best practice speeding up team learning the most successful

BEST PRACTICE

Speeding UpTeam Learning

The most successful teams adapt quickly to new ways of

working. Now, a study of 16 cardiac surgery teams offers

intriguing insights on how to make that happen.

CARDIAC SURGERY is One of medi-cine's modem miracles. In an oper-

ating room no larger than many house-hold kitchens, a patient is renderedfunctionally dead-the heart no longerbeating, the lungs no longer breath-ing-while a surgical team repairs orreplaces damaged arteries or valves, Aweek later, the patient walks out of thehospital.

The miracle is a testament to medicaltechnology-but also to incredible team-work. A cardiac surgical team includesan array of specialists who need to workin close cooperation for the operation tosucceed. A single error, miscommunica-tion, or slow response can have disas-trous consequences. In other words, sur-gical teams are not all that differentfrom the cross-functional teams that inrecent years have become crucial tobusiness success.

We studied how surgical teams at 16major medical centers implemented adifficult new procedure for performing

by Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer,

and Gary Pisano

cardiac surgery. What we found shedslight on one of the key determinants ofteam performance: a team's ability toadapt to a new way of working. In cor-porate settings, teams frequently haveto leam new technologies or processesthat are designed to improve perfor-mance. Often, however, things getworse - sometimes for a long time - be-fore they get better. Team members mayfind it hard to break out of deeply in-grained routines. Or they may struggleto adjust to new roles and communica-tion requirements.

When a product development teamadopts computer-aided design tools, forexample, designers, test engineers, pro-cess engineers, and even marketers haveto learn the technology. But they alsohave to create and become comfortablewith entirely new relationships, working

collaboratively instead of making con-tributions individually and then hand-ing pieces of the project off to the nextperson.

Most teams become proficient at newtasks or processes over time. But timeis a luxury few teams-or companies-have. If you move too slowly, you mayfind that competitors are reaping thebenefits of a new technology whileyou're still in the leaming stages or thatan even newer technology has super-seded the one you're finally integratinginto your work. The challenge of teammanagement these days is not simplyto execute existing processes efficiently.It's to implement new processes-asquickly as possible.

Whether in a hospital or an officepark, getting a team up to speed isn'teasy. As a surgeon on one of the teams

OCTOBER 2001 125

BEST PRACTICE • Speeding Up Team Learning

we studied wryly put it, the new surgicalprocedure represented "a transfer ofpain-from the patient to the surgeon."But if that came as no surprise, we weresurprised at some of the things thathelped, or didn't help, certain teamslearn faster than others. An overridinglesson was that the most successfulteams had leaders who actively man-aged their teams' learning efforts. Thatfinding is likely to pose a challenge inmany areas of business where, as In med-icine, team leaders are chosen more fortheir technical expertise than for theirmanagement skills.

Teamwork in OperationA conventional cardiac operation, whichtypically lasts two to four hours, unitesfour professions and a battery of spe-cialized equipment in a carefully chore-ographed routine. The surgeon and thesurgeon's assistant are supported by ascrub nurse, a cardiac anesthesiologist,and a perfusionist-a technician whoruns the bypass machine that takes overthe functions of the heart and lungs.A team in a typical cardiac surgery de-partment performs hundreds of open-heart operations a year. Consequently,the well-defined sequence of individualtasks that constitute an operation be-comes so routine that team membersoften don't need words to signal thestart of a new stage in the procedure;a mere look is enough.

Open-heart surgery has saved count-less lives, but its invasiveness-the sur-geon must cut open the patient's chestand split the breastbone - has meant apainful and lengthy recovery. Recently,however, a new technology has enabledsurgical teams to perform "minimallyinvasive cardiac surgery" in which thesurgeon works through a relativelysmall incision between the ribs. The pro-cedure, introduced in hospitals in the

Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer, and

Gary Pisano are faculty members at Har-

vard Business School in Boston. Edmond-

son is an associate professor; Bohmer, a

physician, is an assistant professor; and

Pisano is the Harry E. Figgiejr., Professor

of Business Administration.

late 1990s, held out the promise of amuch shorter and more pleasant recov-ery for thousands of patients - and a po-tential competitive advantage for thehospitals that adopted it. (For a descrip-tion of the procedure, see the sidebar"A New Way to Mend a Broken Heart.")

