Managing Self-Managing Teams

Managing self-managing teams sounds like an oxymoron. I assert that it isn’t. Hear me out.

Central to my position is an understanding of management (managing), self-managing, and the manager role.

Management refers to the collection of activities required for the healthy functioning of an enterprise. These activities include planning, organizing, measuring, budgeting, coordination, etc. We can lump these activities under the umbrella of “managing.”

Researchers (as far back as the 1970s) have described self-managing teams as groups of individuals who can self-regulate on whole tasks. Dr. Richard Hackman developed a typology that includes self-managing teams. Other team types include manager-lead teams, self-designing teams, and self-governing teams. Hackman’s typology below describes teams based on their management responsibilities.

Last but not least, a manager is anyone assigned managerial responsibilities (and not just people with “manager” in their job title). This means that a Vice-President in a software development firm is a manager because they have management responsibilities. I will not wade into the nonsense I consider the manager-leader distinction. That will have to wait for another day.

Bringing this home to product development, a self-managing team has responsibility for executing the team task and monitoring and managing work process and progress. “Executing the team task” requires little explanation and is pretty straightforward to understand—the team has full responsibility for completing the task required to achieve desired outcomes.

Self-managing teams also have responsibility for managing how they get their work done and monitoring their progress on their work. Of course, the team must have the competencies to do this well. It’s not enough to declare a team self-managing and expects that they can now magically “monitor and manage work process and progress” effectively. Self-managing is not without its challenges, and anyone who suggests its a panacea is not being truthful.

(While I have you, let me share that I prefer self-managing over self-managed because it speaks to the ongoing nature of the management activities the team is responsible for.)

Hackman’s model makes it clear that “other-managing” will focus on other aspects of management, i.e., “setting overall direction“ and “designing the team and its organizational context.” A self-managing team is not focused on these aspects of management. These aspects can be the responsibility of a manager. It will be the responsibility of some individual(s) outside the self-managing team.

The effective manager of a “self-managing” team will continually ensure the self-managing teams have the resources needed to succeed. The manager will address external friction impeding team progress. The manager’s role is to provide external managerial support so the team can self-manage. And this is managing—managing a self-managing team.

Now it’s easy to try and establish a clear separation between the focus on the manager and the focus of the self-managing team based on typology. Doing this would be a mistake. While the responsibilities are distinct and can be analyzed separately (to a degree), the responsibilities interact and influence each other.

For example, when direction or organizational context changes (and it will), the self-managing team needs to know to adapt their processes appropriately. Conversely, the self-managing team needs to make its progress transparent so the manager can use this information in direction-setting and organizational context conversations. 

These interactions don’t change the locus of responsibility. Rather the interactions remind us that everything is connected and the importance of healthy feedback loops.

I firmly believe that many product development contexts would benefit from (at least) self-managing teams. We know that the more autonomy people have over their work, i.e., what they do, and how they do it, the more meaning and fulfillment they derive from work. The more committed we are, the more we positively contribute to our organizations.

Self-managing teams are rare in product development organizations despite many senior leaders claiming them. I believe a key reason for this is that many senior leaders in organizations do not understand how to foster self-managing teams. They often give mixed messages. On one hand, they tell teams they want them to be self-managing, and on another, they tell managers they are accountable for “monitoring and managing work process and progress.” Well, what do you think happens? 

Many managers feel a strong desire to control. It’s a natural expression for many of us. Additionally, our organizational socialization leads us to believe the only way to control is to take over the responsibilities of self-managing teams. Without proper training in other management areas, while enabling self-managing teams, managers focus on what comes naturally. So manager-led teams continue to dominate the landscape.

Organizations need managing. While self-managing teams manage critical aspects of their work, they will also need management support if they are going to achieve organizational goals. Managing self-managing teams is not an oxymoron.