The Exercise A2

OUR PRODUCT

Busy looking at the food package to calculate the calories?  It is time for a smart calories rice cooker to help you pursuing a more relaxing and healthy life.

 

As people are more concern with their health, many people would like to calculate how much calories intake they have for each meal.  It makes them so busy looking at the food package and then calculate.  With this intelligent rice cooker, calories will be indicated and it saves your time to find and calculate.  You may question, rice cooker can only cook rice, and how can I calculate calories of other dishes?  That is why this cooker called “smartcalories rice cooker”.  You can also cook other food such as vegetables or meat on top of this rice cooker as there is a pan on top of it.  This is not a rice cooker but your “Meal Cooker”.  So actually this is a Two-In-One convenient cooker which can also serve the calories calculating purpose.  

OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

“We feel comfortable to talk and express ideas in the team”

“Everyone contributes and makes our work efficient and the goals are easily achieved.”

“This is OUR presentation and we strive the best for it”

OUR TEAM IS CREATIVE

Relaxing and Free Atmosphere

Everyone was in equal position.  By following the Pixar’s operating principles, all of us not only have the freedom to communicate with each other (“interaction”) and also felt safe to express ideas (“trust environment”).  Furthermore, work group support and encouragement could help us to achieve the best outcome.

Instead of being controlled, we were given the autonomy and freedom to share new ideas as well as making our own decision on how to present the new product.   The more often weexchanged ideas and information by working together, the more knowledge we would have.  It could help the team to maintain a good balance between creativity and work outcome.

Peer Culture

By creating a mutually supportive group, everyone felt committed to their job and was willing and eager to work closely with each other.  A good example was that when Cherry offered an idea to introduce the core benefits of our “Smart Calories Rice Cooker”, Amy proactively raised her concern on how to deliver a key message to CEO in a simple script within ONE minute.  Meanwhile, both Fred and Fion gave helping hands by suggesting a “unique” caption.  In the whole process, we were open to new ideas, constructively challenged one another’s idea as well as invested in helping everyone to think of the possibilities instead of constraints.  All of us were loyal to the group and the collective work. It was unlike “Exercise 1” where the supervisor was trying to look for reason not to use the new idea instead of searching for reasons to explore its feasibility.

​

Everyone was encouraged to brainstorm as much as ideas as possible.  We also freely and generously recognized creative ideas to encourage team collaboration and communication.  This was a good way to construct an environment that nurtured trusting and respectful relationships and unleashed everyone’s creativity.  It was completely different from our previous exercise in creating a climate of fears that undermined people’s intrinsic motivation. 

WE TRUST EACH OTHER

Everyone was equal and free to express ideas. Team members listened, appreciated and gave feedbacks.  They were involved, committed and devoted to the discussion. 

 

Fred suggested a "robot hoover" and was appreciated by the team.  Fred's idea was genius and it suited for lazy people and that the robot hoover is smaller than a normal hoover which is easy to hide underneath the couch. 

 

Cherry suggested a "calories rice cooker" and gained positive feedbacks from all team members. They thought it was the excellent idea and sure there will be a huge market for it. It does not only save people's time but also save gas and electricity.

Fion gave positive feedback on both electric appliances.  Fion concerned the cost of making these two. They discussed the production cost saving element.  

High Level of Communication

We built a relationship by exchanging ideas freely. Confidence, encouragement, appreciation and positive feedbacks were given by each other.

We worked towards the same goal of developing an innovative product.  We let each other know what we are thinking and listening to each other.  We emphasized on communication with each other.  That is why we could throw out ANY kinds of ideas that made our products to be more creative.  

High Level of Alignment of interests

The team has consistent value, thinking and direction.  We think it is the best to help the company to generate more revenues and to increase the market penetration.

 

We were very clear of what we wanted such as presenting to Senior Executive altogether.  This involved and motivated everyone. We took one another's ideas into account and find ways to accommodate them.

Benevolent Concern

As we were going to present the pitch collectively, everyone had a sense of responsibility and wanted to perform the best.  It was not just the team leader’s presentation but the team’s presentation.  It helped to enhance the sense of ownership.  That also made each of us trust each other as no one wanted to have a bad performance in front of top management.

TRUST!! TRUST!!! TRUST!!!

 

This was a high trust group.  Trust is important in relationships especially in working group.  This enables coordination and commitments, enhances control and prediction.  It also increasesproductivity.  Trust plays a significant role in anticipating the emotional effects that decisions and actions might have on others.  Trust helps us to respond tactfully and respectfully in emotional situations.  Moreover, trust elicits the perceptions, feelings and concerns of others, recognizing that conflict is inevitable and using it to strengthen relationships.

OUR TEAM COLLABORATES

 

Strong Sense of Community

Given the equal status of team members, no individual’s agenda overrides our ultimate goal. We were able to share our views freely and comfortably so that high performance collaboration could be achieved. 

Group Ego

Since there was no leader, we got a shared identity.  Each of us understood that if the team failed, each individual would fail.  Since the team would present the pitch collectively, each of us got strong driver for good performance and with good ideas.  

Collaborative team

In the team development process of forming, storming, norming and performing, we were able to build trust which fostered creativity and new insight to facilitate constructive dialogues and discussions. 

With the freedom to communication with anyone, we had enhanced mutual respect and trust so that we could fully participate in the discussion. As a result, we could efficiently work out solutions to address complicated issues and disagreements.

Everyone in the group held the same position, we were not afraid to make criticism on others views and ideas. Similar to the peer culture in Pixar, people at all levels support one another and everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work. 

DRAWBACK OF HAVING FREEDOM

Though we could freely express our ideas in such a free and relaxing atmosphere, sometimes our directions are distracted.  Without a team leader, we did not have a clear direction.   Sometimes we fell into the trap of groupthink.  We easily agreed with others’ ideas in a friendly environment.  

Moreover, since the atmosphere was free and relaxing, sometimes we would discuss something not related to the product development.  That greatly hindered the efficiency of our discussion.  We spent much time on discussing unrelated topics.  Since everyone was free to talk in the discussion, sometimes the situation was out of control and everyone talked together.  Also, we spent much time on listening to each individual’sideas.  Thus, the time spent on such discussion was much longer than in case 1.

 

 

References:

• Bill F. and Andy B. (July – August 2005) Virtuoso Teams. The High-Performance Organization. Harvard Business Review, pp117-123
• Charles E. Taylor, (21 December 2012). Human Factor Industry News. Aviation Human Factors Industry News. Vol VIII

• Deepak, M. (February 2004) Risky Business: Trust in Negotiations. Negotiation Decision-Making and Communication Strategies That Deliver Results, Newsletter from Harvard Business School Publishing and the program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
• Dr. Sandra Lindsay, (23 October 2007). The importance of trust. SEDL Advancing Research, Improving Education.
• Ed Catmull. (September 2008) How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, pp.65-72
• Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. (November 2007) Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams. Harvard Business Review
• Roderick M. Kramer, (June 2009). Rethinking Trust. Spotlight on TRUST. Harvard Business Review, pp.69-77
• Robert F. Hurley, (September 2006). The Decision to Trust. Managing Yourself. Harvard Business Review, pp.55-62
• Teresa, MA. (September - October 1998) How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review, pp.77-87 
• Science Daily (NA) Confirmation Bias [WWW] Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm. [Last Accessed Feb 16 2015]