Replying to LO21319, LO21321, LO21319:
On 15 Apr 99 at 18:25, Fred Nickols wrote:
> I assume Robert means that he can't make sense of the distinctions
> between large groups as not doing things and small groups as doing
> things. Neither can I. My point was and is that abstract entities
> don't engage in action; people do. If a husband and wife do
> something, it is the husband and wife who do it, not "the team" or
> "the marriage" or "the family." These are shorthand descriptions for
> groups of people and it is the members of the group who do things,
> not the group, whether the group consists of two or 20 or 200 or
> 2000 or 200,000,000.
Robert Bacal wrote in response:
> I understand Fred's concern about reification, but I disagree that his
>distinction is meaningful or useful.
Philip Pogson also wrote in response:
>Forgive me for my temerity, but it sounds to me that you believe if you
>repeat a statement often enough, and with enough convinction, it becomes
>true. Have you evidence to support this assertion?
>
>Do you really mean that there is no such thing as a collective human
>entity which is not more than the sum total of its parts (or at least
>diferent from the some total of its parts), or am I unfairly paraphrasing
>you? If so, why do sports teams of all sorts train together as a team
>rather than as individuals and just get together for the match?
Dear LO fans,
Aren't we getting a little testy here? The point has been made (and
indeed I made it earlier with little such response) that all action, group
or otherwise, can be broken down into its individual components, that
there is no entity that exists independent of its components. That does
not mean the whole cannot be greater than the sum of the parts, especially
in terms of output rather than process; it does mean that the unit of
analysis can be --and indeed, should be--at the individual level. Or so I
interpret it. I had not thought this to be a controversial position.
You cannot play baseball to a minimum standard without nine players, each
of whom has a particular set of skills required to operate. But it is as
reasonable to describe the unique combination of nine as it is to talk
about "the team" as an entity. People talk about the Miracle Mets and
other kinds of successful teams (e.g., the Beatles, certainly a case of
the whole being greater than the sum of the parts) as a single being, but
of course they would not exist without their components. The disadvantage
of using the group as the unit of analysis is that it is far less possible
to learn from it--the output may be as a group, but the means to reach
that output are not.
Having studied the competencies of self-managed work teams for years,
including executives, assembly-line workers, technical professionals, and
writing workshops, I have found three levels of competencies:
1. Competencies of the group (meta-competencies): things you can
attribute to the group that distinguish it from similar
groups--creativity, speed, whatnot--and create different levels of
performance. But you can find the same people on different teams that
perform differently. Therefore this is not enough to understand the
performance.
2. Competencies required by all (or virtually all) of members): these
are the competencies that generally drive the ability of the group to work
together. I have seen a few that appear most places: Achievement
orientation (wanting to make things better, improve performance), Trusting
affiliation (enjoying being with people and working with them, identifying
with groups), and what I call "Team Achievement" (wanting your team to
perform well and wanting to help the members of the team make that
happen). There are other competencies that derive from this, primarily a
willingness to give and receive feedback (this is critical) for
improvement. See, for example, Vanessa Urch-Druskat's dissertation. I
think she is at Case Western Reserve University.
3. Competencies required by some person on the team, but not by all or
nearly all. These are the unique abilities individuals bring that may
help. Many effective teams have a person who acts as the goad (I've heard
ruder words, but I won't use them here) and the administrator--the banker
in Monopoly, as it were. A group out of the UK whose company I cannot
recall at the moment found a leader role emerging out of their data
against their preference. Some of our work as distinguished between team
facilitator, team leader, and team sponsor roles, each of which has
separate competencies attached.
In addition, there is a great deal of work on team process, which can be
construed as a competency at level #2.
I find that using this model you can pretty well analyze the
characteristics of a group down to the ground. Then you can build up to
outputs which require the possibly unique combination of those
characteristics distributed in a distinct manner. Not everyone can be the
goad, for example. In practice, you can move up from #3 to #1--because
their is an effective team leader (level #3) which has enforced mutuality
of feedback among all members (#2), you get a smoothly-functioning team
that gets agreement quickly (#1).
A lengthy message, but I hope helpful.
Steve Kelner
Director, Educational and Advising Services
Center for Quality of Management
http://www.cqm.org
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>