Short Assignment 1
Assignment’s Description
Kitchenware Company
is an organization with a long legacy of answering to authority. Recently, a
special product development team was set up to come up with a pitch to sell to
the CEO, Chief Operating Officer and Marketing Director. The team was on a one-off
basis and there are three members in the team. Every member was assigned from
different departments. Members’ background was:
Background information in different scenarios
Scenario
1
Supervisor: Kristina
Team members: Chris
& Eddie
Underlying Rules: No
laughing is allowed. No team member is allowed to talk without the permission
to speak from the supervisor. The supervisor presents the pitch.
Scenario
2
Team members:
Kristina, Chris & Eddie
Underlying Rules:
Everyone is equal in this company, there is no supervisor. Everyone must have
the freedom to communicate with everyone. It must be safe for everyone to offer
ideas.
We'd like to discuss the 2 scenarios by 3 aspects:
"Trust", "Creativity", and "Teamwork".
Trust
The new collaboration
is an invaluable way to air and debate multiple views and allow consensus to
emerge. Groups of all sizes can evolve through the “storming, norming, and
forming” stages, to build a solid foundation for performance (Building the
Collaborative Enterprise [nGenera Corporation], 2009). Among all three stages
of collaboration, the trust has played a critical role in the process by which
foster a mutual understanding between team members and improve the productivity
in turn as well.
We are born to be
engaged and to engage others, which is what trust is largely about. If it’s
human to trust, perhaps it’s just as human to err for there are some tendencies
that skew our judgments. (Roderick M. Kramer , 2009) In order to minimize the
bias rooted from our mindset, forming teams to organize talents with
different backgrounds and personalities is an efficient and effective approach
to solve the inherent mankind problems to promote trust and increase productivity
eventually.
Building on the social psychologist Morton Deutsch’s research on trust, suspicion, and the resolution of conflict, and on his own experience over the past 15 years consulting with organizations and executives on trust, Robert F. Hurley developed a model that can be used to predict whether an individual will choose to trust or distrust another in a given situation. (Appendix 1) We will adopt this model to analyze scenario which is more effective in terms of building trust between two given scenario and make some recommendations basing on the conclusion.
In the Model for
Trust developed by Robert F. Hurley, the final choice is mainly decided by two
groups of factors: Decision-Maker Factors and Situational Factors. Former group
of factors, just like how risk-tolerant and well-adjusted is the truster, are
more directly related to the personalities of the trusters in a certain group
and are irrational to be changed in a limited time, what we can cope with this
"personal factors" is to optimize our staffing policy to be suited
with team-work culture and to hire the people who are more willing to work
collectively with certain kind of risk- tolerance and well- adjusted
flexibility. After the team had been set up already, we should pay more attention
on the latter group of situational factors by which we can make the whole team
more harmonious and productive. To arrive at the conclusion that which scenario
is better in terms of building trust, we will go to depth in different
dimensions just as below:
1. How secure do the
parties feel? Roughly speaking, the team members from scenario one would feel
more comfortable for they are used to work in a traditional hierarchical
organization and they know exactly how to cooperate with colleagues and
supervisors under such a kind of organizational system. Having been put into a
more open and unconsolidated environment, the team members from scenario two
would have no idea what to do at very beginning and hard to reach a consensus
later on once there is no supervisor to control the direction and process.
Communication itself means nothing unless it can work out a conclusion at last. Quite similar to the item above, the team members from scenario would communicate in the way they used to be without discount in express their opinions in that organizational structure, and they would easily come to the conclusion based on both the collective brainstorming and the supportive leadership within the team. In the scenario two, team members would behave more rely on their own personalities: the introvert members would not willing to express him/her but the extrovert ones may dominate the discussion. No supervisor in a team means that they should spend more time to form a virtual leader to make the whole team work systematically.
3. How many
similarities are there between them? Similarities here both can refer to the
background, personality and current position in the organization, and with
those similarities can easily establish a common ground among all team members.
In the scenario one, there will be a period of time for team members to find
similarities between themselves and supervisor, but team members from scenario
two would feel more free to contact with each other because of no position
difference which usually acting as a barrier in the team.
All in all, the team
with or without a supervisor both has its own advantages and disadvantages in
creating and maintaining the trust to increase the productivity, but a team
with supervisor tend to be more cohesive and efficient, especially at the
critical decision making period.
Creativity
In Exercise A1,
Kristina acted as the supervisor of the product development team. She has rich
information of the product and comprehensive understanding of the management
team’s expectations. Chris and Eddie were the team members.
