Working on articulating how tech can help or hinder specific team processes. Want to work through each process from @Marks.Mathieu.ea2001TeamProcesses and other sources, consider what I've done on this in the past and what new things I want to add. Go through this systematically:
Plan:
Going to build out thoughts for how tech high in each dimension can present opportunities and challenges, and use block references - then have subsections for how it helps, opportunities, and challenges. Maybe as part of this, I should review that document from Anne-Laure Le Cunff that has specific technologies used for different things. Great if I can also integrate empirical work - although Steve was thinking perhaps to separate them out?
strategy formulation - just subdimensions of deliberate planning and contingency planning; leave reactive strategy adjustment, since it's captured by Elisa's.
(During the transition stage, teams are planning what to do during the action stage. This breaks down into specific processes, as outlined below. But there are some aspects where technology enables teams to virtually engage in these planning processes that are applicable to all transition stage processes - where they enable easier conversations across the board, without being able to specify that they apply to one part of the planning process more than another.)
Ease and enrich communication, especially across distances - enabling non-verbals
Note - @Kirkman.Mathieu2005 suggest that all transition stage processes, are better handled in person *. Aspects of communication richness that allow a virtually distributed team to talk as if they were in the same room helps with this.
Evidence that group biases don't hold when communicating virtually (Bazarova & Yuan, 2013).
Opportunities:
While current video conferencing technologies enable non-verbals, it is a common experience to find this method of communication fatiguing (find the sources that have explored why - remember seeing some indications or conjecturing that this is because it is unnatural to stare at one place when talking to others.). Future technologies can explore easing this fatigue via the use of augmented reality technologies such that virtual others are placed in a three-dimensional space, and enabling spatial audio such that communication comes from the manifestation of other individuals. (Support for this - fatigue of those who are hard-of-hearing might be a related construct. Now where did I see that?)
(Joe Allen at INGROUP 2020 had found that as gain experience with virtual meetings, takes less time to recover from them - was a side product, he had not intended to study Zoom meetings.)
Challenges: Differing preferences for use of virtual
communication among team members *
AI challenges: Communication between AI and human counterparts is difficult, as humans do not easily understand the decision making process of an AI, and an AI cannot always understand a human’s intent, or communicate its own intent.
"Interpretation and evaluation of the team's mission, including identification of its main tasks as well as the operative environmental conditions and team resources available for mission execution" (p. 363 table, 365 text) definition
Would happen during staff meetings, retreats, AARs
Each team member thinks about their charge within the parameters of "team abilities, resources, and time constraints" (p. 365)
Verbal discussions to get shared vision of purpose and objectives
Includes both backward evaluation (AAR) and forward visioning
Backward, we know that better they understand causes of previous performance, better can plan for future (Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1997)
Forwards, interpreting future mission in context of environment
If don't do this step, will work totally reactively, and will be undermined by changing circumstances; and their efforts may be misguided until too late (Gersick, 1988)
Edit - Not really. Seems to be more an overall first step - what are we dealing with, what have past successes looked like in a similar space (note, AI can inform this), how does that inform our plans for this. And the very specifics of how we'll get there are more part of strategy formulation.
Edit - Not really. Seems to be more an overall first step - what are we dealing with, what have past successes looked like in a similar space (note, AI can inform this), how does that inform our plans for this. And the very specifics of how we'll get there are more part of strategy formulation.
Feed information to team, find potentially similar situations or missions from a huge database of previous similar situations that this or similar teams have faced, using algorithms to find similarities. What have past successes looked like, in a similar space?
(Medical teams - think finding similar potential diagnoses or potential hazards before a surgery (this is being developed - need to find citations). Army teams, such as finding similar patterns of terrain from previous missions. Key for where AI more helpful, is where there is a) a huge amount of data to comb through, and/or b) very limited time to find relevant data and make decision.)
Opportunities:
(don't think this exists yet): Help with overlapping lexicons and unfamiliar languages. See here or here.
External scaffold to store and retrieve rich data about resource parameters that team must operate within, and team abilities
Project Management tools to help plan the timeline and scope of the mission (more specific breakdown is more relevant for strategy formulation, see later).
Helps: Use of structured communication clarifies goals for
all team members without requiring the use and remembrance of explicit, unstructured
communication.
Opportunities: Algorithms to determine timeline for a project,
based on estimates for each task, and comparing with database of similar tasks
and how previous estimates differed from actual time. May aid in mitigating
planning fallacy.
(Assuming that timeline is part of goal specification.)
