Insights on Excellence | "Insights on Excellence" Archive

Scheduling systems and teams

by Stephen Hawley Martin
for Virginia Business
November 1, 2007

In many cases, to create a schedule is in effect to put together a team. For this reason, an automated scheduling system needs to be multidimensional. It ought to take into account who, when, where and what. In other words, which employee should be scheduled for a particular date and time, the location where he will work, and the activity he will be assigned.

People perform with two personas -- one as an individual and another as a member of a group. To get the maximum benefit, both roles should be operating at peak performance. Becoming a productive team member can take time, and it often takes a while for a team to jell. But once a team does, it can be very effective, much more so than several people who have been thrown together on an ad hoc basis.

Teams typically progress through stages. The first is "forming," which is marked by uncertainty and distance between members, then "norming" occurs when the team begins to settle down to become an efficient unit, followed by "storming," which is what transpires when conflicts arise. If everyone on the team sticks it out through the storming stage, the team will eventually reach the "performing" stage, when a mature team can be counted on to deliver solutions and work together in harmony. For this reason, managers of many companies feel an automated scheduling system should be programmed in a way that keeps teams together to the maximum extent possible.

I've been assured by experts that if a system is set up correctly and properly programmed, it can do this, thus avoiding the lost productivity that is often the case when team members are in the early stages of getting to know each other.

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Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency in Richmond and the author of more than half a dozen books including his newest, Lean Enterprise Leader: How to Get Things Done Without Doing It All Yourself. He is editor and publisher of The Oaklea Press, a book publishing business dedicated primarily to helping business executives increase productivity.