ASSIGNMENT 1 （FINAL)

<EXERCISE A1>

OUR PRODUCT

Nowadays “Eating Healthy” is popular in Hong Kong.  Our new product “Calories Rice Cooker” can provide a convenient and innovative cooking experience to busy Hong Kong people.  Calories Rice Cooker will indicate the calories of the food you put into it.  This is surely an innovative product that can attract busy Hong Kong working mothers.  With our cooker, user can know how much calories intake they have for each meal.    

OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

During the discussion, the leader, Amy, dominated.   Though Amy dominated the discussion, she didn’t feel good after the discussion.  As she tried to control the discussion, other team members were not quite involved.  Below are the feelings of the group:  

“As a leader, I think my team is non-productive.  They didn’t contribute ideas and it made MY presentation not rich enough.” AMY said.

Fion: “It is Amy’s Kingdom!  It is Amy’s presentation, who cares?”

Fred: “Whatever you said, you will be challenged and the comments are negative.  Who cares to throw out ideas?”

Cherry: “I am so frustrated and got no interest to get involved in the discussion.”

A. OUR TEAM IS LACK OF TRUST

Supervisor’s Confirmation Bias of Similarities 

Amy kept challenging Cherry's suggestions. Amy showed a sarcastic smile. She questioned her idea with her voice raised such as the production cost, feasibility and marketability. There is no doubt that Cherry was upset, de-motivated and dissatisfied.

When another team member, Fion, supported Cherry's idea, Amy showed a totally different response.  Amy showed concentration to Fion's comments and started to show appreciation.  It seems that Amy has no problem to accept Fion's suggestions.

We think that Amy got a confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to social stereotypes that most of us carry around in our heads such as facial characteristics, age, gender and race, etc.)  Amy always has a positive expectation to Fion.  As Amy thinks Fion and she got similarities. Such as their single eye-lid, personality (upfront, sensible and cheerful), gender and education background. Psychologists call these beliefs implicit theories.  Because of the similarities, Amy categorizes Fion as her same type. Amy found Fion trust-worthy. The bias skew Amy's judgment if Fion's comments are inaccurate.  Confirmation bias is phenomenon’s where in decisions makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweight evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.

With this confirmation bias, not only Amy could not trust others but other team members also could not trust each other.  Cherry observed that Amy got bias and would only listen to team members’ ideas according to her own preference.   That is why Cherry felt frustrated.  As the leader is not trusting team members, team members cannot trust the leader and other team members as well. 
As team members believe the leader is not a fair leader so we are discouraged to contribute and get involved.  We also could not trust other team members as the leader favors some of the members.  This made the team not working towards the same goal.  There is no harmony within the team.

Low Level of Communication / Openness

As Amy set up rules of check in and cannot laugh, the level of communication in the team was low.  Amy’s openness was low.  She could not accept members’ ideas easily.  It shows that Amy was lack of trust towards individual team members. She just selectively trusted specific member with bias.  

Since there is low level of communication within the team, no trust was built up.  There is no linkage between team members when there is no trust.  Each individual possessed a conservative attitude and not willing to open up.  This leads the team to be quite silent.  A team without good communication cannot bring up innovative ideas.  There is no exchange of ideas and opinions and thus no synergy effect created by the team.  Therefore, the team failed to function as the purpose of forming a team is to create synergy effect. 

Low level of Risk Tolerance

Amy had a low level of risk tolerance as she would be the presenter of the pitch.  To her, it is her responsibility to give out a good idea.  She demonstrated a low trust level to the team.  She challenged members’ ideas negatively in a strong manner before accepting the idea.  She also possessed the final decision-making right.  The higher the risk, the higher the potential benefit.  Without the tolerance of risk, the team is lack of the spirit of taking challenge.  In short, the potential of the team is limited. 

Lack of Benevolent Concern

The pitch was presented by Amy alone to the top management.  To us, as team members, it is Amy’s presentation and seems that it is not our business.  Whatever good ideas we provided, the rewards won’t come to us.  We could not trust what Amy was doing was for the sake of the team.  Thus, we do not necessary to offer good ideas.

Because there is no benevolent concern, there is no strong driver to deliver ideas benefit to the team.  Individual members had no incentive to express good ideas as this does not bring immediate and direct benefit to us.  Thus, in turn, the team cannot generate good ideas.

