teaching team effectiveness

A curriculum proposal for the Institute of Design at

the Illinois Institute of Technology.

For the Institute of Design student and faculty that are dissatisfied with the effort required in team-based student projects versus quality of output, a proposed seminar that teaches collaboration and teaming skills for team-based projects that provides techniques and practices that will enhance effectiveness.

Unlike existing solutions this seminar will be composed of a concise set of activities that is specifically focused on skills required for cross-disciplinary teams and the cultural aspects of teaming that can foster breakthrough innovation.

Our initial focus is on full-time faculty, and also incoming graduate and foundation students to the Institute of Design.

The seminar will solve teaming problems by teaching students and faculty how to determine when a team-based project is appropriate, what type of team to use, the skills required for that team, how to collaborate, give feedback and effectively set goals.

Teaching Team Effectiveness | Chris Bernard | May 12, 2006

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Teaching Team EffectivenessChris Bernard, Spring 2006

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Existing Theory 4

Effective groups versus performance units 4

Performing teams versus single-leader units 4

Characteristics of performing teams 4

Understanding Dysfunction 5

Existing Programs 6

Academic Programs 6

Enterprise Programs 6

Suggested Solution Approach 7

Suggested Solution Components 7

Assessment 7

Management styles 7

Project management 7

Technology and remote collaboration 7

Giving and receiving feedback 7

Logistics and continuity 7

Alternative Approaches 7

Conclusion 7

Appendix 7

Teaming Toolkit 7

Teaming Site 7

Communications and Implementation Plan 7

Endnotes 7


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IntroductionFor design to continue to flourish as a valued profession, design requires not only our passion and commitment but also our continuing quest to develop our knowledge. Only this will allow our craft to remain relevant and valued1.

Our design knowledge is an investment in two things, our profession and ourselves. If we neglect either one for too long our efforts and investment will not sustain us as a vocation.

But ignore our design knowledge we have and it is hurting us at the Institute of Design because don’t teach our graduates how to develop one key area required for the effective practice of our design education—collaboration and teaming skills. The Institute of Design (ID) needs to institute a regimen of collaboration and teamwork education. Here’s why.

The world is paying more attention to designers today because of the value they can bring to the enterprise. In 2005 Booz Allen Hamilton completed a study called The Global Innovation 10002, a study that looked at the top 1000 companies around the world in attempt to determine what helped these organizations succeed in innovation. They learned three things that matter to the profession of design.

One, there’s no clarity or

formula on how much spending

is enough to sustain innovation

as a function of research and

development for the enterprise.

The right amount to invest seems to vary from group to group, sector to sector, industry to industry and product to product. One of the great advantages of ID is how we can teach practitioners how to validate innovation choices against insights that removes risk from the process and helps guide investment.

Two, it’s often the process and

the not the pocketbook that

drives success.

In most cases superior results seemed to be the result of the innovation processes that a team brought to bear. The ID toolkit and methods allow practitioners to frame the solution space more effectively and accessibly than traditional methods using business and human factors frameworks alone. These capabilities distinguish our institution, our faculty and our perspective.

Three, the study revealed that

the most important concept of

all is that collaboration is the key

to successful innovation.

ID spends considerable time and effort in producing students that are expert researchers, communications designers, product designers, and planners. We give them experience and a toolkit to take out into the world to use. But we don’t spend time, or very little time, in making sure that ID graduates are experts at collaboration, either in usage or practice. We simply assume that because we’ve set up team that the team must be working effectively.

Our biggest educational weakness in producing graduates that can be effective is the lack of rigor that we put into teaching skills for effective collaboration and teaming. Our peers in other design and business schools ensure that it is part of their rigorous curriculums.

By not focusing on teaching the critical collaborative component that is required for modern design education we are stepping on our own legacy and compromising the education that we are promising the students that attend this school, an ability to effectively engage in


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3What’s Missing?

Teaching Teaming & Collaboration at

The Institute of Design

“There has clearly been a

steady decline in the design

profession for over 30 years,

and the source of that decline

is the profession’s intractable

stasis. We are unchanged

professionals in a changing

professional climate, clutching

at old idols, while failing to

create new offerings, failing to

reinvent and reinvigorate the

practice when needed, failing

to inculcate a professional

culture that is accessible and

fair.”

-Clement Mok

systematic design that integrates multiple contributors across multiple domains.

This paper will highlight existing theories and practices around teaming and collaboration as they relate to design, evaluate comparable offerings and suggest a solution approach to how we can teach these skills at ID cost and time effectively.

Existing TheoryMuch of the foundation for why our teaching at ID around collaboration and teaming requires can be traced back to writings by Jay Doblin3.

Predating Mok’s observations on design by 25 years or so Doblin even identified, albeit indirectly, the challenges that face the profession around collaboration and teaming and talked about the types of design that benefit from collaboration.

For large complex projects, it

"would be irresponsible to

attempt them without analytical

methods" and adopt an

"adolescent reliance on overly

intuitive practices."

-Jay Doblin

Doblin also discussed the evolution of design value, from ‘direct’ models where a craftsperson worked directly on the artifact to ‘indirect’ models in which a designer first created a representation of the artifact, separating design from production in more complex situations.

