Individual and collective team effort: a vital part of sourcing team success.

Imagine an approach to organizing work that almost every manager endorses, yet few argue has satisfied their personal performance expectations. This may not be as difficult to imagine as one may think. At a recent gathering of executive procurement managers, organizers asked several questions concerning the use of cross-functional sourcing teams.[1] The first question asked if the participants relied on cross functional sourcing teams to support procurement and sourcing decision making. The response was overwhelming - every manager said his or her firm used sourcing teams in some capacity.[2] The second question asked if the performance of these teams met their personal expectations. Again, the response was overwhelming - every manager revealed some level of dissatisfaction with overall sourcing team performance.

This perceived dissatisfaction with cross-functional sourcing team performance is consistent with findings from earlier team-based research) In this study, team members and leaders rated how well their sourcing team satisfied their personal performance expectations. The average perception, 6.4 out of 10 (where 10 represented total satisfaction), revealed a wide gap between actual performance and performance expectations. Performance raters external to each team, many of whom were executive managers, also perceived a similar gap between actual and desired performance. Additionally, a recent survey by A.T. Kearney revealed that seven out of 10 organizational work teams fail to achieve their intended results. While most managers argue strongly that teams are a vital part of today's organizational landscape, the evidence to date suggests that team performance, including cross-functional sourcing team performance, has yet to match expectations. Using sourcing teams is not as routine as many managers believe and comes with no guarantee of better results compared with more traditional work methods.

While many variables affect team performance, the individual and collective effort that members put forth on their sourcing assignment is critical to success. Unfortunately, the relationship between member effort and team effectiveness has received minimal attention by academicians and practitioners. Given the emphasis placed on the use of cross-functional sourcing teams, how to gain member effort and commitment becomes one of the most important team-based issues facing procurement and sourcing managers today.

This article addresses the topic of member effort and commitment by presenting a set of questions that executive managers must ask concerning the use of cross-functional sourcing teams. Knowing how to respond to these questions increases the probability that individual and collective effort will occur at the level required to satisfy performance expectations. The arguments presented are based on experience with more than 100 cross-functional sourcing teams, continuing research and experience with a wide range of organizational teams, and an integration of related work by leading researchers. Because the research involving cross-functional sourcing teams is limited, this discussion will include research findings involving self-managed teams, a category of teams that includes cross-functional sourcing teams.

PROMOTING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE TEAM EFFORT

Figure 1 illustrates part of the reason why many sourcing teams fail to satisfy performance expectations. This exhibit, featured in an earlier International Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management article, segments cross-functional teams across two variables: the time frame of the team's assignment and the personal time commitment required of each member.[4] Sourcing teams staffed by part-time members, which is the lower half of the figure, face the greatest risk of not realizing adequate member involvement and commitment. While some firms manage their sourcing process with teams staffed by full-time members, most have maintained their existing functional structure while adding part-time cross functional sourcing team responsibilities. A scarcity of non-purchasing resources or an unwillingness to organize the sourcing process permanently around teams has precluded most sourcing teams from benefiting from full-time team membership. Within the part-time model, sourcing team members have more than one job responsibility and dual reporting relationships. Time constraints and a matrix reporting structure have affected member contribution and commitment to sourcing teams, particularly for non-purchasing members.

A third variable not pictured in Figure 1, distance between members, often compounds the challenge of managing sourcing teams. Many sourcing teams have members who are flying distance apart, particularly within companies that have geographically dispersed buying centers. Teams that are responsible for developing worldwide commodity strategies (usually part-time/project teams) usually have to contend with travel, time, and budget constraints. Even when members want to commit to the team, distance often limits time the team can physically work together.