Chris was very excited in creating new ideas and passionate about success of the product, whereas, Eddie was more introverted technical person who was interested in developing practical functions for customers. Kristina asked the team members to develop 30 second pitch in the meeting. The discussion went through 3 stages:
In the beginning,
Kristina asked Chris and Eddie to speak their ideas about this pitch. Chris and
Eddie shared preliminary thoughts respectively. Kristina said some of what they
said were inspiring, but might not be interesting enough to impress the
management team. She also pointed out that they have to highlight the
functionalities of the kitchenware when developing the pitch. In the second
stage, Kristina discussed product functions with Eddie to prioritize the most
attractive selling points, and she also constantly motivated Chris to come up
with as many ideas as possible to promote the selling points. During the
process of idea storming, Kristina had been encouraging Chris and Eddie to come
up with a lot of ideas. It seems Kristina was quite confident that she had a
very clear framework of what the pitch looks like. However, Kristina was
critical to assess each idea brought up by Chris and Eddie, she often pointed
out one or two negative aspects of the ideas, even some of the ideas sounded
quite good to her. To some extent, Chris and Eddie felt frustrated to present
new ideas. Kristina had a good command of facilitating the process of
result-oriented discussion, but the atmosphere of creativity had been influenced
by Kristina’s dominance and skepticism.
In Exercise A2,
Kristina, Chris and Eddie had different background and knowledge, each of them
was dedicated to the product development and had strong drive to make the pitch
successful. It was a free discussion, Kristina, Chris and Eddie had a lot to say about their own opinions. They also inspired each other to generate more ideas. However, Eddie were very aggressive to influence the rest two to accept his ideas; Kristina and Chris also thought they had pretty good creativities.
They had contributed many good ideas to the
pitch, but there were no specific agreement on how to create the whole pitch.
Thus, they spent a lot of time to compromise to each other, the arguments had
been continuing for nearly an hour. Finally, Kristina, Chris and Eddie had had
their own version of pitch sold to the management team.
From the creativity
behaviors discussed above, we can have the conclusions below:
1. Giving people
autonomy concerning process facilitation rather than necessarily the ends,
people will be more creative. If team members have freedom around process, but
they don’t know where they are headed, such freedom is pointless (Amabile, T.
M., 1998). Kristina had clearly specified the goals of the pitch that enhanced
creativity of Chris and Eddie.
2. Skepticism and
negativity bias kill creativity when new ideas which are not worthy of
consideration (Amabile, T. M., 1998). It damaged creativity to doubt unsuccessful efforts and even creative
efforts. Creativity should be encouraged by
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Kristina usually demonstrates a reaction to
each new idea, which undermines Chris and Eddie’s intrinsic motivation.
Teamwork
Definition of Teamwork
Dictionary.com:
“Cooperative or
coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.”
BusinessDictionary.com:
“The
process of working collaboratively with a group of people in
order to achieve a goal.”
OxfordDictionaries.com:
“The
combined
action of a group, especially when effective and efficient.”
Cambridge
Dictionaries Online:
“The
ability of a group of people to work well together.”
Teamwork doesn’t only
refer to a group of people working together, but also in a way that each
individual has to work collaboratively and productively towards the common
goal.
A Successful Teamwork – Two Critical Factors
According to
Time-Management-Guide.com (2005), a successful teamwork is when the team has a Strong Synergy of Individual Contributions.
The team can achieve something bigger as a group than a group of the same
members working on their own individually. To build a high collaborative team,
there are two critical factors: Diversity
of skills & personalities and the Team’s
efforts in working towards the same goals.
Diversity of skills
& personalities means that each member has different strength that can
compensate each other’s weakness. Correspondingly, their different in
personality can also balance and complement each other in team \collaboration
(supplementary information can be found on Belbin’s Team Role Summary
Description). And when team members share the common goal, they will try to
contribute their best to work towards it. (Time-Management-Guide.com, 2005)
Nevertheless, based
on the findings by Lynda Gratton & Tamara J. Erickson (2007), “the
proportion of strangers on the team and the greater the diversity of background
and expertise, the less likely the team members is to share knowledge or
exhibit other collaborative behaviors.”
Eight Factors to Build a Collaborative Team
In our team
discussion on the two scenarios, each member in the scenarios is coming from a
different background and sharing a common goal. Yet the group of strangers in
scenario 1 was able to maintain a harmony relationship whereas the same group
in scenario 2 was not. Both scenarios fit both the critical factors but ended
with a different outcome. Scenario 1 has certainly a better teamwork than that
of scenario 2. But why is there a difference? How the synergy of a same group
of strangers can work out a better outcome as in scenario 1? Let’s examine the
difference between scenario 1 & 2 with the Eight Factors that Lead to Success developed by Lynda & Tamara
(2007).