While these distinctions in design methods are familiar to us the way they correlate to teaming and collaboration might not be.

Direct design skills are still taught and practiced at ID but often we tend to practice these skills in the guise of a ‘group’ or a ‘team’ when in fact, we could be more effective in certain situations if we allowed some of our learning at ID to occur with individual performance or what is called ‘single-leader’ efforts versus truly collaborative teams. This is because teams require more time to be effective than tasks that can be accomplished via individual performance or with single-leader efforts.

One of the primary causes of

team dysfunction is when teams

at ID are used inappropriately.

Understanding how different

types of teams can be used is

critical to our effectiveness.

In “The Wisdom of Teams” authors Katzenbach and Smith4 identified that many collaborative efforts that claim they are in fact teams might be operating inefficiently. and that other more simplified methods of operations may in fact be more appropriate for certain types of work. They defined these types of groups as follows:

Effective groups versusperformance unitsAn effective group doesn’t require the discipline and rigor of a performance unit, and when characteristics of a performance unit are applied to a group in can frustrate and overburden users. Typically an effective group merely requires an understandable charter, good communication, defined member roles, time-efficient processes and reasonable accountability.

Performing teams versus single-leader unitsSingle-leader units function differently than a performing team in that the traditional management style of leadership is imposed with a designate that makes the key decisions, delegates and monitors individual assignments and accountability, and chooses how and when to modify specific approaches. The benefit of this approach is that it is more agile and familiar to most individuals than the techniques required to be a ‘performing’ team.

Characteristics of performing teamsKatzenbach and Smith identified six basics that were required for effective performing teams.

1. Small numbers—Large numbers of people have trouble interacting constructively as a group. Performing teams typically function best when there are a small number of people working together with four to six people often being a good target.

Single leader and effective groups also benefit from smallness but the less resource intensive nature of process required for this types of teams typically means they can be a little larger, in the range of twelve to twenty-five people.

2. Complementary skills—In the enterprise high performance companies build teams based on complementary skills. This of course requires an understanding of what skills people have. It’s further complicated in a learning institution around not only understanding what skills people have but also what skills they would like to develop. Insights into technical and functional expertise, problem solving and decision making skills and interpersonal skills are all factors that go into the creation of effective teams.

3. Common purpose—A team’s eventual performance is directly correlated to its purpose. If team members have a different purpose or the the purpose of the team is unknown, it’s difficult for teams to perform effectively.

4. Common set of specific performance goals—Specific performance goals are also essential for most teams to function effectively and they need to be defined for or developed by the team.

5. Commonly agreed upon working approach—Teams that can’t standardize on the same working environments and tools often do not function well. Incompatible software and collaboration tools can cripple teams and cause massive hits to productivity and effectiveness.

6. Mutual accountability—teams need to hold themselves accountable and be evaluated as a team. Organizations that expect team performance but only reward individual contribution in absence of accountability to a team are often ineffective. If we don’t incent the performance we want, we wont get the performance we want.


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Katzenbach and Smith represented the continuum of teams and their performance and requirements as ‘climbing the y’.

These findings are important for ID as they can be leveraged to guide us in the following ways.

One, they highlight that real

team discipline is complex,

sometimes overly so for the

tasks we use teams for at ID.

Understanding this, and making intelligent choices about effective groups and single-unit leadership versus a real team as circumstances dictate can reduce a great deal of the dysfunction that we have at ID. For example, an effective group approach may be much more effective for many team efforts that occur outside of class and revolve around issues such at the ID social committee or other voluntary groups. Other areas, such as sponsored research projects might benefit most from single-unit leadership.

Two, to be effective real teams

require an infrastructure and

toolset that is absent at ID.

When circumstances do dictate the need for a real team, Katzenbach’s and Smith’s work informs us about some team ‘basics’ that need to exist before an environment for ‘potential’ team success will exist. Some of these are easy to control, such as team type, and size. While others should form the foundation of a teaming curriculum focused on assessment and education for incoming students that creates an environment for understanding common purpose, performance-based goals, common working approach and mutual accountability.

Three, students at ID need to

have a degree of understanding

about their peers working

styles, skills and personal goals to

work effectively.

Understanding DysfunctionIn “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” author Patrick Lencioni built on the frameworks established by Katzenbach and Smith and identified five areas that lead to dysfunctional team performance5. When students first come to ID they don’t have the benefit of knowing their new classmates or existing students. This translates into an absence of trust between new students and their fellow new students and, more importantly, between new students and existing students. This absence of trust metastasizes into a myriad of other problems quickly whereas new students develop a fear of conflict and eventually a lack of commitment to working effectively with others.

This is further compounded by the fact grading and performance at ID is still primarily measured individually versus for the team, creating a climate where individual performance is cherished more than effective team performance and the

actual quality of the team’s results. One of the criterions for our curriculum should be to be able to teach methods and techniques to faculty and students that provide incentives for effective team efforts versus individual performance and create an environment where new and existing students can interact effectively immediately.


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Single Leader UnitDiscipline

Real TeamsDiscipline

Effective Group Fundamentals

Individual goals add up to group's purpose

Compelling performance purpose exceeds sum of individual goals.

