Transcript Document 7562743

United Flight 173
• Denver to Portland, OR
• 181 passengers, 8 crew members
• Landing delayed for 1 hour due to landing
gear malfunction
• Crashed 6 minutes short of airport due to
insufficient fuel
• 10 fatalities
• BTW – flight crew properly certified,
aircraft properly certified and maintained
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United Flight 173
• What are the main reasons the cockpit
crew allowed the aircraft to run out of fuel?
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Factors Affecting Group
Performance
External Context
•reward system
•organization structure
•org. culture and politics
•education
•phys/fin/info resources
Membership
•motivation, effort
•skills and knowledge
•personalities
Team Structure
•size
•diversity
•roles
•cohesion
•norms
Task
Performance
Group Process
•Task accomplishment
•Satisfaction of members
•Can work together again
•communication
•conflict
•decision-making
•development
•execution
Coaching
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Common Pitfalls in Managing
Teams
• Assembling a group of smart people, telling
them in general terms what needs to be
accomplished and let them work out the
details
• Calling it a team but managing it as a set of
individuals
• Not finding the right balance between
assigning and withholding authority
• Believing that agreement is good, and that
disagreement and conflict are always bad
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Team Effectiveness Criteria
1. Does the team’s output meet the
standards of those who have to use that
output?
2. Does the team experience enhance the
capability of the members to work
together in the future?
3. Does the team experience contribute to
the personal well-being and development
of the members?
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Organizational context
• Reward system
– positive consequences for excellent
performance
– focus on group (not individual)
• Education and other resources
• Information system
– allows situation assessment
– allows evaluation of alternative strategies
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Group design
• Size
• Skills
– task-relevant
– interpersonal
• Diversity
• Boundaries
• Roles/Norms
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Questions to Ask in Designing
a Team
• What type of teamwork is needed?
• What skills do you need represented on the team
(both content area skills and teamwork skills)?
• How much and what types of diversity do you
want?
• How big should the team be?
• To what extent do you want to define different
roles for team members?
• What are the team’s goals and what deliverables
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are expected (and when)?
Effects of Team Size
Advantages of
Small Size
• Easier coordination
• More input from members
• High motivation,
commitment, and
satisfaction
• Less diffusion of
responsibility & social
loafing
Advantages of
Large Size
• More resources at the
team’s disposal (ideas,
perspectives, labor)
• More potential for division
of labor
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Task Structure
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•
•
•
•
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Interdependent
Clear & involving clear objectives
Requires varied high-level skills
Identifiable
Significant
Opportunities for feedback
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A Group’s Performance Does Not
Always Equal its Potential
Performance
Potential
Performance
+
Process
Gains
-
Proces
s
Losses
=
Actual
Performance
Potential performance: The level of performance that one would expect
given the capabilities of the individual members
Process gains: Increases in performance resulting from effective
coordination and motivation
Process losses: Performance difficulties that a group experiences due to
coordination and motivation problems (e.g. social loafing)
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Common Traps
• Leader abdication
Leaders withdraw from their team and become less
involved. The result - chaos, confusion, lack of direction.
• Succession-less planning
Key people on a team leave / replaced. The
result - break in continuity and developmental regression.
• Team arrogance
A team becomes so immersed in their task that it doesn't
consider the impact its actions may have over others.
• Undefined accountability
When ownership of decisions and action items
is ill/not defined teams make decisions without subsequent actions. The result diffused responsibility and consequently lack of progress.
• Disruptive team member
It takes only one rotten apple…if a disruptive
member is not dealt with directly and effectively the performance of the entire
team can be damaged.
• Poor teamwork habits
Teams that lack explicit ground rules damage their
potential for successful collaboration
• Decision by default
Teams that develop a tendency to postpone decisions
and or defer to hierarchy when needing to decide make a decision by default
rather than by choice.
• Varied team member contributions
Teams with uneven distribution of
workload have their key members becoming frustrated, resentful and
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consequently uninterested in delivering high levels of productivity.
Some Examples of Process Losses
• Process can be time consuming  Boredom, fatigue, apathy,
reduced effort
• Failure to exert sufficient effort (e.g., laziness, individuals are
not prepared).
– Diffusion of responsibility  less effort.
• Groups may be dominated by one or more members
– will pull group’s performance in the direction of their
individual performance level
– Personal or political agendas may dominate
• Group experiences dysfunctional levels of conflict –reduces
members’ ability to learn from each other
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Some Examples of Process Losses
• Failure to use knowledge and skills of members due
to poor process
• Members being unduly influenced by each other
(groupthink, the Abilene paradox)
• Poor group process leads to inefficient information
sharing (failure to share “unique” information;
tendency to share “shared” information; so-called
pluralistic ignorance).
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Common Sources of
Process Losses
• Lack of common goal
– Personal Agendas
– Political Agendas
• Diffusion of Responsibility
• Conformity Pressures
• Dysfunctional Conflict
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Using Groups to Make
Decisions
Advantages
• Greater range and
diversity of information
and ideas
• Potential for synergistic
problem solving
• Better memory and error
detection
• Encourages participation
and buy-in which
facilitates decision
implementation
Disadvantages
• Process can be time
consuming
• Personal or political
agendas
• Domination by one or
more members
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Conformity pressures
and/or Groupthink
• Dysfunctional conflict
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Improving Team DecisionMaking
• Identify the problem or opportunity, clarify
objectives & performance criteria
• Analyze the problem
• Development of ideas & alternatives (e.g.,
brainstorming, nominal group technique)
• Critical evaluation of ideas & alternatives
– Value dissent
– Support the minority opinion
• Identify best ideas & alternatives
• Implement decisions & assess effectiveness
• Emphasize flexibility & adaptability over time
Task
Performance
Team Performance Curve
High
Performing
Team
100%
15 –
20%
0
Midpoint
Time
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TEAM DEVELOPMENT
Key developmental activities include:
Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning
Period of Inertia
• Team is created
• Team identifies strategy
• Norms enacted
• No discussion of process
Period of Transition
• Drop old patterns
• Revise norms
• Revise strategies
15% work completed
Period of Inertia
• Execute new
strategies
• New norms enacted
• No discussion
of process
Task completed
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Transition points
• Midpoints or transitions are crucial to team
outcomes
– Opportunity to set goals, alter norms and acquire
key resources
– Ineffective management of transition points has
significant opportunity cost
• Managing transitions
– Proactively generate midpoint
– Anticipate transition work and execute it prior to
the midpoint
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