What is self-transcendence and how do we get there?

A key aspect of self-managing teams which Takeuchi and Nonaka raise is that the team are challenging themselves.  They set their own targets and keep striving to make themselves better.  A self-managing team set their own goals and work to achieve them.  They manage not only how they work but how they improve.  It is their ability to develop in unexpected ways which leads to greater improvement.

This approach is a huge mind shift for many organizations.  It counters many ideas which are central to organisations based on Scientific Management. In Taylor’s theory, the assumption is made that workers are inherently lazy.  That given the opportunity every individual will minimise the work that they do.  In other management theory, this is the equivalent of “Theory X” in McGregor’s work.  

Were individuals inherently lazy and reward-oriented or internally self-motivated?  Taylor was fairly clear on his view.

To build successful self-managing teams we need to trust the team.  This theme of trust will recur frequently in these Plays. The team need to achieve what Takeuchi and Nonaka called “Self-transcendence”. A state where they self-manage not only their own work but also their improvement.  Teams need to be able to review their current performance through their use of retrospectives to look at past events.  They also need to be able to plan improvements and reduction of technical debt in the product. This also extends to the team’s involvement in training and development which are often delegated to managers or Human Resource departments.

It will always be simpler for the organization to have uniformity.  Self-managing teams are inevitably different from each other.  If the teams own self-improvement, they will develop at different speeds and in different directions.If the teams are different, a manager needs to learn about each one.  That takes more time and effort.  As a senior manager, it is simpler (and less work for the manager) if all teams standardise.  But self-transcendence requires that teams are able to drive their own change.  Managers need to become comfortable with team autonomy. Uniform teams have their own risks around Groupthink.

A classical approach to management puts the manager in a remote office creating strategy and issuing orders.  The expectation is that those orders are blindly obeyed by a uniform workforce.  This was a successful approach when the work was wholly defined by managers and executed by workers.  However, in modern complex environments this separation is not effective.  The individuals performing the work typically have the best, most accurate information.  The teams are diverse and have different needs.  Keeping management and individual workers separate leads to a deviation.  The actual activities and working practices quickly move away from those imagined by remote managers. 

Gemba

The alignment of the management and team viewpoints can come from only one source.  This is by a shared understanding of how the team works and what really happens in the work environment.  In Lean approaches, the Japanese term Gemba (sometimes anglicised as Genba) refers to the place where work is done.  It literally translates as “the place” or “the actual place”.  In a manufacturing environment it is roughly the equivalent of the term “the factory floor” in English business usage.  The term relates to the need for managers to remain engaged with what is really happening.

Gemba involves management spending time with the teams.  This involves looking from the team viewpoint at what works well and what is less successful.  Where do teams have to implement workarounds to deal with ineffective rules and process?

The intent of Gemba in Lean is to help prevent the divergence between team practice and management perception.  Leaders should make sure they understand what is really happening in the business.  They should work to align the intent with the practice.  That does not mean “enforce the rules”.  As applied, it is more generally the opposite.  It is about understanding why the practice is more effective than the rule.  And then updating either or both, guided by the general principle of maximising the value delivered to the customer.

Good practices

As a leader you should enable your teams to improve themselves. This can be by ensuring effective retrospectives happen. It could be by ensuring the teams request and engage with training. In most cases the limiting factor in training is not budget but teams feeling they are not free to take the time to train.

Use the concept of Gemba. Go to the teams and understand what really happens and where the teams are seeing issues. Where the rules are not working, talk to the teams and get them to build better ideas for how to work.