A little book on management teams
3 Umeå, 2021
Stefan Söderfjäll
A LITTLE BOOK ON MANAGEMENT TEAMS
ISBN 978-91-8020-307-4
© 2021 Stefan Söderfjäll
Translation: Darren Packman
Graphic Design: Daniel Åberg/Åbergs stilus et forma
Cover:: Daniel Åberg/Åbergs stilus et forma
Coverpicture: ShutterStock/Rudall30
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5 CONTENTS Introduction .......................................... 7 Top-performing management teams 11 Management groups or management teams? ............................ 23 Optimal team structure ..................... 35 The team leader ..................................... 47 When management teams meet ........... 59 What happens outside meetings? ...... 83 Hearts and minds in topperforming management teams ........ 93 How to develop management teams 113 And finally .......................................... 137 About the author ................................ 141
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Introduction
This little book focuses on management teams. The kind of teams that lock themselves into a conference room a couple of times each month and, once they emerge, try to give the impression they have done something very important indeed. What happens before, during and after these meetings is, of course, not completely unimportant either. Otherwise the book you are holding right now would probably never have been written. But if you ask managers about how useful the time they spend in management team meetings is, the truth is that an alarmingly large number of them say it is anything but meaningful. Research seems to agree, reporting that a disturbingly large proportion of management teams function and perform significantly worse than expected, which is significant given the importance and influence (both good and bad) they have, or could have, in the organisations they operate in.
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I have worked in various ways with team and leadership development throughout most of my professional life. I have conducted my own research, greedily consumed the research of others, run consulting companies, studied, written several books and read many, many more. I have lectured, blogged, penned debate articles, spent restless nights lying awake thinking, debated, offered tips and advice and practiced and participated in multiple forms of leadership and group dynamics. Over the years I have revised and nuanced many of my beliefs. But there is one conviction that has stood the test of time (and grown stronger over the years), and that is regarding the importance of effective management teams. The research devoted to studying these teams has produced a number of compelling reasons to hold on to this conviction. Just how well management teams function has, among other things, been proven to be of importance to an organisation’s financial performance, the quality of the goods and services it delivers and the well-being and work performance of the managers and staff it employs.
This book is, for these very reasons, my own attempt to give these important teams more tools to succeed. In its pages is a mixture of my own experiences and
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research into the subject. The fact that, as already mentioned, research suggests there is a huge development need in many management teams makes writing it feel more relevant than ever. It is my hope that after reading this book you’ll find something useful that you can apply to a management team you are part of in some way. As the title suggests this book is not designed to be an authoritative work on the subject. It has instead been written for those of you who do not normally have much spare time to read, and in such a way that hopefully ensures you get to the end of it. Or maybe even read it more than once if you find something in its pages that resonates with you.
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Topperforming management teams
Not even the greatest superhero or the biggest of egos can do everything on their own. We simply aren’t built to do as many things, be in as many places or process as many thoughts as we would like to all at the same time. Our physical and mental limitations mean we are just not wired to solve all the tasks and challenges we come up against on our own. Instead we need to regularly coordinate our efforts with others. We need to help each other out, agree on things, discuss matters, share information and try and reach a consensus on solutions to all kinds of tasks and problems.
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Managing an organisation, or part of an organisation (such as a department, region, service, etc.) is one such task that is often too complex for any one individual to take on. An organisation usually consists of a number of people, each one with unique yet not always fully compatible interests, personalities, opinions and abilities. Organisations operate in an ever-changing and often unpredictable environment, in which competitors fight over customers as well as talented employees. In this environment market forces often seem to have a life of their own, and the minute you think you’ve adapted to them with new work processes and strategies to reach your goals they shift again, and your hard work can almost feel redundant.
In this complex reality management teams operate by making decisions, discussing strategic and operational issues and gathering and disseminating information and resources. They symbolise leadership, give each other support, follow up on decisions and work processes and update each other – all the while coordinating the business and its various processes. A little later in this book we will take a closer look at what top-performing management teams actually do, both inside and outside of their meetings. We’ll also
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look at how important it is for management teams to be empowered to operate as just that – real teams. We will discuss how these teams should be formed and organised, the mindsets that are common in them and how it feels to work in a top-performing team. Finally we will look at what can be done to develop a management team. But before we move on to that we should start by talking about what teams actually achieve. Because, in the end, that’s what everything we’re going to talk about ultimately leads us to.
What do top-performing management teams achieve?
From time to time I ask the members of management teams I meet how they evaluate whether they have done a good job. The answer, remarkably, is often that they don’t. Not in any systematic way. Instead it is common to only follow up on how well the organisation is performing as a whole, and thus the management team’s performance is often associated and measured this way. This is, of course, an important metric to keep track of, and the management team absolutely has a role in influencing this. But organisational performance and results depend
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focuses 011theteamsthatareresponsibleforallorpartof anorganisation.Itisbased011researchandaims tosummariseinaconciseandpracticallyapplicablewaywhatcharacteriseswell-functioning managementteamsandwhatcanbedonetohelp themperformbetter.Thisbookcanbeusefulfor peoplewhoaremembersofmanagementteamsas wellasthosewhohelpmanagementteamsdevelop. whohasaPhDinpsychology,is anorganisationalconsulrantandaurhor.Hehaswritten anumberofbooksabourworkplaceandorganisational psychology,including: ALittleBookonLeadership ( 2018 ), Reflections ofaLeader ( 2019 ), and,togetherwirh ChristopherSvensson,ALittleBookonGoals ( 2017 ).
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