Leadership and Teamwork

The text below is a translation from a newspaper article, translated by Anne Penttil.

Living in constant uncertainty teaches us to go back to the source of the old truths: work communities can develop and be productive if they allow humanity, initiativity, creativity, learning new things, responsibility and freedom, cooperation and working to one's heart's content. Changing over from the hierarchical formality to cooperational teamwork is not the philosopher's stone of management that would solve and fix all the organization's problems. Very often the organization's and its members' insufficient ability to learn new operations and thinking models retards teaming. Good discussions within the work community are important for learning new operations models. The communication itself clarifies and improves the thoughts of every individual and those of the whole team too. The article series Leadership and Teamwork by the Vaasa University Continuing Education Center and the newspaper Pohjalainen studied in a new and a fresh way the dimensions of today's managment and leadership. The writers of these articles were the professors, researchers and teachers of the Department of management and organization, Faculty of Business Administration: professor Vesa Routamaa, researcher Virpi Asikainen and assistant Tiina Galln, assistant professor Jukka Peltoniemi and researcher Taru Hautala, researcher Riitta Strmmer, professor Jukka Vesalainen and chief assistant Kai Stenman. Journalist Sirpa Sainio attended to the editing and the journalistic layout of the articles. The Vaasa University Continuing Education Center thanks all the writers and cooperators of the Newspaper University Forum for the creditable contribution in the current theme. This publication offers another possibility for the utilization of the information conveyed by the Newspaper University Forum and we hope that it will arouse discussions.

Newspaper University Forum Develops Leadership and Teamwork

By journalist Sirpa Sainio

The traditional management and organization will be replaced by a new one

The development of leadership and teamwork are the themes of the spring's Newspaper University Forum organized by Pohjalainen and the University of Vaasa. The Faculty of Business Administration under the guidance of professor Vesa Routamaa will answer for the teaching of this course. According to Routamaa a team and a group are still new as everyday work forms even though the words themselves are already worn. The traditional organization is disappearing and people have to develop new kind of participating management instead, which includes creativity and learning. -We are talking about human relationships, issues that were invented in the beginning of this century. The education manager of the Continuing Education Center says that this spring's lecture series is the 13th that has been arranged by the open university. A year ago Newspaper University Forum expanded its operations into Internet and now one can also find last fall's Newspaper University Forum lectures on language immersion. - Over 200 students have taken the examinations based on the Newspaper University Forum's lectures, says Auli Kinnunen. The series of five lectures was published every Sunday starting from 13 April 1997. This entity was counted as two credits. In addition to these lectures published in Pohjalainen there was a two-day seminar dealing with the same subject on 16 and 17 May in Tervahovi at the University of Vaasa. The first twenty students that had registered for the course was taken in. The participation in the seminar was obligatory if one wanted to get the mentioned study weeks. In addition to the articles published in the newspaper the students were expected to master also the book The wisdom of teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, written by Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. and published by Harward Business School Press (1997). During the seminar the students were given another collection of articles they were supposed to read for the examination also. This course costed 150 FIM, which covered supervision on the studies, informing, examinations and the certificate writing expenses. The education itself was free of charge.

Is the Time Ripe for Releasing Enthusiasm, Creativity and Cooperation Abilities?
By Vesa Routamaa

Ideas of leadership and teamwork which were invented already decades ago are now coming true
The recession in the beginning of this decade released several currents of change that were greater than usual in the labor market. The depression both forced and enabled the intensifying of the organizations' functions. Profitability and survival required checking of the organization and expense structures and also enhancing the productivity. Under the cover of recession it was possible to make necessary decisions, which in better times might have fallen down because of the resistance of the personnel and the organizations representing it. Very often the companies are developed rather because of the forcing circumstances or with the help of scattered and fashionable tricks sold by consultants, than because of the internalized knowledge and proactive planning of the management. In the public sector the organization development often focuses on essential basic problems because of barely sufficient appropriations. It even seems that after the recession the public sector organizations have seized on the development of the organizations more eagerly than enterprises.

Earlier alone - now with others' help

Earlier it was usual that enterprises took care of the duties required by the business by themselves as far as possible, whether they concerned personnel, machinery or room. The majority of the enterprise's employees consisted of permanent full-time personnel. Today, mainly because of the economical and productional reasons the traditional subcontracting, netting and the privatization of such services, as transport, maintenance, ADP and sanitation are becoming more general and more often outsourced. This tendency is getting stronger all the time. Bigger productivity with smaller personnel than before has become possible with the help of team-type operations, such as production cells, teams and self-directing work groups. They have increased versatility, motivation and self-directing, reduced hierarchies and developed teleinformatics.

The enterprises have been able to reduce permanent personnel without jeopardizing increase in productivity. However, it is a fact that now during the upspring there is pressure to increase work force, but the unreasonable extra expenses of the salaries and strict employment conditions delay the hiring of new personnel especially in small and medium-sized companies. In the public sector the recruitation ban (prohibition to hire new personnel) and the diminishing salary appropriations have same kind of effect.

Finish the job - move on to new duties

The future jobs will be altered by several kinds of factors Bureaucratization and the difficulties in management caused by it, have increased along the growth of the organizations and caused a trend towards small units: small and medium-sized companies, the corporationing of the units of big organizations, and the enterprises that have sprout from the mother-company, such as the spin-offs of big enterprises. Beside the traditional line organizations the projects, team organizations, and the matrice organizations in bigger companies based on, for example, the cross control of products, areas and different functions, such as marketing, accounting, product development, administration, etc, are becoming more general. One example of this is the Finnish Nokia in Asia and in both Northand South America. The project related working which has traditionally been typical for building industry is now increasing on several other fields. In a project both the organization's permanent and also temporary personnel work in project organizations that are set up for certain purpose for a fixed period. When the job is completed the temporary project organizations are dismissed. After this the personnel moves on to other projects either in the base organization or enter the employment of another employer.

Company may not have a concrete location

The real time information technology enables so called virtual organizations, which have maybe only about twenty per cent of employees as full-time workers. The rest consists of part-time employees, external employees, suppliers, contractors or other such associates and professionals who employ themselves and are not tied to a certain place. The virtual organization differs from the traditional concept of an enterprise because it is not necessarily a concrete visible entity in a certain place, even though it delivers products to the customers. Netting, the operations model based on the organizations internal and external hierarchy independent operations, is getting more common. With the

help of teleinformatics maybe even true system organizations, which were first written about already in the 50's, will be born.

