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The Myth of the Management Team
By: Graeme Nichol, Sun May 28th, 2006
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Every business has problems. That is why the average life span
of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning
disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from
their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time.
Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the
problem. The problem is an embarrassment that should be swept
under the rug and forgotten rather than be used as an
opportunity to learn. Handling these dilemmas and disabilities
is the Management Team. Below is a quote from Peter Senge’s book
“The Fifth Discipline – the Art & Practice of the Learning
Organization.” Does this sound like your company? If it does
start worrying!
The Myth of the Management Team Standing forward to do battle
with these dilemmas and disabilities is “the management team,”
the collection of savvy, experienced managers who represent the
organization’s different functions and areas of expertise.
Together, they are supposed to sort out the complex
cross-functional issues that are critical to the organization.
What confidence do we have, really, that typical management
teams can surmount these learning disabilities? All too often,
teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf,
avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and
pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective
strategy – maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To
keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people
with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint
decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone
can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on
the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a
manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal
the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a
way that the team as a whole could learn. “Most management teams
break down under pressure,” writes Harvard’s Chris Argyris – a
long time student of learning in management teams. “The team may
function quite well with routine issues. But when they confront
complex issues that may be embarrassing or threatening, the
‘teamness’ seems to go to pot.” Argyris argues that most
managers find collective inquiry inherently threatening. School
trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and
most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people
who excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex
issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your
organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s
current policies rather than solving urgent problems?) Even if
we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves
from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very
process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten
us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence”
– teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping
themselves from learning.
So how does your company stack up? If your company is what Senge
describes as a ‘Learning Organization’ then there is no need to
protect your turf, no need to accept compromise, no need for
management to know everything. In a Learning Organization the
knowledge that employees have is used and each member of the
management team is there to support the other. They realize that
everyone wins if the team does well and they also know that a
failure is just another term for a learning opportunity.
Wouldn’t you like to work in an organization where your opinion
counts and where you CAN make a difference in the companies
success? Where you don’t have to pretend to be busy, or pretend
to know everything. So how do you create a learning
organization? It starts with creating learning individuals in
learning teams which then cascade into a learning organization.
The only process that we know of that comes close to achieving
the goal of a learning team is the Best Year Yet system
(http://www.arcturusadvisors.com/partners.htm). Through this
facilitated process team members learn to work collaboratively,
learn from their mistakes and continually challenge their
assumptions about reality. Above all they work together as a
team to solve problems and improve results.
A Learning Organization is possible!
About the author:
Graeme has worked on four continents, over the past 20 years,
with large global companies and small enterprises that want to
improve their businesses.
