Building Collective Intelligence tool

Aug 15, 2022 | Tools

Purpose: Tap into your team’s potential to solve complex problems

Time required: Initial half-day workshop, then interim follow-up work over the next six months

The theory behind the resource: The traditional approach to problem-solving on large projects is to rely on the knowledge and experience of individual experts. However, we are coming to realise that when faced with the often complex and ambiguous issues that are a feature of 21st-century, projects require a different way of thinking. The solution is to tap into the power of human ingenuity by using the collective thinking power of a diverse group. Teams can therefore provide an invaluable mechanism for finding new and effective solutions to difficult problems.

Accessing the collective intelligence of a team is, however, easier said than done. Assembling a group of bright minds does not mean they will generate any new thinking. There are a number of barriers which inhibit the truly open discussions that are needed. Miscommunication, a lack of appreciation of each other’s mental filters, outsized egos, and internal rivalries all diminish thinking capacity. To build collective intelligence, teams often need to learn, through training and group coaching, to be able to understand their limiting factors and how to work around them.

The process: The first step is to set up a half-day workshop, or to include the following activities as part of a team development day. The workshop comprises of three sessions.

Part One – Seeing different perspectives

The first part of the journey is to help team members recognise they have different ways of thinking. One of the fastest ways to do this is to use a simple psychometric that will help identify different motivations or preferences that will shape each person’s perspectives. Our preference is SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory) because it is quick to administer, easy to absorb, and most importantly easy to memorise. Having sent out the online tests the week before the team should arrive at the workshop aware of their own psychometric profile. The facilitator can then focus the team on the differences that are likely to emerge from each of the main profiles. The purpose of this first session is to engage the team members in a discussion that begins to help them see the potential value in having different perspectives when compared with the limitations that come with a single point of view.

Part Two – Formative experiences

How we behave in a working environment is also influenced by our previous experiences, both positive and negative. The second part of the workshop requires the team to split into groups of two or three people. Each person is then allowed five minutes to talk about what they remember as an important experience that has shaped how they think or make decisions. This could be personal or it could be professional. Once each person has had the chance to share,  their counterpart must then provide a shortened (two minutes) summary of what they have heard, to the rest of the room. The value of this exercise is that it begins to deepen the types of conversation that can take place between team members helping them to understand what matters to each person and why.

Part Three – Understanding the need for psychological safety

A team is unlikely to harness its collective intelligence if some of the members do not feel psychologically safe. In other words, every person around the table feels sufficiently comfortable to be able to express their thoughts without fear of ridicule or retribution. This is easy to understand in theory, but how does it work in practice?

This is a short exercise where the concept of psychological safety is explained. Having allowed some time for questions, each team member is asked to spend five minutes thinking about the concept and to make a note of their thoughts around the following questions:

1. When do I feel most safe in a meeting?
2. When might I be uncomfortable?
3. What could we do as a team to improve our sense of safety?
4. How do we get better at challenging each other’s thinking without creating an intimidating atmosphere?

The facilitator then goes around the table, taking each of the questions, in turn, explains their thoughts without interruption, summarising their points on a flip chart. Once each person has spoken the team can then have a short discussion before moving on to the next point.

Part Four – Next actions

To close off the session, the team should spend 10 minutes identifying a series of actions they will take forward in future meetings.

Notes:

These exercises will not in themselves automatically improve the team’s Collective Intelligence. They will however your team the foundation upon which to build a more effective way of thinking as a genuine team. The key point to emphasise is that in a complex environment, there are few simple answers. Indeed one of the dangers teams face is to try and oversimplify an issue by simply ignoring the other elements that create complexity.

Part of the underlying learning from the above exercises should be that no single member of the team has the full answer, but each member of a team potentially has a part of it. Teams who can learn the humility to accept this have a much better chance of finding novel and practical responses to the challenges of 21st-century problems.

Collaboration at the interfaces

Apr 21, 2022 | Tools

Major projects are typically fraught with issues and problems. Teams are generally set up with the resources to solve day to day difficulties. It is why most of us like working on projects. What happens, however, when you have to rely on another team to find the answer? This is why every project needs to pay attention to the development of collaborative interfaces.

More often than not when we talk about collaboration we think of it as some form of generic process or activity that should be taking place across the whole of a project at all times. The reality is that collaboration is only needed when a problem occurs at the interface between two or more teams engaged in the delivery process. One of the key leadership activities sitting under the collaboration workstream should focus on the potential points of inter-team friction.

Here are some suggestions to consider that will improve collaboration by reducing friction:

1) Create an Interface Management Plan
Each team within a project should invest time in developing an ‘interface management plan’. This is a simple document that captures the thinking around the following questions
a.   Who are we going to be dependent on to deliver our portion of the works
b.   Who is going to be dependent on us
c.   What are the potential friction points where problems could arise
d.   Who are the individuals we need to get to know in those teams where we have a degree on interdependency
e.   How should we connect and communicate with them to establish the right relationships? The development of the plan should be treated as a short and simple exercise, the output from which is contained in a single sheet of paper. It can be created in a couple of hours, but should be a team exercise so that everyone is aware of the need to manage the interfaces.

2) Build collaborative relationships
If you know you are going to need help from someone in another team, it is a good idea to have some form of positive relationship with them. We advocate the process of building what is known as Level 2 relationships, where we seek to have the kind of social exchanges which enable us to learn enough about the other party to be able to see them as human beings rather than simply names attached to a role. Of course, people must be allowed to make their own choices about building personal relationships, but we can put in place mechanisms to stimulate our team’s knowledge of each other through meetings, workshops and social events.

3) Manage blame instinct
It is also helpful to train your teams to understand the counter-productive nature of blame when things go wrong. Blame is an emotional reaction to frustration and anger, but it tends to be highly destructive and usually closes down our ability to find solutions as we limit communication and establish adversarial positions. As human beings, we cannot control our emotions, but we can learn to manage them. So train your teams to understand the need to move quickly from a reactive response that the other team is at fault, to a reflective position where you try to understand what has gone wrong and how to remedy the situation.

Paying attention to collaborative interfaces can be thought of as another form of risk management. It requires identifying key interdependencies in advance and putting in place a plan of activities to mitigate the consequences of inter-team conflict. At ResoLex, we come across too many projects where the leadership takes a view that a proactive approach to collaborative relationships is unnecessary. This attitude is somewhat complacent as human beings have a tendency to react negatively when under pressure or stress. So paying some attention to establishing positive interfaces between the right people at the right time, will significantly improve the chances of a successful outcome.