Why building Self Managed teams for Sustained Success

Disclaimer: “The views stated here are my own, not those of the companies I work or worked for.”

Here it goes again! You are in a situation where your to-do list keeps on piling up, it is 6 p.m. and you did not even start to work on your managerial tasks: you spent all day checking that projects would run smooth, being on the neck of your team. However controlling everything and everybody is ineffective, time-consuming and draining: in fact, you feel like sleeping and this has been going on for weeks.

You basically are in what I call the "micromanagement trap": the constant need to control that your team is doing a good job, anxious that something will go wrong if you don't. And probably you are right: if a team is not coached and mentored consistently and properly, it will probably do not have the tools to succeed on their own. They might come to you constantly for your advice, even outside the official scheduled 1:1 meetings. This could work if you have 5 people, but what about if you grow your team to 10 and above? Even worse: you could have created a culture where they are afraid to come to you, so you do not really know what is going on...until something bad happens or somebody really talented leave.

As you might have guessed, micromanagement creates a lot of problems. A couple of examples are:

1. underperforming consistently on core duties
2. absenteeism
3. high talent turnover
4. low employee engagement
5. lack of innovation
6. a bad reputation of your company (etc. Glassdoor reviews)
7. a bad reputation for you as a manager, which goes beyond your current company

and the list goes on and on.

Rings a bell?

Well let me tell you something: it happens a lot, but it does not have to be like that. What if you could at least try a different model to build and manage your teams? A structure that can mostly self-sustain and where you can have time to spend on value-added activities?

Maybe it is time to try a Self-Managed model.

The self-managed team is not a managerless team: it is about empowering reports delegating them key strategic responsibilities, making them accountable to deliver on agreed and specific results with full freedom, while being there when they need you on a stable and frequent basis.

The concept is not new, as it was introduced around the 1960s, it is already widely utilised in the US, and to some extent in Europe. According to Cron (source): "around 80 percent of companies in the Fortune 1000 and 81 percent of manufacturing companies use self-managed teams within their organisational structure. Companies favor self-managed teams as they offer cost savings and increased productivity if implemented effectively"

A self-managed team can for example:

• decide independently on how to best execute on team strategy
• under existing rules and constraints, the team can appoint different PoCs each one responsible for a particular function (e.g. Budget distribution, Operations lead, etc.)
• with some manager guidance, decide which team behaviours they want to adhere and live by (with a tremendous impact on culture)
• Initiate and keep a regular team meeting where the manager is present only for 50% of the total running time. The manager gives key updates at the beginning of the meeting but then the agenda is driven by the team itself
• while they will not give each other ratings, they can regularly give each other feedback ("peer evaluation") in a structured and actionable way

Be mindful though: self-managed team it is not the same as a Manager-less team. The manager is still there focusing on strategic tasks that are risky to delegate while coaching and mentoring the team as needed and on a stable and frequent basis, for example through regular and weekly 1:1s touch points.

So how you build it?

In my opinion, there are 7 key ingredients in the formula:

(0) Hire the right people (and be clear about the culture you want to drive)

It all starts with hiring the right people on board. While there is not a clear formula there are few principles that tended to work for me:

• hire for the potential and not for the role
• put a bigger weight on soft skills
• never compromise on cultural fit: make it a priority and assess it during the interviews

The last point is tricky as asking if the candidate is team-oriented will give you the obvious "yes" as answer! However, there is an easy solution to assess cultural fit, which worked quite well for me and a lot of colleagues: situational questions. An example could be: "Tell me a time when you were in situation X, how did you solve it and what did you learn from it". Normally, these are great questions to ask anyway and according to a study made at Google one of the best predictors of performance. I tend to agree with that. However, they are also good at assessing the cultural fit. For example, the candidate could celebrate himself while telling you about solving the problem, or instead, they could mention often how teamwork and collaboration were crucial. Pay attention to the signals, and - while there is no guarantee - you will probably have a good likelihood of hiring a good cultural fit!

If you are assigned to a team that is already established, the hopes are not lost. It will require however a long time to re-shape the general mindset, toward the culture you want to drive. In my opinion anything from 6 months to 1.5 years of constant work. While I would need an article to speak about culture, its impact, and its importance, it is sufficient to say that in a self-managed team there are a couple of cultural elements you can find at point (7), which are the preconditions of success.

Think about it: if the team does not trust and respect each other, how they can self-manage themselves?

(1) Ongoing & actionable 1:1 Coaching

Self-managed teams require a considerable amount of setup work in the beginning. This is the coaching part: not telling your reports what to do, rather guiding them to develop their own solutions.

In fact, coaching is not easy: it requires the "coach" to ask the right open-ended questions in 1:1 settings, guiding the "coachee" to formulate their own solution when they do not feel confident to do so. When you will start this process, people will feel most of the time uncomfortable, as they will tend to seek a solution from you. The most common objection you will hear is: "You are the manager, you should tell me what to do". There might be countless reasons behind this attitude, but the key message here is that you should expect this to happen without reacting negatively.

Furthermore, during the coaching process, you will be tempted to give your reports your own solution as this will be much more time-effective. However, this will prevent them from developing critical skills which will eventually benefit not only you but the team as a whole. Instead, I would encourage you to keep on asking coaching questions like the following:

• "How would you personally solve the problem at hand?"
• "Imagine there is no managerial restriction, certainly not from my side, what would be your step-by-step approach?"
• "Have you mapped all the challenges at play? And what solutions have you already tried before asking me the solution?"
• "Imagine you are the manager. What advice would you give to the person in front of you when faced with this challenge?"