(Deepak, M. February 2004) (Dr. Sandra L. 23 October 2007) (Roderick M.K. June 2009) (Robert F.H. September 2006)

B. OUR TEAM IS LACK OF CREATIVITY

Stressful and Restricted Atmosphere

Amy set up lots of rules and restrictions.  We must check in with Amy and seek for her approval before offering any new idea or suggestion.  The atmosphere was stressful and lack of freedom. The most unacceptable treatment was that all group members were not allowed to talk or speak without Amy’s permission.  Amy would reject our ideas directly or keep challenging the feasibility and marketability with harsh criticism.  Actually, challenges might help people to generate more creativity.  However, she never gave opportunity to members for further explanation.  It was a very unpleasant and stressful experience to everyone.  Meanwhile, we observed that she tended to ignore some ideas in a biased and selective manner.  We do not possess any power in the discussion, not even the freedom to talk and laugh.  This is surely a factor to kill our creativity.  Also, lack of freedom to communicate with each other made us difficult to offer creative ideas.  We felt unsafe to offer ideas since Amy kept on giving negative comments.

We encountered Emotional Blocks as we preferred to keep silence as the “harsh criticism” and “murder” ideas make everyone fear to fail or to be challenged.   Moreover, there was Environmental Blocks.  Motivation is mostly influenced by the work environment.  However, we were discouraged to offer innovative and new ideas due to the lack of cooperation, interaction and trust among the group. 

Under the pressure of being criticised, individual members will not come out to express ourselves.  While we need to obey the rules, there was no room for us to be creative.  Because of the strict control, members only focus on not violating the rules and this prohibited individual to express freely.  Since there was no input from individuals, the team could not bring up creative ideas neither.

Lack of Peer Culture

Most of creative ideas were killed by the supervisor without gathering further information.  Even though she agreed with a good idea, she would still keep challenging and give negative feedback/comments on it.  There were no trusting and respectful relationships built in the group.  Amy, as a supervisor, was not showing her concern to seek advice suggestions from us and she was not going to consider our every suggestions.  In our mind, Amy was just putting herself as the core.  Obviously the culture was not a peer culture.  Though Amy is the supervisor, we were not showing support to her due to the fact that we, as team members, were not being respected.

Ladder of Inference

By following the ladder of inference, Amy did select available data based on her preference, interpret the selected data subjectively and draw the conclusion on her own decision.  She failed to obtain more information to further explore the idea and asked members to share their views before making a decision.  Our involvement in the decision making process was minimal.  She just jumped up the conclusion based on her own perception and assumption.  There was lack of collaboration due to her micromanagement.  

(Catmull, E.D. September 2008) (Teresa, M.A. September - October 1998)

C.  OUR TEAM IS NOT COLLABORATIVE

 

No sense of community

Apparently, the meeting was held in a poor atmosphere under the influence of the supervisor. She kicked off the meeting by setting unwelcome instructions with a view to preventing team members from offering ideas and suggestions. Whatever member offered, Amy just kept challenging their justification instead of asking them to elaborate their ideas further. 

Amy used her position power to dominate the meeting.  She showed no collaborative behavior.  There was no communication among the members and the way of communication was top down instead of two-way.  There was no sense of community.  The comments or feedbacks given by Amy were always in a negative manner which led to the lack of trust, commitment and eventually inattention to results among the members. 

No Empowerment

No empowerment was given by Amy throughout the meeting as there were only challenges, dissatisfaction and stress.  Amy failed to build the team ego as she adopted the traditional team approach which operates under the tyranny of the “We”.  She put group consensus and constraint above individual freedom.

Solely Task-Oriented Leadership

Leadership is critical to teamwork.  However, Amy failed to lead with example by communicating openly and honestly to the members thereby unable to win the respect and trust of others. Her un supportive attitude also lowers the trust and mutual respect in the team.  Therefore, members were unwilling to excel for achieving their ultimate goal.

Under Amy’s leadership, team members’ self-esteem was extremely low and they were hesitated to express their views in order to avoid being challenged.  They preferred lay-low and unwilling to share their ideas due to poor team spirit. It was observed that Amy just pooled people together but failed to motivate them to function effectively as a team.  Obviously, Amy was task-oriented with low relationship-oriented intention.  A highly collaborated team should have a leader with both task- and relationship-oriented.

(Bill F. and Andy B. July – August 2005) (Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. November 2007) (Confirmation Bias, NA) (Charles E.T. 21 December 2012).

GOOD POINT TO HAVE AMY

Amy appeared to be a devil in the whole product development process.  However, to some extent, she was serving as the engine of the team.  Only with a strong and strict team leader, we were able to have a clear direction on what we should do next.  Since Amy was demanding and always gave negative feedbacks, we could then re-think the feasibility of our ideas though this greatly hindered our creativity.  With this demanding leader, we operated at a fast pace. Thus, Amy also served as an important part in making the team collaborates.  