Remote work keeps villages inhabited

The social needs that are very important for most people have decelerated increase in remote work. What comes to the information technology remote work would have been possible for some time already. However remote work is not limited merely to information occupations. In Japan it has been used very effectively and on a large scale in supplying-type compositions, and it is not unknown idea to the small and medium-sized South Ostrobothnian enterprises in Finland either. Nevertheless this kind of work organizations could still be greatly extended. As a matter of fact, remote work probably is one of the few ways to keep the most outlying districts inhabited.

Solitary entrepreneur sells to one and to another

The development will also lead to the generalization of a new employee-type. People who have formerly worked as the employees of a company are now selling their services to one or several employers as solitary entrepreneurs. This means that the roles of the employee and the entrepreneur will unite. The employees start to act like entrepreneurs even though they would work for the company as freelancers or part-time employees. This kind of development creates pressure, for instance, on taxation practice and trade unions.

Need for managers diminishes

The rising level of education, more efficient use of information technology, decentralization of authority and increase in self-directing lead to the diminishing need for managers. For example the self-directing teams on the employee level enable the revaluation of the management. The development towards team-based work forms has started off slowly because of the resisting superiors. My transparencies concerning teamwork and production cells which I wrote during the 70's have not actually met with response in the enterprise and organization practice until this decade, and now almost as such, only externally polished with a word processor.

Team has to exceed the level of its best member

After the starting difficulties teaming seems to develop rapidly during the next few years. The management and different personnel and interest groups need to change their attitude in order to enable the officials, employees and experts

performing different duties to cooperate in the problem centered work. Work forms are changing. Work groups and teamwork are both old and established work forms. So much time has been wasted on inefficient teamwork. While the results of teamwork should beat the capacity of its best member, the reality is often a bad compromise on the level of the most average abilities. However teamwork is something else. In teamwork the best individuals can show their real abilities. The requirement for versatility in teams and projects is becoming general.

Being at work is said to be working

Beside the pressure from the team also the higher salary makes versatility tempting. As the result management is getting more common and the work forms changing, also the role of the inflexible pay systems is getting smaller. The result based salary is becoming usual as the former stiff salary and duty classes are losing their importance. The salaries are more often based on achieved performance, not so much on the time spent at work which has, according to traditional thinking, been the name for working.

Sense of community is emphasized at work

The change in organization and work forms means, also for an individual, change and increase in many ability requirements. As teamwork is becoming more real it requires new kind of responsibility from the individual. Versatility and the independent decision making of a team demands, in addition to social talents, also capability to take collective responsibility for many administrative issues. At the same time as individualism is rising in the society, the organizations and the work forms require greater sense of community than we are used to. One Estonian warned us Finns of excess enthusiasm for teamwork by saying:" You are crazy if you go into that socialism we have just got rid of! " The interesting point is how to manage to combine the requirements of individualism, initiative, entrepreneurship and the cooperation which teamwork calls for. This kind of approach has been experimented decades ago when piecework groups, which resembled modern day teams, built countless houses after the World War II in Finland. At the dawn of better times these work groups disappeared. Interest groups started to collect acquired benefits and there was no need for the spirit of entrepreneurship anymore.

Education makes a specialist a specialisted generalist

The renewing working life needs new kind of learning and know-how, constant learning. Earlier some basic degree, work experience and courses now and then carried all the way till retirement. Versatility becomes easier when a specialist is educated to a general expert. For most this means re-education. Competition for the lessening and the more and more demanding jobs, demands people to take responsibility of their own learning. Today it is not necessarily the employer who guides and takes care of the know-how of every employee. Getting a job and also keeping it demands ability to sell oneself. But how are the Finns who are used to the excessive social security and to the "ready made settings" going to adjust to the new system? New work forms require a lot from the learning of cooperation abilities, not only on the team level but also in the whole organization. The decentralization of authority and responsibility requires also open information policy. The losses and defeats of the organization have to be told openly in order to achieve real commitment. This means that all the employees have to have sufficient understanding on economy and trading which sets demands for the education also. In the future the information superhighway of working life also offers new tools for learning, at least for those who are able to keep up with the development of information society.

Aimed dream in sight

In addition to individual and situational leadership the superiors are required to posses the facilities of a change manager. The change manager is able to convey the employees a vision, the aimed dream of the positive future of his unit. The Finnish politicians have failed completely in this. The appropriation cuts could seem acceptable if something positive might follow in time. It would be worth learning from the Church which has been able to captivate people and rulers by its vision, the truth of which nobody can absolutely prove in this time. A hint of charisma would not hurt the credibility of a manager. In the future a successful manager is rather a leader of people, a trainer and also a person than an issue manager leaning on the traditional power that is granted by his position.

This is how things should already be, but the development takes its time. However, the new role of the manager and emphasizing the leading of people do not mean that the managing should become loose. Things and organizations need to be in order, but they are answered for by the capable units and self-directing teams more than before.

Organizer, account executive, coach

Increase in team-type work forms, production teams, cells and professional teams will most concretely change the positions of management and certain superiors. In several cases managing has become the duty of a team organizer, a liaison role, a coach or a team coordinator. The leadership of a team itself can be taken care of collectively or by a circulating superior, a permanent conductor chosen by the team, or in some cases, with the help of a superior or a coach named by the organization.

Failed nominations are a big problem

The changes both in work forms and leadership set remarkable demands for recruiting. Present recruiting policies are mainly concentrated on finding at least the best suitable, if not the best possible person for the open job. In most recruiting situations people do not have adequate knowledge. Employees are hired without properly knowing the group in which they are going to work. In front of new challenges the knowledge and the methods of the organizations and of the people assisting in the recruiting are inadequate. What is needed also, is a lot of research on such areas as the forming of efficient groups and teams as well as on the successful leadership. The forming of active and creative teams by internal or external recruiting requires special expertise on personality structures and on other qualifications required for cooperation, and many other such things. Insufficient recruiting and failed staff nominations are the worst Achilles' heels of the Finnish organizations. "It is easier to start something than to get rid of it."