From the table above,
given that the members’ background/relationship, office environment &
organizational culture are the same in both scenarios, scenario 1’s way of team
collaboration is more successful than that of scenario 2.
In scenario 1, the group of
strangers was able to contribute their own strength and worked out a beneficial
conclusion under the lead of team leader. The synergy is 1+1+1=4. Whereas in
scenario 2, even each member was trying to contribute their strength in full,
but without the lead and support, they were not able to agree on a single
pitch. The synergy is 1+1+1=3.
We believe that there
is a close relationship between the organization culture and the successfulness
of teamwork. When the organization is not providing support to foster the
communicational environment/practice, a more hierarchy oriented teamwork is
comparatively more competent to provide a constructive outcome.
Reference
Amabile,
T. M. (1998). How to Kill Creativity.
Harvard Business Review. Spetember-Octoboer 1998. 77-87
Building
the Collaborative Enterprise. (2009).
nGenera Corporation, Retrieved from
http://www.
ngenera.com
Lynda
Gratton & Tamara J. Erickson (2007). Ways
to build
collaborative teams. Harvard business review, Nov 2007,
101-109
Roderick
M. Kramer (2009), Rethinking Trust, Harvard
Business Review, June 2009
Robert
F. Hurley (2006). The Decision to Trust. Harvard
Business Review
R.
M. Belbin (2012). Belbin Team Roles. BELBIN.
Retrieved
from http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8
Teamwork.
(n.d.). In Dictionary.com, LLC.
Retrieved from
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/teamwork
Teamwork.
(n.d.). In BusinessDictionary.com.
Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/teamwork.html
Teamwork.
(n.d.). In Oxford Dictionaries.
Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/teamwork
Teamwork.
(n.d.). In Cambridge Dictionaries Online.
Retrieved from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/teamwork
Time-Management-Guide.com
(2005). Team work and team building essentials. Time-Management-Guide.com. Retrieved from
http://www.time-management-guide.com/team-building.html
Picture Source:
1. http://news.sina.com.hk/news/20120630/-1-2705991/1.html
2. http://kelleylattaministries.com/surrender-without-trust/
3.http://eco
4. http://con
5. http://kyf
6. http://lik
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回复删除The cartoon video impressed me deeply, for one side I think it's a creative idea itself and your team must spend lots of time on it; and for the other side that I feel it could be better if you had added voice to elaborate it meanwhile. Couldn't fully understand it if only watching a silent video. BTW, it would look much better if you fix a proper format for the content.
回复删除It's interesting to read your group's final conclusion like "even each member was trying to contribute their strength in full, but without the lead and support, they were not able to agree on a single pitch"--at least I read several groups' papers, seems most groups agree with my own group's opinion that we work better in exercise 2. Tks.
"even each member was trying to contribute their strength in full, but without the lead and support, they were not able to agree on a single pitch" I fully agree with this idea. Just like what we normally say anything need a maximum limits. Team creation and demoncracy shall be encourged and led by an effective and nice charming leader.
回复删除Dear Group 4 (MUST),
回复删除It’s teacher Frank here. I have a fun time reading this. I especially appreciate your team introduction and the concept behind your team name. For the group creativity exercises, you have come up with very nice videos in both exercises to show how the specific roles of two different decision contexts effect group innovation processes as influenced by the features of the decision contexts and the nature of creativity developing in group processes.
Nice use of visuals and graphics and videos! I like the clarity and coherence your group arrives at in writing with clear subsections that carry the story forward without distraction or going to the tangent. Nice job!
I recommend you work on having a nice introduction that situates your analysis and your readers well about the issues and thesis statement you intend to address and the concluding insight or culminating lesson learned about the group process of the innovation process that sums, typifies, extends your thesis statement in the introduction. This is a pretty nice first draft, though there is still room for improvement. Please adopt suggestions as you see fit. Please post a separate new post of this assignment, and keep the old post intact with comments from me and others. This way it shows your revision effort and gets you bonus points. Enjoy writing and learning!
Also, this is not meant to be a blog comment as a peer; rather, it's written as recommendations for improvement. So, please do not emulate my style in making blog comments on each other's blogs. Please see Trello cards on tips on making constructive comments. Thanks.
Best, Frank
ORIGINALITY AND AESTHETICS:
回复删除Nice photos and videos on introducing your team left deep impression on me. Through your vivid show, I get to know you more clearly. Less is more beautiful, your pictures well show your topics in the content. The diagram also gives me a concise and clear picture about your thinking.
I much appreciate your “show” rather than “tell” approach in situating the decision contexts for your readers; however you still need to explain and analyze after you have shown.
