12

Why Teams Dont Work

J. Richard Hackman
A few years ago, Paul Osterman, an economist at MIT, did a careful national survey of
innovative work practices in U.S. manufacturing firms. He found that more than half
the companies surveyed were using teamsand that some 40% of these companies
reported having more than half the organization working in teams (Osterman, 1994).
How well do all these teams perform? To judge from books and articles written for a
managerial audience, the answer is clear: Teams markedly outperform individuals,
and self-managing (or self-regulating, or self-directed, or empowered) teams do best
of all.
Here are some reports from the field, cited by Osburn, Moran, Musselwhite, and
Zenger (1990) in Self-Directed Work Teams: The New American Challenge. At
Xerox, the authors report,
Plants using work teams are 30 percent more productive than conventionally
organized plants. Procter & Gamble gets 30 to 40 percent higher productivity at its
18 team-based plants.. . . Tektronix Inc. reports that one self-directed work team
now turns out as many products in 3 days as it once took an entire assembly line to
produce in 14 days.. . . Federal Express cut service glitches such as incorrect bills
and lost packages by 13 percent.. . . Shenandoah Life processes 50 percent more
applications and customer service requests using work teams, with 10 percent
fewer people. (pp. 5-6)

Heady stuff, that, and it is reinforced by back-cover blurbs. Tom Peters: Selfdirected work teams are the cornerstone of improved competitiveness . . . Bob
Waterman: Self-Directed Work Teams seems too good to be true: dramatic improvement in productivity and a happier, more committed, more flexible work force. Yet . . .
they do just what they promise for the likes of P&G, GE, and Ford.
It makes sense. Teams bring more resources, and more diverse resources, to bear
J. Richard Hackman Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
02138.
Theory and Research on Small Groups, edited by R. Scott Tindale et al. Plenum Press, New York, 1998.

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on a task than could any single performer. Moreover, teams offer flexibility in the use
of those resourcesthe capability to quickly redeploy member talents and energies
and to keep the work going even when some members are unavailable. Teams
composed of people from different units can transcend traditional functional and
organizational barriers and get members pulling together toward collective objectives. And, of course, teams offer the potential for synergy, that wonderful state when
a group clicksand members achieve something together that no one of them could
possibly have accomplished alone. These are major benefits, worthy of the attention
of the leaders of any purposive enterprise. No wonder Osterman found teams to be
so popular.
But there is a puzzle here. Research evidence about team performance shows that
teams usually do less wellnot betterthan the sum of their members individual
contributions. I first encountered this bleak fact as a beginning doctoral student at the
University of Illinois. In a course on group dynamics, Ivan Steiner put on the board his
now well-known equation: AP = PP PL; that is, the actual productivity of a group
equals its potential productivity (what the team is theoretically capable of, given the
resources brought by members) minus what he called process losses such as coordination and motivational problems (Steiner, 1972). I was surprised that there was no term
for process gains, the synergistic benefits that can emerge when people work together.
The model, I thought, should really read: AP = PP PL + PG.
It turns out that there is no empirical justification for that extra term. When
interacting teams are compared to nominal groups (i.e., groups that never meet,
whose output is constructed by combining the separate contributions of those who
would have been members), nominal groups usually win. And when Steiners models
miss the mark in empirical studies, the problem usually is that groups fail to achieve
even the relatively modest performance targets specified by those models.
At least for groups in the experimental laboratory. Maybe the laboratory context
is so constraining that groups do not have the elbow room to show what they can do.
Maybe the real advantages of groups are only to be found in organizational practice.
I came up short on this hypothesis as well, this time at the hands of Bill Hicks, an
editor at Jossey-Bass. My colleagues and I had completed an intensive study of some
33 different work groups of all different kindsathletic teams, industrial production
workers, top management teams, prison guards, airline crews, economic analysts, and
more. We pulled our findings together in a book that I proposed be titled Groups That
Work, a catchy phrase with what I thought to be a clever pun. Bill sat me down and
said hed be happy to publish the book, but not with that title: There were just too
many groups in our study that barely worked at all. I went back to the manuscript and
found that he was right. Probably 4 of our 33 groups were actually effective teams.
The rest had problems so severe that our analysis was mainly about what had gone
wrong with them. So the book was published with a parenthetical phrase after my
clever title: Groups That Work (And Those That Dont). Anyone who actually reads
through it will discover, as Bill did, that most of our groups lie within the parentheses.1
Moreover, the preface of the book offers a cautionary note about team effectiveness, based on the
experience of the authors who wrote it. The book took 9 years to be completed, mainly because our own
team suffered a near-total collapse midway through the project.

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Other in-depth studies of real groups performing real work provide additional reasons
for concernsuchas Irving Janiss (1982) well-known demonstration that even
highly cohesive groups composed of well-qualified, well-motivated people sometimes fall into a pattern of groupthinkthat can yield disastrous policy recommendations.
What, then, are we to make of all the team successes reported in the managerial
literature? It is possible, of course, that the published claims are exaggerated, as
writers have sought to catch the wave of enthusiasm about teamsto sell books, to
build consulting practices, to market training programs, to become team gurus. That is
not a sufficient explanation. Indeed, I trust the accuracy of the numbers about
productivity and service gains that are reported in the popular books about teams. My
concern, instead, is whether those numbers really mean what they seem to mean.
Consider first the attributions that are made about the causes of team successes.
After teams have been implemented in an organizational unit, its performance
typically is compared to that of a conventional unit (or, perhaps, to the same one
before teams were installed). Such comparisons are fraught with interpretive ambiguities, because there invariably are many differences between the units compared
in technologies, labor markets, senior managers, and so on. It almost never is the case
that the only change is that work previously done by individuals is now performed by
teams. Was it the teams that generated the improvements, or was it one of the other
differences between the units? It is not possible to know for sure.2
Questions also can be raised about the staying power of any performance
improvements obtained when teams are installed. The implementation of any new
management program, be it self-managing teams or anything else, invariably involves
intense scrutiny of the unit where the changes will occur. Taking a close look at any
work unit that has been operating for a while almost always surfaces some inefficiencies and poor work procedures. These incidental problems are corrected as part of the
change processit would be foolish not to. But in making those corrections, an
interpretive ambiguity is introduced. Was it the team design that resulted in the
improvements found, or was it that a shoddy work system was shaped up? Virtually
any intervention that is not itself destructive has a better-than-even chance of generating short-term improvements, simply because of the value of intently inspecting a
work system. This, in addition to any benefits from the well-known Hawthorne
effect (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). The question, then, is whether short-term
improvements associated with the introduction of teams are sustained over time as the
newness wears off and inefficiencies begin to creep back into the system. Again, it is
not possible to know for sureat least not without an appropriate longitudinal
research design.
2