It is essential to know how leadership effects

The reformations carried out at the moment have been found both in research and in theory already decades ago. For example the advantages of flat structure, small amount of hierarchy levels, and the group based activities were noticed in so called Hawthorne research begun in the late 1920's and also in the principles of the school of human relations largely based on this research. The time was not ripe, or one did not have to carry out these theories.

Later on the management of the organizations has not had enough knowledge to be able to make good use of these theoretical possibilities. Now the time seems to be ripe for arousing enthusiasm, creativity and cooperation by developing leadership and teamwork. However, this requires knowledge and experience in the effects of leadership on creativity, team structures and learning organization.

Creativity Promoting Managers Are Able to Rejoice at the Solutions Others Have Invented
By Virpi Asikainen and Tiina Galln

The success of an enterprise is rarely a one man's show

The careful refining of productivity became the hit of the 1970's. The 1980's can be called the breakthrough period of quality thinking. In the 1990's the necessity of creativity and innovativeness for the success of enterprises has been understood better than never before. Nowadays it is essential to claim creativity holistically and throughout the whole organization. It is more and more rare in the future that an enterprise will be counting on a heroic one man's show. Seppo Synjkangas from polar Electro stated in an interview by Economica magazine that in his opinion an authoritarian one man's show works fine until the turnover of the enterprise is at the level of 10 million Finnish marks. If the owner can not create teams and count on his subordinates at that point, the outlook for the future is rather bleak. Creativity is usually defined in terms of the new and useful ideas produced by individuals or small cooperating groups. Innovations, for their part, are based on creative ideas. Organizational innovation can be seen as a successful realization of the creative ideas in the organization. The different qualities of a creative person have been tried to define: every one is creative somehow and in some situations. The disappearing of creativity and innovations is the same as the death of the whole business. The difficulties of most enterprises are due to years of avoiding or arise from the inability to encounter internal and external changes. The internal changes are new values, attitudes, styles of organization and new courses of action and communication whereas the external changes originate from social changes, economical fluctuations or technological development. It is essential for the survival of the organizations that the messages conveyed by the environment are recognized and answered if necessary.

Great inventions - everyday ideas

At the one end of the creativity continuum are the greatest scientific inventions and the most stunning achievements, such as Einstein's theory of relativity or the compositions of Mozart. At the other end are the every day creative and clever solutions, such as how to get through a locked door without keys. There are no breaking points between the levels of creativity. The differences are born out of people's different abilities, talents, motivation, interests and circumstances.

Individuals and organizations create together

In order to arouse creativity in an organization both individualistic creativity and a creativity promoting organization are needed. The structure and the culture of an organization may turn out to be fatal. The managers from the executive level to the level of foremen have a great influence as the creators of the right kind of atmosphere. To promote innovations the executive level has to influence organization's atmosphere in such a way that creativity and innovation are emphasized, rewarded and fairly noticed. The executive level decides also when allocating its resources whether it supports creative or maintaining projects.

Closest colleague may be the first to reject

The middle management, the managers of a project and a team, support creativity by maintaining connections, setting goals and timetables clearly, giving feedback and by taking care of the balance between freedom and limitations. Also the experiences of the colleagues, the technical expertise and the social skills affect person's creativity. The closest colleagues may be the first and only ones to torpedo a new plan, if the uniformity of the group is its most important value. The literature dealing with creativity and innovation tries to present things with the help of various models and figures. It also tries to analyze the birth of creativity and innovation by acknowledging different phases connected to the process. The phase model presented in this article describes one kind of idealistic order between different phases.

Common vision awakes enthusiasm

A common prospect for the future can clearly be seen on the level of vision, if the organization is striving for creativity and innovativity. The vision involves all the members of the organization. Its power is based on the convincing

commitment of the management which can be seen in practice also. A mere clever word mongering about an imposing future is not enough to motivate others, even though it would be well presented. Talking about the favoring of risk taking is something else than understanding the human mistakes as an inevitable part of experimenting and creative activities. The projects are given goals that support the vision and the rules are agreed. For the success of innovation, it is essential to evaluate also the possibilities offered by external environment.

Good manager protects his group

A good project manager is able to acknowledge from the environment the information that is essential for the organization and can use it when creating and realizing new possibilities. In addition to this, a good project manager is technically proficient in both expertise and social skills, is able to find the right person for the right job and projects the group from external disturbances. The way of managing either promotes and tends creativity or suffocates it. The factors of individual creativity, such as the expertise of the field, creative skills and motivation, function as the basis of ideation. Expertise is connected to the know-how and attitudes characteristic to the field. They function as the raw material of the creative process.

Persistence is needed too

The skills connected to creativity give the technically good or sufficient achievement the specialty that is characteristic to creativity. Man's creative skills include seeing the problem from new perspectives, new ways of thinking and a new style of working. In addition to personal characteristics such things as risk orientation, independence and social skills are crucial. Making good use of the torrent flow of ideas requires also persistence and unyielding combined with convincing communication skills. The skills connected to expertise and creativity depend on education and experience. Motivation can, to some extent, replace the missing field related skills or the abilities connected to creativity. The positive internal motivation shows in self managing, in the interest towards the work itself, in enthusiasm and in experiencing the work challenging. An individual may easily see the external limitations that are not directly linked with the job, such as evaluation, supervision, reward, competition or the discarding of the options, as tools of control. Motivation is also affected by person's ability to get around the limitations and turn them into internal challenges. Some may become depressed because of the external critique

and evaluation, whereas others are either able to put them aside or experience even greater enthusiasm knowing that they really get feedback. All these factors are needed for creative solutions. The higher level each skill and motivation has reached, the better are the chances to achieve creativity.