Although the scene and players re-main the same, the new technology sig-nificantly alters the nature of the surgi-

cal team's work. Obviously, individualteam members need to leam new tasks.The surgeon, with the heart no longerlaid out in full view, has to operate with-out the visual and tactile cues that typ-ically guide this painstaking work. Theanesthesiologist has to use ultrasoundimaging equipment, never before a partof cardiac operations. But the mastery ofnew tasks isn't the only challenge. In the

The challenge of team

management these

days is to implement

new processes - as

quickly as possible.

126 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

A New Way to Mend a Broken Heart

The cardiac surgery technology we studied is amodification of conventional cardiac surgery,but it requires the surgical team to take a radi-cai new approach to working together.

The standard cardiac operation has threemajor phases: opening the chest, stopping theheart, and piacing the patient on a heart-lungbypass machine; repairing or replacing dam-aged coronary arteries or valves; and weaningthe patient from bypass and closing the chestwound. The minimally invasive technology,adopted by more than lOO hospitals beginningin the late 1990S, provides an alternative way togain access to the heart. Instead of cuttingthrough the breastbone, the surgeon uses spe-cial equipment to work on the heart throughan incision between the ribs.

The small size of the incision changes open-heart surgery in several ways. For one thing,the surgeon has to operate in a severely re-stricted space. For another, the tubes that con-nect the patient to the bypass machine must bethreaded through an artery and vein in thegroin instead of being inserted directly into theheart through the incision. And a tiny catheterwith a deflated balloon must be threaded intothe aorta, the body's main artery, and the bal-loon inflated to act as an internal clamp. Inconventional cardiac surgery, the aorta is

blocked off with external clamps inserted intothe open chest

The placement of the internal clamp is anexample of the greater coordination amongteam members required by the new procedure.Using ultrasound, the anesthesiologist workscarefully with the surgeon to monitor the pathof the balloon as it is inserted, because thesurgeon can't see or feel the catheter. Correctplacement is crucial, and the tolerances on bal-loon location are extremely low. Once theballoon clamp is in position, team members,including the nurse and the perfusionist, mustmonitor it to be sure it stays in place.

"The pressures have to be monitored onthe balloon constantly,"said one nurse weinterviewed.'The communication with perfu-sion is critical. When I read the training man-ual, I couldn't believe it. It was so different fromstandard cases."

Perhaps it isn't surprising that adoption ofthe procedure-by all of the teams-took longerthan expected. The company that developedthe technology estimated that it would takesurgical teams about eight operations beforethey were able to perform the new procedurein the same amount of time as conventionalsurgery. But for even the fastest-learning teamsin our study, the number was closer to 40.

new procedure, a number of familiartasks occur in a different sequence, re-quiring a team to unleam the old rou-tine before learning the new one.

More subtly, the new technology re-quires greater interdependence andcommunication among team members.For example, much of the informationabout the patient's heart that the sur-geon traditionally gleaned through sightand touch is now delivered via digitalreadouts and ultrasound images dis-played on monitors out of his or herfield of vision. Thus the surgeon mustrely on team members for essentialinformation, disrupting not only theteam's routine but also the surgeon'srole as order giver in the operatingroom's tightly structured hierarchy.

Isolating the "Fast Factors"

The 16 teams we studied were amongthose that adopted this demanding newprocedure. Given its complexity, theyexercised great care in carrying it out,checking and double-checking everystep. As a result, the rate of deaths andserious complications was no higherthan for conventional procedures. Butthe teams were taking too long. At everyhospital we studied, operations usingthe new technology initially took two tothree times longer than conventionalopen-heart procedures.

Time is important in cardiac surgery.Long operations put patients at risk andstrain operating teams, both mentallyand physically. And with operating-

rtx>m time costly and profit margins forcardiac surgery relatively high, cash-strapped hospitals want to maximizethe number of operations cardiac teamsperform daily. •

As teams at the various hospitalsstruggled with the new procedure, theydid get faster. This underscored one ofthe key tenets of leaming, that the moreyou do something, the better you get atit. But a striking fact emerged from ourresearch: The pace of improvement dif-fered dramatically from team to team.Our goal was to find out what allowedcertain teams to extract disproportion-ate amounts of learning from each in-crement of experience and thereby leammore quickly than their counterpartsat other hospitals.