The solution to this problem, of course, is to conduct experimental research on the impact of team designs
for work, because true experiments allow unambiguous inferences to be drawn about the causes of any
effects obtained. Unfortunately, experiments are rarely a viable option for comparing team and traditional
work designs in organizations. For one thing, the level of experimenter control required in such studies
(i.e., to randomly assign people to teams and teams to experimental conditions) would not be tolerated by
most managers who have work to get out. And even if an organization were found in which managers
would relinquish such control to experimenters, there would be serious questions about the generalizability of findings obtained in such an unusual place (Hackman, 1985).

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So what is going on here? How can we reconcile the amazing reports from the
field about the benefits of teams with the gloomy picture that has emerged from
scholarly research on group performance? Do teams generate the benefits for their
organizations that are claimed for them, or do they not?3
My observations of teams in organizations suggest that teams tend to clump at
both ends of the effectiveness continuum. Teams that go sour often do so in multiple
waysclients are dissatisfied with a teams work, members become frustrated and
disillusioned, and the team becomes ever weaker as a performing unit. Such teams are
easily outperformed by smoothly functioning traditional units. On the other hand,
teams that function well can indeed achieve a level of synergy and agility that never
could be preprogrammed by organization planners or enforced by external managers.
Members of such teams respond to their clients and to each other quickly and
creatively, generating both superb performance and ever-increasing personal and
collective capability. Teams, then, are somewhat akin to audio amplifiers: Whatever
passes through the devicebe it signal or noisecomes out louder.
To ask whether organizational performance improves when teams are used to
accomplish work is to ask a question that has no general answer. A more tractable
question, and the one explored in the remainder of this chapter, is what differentiates
those teams that go into orbit and achieve real synergy from those that crash and bum.
As we will see, the answer to this second question has much more to do with how
teams are structured and supported than with any inherent virtues or liabilities of
teams as performing units.

Mistakes Managers Make

In the course of several research projects, my colleagues and I have identified a
number of mistakes that designers and leaders of work groups sometimes make. What
follows is a summary of the six most pernicious of these mistakes, along with the
actions that those who create and lead work teams in organizations can take to avoid
them.4

Mistake I: Use a Team for Work That Is Better Done by

Individuals
There are some tasks that only a team can do, such as performing a string quartet
or carrying out a multiparty negotiation. There are other tasks, however, that are
inimical to team work. One such task is creative writing. Not many great novels,
There is a large and diverse published literature on the performance of self-managing teams. Here is a
starter set of illustrative and informative pieces: Cohen and Ledford (1994), Cordery, Mueller, and
Smith (1991), Gunn (1984), Jackson, Mullarkey, and Parker (1994), Poza and Marcus (1980), Wall, Kemp,
Jackson, and Clegg (1986), and Walton (1980).
4
Some of the material in the next section is adapted from Hackman (1990).
3

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symphonic scores, or epic poems have been written by teams. Such tasks involve
bringing to the surface, organizing, and expressing thoughts and ideas that are but
partially formed in ones mind (or, in some cases, that lie deep in ones unconscious),
and they are inherently better suited for individual than for collective performance.
Even committee reportsmundane products compared to novels, poems, and musical scoresinvariably turn out better when written by one talented individual on
behalf of a group than by the group as a whole working in lockstep.
The same is true for executive leadership. For all the attention being given to top
management teams these days, my reading of the management literature is that
successful organizations almost always are led by a single, talented and courageous
human being. Among the many executive functions that are better accomplished by
an exceptional individual than by an interacting team is the articulation of a challenging and inspiring collective direction. Here, for example, is a mission statement
copied from a poster in a company cafeteria: Our mission is to provide quality
products and services that meet the needs of individuals and businesses, allowing us to
prosper and provide a fair return to our stockholders. Although I do not know how
that particular statement was prepared, I would be willing to wager that it was
hammered out by a committee over many long meetings. The most engaging and
powerful statements of corporate vision, by contrast, invariably are the product of a
single intelligence, set forth by a leader willing to take the risk of establishing
collective purposes that lie just beyond what others believe to be the limits of the
organizations capability.
Beyond creative writing and executive leadership, there are many other kinds of
tasks that are better done by individuals than by teams. It is a mistake-a common one
and often a fatal oneto use a team for work that requires the exercise of powers that
reside within and are best expressed by individual human beings.

Mistake 2: Call the Performing Unit a Team but Really Manage

Members as Individuals
To reap the benefits of teamwork, one must actually build a team. Real teams are
bounded social systems whose members are interdependent for a shared purpose, and
who interact as a unit with other individuals and groups in achieving that purpose
(Alderfer, 1977). Teams can be small or large, face-to-face or electronically connected, and temporary or permanent. Only if a group is so large, loosely connected, or
short-lived that members cannot operate as an intact social system does the entity
cease to be a team.
Managers sometimes attempt to capture the benefits of teamwork by simply
declaring that some set of people (often everyone who reports to the same supervisor)
is now a team and that members should henceforth behave accordingly. Real teams
cannot be created that way. Instead, explicit action must be taken to establish and
affirm the teams boundaries, to define the task for which members are collectively
responsible, and to give the team the autonomy members need to manage both their

