In its new business groups, Applied Materials has changed the way decisions are made. Each week in the Solar Business Group, a technology roadmap/strategy meeting is held with all levels of employees invited, from VP to engineer. It was called the Tea House meeting because Samurai only remove their swords when they enter a tea house. In the same spirit, each person at the meeting has equal rank and all opinions must be considered regardless of who proposes them. In this way, the collective knowledge of the organization is optimized.
The Solar Business Group held these meetings to guide development in solar technology. The Tea House format was installed by Randhir Thakur who was the General Manager at the time. Started in 2009, the Tea House meeting took advantage of the collective expertise of the entire organization. This was a critical point because the Solar Business was a new growth area for the company. The ambitious growth targets required a new way of organizing and planning. The Tea House format allowed more opinions to be added to the discussion.
An initiative was undertaken by the company to produce the first large area thin film solar module. This was an incredible challenge that had not been done before. Since the solar module incorporated many different types of technology, an efficient method was needed to maximize the collective knowledge of the Technology team. Not only were there were varying levels of experience in the organization, but half of the development team was based in Germany. Clearly, a top down hierarchy would be inefficient for this initiative. A forum was needed where all ideas and opinions could be expressed from any level in the organization.
2008 - 6% efficiency achieved
2009 - March, 8% efficiency achieved
2009 - May, Accelerated effort needed to reach goal
2009 - May, Tea House meeting established
2009 - December, 9% efficiency achieved
2010 - July, 10% efficiency achieved
This forum empowers all levels of the team to contribute by removing the biases the come with titles and hierarchy.
Utilizing the talent of the entire organization will be a part of the long term growth of the company.
The most valuable part of an organization is the people. Create an environment where there are no barriers to their contribution.
Excellent concept. Perhaps if the participants could also remain anonymous during the meeting (i.e. have a virtual meeting room), people would have fewer inhibitions about speaking their true minds. This could be great for identifying undercurrents as well as strategic thinking. The fact that people get unvarnished feedback and ideas might cause them to wield their weapons less if they realize that their actions may end up a topic of the next company virtual meeting on culture.
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Brendan,
Thanks for the post. I like the story. I've seen similar approaches used before in other firms. GE is famous for making titles and positions irrelevant in their action learning projects in GE's corporate university. I've also personally tried this in the leadership development program I ran for a company where the ground rule was that the people were equal in the program and titles couldn't be mentioned. But like David said, these people picked up their swords again when they went back into the field... Can't say that it worked long term, but it did create more productive discussions.
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