United Flight 173

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United Flight 173

• Denver to Portland, OR
• 181 passengers, 8 crew members
• Landing delayed for 1 hour due to landing gear
  malfunction
• Crashed 6 minutes short of airport due to
  insufficient fuel
• 10 fatalities
• BTW flight crew properly certified, aircraft
  properly certified and maintained

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United Flight 173

• What are the main reasons the cockpit crew
  allowed the aircraft to run out of fuel?

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(No Transcript)
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The Crash

• Individuals
• Captains lack of leadership
• Frostys unassertiveness
• Group
• Respect for each others knowledge
• Comments ignored
• Intergroup
• Communication breakdown between cockpit and tower
• Organization
• Hierarchical culture
• Rules and procedures

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Factors Affecting Group Performance

• External Context
• reward system
• organization structure
• org. culture and politics
• education
• phys/fin/info resources

Task

• Performance
• Task accomplishment
• Satisfaction of members
• Can work together again

• Group Process
• communication
• conflict
• decision-making
• development
• execution

• Membership
• motivation, effort
• skills and knowledge
• personalities

• Team Structure
• size
• diversity
• roles
• cohesion
• norms

Coaching
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Common Pitfalls in Managing Teams

• Assembling a group of smart people, telling them
  in general terms what needs to be accomplished
  and let them work out the details
• Calling it a team but managing it as a set of
  individuals
• Not finding the right balance between assigning
  and withholding authority
• Believing that agreement is good, and that
  disagreement and conflict are always bad

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Team Effectiveness Criteria

• 1. Does the teams output meet the standards of
  those who have to use that output?
• 2. Does the team experience enhance the
  capability of the members to work together in the
  future?
• 3. Does the team experience contribute to the
  personal well-being and development of the
  members?

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Organizational context

• Reward system
• positive consequences for excellent performance
• focus on group (not individual)
• Education and other resources
• Information system
• allows situation assessment
• allows evaluation of alternative strategies

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Group design

• Size
• Skills
• task-relevant
• interpersonal
• Diversity
• Boundaries
• Roles/Norms

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Questions to Ask in Designing a Team

• What type of teamwork is needed?
• What skills do you need represented on the team
  (both content area skills and teamwork skills)?
• How much and what types of diversity do you want?
• How big should the team be?
• To what extent do you want to define different
  roles for team members?
• What are the teams goals and what deliverables
  are expected (and when)?

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Effects of Team Size

• Advantages of
• Small Size
• Easier coordination
• More input from members
• High motivation, commitment, and satisfaction
• Less diffusion of responsibility social loafing

• Advantages of
• Large Size
• More resources at the teams disposal (ideas,
  perspectives, labor)
• More potential for division of labor

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Task Structure

• Interdependent
• Clear involving clear objectives
• Requires varied high-level skills
• Identifiable
• Significant
• Opportunities for feedback

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A Groups Performance Does Not Always Equal its
Potential Performance
Potential Performance
Process Gains
Process Losses
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Actual Performance


Potential performance The level of performance
that one would expect given the capabilities of
the individual members Process gains Increases
in performance resulting from effective
coordination and motivation Process losses
Performance difficulties that a group experiences
due to coordination and motivation problems (e.g.
social loafing)
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Common Traps

• Leader abdication Leaders withdraw from their
  team and become less involved. The result -
  chaos, confusion, lack of direction.
• Succession-less planning Key people on a team
  leave / replaced. The result - break in
  continuity and developmental regression.
• Team arrogance A team becomes so immersed in
  their task that it doesn't consider the impact
  its actions may have over others.
• Undefined accountability When ownership of
  decisions and action items is ill/not defined
  teams make decisions without subsequent actions.
  The result - diffused responsibility and
  consequently lack of progress.
• Disruptive team member It takes only one rotten
  appleif a disruptive member is not dealt with
  directly and effectively the performance of the
  entire team can be damaged.
• Poor teamwork habits Teams that lack explicit
  ground rules damage their potential for
  successful collaboration
• Decision by default Teams that develop a
  tendency to postpone decisions and or defer to
  hierarchy when needing to decide make a decision
  by default rather than by choice.
• Varied team member contributions Teams with
  uneven distribution of workload have their key
  members becoming frustrated, resentful and
  consequently uninterested in delivering high
  levels of productivity.

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Some Examples of Process Losses

• Process can be time consuming ? Boredom, fatigue,
  apathy, reduced effort
• Failure to exert sufficient effort (e.g.,
  laziness, individuals are not prepared).
• Diffusion of responsibility ? less effort.
• Groups may be dominated by one or more members
• will pull groups performance in the direction of
  their individual performance level
• Personal or political agendas may dominate
• Group experiences dysfunctional levels of
  conflict reduces members ability to learn from
  each other

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Some Examples of Process Losses

• Failure to use knowledge and skills of members
  due to poor process
• Members being unduly influenced by each other
  (groupthink, the Abilene paradox)
• Poor group process leads to inefficient
  information sharing (failure to share unique
  information tendency to share shared
  information so-called pluralistic ignorance).

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Common Sources of Process Losses

• Lack of common goal
• Personal Agendas
• Political Agendas
• Diffusion of Responsibility
• Conformity Pressures
• Dysfunctional Conflict

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Using Groups to Make Decisions

• Advantages
• Greater range and diversity of information and
  ideas
• Potential for synergistic problem solving
• Better memory and error detection
• Encourages participation and buy-in which
  facilitates decision implementation

• Disadvantages
• Process can be time consuming
• Personal or political agendas
• Domination by one or more members
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Conformity pressures and/or Groupthink
• Dysfunctional conflict

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Improving Team Decision-Making

• Identify the problem or opportunity, clarify
  objectives performance criteria
• Analyze the problem
• Development of ideas alternatives (e.g.,
  brainstorming, nominal group technique)
• Critical evaluation of ideas alternatives
• Value dissent
• Support the minority opinion
• Identify best ideas alternatives
• Implement decisions assess effectiveness
• Emphasize flexibility adaptability over time

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Team Performance Curve
Task Performance
High Performing Team
100
15 20
0
Time
Midpoint
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TEAM DEVELOPMENT

• Key developmental activities include
• Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning

Period of Inertia Period of Transition
Period of Inertia

• Execute new
• strategies
• New norms enacted
• No discussion
• of process

• Team is created
• Team identifies strategy
• Norms enacted
• No discussion of process

• Drop old patterns
• Revise norms
• Revise strategies

15 work completed Task completed
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Transition points

• Midpoints or transitions are crucial to team
  outcomes
• Opportunity to set goals, alter norms and acquire
  key resources
• Ineffective management of transition points has
  significant opportunity cost
• Managing transitions
• Proactively generate midpoint
• Anticipate transition work and execute it prior
  to the midpoint