Part 1: Team Practices
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C ommunication
This
project is totally done in virtual way within two teams which provides many
challenges for us. The big challenge is certainly the communication, because we
don’t have any face-to-face formal introduction or talks with each other before
which could not easily bring a sense of group. However, the communication
between our team members is ok. We used emails and QQ Group to facilitate our
project at least once a week. In the initial stage, we focused more on the
acquaintanceship. We have to know who the people we are working with and then
we could decide how much trust we are going to deliver to the evening team. The virtual challenge of Trust is also faced by many other teams. In
the second stage, the content focused on the core project, like what industry
we represent and how the value is added, etc. In the final stage, we did more
reflection on the other team’s work, using a different perspective to inspect is
there any error or any big point ignored.
Coordination
The
coordination level of the project group is moderately high. Fortunately, we
didn’t have uncommitted team member who hinders the team performance. All of us
were willing to commit although in different level. What works well was that the
two team leaders confirmed the meeting time ahead of time through emails. Even
though it’s a small coordinating action, it helps everybody present in the
meeting room at the same time which is the premise to successfully complete the
project.
What
didn’t work well is the sub-communication method. We choose to share ideas
through typing words instead of video or voice. It’s easy for somebody leaving
the meeting without noticing other teammates. We could always find that one
person doesn’t type anything over a quite long period in the meeting which
absolutely made the meeting less efficienct and lead to the dissatisfaction
from other members. All of these emotions decreased our trust level to the
evening class or to some of them, and it took not a short period to repair it.
Decision making
Each
of morning and evening class has a leader, while both of them are quite people-oriented
which means they care more about team members’ feeling when doing the whole
project. We don’t have strong leader and with no vice leader as well, so our
group structure is flat and teammates have much freedom to share their
opinions. Most of time, we use brain storming. Edison says “To invent, you need
a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Our group always believes more ideas
are better because we are doing a creative project, and there is not clear right
or wrong. The best one is always on the way. Each of our team members could
share ideas freely because we didn’t criticize other ideas, we just use logic
to explain and decide whether we would adopt it. The decision must be made
under the approval of majority and logical analysis.
Although
brain storming is a comprehensive way to get as more as possible ideas, it
takes too much time under this tight project schedule. When the decision is
closing to the deadline, the team leaders’ function has appeared. They need to
control the total time allocation and come up with the most satisfied solution.
This is a very common phenomenon that managers don’t pursue the best choice
while they choose the most satisfied one for the organization. We also did like
that selecting the fittest one for our project especially when we were hindered
by the schedule.
Sometimes
when the brain storming was in the fierce stage, some of us may have gone so
far with so much “creative” ideas. Over and over again repeating our goals
helped us keeping on the right track. Although the final goal is clear, the
sub-goals really caused us some time to make negotiation. Because we are representing
different company, the sub-goal for each company is quite different. So our
principle for making decision is to maximize the reach to both parties’ goals.
Even with some sacrifice, if the final solution maximizes the benefit of our
taste-your-fashion.com, each team accepted it.
I
always emphasize that our group promotes brain storming and free ideas, so team
members tend to share their opinions while not tend to make decision. Also, our
two leaders are very gentle and people-oriented, so they don’t want to make
decision assertively making others discomfortable. Overall speaking, we neither
too actively make decision, nor let things happen. We are making decision in a
gentle and logical way.
Conflict 1
The
first conflict happened in the early stage. As what the team development
states, we were in the stage of Forming at that time. When we made an
appointment of a meeting in QQ chatting room, some or even all of the evening
class teammates were absent. Only our morning teammates were talking with each
other. We kept asking “Where is XX?” or “Is XX here?” Few feedback were gotten
from them. We were fairly unhappy with this situation because it was wasting
our time when they didn’t keep their promise. So the only thing we could do is to
tell the present teammates that the talk should be stopped because we still
miss someone.
As
what the conflict defines: one party has negatively affected, or is about
to negatively affect something that the first party cares about, the perceived
process by the first party is conflict. So even the evening class might not
perceive this as a conflict, we already had negative affect to them. Initially
the conflict was only a task problem because people didn’t present which lead
us can’t successfully complete the task on the foregoing schedule. As time pass
by, we started to think more about the case so it turned to a relationship conflict.