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own team processes and their relations with external entities such as clients and
coworkers.
Creating and launching real teams is not something that can be accomplished
casually, as is illustrated by research on airline cockpit crews. It is team functioning,
rather than mechanical problems or the technical proficiency of individual pilots, that
is at the root of most airline accidents (Helmreich & Foushee, 1993). Crews are
especially vulnerable when they are just starting out: the National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) found that 73% of the accidents in its database occurred on the
crews first day of flying together, and 44% of those accidents happened on the crews
very first flight (National Transportation Safety Board, 1994, pp. 40-41). Other research has shown that experienced crews, even when fatigued, perform significantly
better than do rested crews whose members have not worked together (Foushee,
Lauber, Baetge, & Acomb, 1986), and that a competent preflight briefing by the
captain can help reduce a crews exposure to the liabilities of newness (Ginnett, 1993).
This substantial body of research has clear policy implications. Crews should be
kept intact over time, preflight briefings should be standard practice, and captains
should be trained in the skills needed to conduct briefings that get crews off to a good
start (Hackman, 1993). Yet in most airlines, crew composition is constantly changing
because of the long-standing practice, enforced by labor contracts, of assigning pilots
to trips, positions, and aircraft as individualsusually on the basis of a seniority
bidding system. Virtually all U.S. airlines now do require that crew briefings be held.
Yet captains receive little training in how to conduct a good one, some briefings are
quite cursory (e.g., Letsget the social hour over real quick so we can get on out to
the airplane), and schedules can get so hectic that crew members may not even have
time for proper introductions, let alone a briefing, before they start to fly together.
Creating and launching real teams is a significant challenge in organizations such
as airlines that have deeply rooted policies and practices that are oriented primarily
toward individuals rather than teams. To try to capture the benefits of teamwork in
such organizations, managers sometimes opt for a mixed model in which some parts
of the work and the reward system are structured for individual performance, whereas
other parts require teamwork and provide team-based rewards. Research has shown
that such compromises rarely work well. Mixed models send contradictory signals to
members, engender confusion about who is responsible and accountable for what
portions of the work, and generally underperform both individual and real-team
models (Wageman, 1995). If the performing unit is to be a team, then it should be a
real teamand it should be managed as such.

Mistake 3: Fall Off the Authority Balance Beam

The exercise of authority creates anxiety, especially when one must balance
between assigning a team authority for some parts of the work and withholding it for
other parts. Because both managers and team members tend to be uncomfortable in

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such situations, they may implicitly collude to clarifywho is really in charge of the
work. Sometimes the result is the assignment of virtually all authority to the team
which can result in anarchy or in a team heading off in an inappropriate direction.
Other times, managers retain all authority for themselves, dictating work procedures
in detail to team members and, in the process, losing many of the advantages that can
accrue from team work.
To maintain an appropriate balance of authority between managers and teams
requires that anxieties be managed rather than minimized. Moreover, it is insufficient
merely to decide how much authority a team should have. Equally important are the
domains of authority that are assigned to teams and retained by managers. Our
research suggests that team effectiveness is enhanced when managers are unapologetic and insistent about exercising their own legitimate authority about direction, the
end states the team is to pursue. Authority about the means by which those ends are
accomplished, however, should rest squarely with the team itself.5
Contrary to traditional wisdom about participative management, to authoritatively set a clear, engaging direction for a team is to empower, not depower, it.
Having clear direction helps align team efforts with the objectives of the parent
organization, provides members with a criterion to use in choosing among various
means for pursuing those objectives, and fosters the motivational engagement of team
members. When direction is absent or unclear, members may wallow in uncertainty
about what they should be doing and may even have difficulty generating the
motivation to do much of anything.
Few design choices are more consequential for the long-term well-being of
teams than those that address the partitioning of authority between managers and
teams. It takes skill to accomplish this well, and it is a skill that has emotional and
behavioral as well as cognitive components. Just knowing the rules for partitioning
authority is insufficient; one also needs some practice in applying those rules in
situations where anxieties, including ones own, are likely to be high.6 Especially
challenging are the early stages of a groups life (when well-meaning managers may
be tempted to give away too much authority) and when the going gets rough (when the
temptation is to take authority back too soon). The management of authority relations
with task-performing groups is much like walking a balance beam, and our evidence
suggests that it takes a good measure of knowledge, skill, and perseverance to keep
from falling off.
As used here, the terms manager and team refer to conventional organizational arrangements in which
some individuals (managers) are authorized to structure work for performance by other organization
members. Teams that have been given the authority to monitor and manage their own work processes are
therefore called self-managing. In some circumstances, teams also have the authority to set their own
direction. Examples include physicians in a small-group practice, a professional string quartet, and a
mom-and-pop grocery store. These kinds of teams are referred to as self-governing (Hackman, 1986).
6Given that newly minted MBAs increasingly find themselves working in or leading task-performing teams
immediately after graduation, it is unfortunate that few MBA programs provide their students with
practice and feedback in developing such skills.
5

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Mistake 4: Dismantle Existing Organizational Structures So That

Teams Will Be Fully Empoweredto Accomplish the Work
Traditionally designed organizations often are plagued by constraining structures that have been built up over the years to monitor and control employee behavior.
When teams are used to perform work, such structures tend to be viewed as unnecessary bureaucratic impediments to group functioning. Thus, just as some managers
mistakenly attempt to empower groups by relinquishing all authority to them, so do
some attempt to cut through bureaucratic obstacles to team functioning by dismantling all the structures that they can. The assumption, apparently, is that removing
structures will release the pent-up power of groups and make it possible for members
to work together creatively and effectively.
Managers who hold this view often wind up providing teams with less structure
than they actually need. Tasks are defined only in vague, general terms. Lots of people
may be involved in the work, but the actual membership of the team is unclear. Norms
of conduct are kept deliberately fuzzy. In the words of one manager, The team will
work out the details.
If anything, the opposite is true: Groups with appropriate structures tend to
develop healthy internal processes, whereas groups with insufficient or inappropriate
structures tend to be plagued with process problems.7 Because managers and members of troubled groups often perceive, wrongly, that their performance problems are
due mainly to interpersonal difficulties, they may turn to process-focused coaching as
a remedy. But process consultation is unlikely to be helpful in such cases, precisely
because the difficulties are structurally rooted. It is a near impossibility for members
to learn how to interact well within a flawed or underspecified team structure.
Our research suggests that an enabling structure for a work team has three
components. First is a well-designed team task, one that engages and sustains member
motivation. Such tasks are whole and meaningful pieces of work that stretch members skills, that provide ample autonomy for doing what needs to be done to
accomplish the work, and that generate direct and trustworthy feedback about results.
Second is a well-composed group. Such groups are as small as possible, have clear
boundaries, include members with adequate task and interpersonal skills, and have a
good mix of memberspeople who are neither so similar to one another that they are
like peas in a pod nor so different that they are unable to work together. Third is clear
and explicit specification of the basic norms of conduct for team behavior, the handful
of must do and must never do behaviors that allow members to pursue their
objectives without having to continuously discuss what kinds of behaviors are and are
not acceptable. Although groups invariably develop their own norms over time, it is
important to establish at the outset that members are expected to continuously monitor
This point is reinforced in a quite different context by an essay written by Jo Freeman (1973) for her sisters
in the feminist movement in the 1970s. The message of the essay is neatly captured by its title: The
Tyranny of Structurelessness.