<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 “smart calories 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

During our discussion in exercise 2, each team members felt comfortable to express own ideas and we were willing to get full involvement in the discussion because we had the below feeling:

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

Cherry: “we appreciate, trust and respect to each other’s efforts!!”

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

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

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.  

A. WE TRUST EACH OTHER

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.

Each individual member felt the confidence to express ideas freely under the “Trust” environment.  There was no pressure in communicating with others as no one will intentionally give out negative comments.  Individual was comfortable as we knew our ideas expressed would be listened and considered carefully.  No matter the idea was good or bad, we still TRUSTED constructive suggestions could be provided by other team members.  This “Trust” was the major driver for team members to contribute ideas to the team.  Without this “Trust”, team members would have no motivation to contribute anything.  No trust then no confidence granted to individual.  Without confidence, individual would rather keep silence or just agree with others’ ideas without adding constructive comments.  Thus, “Trust” enhances communication between individuals.

At Group Level, the “Trust” created a bonding between each team member.  This bonding acts as a bridge linking up individuals.  Together the group with the “Trust” element was able to drive each team member to get involve and contribute.  The “Trust” element was essential in driving members to communicate.  A group without communication driven by trust element is of no value.  This kind of group cannot “combine” the contributions of team members.  Trust drives communication and thus leads to effectiveness of combining the effort and contributions of team members.           

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. 

Since individual members’ interest of developing an innovative idea is consistent with the group’s interest, there is no doubt that the whole team is moving towards the same direction.  This greatly drives the team to achieve the goal of developing an innovative idea to present the pitch in an effective manner.  When all individuals in the team are working towards the same goal, the team obviously will move to the destination in a faster and more efficient way.

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.

Individuals’ concern to strive for best performance links the team members together.  This linkage strengthens the team’s goal to present the pitch in a nice way.  With sense of ownership due to benevolent concern, individual members were willing to give 100% effort while the team could achieve the goal of performing well in the presentation with members’ contribution of effort.

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 increases productivity.  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. (Deepak, M. February 2004) (Dr. Sandra L. 23 October 2007) (Roderick M.K. June 2009) (Robert F.H. September 2006)

B. OUR TEAM IS CREATIVE

Relaxing and Free Atmosphere

Since there is no pressure of giving wrong ideas that will lead to being criticized, the atmosphere is relaxing.  No one will afraid being commented negatively.  There would not be any penalty or punishment even when expressing a bad idea.  Without the pressure of saying wrong things, team members felt so free to throw out any ideas in mind.  That is why we felt relaxing and free.

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 we exchanged 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. (Catmull, E.D. September 2008) (Teresa, M.A. September - October 1998)

C. 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. 

Individual members got a feel that we are a member of the team and there is a responsibility for us to let the team performs the best.  When individual got a sense of belongings to the team, the team could collaborate.  With this sense of belongings, the team becomes really “one team”.  Every team member would think with the “team” in our mind.  The team owns loyal members which greatly enhance the team effectiveness in performing best in creating the pitch.

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.  

The group ego creates a special feel of linkage between individual members.  We become “one family one team”.  Our interest and destiny are interlinked.  We only did the best things for the team and would not do something harmful to the team.

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.

(Bill F. and Andy B. July – August 2005) (Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. November 2007) (Confirmation Bias, NA) (Charles E.T. 21 December 2012).

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 group think.  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’s ideas.  Thus, the time spent on such discussion was much longer than in case 1.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, “TRUST, CREATIVITY & TEAM WORK” are always the key success factors to achieve high performance collaborations.  We found that there was a big difference in between these two exercises.  In Exercise 2, each group member was playing the key role to identify and determinate the final decision.  Trust built up the base for creativity.  With trust, individual members are linked up together and feel free to contribute and get involved.  This enhances the creativity potential of the team.  When all members are feeling free to express ideas, more contributions are allowed in the team.  With the higher level of communication and involvement, the team as a whole will be able to collaborate.

References:

• Bill F. and Andy B. (July – August 2005) Virtuoso Teams. The High-Performance Organization. Harvard Business Review, pp117-123
• Charles E. T. (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 L (23 October 2007). The importance of trust. SEDL Advancing Research, Improving Education.
• Catmull, E.D. (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.K. (June 2009). Rethinking Trust. Spotlight on TRUST. Harvard Business Review, pp.69-77
• Robert F.H. (September 2006). The Decision to Trust. Managing Yourself. Harvard Business Review, pp.55-62
• Teresa, M.A. (September - October 1998) How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review, pp.77-87 
•  Confirmation Bias (NA) Science Daily [WWW] Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm. [Last Accessed 16 Feb 2015]