Our group name is H2O international, team 10. In our
team, two boys are from high-tech electronic area, and the girl is from OM. It
is combination of liberal art and science, which is why we can stand on an
international, compatible position to solve problems, to achieve high
performance collaboration. Further more, H2O is the most essential source in
the world. There would not be human civilization without water. It means we H2O
team can generate ideas all the time as long as we can put effort together.
Scenario A
In
this scenario, the supervisor is the one who controls the whole process, who
gives assignments, gives comments and decides in which way the new product will
be designed. Here is what happened in Scenario A.
Supervisor
(S): Our performance in last season was really bad. We need a solution to
increase the profits. Each of you should hand in one solution two days later.
Any questions?
Employee
A (A): Do you have any detailed requirements?
S:
I want a perfect product. We need to make more money. Figure it out by
yourself. Use your imagination! This case is closely related to reputation of
our department. See you!
Two
days later.
S:
Tell me about your solution, A.
A:
My method is to cut costs by using cheaper materials. Here is the report.
S:
Cost cutting is a good idea. However, cheaper materials will affect the appearance
and will lower the grade of our products, and it will be hard to raise the
price. Furthermore, cheaper materials will bring reliability problems. What do
you think is our product, disposable chopstick?
A:
Eh…We can do some research to find another material that is…..
S:
Stop it! It is a waste of time to discuss about new materials. Next one!
Employee
B (B): I’d like to add more functions to our old product, such as LED screen,
WIFI control system…blabla.
S:
It is an interesting idea. However, this will cost too much time and money
during pre-design. Also, it is not user-friendly for housewives, too
complicated. Do you think they are all electronic products master? Any questions?
B:
Well….No.
Finally,
the supervisor himself worked out a solution due to the lack of trust to the subordinate.
In Scenario A, we found that supervisor controlled all the
process of the meeting. And the product is designed by the supervisor's
personalization. If the supervisor is well-experienced, he can make the
product wonderful, just like Steve Jobs. In this scenario, teammate can
get order clearly and do feedback quickly. As soon as the supervisor decided,
all the people only to obey it instead of wasting more time on discussing
without any results. It save time and has high efficiency in carrying out the
whole plan. But because of the high centralization, the innovation of teammates
is limited, the advice maybe ignored and everyone desired to get power to
control the team which led depressive atmosphere in office and office
politics.
A pyramid organizational structure is a
hierarchy with the executive level at the top and descending levels from middle
management to the lower levels of the organization. The idea behind the
structure is that each upper level is able to function because of support from
the lower portions of the pyramid.
Pyramid-like organizational structures are commonplace (La Porta,
Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer, 1999; Claessens, Djankov, and Lang, 2000;
Khanna and Yafeh, 2007). On the apex of a pyramid sits a controlling owner who
controls a firm indirectly through layers of intermediate companies.
During the role play we found some interesting phenomenon. The
supervisor wanted to control the whole project to move forward as he decided.
Teammates only have rights to obey the order, though they could give ideas and
advice. The atmosphere in the meeting is depressive and some people even feel
hard to breathe. They are afraid to get blame from the supervisor.
After the role play we wanted to get more information about the
reasons for the phenomenon. At last we realized that centralization should be
the major reason which is the most dominant feature of this structure.
Centralization is the degree to which the tip of the
organizational pyramid is top-weighted. In highly centralized organizations,
decision making tends to be highly concentrated at the top of the structure,
leaving less autonomy for individual workers to make decisions. This often
works hand-in-hand with formalization, which is the degree to which the rules
about communication and decision making must be followed, and how complicated
they are. Highly centralized and formalized organizations tend to have very
rigid structures.
The higher a person is in this structure, the more authority he
has, but also more responsibilities.
Because of the feature centralization of pyramid organization
structure, the communication has some unique traits.
In this structure employees receive their policy directions and
day-to-day assignments from their direct manager, who interprets orders from
the top, and employees send information about their work as well as their ideas
up the hierarchical structure, reporting first to their direct manager.
This organization structure is like the structure of army, members know to whom they report and who reports to
them. This means that communication gets channeled along defined and
predictable paths, which allows those higher in the organization to direct
questions to the appropriate parties. It also means that individuals tend to
know who does and does not possess the authority to assign or change tasks. A
clear chain of command also generates clearly defined sets of responsibilities.
Military structures rely heavily on this division and assignment of responsibility
and authority to maintain discipline.
As hierarchical organizational structures tend to
channel communication vertically, interdepartmental or inter-agency
communication suffers. Departmental specialization can lead to communication
barriers when no shared jargon exists that allow members of different
departments to communicate on the same level. In worst-case scenarios,
departments purposefully withhold information from each other.
People are more likely to develop into cliques, which in turn
compete for power. You don't just see this kind of competition at the
departmental level. Managers might become territorial about their own
department, and they might more often approach organizational-level issues from
their own departmental perspective.
As we have mentioned before, the structure is rigid. Hierarchical
organizations inhibit timely transformations, which are essential if a business
is to survive in a rapidly changing environment. Organizations that cannot
adapt to new market demands or advancing technologies in pace with or ahead of
other organizations often end up marginalized.
Creative thinking refers to how people
approach problems and solutions-their capacity to put existing ideas together
in new combinations. The skill itself de-pends quite a bit on personality as
well as on how a person thinks and works (Teresa
M. Amabile. May 2009). Employees need flexibility to share ideas with you and with
others in the company.
