The Myth of the Management Team
Management teams often fail under pressure due to avoidance of conflict, turf protection, and pretending consensus, leading to watered-down decisions and 'skilled incompetence' that blocks genuine learning.
THE IDEA
7. THE MYTH OF THE MANAGEMENT TEAM
Striding forward to do battle with these dilemmas and disabilities is “the management team,” the collection of savvy, experienced managers who represent the organization’s different functions and areas of expertise. Together, they are supposed to sort out the complex cross-functional issues that are critical to the organization. What confidence do we have, really, that typical management teams can surmount these learning disabilities?
All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy—maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn from.
“Most management teams break down under pressure,” writes Harvard’s Chris Argyris—a longtime student of learning in management teams. “The team may function quite well with routine issues. But when they confront complex issues that may be embarrassing or threatening, the ‘teamness’ seems to go to pot.”[4]
Argyris argues that most managers find collective inquiry inherently threatening. School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people who excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s current policies rather than solving urgent problems?) Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence”—teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.
When to use it
Evaluating the effectiveness of a senior leadership team in a strategic planning offsite.
Diagnosing why a cross-functional project team repeatedly fails to innovate or adapt.
Designing a training program for new managers on fostering genuine dialogue and inquiry.
Analyzing a failed organizational change initiative to identify team dynamics that blocked learning.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Watered-Down Strategic Decision
A management team tasked with launching a new product avoids surfacing deep disagreements about market risk. Instead, they settle on a safe compromise that neither fully commits to the new direction nor maintains the status quo, resulting in a lackluster rollout that satisfies no one.
Turf Protection During Budgeting
During annual budget allocations, department heads fight to protect their own resources rather than openly discuss cross-functional trade-offs. Any questioning of another's budget is seen as a personal attack, leading to inflated budgets across the board and a failure to reallocate funds to higher-priority initiatives.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
When have you witnessed a management team avoid surfacing disagreement to maintain a facade of unity? What was the outcome?
Think of a time you personally hesitated to raise a difficult question in a team setting. What fear drove that hesitation, and how did it affect the team's learning?
How could your organization create psychological safety to reward inquiry over advocacy, reducing skilled incompetence?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Fifth Discipline The Art Practice of the Learning Organization (Peter M. Senge)