Finally, measurements of managing own peiformance
were coded mainly from responses to three interview
questions: (1) "Describe a time when your group deliberately
took time out from its regular work to discuss
better ways of operating;" (2) "Describe a time when your
group should have taken time out but did not do so;" and
(3) "Describe a time when you felt you could not act as
a team." Groups coded as high on managing (n = 11)
described multiple instances of autonomously convening
problem-solving meetings and altering their perfonnance
strategies—such as a team that redesigned standard maintenance
practices to fix a machine reliability problem.
Groups coded as low (n = 10) tended to let chronic problems
ride unaddressed. Groups coded as moderate on
managing {n = 13) were those that neglected some ongoing
problems but altered their performance strategies
to deal with other problems or opportunities. One group,
for example, had redesigned its call-queuing strategy to
improve response time, but had not addressed (and had
no active plans to address) a long-standing reliability
problem.