OCTOBER 2001 127


A Tale of Two Hospitals

The leader of the team implementing the minimallyInvasive surgical procedure at Chelsea Hospital was arenowned cardiac surgeon who had significant experi-ence with the new technology. Despite that apparentadvantage, his team learned the new procedure moreslowly than the teams at many other hospitals, includingMountain Medical Center, where the team leader was arelativelyjunior surgeon with an interest in trying newtechniques, Why?

The New Technology as a Plug-in ComponentChelsea Hospital (the names of the hospitals are pseudo-nyms) is an urban academic medical center that at thetimeofourstudy had just hired a newchief of cardiacsurgery. He seemed an ideal choice to lead the depart-

Procedure time

in hours5 -

10

Number of procedures

Mastering the new technology proved unexpectedlydifficult for al! team members. After almost 50 cases atChelsea, the surgeon said: "It doesn't seem to be gettingthat much better. We're a little slicker, but not as slick asI would like to be."As at other sites, team members atChelsea reported being amazed by the extent to whichthe procedure imposed a need for a new style and level ofcommunication. But they were less confident than teammembers at other hospitals that they would be able toput these into practice.

The New Technology as a Team Innovation ProjectMountain Medical Center is a respected community hos-pital serving a small city and the surrounding rural area.Although the cardiac surgery department didn't have a

history of undertaking majorresearch or cardiac surgicalinnovation, it had recentlyhired a young surgeon whotook an interest in the newprocedure. More than any ofthe team leaders at otherhospitals, this surgeon recog-nized that implementing thetechnology would requirethe team to adopt a very dif-ferent style. "The ability ofthe surgeon to allow himselfto become a partner, not a

Mountain Medical Ceriter

Chelsea Hospital

Average of all hospitals in the study

Procedure times have been adjusted for the type of operation and the severity of the patient's illness.The curves are trend lines that reflect the average improvement ir\ procedure times.

ment's adoption of the new technology, as he had usedthe new procedure in numerous operations at anotherhospital (one that was not in our sample). Administratorsat Chelsea supported the surgeon's request to invest inthe new technology and agreed to send a team to thesupplier company's formal training program.

The surgeon, however, played no role in selecting theteam,which was assembled according to seniority. Healso didn't participate in the team's dry run prior to thefirst case. He later explained that he didn't see the tech-nique as particularly challenging, having experimentedfor years with placing a balloon in the aorta. Conse-quently, he explained,"it was not a matter of training my-self It was a matter of training the team." Such training,though, wouldn't require a change in his style of commu-nicating with the team, he said: "Once I get the team setup, I never look up [from the operating field], It's theywho have to make sure that everything is flowing."

dictator, is critical," he said."For example, you really dohave to change what you'redoing [during an operation]

based on a suggestion from someone else on the team.This is a complete restructuring of the [operating room]and how it works,"

Team members, who were picked by the surgeon basedon their experience working together, responded enthusi-astically to his approach. One noted that the "hierarchy[has]changed,"creating a "free and open environmentwith input from everybody." Said another: "I'm so excitedabout [the new procedure]. It has been a model, notjustfor this hospital but for cardiac surgery. It is about what agroupof people can do," He explained that the team gotbetter because "the surgeon said,'Hey, you guys have gotto make this thing work.'That's a great motivator."

In the end, despite the team leader's modest reputa-tion and the hospital's limited experience in implement-ing new cardiac procedures. Mountain Medical was oneofthe two hospitals in our study that learned the newtechnology most quickly.


Speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

The adoption of the new technologyprovided an ideal laboratory for rigor-ously studying how teams learn andwhy some learn faster than others. Wecollected detailed data on 660 patientswho underwent minimally invasive car-diac surgery at the 16 medical centers,beginning with each team's first suchoperation. We also interviewed in per-son all staff members who were in-volved in adopting the technology. Thenwe used standard statistical methods toanalyze how quickly procedure timesfell with accumulated experience, ad-justing for variables that might influ-ence operating time, such as the type ofoperation and the patient's condition.Using these and other data, we also as-sessed the technology implementationeffort at each hospital.

Because teams doing conventionalcardiac surgery follow widely acceptedprotocols and use standardized tech-nology, the teams adopting the new pro-cedure started with a common set ofpractices and norms. They also received

the same three-day training programin the new technology. This consistencyamong teams in both their traditionalwork practices and their preparation forthe new task helped us zero in on the"fast factors" that allowed some teamsto adopt the technology relativelyquickly.

