Watch the video below to see how to get started with self-managed teams:
According to a Harvard Business Review report, business owners spend about 20% of their time on organizational and talent issues.
If you work for 50 hours per week, that’s 10 hours.
The idea of self-managed teams for a small business may sound appealing but unrealistic to cut down your time spent on overseeing. But let’s consider this:
Small business owners are more hands-on with teams, so they may spend even more time on team management.
Say – 15 hours?
And if you belong to an industry with a strong emphasis on innovation and technology you may need to spend by far the most time managing teams to stay agile and competitive.
Does it come to 20 hours per week for you?
That’s the bad news. It takes a heck of a lot of time to set up a good self-managed work team that doesn’t require you to micromanage half of your time.
Now, here comes the good news:
As a company grows, business owners find themselves transitioning from more direct team management to a role where they lead through delegation, setting the overall vision and strategy. You may need to establish several cross-functional self-managed teams and gudie them to your goals with aplomb.
So how do you make this transition from dealing with staff minutia to visionary and strategic work?
By productizing your services. Simplicity lies at the core of this business productization approach with self-managed teams.
In this article, we’ll guide you through 10 essential steps to productize your service business with the aid of self-managed work teams.
What Are Self-Managed Teams?
Self-managed teams are groups within a company that operate without the direct supervision of a manager.
Instead, team members collectively handle administrative and operational duties, from setting goals and managing projects to making decisions and solving problems.
This structure allows for greater autonomy and flexibility, encouraging innovation and faster decision-making.
Each member often has an equal say in the direction and execution of team tasks, which can boost motivation and job satisfaction by giving employees a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for their work.
Self-managed teams are particularly effective in dynamic environments where quick adaptation is crucial.
Self-managed teams are the poster child of team setup in agile companies.
Self-Managed Teams vs. Self-Directed Teams
Self-managed teams and self-directed teams are terms often used interchangeably, but there can be subtle differences in their definitions depending on the context.
- Self-Managed Teams
These teams operate without the traditional managerial oversight, handling many of the tasks typically associated with managers. This includes planning, scheduling, monitoring, and staffing. They are given the autonomy to make decisions that affect their work directly.
- Self-Directed Teams
Similar to self-managed teams, self-directed teams also operate with a high degree of autonomy. However, the term ‘self-directed’ often emphasizes even more freedom in terms of setting their own goals and finding the best paths to achieve them. They might have even less oversight and may control more strategic aspects of their work, such as defining their own objectives aligned with the organization’s goals.
Here is how you productize and scale with self-managing teams:
Productize Your Services in 10 Steps with Self-Managed Teams
These steps are designed to scale your business effectively.
1. Digital Leadership System
At the inception of your transformation, establish a digital leadership system.
Define clear accountability for each aspect of your business, from sales to project delivery.
Consider this phase as laying the foundation for your business, akin to building a house starting with a well-structured basement.
Leadership ensures seamless collaboration within your teams.
2. Offer/Deliverables
Shift your focus from what you do to what you offer clients.
Your offer comprises tangible deliverables that bring value. Clients are interested in results, such as an SEO audit report or a published SEO blog post.
Quantify these results to provide a clear understanding of what clients receive and what they are paying for.
Clients don’t care what you do, clients care about what they get. Ask yourself?
What is the result that you take and hand over to them?
3. Sales Responsibility
Delegate the responsibility of selling your defined offerings to your sales team.
Selling individual components can lead to chaos, and the business owner must decide on the core offerings.
Your business strategy, akin to the basement of your house, should outline precisely what you sell, including the deliverables.
4. Project Backlog
Once a sale is made, create a project backlog for each offering.
This backlog, akin to a blueprint, details the deliverables that your team needs to produce and deliver.
This marks the transition from the sales side to your production team.
5. Role Clarity
Avoid chaos in self-managed teams by establishing role clarity.
While onboarding videos are helpful, the highest leverage comes from clearly defining roles.
Identify who works in which role, creating a structured foundation for your team. This is a critical step to ensuring efficient collaboration.
6. CSM (Customer Success Manager) Role
Empower your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to take ownership.
The CSM defines deliverables in the backlog, ensuring a clear roadmap for your team’s tasks.
If something sold isn’t precisely defined, the CSM or a business analyst can step in to provide clarity before the self-managed team commences work.
7. Scrum Implementation
Implementing Scrum for your team brings significant impact. Assign a process owner who collaborates with the CSM for weekly planning.
Prioritize work items based on client-defined priorities. Ensure every deliverable has a dedicated owner within the self-managed team.
8. Process Owner Role
The process owner plays a crucial role in weekly planning, reviewing the backlog with the CSM.
They prioritize work items, ensuring the highest-priority deliverables make it to the next week’s Sprint backlog.
This fosters accountability and commitment within the team that manages itself.
9. Team Ownership
Encourage team ownership by allowing members to assign themselves tasks.
During the weekly meetings, high-priority work items are self-assigned, fostering commitment and accountability.
A process owner facilitates this Scrum process, ensuring a structured approach to team management.
10. Collaboration and Communication
Incorporate a culture of showing, not just telling, in your team meetings.
The process owner, also acting as the Scrum Master, ensures that members in self-managed teams showcase their work, sharing screens and project boards.
This transparent communication fosters accountability and clarity.
Implementing these steps, with a special focus on making the Customer Success Manager the owner of your team’s backlog, sets the stage for efficient service productization.
Prioritize accountability and clarity in your processes to ensure a smooth transition to self-managed teams.
Do you want to see the full agency blueprint showing you all systems and the implementation steps to sell and deliver your services more easily and a lot more profitably thanks to a productized offer, AI, automation, and self-managed teams?
Click below to get started:
