Intelligent Teams^TM: The Dynamics of Collaboration

Written by: Brett Richards, M.A.
President, Connective Intelligence Inc.

In the Summer 2003 issue of The Journal for Quality and Participation, I explored the discipline of innovation and concluded that those organizations that enable individuals and teams to develop the appropriate skills to manage both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of innovation will experience reduced cycle times and sustained high performance. Not only do teams enact the innovation process, they drive the overall momentum of the business, and thereby provide an interesting barometer to the current and future performance of business units, if not whole organizations. In this issue, I will explore the link between effective teams and organizational performance, as well as the dynamics that underpin effective team collaboration.

Are You Smart or Effective?

I recently worked with a high level team who were all very “smart” people, by smart I mean highly educated professionals and scientists; however, they could not get their heads together to collaborate effectively. It reminded me of a query by Dr. Robert Sternberg, in his book, Successful Intelligence (to paraphrase): how is it that a group of really smart people can end up with really dumb results? Over and over again, I have experienced that team performance is far less a function of “knowledge” and “expertise” and far more a function of their ability to collaborate. To reiterate, the team in question was comprised of very smart people who were highly motivated and committed to their work and to their organization. However, despite their best intentions, the team had reached a performance ceiling, which demanded that they rethink how they work together, while developing a different set of skills. Without the discipline and commitment to continuously refine their collaborative skills, all teams will eventually reach that same performance ceiling where the quality of their interaction is insufficient to meet new and emergent levels of organizational change, speed, and complexity.

Figure 1: Collaboration and Performance

Figure 1 represents a model that I believe articulates the interdependent relationship between, learning, performance and systemic change. I have adapted it from a ‘systems law’ that was formulated by Ross Ashby who was one of the founding fathers of a branch of science known as cybernetics. Ashby’s law of requisite variety states that for a system to maintain its integrity and survive, its rate of learning must at least match the rate of change in its environment. I should mention that although the focus of this article is geared at team learning and team collaboration, I believe the model equally applies to organizational learning and the entire suite of collaborative systems utilized to drive performance within whole organizations. In my view, teams should be viewed as sub-systems of a much wider organizational network, which is, in turn, affected by even broader systemic levels beyond the borders of the organization. In my experience, team dynamics often represent a microcosm of similar dynamics at play within the larger organization.

Line A – indicates that the rate of change and complexity is accelerating at a faster rate than the team’s ability (or willingness) to learn and collaborate. Under such conditions, the team will be unable to sustain the necessary levels of performance to achieve desired results. In organizations, the pressure is usually increased due to externally imposed time compression, where the team is forced to respond with equal or higher levels of quality and results in less the time. The cognitive and emotional pressure on individual team members becomes too great and the team’s collaborative dynamic breaks down as self-preservation and infighting increases. Typically, the team becomes divided, breaking up into various sub-groups, which further dilutes its much-needed collective brainpower and energy.

Line B – indicates a circumstance where the team’s rate of learning is keeping pace with the current rate of change in the environment. The watch out at this level of learning and collaboration is that if a crisis emerges or there is an unanticipated onslaught of change, it could throw the team into chaos, moving it back towards Line A. In effect, there is no buffer zone between current levels of systemic complexity and sudden influxes of change. Given the nature of the current business environment, it is not unrealistic to expect sudden, if not drastic, organizational, competitive or even global changes to emerge, frequently.

Line C – indicates an optimal rate of team learning and collaborative ability. I would argue that the goal is always to strive to stay to the right of Line B, keeping ahead of the required level of performance. Organizational leaders and team leaders are responsible for this difficult task, as they must set the tone, raise the performance bar and create the necessary conditions for continuous learning and development. Effective leaders anticipate potentially threatening circumstances and make great efforts to provide appropriate information, knowledge, tools and skills to ensure sustained high performance. Perhaps most importantly, effective leaders continuously strive to help their teams maintain a posture of emotional readiness to the demands of both, continuous learning, and accelerated change. The task of continuous learning requires tremendous amounts of emotional energy; it also requires a good amount of emotional resilience to personally cope with, and lead others through, accelerated change.

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