Your analysis is too descriptive. You need to engage in critical reflection about the dynamics of the group processes itself and the feelings and perceptions evoked at the individual and group level while engaging innovation two different decisions which constrain and channel both group and individual behaviors. In engage in critical reflection of group processes, one can identify what helped and what hindered the quality of learning and whether certain behaviors had a positive or negative effect. Team members can reflect on both the processes and products of group work.
Based on the learning insights on group processes based on critical reflection, team members can then set personal goals designed to improve their effectiveness within the group. This could be achieved by asking a number of questions inviting self-reflection, especially in relation to the performance outcomes of innovation quality and feasibility and group effectiveness and creativity, etc: What actions did you engage in most and least as an individual in a group, and how do these actions relate or not relate to your group roles? What actions would have helped the group work more effectively? Decide on a personal goal to increase your effectiveness and share it with the other group members” (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1998).
INSIGHT AND PROVOCATION:
回复删除In each part of your content, you illustrate one core topic, such as trust, creativity and collaboration. Yet, here, I suggest that you can summarize or illustrate the key points clearly so readers can know or at least not misunderstand your thinking or arguments. For each part, you put the most important factors in the end with various trivial points rather than insightful analysis. It is not a good way to attract readers’ attention. And since there are a lot irrelevant points before the key points, it is hard for readers to catch your main idea.
Though you have a clear structure for writing and a creative strategy of attacking the analysis, it is not enough to motivate readers to think actively as there are gaps in logic without a nice framework, progressive arguments building on prior arguments leading to a nice, cogent concluding insight. In your introduction, you need to provide a thesis statement and situate your reader the frames of reference, giving your readers a nice bearing to take the ride of analysis and arguments with you to arrive at your insightful conclusion.
SUPPORT AND EVIDENCE:
In the part about trust and creativity, you made good of facts of the teamwork progress to persuade me to accept your conclusion, which is perfect in leading me to believe in your judgment. While in the last part, more evidences need to be given to persuade me. Making use of Eight Factors that Lead to Success is a highly specific way of illustrating paths to collaborative teamwork; you can more explicitly addressed the factors that concern group creativity outcomes, in particular, and relate literature better in your analysis.
But you had better give me more clues in both scenarios that inform group innovation processes, though scenario 1 is better developed than scenario 2. In your content, you just told the reader, scenario 1 works betters since they have a leader. But there are other factors in the diagram can be shown to the readers to buy in your idea. You also need to do analysis persuading your readings to agree with your concluding point and position. You risk going on tangents by not successfully linking and integrating concepts and past knowledge well into the group innovation processes, as affected by decision contexts.
MASTERY AND UNDERSTANDING:
回复删除In order to prove your ideas, you made good use of models. It is a good way to support your ideas. But some of them are not necessary to be put in your content. In the second paragraph, you mentioned diversity can motivate trust, while in the next part, there is nothing about diversity. This way does not support your idea; it also distracts and confuses readers. And in the definition part of teamwork, there is no need to give so many similar explanations. In my opinion, since you are the writer to lead me to think, you just need to give me a clear definition which can give me hinds of your idea so you can prove your view and for me, I can better understand your mind.
You can engage in more critical thinking to arrive at better reflective insights as a group to help you extend arguments that help better integration with concepts and past literature. Critical thinking has been defined in many ways, but is essentially the process of deliberate, systematic and logical thinking on any subject, while considering bias or assumptions that may affect your discussion. Critical thinking can be defined as, "the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it”.
A critical thinker typically engages in these behaviors and activities that jointly make them a good critical thinker: (1) has a goal (What do I already know? What do I need to work out?); (2) applies relevant and well-focused questions to information and opinions (Is this fact or opinion?); (3) seeks clarity, consistency and accuracy (How do I know this?); (4) tests conclusions and reasoning against specific relevant criteria (What evidence do they have for their claims/ conclusions?); (5) attempts to understand the causes, effects and implications of events, systems and ideas (Why does/ did that happen?);(6) strives to recognize bias including their own (What are the stated and unstated assumptions in this information?);(7) is open to alternate ideas, views and information (What other ways can we think about/ act on this?)
Four activities are central to critical reflection (Brookfield 1988): (1) ASSUMPTION ANALYSIS - This is the first step in the critical reflection process. It involves thinking in such a manner that it challenges our beliefs, values, cultural practices, and social structures in order to assess their impact on our daily proceedings. Assumptions are our way of seeing reality and to aid us in describing how the order of relationships; (2) CONTEXTUAL AWARENESS - Realizing that our assumptions are socially and personally created in a specific historical and cultural context; (3) IMAGINATIVE SPECULATION - Imagining alternative ways of thinking about phenomena in order to provide an opportunity to challenge our prevailing ways of knowing and acting; (4) REFLECTIVE SKEPTICISM - Questioning of universal truth claims or unexamined patterns of interaction through the prior three activities - assumption analysis, contextual awareness, and imaginative speculation. It is the ability to think about a subject so that the available evidence from that subject's field is suspended or temporarily rejected in order to establish the truth or viability of a proposition or action.
