Leading With Data· a Bicycle Guide

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Designing team-based organizations new forms for knowledge work

A research-based guide to designing the entire organization—its structures, processes, and systems—to successfully support high-performing teams in complex knowledge work.

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What it’s about

While many organizations have embraced teams to improve performance, most find the transition daunting because simply creating teams is not enough. 'Designing Team-Based Organizations' argues that to truly succeed, the entire organization must be redesigned with a new, lateral logic. Drawing on over fifteen years of research and consulting with leading companies like Honeywell, HP, and Pfizer, the authors provide a field-tested, five-step framework for designing the structures, integration mechanisms, management roles, and support systems necessary for teams to thrive, particularly in complex knowledge-work settings. This practical guide moves beyond team dynamics to tackle the fundamental organizational design challenges, offering a systematic roadmap for managers, consultants, and leaders who are serious about building a truly effective team-based organization.

The through-line

Who it’s for
A manager, consultant, or human resources specialist whose organization has committed to using teams but is struggling to make them effective, feeling frustrated that the promise of higher performance is being blocked by the complexity of the transition.
The problem
The organization has formed teams, but they are underperforming due to coordination problems, conflicting priorities, and a lack of support from the existing hierarchical structure and systems. The reader feels exhausted, cynical, and overwhelmed, believing in the potential of teams but feeling like their efforts are being undermined by a system that isn't designed for collaboration.
The plan
  1. Step One: Identify Work Teams based on an analysis of work processes, deliberations, and interdependencies.
  2. Step Two: Specify Integration Needs and design mechanisms (like cross-teams and liaisons) to link teams.
  3. Step Three: Clarify the new Management Structure and Roles required to support teams.
  4. Step Four: Design the critical Integration Processes for direction setting, communication, and decision making.
  5. Step Five: Redesign Performance Management processes for defining, developing, reviewing, and rewarding at the team and individual levels.
The payoff
The organization becomes a dynamic, laterally-oriented system where teams are highly effective and empowered. · Performance dramatically improves in speed, cost, quality, and innovation, creating a significant competitive advantage. · The reader feels competent and successful as a leader who has guided a complex but rewarding organizational transformation.

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Additional reading

  • Work of Jay Galbraith on organizational design · Jay Galbraith

    The book borrows heavily from Galbraith's fundamental concepts of organizations as information-processing entities and the 'Star Model' of organizational design, which is a core framework used throughout the book.

  • Work on employee involvement · Edward E. Lawler III

    The book builds on Lawler's framework for high-involvement management, which provides the principles for empowering teams by pushing down knowledge, information, power, and rewards.

  • Work of sociotechnical systems theorists · Eric Trist, William Pasmore, Thomas Cummings

    Their work provides the theoretical heritage for the concept of the self-contained, autonomous work team, which the book uses as a baseline model to contrast with the more complex, interdependent teams needed for knowledge work.

  • Group effectiveness model of J. Richard Hackman · J. Richard Hackman

    The book's definition of team effectiveness (performance output, team capability, and member satisfaction) is directly adapted from Hackman's influential model.

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