Everything must not be connected to money

However, the ideation of individuals and groups depends on the characteristics of the organization too. The resources of the organization affect the expertise of an individual and the possibilities to develop it. Especially important tool for the management is the reward system, which should pay enough attention to creative work. Nevertheless, it is essential to keep the balance between diverse concrete rewards and other forms of encouragement. All action must not be connected to bonuses, pay hikes, and other such concrete measures. People have a tendency to avoid taking risks and trying new ideas, because experimenting always brings a possible failure along with it. Generally speaking, evaluation should be continuous and constructive change of information between the management and the members of the team. If people feel threatened because of the annual unfavorable and error seeking evaluation, their will to take risks diminishes and creativity weakens. Therefore both the nature of feedback and the timing of it are significant. Pressure and competing can have both supporting and weakening effect on creativity. A missing project schedule may give a feeling that the work is not important. On the other hand a tight schedule may force people to settle for the simplest and the most uninventive solutions. Competition that is found threatening, for example within a group, weakens creativity. But in a situation where the group is competing against another external group or enterprise the threat pulls the members of the team closer to each other and connects them tightly. Competing gives the activity positive excitement connected with the challenge which has a favorable effect on creativity. In general, good and creativity promoting organization atmosphere is characterized by cooperation between different sectors. Sufficient resources and time support creativity, whereas the lack of them prevents it.

Guards against irrelevant critique

Abilities to administrate innovation are emphasized again, when the ideas are tested and carried out. At this stage the process is still very exposed to external critique.

The stage of evaluation and testing usually requires most personnel, money and material, which emphasizes the significance of the organization's general resources. Even though the performing of the job has been the responsibility of a single team or a project, the testing and the realizing of the ideas has usually been carried out by the whole organization. Achievements should always be evaluated in order to make the creative aims motivating and significant. Both success and a total failure will always lead to the ending of the process. Success of some degree is likely to lead into a situation where the group still tries to solve the problem after it has reconsidered and reformed its aims. People find fair rewarding very important, not only concrete bonuses, but also other kind of recognition and encouragement.

Latent talents must be called forth

The challenges of managing are still growing as creativity is expected from more and more organization members. The characteristics of creativity required from a promoting management and a manager may easily end up being a massive list of top-ten. Realizing it by just one man's or woman's efforts seems to require a miracleworker. However, reality demands action that is quite the opposite: instead of a one man's show the biggest challenge for the management and the superiors is to be able to release the resources of the personnel and call forth its latent talents. The superior's true faith in people's abilities and skills form the basis for this. The trust must be conveyed to the people too. Well functioning communication is an essential tool for success.

Learning is more important than knowing

Nobody is able to tenably forecast the future. However it is important for the organization to be able to grab the signals conveyed by the environment and by the changes in it, as also the possible new tendencies and requirements. The prospect for the future, the vision, is at its best every employee's personal and inspiring goal. More important than the realizing of decisions may be the participation in the decision making, and the personal commitment and motivation achieved through it. Instead of knowing it is learning which is more essential, to the superior as well as to the employee and to the team as well as to the whole organization on the basis of both personal experience and other policies.

The creative skills, expertise and motivation of individuals, are crucial when creativity is being prompted. What is needed, is the organization's ability to manage and support individual creativity. The organization has to have resources. The atmosphere has to show encouragement to creativity and innovations.

Team Members Can Do Almost All the Job Requires

By assistant professor Jukka Peltoniemi and researcher Taru Hautala

Earlier work was intensified by the means of "spade science": the bigger the man the bigger the spade
The traditional operations model of the organizations seems to be a very threatened species nowadays. A part of the period's tendencies consists of short time isms, whereas another part of them may have permanent effects on the organizations' way of thinking. Team organizations seem to belong to the latter group. The forming of teams is, in fact, one development stage in the organizations' constant aspiration to improve productivity and profitability. When industrial enterprising was still rather new, the intensifying followed the principles of so called "spade science" which was an aspiration to improve the productivity of an individual worker through rationalization: the bigger the man the bigger the spade and the bigger the heaps of coal. In addition to this, hierarchical organizations and the behavior unifying rules and directions were supposed to improve anticipation and diminish errors caused by the dissimilarity of people. This way of thinking is probably familiar to the modern organizations too.

Employee is not a machine but a human being after all

It may be paradoxical but about 70 years ago it was found out in a series of research aiming towards the rationalization of work that a worker was not a machine but a human being, whose work was affected, among other things, by the group in which the person was working. The norms of the group and the unofficial leadership within the group became important work regulating mechanisms. The leadership and people's work motivation as the improvers of not only efficiency but also of the job satisfaction, have in time become as important as the hierarchical structures and the rationalization of the work. The use of teamwork as an intensifier was first experimented in some Norwegian and Swedish factories in the 1960's and the 1970's. The challenge of these experiments on so called autonomous work groups was to create "a community which is based on trust and the common interests of both the company and the employees, and in which an individual member feels safe and comfortable."

Work groups were too loose

The groups were given responsibility of their work and they emphasized the competence of all the members and their responsibility for the group's management. The results have been various. In some cases for example the absence and the turnover of the employees have decreased, but increased in others. However, the problems in productivity have been significant. At the worst it could be only 15 % of the productivity of the corresponding assembly line factories in the United States. One reason for this may be the fact that autonomous work groups were considered as loose motivation techniques. Hence the social side of the work was emphasized at the cost of productivity. However, time was not mature for the further development of team work, as the intensifying of organization's activities proceeded in many other ways at the same time. The profit center structures were supposed to answer the needs of various customer groups. Global enterprises started to use matrices as their structural forms. Strategic management was hoped to provide competitive advantage, and management by objectives was expected to lead to good financial performance. The model for quality management was sought from Japan.

Additional value to the customer

At the turn of the 1990's, along with the increasing competition, rose the question how to get more efficiency and productivity. One solution has been the low process organizations and once again the groups, now called teams. The customer orientation as a goal, firms have tried to bring forth a lighter and more flexible organization and to release the latent human resources to the use of the organization. At the same time it is thought that the individuals' possibilities to learn new things and then to use the learned are improving. The following paragraphs describe the change in the way of thinking (figures 1 and 2). The organization's structure and the internal functional mechanism are important in hierarchies. The managers are expected to posess all the skill and wisdom in the organisation.

The modern lean organizations, on their behalf, consider the needs of a customer as the basis of their action. The organization does not have intrinsic value. The organization is described as processes (e.g. production, the control of the customers, logistics, management, etc.) that produce additional value to customers and in which the central units of the work are not the hierarchical levels nor the separate departments, but the teams with complementary skills which have as straight connections to the customers as possible. Therefore all the members of the work community are expected to posses adequate knowledge and skills.

Figure 1. The model of traditional hierarchial organization

Figure 2. The model of lean organization

Team or a work group?

