Change Management + PMP - Changing the Team

For those looking to pass the PMP, and others interested in Change Management concepts, I have broken things down into 3 levels. Individual, Team, and Organizational change. Below is the Team change info.

A PMP Perspective on Change: Part 2, The Team.

Part 2 of my series is changing the team. We all know and understand that teams can be either very easy to change or very challenging. Sometimes changing team performance or behavior is as easy as changing the leaders’ mindset. Other times it can be a roller coaster of progress that cycles through many dynamics and will turn your hair grey before you ever see progress. Again I will be hitting this topic with my experience, education, and referencing the stellar book, Making Sense of Change Management: A Complete Guide to the Models, Tools & Techniques of Organizational Change, Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2009), and again I suggest this should be on your shelf as a supplement to your library.

In short, my experience has taught me the secret to changing a team is to identify what kind of team you have and develop cohesion upon that team before you try to summon change. If the team is not a cohesive unit with a unified goal, or getting close to that point, you are not trying to change a team; but trying to manage change among a group of individuals. First you must unify the group into a team, and then change them all at once. My education backed this practice up, but through psychological terms and theories that I couldn’t apply in the needed time. Cameron and Green also have this approach and cover it with team identification terms, the Tuckman model, and factors to team effectiveness.

Let’s begin changing the team,

Understanding the composition and nature of your team will enhance the chances of changing it. Virtual teams have little face to face interaction and are not as prone to be manipulated or dominated into behavioral changes by one figure as a field unit of bomb technicians would. On the other hand, a team of professional lab technicians who rely upon each other for stages of progress and share a professional relationship may be more compromising in a changing organization than an assembly line of factory workers. The above are theoretical examples and not fact based. Below are team identification according to Cameron and Green:

Work Team- Most common form of team found throughout many industries and is often lead by a team leader or supervisor. This team is responsible for delivering a product or service and typically shares a common goal.

Self-Managed Team- Similar to the work team but lacking the direction of the team leader or supervisor. Commonly found in manufacturing, this team uses a distributed leadership or consensus to reach decisions.

Parallel Team- These teams are similar to consulting services that are separated from the hierarchy of a normal business structure. Picture a third party audit, or a quality control team conducting and inspection. They are often developed for special purposes and life spans vary along an as-needed basis.

Project Team- Our favorite. Project teams are developed for the purpose of completing the project. As project dynamics, schedules, and scope vary, so do project teams. These factors make project team change a complicated nature.

Matrix Team- These teams are becoming more popular as project management becomes more streamlined. An organization will pull members from various functional areas and distribute them among projects on a temporary basis. These team members will fall under two supervisors; the project manager, and their functional supervisors.

Virtual Teams- In the global economy with technological advances, and diverse skill sets paying off, virtual teams are also becoming more popular. These teams rarely meet each other on a face to face basis (sometimes never). Though advantageous to an organization that can save money on office space, managing these individuals can be challenging.

Management Team- Similar to the work team in structure and delivery, the management team is the key component in many organizations. Cameron and Green note that this team is the key element in a changing organization scenario.

Change Team-Similar to parallel teams and project teams, this team is often created within an organization to lead and manage change. The authors note that a successful change team is comprised of people that represent the entire workforce rather than a selected group.

Now that you identified your team, where are they in progress of being a team? Are they a bunch of individuals on a team or are they a collective unit? Are they a unified well oil machine, or a motley crew? ARE THEY EFFECTIVE? Team effectiveness is a critical indicator of the team’s health. Know the Tuckman model (Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing) to understand the stages of team development. This model is found in management 101 of every course taught and should be investigated deeper if you want to understand team dynamics. If you scrutinize the stages and survey that the team has never formed properly, perhaps a team development workshop would be prosperous. Understanding team development within the Tuckman Model is essential for changing a team because managing these people throughout these phases is a science in of itself.

The authors go beyond the Tuckman model and apply five elements per Christine and Rollin Glasser that contribute to team effectiveness. I have experienced similar situations where ineffective teams have lacked these elements listed below. I assumed the ineffectiveness was due to team stage development or poor training, but a closer look at the details summons clarity that other factors can play at team effectiveness and disturb the performance of a perfectly healthy team.

Team Mission, planning and goal setting- Teams with an attainable mission, clear plans, and unified goals have a higher degree of unity, accomplishment, and cohesion. Teams that lack these three variables are more of a working group than a team. 

Team roles- Clearly stated roles and accountability will summon a sense of purpose among individuals on teams and also provide support during change. If your team members do not have designated roles and responsibilities, they may not have a sense of ownership among the team.

Team operating processes- Established processes within the team environment allows members an opportunity to feel valued. Processes such as scheduled meetings, ground rules, reward programs, conflict resolution processes, and decision-making/problem solving techniques provide team members with a sense of empowerment. If teams do not have the ability to design their own operating processes, they may have a sense of oppression and not respect authority.

Team interpersonal relationships- To achieve clear understating of roles and goals, team members must freely communicate with trust and confidence. Creating interpersonal relationships among team members develops the camaraderie needed for unified goals. Teams who do not mingle tend to never develop the friendships that overcome even the simplest of conflict.

Inter-team relations- Isolated teams will not be as fruitful as teams that reach out within their organization or to others. Teams that inter-relate with an organization are also more likely to accept changes to their routines and processes.

After you investigate these elements and establish the health of your team to be positive you should, in theory, have a team that is ready for change. And just like the ingredients for changing an individual a basic foundation is as follows:

1.     Establish your plan; goals, methods, and time frame.

2.     Model the desired method.

3.     Communicate the necessity for change to the team.

4.     Coach the team with positive dialog (and model that method).

5.     Assess the progress of change (assess the teams progress through change via the Tuckman Model, it is a quality gauge).

6.     If successful; write it down in a lessons learned log and keep it for the future.

7.     If not successful; you must evaluate where things went wrong? Be positive and look at both sides of the coin. Then try it again when you find the break. 

Broken-down at this level, changing a team does not appear too challenging, but one must also consider the difficulty in this from a manager’s perspective when adding the individual behaviors and personalities on the team as well as organizational history from Part 1 of this series.