PURPOSE
The purpose of Employee Owned Change is to build a cohesive team unit so that coworkers work together in a spirit of cooperation, collaboration and ownership.
WHAT IS EMPLOYEE OWNED CHANGE?
A healthy organization is one that has a strong sense of its own identity and mission, plus the capacity to adapt readily and constructively to change. This type of organization exhibits independence, optimism, interdependence, and a high degree of responsibility and results.
Team development actions are rooted in behavioral science principles. These reflect human-centered and participatory approaches to management and leadership. Team development reflects two aspects of organizational development.
They are:
- a way of managing change
- a way of focusing human energy toward specific desired outcomes
Success with any team development action rests on the fundamental belief that in an organizational setting, the individual members must have the opportunity to grow if a vital organization is to remain healthy or if an ailing one is to revive.
In managing change, the methodology of team development is to work in concert with the persons affected by the change. This fosters responsibility in managers which leads to creativity in problem solving. What is true of individuals then becomes true of the associations they form.
Team development is also practical and functions as a discipline for focusing energy on specific goals. While most organizations begin purposefully, the goals of groups give way to individualistic aims. Team development recognizes that all energy must be volunteered by individual managers. The wants and needs of the individual are therefore essential input to the goal- setting process of the group. If each member participates in forming group goals and in general, subscribes to those goals, then a considerable share of his/her energy and the energy of coworkers, begins to work toward a common purpose.
Team development actions succeed when leaders proceed by:
- Linking with all those who can influence desired outcomes.
- Identifying/forming tentative general goals, which by joint processes, will convert to specific group goals.
- Working on improving the quality of relationships from one in which managers are conditioned to inter personal/conflict (I-you) versus one of collaboration and healthy competition (we-us). To bring about such a organizational change, open communication, collaborative goal setting, and mutual problem solving/decision making must be encouraged.
- Building active feedback loops so managers monitor and share in their organization’s progress towards the achievement of mutually agreed upon goals.
A schematic representing typical team development concepts follows. While it represents a “typical” flow of events, each situation will vary. This demands adaptation and tailoring of actions to achieve client objectives.