A work group and a team are partly overlapping concepts.

Compared to the traditional work groups teams have some differentiating features. A team consists of skilled and versatile employees or experts. All the team members can do almost everything the whole of the job requires. They can also replace each other. The team's principle is that the work is done in the same place where the decisions are made, as far as possible. Responsibility for the scheduling of work and for the results are alsodifferent as well as the pay systems, and the quantity of direct control is smaller than in the traditional work groups.

Teams can be various

The concepts of the team are not quite established. Therefore there is not just one and only way of classification, either. The names of the classes are partly overlapping too. The most common classification criteria is the task of the team. Operational teams consist of the employee level members and they perform "floor level" duties. An example of such team is an assembling team, which in other words performs all the stages of the work process by itself. Teams that promote information flow and coordination can be, for example, horizontal or vertical teams. In a big company the teams formed of employees and middle management may convey and collect information quickly from the top to the bottom and vice versa. Inter functional teams, for example teams developing new products, operate between the organization's different departments, such as product development, production and marketing. Decision making teams are the teams of the executive level, such as top management teams.

Amount of autonomy varies

The teams can be classified according to the amount of autonomy, control and authorization (figure 3). The amount of autonomy grows and the amount of control diminishes when a traditional work group is gradually changed into an self-directing team or even an self-leading team. The traditional work group is an externally managed team in which a superior tells the employees what to do. The employees do not have managerial responsibility or control. Operational team represents versatility. It can for example decide on work planning, but the team leader still answers for the goal setting.

Semiautonomous work group is suitable for manufacturing industry in which employees are allowed to decide on production activities. However, other groups or teams perform supporting activities, such as quality control.

Figure 3. The amount of autonomy and authorization in different team types

Self-directing team experiments

A self-directing team is a relatively independent work group, in which jobs and responsibilities are sought from a carefully defined work segment. In the best case the self-piloting team realizes the principle of "holistic work" including the goal setting, planning, execution, and the evaluation of the whole operation A self-directing team tries to experiment varying jobs and emphasizes the success of the whole group. A well advanced self-directing team can interact directly with the customers and suppliers. The team can also decide whether it wants to have a teamleader or not. However, it is possible that these kinds of teams are more illusion than reality.

Pseudo teams do not want to commit themselves

All groups that call themselves teams are still not teams. These kinds of seemingly functioning, so called pseudo teams realize the traditional course of action and do not want to commit themselves to the common goals: work result, action model or shared responsibility.

Even though teams are often described as loose and flexible organizations, they still have a cohesive structure. This structure forms the context in which the team's member is working. The structure of the team includes the tasks of the team, the roles and the statuses of the members and also the norms of the team. The basic task of every team is to set clear and understandable goals for their work. It is essential to increase work's efficiency, productivity, flexibility and competitiveness, but also its meaningfulness. In those organizations that successfully use teamwork the team members control their own productivity, expenses, budget and the quality of the work. Keeping to the schedule is essential because certain work processes have to be completed within the agreed schedule. In addition to that the teams take care of the development of new work methods, personnel relations and cooperation, and also see to the education, customer service and the informing of the stakeholders. Team members may have authorities to make big changes in the work processes without asking permission from others. The tasks may include the recruiting of new members too.

Team members have roles

The construction of the team's activities is essentially influenced by the roles of the members. The role describes the behavior which is characteristic to each member in their social community. The roles can be attached to the person's occupation, like the roles of a foreman, an adviser or an internal developer but they may also be unofficial and connected to human interaction. Examples of the latter are the roles of a team supporting initiator, an informer, an evaluator and also the role of an encouraging and tension relieving member. Team work is disturbed by self-centered dominators who require attention from others, by people seeking recognition and by those who just have a principle to disagree. The criticism coming from these people is not aimed at helping the group's work. The team supporting roles will develop more easily, if the members know what is expected from them and what is the right way to work with others.

Team avoids appreciation differences

It is important in a team organization to avoid power hierarchies and rolerelated appreciation differences. The whole team's ability to produce value for the customer is essential. In a team, in which the members are capable of doing different jobs, all official roles are of equal value.

However, different kind of social appreciation may be attached to the unofficial roles of the team. In these cases it is a question of the role's status. A status hierarchy means a social rank within the team. The members of higher status are often so called unofficial leaders whose opinion affects the whole team. If the team is not unanimous in status hierarchy, harmful rivalry may follow. Another status hierarchy problem appears, if the leader with his assistants and yes-men forms an inner circle. The outsiders are not informed nor do they participate in decision making, but if necessary they are the ones who are made the scapegoats and black sheep.

Norms express the limit of tolerance

Norms are the behavioral rules of the team, which aim to maintain order in the team's activity. Official norms are, for example, instructions or goals given to the team. Unofficial norms develop as the result of the team's actions and are often latent. They have not been written down and they pass on to the new members as an "oral tradition". The norms express the tolerance limit and the accepted form of behavior. For example, in issues important to the team exceptional behavior e.g. a weak work performance may not be tolerated. The compliance with the norms is based on people's expectations and experiences on what kind of behavior may be rewarded and what punished. It would be important for the organizations that the unofficial norms and the goals of the team were not conflicting. In addition to this, the norms that encourage open expression of different thoughts and the acceptance of the members' uniqueness would be essential for the result of the team and for the motivation of the members.

Teaming must be genuine

Before starting to use team work it is important to carefully consider what problems the teams are supposed to solve in the organization. A mere decision to start teaming is not enough. The transfer of authorities must be real and genuine too, as the teaming will most certainly stop halfway if the management and the superiors little by little take over the reins again. The teams have to know what they can decide and the superiors have to obey agreed rules. It must also be accepted that people's jobs may change and some department boundaries disappear from the organization. These can be learned in team training. The third, but certainly not the least precondition is that the realization is supported by the management. If the management does not believe in the idea, the forming of teams is waste of time.

It is not rare that even good ideas may have to wait for a long time before they are introduced in an organization. This has happened to the theoretical ideas behind the team organizations which were found already decades ago. Now it seems that the introduction of teams is becoming more common especially in such organizations in which the changed situations demand new work forms.

