With High Performance Work Teams, it is difficult to get teams to feel true ownership of their manufacturing process and work to improve it.

We are experimenting with implementing a business scorecard so that the teams will be focused on strategic goals for the organization. However, the difficulty has become getting the teams to focus on writing meaningful action plans to improve performance where goals have not been met.

Does anyone have any suggestions, best practices, resources for devising a system in which the teams will feel compelled to thoughtfully develop and commit to action plans?

Thanks for your help in advance.

-- stacey cruz (stacey.cruz@us.michelin.com), May 31, 2000

Answers

The only way to hold the team accountable for its work outputs is to appoint an accountable team leader. Hold that team leader accountable for the work of the team. That leader will have to hold each team member accountable for working effectively on processes, teamworking, etc.

I would suggest you investigate the Levinson Institute's Essential Organization concepts on Accountability-based management practices. Our company (Special Metals Corp.) has been using the core concepts of accountability management to successfully run team processes. You can view the Levinson information at www.levinsoninst.com. I suggest looking at this month's newsletter posting (www.levinsoninst.com/newsletter.htm) to see what subtle changes of some core team concepts can do to assist with team activity.

I have developed some Power Point presentations that outline the base conceptys of accounability management and have a show specifically titled Accountable Teamworking. If you wish, I can e-mail them to you (big files). Just let me know.

Bill Butler Training & Development Manager Special Metals Corporation www.specialmetals.com

-- William C. (Bill) Butler (wbutler@smcwv.com), June 07, 2001.

Having developed serveral HPWT over time I have found that teams work best when the group develop consequeces for not performancing prior to the emotional event. You must establish the consequence prior to it happening and thed team agree it's the right consequence.

Thanks

-- Willie L. Everette, Sr. (weverettes@aol.com), August 16, 2002.