I went on a two day course at the Industrial society about this titled Builing self managed teams. It was very good and we had a practical workshop that helped us understand the concept. They are in London and other big cities. However in practice it hasbeen much harder to implement the changes, as we were told it would be. Basically it is a massive culture change for the company. The way we have done it is very slowly starting with the small things like authorising their own holidays and scheduling workloads themselves, but eventually you go right up to things like pay rises being decided themselves. I have found though that starting this whole process is a problem, I didn't communicate what I was doing to my team and I was branded as lazy and not doing anything as I was delegating almost everything to them so make sure you do tell them that you are going to push the team this way. I have some good hand outs that would help you that I could fax to you if you want. Also a good exercise is the "graphic eqauliser" get a large sheet of paper write management at the top and employees at the bottom and draw a line in the middle, then list all the jobs that go on in your department, for example discipline budgeting hiring team members, and put them on the chart where you think who deals with that, I found most were management and realised that the only reason is training. The question that was asked was How did I first learn to do that ? A: I was trained or learnt on the Job, so why can't front line staff do that. This is a very large subject to talk about and a complex one depending how far you want to go with it, beware though if it goes to far it removes the need for team leaders and seniors but on the plus side staff are happy as they have meaningful responsibility and trust but also develop skills apart from phone work. If you want to know more you can E Mail me with specific questions clarke_antony@hotmail.com I am back at work on Tuesday going to Amsterdam this weekend for a stag do !!!! |