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their environment and to revise their performance strategy as needed when their work
situation changes.
The key question about structure, then, is not how much of it a team has. Rather, it
is about the kind of structure that is provided: Does it enable and support collective
work, or does it make teamwork more difficult and frustrating than it need be?

Mistake 5: Specify Challenging Team Objectives, but Skimp on

Organizational Supports
Even if a work team has clear, engaging direction and an enabling structure, its
performance can go souror fall well below the groups potentialif it has insufficient organizational support. Teams in what Richard Walton (1985) calls high
commitment organizations can fall victim to this mistake when they are given
challenging objectives but not the resources to achieve them. Such teams often start
out with great enthusiasm but then become disillusioned as they encounter frustration
after frustration in trying to obtain the organizational supports they need to accomplish the work.
If the full potential of work teams is to be realized, organizational structures and
systems must actively support competent teamwork. Key supports include (1) a
reward system that recognizes and reinforces excellent team performance (not just
individual contributions); (2) an educational system that provides teams, at their
initiative, any training or technical consultation that may be needed to supplement
members own knowledge and expertise; (3) an information system that provides
teams the data and forecasts members need to proactively manage their work; and
(4) the mundane material resourcesequipment, tools, space, money, staff, or
whateverthat the work requires.
It is no small undertaking to provide these supports to teams, especially in
organizations that already have been tuned to support work performed by individuals.
Existing performance appraisal systems, for example, may be state-of-the-art for
measuring individual contributions but wholly inappropriate for assessing and rewarding work done by teams. Corporate compensation policy may make no provision
for team bonuses and, indeed, may explicitly prohibit them. Human resource departments may be primed to identify individuals training needs and to provide first-rate
courses to fill those needs, but training in team skills may not be available at all.
Information and control systems may provide senior managers with data that help
them monitor and control overall organizational performance, but teams may not be
able to get the information they need to autonomously manage their own work
processes.
To align existing organizational systems with the needs of task-performing
teams usually requires managers to exercise power and influence both upward and
laterally in the organization, and may involve difficult negotiations across functional
boundaries. For these reasons, providing contextual supports for teams can be a

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significant challenge for managers whose experience and expertise has mainly involved supporting and controlling work performed by individuals. That challenge is
worth taking on, however, because an unsupportive organizational context can
undermine even teams that are otherwise quite well directed and well structured. It is
especially shattering for a team to fail merely because the organizational supports it
needs cannot be obtained.

Mistake 6: Assume That Members Already Have All the Skills

They Need to Work Well as a Team
Once a team has been formed and given its task, managers sometimes assume
their work is done. A strict hands-off stance, however, can limit a teams effectiveness
when members are not already skilled and experienced in teamworka not uncommon state of affairs in cultures where individualism is a dominant value.
It can be helpful, therefore, for leaders and managers to provide some coaching
to individuals in honing their team skills and to the team as a whole in developing
good group performance practices. There is no one best way to provide such help, nor
is there any one best coaching style. Like teaching a class, coaching a group is done
best when the leader exploits his or her own personality and style to get the lesson
across.
Still, some things are known about the types of interventions that are helpful
to teams and, importantly, about the times when different interventions are most likely
to take.All social systems, including task-performing teams, go through discernible stages or phases over time (Bales & Strodtbeck, 1951; Tuckman, 1965). Moreover,
different task and interpersonal issues become salient for groups at those different
times. The issues that are on members minds when they first meet, for example, are
quite different from those that command their attention as they are finishing up the
work. Effective coaching interventions address issues that are naturally alive for the
group at the particular time when they are made. Those that ask members to consider
matters that are not salient for them at the time may do little other than distract the
team from getting on with its work.
Recent research has identified three times in the life of a task-performing group
when members are likely to be especially open to coaching interventions: (1) the
beginning, when a group is just starting its work; (2) the midpoint, when half the work
has been done and/or half the allotted time has passed; and (3) the end, when a piece
of work has been finished.
There is much on a groups plate when members first come together to perform a
piece of workestablishing the boundary that distinguishes members from nonmembers, starting to differentiate roles among members, developing initial norms about
how members will work together, and engaging with (and, inevitably, redefining) the
group task. Members decisions about such matters, whether made explicitly or
implicitly, establish a track for the group on which members stay for a considerable

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time (Gersick, 1988; Ginnett, 1993). A coaching intervention that helps a group have a
good launch can significantly enhance members engagement with each other,
their commitment to the team, and their motivation to perform the work as well as they
can. The payoff of a good launch can be substantial when, later in the teams life,
members encounter thorny task or interpersonal challenges.
A second window for coaching interventions opens around the midpoint of the
groups work. Research has shown that a group tends to stay on its initial track until
about half of its allotted time has elapsed, at which point members experience a major
upheaval that can result in a significant change in how they operate (Gersick, 1988).
At such times (or at other natural breakpoints or low-workload periods), coaching
interventions that encourage members to reflect on their work thus far and the
challenges they next will face can be quite helpful to them in revising and improving
their task-performance strategies.
The third special opportunity for coaching occurs at the end of a performance
periodwhen the work is finished or a significant subtask has been accomplished. It
is well established that people do not learn well when they brim with anxieties,
including those that have to do with getting a piece of work finished on time and well.
Because such anxieties dissipate once the work is finished, postperformance periods
offer an especially good time for coaching interventions aimed at helping members
capture and internalize the lessons that can be learned from their work experiences.
Although I am uneasy about the applicability of examples from athletic teams to
work teams in organizations (both their tasks and their contexts are so different that
generalization from one to the other must be done with caution), the behavior of good
athletic coaches does illustrate the different coaching functions that can be performed
at different times in the life of a group. In the locker room before the game, coaches
tend to focus on matters of motivation, establishing that the contest about to begin will
be quite challenging but that the team has a real chance to win if members play hard
and well. Halftime, back in the locker room, is a time for consultation, revising the
game strategy for the second half of play based on how things have gone thus far. The
next day, when the team has gathered to review the game films, is the time when
coaches focus on education, helping to build individual and team proficiency in
preparation for the teams next contest.8
There are, of course, many things that coaches can do at times other than those
just discussed. They can, for example, be continuously alert for opportunities to
recognize and reinforce competent team self-management, they can help the group
obtain outside assistance or resources, and they can provide a generally supportive
8

These three coaching functions reinforce the contributions of the structural and contextual features
previously discussed. The motivational function reinforces the motivational benefits of a well-designed
group task and of an organizational reward system that recognizes and rewards team excellence. The
consultative function reinforces group norms that support team self-management and the groups use of
data provided by the organizational information system. The educational function helps the group take
advantage of both good composition (i.e., members who have an appropriate mix of task-relevant skills)
and of organizational systems that provide teams with any needed training or technical consultation.

