Step Five—Composing the Team

Why jump from the task to a team? Why not assign an individual? In most healthy companies, the problems that individuals can solve are already solved. It is only the problems which cut across departmental or individual responsibility which remain unsolved.

More often than not, the primary reason a team fails is that is does not have the right people on the team. This step will give you the tools for selecting the right team-the team that can solve the problem; not a team that simply researches or recommends. This step exactly balances the task with the people who are needed to carry out the task. The rule here is to use the least amount of people for the least amount of time who can deliver the goods. Deliver the goods, of course, means solving the problem and achieving the objective within the constraints.

The most effective way of selecting the team is to compose a team with Capi[4]. This is an acronym that stands for coalesced, authority, power, and influence. When you coalesce, authority, power, and influence, it means that you've composed a team of just the right people to address the task. The Capi for any task will change as the task changes. In fact, it will even change over time as the task evolves from the time when it's launched until a solution is implemented. This means the composition of the team will change over time—it is not fixed.

How Decisions are Controlled in the Real World[5]

It is one thing to believe that including the right people can improve problem solving; it is another to know specifically who to involve to bring this efficiency into fruition. This section will outline a methodology for identifying which individuals are needed for a responsible team. It is based on an understanding of how decisions are actually controlled—not how they should be controlled, not how you might like them to be controlled, but how they are actually controlled in business, government, non profits, and even family life The implementation of decisions or solutions is controlled through three basic mechanisms—authority, power, and influence. Two or more of these can overlap and produce combined effects. Outstanding leaders have intuitively used the three elements to build support for their ideas. These concepts of control were first developed by Dr. Ichak Adizes, while at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. He did this by actually observing successful leaders in the process of making decisions and solving problems.

Authority (a)

This is the formal right that someone has to make a decision. The person with authority has the right to make or sign off on a decision. This is the 'decider.' A person's authority can be formally determined by their job description, knowing who they can hire or fire and the budget decisions the individual is authorized to make. Informally, you can determine your level of authority by making a decision and seeing if you are accepted as the decision maker. Because authority is the 'official' means of control, it is always conferred on an individual by the organizational hierarchy.

For this reason, authority goes with the job, not with the person. When you are promoted to a new position, you have a different scope of authority. Your old authority is not the same as your new authority. However, anyone familiar with organizational life knows that the transferred person may still wield significant control over their prior bailiwick. This is due to various amounts of Power or Influence that they still retain. Power and Influence are not tied to the position, but to the individual. They are portable. Authority is not. This explains why many structural changes are hard to implement. A CEO can easily change your authority by changing your job description, but altering your power or influence cannot be done by edict. Thus, you may have the title, but not the real control.

Power (p)

Power is the ability (it has nothing to do with a right) to give or withhold support and energy for a decision. Power is exercised whenever someone rewards or punishes. It is easy to think about the reward and punishment that deciders (managers) can use to motivate behavior among their people. Those with authority use their 'authorized' or 'legitimate' power when they promote and fire, or when they praise or criticize someone, or when they give or withhold budgetary approval.

We often forget that workers can reward or punish managers by granting or withholding their ideas, support, or energy. There is little that is more motivating for managers than having their decisions enthusiastically received and implemented-that's rewarding. There is little that is more frustrating than having your 'good' decision undermined, delayed, and subverted. That's punishing.

To determine who has power over a problem or a decision ask, "Who is needed to implement it?" or "Who could mess up the implementation?" If this list is too long to involve on a team, you might ask a second question to narrow the field, 'Of those needed, who is most likely not to be filled with energy and commitment for the decision?' Include these people on the team.

Authorized power (ap) is exercised by deciders, while unauthorized power(p) may be exercised by anyone without authority(a). Typically, those on the front-line who carry out the decisions have little or no authority. Yet they impact the efficiency of a solution or decision because they control the implementation. These are the 'doers.' It is their power that is often not considered in decision making and problem solving. And, it is their power that often enables solutions to be blocked or to be easily implemented.