Old Customs in a New Situation Confuse and Oppress

By Riitta Strmmer

Creative learning enables bold leaps and takeoffs

The examination of learning has got a new welcome dimension during the past few years. In addition to individual learning people have started to talk about the learning of groups, communities and organizations. This article surveys the learning of organizations. Its perspective suits all organizations, such as enterprises, public institutions and offices as well as schools. In all these learning can be either effective or ineffective, inspiring or banal, success promoting or deteriorating.

Change takes the sting out of the old weapons

The big, succeeded enterprises around the world have been forced to notice that they can not ride on their earlier success anymore. The changes in the environment may quickly take the sting out of the old weapons. It has been noticed that the ability to quickly and constantly develop new coping methods is the key to survival. The holistic developing of the learning abilities is supposed to give new and more comprehensive solutions to the demands of the constant change. The learning organization has been defined, for example, as "an organization which has been tuned to constant change and to develop its processes and the contents of its action in the more and more dynamic environment". The fast technological development creates both possibilities and pressure: flexibility and rapidity have become the lifeblood of the organizations. Success in the new environment depends, not only on the resources of the enterprise, but also on the rapidity of learning. The concept of efficiency is now seen in a new light. If the enterprise wants to develop its abilities, it has to be able to combine the constant development of its know-how, the encouraging work environment which enables that development, and the effective work processes.

Learning is not easy either

The learning of an organization has typically been examined as a two level process consisting of survival learning and creative learning.

The survival learning is connected to experience, which forms the nuclear of the daily routines. The problems are solved on the basis of the old courses of action. The creative learning widens one's creative abilities and enables qualitative and structural changes in the work practices. Therefore it also enables bold leaps and takeoffs. The confusion and oppression connected to changes are often results of the effort to cope with the radically changing circumstances only with the help of survival learning. The old courses of action are too stiff to enable the finding of effective solutions to new problems. As a result follow exhaustion and frustration caused by the fruitlessness of the efforts. However, creative learning is not easy either, at least not in the beginning. People have to question all their earlier courses of action and maybe even completely change their way of thinking.

Formalities must be discarded

The Masa Yard cabin factory in Piikki, Finland can be mentioned as an example of two level learning. The increasing competition forced the company to seek efficiency, but for a long time this was done within the hierarchical structure, strictly defined job descriptions and salary classes. The company did not dare to abandon the old systems before it was ruined by bankruptcy. Then it finally gave up the hierarchy and the job descriptions and changed over to teaming. Meeting memorandums were abolished and formalities discarded. But also the number of personnel was cut down. It was not until after this that successful learning, which could be seen in the results too, became possible. In addition to profit earning capacity also job satisfaction improved. In Piikki the company succeeded in in-depth learning. On people's level it meant thorough change in the ways of thinking, and on the level of the organization the radical reforming of the operations model. Very often this becomes possible through a crisis only.

Inability to give up obstructs learning

Learning new operations and thinking models always requires ability to give up old habits. This is called unlearning.

Difficulties in giving up the old courses of action usually are the biggest obstacles for learning new things. Unwillingness to unlearning has also been called change resistance. Difficulties in giving up dear old photographs, smoking or the earlier learned things belong to the same category. In enterprises this human feature may, at the worst, cause bankruptcy.

Silent knowledge out through talking!

Japanese Nonaka has analyzed the processes which convert the so called silent knowledge of the employees into knowledge which is valuable to the whole organization and which strengthens its opportunities to succeed. The silent knowledge is individuals' knowledge developed through experience and profound acquaintance. Sometimes it is hard to clothe this knowledge in words. At the best, however, it becomes clearly expressible explicit knowledge, such as special know-how in customer service, that is common to the whole organization. According to Nonaka, discussion is the most effective way to turn silent knowledge into the common knowledge of the whole organization. When issues are analyzed, categorized and combined into new entities together, the earlier latent information is brought out and formed into common knowledge. Through different kinds of experiments and experiences the explicit knowledge becomes silent knowledge again, which then directs the action of every individual in practical situations. In practice this means that the work communities need to start a good discussion. Of course it is important to talk about activities, issues, experiences with the customers, mistakes that have been made and also about wild new ideas in order to develop things. Sometimes also the feelings, hopes and fears, in other words the things that may jeopardize the concrete solutions and results of the work community, are worth discussing.

Experience is the basis for learning

Most organizations draw conclusions based on the past. The earlier experiences give ideas for the basis of future activities and for the evaluation of possibilities. Learning from experiences can happen on different levels connected to each other: 1. experiences of the environment (e.g. the environment, competitors, customers, etc) 2. experiences of the organization's or its management's activities (e.g. strategy, policies, procedures, management practices, etc) and 3. the personal experiences of every individual working in the organization. What makes the situation difficult, is the fact that the earlier experience will not necessarily be useful at every turn.

A feature coming more and more common is the very short interval between the estimation of the situation and the action itself. At this point it is important to pay attention also to people's evaluations, instincts and intuitive abilities.

Interaction gives more value to learning

Organizations try to attain ability to notice the signals that come from the surroundings involving the organization's action, aims and the effects of the action. It is essential to understand and to be able to define and handle the gap between the organization's present abilities and future possibilities on the level of actions. Therefore experience is not to be relied on like a walking stick, but it is possible to develop the capability of moving with the help of it in order to find the agility needed at the points of change. There is a collective element in the organizations' learning which, as a result of interaction, gives learning a new value adding dimension. The organization's prevailing view and the way of thinking affect the individual's way of orientation, interpreting of the situations, and learning. If, for example, an enterprise genuinely appreciates the customer it will most certainly have an effect on the actions and the conclusions of every employee. The generally approved ideas of the purpose and the way of action in progress are the combining "glue" in this kind of learning. The majority of the members have to agree on them. The results of the action based on these ideas are evaluated which will affect the actions in the future. The evaluation may lead from the way of thinking, concerning the sharp tuning of the courses of action, to another extreme, creative learning. Very often the inspirer of the "glue's" regeneration is a strong-willed and a brave leader, another influential person or a group.

Combining the views is vital

We start from the assumption that in every organization there are as many individual interpretations and patterns of thought they are based on, as there are individuals. However, the group's aim is to integrate these individual patterns of thought and to build common views based on the common experiences of the group's members. As a result develops organization's collective and action directing thinking model. Individual performances become the general courses of action based on the common knowledge, discussion and concrete cooperation. The combining of the individual views is vital to the success of the organization. If every employee aims to different directions like a bevy of

sparrows, it is not very realistic to hope that the goals set for the organization would be effectively achieved. At the worst, the goals have been understood in various ways too, and therefore even the vigorous attempts pull the entity to different directions.