CLARITY AND COHERENCE:
回复删除The framework of this paper is really clear with three main key words of trust, clarity and teamwork. While in the content, there are two places not coherent. In the trust part, the second paragraph seems not necessary for the argument. In the teamwork part, you mentioned two factors helping team work efficiently. Yet, in the conclusion, the effects of the two factors do not show to the readers. Instead, you apply another framework to illustrate your idea. I suggest the following way. You use leadership theory to replace the first two paragraphs in teamwork to make it more coherent.
Before you write, you need to think and reflect. I recommend that you start by drawing up a Mindmap.
Your group lacks a clear concluding point that you progressively prove with arguments that build on each other, hooks your ideas clearly, helps you deliver your messages more clearly and effectively to your readers. Before you start your writing, you might want to try mind-mapping is a technique that can help you expand your thinking, structure your ideas and make connections. You can use a Mindmap to plan your assignment and arrange items to create the structure of your writing: (1)Write your topic in the centre of a blank page; (2) Draw related ideas on 'branches' that radiate from the central topic. When you get a new idea, start a new branch from the centre; (3) Include any ideas, topics, authors, theories, experiences associated with your topic; (4) Map quickly, without pausing, to maintain a flow of ideas;(5)Associate freely and do not self-edit; at this stage anything and everything is OK; (6) Circle the key points or ideas. Look at each item and consider how it relates to others, and to the topic as a whole; Map the relationships between the ideas or key points using lines, arrows, colours. Use words or phrases to link them.
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回复删除Hi,this is 53935415
回复删除Actually i'm trying to find the defect we have which can be fixed via reading your blog.
WOW, how did you so talent to make those short movie? Cannot be more cooler ! actually we have a big defect which I found via reading your blog, lack of photo and video to make our blog vivid. Sorry for the fact that we are a group of science geeks which really have defect on our blog, that's why we here to learn from you manage gunnies,i also noticed that you have not only compare them in difference but also analyse them to see how many similarities are there between them, that will be a good aspect to found the common point of both and the really inner relation between them and may find the transfer of both.
Thanks for your idea.
Hello, this is 53698153.
回复删除Actually the first make me feel very surprise is the cartoon image. You are very creative use the different cartoon image make readers more clear what you are stating about. In general, you make readers want to read on.
Sencondly, about the content. You first give the background, the from "trust","creativity","teamwork" to assess the two scenurio, and mark the key words. I think this blog is very good! I like the structure especially the cartoon.
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回复删除此评论已被作者删除。
回复删除The video is quite vivid to clarify the circumstances with cartoon characters. It expressed how the three people act in two senarios, which made me feel at real with their speech.
回复删除When you mentioned the topic of trust, you raised three questions. These quesitons guided me to think more on how the parties collaberate with each other. It is really helpful for understanding the knowledge in lectures.
I also appreciated with the table which comparing the differences or the identical issues in two senarios. I can reflect on what i've learned in class.
In conclusion, I do like your blog in both content and formation.
Seems everyone enjoys so much on your vivid YouTube clicks scenario role play ^_^. And if it’s possible to put your 3 amazing voice inside it as well? Maybe I ask for too much… Anyway, I love it not only the way you show to us is much of interesting, but also the content you provided is simple but clear as well as easy to understand. Another one thing I want to emphasize is the analyses part based on eight factors theory. By comparing the common and different factors in each scenario, you make a conclusion of 2 kinds of result which enlighten me to learn more about this case.
回复删除Hi, “MUST” team, This is 53978673. I really like the animation you used to display what happened in your team when you develop the two pitches. Very interesting! In addition, you adopted some theories and models to analyze trust, creativity and teamwork separately, such as trust model developed by Robert F, Eight Factors that Lead to Success developed by Lynda & Tamara. These theories and models could give you a clear structure to illustrate the factors that impact the subject. However, I think it could be better, if you could talk more about the relationship between the trust, creativity and teamwork in each senario. So the connection of these three parts could be more closely and I could be more clearly to understnd how we could creat a more succesuflul team work.
回复删除I really interseted to the mindmap tool intorduced by Frank, soulds a very useful approach to clear your mind when you need to think about something. I will try it next time. Thank you, Frank