Self-organized Team with Tensions

[Deleted member 262718]

Hi everyone

I work in a small self-organized team within a much larger organization.

For the most part we are doing fairly well as a team. However, it has become apparent that one of the team members is bending the rules to their advantage whenever possible. Among other things, they are finding excuses (and creating opportunities) to go on as many business trips as possible, even though this is not part of their primary (or even secondary) role in the team. And to make matters worse, they have been arranging their trips to maximize the amount of days that they can take off as part of the company-wide compensation scheme. E.g. taking flights on the weekends and rather creative accounting of overtime during the business trips. And that has resulted in some hilarious compensation requests from them: (almost) one day of paid leave for every day spent on a business trip.

Any advice on how to deal with this situation? Unfortunately we do not exactly have a supervisor that we could discuss this with. And the well-traveled colleague in question succesfully ignores all our hints to focus on their tasks instead of traveling the world on company time&money and issuing outrageous compensation demands.

 

[Deleted member 262718]

Thanks for the inputs. Indeed putting a lot of work towards that individual might do the trick. Although none of us are really in the position to tell each other what to do. It works mostly on a basis of "hey this thing needs to be done and I'm qualified to do it, therefore I will be doing it". If a single individual doesn't want to do a certain thing in a self-organized team, there is fairly little in the way of authority that would step in and tell them otherwise.

Regarding budget for travel: There's no defined budget, and the people signing off on the reimbursement for the trips are not tipped off because a) they don't know why anyone goes on a trip anyways, and b) each individual trip of this colleague does not raise any red flags on its own, i.e. none of the trips are stupidly expensive and therefore they don't cross any alarm-threshold in the finance department.

It's also worth noting that this person is actually quite good in their intended role inside the team. The trouble is that they don't seem to want this role anymore, and instead they fancy themselves as some sort of high-end business person making deals and dining with potential customers half way around the world (neither the deal making nor making good with potential customers have been very succesful so far). And unfortunately this overlaps with the role of someone else in the team (who btw has the right background to do that kind of thing and is way better at it). To me at least it looks like this colleague got bored in their current role and now they are trying to "expand" their activities and/or try to minimize the time they have to do their actual job. What do you think?

I'm afraid the moment I bring this up in front of everyone, it would degrade the team spirit massively. Plus again considering our supposedly self-organized nature without a boss and all, who am I to tell someone else at the same level what to do or not do?

 

[Deleted member 262718]

The team may well be self organised and expected to deal with their own workload but surely there's someone up the ladder with actual oversight?

No oversight really. We're considered an independent business unit. We have a long-term goal. But how we get there is up to us. From where we are, the only person "up the ladder" is the CEO. Therefore I feel that is up to us to self-regulate and don't overdo it in terms of what we allow ourselves to get away with. And for the most part this also works quite well. Except for the one colleague that is seeminly abandoning their primary role in favor of something more pleasurable. Now we are faced with the question of what to do about it in the team.

 

[Deleted member 262718]

Why not convene a team meeting to discuss concerns? Rather than let morale suffer.

Should this be done first with or without the co-worker in question?

What company is this? I quite fancy working for you. Crap management is one thing, but no management, that's great!

Probably for very obvious reasons I cannot say which company this is . Suffice to say that this kind of organization and mutual trust only works as long as the overwhelming majority of people are good team players and honest. Too many people start to abuse the system, and it will all collapse.

It doesn't sound like you're in any possition of power amongst the others in your team so personally I'd just stick to doing what you need to do to hit your targets and forget what everyone else is doing regardless if it's morally wrong or not.

End of the day that worker is probably costing the company a whole lot more than it should be and taking advantage but that seems like a company issue and not your's.

Morale of the story, don't go above your pay grade,not saying that in a nasty way just giving my 2 cents.

No offense taken, no worries! I ask myself exactly the same question. Is it really my job to watch out for this kind of thing in the first place? On the other hand, nobody from higher up is watching out for this kind of thing either. And in case the behavior of this one colleague is ever getting noticed outside of the team, for sure there will be questions like "why did you (as a team) not do anything?". Us not doing anything could be seen as covering for the person, nevermind that the rest of the team has to pick up some of the colleague's workload in order to keep advancing. If one of us fails, the whole thing falls apart.

For us (the company) the idea of self-organization includes taking over (and distributing) all the responsibilities that would traditionally be taken care of by a group leader. And I guess if a group leader would notice one of the team members behaving in the way that I described here, they would want to (and have to) act, right?

 

[Deleted member 262718]

I'd be doing what that guy is doing, instead of being jealous.

Apologies if I sound jealous.

Canvas opinions from your co-workers without them present. See if others feel the same or you are just being a Karen. If there is a consensus then discuss as a group how best to escalate it. This might be as simple as confronting the individual concerned and explaining how it comes across.

Thanks for the input. This sounds quite reasonable.

Overtime scheanegans are a bit iffy but the issue with the trips and paid leave is unclear?

Do you mean that by booking a flight on a weekend they get a day in lieu/additional holiday or something?

(...)

In the former case, if that's egregious like they've booked a flight on a Saturday but only need to be at the location on Monday etc.. and there is no obvious justification for it then perhaps you need new policies re: the booking of flights etc. in some companies flights, hotel and taxi booking etc.. is carried out by a member of the admin team, especially if you've got staff members who travel frequently - just hire a full-time travel secretary to deal with all of that stuff.

It is "the former case": arriving at destination too early and staying too long. Then asking for compensation for all the additional "work" days they had to spend on the business trip.
We don't have any oversight when it comes to business travel. This used to be handled by the group leaders, and they would (or should) make sure that everyone plans their trips responsibly. Since we've moved to a self-organized structure, planning business trips is at the discretion of each employee. If I schedule a 10 day business trip for something that takes 5 days at the most, technically nobody has to approve it. The system works because most of us plan our trips responsibly, don't try to travel as much as possible, and don't overdo it with the paid leave compensation afterwards. And since the company is going full force on the self-organization, I don't see anything like a central travel secretary put in place that is actually running sanity checks on the travel plans. There's an office that can help with bookings, but they just execute your requests no questions asked, because they assume our requests are all totally reasonable.

The trouble with self-organising teams, is that without leadership individual behaviours and issues are often left to fester. There *must* be some oversight from somewhere/someone, I refuse to believe that a team of people are effectively left to their own, unchecked, with no targets/goals and no leadership.

The way to solve this is to get some leadership in place - without that, there's no effective way to modify this sort of behaviour.

Our team was given a clear goal and a (vague) deadline, but that's it. And that's already better than a couple of other teams that don't even have a clear goal and instead just fumble along and do their own thing. And the thing about leadership, yeah I'd like some leadership. Having a good leader - someone that can motivate and inspire people and bring out the best in them - is great! However, leadership at our company was a very mixed bag with some rather questionable selections and people with good technical expertise but not so good leadership skills. There were also good leaders, people that were just naturally good at leading due to their compassion and emotional intelligence.

However, it was decided that instead of trying to improve (or remove) the not so good leaders, all leadership at the company should be abolished. Don't get me wrong, there's still a CEO and some people that are vaguely in charge of figuring out a company strategy. But the team leaders, group leaders, department heads etc... they are no more. So now if something in a team is starting to go wrong - e.g. someone not doing their job anymore - it is left to the other team members to correct the situation. The very same team members that have no authority over each other, but are very much affected by a colleague not pulling their weight anymore.

 

[Deleted member 262718]

Most active troll I have ever seen, sure has you guys hook line and sinker

What makes you think I'm trolling?