Individual's learning is the essence

The success of the organization's attempts and, at the end, also the money and the per cents that may change the result, depend on people. Therefore the learning of an individual is most essential. However, the organization plays very important role in directing the individual's learning, either by encouraging or discouraging it. This includes a group of factors, such as culture, managing, structure and the ways of action, which shape the unique character of the organization. According to specialists, the characteristics of a learning supporting organization capable of quick learning are as follows:

A common vision: everybody in the organization knows what kind of future the organization is heading for The constant developing of the employees' know-how which, at its best, is effectively achieved through work Flexible organization in which as much power and responsibility has been given to the teams as possible. Effective learning orientation, learning from mistakes, learning from others and team learning, which all sensitize everybody to think from the perspective of learning. System thinking, in other words, everybody in the organization understands its systematic entity and the interaction between the matters. A committed and an inspiring management, which especially concentrates on the supporting of learning. Wide participation, in other words a culture which inspires everybody to add their mite to the pile. Open and effective flow of information which includes both open discussion and effective systems. Indicators of development which help everybody to develop their own work and the operations models of the organization, and to redirect their activities too, if necessary. Bonus schemes that stimulate learning, trying and ideation.

Most organizations adjust and gradually develop their activities within the existing products, markets, services and technology. The earlier success directs their development. They react mechanically and in a routine like manner to the changes in the environment and try to avoid risks. This prevents diversity of opinions, experimenting and risk taking. The survival abilities of these organizations can not endure big changes in the markets.

In creative organizations the change is seen as the engine of development. A network based and team structured organization reforms itself through constant evaluation. Sincerity, creativity and system thinking characterize the actions of the organization. A netting process with other companies may be an inspiration for learning. It may be stimulated by cooperation with a client or a supplier. Ideas are sought from the best practices of other organizations and the limits are bravely broken.

Versatility adds ability

At its best the organization has managed to combine work and learning. Special care has been taken of learning, and all superiors and teams, and of course the individuals too, answer for it. The development projects that produce versatility add organization's capabilities. The reward systems pay attention not only to the performances and responsibility but also to the increase in abilities. In the organization the learning of new operations models usually proceeds in stages. The first step is a situation where different disturbances are noticed and tried to fix with the traditional means. The course and the contents of the change are, at this point, still unclear and different interest groups far away from each other. The second step often means unavoidable conflicts and chaos. Demands coming from different directions nullify each other and cause pressure which may require a completely new operations model. This phase often includes a crisis. The third step means that a new operations model is developed and it functions as a foundation for the activities. At the best it has been preceded by the handling of diverse visions and the finding of a common solution to which everybody can commit themselves. The fourth step is about starting to apply the new operations model into practice. Very often this happens first as a limited experiment. What is learned from it can then be applied more widely. At this stage it is impossible to avoid the handling of the conflicts between the conventional policies and the new model. Through the learning process the operations model enriches and takes its form. The fifth step means the strengthening of the new operations model, for example with necessary rules, and the evaluation of the results.

Never-ending journey of learning

It is a general thought that organizations' development is a slow cumulation of incidents with sudden turns occurring once in a while.

According to the modern idea, the development is seen as a constant qualitative change, which means that tensions and developmental challenges are an inseparable part of everyday activities. It is useless to hope that this change would suddenly end and we would get back to the peace of the good old days. It will not happen! The challenge of today's work communities is to make the biggest part of learning to take place in its natural environment, in the work, as the organized teaching is expensive and slow, and often found ineffective. On-the-job learning has become a part of the company's competition strategy. It pays attention to both short and long term needs. The most important precondition is the creation of development supporting activity culture and the developing of learning supporting systems.

Development starts from realization

The organization can control change only after the situation has been recognized and the public discussion started. After that the organization's learning requires conscious directing. Development always starts from realizing and deciding. Luckily, every one of us has one point from which the change and conscious learning can be started right away without any obstacles. That point is in us ourselves!

Real Teams Increase Employees' Commitment, Job Satisfaction and Initiativity

By Jukka Vesalainen and Kai Stenman

The Finnish work communities still do not make enough developing suggestions
The professionals teaching and lecturing on teamwork are unanimous in the usefulness of their product. However most of them can not present any supporting research reports on how the benefits of teamwork show in the organizations. We, for our part, try to moderate this lack by studying the experiences in the teamwork among the Finnish men and women working in metal industry. In the spring of 1996 we sent a questionnaire to one thousand members of the Metalworkers Union. In return mail we got 244 appropriately filled forms. The results presented here are based on that material. The actual research report has not been published yet, and therefore these research results are definitely fresh.

There are several influencing factors

Behind the business economic research lies the profitability of an enterprise. However, there are so many influencing factors that it is impossible to build an explaining model which would be universally applicable and take all situations into consideration. Matters are always affected by a human being, whose decision making and actions are not always so rational that they could be absolutely trustworthily modelled. Therefore the business economics do not usually try to make strict explaining models in a way the natural sciences, like physics, do. It is rather a question of what kind of roles different background phenomena play in the development of profitability and other explaining factors. In this research the study does not reach the level of the enterprises' profitability. The variables we have used are the commitment and the job satisfaction of the employees.

Committed, satisfied
We assume on the basis of the earlier knowledge that the high commitment and good job satisfaction of the employees have a positive effect on the profitability of the enterprise. One of the teamwork's basic ideas is that when people are given more responsibility and freedom they voluntarily release both quantitative and qualitative energy to their work. People working in teams should therefore be more committed and satisfied with their job than people in more traditional employment. Majority (56.1 %) of the people who filled and returned our research questionnaires work in enterprises that employ 25100 people. Correspondingly the biggest individual sectors and their mainly used production forms were as follows: 1. The manufacturing of metal products: 70 % produced in series. 2. The manufacturing of machines and equipment: 65 % in one-off production. 3. The electric products and instruments: 60 % produced in series. The manufacturing of metal products was clearly the biggest user of process production (70 %).