Aid in aligning all task elements with goals that
are appropriate to the stage of development; helps in prioritizing tasks that are deemed integral to high priority goals.
deliberate planning - the "formulation and transmission of a principal course of action for mission accomplishment" (p. 365) definition
This could be the daily standup, figuring out what's up next and who will work on what.
Based on current environmental info.
This is the part of planning that is most commonly found in lit to date, on planning and strategy development
contingency planning - "the a priori formulation and transmission of alternative plans and strategy adjustments in response to anticipated changes in the performance environment" (p. 366) definition
If-then adjustments that will be made if things change - like if an event falls behind schedule. Plan B's.
(Related - before action reviews, had that idea mentioned in one of Lauren Kuykendall's classes, to identify potential trigger events? premortem)
reactive strategy adjustment - "the alteration of existing strategy or plans in response to unanticipated changes in the performance environment and/or performance feedback" (p. 366) definition
When you invent new plans on the fly. "occurs during action phases" (p. 366), in response to changing environmental demands, or to feedback that the current strategy isn't working.
All of Elisa's work builds on this, where she separates intoacting, monitoring, and recalibrating - so once that's incorporated, this process can probably be left out.
Opportunities: Draw from database to suggest areas where plans may go awry, to prompt formulation of alternative plans.
Challenges:
contingency planning, a subdimension of strategy formulation, is the formulation of a Plan B. Programming machines to change plans on the fly will still require some level of adaptation, which is not something computers are as good at; additionally, with the increasing complexity necessary in this programming, this can be challenging for the shared mental model between humans and machines. Also, machines make decisions differently than humans @Wang.Pynadath.ea2016, and may not easily be able to explain their decisions in a way that makes sense to humans.
When determining sequencing of actions, assigning members to tasks, etc - Project Management technologies help aid this process, providing tools to track how tasks are divided across members over time, aiding in ensuring that each member has sufficient time to achieve their goals
Technologies offer opportunities to use multiple data
representations in planning details of a project, aiding in switching between overall strategy and detailed operational planning.
Tools can include flowcharts, diagrammed processes, direct the efforts of teams who are new to a problem, based on those that have come before. These serve to guide the course of action that teams take.
(This exists in many tools which provide templates - these might facilitate brainstorming sessions, creating roadmaps, pre-mortems, after action reviews, classroom setups, etc.)
"Tracking task and progress toward mission accomplishment, interpreting system information in terms of what needs to be accomplished for goal attainment, and transmitting progress to team members" (p. 363) definition
Communication richness helps: Use of structured communication to transmit progress to team members allows for effective asynchronous communication, freeing up time for members to focus on own tasks.
AI Helps: Technology can help monitor progress towards goals; particularly in contexts when this data needs interpretation, higher levels of AI can help.
AI opportunity: Identify when a team member is falling behind task, and determine whether to share helpful resources directly with the team member or alert others.
"Tracking team resources and environmental conditions as they relate to mission accomplishment, which involves..." (p. 363) definition
..."(1) internal systems monitoring (tracking team resources such as personnel, equipment, and other information that is generated or contained within the team), and..."
..."(2) environmental monitoring (tracking the environmental conditions relevant to the team)"
Communication richness helps: Structured communication allows team members to share the tracking of personnel and equipment into a system, that other team members view without requiring explicit worded communication.
AI Helps: Low levels of AI are sufficient to constantly monitor environments that change in predictable ways, such as monitoring travel speed, human heartrate, etc.
AI Opportunities: Environmental conditions of teams vary in their complexity; at high levels of complexity and/or danger, there is value of AI that monitors changes untiringly, and can draw upon many similar models to find similarities. This may be valuable in addition to, and eventually in substitution for, human counterparts.
Visualizations can help maintain situational awareness - can be AI or IA or combination, depending on level of need for human input/interpretation (edit, would call them both AI - just lower levels. I think.)
"Assisting team members to perform their tasks. Assistance may occur by..." (p. 363) definition
..."(1) providing a teammate verbal feedback or coaching,..."
..."(2) helping a teammate behaviorally in carrying out actions, or..."
..."(3) assuming and completing a task for a teammate"
Communication richness opportunities: Richer means of virtual communication allow for remote team members to help others in more ways, such as a master technician or medical specialist providing instruction via an augmented reality overlay projected onto the environment.
AI opportunities: AI can find parallels to a current task and provide prompts or guidance to a team member faced with an unfamiliar task. Alternatively, AI can aid by calling upon other team members to provide guidance for another.
IA helps/opportunities: IA can encode the coaching of a process into a tool, such as a guided set of prompts of how to address or document a specific problem.
