Job Demands

Team Management Systems uses a model known as the Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel to characterize the nature of work undertaken in teams.

Figure 1. Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel

This model defines eight types of work or work functions as follows:

• Advising - Gathering and reporting information
• Innovating - Creating and experimenting with ideas
• Promoting - Exploring and presenting opportunities
• Developing - Assessing and testing the applicability of new approaches
• Organizing - Establishing and implementing ways of making things work
• Producing - Concluding and delivering outputs
• Inspecting - Controlling and auditing the working of systems
• Maintaining - Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes

In the center of the Types of Work Wheel is an activity known as 'linking'. When team members focus on their critical work functions then they need to employ the principles of linking to be successful.

Job analysis methodology has shown that opposite work functions are different aspects of work whereas those closer together on the Wheel are more related. The nature of work and the way jobs are defined means that the critical work functions (job demands) in an individual's job are more likely to be in adjacent sectors of the Wheel than in opposite ones.

In high-performing teams there is usually a distribution of labour required in terms of the Types of Work Wheel. Rarely would an individual team member be expected to have all eight work functions on his or her critical list. However when the critical work functions of all team members are put together, a well-designed team should cover all eight functions.

Work Preferences

Our research over many years has shown that people have distinct likes for some of these work functions and definite dislikes for others. We measure these work preferences using four key scales as follows:

Figure 2. Work Preference Measures

The results show the following relationships between the Types of Work Wheel and the four Work Preference Measures.

Figure 3. Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel

Longitudinal Study

Over the past three years we have carried out a longitudinal study to see how changes in people's critical work functions might impact their work preferences. 92 people completed the Types of Work Profile Questionnaire, which determines the critical work functions of their job, as measured by the Types of Work Wheel. Simultaneously they also completed the Team Management Profile Questionnaire which determines their work preferences. They completed the same questionnaires a year later (Year 2). 63 of them also completed the questionnaires two years later (Year 3). The data enables us to see what relationships there might be between changing critical job demands and changing work preferences.

Predicted variations

One theory often postulated is that people's work preferences are very much moulded and shaped by the job they do. It is possible from the model of Figure 3 to predict the changes that might occur in one or more of four work preference measures as a result of changes to a particular work function. For ease of discussion it is best to refer to the work preference measures by the four continuous scales of EI, PC, AB and SF.

Figure 4: Predicted Relationship between Work Functions and Work Preferences

Taking Producing as an example, we can see that any increase in criticality of the Producing work function should result in a decrease in the EI scale, and/or an increase in the PC scale, and/or and increase in the AB scale, and/or and increase in the PC scale.

The Results

Figure 5 shows the results of the comparison between Year 2 and Year 1, for the 92 respondents involved in the study.

Note: * correlations are significant at p<.05000

From this data we can make the following observations:

• An increase in the criticality of the Producing function is related to a decrease in the EI scale (or an increase in introversion).

• An increase in the criticality of the Innovating function is related to a decrease in the PC scale (or an increase in the Creative information-gathering work preference measure).

• An increase in the criticality of the Maintaining function is related to a decrease in the AB scale (or an increase in the Beliefs decision-making work preference measure).

All three of these observations align with the prediction from Team Management theory.

Figure 6 shows the results of the comparison between Year 3 and Year 2, for the 63 respondents who remained in the study.

Figure 6: Relationship (Pearson product-moment correlations) between changing work functions and continuous scale scores (n=63), Year 2 to Year 3

Note: * correlations are significant at p<.05000

The results show these trends:

• An increase in the criticality of the Innovating function is related to a decrease in the PC scale (or an increase in the Creative information-gathering work preference measure).

• An increase in the criticality of the Organizing function is related to an increase in the PC scale (or an increase in the Practical information-gathering work preference measure).

• An increase in the criticality of the Developing function is related to an increase in the SF scale (or an increase in the Structured organization work preference measure).

Again these results align with the prediction from Team Management theory.

A further analysis was also carried out on the data in Figure 6 by removing those respondents who did not change job positions between Year 2 and Year 3. This reduced the sample size to 30. One might expect a greater change in critical work functions for respondents who moved to a new position and therefore such an analysis might throw up additional relationships.

Although this is a small sample, significant relationships were found as follows:

• Advising was correlated to the SF scale at –0.37
• Innovating was correlated to the PC scale at –0.44
• Developing was correlated to the SF scale at 0.40
• Organizing was correlated to the PC scale at 0.38

The relationships highlighted in the larger sample (Innovating, Developing and Organizing) were reproduced in this analysis, but with higher correlations. In addition a new relationship between Advising and the SF scale was found. An increase in Advising as a critical function was correlated with an increase in the Flexible organization work preference measure.

Again these results confirm our Team Management theory.

Conclusion

Based on the data of this longitudinal study we can conclude that there is a definite pattern in the relationship between a change in respondents' critical work functions and their work preferences, very close to that described by Team Management theory. What is not yet clear, though, is the arrow of causality ie. Does a change in job cause work preferences to change or does one seek to change the emphasis of the job to align with changing preferences?

Copyright © Team Management Systems. All rights reserved.

With a background in science, engineering, finance and organizational behavior, Dick McCann has consulted widely for organizations such as BP, Hewlett Packard and Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank. He is coauthor of Team Management: Practical New Approaches with Charles Margerison; author of How to Influence Others at Work and The Workplace Wizard: The Definitive Guide to Working with Others; and coauthor with Jan Stewart of Aesop's Management Fables and The Half-Empty Chalice. Involved in TMS operations worldwide for over 15 years, Dick is now Managing Director of TMS Australia, a Director of TMS Development International and President of Team Management Systems Inc.

Further Information:

• Team Management Theory
• Types of Work Profile Questionnaire
• Team Management Profile Questionnaire