Real and false teams

A mere new name does not make a group a team. One central aim of this study was to separate the real teams from so called false teams. What we called real teams were groups in which the superior has adapted more the role of a coach than that of a hierarchical superior. The teams have far reaching rights to make decisions connected to their work and their activities include also the measuring of productivity and the result-based wages. In our research material there are 37 people who work in such real teams as described above. Correspondingly 64 people work in work groups classified as so called false teams. In these teams the above described features of real teams were not fulfilled. In addition to this the material includes 126 people who do not work in teams. To the third group we put those 64 people who worked in a company which used teamwork, but were not members of a team themselves. This group is called team organization, not personally in a team. The fourth group consists of those 62 people who work in a company which does not use teamwork at all. In the study this group is referred to as a usual organization.

Team is felt important

Teamwork was clearly seen very important in those groups that were using it, not depending on the quality of the team or whether the person, who had filled in the questionnaire, belonged to a team or not. The surprise was that even in the usual organizations most of the people (57 %) found teamwork necessary. This result has to be taken with slight reservations as most people probably do not have experience in teams. Therefore the answers could be seen as reflecting some kind of image of teamwork or a general interest in it.

Active and positive relationship evolves

Commitment to work is normally understood merely as a minor turnover and rare absences, in other words as a somehow passive phenomenon. This probably works fine as a general interpretation. However, in this research commitment means the positive and active relationship between an organization and its personnel. In addition to stability commitment includes also strong fate in the targets and the goals of the organization, the acceptance of them and will to strive hard for the organization. Commitment was measured by several different questions that helped to study its different features. For the analysis that is presented here they were combined into one variable which enabled the classifying of the people into groups describing the strength of commitment.

False teams lower commitment

The people who fulfilled all requirements of commitment were put into the group of high commitment. The group of average commitment consists of people who had some very strong feature, for example strong will to stay in the job, while other features were rather weak or then they all represented average level. The features of the people who belonged to the group of low commitment were all comparably weak. People in this group change their jobs quite easily, unless there are some kind of obstacles for moving. Table 1 presents the proportions of low, average and high commitment in different groups. The results of this research are very clear. 75 % of the people working in real teams are highly committed, while the corresponding rate in other groups is only a little over 30 %.

Especially interesting is the fact that the people working in so called false teams are not any more committed than those who do not belong to teams at all. Actually the situation is quite the opposite: nominal teams seem to lower commitment. Noteworthy is also the fact that in the group C commitment is not any higher than in the groups B or D. This result shuts out the possibility that such enterprises which practice teamwork would somehow be better than others and their personnel more committed than that of other enterprises.

Table 1: Employee's commitment in different teams (% of people / group)

People working in teams are more satisfied

When studying job satisfaction, we measure the employees' attitudes towards: colleagues, superiors, the certainty of the job, the possibility to use one's skills and abilities in the work, the feedback on work, the meaningful entity of the work, etc. As a phenomenon job satisfaction is more shortsighted than commitment. It reflects more the attitude towards the work itself, work environment and work community. Because of the multiplicity of the phenomenon job satisfaction was measured with several questions which were then combined into one reading that described satisfaction in general.

Table 2 describes the division of job satisfaction which follows the same lines as the division of commitment. People in the group A are clearly more satisfied than others. Especially notable is the fact that only 2,7 % of people working in real teams are not satisfied with their job. Correspondingly a little over 20 % of the employees in other groups are not satisfied.

Table 2: Job satisfaction in different groups (% of people / group)

Real teams are more initiative than others

In addition to commitment and job satisfaction we asked the metal workers some other things connected to teamwork. One of them was initiativity. Making initiatives, developing suggestions, or other such things is much more rare in the Finnish work communities than in the corresponding work communities abroad. This is clearly a problem bothering several Finnish work communities. Initiativity can be seen as one external characteristic of internal entrepreneurship. What is basically involved, is the employee's qualitative, mental contribution to his work. The traditional and especially hierarchical managing system usually can not affect people's initiativity, because it is something the employee can rule personally. If the circumstances support independent and even self-piloting activities, the result may be an increase in initiatives. Teamwork is one way to do this.

We need more group initiative

We measured initiative on the scale of 1-5, where 1 means low initiativity and 5 high initiativity. In the real teams the average initiativity was 3,2, in false teams 2,5 and in the two other groups 2,4 and 2,2. Even when looked like this the real teams stand out from the others. However, the difference is not very clear. This may be because teamwork means working in a group, but in the Finnish culture an initiative is considered rather a personal than a group performance. What is needed is a chance in attitude before group level initiative is possible.

Egg - chicken situation keeps the mind occupied

The research results presented above clearly speak for an orthodox teamwork. We can draw a conclusion that the orthodox teamwork is a tool of management which increases the commitment of personnel and improves job satisfaction and initiative. However, the researches are often doubting Thomases. They do not want to announce even the clear seeming results to be truths before careful and extended analyses. Behind these doubts always lies the possible interfering variable: the research result may have some other explanation than the one that was discovered. In these cases the doubt is cast on two issues. Firstly do those companies that practice orthodox teamwork have something, for example the image of the enterprise, which would, in spite of teamwork, influence the commitment and the job satisfaction of the employees. Another possible error factor has to do with people. It can be asked whether the already more committed and satisfied employees particularly end up into the orthodox teams? Presenting doubts is a part of researchers' work. Nevertheless it seems that the research results of the usefulness of the orthodox teams can be relied on. The affects of teamwork could best be estimated by a classical experimental arrangement. This kind of research is a longitudinal study, in which first comes the initial survey, after which the organization starts to drive in the orthodox teamwork. In the control organization nothing is changed. After a certain period (in this case the time needed would be a couple of years) the final survey is performed and the results are compared with those from the initial survey.

Team is not the philosopher's stone of management

When evaluating the results of this research and especially when thinking about the realization possibilities in your own enterprise or department, it is good to notice that this research concerned productional enterprises. Many productional enterprises have tried to apply different ways of group work. Along with these they may have got organization-related experiences which some managers and superior have been able to use apparently successfully when switching over to teamwork. Another noteworthy issue is that in spite of clear advantages teamwork is not a philosopher's stone which would fix all matters and problems in the organization. The successful realization of teamwork is not easy, and the imperfectly functioning teams will not give as good results.