Business without bosses: How self-managing teams are building high performing companies

Business without bosses: How self-managing teams are building high performing companies

Book Edited by Richard Business Without Bosses: How SelfManaging Teams Are Building High Performing Companies by Charles C. Manz, and Henry P. Sims...

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Book Edited

by Richard

Business Without Bosses: How SelfManaging Teams Are Building High Performing Companies

by Charles C. Manz, and Henry P. Sims (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), $24.95 hardcover. Paperback to be released September 1995. Reviewed

by Jonathan

University

of North Texas

6

F. Cox

usiness Without Bosses is the first book-

length collaboration by Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. since the publication of SuperLeadership in 1989. Both books consider ways to promote self-management and responsible autonomy in the workplace. Superleadership, which offers specific suggestions about how leaders can directly encourage self-management, is the broader and more prescriptive of the two. In Business Without Bosses, Manz and Sims continue to explore the advantages of self-management over traditional hierarchies. But their new book features a much more comprehensive treatment of the self-managing team organization. The book is structured around a series of real stories about empowered teams reported by Manz, Sims, and several associates. Drawing material from a variety of industries, these stories describe the experiences of companies that have implemented teams with varying de-

M. Hodgetts

grees of success. Particularly effective are the summaries following each chapter-“Key Lessons for Creating Business Without Bosses”-that recap the central themes of each story. The result is a balanced, insider’s view showing what it is like to make the transition away from bosses to teams. Because of its descriptive format, narrative style, and extensive quotes, Business Without Bosses reads much like a novel. Most prior books on self-managing teams have been written to interest readers in teams, introduce basic concepts, and prescribe techniques for implementation. Manz and Sims start with the premise that the reader is already interested in teams and wants to learn more about how it feels to make the team transition. As such, this is really a second-generation book released at a time when the technology of team organization is gaining widespread interest. The introduction discusses economic and social factors that have caused business to consider new ways to work, including teams. It briefly orients the reader, answers preliminary questions, and traces a link between SuperLeadership and new leadership roles required to support team self-management. Chapter 1 again brings leadership to the fore by discussing the realities of middle-management resistance, one of the most difficult challenges to effective implementation. This chapter follows a group of initially skeptical warehouse supervisors as they grapple with a new kind of leadership. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 take the reader inside three work sites-two manufacturers and a service provider-with team systems in various stages of maturity. Chapter 2 describes life in a General Motors battery plant that has been entirely team-based since opening in 1974. The 83

reader can contrast this mature team operation with less mature installations described in the following two chapters. Chapter 3 describes a greenfield team installation in a paper plant operated since 1987 by Lake Superior Paper Company. Chapter 4 introduces a team retrofit implemented in 1988 among office workers at IDS Financial Services. Chapters 5 through 8 treat a range of special topics and applications. Chapter 5 describes an insurance company whose CEO implemented teams to actually reduce the discretion of employees and extend his personal control. The chapter ends with a series of questions that sound a note of caution about how team organization can be abused. Chapter 6 discusses the unique lattice structure of W.L. Gore & Associates, in which teams coalesce only as needed and then disappear. In Chapter 7, a study of a Texas Instruments plant in Malaysia provides an international perspective and describes how teams can be evolved from Total Quality Management. Chapter 8 rounds out the body of the text by describing high-level strategy teams in the executive ranks of AES Corporation. Manz and Sims conclude in Chapter 9 with advice and summary commentary. Based on the earlier descriptions and their own experience, they offer implementation suggestions and alert the reader to challenges that are commonly encountered during and after implementation. Still, it bears repeating that Manz and Sims have not written a “how-to” manual: their main purpose is to showcase the reality of organizations negotiating the challenging team transition. Chapter 9 and the summaries following each chapter provide an effective structure within which the reader can gain insights and draw conclusions. Readers should not pick up this book expecting to find a detailed implementation guide complete with checklists and action items. The unique strength of this book is the extensive description in Chapters 2 through 8. In essence, these chapters amount to a series of guided armchair site visits that nicely complement the many detailed guides already available. They can serve as a particularly useful orientation for those considering in-person site visits and fea84

sibility studies. For readers who want to experience teams before wading into the details, Business Without Bosses is a great place to start.

Entrepreneurs Are Made...Not Born

by Lloyd E. Shefsky (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994), 206 pp., $22.95.

Reviewed by Donald Ball State University

F. Kuratko

hile the major thrust of this book is to provide “self-help” for people considering the start-up of a business, it does not attempt to cover traditional business functions. Rather, author Lloyd E. Shefsky focuses on the individual attitudes, desires, fears, dreams, etc. of potential entrepreneurs by presenting stories and short vignettes of individuals who have been successful in launching a business. As Shefsky states in the preface,

W

This book is not an encyclopedia. It will not lead you to the Dr. Speck-like solution. You can be taught to change a diaper without knowing much about yourself. You need only know how the diaper folds and how the baby doesn’t. Changing your entrepreneurial attitude requires some introspection and some understanding of your own attitudes and those you want to have. However, after you have read the entire book, you will see how easy it is to use as a reference guide to remind you what you already know. One hundred sixty individuals are listed by name in the acknowledgments section for their contributions to the book, and Shefsky draws in-