It is very fashionable at present to talk about the need for flatter corporate structures, the need for stripping out middle management and so on. Indeed, the main motivator as well as the main enabler for such a shift in management techniques is information technology itself, yet companies that operate in this sector have, ironically, so far proved very slow in adapting themselves to the needs of new technology. One company that is taking itself in hand is Sherwood Computers Plc. Sherwood is 20 years old and during that time has grown from a bureau service remote from customers into a software and services company where frequent customer contact is part of the sale. Last year Sherwood was arranged in six business units catering for three horizontal markets and three vertical markets. On January 1 1991 Sherwood will comprise 26 business teams and a board of directors. In between, a minor revolution has been taking place. Earlier in the year the board sat for several days and came up with a plan to cut bureaucracy within the company. The solution was teamworking. The teams were to be self-sufficient business units and the change in structure would eliminate four or five layers of management without any job losses. A huge and expensive re-education project got under way immediately. Employees’ ideas about career structures had to be altered beyond recognition. For example, systems analysts have come to believe that their future prospects lie with a management job rather than with their true job skills as an analyst. Sherwood’s director of group sales, Barney Quinn, explains that one of the main reasons for moving to teamworking was to enable people to go back to what they are good at. Merit awards will in future go to reward people for innovation within their particular technical or sales area, not for scrambling up the traditional corporate ladder. An appraisal system has been set up but the principle is management by team-agreed objectives. Some of the teams are self-led, that is different leaders are expected to come to the fore for particular projects, while other teams will elect a leader at regular intervals. The number of team members varies but on the whole each team is considered to have a full complement of staff with between 15 and 20 people. A lot of the teams have been determined by the geographical location of offices, others have come together around a particular service or product. For each market sector in which Sherwood operates there are market co-ordinating teams on which representatives from each of the relevant teams sit. Above this there is a business team made up of directors of the holding company and the boards of other member companies. Moving between these different teams are advisors, who have specialist skills and act as internal consultants. Creating the right cultural environment has not been easy, as Quinn says, he has had to go into the company and actively sell the idea. The Ashridge Management College has also been brought in to help with parts of the change.
Doubting Thomases
A number of teams have been created internally to help develop the teamworking idea but there are still a number of doubting Thomases and Sherwood has lost a few employees over the strategy. However, Sherwood has, historically, had a problem identifying high fliers and Quinn hopes that teamworking will remedy this. One slight problem Quinn does foresee with teamworking is having difficulties recruiting people in the middle of their chosen career, who might well miss the security of a traditional corporate structure. Nevertheless, clients have been supportive of the new teamworking strategy because many are trying to bring in similar internal changes. Clients are encourged to sit in on team meetings and become part of the team with which they are dealing. Unfortunately, most companies in the information technology sector that are looking to institute changes such as Sherwood has done have their backs against the wall as they face declining profits or even losses. Quinn does not believe that such sweeping corp
orate changes can be implemented in these circumstances for two reasons: employees need to have high morale to accept the changes, and the changes themselves cost a lot to implement. Sherwood was in the fortunate position that it had made job cuts in 1988, got its base strategy together, and was looking for a way to fuel growth. Time will tell whether teamworking is the dynamo it was looking for. – Katy Ring
