What can self-managing teams do for your organization?

What is a self-managing team?

While older employees might still be used to taking orders from a manager, most millennials highly value equality. They want to be involved in decision-making, feel a sense of ownership, and demand sufficient freedom in how they carry out their work. And let’s be honest: most people don’t need someone else to dictate everything for them. At home, you make sure the rent is paid and the fridge is stocked. Why should work be any different?

Read more about employee experience: make your organization a great place to work!

The idea of a self-managing organization isn't so crazy after all. But what exactly do we mean by it?

In a self-managing organization, teams have complete freedom to define their goals and the path they take to achieve them. Employees take responsibility for giving their best to deliver top results. And they can be held accountable for it, too. The team is responsible and accountable.

Benefits of self-managing teams

Companies like Buurtzorg and ABN Amro have proven that self-managing teams offer many advantages. Below is a summary of the biggest benefits of self-managing teams:

1. You make optimal use of your employees' personal talents.
2. You organize your teams around the customer.
3. You make business operations much more agile than in the old-fashioned hierarchical corset.
4. It leads to much greater job satisfaction.
5. Employees feel more trusted and have the opportunity to develop further than in a 'standard' organization.

Sounds great, right?! Yet many organizations that eagerly tried to implement the self-management concept have been in for a rude awakening. It turns out it’s not just a matter of flipping a switch, but primarily a matter of patience. Both employees and managers need to be ready for it. And there are quite a few pitfalls to such a transition. Let us guide you through the first steps you could take on the road to self-management.

Setting up self-managing teams: 5 tips!

1. Use self-organization as a stepping stone

For many people and organizations, moving to full self-management in one go is too big a step. In that case, self-organization is a smart intermediate stage. With self-organization, the team is responsible for the development and delivery of products and services, but management provides the framework within which the work must be done. Management therefore remains (for the time being) accountable.

One of the disadvantages of self-managing teams can be that total freedom can be paralyzing. It can confuse people, especially if they weren't previously used to making decisions themselves.

In that case, it’s helpful if management ensures that the goals are clear. What results need to be achieved, what quality is required, and what about laws and regulations? With self-organization, senior management creates those frameworks. It is then up to the teams to determine the path to reach those goals.

2. The new mantra for managers: ‘Let it go’

To make the step to self-management successfully, it is crucial that everyone pulls in the same direction. And above all: that managers and staff members learn to keep their hands off. With self-management, managers are no longer in charge, and staff members are no longer the ones who work out the policy down to the last detail. Their role becomes supportive and facilitating. 

This shift will not be easy for many a manager. The urge to control and fix things is often so deeply ingrained that letting go of it almost resembles a detox. Of course, it is tempting to step in when you see something about to go wrong and you know exactly how it could be fixed. 

If you do take things out of your employees’ hands anyway, the very basis for self-management quickly evaporates: the teams’ sense of ownership. Before you know it, people fall back into their old, familiar patterns, where the managers decide everything and the employees follow. And that was exactly not the point of the step toward self-management. So sing ‘Let it gooo’ to yourself and let it happen. Place trust in your colleagues’ ability to solve problems. You will probably be surprised by their creativity and new insights. And if things do go wrong once in a while, see it as an important learning moment for everyone.

It helps to spend plenty of time in the preparatory phase on the changing roles and to work out their consequences properly. Explicitly ask for commitment. There are people for whom this way of working absolutely does not fit, and who choose to leave the organization. But in most cases, the freedom and positive flow are recognized and appreciated, even if it takes some getting used to at first. 

In this blog post, you can read more about the skills of a good manager.

3. Collaborate more and more broadly

Taking responsibility means that you have weighed a decision first and can properly justify why you did something. In the past, that task lay with the management board. With self-management, the idea is that the team makes the tough calls. That does require more collaboration. If you want to work well in a self-managing way, you can no longer stay on your own professional island. You need each other’s knowledge and skills to see the big picture. 

Make sure an issue is looked at from diverse perspectives. Put together multidisciplinary teams with colleagues from different departments. Cherish diversity in the team: it is precisely the different talents and personalities that make it more likely that all aspects are properly taken into account. You don’t always have to agree with each other. Substantive discussions are fine, as long as they happen respectfully and with trust in each other’s qualities and professionalism. 

4. Ensure good communication

Don’t make the teams too large.

Before you know it, you end up with a chaotic free-for-all where everyone is chewing on the same problem and wants to have their say. That creates noise and makes the organization less agile. It is more practical to work in small teams where everyone knows each other and knows where to find each other. 

Good internal communication is then a prerequisite. Not only between the team members within each group, but also between the different teams. That lets you align progress across the organization, share knowledge, and keep the sense of ‘we’ strong. After all, even if you work in different teams, you do so with a shared goal and for one organization.

An intranet that is accessible to everyone, with smartly set up subgroups, does an excellent job here. If you alternate online communication a few times a year with a company-wide session, the big picture is almost guaranteed to hold together.

5. Meet the new need for information

To do the right things, it is of course important to have the right information. Thanks to self-management, many employees are confronted with certain questions and aspects of running a business for the first time. Someone from the shop floor has probably never given much thought to HR policy before, and the business controller looks at a new production process with very different eyes. It is good to take this into account. 

Adapt your Learning Management System to the new situation. The need for accessible training on business operations and management will probably grow, but production processes and market developments can also be important. Put information online, but also consider organizing an informal live themed session. When a financial controller or HR manager explains how certain processes work, and you can ask questions directly as a colleague, that removes a lot of barriers. 

Set up a knowledge platform where information about your organization’s products and services is easy to find and written in understandable language. An explanation of relevant laws and regulations is also nice to have at hand as an online reference. Of course, Google is everyone’s best friend, but it feels more familiar to have this kind of information in your own environment, and if possible with a short, plain-language summary alongside it.

Read more here about why an LMS is essential for HR.

And, last but not least: make management information, such as revenue, staffing levels, and absenteeism rate, accessible to every employee. Being able to see the effects of certain decisions right away provides important input for future improvements.

Need inspiration for the transition to self-management?

‍There is likely more possible online than you think. Feel free to reach out to us to brainstorm about this. Leveraging the potential of data and online knowledge sharing is exactly what we do best!