Rethinking ConventionaiWisdomWe were surprised by some of the fac-tors that turned out not to matter in howquickly teams learned. For instance,variations among the teams in educa-tional background and surgical experi-ence didn't necessarily have any impacton the steepness of the learning curve.(For a comparison of teams at two med-ical centers, see the sidebar "A Tale ofT\vo Hospitals.")

We also turned up evidence that coun-tered several cherished notions aboutthe ways organizations-and, by im-plication, teams-adopt new technolo-gies and processes. For one thing, high-

level management support for the min-imally invasive technology wasn't deci-sive in hospitals' success in implement-ing it. At some hospitals, implementationwas unsuccessful despite strong vocaland financial support from senior offi-cials. At others, teams enjoyed tremen-dous success despite support that wasambivalent at best. For example, onesurgeon initially had difficulty convinc-ing hospital administrators that thenew procedure should be tried there;they saw it as a time-consuming dis-traction that might benefit surgeonsbut would further tax the overworkedhospital staff. Even so, the surgeon'steam became one of the more success-ful in our study.

The status of the surgeon who led theteam also didn't seem to make a differ-ence. Conventional wisdom holds that ateam charged with implementing a newtechnology or process needs a leaderwho has clout within the organization -someone who can "make things hap-pen" in support of the team's efforts.


But we saw situations in which depart-ment heads and world-renowned car-diac surgeons coirtdn't get their teams toadapt to the new operating routine. Atother sites, relatively junior surgeonschampioned the new technology and,with little support from more seniorcolleagues, brought their teams quicklyalong the learning curve.

Finally, the debriefs, project audits,and after-action reports so often citedas key to learning weren't pivotal tothe success or failure of the teams westudied. In fact, few surgical teams hadtime for regular, formal reviews of theirwork. At one hospital, sucb reviews werenormally conducted at midnight overtake-out Chinese food. Some research-oriented academic medical centers didaggregate performance data and ana-lyze the data retrospectively, but teamsat these hospitals didn't necessarily im-prove at faster rates. Instead, as we willdiscuss, the successful teams engaged inreal-time learning-analyzing and draw-ing lessons from the process while it wasunder way.

Creating a Learning TeamWe found that success in learning camedown to the way teams were put to-gether and how they drew on their ex-periences - in other words, on tbe teams'design and management. Teams tbatleamed the new procedure most quicklyshared three essential characteristics.Tbey were designed for learning; theirleaders framed the challenge in such away that team members were bighlymotivated to learn; and the leaders' be-havior created an environment of psy-chological safety that fostered commu-nication and innovation.

Designing a Team for Learning.Team leaders often have considerablediscretion in determining, tbrougbchoice of members, the group's mix ofskills and areas of expertise. The teamsin our study had no such leeway-car-diac surgery requires a surgeon, an anes-thesiologist, a perfusionist, and a scrubnurse. But tbe leaders who capitalizedon the opportunity to choose particu-lar individuals from tbose specialtiesreaped significant benefits.

At one extreme, the leaders-the sur-geons-took little initiative in cboosingteam members. At one hospital,the staffmembers chosen for training in the pro-cedure were, essentially, those wbo hap-pened to be available the weekend oftbe training session.

In a few teams, however, selectionwas much more collaborative, and tbechoices were carefully weighed. Ananestbesiology department bead, forinstance, might get significant inputfrom the cardiac surgeon before choos-ing an anesthesiologist. Selection wasbased not only on competence but alsoon sucb factors as the individual's abil-ity to work with others, willingjiess todeal witb new and ambiguous situa-tions, and confidence in offering sug-gestions to team members witb higberstatus.

Another critical aspect of team designwas the degree to which substitutionswere permitted. In conventional sur-gery, all members of the surgical de-partment are assumed to be equallycapable of doing tbe work of theirparticular discipline, and team mem-bers within a discipline are readily sub-stituted for one anotber. It's logical toassume that training additional teammembers would allow for more cases tobe performed using the new procedure,but we found that such flexibility basa cost. Reductions in average proceduretime (adjusted for patient complexity)were faster at hospitals that kept tbeoriginal teams intact.

