Method

Team management

In French: Management d’équipe

Leading an improvement team means obtaining the cooperation of people who do not report to you, on a subject they did not choose, on top of their work.

The particular situation of the improvement project leader

They almost never have line authority over their team. The members come from several departments, their main workload stays elsewhere, and their manager can recall them at any time.

The consequence is direct: what moves the project forward is not instruction but interest. A member who understands how the subject concerns them will find time; a member who was summoned will find none, and nobody will be able to reproach them for it.

Hence the weight of the initial framing: naming what each person stands to gain, what exactly is asked of them, and over what period. A mission letter signed by the members’ managers is worth more than ten reminders.

The phases of a team

A team that is forming goes through fairly regular stages, and knowing them avoids mistaking them for failure. It starts cautious and polite, goes through a period of friction where roles and disagreements surface, agrees on operating rules, then becomes productive.

The friction phase is the one people try to avoid, and that is a mistake: a team that has not gone through it has not expressed its disagreements, it has put them away. They will resurface at the moment of concluding, when going back will be expensive.

The facilitator’s role there is to have the conflict bear on facts rather than on people — which is exactly what shared data allows. It is one of the secondary benefits of measurement: it gives a disagreement a ground where it can be settled.

Meeting usefully

An improvement meeting is prepared by what it must produce, not by what it must cover. A decision to take, a piece of data to interpret, a plan to settle — announced in advance, with what needs to have been read.

The facilitation techniques that really serve are few: have everyone speak before the general discussion so that the most senior person’s opinion does not fix the others, rephrase before concluding, and write the decisions in front of everyone rather than in minutes sent three days later.

A meeting without a decision records the impression that the project is not moving forward, even when it is.

The common mistakes

Believing that the quality of the analysis is enough. A technically irreproachable project whose solutions were not built with those who will apply them does not survive the departure of the project leader. The most accepted solution regularly beats the optimal solution.

Confusing consensus with unanimity. Seeking everyone’s agreement on everything paralyses; the achievable objective is that everyone has been heard and understands the decision, including if they would not have taken it.

On the shop floor — Food industry

A project stalled for six weeks on a disagreement between production and maintenance. Setting up a shared record — both departments noting the same stoppages on the same sheet — settled the argument in ten days: the figures did not match because the two were not counting the same thing.

The other tools illustrated by this trade: food and beverage.

Frequently asked questions

What size for a project team?

Four to six people for the core, bringing in other skills on an ad hoc basis. Beyond seven or eight, meetings become round-tables and individual preparation drops — everyone counting on the others.

How do you handle a member who does not show up?

Go back to the manager who appointed them, without making it personal: the absence almost always reflects a workload trade-off made elsewhere. If the trade-off is confirmed, it is better to formalise it — remove the person from the team — than to keep up a fictitious participation.

Are written operating rules needed?

A few, decided by the team itself at the first session: frequency, duration, what is prepared beforehand, how disagreements are settled. Five lines are enough, and their value comes from having been discussed, not from their content.

How do you keep the momentum on a project lasting several months?

With close milestones that produce something visible — a measurement, a map, a first trial — rather than progress updates. A team disengages when it sees nothing coming out, not when the subject is hard.