Self Managed Teams
Self-managed teams are empowered to take corrective action and resolve day-to-day problems;
they also have direct access to information that allows them to plan, control, and improve their
operations. In short, employees in SMTs manage themselves.1 SMTs offer a way to put the
concepts of job enrichment and job enlargement into active operation.
The SMT concept was developed in Britain and Sweden in the 1950s. One of the early
companies to adopt it was Volvo, the Swedish auto manufacturer. Pioneering efforts in SMT
development were made by Procter & Gamble in 1962 and by General Motors in 1975. These
U.S. developments were concurrent with the Japanese quality team developments which, in
Characteristics of Self–Managed Teams
SMTs have the following characteristics:
• They are empowered to share various management and leadership functions.
• They plan, control, and improve their own work processes.
• They set their own goals and inspect their own work.
• They often create their own schedules and review their performance as a group.
• They take responsibility for the quality of their products and services.3
A good example of an SMT in action is found at AT&T Credit Corporation.4 In most
financial companies, the jobs in the back offices consist of processing applications, claims, and
customer accounts—tasks that are similar to manufacturing assembly lines: dull and repetitive.
The division of labor into small tasks and the organization of work by function are characteristic
of many service organizations. At AT&T Credit Corporation, for example, which was
established in 1985 to provide financing for customers who lease equipment, one department
handled applications and checked the customer’s credit standing, a second drew up contracts,
combined in each team. The company also divided its national staff of field agents into seven
regions and assigned two or three teams to handle business from each one. In this way, the same
teams always worked with the same sales staff, establishing a personal relationship with both
them and their customers. Above all, team members took responsibility for solving customers’
problems. Their slogan became, “Whoever gets the call owns the problem.” Members make most
decisions on how to deal with customers, schedule their own time off, reassign work when
people are absent, and interview prospective new employees. The teams process up to 800 lease
applications daily versus half that amount under the old system, and they have reduced the time
for final credit approvals from several days to 24 to 48 hours.
Transitioning to SMTs
Many organizations progress from simple quality circles to more complex SMTs. A process for
moving from quality circle-type teams to SMTs involves:6
1. Creating a work unit responsible for an entire task. This step requires defining a whole
work unit based on identifying a customer, establishing a means of contact between the
team and customer, and establishing the standard for the product or service.
2. Establishing specific measures of the work unit’s output. These include defining standards
for outputs in terms of quality, quantity, cost, and timeliness, together with accountability
and a feedback system.
3. Designing multiskilled jobs. A systematic study of workflow functions and variances is
followed by redesign of the jobs to enhance the development of multiple skills.
4. Creating internal management and coordination tasks. The coordination of the work team’s
tasks, typically handled by managers in a conventional organization, is handled by the team
and covers items such as scheduling, task assignments, hiring of new members, and cross-
A study conducted by Development Dimensions International, the Association for Quality
and Participation, and Industry Week identified four key factors associated with successful
SMTs.7 First, the longer teams have been in place, the more positive are the reported results. This
observation suggests that higher benefits occur with time, and that companies need to be patient.
information; coaching teams; and recognizing contributions led to increased member
satisfaction, quality, and productivity. Finally, teams that had responsibility for both production
1 Ron Williams, “Self–Directed Work Teams: A Competitive Advantage,” Quality Digest, November 1995, 50–55
2 Peter Lazes and Marty Falkenberg, “Workgroups in America Today,” The Journal for Quality and Participation
14, no. 3 (June 1991), 58–69.
3 Richard S. Wellins, William C. Byham, and Jeanne M. Wilson, Empowered Teams (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass,
1991).