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and encouraging context for teamwork. Still, these three times in the life of a group
the beginning, midpoint, and endoffer openings for coaching interventions that
may be especially welcomed by group members and helpful to them.
No matter how well-designed, well-timed, and well-executed coaching interventions are, they are unlikely to be of much help if a teams overall performance situation
is poor. If members are unclear about what they are supposed to accomplish, if the
team or its task are badly designed, or if the surrounding organization places obstacle
after obstacle in the teams path, then a leader would be well advised to focus first on
solving these more fundamental problems. It is nearly impossible to coach a team to
greatness in a performance situation that undermines rather than supports teamwork
(Wageman, 1996).
A favorable performance situation, on the other hand, yields a double benefit:
Teams are likely to have less need for coaching interventions (because they encounter
fewer problems that lie beyond their own capabilities), and the coaching that they do
receive is likely to be more helpful to them (because they are not preoccupied with
more basic, structurally rooted difficulties). Over time, such teams may become
skilled at coaching themselves and perhaps even enter into a self-fueling spiral of
ever-increasing team capability and performance effectivenessjust the kind of
pattern that is described in all the popular books that tout the benefits of organizational
work teams.

Why It Doesnt Happen

Imagine a team whose leaders have made none of the six mistakes described in
the preceding section. The following facts would be true for that team:
1. The task is one that is fully appropriate for performance by a team.
2. The team is an intact performing unit whose members perceive themselves as
a team and that others deal with as such.
3. The team has a clear, authoritative, and engaging direction for its work.
4. The structure of the teamits task, composition, and core norms of
conductpromotesrather than impedes competent teamwork.
5. The organizational context provides support and reinforcement for excellence through policies and systems that are specifically tuned to the needs of
work teams.
6. Ample, expert coaching is available to the team at those times when members
most need it and are ready to receive it.
All of the evidence that my colleagues and I have been able to obtain suggests
that a team for which these six conditions hold would be likely to perform very well.
It is, however, much easier to create these conditions for some types of teams, and in
some kinds of organizations, than in others.
Consider, for example, a product development team in an entrepreneurial organization. The product development process lends itself to teamwork because it requires

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coordinated contributions from several different specialties. Product development

teams generally have a clear and engaging direction, and perform whole pieces of
work for which they are relatively autonomous and about which they receive direct
feedback (i.e., the product is created and works, or it isnt and doesnt). There are no
built-in obstacles to composing the team well or to establishing task-appropriate
norms of conduct. Such teams typically have access to the information and technical
assistance they need for their work, and substantial rewards and recognition commonly are bestowed upon successful product development teams. With ample material resources and a little coaching to help in navigating the rough spots, there is no
reason why most product development teams cannot be primed for good performance.
Start-up organizations, such as new plants or offices, also provide favorable
settings for establishing the conditions that support team effectiveness. So long as
those who design the new organizational unit are relatively free of structural or policy
constraints imposed by a parent organization they should be able to design a teambased unit in which the six facts listed earlier are true.9
Yet most of the teams my colleagues and I have studied fall far short of meeting
these six conditions. Why should this be so? The conditions themselves are not subtle,
complex, or difficult to understand. Indeed, they are just the kinds of things that an
alert manager surely could learn from experience. Are there more fundamental
obstacles on the road to successfully structuring, supporting, and leading teams?
I have observed two such obstacles, one more commonly found in organizations
that aspire to cooperative or democratic ideals, the other more characteristic of teams
in established business corporations and public agencies.

The Co-op Obstacle

It has always bothered me that we in the United States, who cherish the principles of political democracy, so infrequently apply those principles to the workplace.
Some years ago, therefore, I took a close look at worker cooperatives, organizations
whose charters explicitly embrace democracy and where all important matters are
decided by membership vote. Some of the co-ops I examined were so small that the
whole organization operated as a single work team; others were larger enterprises that
had many teams within them.
I found a number of successful work teams in cooperative organizations, but also
a surprisingly large number of failures. The reasons for the failures are instructive.
9

It is not happenstance that some of the most successful team-based organizational start-ups have been
located far from corporate headquarters. A remote location provides a measure of freedom from
potentially constraining corporate systems and policies that is unavailable to units within sight of
corporate offices. Indeed, a number of highly successful team-based start-ups have gotten into trouble
when corporate managers eventually discovered that the start-up organization was ignoring or violating
corporate policy in the interest of creating a favorable environment for teamwork. For the same reason,
attempts to diffuse the lessons learned from remotely sited, team-based units back to headquarters
facilities often are unsuccessful.