At one hospital where several addi-tional members of the nursing, anes-thesiology, and perfusion staff weretrained in tbe new procedure sbortlyafter adoption, the makeup of the teamchanged with almost every operation.Again and again, teams bad to learnfrom scratch how to work together.After the tenth time, the surgeon de-manded a fixed team wbenever he per-formed tbe new prcKedure. Operationswent more smoothly after that.

Framing the Challenge. When dis-cussing tbe new procedure with teammembers, the leaders of teams that suc-cessfully implemented the new tech-nology characterized adopting it as an

organizational challenge rather than atechnical one. Tbey emphasized the im-portance of creating new ways of work-ing together over simply acquiring newindividual skills. They made it clear thatthis reinvention of working relation-ships would require the contribution ofevery team member.

By all accounts, tbe difficulty of thenew procedure makes cardiac surgeryeven more stressful than usual, at leastinitially. But many surgeons didn't ac-knowledge the higber level of stress orhelp their teams intemalize the ratio-nale for taking on tbis significant newchallenge. Instead, tbey portrayed thetechnology as a plug-in component inan otherwise unchanged procedure. Asone surgeon told us: "I don't see what'sreally new here. All the basic compo-nents of tbis technology bave beenaround for years." Tbis view led to frus-tration and resistance among teammembers. Another surgeon, who char-acterized the procedure as primarily atechnical challenge for surgeons, was as-sisted by a nurse who, with grim humor,said sbe would rather slit ber wrists thando the new procedure one more time.Her attitude was shared by many weinterviewed.

But that attitude wasn't universal. Atsi>me hospitals, staff members were ex-cited to be "part of something new" asone expressed it. A nurse reported thatshe felt honored to be a member of theteam, in part because it was "excitingto see patients do so well." The leadersof teams with positive attitudes towardthe cballenge explicitly acknowledgedthat the task was difficult and empha-sized the importance of eacb person'scontribution. Tbe surgeon who talkedof the transfer of pain from the patientto the surgical team belped his team byhighlighting, witb light bumor,the frus-tration they all faced in this leamingcballenge.

Creating an Environment of Psy-chological Safety. Teams, even moretban individuals, learn througb trial anderror. Because of the many interactionsamong members, it's very difficult forteams to perform tasks smoothly thefirst time, despite well-designed train-


speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

ing programs and extensive individualpreparation. The fastest-learning teamsin our study tried different approacbesin an effort to shave time from the op-eration without endangering patients.Indeed, team members uniformly em-phasized the importance of experi-menting with new ways of doing thingsto improve team performance - even ifsome of the new ways turned out notto work.

As we have noted, this ieaming in ac-tion proved to be more effective thanthe after-action analysis so often toutedas key to organizational leaming. Real-time learning occasionally yielded in-sights that might have been lost hada team member waited for a formal re-view session. During a procedure at onehospital, for instance, a nurse sponta-neously suggested solving a surgicalproblem with a long-discarded type ofclamp affectionately known as the "ironintem."The use ofthe nearly forgottenmedical device immediately becamepart of that team's permanent routine.

When individuals leam, the processof trial and error-propose something,try it, then accept or reject it-occurs inprivate. But on a team, people risk ap-pearing ignorant or incompetent whenthey suggest or try something new. Thisis particularly true in the case of tech-nology implementation, because newtechnologies often render many oftheskills of current "experts" irrelevant.Neutralizing the fear of embarrassmentis necessary in order to achieve the ro-bust back-and-forth communicationamong team members required for real-time leaming.

Teams whose members felt comfort-able making suggestions, trying thingsthat might not work, pointing out po-tential problems, and admitting mis-takes were more successful in learningthe new procedure. By contrast, whenpeople felt uneasy acting this way, theleaming process was stifled.

Although the formal training for thenew procedure emphasized the need foreveryone on the team to speak up with

observations, concems, and questionswhile using the technology, such feed-back often didn't happen. One teammember even reported being upbraidedfor pointing out what he believed to bea life-threatening situation. More typi-cal was the comment of one nurse: "Ifyou observe st>mething that might be aproblem, you are obligated to speak up,but you choose your time. 1 will workaround the surgeon and go through hisPA [physician's assistant] if there is aproblem."

