There’s no "I" in team, but there is in Community

We finished an interesting semester in Measuring Social class.  I’m always amazed at the journey students take from ambiguity to clarity, denial to self-awareness, and uninitiated to competence.  However, not everyone take the same path and many stumble and hit several hurdles along the way.  I believe that the uniqueness of the class might have something to do with it.  Part of experiential learning is that students learn by doing, not simply through mastering the material via repetition.  All projects are designed to have students tackle challenging problems and apply skills acquired within the program, life experiences, or anything they might have learned through class.  One of the difficulties comes in working with a team of folks with different experiences, commitments, expectations, and skills.  Open communications at the beginning of the project and throughout is critical.  Sharing commitment helps in planning, discussing expectations leads to commonality; understand skills help allocate work streams in a more constructive fashion. All the projects we bring into class are different – industries, metrics, questions, etc.  As an example, last semester, we worked with NPR, United Way, Autodesk, Sony Pictures, PNC, Expedia and Wal-Mart. We have 7 sponsors a semester working with 7 teams.  Teams are selected based on differentiated skillsets and experience (my attempt at social engineering).  Some teams click and work at a high level while others try to cope with internal team conflict.  This can quickly lead to disenchantment and disengagement and has a direct correlation to team performance.  Opening the channels of communication is not easy especially when different cultures are represented. We often see students who believe their opinion is not being heard or they are mistreated or even team members are not being sensitive to any cultural difference (which happens quite a bit).  This requires members of the team to speak up and voice their concerns. If its not addressed, it festers and can be detrimental to the team dynamic.  It also can extend to the sponsor who sense that something is going on with the team.

The other issue we try to address in the class has to do with the hyper competitive nature of academics.  There are a couple of issues at work here including keeping proprietary information within the team which makes sense since we often deal with confidential information.  However, the tacit knowledge can be shared between teams but rarely occurs.  This might have to do with time commitment but I believe has to do with the embedded notion that if the playing field is leveled, students have less of a chance of standing out and getting the best grade.  We try to foster sharing between different teams but this does not come about naturally.  Even though it would be beneficial from their learning experience as well as the sponsors.  One of the ideas behind the class to provide a learning community where sponsors can benefit from an understanding of how social is impacting other industries and how other companies are using social data as a strategic driver.  This only really occurs at the end of the semester when all the sponsors come to CMU to listen to final presentations.

There is a corollary here to what is happening within organizations.  Teams are task oriented and oftentimes designed for competition while communities are interest based or goal oriented and designed for sharing.  There might be no “I” in team or it gets pushed aside in the interests of the team but you need the “I” in Communities to strengthen relationships, create content and develop community processes.  So both are focused on collective action but it seems (to m at least) that the “I” is stripped out of Teamwork where the “I” is a critical part to communities.  For my students at least, they want the “I” to be brought back into a class group structure.  It provides meaning, purpose and most importantly identity.    How can we take the good parts out of both social structures and combine them to deliver an optimized experience for both employee/student and organization/class?

I honestly don’t have an answer but I am going to try and incorporate more community-based dynamics within the team orientation of the class.  One idea was to eliminate grades completely.  However, I think that would lead to other unusual behaviors including free ridership.  Perhaps, incentivize students for their ability to share and help other teams.  I also think that the idea of visualizing collective effort is important so students can get a quick sense of who is sharing, how they are sharing and how it directly impacts (incentives) outcomes.  Any other ideas are more than welcome…