There's a great article in Monday's Journal by Erin White titled "How a Company Made Everyone a Team Player." The story is about ICU Medical and how project teams have evolved there.

It's the evolution that's important. Teams have been a hot topic for decades, but many teams are not teams at all They're loose groupings of people trying to accomplish an objective.

It's the evolution that's important. The term "self-managing team" is thrown around a lot. But too many teams are managed from above. At ICU self-managing is a reality, but it didn't start out that way.

It's the evolution that's important. The changes at ICU didn't begin with a high priced consultant's high priced study or a charismatic guru's "6 ways to trick people into being team members." Teams working the way they do now at ICU evolved through the give-and-take and trial and feedback that accompanies most incremental change in business.

One particular quote caught my eye, from Dr. George Lopez, founder and CEO of ICU. Here's what he said.

"In a competitive environment, this is what works best. It allows these people to take control -- they can do as much as they want to do and can advance as much as they want."

In other words, ICU offers opportunities to work in teams that make a real contribution to the company. Working on teams can also yield monetary rewards based on the contribution of the project and a team member's contribution to the work. It can also yield rewards such as recognition and personal satisfaction, all without having to go into management or climb a separate career ladder.

Dr. Lopez says he's never vetoed a team decision, even when he disagreed with it. That reminds me of Ricardo Semler, of Brazil's Semco. In his book, the Seven-Day Weekend, Semler lays out the reason he won't override a team decision, even though he could.

"At that point, I'd lose everything I worked for, and people would know that democracy at Semco was fleeting, insincere and unreliable. That's too high a price to pay."

Maybe Semco, and ICU, can give us a vision of ways that people can work together productively without having to be controlled by some Grand Poobah of a manager. When Semler is asked, "How do you control a system like this?" his answer is simple. "I don't. I let the system work for itself."

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