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Too often, co-op members debated endlessly about their values, purposes, and
collective directionswhilecompetitors who had a more focused business strategy
took their customers away. Collaboration and teamwork were so highly valued that
virtually all tasks were done by teams, even those that would have been better
performed by individuals. Equity and equality were such dominant values that
members found it difficult to delegate real authority to any of their number. To
maximize the choices of member-owners, team composition often was based solely
on personal preference rather than on an analysis of the mix of skills that the work
actually required. And, finally, I found members of many co-ops quite reluctant to
establish and enforce use of organizational structures and systems that could have
supported teams in their work.
The democratic ideals of co-ops are wholly consistent with the use of selfmanaging teams to perform work. It is ironic, therefore, that in cooperative organizations, those ideals so frequently get in the way of creating the very conditions that
promote team effectiveness.
The co-opmistake also is occasionally seen in other organizations, including
businesses and public agencies, where ideological considerations come to dominate
decision making about organizational structures and practices. I had the good fortune
to observe and document many of the innovative organizational practices that founder
Don Burr and his colleagues developed at People Express Airlines in the 1980s. That
company turned out to experience some of the same kinds of issues in structuring and
supporting its many self-managing teams as do worker cooperatives, and for some of
the same reasons.
Part of Burrs vision for People Express was to create a nonbureaucratic organization in which the inherent power of individuals and teams, locked up or suppressed
in traditionally structured firms, could be unleashed in the service of customers,
colleagues, and shareholders. To accomplish this, Burr and his senior management
colleagues formulated a set of precepts that served as the guiding vision for the
enterprise, they created self-managing teams throughout the company, and they made
sure that every organization member was supported by leaders who had been well
trained in the People Express precepts.
In its early years, when organization size was less than 1,000, People Express
was a remarkable successone of the fastest growing firms in the history of
American business. Coordination among individuals and teams happened naturally in
real time in the halls of the company offices at Newark airport, on airfield ramps, and
in airplanes. Customers queued up to get seats on People Express, the company was
the darling of Wall Street, and social scientists (including this one) wrote articles that
described the companys innovative organizational form and probed the reasons for
its success (Hackman, 1984).
As People Express grew, it became increasingly difficult for members to coordinate in halls and airplanes, and operational problems became frequent and severe
enough that many backers of the organization suggested that the time had come to
beef up the organization, to install structures and systems to support its self-managing

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259

workforce. To do so, however, would have been a retreat from the values on which
People Express had been foundednamely, the transcending power of vision and
leadership to unleash and direct the energies of organization members.
Values prevailed. Rather than installing the structures and systems that his
backers advocated, Burr and his colleagues redoubled their efforts to ensure that all
members of the organization deeply understood the companys vision and added even
more trained leaders to coach and teach organization members. In a time of trouble,
the founders reaffirmed the principles that had been responsible for their early success
and behaved more vigorously than ever in accord with them.
It did not work. As People Express continued to grow, and as other airlines
developed strategies for competing with it in the marketplace, financial and operational results deteriorated further. Eventually, disillusionment set in for some organization members and, finally, the operation itself cratered. At that point, it was only a
matter of time until the company was acquired by a competitor and People Express
ceased to exist.
In both the worker cooperatives and People Express Airlines, ideological currents ran strong and deep. And in both cases, perversely, those strong collective values
made it nearly impossible for leaders to install the structural and contextual features
that are among the key conditions for team effectiveness. These organizations, and
many like them, attest to the fact that visionary direction and abundant coaching, by
themselves, are insufficient to ensure the success of work teams in organizations.

The CorporateObstacle
Many existing businesses and public agencies have in place organizational
structures, systems, and policies that have been tuned over the years to control and
support work performed by individual employees. Managers are understandably
reluctant to overturn well-established organizational features just to see whether work
teams actually generate the benefits claimed for them. Veteran managers have, after
all, weathered quite a number of organizational innovations that had their origins in
the behavioral sciencesmanagement by objectives, job enrichment, T-groups, zero
defects, quality of worklife, gain sharing, and a multitude of others. And, no doubt,
there will be more to come after work teams have had their day and passed on.
There are two different strategies that managers use to implement work teams
without upsetting the corporate applecart. One is to try to capture the benefits of
teamwork by relying mainly on rhetoric and training. Members are told that they are
now in teams, team leaders are appointed, and everyone is sent off to get training in
good team processes. It is easy to implement teams this wayneither organizational
structures nor managers own behaviors need change. But such teams are more
ephemeral than real, and mere changes in appearances rarely yield measurable
improvements in organizational outcomes.
The second strategy is to form real teamsintact, performing units whose

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members share responsibility for some product or servicebut to lay them atop
existing organizational structures and systems. The rationale, as one manager told me,
is to see how well they perform before making other organizational changes that could
be hard to reverse. With this strategy, one typically sees encouraging results early in
the lives of the new teams, followed by a gradual diminution of both team performance and member commitment as the teams encounter obstacles rooted in longstanding and team-unfriendly organizational arrangements. That pattern is inevitable,
I believe, when one seeks to obtain the benefits of work teams on the cheap, without
providing them the organizational supports that they need to prosper over the long
term.
In the foreword to Self-Directed Work Teams (Osburn et al., 1990), David Hanna,
then-manager of organization development at Proctor & Gamble, identifies skepticism as the largest single roadblock to team success: Beware of skepticism! he
warns. Doubt your doubts.. . . Self-directed teams really do work (pp. vii-viii).
Indeed they canbut not without providing them the direction, structure, contextual
supports, and coaching that makes excellent teamwork possible. And those supports
turn out to be harder to arrange in established corporations and public agencies than is
usually acknowledged either by managers who form teams or social scientists who
study them.

Roots of the Obstacles

The co-op obstacle and the corporate obstacle are two sides of essentially the
same coin. In both cases, there is an unwillingness or inability to establish the set of
conditions that enable teams to perform well. For co-ops, the reluctance stems from an
ideologically based preference for vision and leadership over hierarchy, structure, and
bureaucracy. For corporations, the problem is the unfriendliness to teams of those
organizational structures and systems that already existand with which managers
are reluctant to meddle.
The reason why these obstacles are so pervasive and hard to circumvent is that
both their co-op and corporate versions reflect what sociologists call institutional
forces (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Zucker, 1977). Institutional forces result in
organizations situated in similar environments becoming increasingly similar and
persistent over time.10 They specify a set of right answers for organizational design
Specifically, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) identify three processes that foster similarities across organizations and the temporal persistence of organizational features. Mimetic or imitative processes involve
organizations turning to others of the same general type, especially those that are viewed as successful, as
guides for how their own enterprise should be structured. Normative processes involve the crossorganization diffusion of socially defined correctways of operating. It is not so much a question of how
things actually are done in other enterprises, but what infused values and community expectations specify
about how they should be done. Coercive processes involve agents with legitimate authority (such as
government representatives) specifying how certain things must be done.

10

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261

and management, and they are notoriously difficult to redirecteven in the face of
resolute managerial action or significant environmental shocks (Allmendinger &
Hackman, 1996).
Countering institutional forces is not management as usual. Nor do such forces
yield gracefully to planned organizational change programs of the flipchart and to-dolist variety. As will be seen next, creating organizational conditions that support work
teams is, more often than not, something of a revolutionary act.

