Transitioning to a Self-Managed Team: Lessons from My Practicum Project Experience with CPMC

I went into the first meeting with my California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) Practicum group not knowing what to expect. We were a group of four Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) students venturing out of our comfort zones to work on a platform in an unfamiliar field, with hitherto unknown team members. How would the meeting be structured? What points would be covered? Would my voice be heard? These questions were natural to me, as I had never before worked professionally in a Self-Managed team.

What is a Self-Managed Team?

A Self-Managed team is a group of employees that’s responsible and accountable for all or most aspects of producing a product or delivering a service.

A Self-Managed team differs from a traditional team in that there is limited formal hierarchy, and that each team member is expected to take total responsibility for the project deliverables. I initially thought that this type of team structure would be relatively uncommon among large organizations with a more traditional structure. However, to my surprise, I learned that roughly 79% of companies in the Fortune 1,000 deploy such self-directed teams. Our MSBA Practicum Project team decided to adopt this structure for our project with CPMC; along the way, I’ve learned quite a bit about working in an autonomous unit. In this blog, I seek to review the aspects of working in a Self-Managed team and hope to impart some of the lessons learned by our CPMC team onto you.

Working Towards Team Success

Early on in our project, one aspect of working in a Self-Managed Team became clear; due to greater ownership of project deliverables, each member is motivated to work towards the success of the group, rather than focusing on individual accomplishments. Nowhere was this highlighted more than in our meetings with our practicum partner, CPMC. When reviewing our progress and highlighting our achievements to date in meetings with leadership, not once were we asked which team member created the report that we had completed, or the analysis that we were presenting. Instead, our performance was evaluated on a team level; the work of any individual team member was conveyed to be the work of our collective team. Quickly, we learned that we succeeded — or failed — together.

Self-managed teams work with and for each other. Each member’s success is everyone’s success.

Flexibility In Scheduling and Responsibility

Have you ever taken a sick day or vacation leave from work, only to find a mountain of work that had stockpiled during your absence, awaiting your return? I have. And it’s not fun. In fact, the anticipation of falling behind often drove me back to work earlier than I would have liked. But in Self-Managed teams, such a phenomenon is a thing of the past.

Due to shared responsibilities and flexible scheduling, team members may fill in for each other to cover holidays and absences. In our CPMC project, this came in handy when members of our team had personal issues arise and were not able to complete their assigned task on time; rather than incur a project delay, other members of the team stepped up to get the job done in their absence. This kind of flexibility allowed for our team to meet project deadlines even when individual team members were unexpectedly absent, which greatly helped us in completing tasks and providing deliverables on time.

The Need for Driven Team Members

If you’ve ever been part of a group project in school where you’ve ended up doing most of the work, you may recall that it isn’t a good feeling when your lazy teammates end up receiving the same grade that you do. It feels unearned. After all, you did most of the work. So why are you being evaluated as a team?

This same feeling can be a downside of working in a Self-Managed teams, and highlights the need that all team members be driven. It is crucial that motivated individuals comprise the team, so as to avoid having certain team members carry the load, which can engender frustration and internal strife between team members.

Furthermore, for a self-managed team to flourish, the team must trust each other. Trust between team members is essential when working towards a collaborative goal, and when responsibilities are shared between group members. In a flexible team structure wherein each team member is expected to complete tasks independently each week, trust is a necessary prerequisite.

Closing

In our team’s Practicum project with CPMC, a Self-Managed team structure proved incredibly beneficial. It enabled each individual team member to work towards the success of our group, to fully own the deliverables and tasks, and allowed for a flexibility in scheduling and responsibility that was a breath of fresh air. I hope that you can learn from my experience, and can undertake your next project with a clear understanding of the benefits, and potential shortcomings, of working in a Self-Managed Structure. Use it wisely.

*All images used are public domain images taken from pexels.com.