They are the people who interact directly with suppliers and
customers. If you select a flexible structure, such as self-governing teams,
you provide more ways for employees to be innovative. The top-down
decision-making structure means that business units are unable to respond
rapidly to competitive threats. Make this choice with the realization that the
allocation of power is not the same; with teams, there is a democratic method
of dividing up work, but this comes with joint responsibility. Hierarchical
systems can stifle creativity and innovation.
Scenario B
In
scenario B, the atmosphere was great. 3 people worked as a team in which
everyone makes contribution to the result. We used mind-map to construct our
solution as the picture below shows.
Structure of the organization
In this scenario, the organization was structured as a flat one.
Although in this scenario the team still has a supervisor, the power distance
between he and his subordinate was much less than it is in the scenario A. It
is more like the picture shows, there is a key person (the supervisor) in the
team, but he is on the same flat with the team members.
Because Power distance is one element of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions model (Hofstede, Geert 1984), this model
is used to analysis the culture differences, when the elements changed we can
equally take it as culture changed. That means the organizational culture is
changed.
Communication regulation
Based on the McKINSEY
7-S Framework (Robert H. Waterman, Jr. and Tom Peters 1982), we changed the
communication regulations.
On the first stage, structure changed which impact
the “shared value” (culture) of the organization. In order to
maintain the alignment, we changed the communication regulation (style)
accordingly.
The new communication regulation shows bellow:
1. Peers can communicate with each other freely.
2. It is not necessary to ask for an approval from supervisor
unless for critical factors, such final decision.
3. Team members are encouraged to make mistakes.
Generally speaking, team members are delegated more authority and
have more freedom to manage the creativity. A Peer Culture is applied in this scenario-“the way people at all levels
support one another. Everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn
out the best work. They really do feel that it’s all for one and one for all. Nothing exemplifies this more than
our creative brain trust and our daily review process.” (Ed Catmull, 2008)
Feeling analysis
Supervisor had to explain the task to everyone very clearly and be
sure that everyone was on the same page of what to do and when to complete.
This part took time, because everyone held different perspectives and always
tried to discuss instead of listening.
After the kick off meeting, supervisor had been released from the
meaning less administration tasks and good delegation practice made sure that
everyone had his own responsibility and know what to do.
During the discussion, supervisor only did process checking twice
to make sure every thing would be completed on time and to see wether there
were any challengers need his support.
Team members were more enthusiastic in this task. Because of the
freedom of communication with peers, the team members generate more ideas than
it in the scenario A.
What makes them feel frustrated was that when there was a person
who was to tough and dominant， the discussion was very hard to continue. This dominant
person will automatically took the leader role. In this situation, team members
had to start a negotiation process. It also took time and very easy to drive
the discussion beside the point.
General comments of Scenario B
Generally speaking the open culture is more effective and workable
for creative tasks, since the knowledge transformation process is a
good approach to turning creative ideas into innovations in
organizations. Team members can stimulate each other and help each
other to generate more ideas.
The premises of a good collaboration under this scenario are these
as bellow:
1. Supervisor gives a good instruction and guideline of what to
achieve
2. Team members have good communication skills and build up trust
quickly. The ability to quickly establish and build trust is becoming
even more important in today, where partnerships and strategic alliances are
common practice.
3. Team members share the team role(R Meredith Belbin 2010)
efficiently.
There are different roles in a team, sometime one person takes one
role, but some time one person takes more than one role or more than one person
who take one roles. If there is a role conflict, the collaboration will be very
likely to fail.
4. The risks are put ahead of the collaboration started.
Since the team is more self-organized, the collaboration risks are
put ahead of the beginning of collaboration. Supervisor need to have a sense of
team members characters which will impact what kind of role they are going to
take in the team. And this kind of understanding will be very helpful in the
group forming stage(Gina Abudi, 2010 )
In Scenario B, all the people join in the passionate discussion.
Everyone knows each other’s ideas, more plans have been posted.
The atmosphere is harmony and active. Every participant made his efforts
to optimize the product. Everyone is the designer, everyone is the supervisor.
Before we made the final decision, we have made nearly 2 hours on
discussing and preparing which is as 2 times as scenario A. When we get
difficulties we need to have a meeting, when we have a idea we need to have a
meeting and every meeting cost too much time. Maybe when we make the final
decision, the dead line will meets. It has low efficiency in executing but high
collaboration.
Reference
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., 1999. Corporate
Ownership around the World. The Journal of Finance 54, 471-518.
John Kotter. Hierarchy and Network: Two Structures, One Organization. May
2011.Havard Business Review.
Teresa M. Amabile. How to kill creativity. May 2009.Harvard
Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions.
Hofstede, Geert. Culture's Consequences: International Differences
in Work-Related
Values (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills CA: SAGE Publications.
Robert H. Waterman, Jr. and Tom Peters (1982). In Search of
Excellence.
Ed Catmull, hbr.org | September 2008 | Harvard Business
Review 69
R Meredith Belbin, Team Roles at Work, (Butterworth Heinemann, 2nd
ed., 2010)
Gina Abudi The Five Stages of
Project Team Development, 2010
Different schedules lead to different priority of ranking the tasks and
meeting organization.
