First Teams

he organization of the future will be less hierarchical than today's model. Workers will be empowered to act without seeking endless approvals. They will work in teams, where the emphasis will be on getting a job done, not on rote observation of rules and procedures or on making sure that no one's turf is violated. Bosses won't be authoritarian, but will serve more as mentors and coaches.

That's the theory. And in at least one important case in the federal government, it's actually the practice, or at least the hoped-for result of the sweeping transformation of the old-line bureaucracy in the United States Information Agency. For the past two years, the USIA has worked to create a team-based management structure that is very different from the traditional bureaucratic model. USIA's experience with the initiative will serve as a guide to other government organizations interested in pursuing this idea, which has achieved some currency in the private sector.

Not surprisingly, the USIA initiative came in response to budget cuts the agency was facing. Those reductions predated the arrival of the Republican-led 104th Congress: The agency's reorganization planning began in 1993, under the direction of two USIA senior executives, Barry Fulton and Bob Powers. Their task was to implement a decision by USIA director Joseph D. Duffy to begin the cutbacks by trimming information activities. Other cuts are expected in the coming years in educational, cultural, broadcasting and other operations.

Powers was then acting associate director of the Bureau of Policy and Programs (known as the "P Bureau"), where most of the cuts would be made. Fulton was acting associate director of the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs, which also had responsibility for some information activities. During the fall of 1993, they co-chaired a task force of more than 100 employees, called the USIA Restructuring Partnership Team, that developed a plan to implement the required reductions. Duffy approved the plan in January 1994 and Powers, Fulton and the team worked together over the next four months to develop its details. Instead of just creating a smaller P Bureau, the streamlining plan created a new, reorganized office called the Bureau of Information ("I Bureau"). Staff was cut from more than 600 full-time positions in the P Bureau and related components of USIA's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to 408 positions in the new I Bureau.

While the creation of a new bureau is seldom newsworthy in government circles, this reorganization contained an interesting twist: the abandonment of the traditional hierarchical bureaucratic structure that piles layers of authority on top of one another. In its place, USIA created 21 self-directed work teams. An entire supervisory level was wiped out, branches and divisions were eliminated, managers were downgraded and the staff-manager ratio was reduced from 3-1 in the old P Bureau to 11-1 in the new I Bureau. In addition, the positions of deputies and special assistants were abolished.

The I Bureau opened for business on Oct. 1, 1994. By then, Bob Powers had retired. The challenging task of implementing team-based management fell to Fulton, who had been selected to serve as Associate Director for the I Bureau.

"The first year was the most difficult in my career," says Fulton. "I had to change. I had to give up authority. I had to work with 400 people who had to change their assumptions about work. It was a period of much anxiety."

Many in the I Bureau echo Fulton's sentiments. "The first six months were a nightmare," says one team member. Another compares the first year to the sensation of a trapeze artist flying between bars. With the implementation of team-based management behind them, staffers can concentrate on fine-tuning the arrangement and focusing on the I Bureau's work.

The New Workplace

In many ways, the I Bureau is a testing ground for the "new" workplace and the "new" worker. Team-based management is based on a series of assumptions about individuals and work-assumptions on which people's opinions differ. The I Bureau is betting the future will be characterized by flat organizations, non-autocratic managers and empowered workers with generalist skills-a future far different from the bureaucratic environment still dominant in many federal agencies and other parts of USIA.

"This is not about I Bureau management imposing a new way of doing business on us," says George Clack, leader of the bureau's Print Publications team. "It's about the new global economy imposing new work styles on us and the rest of society. I believe that in the future, narrow specialties will go by the wayside. Everybody will have to be more of a generalist, with a broader range of skills."

But some in the bureau still see a compelling need for specialists. "People have particular skills," says David Pitts, a member of the Democracy and Human Rights team. "You are still what you were trained to be. People should be allowed to continue using their specialized skills. You would not expect a brain surgeon to alternate jobs with a nurse. I believe the same is true for journalists. If people are asked to perform too many tasks, you are going to end up with jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none."

Farewell to Hierarchy

In addition to challenging the conventional wisdom about work and specialization, the creation of the I Bureau forced its members to look anew at the role of managers. "Many managers are still anxious about their role," says Fulton. "They are people who grew up in the old bureaucracy. They learned all their behaviors from working in the old hierarchy. Some are finding it hard to handle the new environment. Individuals had to change roles from that of division chiefs to team leaders. In the old system, authority was derived from grade and title. People now have to think of themselves differently. Leadership is more difficult now, when authority is more ambiguous."

