Tag Archives: Collaboration

04-Managing a project team, 05-Creating & constructing good solutions, problem statement, team dynamics

A post about the birds and the bees: The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

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Think back to the first time you had to make a decision in a corporate setting. Take a moment and ask yourself some question:

– What was the problem at hand?
– Did you have all of the information that you needed to accurately make a decision?
– Did you have enough time to think over all of the potential outcomes?
– Or conversely, did you have so much time, that you started to second guess yourself?

Now, I will ask a different question. Think about the first bad decision that you made; a decision that had an outcome that was not what you were hoping for. Ask yourself the same questions. Then ask yourself, what would have been different, had you sought help from those around you, and made a decision as a group, rather than as an individual?

I personally find the group mentality to be frustrating, even maddening, at times, since, typically the more minds that come together, the more lag there will be until a decision. I know that many share my feelings, and in fact, the majority of corporate decisions are made on an individual basis. It is always easiest to have someone to point the blame at if things go wrong. Is this mentality the most effective decision making tool that we have in our arsenal?

In the HBR article entitled, The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives, Thomas Seeley analogies the group think process to that of Honey Bees. Professor Seeley explains an effective method for maximizing our collective IQ, and ultimately obtaining better solutions then one might without a group. His five step method is below:

  1. Remind the group’s members of their shared interests and foster mutual respect, so they work together productively.
  2. Explore diverse solutions to the problem, to maximize the group’s likelihood of uncovering an excellent option.
  3. Aggregate the group’s knowledge through a frank debate.
  4. Minimize the leader’s influence on the group’s thinking.
  5. Balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence (absence of peer pressure) among the group’s members.

Decision making is arguably the most overlooked competency in organizations today.  People are promoted based on an assumption that they are better decision makers than others.  Yet, group decision making proves to be an insurmountable hurdle for many corporations today. Mastery of both theory and implementation of this soft skill will not only positively impact your corporation, but also your personal brand. Practice this skill and help to raise the collective IQ of the group.

 

**Sorry, I left out the birds….

The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

 

05-Creating & constructing good solutions, creativity methods

Scenario Planning In The Transportation Industry

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Atlanta traffic for some of us is a an hour commute or more each day, which can be hampered by construction or accidents. Whether traveling to school or daily job, we can admit that some portions of the city need serious infrastructure investments but we do not see any progress. Public and private sector stakeholders all need to be aligned on objectives and long term planning, yet due to different agenda’s these companies are far apart.

The HBR below discusses the rise of  Freight Flows, an initiative of convening conversations and achieving alignment, and the importance of ‘scenario planning’ in the transportation industry. Scenario planning helps develop point of views for the future and prepare users for a range of possible outcomes rather than placing all your eggs in one basket for one specific prediction. This type of planning helps bring together disparate parties and  effectively ensures that the best capital investments today will best for long term projects.

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) created a web based mapping application to track freight movement throughout the region and the impact it will have on transportation.  DVRPC now intends to use this application as the starting point to educate business and other regional stakeholders on the insights  on other infrastructure projects. Scenario planning is sponsored by the National Cooperative Highway Research program and will help guide the allocation of funds to projects. Stakeholder conversations has become a barrier to continual development of US transportation systems but this strategy could pave the way around that obstacle.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/07/to-see-eye-to-eye-on-infrastructure-use-scenario-planning/

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics

The Communication Loop

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Throughout my professional years, I have found myself in working situations where the majority of the people that I interact with are not in the same office as me. I imagine several of you have experienced a work relationship like this as well. Satellite environments have made me a huge proponent of closed loop communication.

Steve Adubato describes the impact of this tool in an article entitled Great Communicators Close The Loop. Proactively closing the conversation eliminates confusion as to what the next steps are for each party. While I know some people hate to receive “Thank you.” emails, I am not one of those. Those simple emails say so much. I read those two words as, “I received the document that you have provided, and it fulfills my needs perfectly. I will contact you back should I need anything further.”

When I receive no communication back, I am left in a state of confusion. Did my file go through? Are they too busy to respond? Is that all they needed?

Sometimes I imagine how this interaction would play out in person:

Christine: “Hi John. Here is the file you requested. Please let me know if you need anything further.”