This also takes some of the load off of leaders, who are often the ones responsible for facilitating coordination.
Challenge for high AI: for intellectual teams, who have a nonlinear work process (Devine, 2002), how well do machines handle an alignment of processes that are non-linear?
AI helps/opportunities: In some situations, AI can take over the task of informing various team members when their input is required.
Communication richness helps: Using PM tools to align the timing of actions can lower the overhead required to inform others of time-sensitive information, and can aid in ensuring consistent communication to all relevant persons. May also lower the load on leaders who are otherwise aiding in this sequencing.
AI Challenge: When programmers who give instruction to machines are not involved in the action stage when teams must recalibrate, humans may not be confident that the machine can perform in a new, untested context
Communication richness helps: Dispersed teams that must quickly and effectively communicate a change of plans benefit from virtual communication to discuss these plans, and the ability to integrate rich schematics into their discussions.
"Generating and preserving a sense of collective confidence, motivation, and task-based cohesion with regard to mission accomplishment" (p. 363). definition
"Regulating member emotions during mission accomplishment, including (but not limited to) social cohesion, frustration, and excitement" (p. 363). definition
Helps:
Communication richness allows for more proper managing of these human elements
of teamwork, as they increasingly allow for genuine human-to-human interaction.
Helps: Strategies
to make progress available to teammates, without explicitly communicating every
step, are easily enabled by project management tools; these may mitigate lack
of confidence in teammates’ abilities, especially for newly formed teams.
For intellectual teams, coordination structure matters - in MTSs, evidence that moderately dense structures are good for idea generation (in transition phase), but less during idea implementation (action phase) (Kratzner et al., 2008) - who also found inverse U-shape where communication helps creativity to a point, but too much is distracting and hurts individual creativity. Tech can help handle this by bypassing the need for explicit communication - delegating some elements to PM tools and structured communication. *
Communication richness helps: Mediums for communication can allow team members to
more coherently explain a thought or a problem to another team member, and ask
for input. Virtuality of communication allows easier access to team members.
AI helps/opportunities: AI can generate potential solutions to a problem, and allow humans to evaluate and choose ideas to implement.
IA Helps: Technology can provide affordances to help see a problem space from different perspectives, and to allow team members the opportunity to work in a single
collaborative space to generate insight.
IA Opportunities: Most technologies assume individual work processes, and there is need for a refined set of tools that allow for the exploration of ideas in a collaborative manner, balancing being too restrictive and curtailing individual working styles, versus being too permissive and not having enough structure to enable collaboration.
(Note - when these are related to systems monitoring, it can stay where it is)
shared interaction mental models, software helps direct interactions to relevant persons. Communication richness.
PM software can increase clarity of goals, helping obtain consensus on work objectives - IA
AI Challenge: Humans and AI need to form an understanding of what each other are doing; this is less obvious to each other than it would be to others of the same kind (Lakhmani et al., 2019), and AI needs to be programmed to understand what human are thinking (Chakraborti et al., 2017)
IA Helps: Wikis, or repositories of information for the use of a team, can become living documents that live longer than the memories or careers of any single person.
Communication richness helps: The information about who to consult about which problems can live an in always-accessible format, allowing team members to find relevant expertise when needed.
AI opportunities: Advanced AI should be able to understand queries and find relevant information from large repositories of information, and surface relevant results that may not match particular keywords. Increases in the ability of AI to contribute independently to a team may also result in the AI dramatically increasing the total collective knowledge of a team, as it acts as a team member and freely shares its insights with others.
Communication richness helps: Virtual meetings can expand the ability of teams to reflect on their performance, even when team members cannot gather together for reflection.
AI Opportunities: AI can reflect upon processes collected during action phases, analyze the data and highlight mistakes and opportunities for improvement.
AI Challenges: Human team members may lose their sense of psychological safety if they feel an AI is watching and analyzing all of their actions.
IA Helps: Technologies can allow teams to collect information about their processes during action phases, and reflect upon them during after-action-reviews. Insights are still guided by human leaders.
AI Challenge: Manage human confidence in their AI counterparts. How to address the frustration when humans do not understand what an AI is doing.
Communication richness Helps: PM tools that increase the transparency of when team members accomplish their tasks can increase the sense of efficacy in the team.
communication richness helps: awareness of status and actions of others positively impacts team trust (Chyng-Yang, 2013) ((Chyng‐Yang, J. (2013). Facilitating trust in virtual teams: The role of awareness. Advances in Competitiveness Research, 21(1/2), 61–77.))
AI Challenge: Trust between humans and AI team members (de Visser et al., 2020)