What It Takes
The conditions that foster team effectiveness are simple and seemingly straightforward to put in place. A real team with work that lends itself to teamwork. A clear
and engaging direction. A group structuretask, composition, and normsthat
promotes competent teamwork. Team-friendly reward, educational, and information
systems. And some coaching to help team members take advantage of their favorable
performance circumstances.
Yet to install these simple conditions is also to determine the answers to four
fundamental questions about how an enterprise operates:
1. Who decides? Who has the right to make decisions about how the work will
be carried out, and to determine how problems that develop will be resolved?
2. Who is responsible? Where do responsibility and accountability for performance outcomes ultimately reside?
3. Who gains? How are monetary rewards allocated among the individuals and
groups that helped generate them?
4. Who learns? How are opportunities for learning, growth, and career advancement distributed among organization members?
The answers to these four questions express some of the core values of any
enterprise, and it can be maddeningly hard to change them. For one thing, to change
the answers to the four questions is almost certain to threaten the turf and personal
interests of currently powerful organizational actors. These individuals are therefore
likely to find lots of good reasons why it would be ill-advised or excessively risky to
alter standard ways of operating.
Moreover, the answers to the four questions are, in established organizations,
supported by deeply rooted institutional structures: the authority structure (Who
decides?), the work structure (Who is responsible?), the reward structure (Who
gains?), and the opportunity structure (Who learns?). These structures not only
give an organization much of its identity, but they also promote predictability and
continuity over time. Predictability and continuity are much to be valued during times
of business as usual. But when circumstances change and innovations such as work
teams are called for, these deep structures can be among the strongest impediments to
getting teams in place and working well.

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Indeed, it may be that fundamental change can be accomplished in an established

organization only when it has become destabilized for some other reasonfor
example, the departure of a senior manager, the rapid growth or dissolution of an
organizational unit, financial disaster, or the introduction of a new technology that
requires abandonment of standard ways of operating. Fundamental change cannot be
accomplished either as an add-on (as managers in some corporations appear to
wish) or as a one-step transition to utopia (as members of some cooperative enterprises appear to wish).
Creating organizational conditions that actively support work teams, therefore,
is in many organizations more a revolutionary than evolutionary undertaking. And
people get hurt in revolutionsespecially those who lead them, and even when they
are successful.
Consider the experience of Pete Townsend (not his real name), a production
manager at a semiconductor plant where David Abramis and I conducted some
research several years ago (Abramis, 1990). Pete had started out as a production
worker at the plant. Although he had no formal training in semiconductor manufacturing (indeed, he was studying at night for his high school diploma), he thought he had
a better idea about how to make semiconductors. Over time, he promulgated what
turned out to be something of a revolution in using self-managing teams to manufacture memory chips.
Pete began to experiment with his idea shortly after being prompted to manage
one of the plants production units (called a fab).He converted serial production
lines, the standard work design in semiconductor manufacturing, into small teams,
each with major responsibility for one part of the chip. Team members learned each
others jobs, took on increasing responsibility for quality control, and were encouraged to do whatever needed to be done within the bounds of their limited authority to
increase yield (i.e., the proportion of usable chips relative to the total number of
starts).
Initial results were encouraging. Yields increased, production workers seemed
pleased with their new responsibilities, and managers of other fabs began to take an
interest in what Pete was doing. Then Pete called me up one day and said, Ithink you
ought to come out for a visit. There have been some interesting developments at the
plant. Whenever Pete called, I would come, as I was fascinated by what this hometaught manager was up to. It just happened that the corporate vice president for human
resources was visiting the plant the same day that I was. And it just happened that we
three found ourselves having coffee in Petes conference room, talking over what he
was learning from his team experiment. As if scripted, I asked, Sohow are the teams
going? Big problems, he responded. Yields are great, but team members are
noticing that somebody is making more money now than they used toand it isnt
them. I reacted as Pete no doubt knew I would. This is serious. Unless you provide
them some kind of rewards and recognition based on team performance, the whole
thing could crater. Cantdo it, he responded. All I have to work with is an endof-year bonus pool, and I can only use it to reward outstanding individual performers.
Doing that could undermine the teams.

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The conversation followed the course that Pete no doubt had anticipated when he
arranged for the vice president and me to visit on the same day. By the end of the
meeting, he had obtained from the vice president an exception to corporate compensation policy that enabled him to offer his teams performance-contingent financial
rewards. Over the next year, Pete did the same kind of thing with the plants director of
maintenance (so that all teams would have their own maintenance support persons
who would get to know their particular equipment, and from whom they could learn
how to perform basic maintenance tasks on their own) and with the director of
engineering (so that engineers would consult with team leaders to arrange times for
process tests that would not disrupt regular production work). Given that the corporation took its compensation policy quite seriously, and that both maintenance and
engineering personnel stood much higher in the plant status hierarchy than did hiredoff-the-street production workers, the special arrangements Pete negotiated were
extraordinary political accomplishments.
The production teams continued to perform well, although their rate of improvement slowed considerably. And Pete still kept them on a relatively short leash,
retaining unto himself decision-making authority about those matters he considered
most important. Abramis and I finished up our research, which showed that although
there was much to admire in what Pete had created, the teams were not really selfmanaging. And then, prompted by an economic downturn in the semiconductor
industry, Pete finally decided to go all the way. The production teams, he declared,
would now be called asset management teams, and they would be given authority
to manage all of their resources in pursing collective objectives.
The transition to asset management teams was difficult, as transitions always are
when decision-making authority and accountability for outcomes are altered. But
eventually the changes took,and performance measures for Petes fab reached new
highs. Indeed, his unit was more profitable than any comparable unit in the company,
and he began receiving visitors not just from headquarters but also from managers at
other high-technology manufacturing firms. By all measures, Pete had achieved a
great success with his work teams.
Not long thereafter, I received another telephone call from him. Probably you
ought to come out for another visit, he said. This time to say good-bye. Theyve
decided that some changes need to be made in my area, and the main change is going
to be me. It turned out that the human resources department recently had completed
its annual employee attitude survey, and the job satisfaction of people in Petes area
had dropped from previous levels. That was the reason given to Pete for his termination. It was the only time in my many years of organizational research that I have
heard of someone whose production numbers are at the top of the scale being fired
because of a dip in scores on an attitude survey.
Pete went too far. Drawing both on his intuitive understanding of what it takes
to make a great team and on his considerable political skill, he had succeeded in
putting in place almost all of the conditions that are needed to foster work-team
effectiveness. His work was revolutionary, and it was more than his organization
could tolerate.

