in this group did not enjoy the experience and their level of satisfaction declined. Group 2, with newer hires and limited structure, also maintained overall average performance, but it was less sporadic than Group 1. Perhaps the most interesting finding about this group is that the members quickly swapped the intended limited support structure design for a process with greater involvement from the supervisor. This group used its autonomy to change the rules to better suit members’ needs. In hindsight, it appears that attempting to swap an existing team structure for a partial replacement created nearly as much confusion as replacing it with no structure at all. In some ways, this group reverted to the old supervisordependent system, although not entirely. The presence of some structure did, however, improve the employees’ experience when compared with the “no structure” group. About half of the employees in this group enjoyed the experience, while the other half did not. It was the Agile Group 3 where the magic happened. The performance of this team improved above the average, and every employee in this group reported enjoying the experience for a variety of different reasons. One of the things noted by these employees was that they liked having all members of the team (including their former supervisor) treated as equal and important contributors. Godfrey also noted that members of this team demonstrated more learning behaviors. Many of them went to the web to find resources to help them be more effective within the team. Overall, the pilot experiment seems to provide compelling evidence that self-managed teams could be highly successful in a call center through the lens of performance and employee engagement. Godfrey is bullish about the possibilities and is currently running several pilots in other call centers around the world to validate the results across different cultures. The Vistaprint Philippines call center in Manila is testing a similar approach to Group 3. The center has added further features of the Agile process, including daily stand-ups and the use of Kanban boards to visualize and manage work. The teams have seen some early success, including reducing the average customer call length by 18% while still maintaining consistently high quality. These results had been pursued but never achieved in the past with traditional management.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR MANAGEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT? Since most companies operate using a traditional, hierarchical management structure, the mere suggestion that management might not be necessary is hard to fathom. But, it’s hard to ignore the mounting evidence that this old model just isn’t cutting it anymore. It’s also clear that transitioning to a culture of self-managed teams isn’t as simple as just eliminating anyone with a manager title. Both the Morning Star and Vistaprint
examples illustrate that unleashing the power of selfmanagement requires replacing traditional management with a structure and system (something like Agile) to support this new way of working. Here are some other observations about the changing (diminishing) importance of management: Hierarchy and structure are not synonyms. Hierarchy is a structure, and it may very well be what’s choking out both engagement and performance in many organizations. But simply collapsing that scaffolding does little more than replace one frustration with another. People crave the clarity and structure that help them work more effectively. Agile is a great example of what a self-managed team structure looks like. Self-managed teams only work when there’s a strong personal accountability by each team member. In selfmanaged teams, there’s no place to hide and no supervisor to bail you out when you fail. If you aren’t pulling your weight, it will be obvious to your team members. It’s not going to be for everyone. Godfrey’s speculation about why half of the Group 2 (limited structure) team members liked it and half did not is that it felt more natural to those with higher accountability and was probably uncomfortable for the less accountable. Moving to an environment like this will cause some turnover and put additional pressure on your recruiting process to find people who will thrive in this system. Managers aren’t bad—it’s how they’ve been taught to manage that’s bad. Any manager could (and should) study how the role of the Scrum Master works in Agile. There’s nothing preventing any manager from adopting this method of managing in nearly any work team. It does require some very substantial changes in thinking about how decisions are made and what the relationship between the employee and the manager looks like. It can no longer be treated as a subordinate-supervisor dynamic, but rather an equal partnership between two people with different roles to play. Overall, it’s my conclusion that with the right structure in place, a self-managed work environment has all the makings of a highly engaged work experience. And while I know there are good managers out there, it seems reasonable to conclude that the practice of management is a disengager for employees. Practically speaking, since traditional management isn’t going away anytime soon, increasing employee engagement is less about creating “good” managers and more about minimizing the damage of management in general. AQ Jason Lauritsen has dedicated his career to helping leaders build organizations that are good for both people and profits—first as an entrepreneur, then a corporate HR executive, then as a consultant, researcher, and speaker. He is the co-author, with Joe Gerstandt, of Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships (Talent Anarchy Productions, 2012).
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