1000 Word Blog Assignment ESOC 211 (Jacob Chan) due 10/9/17
ESOC 211 1000 Word Blog Assignment
Analysis of Collaboration
By Jacob Chan
Image: Wikimedia Commons
So I’m pretty new to Information Science and eSociety and the School of Information at the University of Arizona. I have an academic background in finance, economics, and business. I chose Information Science and eSociety because of how it presented a new opportunity to apply my academic interdisciplinary skills to a relatively new major here at the University of Arizona. What I have learned and enjoyed most about switching to Information Science and eSociety is that the material involves a heavy amount of collaborative effort. In fact, if one desires to do well in this area of study, they must be familiar with the social mechanisms dealing with other people of different backgrounds. In my opinion, to be able to work well with others is one of the most important skills in life in general. The ability to interact collaboratively has many benefits including successful professional and personal relationships. It is necessary now more than ever due to the increased level of globalization and economic intertwinement facing our generation.
Our ESOC 211 class entirely focused on collaboration and the building and organization of groups. More importantly, it emphasized the transformation process involving the forming of a collection of individuals into a fully functioning team. A couple of the class readings from Week 4 I chose to analyze from a closer perspective included “How Successful Virtual Teams Collaborate” by Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, as well as “What Really Makes Teams Work: And What We Lose When We Take Groups Online” by Geoff Colvin a Senior Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine, Time Inc.
In class we recently completed and presented our collaborative group projects. The goal of our project was to instruct and understand Bruce Tuckman’s Five Stages of Group Development. The group was then tasked to create a website, timeline, and a presentation at the conclusion of the project. Of this in itself we experienced the Five Stages of Forming, Norming, Storming, Performing, and Adjourning within this timeframe of working together.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
“Train for collaboration. Many skills are difficult to train and develop. Some experts, for example, contend that leadership is more nature than nurture.” (Ferrazzi 2012)
So we can infer that teams nowadays can anticipate more success if they are trained to work together rather than become experts in everything. It kind of makes sense though doesn’t it? It’s a more efficient process of thinking because it means that individuals with specific skills can come together under certain circumstances to perform as a group. This entails that the group members that are selected can be more skilled and specialized in their craft. This means that groups can now function at a higher efficiency and more can be accomplished.
“People have to set aside their egos, trust one another, and share their expertise willingly. In a virtual workplace, collaboration can be all the more difficult to attain, especially when team members work for different companies, are essentially strangers to one another, and have different cultural and professional backgrounds.” (Ferrazzi 2012)
We can analyze what it means to achieve true collaboration as well as what transforms groups into teams but it is pretty important to dial it back a bit and really evaluate the who portion of the team. Group members can make or break the team. It is important to consider that all of your group members will have different beliefs, backgrounds, expertise, as well as individual goals. In order for a team leader to do their job successfully, it cannot be done without a little bit of interpersonal tact and social skill. These attributes help leaders make fully functional units out of collections of individuals. It’s crucial to always keep your people in mind, their wants, their goals, and their needs when making decisions from a position of leadership.
“Have role clarity but task uncertainty. Many managers believe that teams collaborate best when the roles of members are flexible but the group has a clear idea of how to get from A to B.” (Ferrazzi 2012)
With this in mind, when it came time for our group to execute, we were able to keep in mind everyone’s strengths and weaknesses as well as their place within the group. (This is best when coming together and collaborating) What Ferrazzi means in having “role clarity” is that everyone knows their position and function within the unit. This ensures that the working relationships between members runs as smoothly as possible due to less friction in who performs what and at what level as well as to which capacity. If this does not work as smoothly, then a leader must be able to adjust in order to keep the team afloat and on track to accomplish the intended goal.
Analysis of “What Really Makes Teams Work: And What We Lose When We Take Groups Online” by Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine, Time Inc.
“Despite what you might think, as information technology has grown more powerful and influential, the importance of human groups—as distinct from individuals—in creating knowledge has increased enormously...In nearly 100 percent of the fields, more research is being done by teams, and the teams are getting bigger.” (Colvin 2015)
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Information technology has undergone major evolution and innovation within the latter part of the 20th century. Within the last few decades it has developed exponentially and now serves as an integral part of our society. Within the global economy, information technology is widely bought, sold, traded on the open market as many developed firms look to solutions to aid them in digesting and processing such massive amounts of raw data. However, human groups are still integral to this process of fusing machine technology into human markets. It now takes more teams and more innovative thinking to optimize systems and improving business.
“The most important factor in group effectiveness turned out not to be what everybody thinks—cohesion, motivation, leadership. Instead, it’s the social sensitivity of the team members, their skills of social interaction. That’s what encourages those patterns of “idea flow,” to use Pentland’s term. Those three elements of interaction were about as important as all other factors—individual intelligence, technical skills, members’ personalities, and anything else you could think of—put together.” (Colvin 2015)
When measuring what makes teams effective, much has to do with the way the members act with each other. (Remember the aforementioned comparison to what Keith Ferrazzi mentioned with regards to successful teams) Each team member in a successful team more likely than not has a special role and or position in which they have autonomy to operate under a team leader who understands them. When generating ideas, Colvin suggests that “idea flow” is facilitated through the accounting of three different elements. These elements include individual intelligence, technical skills, and members’ personalities all, of which attribute to member contribution to the group.
“When digital interaction is effective, it's most likely between people who already have a face-to-face relationship” (Colvin 2015)
So we talked a lot about how innovation in information technology is one of the driving forces in our global economy and such but it is important to come back to the human side. Technology can only do so much (for now) and is prone to flaws in development as well as function. This means that groups (especially group leaders) must possess the ability to operate face to face with others in the absence of communication technology.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
“Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings,”
What Colvin is suggesting is that face-to-face relationships among people make it more likely for online/digital interaction to be more effective and successful. This is more of a sociological circumstance in which humans utilize technology as more of an extension of themselves to facilitate and maintain far away business and personal relationships. In simple words, Steve Jobs established human relationships but utilized technology to facilitate interactions rather than rely on it to keep relationships alive. (Face to face interaction beats email any day)
So what?
I feel like we all knew teamwork is important to understand and that we will need to be able to use it in the future however takes more than just over the counter analysis to understand. It means that leaders must understand their team members as well as that patience and interpersonal tact must be exercised at all times. Technology is great for facilitating communication between team members but what Steve Jobs has taught us is that established human relationships are the core of what makes digital communication more effective. If one takes the time to study and improve their skills of collaborative effort and collaboration, they are more likely to succeed in our modern, more connected world.
Kieth Ferrazzi
https://hbr.org/2012/10/how-to-collaborate-in-a-virtua
Geoff Colvin
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