The impatience emotions continuously hit us to perceive that people are lazy
and dishonest rather than the task has any error.
The way
we handled the conflict is more suited to Compromising. We have no power to win
the other part because they were already absent, and we can’t punish them or
crash to them face-to-face. It needed no effort to still proceed a not
everyone-present meeting. But what we choose to do is using the power of
documentation which I stated in class presentation too. In fact, we avoid their absenteeism next time in the fear of
relationship break.
Conflict
2
The
biggest front conflict is totally a task conflict instead of mentioning the
former dissatisfaction towards people. That is a good phenomenon I would
appraise all of my teammates that everyone is very professional rather than too
subjective. The conflict is about the strategic position on the target market.
The evening class which represents fashion (clothes) hopes this combination
would target mass market included parent-child market, while our morning class
hopes this could target middle to high-end customers because customization is
originally kind of differentiation which costs company more than cost
leadership companies.
During
the whole negotiation, our morning team still believed that we made a good
choice on the basis of the knowledge of strategic management we learned before.
We split the pie into different pieces. Firstly we analyze why this
collaboration can’t focus on mass market and then lay out our several reasons
for this differentiation strategy to niche market. What’s important is that we
analyze that this strategy could benefit the taste-your-fashion.com more than
their strategy which maximize both profits. Finally they accepted our ideas.
In this
case, we tended to be more Competing as we brought something else into the
negotiation. We prepared much evidence and theories to support our argument
which is vital for the whole project and could lead to a win-win negotiation.
In this
process, both teams demonstrated Competing and Avoidance behavior. We did like that because
we believe in what written requirement says. In our perspective, we think the
evening class has gone in a wrong track, and we tried to turn them around, but
failed. The result shows kind of depression that we didn’t want to argue
anymore and choose to ignore. because it was not a principle
problem at all. Both teams have freedom to do what they want and we need to
respect them. That’s what I learned from this conflict.
Technology
The development
of technology fosters the blossom of virtual team which decrease the physical
distance of different team members and combine more talents together online.
Technology is a double sword. On the one
hand, it links different people from different places together easily. As our
team choose QQ Group chatting room as the main communication method facilitated
by emails, because these two applications could not only be used in computers
but also through mobile phone which means we could get contacts anywhere. This
technology mostly favors the evening class teammates, because they may not get
access to social media through computers in work place, but they can use mobile
access to join the online meeting as well in work or on the way back to home.
It makes impossible possible.
On
the other hand, technology hampers the collaboration as well. Compared to
face-to-face meeting, we can’t actually get in touch with each other physically.
Especially when our group use typing as the main communication way, as what I
demonstrated already, people are easy to sneak off during the meeting. We can’t
watch, hear and feel others which lose the function of supervision. For those
lack self-discipline teammates, their delay and laziness could decrease the
whole group’s progress which might lead to a big disaster within team. In
Pixar, one of the representatives of creative companies, it promotes trust and
respect peer culture. People working in the same team trust each other and have
confidence to the peers. While this problem technology brought to us naturally
lessen our trust level to our teammates. If we can’t get in touch with them for
quite a long time in the meeting, people start to wild fancy and most of time
thinking about the negative parts for that person. The more hypotheses we have
the less trust would appear.
It
also fits into some emails related problem. The research says that “Electronic
communication generates little feedback about how a recipient is reacting.” It
very common that one sent out an email, the other party would only reply after one
day or even several days. Technology accounts for part of reason, but the
personal habit and the attitude towards the project entails more on this
problem. If the team members really care about what they are doing, absolutely
they would follow up the case by heart and timely.
Part 2:
Team Processes
First Meeting related to team commitment
The
team first met with each other around week 6 or week 7. The goal for the first
meeting is to set the rules and confirm the two industries we represent. We
indeed made a lot of commitments on the industry choice, however the whole
process is like a negotiation. It perfectly fits into one of the strategy that
do not really work is “Commitment to reaching a win-win Deal”. Both parties
have their position and ideas, and we fell into the trap that never brought
other things in. The reality shows that when we talked more about our ideas
where other issues jumped into, we become more empathetic with each other and
tended to reach a win-win situation.
