The STAR Concept of Team Leadership

STAR CONCEPT
　
Imagine a five pointed star. Each point on the star represents a particular function the team needs to perform. 　For example:

• Managing
• Operations
• Planning
• Human Resources
• Site

The STAR concept makes different team members responsible for a single function or STAR point in addition to their normal team duties. This is different from having all the functions performed by a single leader. In the STAR approach, leadership is diffused across the team members. This has the advantage of not overburdening one person with leadership. It also draws upon the best abilities of different members to support the team. It does require a broad level of competence across the team to have enough members capable of handling the points. Members can volunteer and be elected by the team to fill a STAR point. They typically serve in a STAR point position for a set period of time (6 mos. - 1 yr.) and then the role opens to other members. A member can be reappointed to the same STAR point for another term.

Here are some details of what a member in a factory might do in each of the five responsibility areas listed above.

Managing

• Overall direction.
• Gather data from outside the team and act as an information resource.
• Link & coordinate with other depts.
• Set performance challenges.
  

Operations

• Coordinate activities with other teams.
• Monitor performance.
• Plan, schedule overtime.
• Assign work within the team.
• Solve production problems.
• Improve work processes.
• Communicate with outside resources.
• Plan and schedule materials flow.
• Quality testing.
• Process checking and SPC analysis.
• Computer networking.

Planning

• Prepare budget input.
• Compare expenditures to budget and determine cause of variances.
• Report variances, causes, and corrective actions.
• Establish team objectives.
  

Human Resources

• Establish training needs.
• Plan and schedule training.
• Conduct new member orientation.
• Explain decisions to team members.
• Manage assignments to broaden team members' skill mix and flexibility.
• Structure work and document skill requirements.
• Do staffing planning.
• Screen and interview candidates.
• Deal with performance issues.
• Manage time cards and attendance.
• Schedule vacations and overtime.
• Assign, borrow, and lend team members.

Site

• Carry out safety inspections.
• Train team members in safe practices.
• Write incident reports.
• Carry out basic and preventive maintenance.
• Assist maintenance in equipment repair.
• Document downtime performance.
• Manage downtime schedules.
• Assist with new equipment installation.
• Improve operations layout.

There is nothing fixed about the categories or the list of duties above. Teams might use "Quality," "Safety," "Improvement," or other categories as their STAR points with their own unique tasks.

Responsibilities of Self-Directed Teams

WHAT DOES THE SELF-DIRECTED WORK TEAM DO?
　
The self-directed work team has primary responsibility for operating, maintaining, and constantly improving the work process. This includes not only the processing of materials and the delivery of services, but also the exchange of information. This work creates output.

Among the typical responsibilities of the self-directed team are:

1. Processing forms, reports, documents, etc.
2. Operating equipment and quality checking.
3. Maintaining and debugging equipment and systems.
4. Troubleshooting inefficiencies and quality problems by using specialized resource help such as maintenance, engineering, or information services professionals.
5. Improving existing processes, equipment, systems, and products (e.g., lean).
6. Consulting with other functional areas for support and information.
7. Preventing variances through statistical process control (SPC) and other techniques.
8. Dealing with day-to-day internal or external customer needs and problems.
9. Addressing individual performance and behavioral issues within the team.

The specific nature of what a teams does varies with the work itself. Manufacturing teams and customer service teams live in two very different environments and do vastly different tasks. The overall set of responsibilities, however, should resemble those listed above.

Leading Teams

FIRST LEVEL LEADERSHIP -- A CLOSER LOOK

The first level leader role gets special attention in self-directed work systems. It occupies a position of critical importance to the success of the organization. It is often filled by persons whose jobs will see the greatest amount of change and who may have been least prepared for it. First-level leaders can make or break a team, particularly break it. Dominant leader personalities will often suppress team contributions and apathy develops because members have little influence.

First level leadership is handled in a variety of ways.

1. Maintain an exempt* "supervisor" position and simply change the title to a more participative sounding one like "team leader." The person does virtually the same things he/she did before. Some firms stop at this point and accept this guise as self-direction. It is not. Others change the duties of the role. (*Exempt personnel do not receive overtime.)

2. Create a "team coordinator" position within the team itself. In an hourly team, this person would be "non-exempt" -- the individual in the role gets paid overtime.* A single team member becomes the leader and stays in the role permanently. This position carries somewhat less weight than the exempt leader who is outside the team. (*In a professional team, all the members would be exempt from overtime.)

3. Create a team coordinator position within the team and then encourage team members to rotate through it. The length of residency in the position is directly related to how long it takes to train the leader. This is a function of both social skill requirements and the complexity of the technology used by the team. The higher these are, the longer the leader should stay in the position in order to recover the investment in his/her development. A flexible time period can be established, e.g., 1-2 yrs. in a simple system, 4-5 yrs. in a complex one. Other team members will want this opportunity at the earlier point in the range so the pressure to rotate out the existing leader comes then.

4. Split the duties of a team coordinator into approximately five main responsibilities and have separate team members carry out each responsibility. This is referred to as the "STAR" concept. More on it later.

Tips for Forming Teams

THE DESIGN OF SELF-DIRECTED WORK TEAMS
　
Because the idea of "teamwork" is inherently appealing to most persons, the desire to create work teams has gained considerable popularity.
　　
Teams and teamwork are not the same thing.
　
Teamwork is cooperative behavior. Teams are a social structure. Teamwork can exist independent of teams. Leaders should not confuse wanting good cooperation and collaboration with the creation of teams. Organizations can have high levels of teamwork and no teams. Similarly, organizations can be filled with teams that exhibit few of the behaviors considered to be teamwork. Teams can become possessive, exclusive of outsiders, resistant to influence and information, and fractured by cliques.

A well designed team will promote teamwork among its members. A well designed organization will promote teamwork among its teams. Let's see what contributes to building strong teams.

Teams are established around seven key criteria.
　
Team members in a strongly linked team will:
1. Work together during the same time period.
2. Work together in the same physical area.
3. Retain the same membership for an extended length of time.
4. Operate/maintain/use the same technology.
5. Be jointly accountable for achieving common goals.
6. Act interdependently to achieve success.
7. Receive common consequences for achievement or failure.
　
It is not always possible for every team to possess all of these characteristics. To the extent that a team does not have these characteristics it is weakened. A team whose members are spread across three shifts may find it difficult to address a performance issue with a fellow team member who does not work with three-fourths of the team. Likewise, a team whose members are given individual performance rewards may maintain a "look out for myself" approach despite exhortations to practice teamwork. Teams with high levels of turnover never really gel.

If it is not possible to create teams following these guidelines, then teams are probably not a suitable organizational structure. Some organizations have tried to create teams of people with the same job description. The "secretarial team" is a good illustration. All the members work independently for separate leaders, are rewarded based on individual effort, have their own dedicated office equipment and may be dispersed in separate areas. While it is desirable to promote teamwork among the secretaries and to have them collaborate on common issues (e.g., phone coverage), calling them a team is a misnomer.