Group items tagged

Dans leur double fond, elles importent une culture et des principes depuis Internet au sein de l’entreprise : conversation, agilité, simplicité, transparence et confiance plutôt que diffusion, bureaucratie, complexité, sécurité, et contrôle. Non pas que les secondes valeurs soient à proscrire mais elles ne déterminent plus le comportement par défaut : ce sont les premières qui le font.

Capturer le savoir tacite, favoriser l’innovation, contribuer à la motivation et au sentiment d’appartenance des employés, raccourcir la feedback loop des clients ou des fournisseurs, limiter le nombre de réunions inutiles et chronophages, débarrasser les employés d’outils inappropriés et inutilisables imposés par la gouvernance SI, etc. : ces problèmes ne manquent pas.

Towers Perrin a publié les résultats d’un questionnaire mondial [en] duquel il ressort que seulement 20% des employés sont impliqués dans leur travail et que, sur trois ans, l’évolution moyenne de la marge opérationnelle entre une entreprise avec des employés plutôt impliqués est de +3,74% lorsque celle d’une entreprise avec des employés moins impliqués est de -2%.

American society, says Rosen, encourages individualism and a star system, which inhibits the very collaboration that he maintains can make companies more effective.

When some people refer to collaboration, they're talking about technology. And that's part of the problem. Companies think that if they introduce certain technologies, that they're collaborating. But a central point in my book is that tools and technologies never create collaboration. Culture creates collaboration.

Star culture is the antithesis of "collaborative culture." In a star culture, the best people supposedly rise to the top in a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest fashion. Some companies regularly eliminate the bottom 5 percent of the workforce.

The group discussion helped evolve the boss's thinking, which reshaped the ultimate decision. But even if the decision wasn't one the boss would have initially made or isn't his or her top choice, the fact is that the CEO was part of the consensus. And as long as the boss is a required part of the consensus — as long as whatever is decided has to be inside the boss's acceptable set of outcomes — then accountability never really shifts to the group. It is the leader, not the group, who ultimately allows that particular decision to go through.

In a study of top management team performance conducted by the global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles a few years ago, 124 CEOs worldwide and 579 of their direct reports were asked to rate whether leadership team decision processes were clear. On a scale of one to seven, the CEOs rated decision process clarity, on average, at 5.62. The executives who worked for them returned a rating of only 3.86.

The wise boss will recognize that individuals, not groups, own decisions and will make this clear to subordinates. Some may be concerned that team members will feel disempowered. But the truth is not nearly as disempowering as fostering an illusion.

It takes a special type of person and set of skills to navigate sketchy work environments (from distracting households to noisy coffee shops) and still be a consistent contributor to a virtual team.

In some ways, virtual work processes may need to be more rigid than those for co-located teams, with specific systems in place to cover time tracking, milestones, check-ins and knowledge sharing.

If you’re embarking on a virtual work process, getting everyone on the same page about how you want the team to work together and how to use the systems you’ve deployed is key. Without a clear explanation and properly conducted training, team output is guaranteed to be inconsistent at best.