Insist on coaching and you will be rewarded: you will see people getting to their own solution initially 50% of times but then up to 80% - 90%. In other words the more you will stimulate your reports to develop their own solutions, the more they will become better at problem-solving. How fast they will improve will depend on their particular abilities, but also on how much they perceive the coaching process as a safe space. In other words, you have to make clear to them that it is totally safe for them to express and experiment with different solutions, that you actually prefer them to "try & fail" rather than being told what to do. Failure must be a necessary component of the development process. Only through failing, your reports will learn to trust their abilities, one step at a time.

In just a few months, they will feel more empowered and more open to putting forward their ideas. They will learn in other words to solve increasingly complex business problems and in turn coach more junior colleagues. In a sense, you will become unnecessary for them in solving this or that problem.

The more you coach your reports, the more you become more effective at it. You will develop a natural ability to ask the right questions to the right personality types and according to the specific problem they are trying to solve. In this sense, you will learn as much as them! And your learning curve will be enhanced if you are coaching a diverse team (demographics, cultures, background, etc.).

(2) Promote Effective Delegation of Senior Tasks, Responsibilities, Projects

You want to coach reports, so they will become more effective professionals, better problem solvers, more proactive, and will develop a wider sense of responsibilities. This way you will be in a position where you can "challenge" delegating increasingly complex and strategic decisions.

But how to effectively delegate a task effectively and safely?

• The report must have shown an ability to fully commit to responsibilities, coming to you in a timely manner for support, respecting deadlines, or renegotiating them as needed.
• The task can be materially solved by your reports. If they can solve it, you can delegate it even if you don't feel like it.
• To maximize chances of success, you will assign the task to the person that is more enthusiastic about that specific project!
• Delegating the task presents limited risks for your report (just as an extreme example, maybe think twice when delegate relations with VPs to a person just joining the company :) )

(3) Give Accountability & freedom

Once a task is delegated, your reports become in charge of making an impact in that area. You are delegating the full responsibility and as much as you can, you will avoid micromanaging the person in charge of the project. Rather you will make clear that there is freedom in determining the best course of action.

Freedom underpins that there is no "retaliation policy". People should not be punished to try different approaches and definitely they should know that failure will not be punished, but it is a part of the learning process.

(4) Set clear and specific goals so progress can be objectively tracked

I usually do not like acronyms but SMART is one of my few favorites. A goal should always be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Related to the overall goal, and measurable over time. Otherwise, you are just wasting yours and your team's time. Goals should be to a certain extent discussed with your reports, not just superimposed.

You have to sit with your report and agree with him or her on what realistically and concretely can be achieved. You might end up with something like this:

"within the next 3 months, I will be responsible to drive the expansion of the Fashion vertical in our team. I will make sure that at least 90 high-value prospects are contacted by me and my colleagues, that we will close at least 5 big names, and collaborate with the account management team to have at least 1 success story in the pipeline. To enable this I will regularly coach the team in a dedicated team meeting, at least showing 1 best practice per week for all the time agreed."

(5) Provide guidance as and when needed

Of course, your team should be convinced you really are available if needed, with no fear of retaliation from your side. This connects straight back to point (1).It is important that you:

• will connect on a weekly 1:1 basis, discussing the results of the core job of the person as well as progress on the projects you assigned.
• if there is any problem, while you will respect freedom of choice with no retaliation, you will coach the person and be there as needed. Is the person stuck? Then as a manager, they have to know you are there to support
• When the situation is particularly tricky, you will be available "on spot" to solve criticality as needed. Expect the person to make mistakes, to fail, also to create few imbalances in the team. This is fine and all part of the learning process.

(6) Instill a feedback-driven, open & safe Culture

The culture must be based on Trust, Transparency, Lead by Example, Consistency, Respect.

Again: if the team does not trust and respect each other, how they can self-manage themselves? Equally important, if they cannot trust YOU how do you expect they will do their job? If they cannot trust you, they will be driven by fear.

A couple of thoughts here:

• Your reports will appreciate and feel they can trust you. They are learning ahead of their time, and they have to realize you want them to grow at a gigantic pace and they can trust you to help them along the way.
• Because you make clear you want communication to be open and there is no retaliation policy, you will promote team stability & Psychological safety.
• The Trust, respect, and empowerment you give comes back in the shape of Transparency: your team feels safe to give you honest feedback, without necessarily waiting for any Anonymous survey.
• When a team shares these values, they will treat each other with respect and, with your guidance, they will learn how to give and receive feedback constructively. By helping each other to grow and trusting others, you will end up in a situation where the team will spontaneously share best practices with others.

What happens in the end?

Your job goes from spending 80% of the time in 20% value-added activities to spending 20% of the time in 80% value-added activities (the ones that can't be delegated). With the remaining 80% of the time, you can keep coaching reports, which in turn enhance your Team Effectiveness, Managing Stakeholders, accounting for extra time for unplanned events. You will also have, just to give you a few examples:

• higher % of reports that are consistently on target (whatever target, from Sales to Customer Experience) or overachieving targets
• higher team retention (a.k.a. less turnover rate), satisfaction & engagement (e.g. as measure by employee survey tools)
• A constant influx of innovation, as people are encouraged to share with each other and explore their potential.
• A considerable amount of time freed up to do high-value activities (the ones that cannot be delegated according to the principles above mentioned)
• The building of long-lasting professional relationships

Seems too good to be true? Think about it again!