An organization which can boast that 10 percent of its people are on teams at any given time has successfully begun the Total Quality Management journey. An organization that has 60 to 80 percent of its people on teams at any given time has completed the cultural transformation to quality. They meet, typically, once a week for an hour. They study the work process assigned them using the tools described in the next section, discover ways to improve the process, propose their improvement to the Quality Council, test their solutions, pilot their solutions, and finally implement them. Teams Implement Quality improvement teams' role in implementing change, rather than just recommending change, makes them unique in management praxis.
Implementation is fun.
At Motorola, a team found a way to reduce the time to fill orders from 45 days to two hours. And at the Tactical Air Command, a team decreased the time to process travel vouchers from six weeks to less than five minutes. Teams work so well for two reasons. First, when organized and managed properly, they are the best means yet discovered to solve work problems and improve work processes. Teams are, in other words, the best way we know of to empower people.