University of Southern California professor Edward Lawler said, “People are very naive about how easy it is to create a team. Teams are the Ferraris of work design. They’re high performance but high maintenance and expensive.”It’s almost impossible to make effective work teams without carefully selecting people who are suited for teamwork or for working on a particular team. When selecting team members, companies should select people who have a preference for teamwork (collectivism versus individualism) and should consider the importance of team level (average ability on a team) and team diversity (different abilities on a team). In selecting workers for its team-based approach to manufacturing single-engine planes like the Skyhawk, Cessna focused exclusively on team skills.If tests indicated that you weren’t a “team player” with an aptitude and willingness to take on responsibility and work with others, Cessna didn’t hire you.However, because it located the new plant in Independence, Kansas, Cessna had trouble finding experienced manufacturing workers.In fact, most of the people Cessna hired to work in the plant had never worked in a manufacturing setting before.In terms of team level, the average ability on a team, Cessna’s production teams was extraordinarily good in terms of being strong team players, but extraordinarily bad in terms of manufacturing experience.Cessna was hoping it could quickly train its workers about manufacturing, but that took much longer than expected.For instance, Cessna hoped to produce 1,000 single-engine planes in the factory’s first year.But because of worker inexperience, it only produced 360 planes that year.In fact, it took four years for its inexperienced workers to produce 1,000 planes per year.John Daniel, who directs assembly at the plant, said, “What we did was kick off the team concept with a whole new work force.”Because of that, “… every time we hit a new situation, it was grounds to shut everything down.” So Cessna dealt with the problem by increasing tam diversity, the variances or differences in ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team.For example, teams with strong team diversity on job experience would have a mix of team members, ranging from seasoned veterans to people with three or four years of experience to rookies with little or no experience.And since Cessna’s single-engine production teams had no experience whatsoever, Cessna infused them with diversity by bringing in 60 retirees who had built Skyhawks before.Said Daniel, “We decided, 'Let's take a break from this team thing and make sure we know how to build the product.’”The mentors worked with teams, teaching them basic manufacturing skills, and instilling confidence.Slowly production speed increased, without sacrificing quality, and the focus shifted back to teams and learning how to resolve conflict, solve problems, and increase flexibility.Eventually Cessna’s production teams will be highly skilled
