Scheduling Teamwork: Hit or Miss?

One of the benefits of online learning is that you can complete assignments within your own schedule. If evenings are good for you, you can do the required work in the evenings. If weekends are your only free time, it's possible to catch up on assignments and do most of the work on weekends. This type of asynchronous environment enables all sorts of people to take classes and continue their education when it may not have otherwise been possible.

This is all well and good when the assignments are based on individual completion, but what happens when the team/group assignments come around? All of a sudden you have people with different schedules, preferences, and external demands that prohibit coming together at the same time to get work done. How can teams function in this situation? What happens when the "team" work becomes a conglomeration of "individual" work thrown together by one or more team members?

First, consensus is hard to gain - when a team tries to make a decision and members are at different stages of making the decision, or getting involved in the decision, one might plow ahead while another is left in the dust. Second, the project becomes heavily influenced by the ideas of one or two team members instead of having major contributions from all members of the group. While there is still opportunity for later contributors to add to the project, if they wait too long, there is not ample time to change the direction that the initial members started going.

One way a team member might deal with this situation is to edit out anything they don't like and replace with their own ideas, but this is not a good suggestion if they are looking to gain the respect and trust of their group. Another option is to assume the role of editor, as opposed to researcher or writer, contributing to the team project in a different way due to their schedule restraints. Is this a problem? Not necessarily, as long as each of the team members feel that everyone is pulling their weight in some way throughout the project - problems come when the "late comers" can't figure out what's going on and then leave the work to the ones that started it.

If you think about the real world, however, you may find that virtual work teams operate in much the same way. While they may find the time to get together on a conference call, most of the time is working on their own, as they are able. Some have more time than others, contribute more than others, or in different ways. The leader often does most of the work in guiding and forming the process, but may not always be the one to tie up the loose ends. At the end of the day, one might say that the most important part of a team is the result they produce, which is valuable, but have they increased or decreased their chance of working well together again? That is a question only the process (not the result) can answer.

Decision-making in Teams

An interesting fact of my (work) life is that I teach a course on decision making, in particular, rapid decision making. The reason this is interesting is because if you asked anyone who knows me really well, they'll tell you that I only make decisions when I'm forced to - most of the time, I'll let others make the decision, and I'll go along. In a team setting, this usually is portrayed as not having initiative or not being a leader, but I see my role as more of a "watch, listen & then respond" instead of a "speak, speak louder, & wait for everyone to follow". I won't be the first one to suggest a course of action, but I'll certainly give my opinion on the various options.

As my course on rapid decision making suggests, people have different decision-making tendencies, some more extreme than others. Recognizing your decision-making tendencies can help you find a balance when making decisions. One good way to balance your own tendencies is to work with someone that has different tendencies, but to work together so that the combination results in a balance of the two. As you work with people on a team, you develop a better sense of their decision-making tendencies, and then can use their strengths and support the weaknesses by applying others' strengths. Together, with good communication and respect of different tendencies, team members can produce a solid, well-balanced decision that everyone agrees on.

In our case, when a good idea presents itself, it's not hard to jump on the bandwagon and move towards the realization of the idea. We all seem to work for "the common good", shown in particular by selecting an idea that was relevant to all of us. Once the idea was chosen, then the focus could shift on generating ideas for how to implement our topic. As in most collaborative teams, when the focus is on the topic/goal of the team instead of the individuals, much can be accomplished by building off the ideas of others. I believe our team will be successful in continuing to work together, make decisions for the benefit of the group, and producing a result that is greater than the sum of the individual efforts.

Spanning the Generational Gap Online

One thing the online world does for community is become the great equalizer, even if it is only initially. Without seeing someone face to face, it is not as easy to make judgements or establish prejudices when the only thing you know is their name (or their "screen name"). In this way it could be easier for people of different backgrounds and experiences to come together and discuss a certain topic or general interest, without necessarily focusing on a person's background or personality, per say.

I see this as an important aspect of online communities not only for my particular work setting, where the two biggest populations are those about to retire and those just getting started in their career, but also for educational and work settings everywhere. In many different ways, people have attempted to bring different generations together, some successfully and others not so successfully, but I believe the online world enables a different level of bringing people of common interest together regardless of their age, location, occupation, race or gender. What this means for community at large is that people can relate to and commune online with others they may not have given a second glance on the street, but it also means there is the potential for a great community of sharing knowledge and learning from each other - bringing generations closer together instead of estranging them from each other.

Certainly once you get to talking to someone online you discover different aspects of their background, experiences, and personality, but the online (text-based) format of communication allows the focus to be on the content of the conversation instead of the appearance or personality of the person(s) communicating.

This idea is applicable to anyone who seeks to enable different generations to interact together in a place where the focus is on the content, learning from each other, and discussing issues that are important to the individuals. If generations become so segregated that we cannot communicate with each other, then we will cease to learn from the work of others and be forced to learn only from our own experiences.

Online Learning Communities in the Nuclear Industry - Learning from our Experiences

One of the "hot topics" in the nuclear industry today is Human Performance. Basically it's all about identifying actions we do that can lead to errors (aka "error precursors"), and then trying to figure out how to prevent those actions from occurring, thus eliminating the errors (aka "events"). Certainly this is an excellent opportunity for sharing in an online community, and my company (as well as others) have internet or software-based programs that enable employees to share "lessons learned" from errors that did occur, in hopes that other employees will read them and not make the same mistake again.

This is a great idea, but it seems that even with "requiring" employees to look at lessons learned before starting a new project, it is far from being a true culture shift in how employees operate. I believe one of the problems is that the system holding these lessons learned needs to be more than a database holding information - it needs to be a community of people coming together to share issues and work toward preventing and solving problems in the future, but also as they arise. But how do you get pertinent information to the right people at the right time? Herein lies the problem.

How do you get already overworked employees to spend additional time sharing and researching information, simply because it is in the best interest of the company? How do you develop a system that is easily accessible to people of varying ages and computer literacy?