Who (perhaps, what) leads a team of equals?
A non-hierarchical self-managed team of equals, with no single manager accountable for its decisions. Sounds interesting, right? It is a management philosophy called ‘Holacracy’. It was tried in organizations like Zappos, Morning Star Co. Even though I haven’t been in one, my experience in practicum (part of my graduate school curriculum) is of a team of equals. It did shed some light on what made it work, the advantages and potential pitfalls.
It was a Monday afternoon when I saw my practicum team allocation, as part of the UC Davis MSBA program. I was assigned to CPMCRI, a leading medical research institute in California, alongside 4 of my peer students. Our team was multi-cultural with each of us from different countries — Brazil, China, India, Russia and United States.
“Let’s (help) cure cancer!”
Exclaimed our Brazilian friend as we marched to solve a process bottleneck problem scientists working on the ‘Cancer Avatar Project’ were facing. With the zeal of contributing to cancer medicine, we ventured into the world of state-of-art gene sequencing. It was indeed epiphanic to envision the possibilities this technological breakthrough can bring to humanity.
As we had our initial interactions as a team, we organically drifted towards forming a team of equals with two specific roles of a project manager to track/manage tasks and client liaison to drive communications with the client (geneticist). With the focus on learning, we decided to rotate the roles over the course of our assignment. We are mid-way through our assignment now. We have delivered the proof of concept of the solution to the client and we move to implement the solution at scale in the coming months.
Reflecting on my experience working with the team, I see a few factors and values that have been critical in making our team succeed.
Team Balance
The forming conditions of a team are crucial. The team’s capabilities ought to match the goal in hand. In that regard, we started off from a great place (thanks to UC Davis faculty for balancing the team). We had relevant technical and soft skills to complement each other. In fact, even my background in biological sciences came in handy to ease through certain situations. With everyone from different cultural backgrounds, it was mind-opening to realize how cultures can influence our behaviors in everyday situations.
The team’s capabilities ought to match the goal in hand
Strong Shared Purpose
Why does our team exist? We all know the answer to that. We acknowledge the impact of the solution we are working to build. The shared sense of purpose becomes the engine that drives us in a compelling direction. It’s fueled by the stimulating scientific conversations we have with our client and our appetites are well fed. The client learns with us and even believes we could publish a scientific paper together. One could argue the leader here is the client who is able to get everyone together (enthusiastically!) in this effort. I can’t argue otherwise. He is rather like the CEO of a company who is able to get his self-managed teams excited about their shared purpose.
The shared sense of purpose becomes the engine that drives us in a compelling direction.
Trust and Followership
With the shared sense of purpose, we are highly motivated to witness the final goal come alive than to personally shine. This pragmatic approach enabled us to objectively listen to each other, assign tasks smoothly and deliver them. Over time, with accrued delivery, we built our own store of trust and followed each other’s cues. Followership is indeed an underrated trait, especially because it is contextual. Knowing to follow when someone leads, focuses more on the goal and helps gather momentum in the necessary direction.
To Follow is To Trust.
With trust, team balance and objective discussions, the decision-making process had been fairly smooth. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t have to face difficult situations. We are gaining better understanding of each other, to handle it well when it comes by. It is necessary to be aware of where we are as a team in terms of maximum potential.
In Tuckman’s team development model, we see ourselves between the storming and norming stages. We still haven’t normed as we are learning to address and manage new situations. Since the focus has been on learning, we still experiment with role changes. That does have an effect on the team’s effectiveness and takes more time to norm.
The advantages of being in a self-managed team are of working in a startup where each of us is a co-founder. We get to wear multiple hats, have a bird’s eye view of where we are headed, have a say in every decision. It is empowering. Contrary to what one might think, with a strong sense of purpose and a clear vision of what we are building, each of us is accountable for not delivering. After all, leadership is contextual.
