Wherever you look in the workplace, groups of people are being transformed into teams. Teams in name if nothing else.

These groups of people are called teams because teamwork is supposed to be a better way to work. Management thinks team structures give a veneer of progress to its outlook. Sometimes this deception works. But you can't fake a self-managed team! Management needs to be results focussed: It has to let go, stand back from the action and that can be very difficult to do.

The self-managed team or SMT is a special kind of team. It can be highly effective. It can be phenomenally productive. And it is an autonomous entity. An entity with the endurance and power of a machine and the cunning and adaptability of an animal.

A SMT isn't just a group of people working together but a genuine collaboration: A team in the true sense of the word. And it is a team which is measured by its results, not the performance of its individual members.

This article looks at how some of the fundamentals of teams apply to the SMT and how the SMT is an enhancement of other types of team. It doesn't attempt to provide any background on teams per se or the basics of creating teams and team-building. There is plenty of material on teams and teambuilding available (including two examples on the good teams page of this article) and plenty, too, on the internet (Try a Google search for team or for teamwork)

A self-managed team has total responsibility for its defined remit.

That remit might be a specific project, such as moving the accounts function from two offices to a single area and, perhaps, revising its business processes. It could be the way a group of production personnel are brought together with sales support staff and given responsibility for all supply to a customer: raw material procurement, sales order processing, planning, manufacture and delivery.

A SMT thrives on interacting skill sets, on shared motivation and shared leadership. The team is autonomous and its members are responsible to no-one but each other. The team's accountability is based on the team's results and not on the performance of its members. Individual performance is an internal team issue.

Why is a self-managed team different to any other team? Why does it warrant its own three-letter acronym?

Self-managed teams

• Are more independent than other types of team
• Help to flatten organisational structure
• Eliminate intermediate levels of responsibility (And removes requirement for middle management!)
• Favour natural leaders

SMTs are often put in place for the lifetime of a project but can be just as effective to efficiently manage a business process in the long term.

They have to be real teams: SMTs

• Should set their own targets

The team can be given a remit by the organisation but the team defines its targets and offers them to the organisation

• Should be fully empowered

The team is given autonomy in all areas

• Must monitor performance and maintain quality

The team must define its own key performance indicators (KPIs) and use them

• Should be able to request assistance from outside the team but never have it imposed

The team is part of the organisation but the organisation is the team's customer

• Must maintain contact with the organisation

Everyone must know what the team's function is and what progress is being made: See the section on communication