John: (Grabs paper and walks away without responding)

Not an entirely beneficial exchange, but I know we all witness these types of passive conversations daily via email.

Steve also describes the importance of proactive communication. Don’t always force people to remind you that they are waiting on a deliverable. Bringing the topic up, explaining your work to date, and acknowledging a completion date all provide confirmation that you are hard at work on their task. People like to feel that their work is important to you, and these simple behaviors will reinforce that feeling.

Am I the only one that saves “Thank you.” emails as a sign of confirmed receipt? Do you all find yourselves frequently in email limbo, wondering if your document was received or if anything further is required of you?

07c-Telling stories, metaphors, storyline structure

90’s Reference, Caveman Stories, and Pigs in a Blanket

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Storytelling seems to be the stuff that mermaid tears and unicorn dreams are made of but there is an innate link between storytelling and the human condition as it relates to the work place and beyond. As I read this article, I couldn’t help but think of Tim, the Tool Man Taylor, and the deep conversations that he would have with his half-faced neighbor, Wilson. Tim, who could be quite dense in his relationships at home and at work, would talk to Wilson about his troubles. The neighbor would always recount a story in order to get Tim to realize the error in his ways. How did Wilson convey information successfully and incite Tim to action? Read more to find out why the mind has evolved in such a way that stories make much more sense to us as humans than mere facts and data.

This article discusses the evolutionary adaptations of the human mind through the lens of storytelling and how these specializations help us today in the workplace and beyond. The brain and the way we think – the mind – is considered an organ that is subject to evolution just as other organs. The evolution and natural selection of better acclimated minds that understand and construct stories allowed us to survive better than our predecessors.

Since, it is supposed that, we began communicating by using glances, gestures, and basic sounds, this became the groundwork for emphatic storytelling. As we incorporated language with the gestures, the information exchanged became much more intelligible and memorable than mere facts. As a simple example: imagine a leader of a tribe calmly, without gesture or intonation, says: “at 1,500 feet north-west, there is a tribe that wants to kill us and take our land.” He conveyed the correct information but did not rouse his compatriots to action, he did not gesture where the enemies were, and he gave no context as to what type of people they were about to battle and why anyone should care. All of this is conveyed through gesture, intonation, and emotion – all aspects of storytelling.

Think pigs in a blanket: Pigs in a Blanket without an attractive vessel of flaky buttery goodness, lukewarm mini hotdogs dislodged from a vacuum-sealed plastic bag aren’t very enticing but, nonetheless, an integral part of the all-American snack favorite. Similarly, important numbers, facts, and data sets mean very little to the vast majority of those we may come into contact with throughout our careers without giving them a reason to digest this information. We must find tactful ways to wrap these bits of knowledge into descriptive, savory, and meaningful anecdotes in order for people to enjoy and successfully consume the pairing.

Favorite Excerpts:
“To weave a good story, the storyteller needs to develop the capability to construct fairly complicated inner representations of goals, intentions, and emotional states of real or fictional characters”

“empathy and the ability to understand ‘other points of view’ are necessary for the working of our narrative mind”

ToM – “Theory of Mind” is that we know and acknowledge that other people have their own minds. We can also step into their shoes, empathize, react, and step successfully out of those shoes in the end. This is also used to create metarepresentations. Metarepresentations occur when we imagine five different scenarios before going into a tough meeting with someone. This is the human mind’s way of telling stories to itself in order to prepare for upcoming unpleasant situations and has served our species well for evolutionary purposes.

A successful company should be one that focuses on creating environments where there is a community of storytelling that allows for collaboration and recombination of skill sets and new ways to solve problems.

Real world examples:
Novartis restructured its building in Basel so that the work of each individual could be watched, talked about, and replicated. They called this a “knowledge campus” and guess how the information was transmitted: through authentic communication and storytelling – not through static, out of context presentations.

Pixar built their existing offices around the notion of information exchange through storytelling focused on collaborative efforts and recombination of ideas and backgrounds.

Yang, Chulguen (Charlie). “Telling Tales At Work: An Evolutionary Explanation.” Business Communication Quarterly 76.2 (2013): 132-154. Business Source Complete. Web. 14 June 2014.

Thank you in advance for humoring my metaphors.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=d017ff20-1bf6-4bdb-9641-493eb889fb0d%40sessionmgr111&hid=119