Throughout the I Bureau, power is cascading downward-from the highest levels. "I had to give up some authority," says Fulton. "I had to pass authority down to my office directors and then every office director has to pass it further down. This does run against my grain and my old habits. I have to bite my tongue sometimes."

As his role has changed, Fulton has been spending his time in different ways. "I now have more time to think about the future of the I Bureau," he says. "It would not be useful to be spending time on the Bureau as it is today; instead I'm looking at a year or two from now. This isn't typical in government. I can look to the future because I am no longer compelled to oversee the daily details."

Fulton's four office directors confirm their roles, too, have changed. "I have five teams reporting to me," says Judy Siegel, director of the Office of Information Resources. "My job has become more collegial, less hierarchical. I often think my job is creating an environment in which people can flower."

The changed environment is apparent to Pamela Smith, recently selected to be director of the Office of Geographic Liaison. "I've worked in Washington a long time," she says. "In the old days, I spent a great deal of my energy managing the hierarchy. When you wanted something, you had to run your idea or proposal up a very long chain of command. People kept adding their perspective as you went up. If a decision was made, it then trickled down through the same chain of command. This took an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of time. After the decision, you then spent time breathing down people's necks to make sure that implementation was done. In the I Bureau, this is almost totally gone.

"When we find a problem that needs solving or want to consider a new proposal, we bring together a group of people to figure out the solution. We try to get the chain of command (which is now much flatter) in the room at the same time. It is participatory, rather than linear, problem-solving. The result is a much more informed decision-making. As a result, participants are more likely to embrace the outcome of a decision."

The New Leader

Memories of the old hierarchical system continue to serve as reference points to the present. Bill Peters, leader of the U.S. Society and Values team, says that in the old system, "We either had the benign type of leader or the autocrat. People skills were not that important. Their job was to pass communication up and down the hierarchy."

Conceptually, the role of team leader stands in stark contrast to that of the traditional manager. "I had a great insight the other day," says Peters. "It came to me that the team is the leader, not me. That is what we are striving for. As team leader, I don't try to second-guess team members or the team. We try hard to reach consensus and find out whether everyone can live with a decision. We are still learning how to do this."

The learning process can be difficult. Alice LeMaistre, who heads the Information and Communications team, describes her transition from manager to team leader: "I never had a problem giving out orders in my old jobs. I found it easy to make decisions by myself. It now takes constant vigilance to guard myself from falling into old habits."

"Being a team leader has been a big change for me," says Tom Eichler, leader of the American Republics team, which handles requests for information from Latin American countries. "I find myself going to meetings all the time. I'm keeping very busy. I realize that I won't be able to be totally familiar with everything my team is doing. In my previous job as a supervisor, I had time to edit and work closely with the material we were producing. I find that my work is much broader now. I'm spread a lot thinner and have to pay attention to many different things. It's a big change, which I am still adjusting to."

As these comments suggest, the transition from the P Bureau to the I Bureau brought tremendous uncertainty. "I was really worried when we went to team-based management," says John Barton, leader of the Central Processing team. "It was uncharted ground. I didn't know if I would be able to do it. Instead of being a supervisor of eight people, I found myself team leader of twenty-two people. I was scared."

Tim Brown, a member of the Global Issues team, agrees that the new approach brought major changes. "The role of team leader is very different from that of supervisor," he says. "Supervisors would just give out assignments. We don't do things that way anymore. There is no more 'boss.' "

The nature of supervision is not the only thing to change in the I Bureau. The nature of work is being re-thought as well. In the old P Bureau, as in many government agencies, jobs were narrow and specialized. Alumni of the P Bureau report little cross-fertilization across subject areas or technical specialties. Now, Brown says, " I'm doing things I've never done before-both on my own team and in the I Bureau. I had the opportunity to serve on the steering committee and design team. I've had a chance to meet a lot of new people in the I Bureau whom I never knew before."

Teamwork hastens the spread of new ideas, I Bureau staffers say. "Before, everybody was for themselves," says Ahmed Quteb, a member of the Near East/South Asia team. "There was no concept of team and very little interaction between people. It took too long to get ideas up the chain. When you had an idea, you told your boss and he told his. Now, ideas move around here very fast."

Hurdles on the Road

Despite the many advances over past practices, life is far from perfect in the I Bureau. The organization has encountered numerous hurdles on the road to team-based management. The two most often cited are too many meetings and too little administrative support.