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People get hurt in revolutions. Especially those who lead them. Even when they
are successful.11

Thinking Differently about Teams

Because creating and supporting work teams in organizations often requires the
redirection of strong institutional forces, the activity is more appropriately viewed as
revolutionary than as management-as-usual. Let me conclude this chapter by suggesting that both research on teams and competent leadership of them also require
unconventionality in how one thinks about teams and the factors that affect their
performance.
Scholars and organizational actors construe influences on work-team performance differently. We scholars want to know specifically what causes the performance outcomes that obtain. To find this out, we deconstruct the performance
situation, first conceptually, and then empiricallyperhaps in a laboratory experiment that isolates the suspected causal factors or using structural equation modeling
with survey data. We want to rule out as many alternative explanations for the focal
phenomenon as we can. We want to pin down the true causal agent.
Organizational actors, on the other hand, are not much interested in teasing out
the relative influence of various possible causes of performance. Instead, they are
prepared to draw upon all resources at their disposal to overdetermine outcomes in the
direction they prefer. They welcome rather than shun both the confounding of
variables (which is the bane of research that seeks to make unambiguous attributions
about causality) and redundant causes (which is a sign, in scientific work, that
concepts have not yet been specified clearly enough).
Although the preferences of scientists and practitioners do differ, they are not
mutually exclusive. There is no a priori reason why one cannot generate models of
social-system phenomena that are, at the same time, conceptually sound, capable of
guiding constructive action, and amenable to empirical assessment and correction.
The model of team performance described in this chapter was generated in that spirit.
Rather than specify the main causes of group productivity (or provide a long list of all
possible causes), I have proposed a small set of conditions that, when present, increase
the chancesbut by no means guaranteethat a group will develop into an effective
performing unit.
To think about the conditions within which groups chart their own courses is very
different from conventional scholarly models (in which the attempt is to link causes
tightly to effects) as well as from action strategies that derive from those models (in
which practitioners attempt to manage team processes more or less continuously in
real time). As a metaphor, consider two alternative strategies that could be used by a
11

Pete spent several months in a corporate outplacement center looking for work, and eventually accepted
a position as production manager at a box manufacturing plant in Mexico. Some months later, he moved
back to the United States and shortly thereafter suffered a fatal heart attack.

Why Teams Dont Work

265

pilot landing an aircraft. One strategy is to fly the airplane down, continuously
adjusting heading, sink rate, and airspeed with the objective of arriving at the runway
threshold just above stall speed, ready to flare the aircraft and touch down smoothly. A
second strategy is to get the aircraft stabilized on approach while still far from the
field, making small corrections as needed to heading, power, or aircraft configuration
to keep the plane inthe groove. It is well known among pilots that the safer strategy
is the second one; indeed, when a pilot finds that he or she is in the first situation, the
prudent action is to go around and try the approach again.12
To be stabilized on approach is to have the basic conditions established such that
the natural course of events leads to the desired outcomein this case, a good
landing. The same way of thinking applies in many other domains of human endeavor.
Consider, for example, constantly tinkering with a nations interest rates, money
supply, and tax policies versus getting fundamentally sound economic conditions in
place and letting the economy run itself. Or micromanaging the development of a
child versus creating a good family context that promotes healthy, autonomous
development by the familys youngest member. Or managing a physical injury such as
a moderately serious burn with surgery and multiple drugs versus fostering the
general health of the patient and letting the body heal itself. Or trying to foster
creativity by telling someone to Be creative and giving the person lots of creativity
exercises versus providing a relaxing and resource-rich setting and letting the creative
response appear when it will.
In all of these instances, the better strategy is to devote the first and greater
portion of ones energies to establishing conditions that lead naturally to the desired
outcomes and the lesser portion to on-line process management. The same considerations apply to the design and management of social systems, very much including
work teams in organizations.
The implications for leaders and members of work teams are clear. Their first
priority should be to get in place the basic conditions that foster team effectiveness. In
this chapter, I have attempted to summarize what is known about those conditions,
and I have pointed out that establishing and sustaining them is a far-from-routine
undertaking in many existing organizations. Once the basic conditions are in place,
12

Because I wanted to make sure that the technical details of this example were correct, I asked Jack Maher,
a Delta Airlines captain, to review it. His response amplifies the point of the example: Thefirst strategy
is typical of pilots who are new to an airplane. They tend to overcontrol because they are behind the
airplane, see change too late, and make aggressive control inputs that are usually excessive. They
cognitively tunnel on the control instruments and have a very limited ability to sense and process
environmental cues. New pilots also tend to be procedure bound, which for them is safer. But if a pilot
flies like that all the time, we know immediately he or she is weak, flying is a struggle, and the pilot is not
having fun. The second strategy is where we like to be. In sports psychology it is called optimum flow,
such as in basketball when you become one with the game. Although I joke about it with other pilots, I
hum to myself during approach and landing to facilitate the state of flow. The nice result is that in this state
I can see more of the environment and expand my cognitive ability to plan adaptive responses to future
events. For example, in bad weather I envision the picture I expect to see when we break out of the clouds,
I can see where a missed approach would take me, and if I lose an engine I know how I can modify the
miss to get more performance out of the airplane and avoid terrain and obstacles.

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then leaders and members can manage at the margins, making small adjustments
and corrections as needed to smooth a groups progress toward its objectives. As
Wageman (1996) has pointed out, dealing with emergent team problems and opportunities is manyfold easierand far more likely to be successfulif conditions
favorable to team performance are already in place.
The challenge for social scientists is to take more seriously than we have heretofore the implications of thinking about social systems in terms of conditions rather
than causes.13 Moreover, we need to find ways to study the evolution of social systems
that do not destroy or caricature systemic phenomena in order to make them amenable
to study usingconventional causeeffectconceptualmodels andresearchmethodologies.
Both scholars and practitioners compromise their own espoused objectives when
they hold constant conditions that may be among the most substantial influences on
their phenomena of interest. Yet we regularly do this: Researchers do it to achieve
experimental control, and practitioners do it to preserve established organizational
structures and systems. Until both scholars and practitioners accept the risks of
revolution and break out of traditional ways of construing and leading social systems,
chapters such as this one will continue to be about why teams dont work rather than
why they do.

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