Too often the deciders make a decision without considering those who have the power to implement or block the solution. After the decision is made, you often hear the deciders say, "Let's figure out how to get their (the doers) buy in." If we replace the word 'buy in' with 'involvement''', you're emphasis changes to how to involve them from how to 'sell' them. Not including the doers in a decision which will affect them is likely to undermine their support. One worker told me that not being included in a decision which affected him felt like an overt act of hostility on management's part.

Just the opposite was reported by a United Auto Worker involved in an early Quality of Working Life Project. He detailed one of the most unpleasant jobs in auto manufacturing-operating a 20 ton body panel press. It is noisy, dirty, scary, and potentially unsafe. Not surprisingly, workers in this job had a notoriously high grievance rate.

A joint labor-management team of operators, engineers, and managers was put together to figure out how to improve this work and the jobs that go with it. They had an ample budget and a generous time frame. The team brought in outside experts and visited other plants. They brainstormed and explored the possibilities for several months.

Their conclusions were reported to management, 'This is a dirty, noisy, and potentially unsafe job. We have done our best to figure out how to improve it. We think it is as good as it can be and recommend no changes... And, thank you very much for asking us.' Everyone went back to the same job, but there were practically no more grievances.[6]

It seems that human beings deeply resent not having input to the decisions that impact their lives. Conversely, having input to those decisions builds strong commitment to them.

A large southwestern city was designing a new city hall. Being open minded, it put the floor plans up in the employees' cafeteria and hung dozens of red pencils under the architect's drawings. Small signs encouraged comments. One barely legible response was from the janitor, 'No slop closet on the third floor.' The architect humbly added one.

Can you imagine the janitor's reaction if it had been left out? Knowing that no one would listen to him, he could simply take his mop and water filled buckets up and down the elevator, spilling and aggravating other passengers to get his message across. This is the use of power.

Power is a very crude way to control a situation. There is no way that spilling water in the elevator would lead to a new slop closet on the third floor.

People with no authority and no influence often use their power just to let you know they exist.

Influence (I)

Influence is the ability to control a decision by enabling others to learn and change due to your experience, knowledge, or charisma. These are the experts. Influence occurs when you impact a decision even though you have no authority and no power over the decision. Of course, influence can be combined with either authority or power, as in the case of the expert who is also the boss (ai) or the doer who has experience (pi). An expert, who is only an expert(i) (and not also a doer or decider) can impact a decision through the information, experience, and knowledge they share with deciders and doers.

Simply sharing your experience or knowledge may not be sufficient since the deciders and doers must accept and use the shared input. Thus, the experts skill in presenting their input can be crucial. This is where charisma enters the picture. Those with high charisma can impact others even when they have no knowledge or experience by simply using the force of their personality. Notice that the definitions of 'power' and 'influence' are more specific and limited than the common usage of those words. The phrase 'political influence'—as it is commonly used—has a negative connotation because it implies the use of rewards or punishments to get your way. In our definitions, this is the use of power, not influence.

The doers, those with no authority and no channels to influence, still desire to have some control over their lives. With no authority and no opportunity to influence decisions, their only option is to use their power. In the political arena, this is the breeding ground for terrorism and revolution. In the business world, this is the source of unionism, resistance and low motivation.

When those in authority open the channels of influence, those without authority set aside their power and depend on their influence to increase control over their lives. Paradoxically, as authority is replaced with mutual influence, everyone's degree of control increases.

4   The concept of CAPI was articulated by Dr. Ichak Adizes of the Anderson School of Management at UCLA in his book, How To Solve The Mismanagement Crises Dow Jones Irwin, 1979.

5  This section is largely from the author's book, Responsible Managers Get Results. Ibid.

6  Panel report by UAW workers at Quality of Working Life Conference sponsored by the New England Labor Management Center, Amherst, Massachusetts, July, 1976.