But other teams clearly did foster asense of psychological safety. How?Through the words and actions ofthesurgeons who acted as team leaders-not surprising, given the explicit hier-archy of the operating room. At onehospital, the surgeon told team mem-bers that they had been selected notonly because of their skills but also be-cause of the input they could provideon the process. Another surgeon, accord-ing to one of his team members, re-peatedly told the team: "I need to hear


Becoming a Learning Leader

Creating an environment conducive to team learningisn't hard, but it does require a team ieadertoactquickiy. Social psychologists have shown that peoplewatch their supervisors carefully for cues on how teammembers are expected to behave. These impressionsform early in the life of a group or project. To set theright tone, team leaders must:

Be accessible. In order to make clear that others'opinions are welcomed and valued, the leader must beavailable, not aloof One nurse in our study commentedabout a successful team leader: "He's in his office,always just two seconds away. He can always take fiveminutes to explain something, and he never makes youfeel stupid."

Ask for input An atmosphere of information sharingcan be reinforced by an explicit request from the teamleader for contributions from members. The surgeon onone successful team "told us to immediately let himknow - let everyone know - if anything is out of place,"said the team's perfusionist.

Serve as a "fallibility model." Team leaders can fur-ther foster a learning environment by admitting theirmistakes to the team. One surgeon inourstudy explic-itly acknowledged hisshortcomings."He'll say/I screwedup. My judgment was bad in that case,"'a team mem-ber reported. That signaled to others on the team thaterrors and concerns could be discussed without fearof punishment.

from you because I'm likely to missthings."Tbe repetition itself vyas impor-tant. If tbey hear it only once, peopletend not to hear - or believe - a messagethat contradicts old norms.

Leading to LearnWhile our research focused on the en-vironment of cardiac surgery, we believeour findings have implications that gowell beyond the operating room. Orga-nizations in every industry encounterchallenges similar to those faced by oursurgical teams. Adopting new technok>gies or new business processes is highlydisruptive, regardless of industry. Likethe surgical teams in our study, businessteams tbat use new tecbnology for thefirst time must deal with a learningcurve. And the leaming that takes placeis not just technical. It is also organiza-

tional, with teams confronting problemssimilar to those encountered by the sur-gical teams we studied: issues of statusand deeply ingrained pattems of com-munication and behavior.

Implementing an enterprise resourceplanning system, for example, involvesa lot of technical work in configuringdatabases, setting operational parame-ters, and ensuring that the software runsproperly on a given hardware platform.The bard part for many companies,thougb, is not tbe technical side butthe fact tbat ERP systems completelychange the dynamics-the team rela-tionships and routines-of the organi-zation. As our study shows, it takes timefor teams to leam bow decisions shouldbe made and who should talk to whomand when. It takes even longer if peopledon't feel comfortable speaking up.

There's yet another parallel hetweenbusiness teams and surgical teams. Busi-ness teams are often led by people whohave been chosen because of their tech-nical skills or expertise in a particulararea: Outstanding engineers are selectedto lead product development projects,IT experts lead systems implementa-tions, and so on. Tbese experts often findthemselves in a position similar to thatof tbe cardiac surgeons. If tbeir teamsare to succeed, tbey must transformthemselves from technicians into lead-ers who can manage teams in such away that tbey become leaming units.

Thus the key finding of our study-that teams leam more quickly if theyare explicitly managed for learning-imposes a significant new burden onmany team leaders. Besides maintain-ing tecbnical expertise, they need to be-come adept at creating environmentsfor leaming. (See the sidebar "Becominga Leaming Leader.") This may requiretbem-like surgeons who give up dicta-torial authority so that they can func-tion as partners on tbe operating teams-to shed some of the trappings of theirtraditional status.

The importance of a team leader'sactions suggests tbat the executivesresponsible for choosing team leadersneed to rethink their own approaches.For instance, if an executive views ateam's challenge as purely tecbnical, heor she is more likely to appoint a leaderbased solely on technical competence.In the worst (and not unfamiliar) case,this can lead to disaster; we've all knownsuperstar technocrats with no interper-sonal skills. Clearly, there is a dangerin erring too far in the other direction.If team leaders are technically incom-petent, they're not only liable to makebad decisions but they alst> lack the cred-ibility needed to motivate a team. Butsenior managers need to look beyondtecbnical competence and identify teamleaders who can motivate and manageteams of disparate specialists so thatthey are able to learn the skills and rou-tines needed to succeed. ^

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