"We are learning both how to have effective meetings and that everything doesn't require a meeting," says Peters. "We are learning to use alternative means of communication, such as e-mail. We did waste a lot of time in meetings in the beginning, but we are now trying hard to become more efficient."

Administrative support continues to be a problem. "We are still groping with how to process paperwork quickly and efficiently," says Brown. In the downsized environment, team members are all having to increase their share of administrative tasks, and some employees are concerned the increase in workload is being placed disproportionately on lower-graded employees.

There are also structural problems which will require outside assistance. "The team approach reduced opportunities for promotions and resulted in many downgraded positions. We need more flexibility," says Rick Marshall, a member of the Near East/South Asia team. "We have an acute problem with pay for our translators. We need to get them higher grades but are hamstrung by the current personnel system. For team-based management to really accomplish its potential, we need civil service reform." Reform also is needed in the bureau's much-maligned individual performance appraisal system, so bureau leaders can provide incentives or rewards to teams.

Another challenge is finding new ways for professionals who are now scattered throughout the I Bureau to interact and share their interests. Barbara Sanders, a reference specialist on the Democracy and Human Rights team, says, "It's now harder to get together with my fellow librarians and reference specialists. We all used to be together in library services. It's harder to communicate professionally now that we are all spread out and assigned to different teams. I miss the contact."

The bureau's next challenge is to increase interaction between teams and create incentives for team members to participate in ad hoc cross-bureau teams. "It's beginning to look relatively easy to make a single team coalesce and work together," says George Clack. "The next big challenge will be to network teams and encourage participation on ad hoc teams."

Outside the Box

Is team-based management working at USIA? I Bureau staffers tell stories of both success and disappointment. "I've seen people who had problems under the old hierarchy really flower in an atmosphere of empowerment," says team leader John Barton. "I've seen people come forth with new ideas, new ways to do things, and develop positive attitudes. I never thought this would happen to these individuals."

Yet, not everyone has adapted to the new system. "People are truly encouraged to be very entrepreneurial," says George Clack. "We still, however, run up against the old government mentality of narrow jobs which you perform for eight hours and that's it.

Team-based management has provided the I Bureau with the flexibility to better respond to current demands. In one instance, two teams were combined to increase synergy between them. In another, one team was split into two. In one division, three teams were reconstituted with new missions and personnel reassignments. "If there is a case to be made for teams, it is the flexibility that it provides to meet change and new challenges," says Howard Cincotta, leader of the newly created Electronic Media team. "In the old days, people had very specific job descriptions and they rarely ventured outside of them. The challenge of teams is to get people and teams moving outside the box."

Cincotta and his team tried to do that by creating a presence for USIA on the Internet. "If you look at the old organizational chart, there would have been no clear place for our Internet activities," he says. "They would have been done in some fashion, but finding the resources would have been difficult and time-consuming."

Cincotta has clear criteria on how he will evaluate the success or failure of team-based management in the I Bureau. "If teams becomes entrenched and start acting like conventional offices and the conventional bureaucracy, we will have failed," he says. "As soon as people go back to a 'not in my job description' mentality, it's over."

Making it Work

The question now is whether team management can be exported to other parts of the USIA and other agencies. USIA counselor Donna Oglesby, the senior Foreign Service officer at the agency, who had the opportunity to observe both the design and implementation of the I Bureau, says, "I'm a big fan of what the I Bureau has done, but I'm no fool about how much time, commitment, skilled management, coaching and training is required to make it work. You have to make a serious commitment to really wanting to move to team-based management. This is hard for organizations in government to do. The real paradox is that I believe that a team-based structure is best suited for unstable times-like now-when you need flexible organizations. But it is difficult to implement change in a time of instability."

The rest of USIA has watched closely the implementation of teams in the I Bureau. "The I Bureau has provided a good lesson for everybody in the other bureaus about what it takes to get team management started," says Joanne Clifton, USIA's deputy associate director for management. "Real commitment is necessary. I've also learned that you need to provide the time and resources for training. If you devote the time and energy, you are going to get results. If you try to low-ball it, you are going to be disappointed."

Growing pains aside, most employees of the I Bureau appear satisfied and relieved that the first year is over. Few want to return to life in the old hierarchy. "For the first time in my professional career, I don't have to ask permission," says Bill Parker, leader of the Development, Evaluation and Training team. "This is a new way of doing business."