Commitments with me and group
I
usually actively joined the group discussion and completed my work on time.
That is the big commitment I made to my group compared to some teammates who
didn’t comment as much or someone even absent for the meeting.
However
the commitments group brought to me is quite large. This is a diverse group
involved people from different sub-culture (local Hong Kong people and mainland
people) and different backgrounds, even different ages. Working in this team, I
got diverse perspectives from different people which boost the creativity
capability. Also through the communication, I changed myself to be more
understanding and respecting with other opinions. Because sometimes you could
find they give you more than you think by yourself.
This
phenomenon could be explained by Knowledge Management. Everybody has the ideas
in their minds which seem to be the tacit knowledge. However, we use
brainstorming to promote sharing with ideas and document those ideas clearly.
What we did just like putting all of knowledge in one pool to a systematic way
that everyone could check and extract easily, also the information could be
kept over time. It also thanks to the technology development which we could
store documents in chatting room and send information through emails.
Because
of good knowledge management skills, the group brought more knowledge to me in
a systematic way which I could also use in the future. Also, the things I didn't do well could be revised by other group members timely which promotes the
overall group performance.
Concerns Sharing
Most
of time, I share concerns with my teammates, because we don’t have
people-criticism culture and everyone respects each other. In the Forming
stage, I shared my concerns about rules because we didn’t set up a rule to this
newly established group, so I reminded my teammates that we need to confirm
something for our further collaboration. Something related to the team members’
names was also put forward by me. Because we use QQ chatting room, each one has
their nick name, but using the official Chinese and English is better for
recognition and documentation. So I suggested everybody to do that.
That
is the virtue of team that people and things are dynamic in this situation. I
stand at the point that everyone should speak out his or her concern freely,
because sometimes what you concerned is also what other people thought. If
nobody wants to talk it out, absolutely the group may have ignored a big opportunity
to revise its mistake in this project. Through discussing the concerns, team
members would gain more information and experience diverse perspectives which
would help the analytical ability and then benefit the whole group.
What
I didn’t share with my group is that someone in evening class was not actively joining
the discussion or attended on time. Why I didn’t say it out? Mainly because it’s
not big enough to hurt the group benefit but talking it out may hurt the
relationship greatly. Although always caring relationship in negotiation or
collaboration is not a good action, in Chinese culture, the good and gentle relationship
would still contribute to the real work.
According
to Jassawalla’s view on team building, to achieve high levels of collaboration
and team success, they should pay attention to four dimensions: At-Stakeness, Transparency,
Mindfulness and Synergy.
For
the dimension of At-Stakeness, our group promotes brainstorming which solicit
everybody’s ideas freely. Also we are very clear about our goals and how to
achieve it through setting schedule or rules.
For
the dimension of Transparency, we are willing to share no matter in ideas or
written outcomes. Actually, the blog outline and draft was shared by both
groups. The evening class were appreciated the business model we used and
thought about changing theirs to in accordance with ours which showing good and
collaborative team work.
For
the dimension of Mindfulness which is tended to the actions we did, the morning
team empathized some special conditions of evening team. Because they are
working people where the conditions are more complicated than our full time
students, we try to consult with them when deciding the meeting time or
deadline. We understand that they are hard for balancing work and study, and
they also appreciated our work on researching.
For
the dimension of Synergy, as we did well on the above three stages, we are easy
to make synergy through combining the insight and expertise from both morning
and evening team to create a good quality project by using team work. Both
parties benefited and improved themselves through the coloration.
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Charlene Solomon (2012). The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams:
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Hargadon, A. & Sutton, R.(2000). Building an Innovation Factory. Harvard Business Review,78(3).
Markus,
M & Manville, B & Agres, C.(2000) What makes a Virtual Organization
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Thompson, L.(2009). Win-Win Negotiation: Expanding the Pie. The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Pearson Prentice Hall.
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