1 Understandable charter.

2 Good communication.

3 Defined member roles.

4 Time-efficient process.

5 Reasonable accountability.

Members work mostly on individual tasks that match their skills.

Work products (outcomes) are mostly individual.

Rigorous working approach driven by leader.

Strong individual accountability.

Members work jointly to integrate complementary talents and skills.

Work products (outcomes) are mostly collective or joint efforts.

Adaptable working approach shaped and enforced by members.

Mutual plus individual accountability.

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

PerformanceUnits

EffectiveGroups

Climbing the 'Y'

Source: The Wisdom of Teams

Inattention toResults

Avoidance ofAccountability

Lack ofCommitment

Fear ofConflict

Absence ofTrust

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Source: The Five Dysfunctions of Teams

Existing ProgramsMany educational institutions and enterprises claim to offer instruction on teaming and collaboration. However, academia and the enterprise approach teaching differently and rely on different resources

Academic ProgramsCurriculums at other educational institutions exist, however these approaches are poorly suited for ID for a number of reasons.

One, the cost of programs at

other educational institutions is

prohibitive.

Stanford’s program, offered through its ‘d-school’, is a 5-day, $7900 program focused largely on what ID would consider the practice of design methods. The manner and intensity of this program is too costly and too long to be leveraged by ID.

Two, the ‘reach’ of programs at

other educational institutions is

lacking.

Stanford’s program is primarily aimed at the executive education market. Other programs such as those offered through Harvard Business School are semester long courses that are taught over 20 sessions. Not only does the duration of the course make it a challenge for ID but the since the classes are not mandatory for students they can’t accomplish our eventual goal of having

our curriculum touch every student that comes into ID.

Three, the courses rely on

theory and immersion to be

effective.

Many programs, such as those offered by the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University are indeed effective, but they are effective because of the time employed and the cohesiveness of the class within the school. For example, Northwestern MBA students engage in a pre-term orientation with the entire incoming MBA class that includes over 30 hours of classroom instruction on collaboration in addition to numerous structured group activities. This approach would be challenging at ID because of the nature of our student body and the different levels of experience that are present in MDM, MDes and Foundation students and also due to the fact that one may come into an ID program in the Spring or the Fall term.

Enterprise ProgramsBusiness realizes much more tangible performance benefits from effective teaming and an absence of effective performance from ineffective teaming. One could argue that teaming and collaboration is taught more effectively in the enterprise because business relies more on effective collaboration and teaming than most traditional educational approaches. There are some specific benefits that we can leverage from the enterprise that can address some of the shortcomings of academic programs.

One, enterprise programs have a

more tangible and tactical focus

on techniques for effective

teaming and collaboration.

Enterprises may be less constrained by dollars than ID but one advantage they have is that instruction is often constrained by the time commitments that employees can dedicate to education. Well-designed and focused education modules on a variety of teaming topics can be leveraged. For example, IBM Learning Services has developed a comprehensive teaming and collaboration field package that is focused on 27 facilitated activities that can each be completed in less than two hours.

Two, the enterprise is more

adept at leveraging technology

for effective collaboration and

remote teaming.

Remote collaboration is a necessity of the enterprise with global development, manufacturing and banking. This collaboration technology, and the insight on how to use it effectively, has rapidly entered the small and medium business market. Adoption by the education community is a logical next step for institutions that want


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The Design Manifesto for the d-school at Stanford.

Pre-Term Orientation at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

to graduate technology literate students. Low cost environments for online synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, project management and audio and visual collaboration all exist now. Low cost providers of this technology include companies such as Macromedia, 37 Signals, Google, Yahoo and many others. Existing theory about how to use remote collaboration effectively can easily be leveraged from enterprises that have global operations and must work collaboratively.

Three, the enterprise is more

adept at accessing and providing

performance feedback.

Talent and performance management are the cornerstone of all successful enterprises and well established methods such as Myers Brigg, the Blake & Mouton Managerial Grid and the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument all represent techniques that could easily and inexpensively be adopted by ID.

In addition, professional business publications and the enterprise have well-developed techniques that can be leveraged to develop better team performance and peer review mechanisms. For example, a group called Performance Consultants has developed a coaching and mentoring program called G.R.O.W that can easily be adapted and developed into a

coaching and advising program at ID. A foundational competencies framework for ID could easily be derived from leadership and growth models that measure competencies at companies such as IBM and GE.

In conclusion, while many academic programs are indeed effective at teaching teaming and collaboration, their methods are not ideal for implementation in ID’s student culture. While business techniques and frameworks are not perfectly suited to ID’s teaming and collaboration needs they represent ID’s best low risk and low cost opportunity to develop an effective curriculum that teaches teaming and collaboration skills to ID students.


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Trustworthiness

Foundational Competencies

Source: IBM

Communication

Taking Ownership

Client Focus

Drive to Achieve

Passion for the Business

Creative Problem Solving

Adaptability

Teamwork &

CollaborationIBMers Value

Dedication to everyclient's success.

Innovation that matters-for our company

and the rest of the world

Trust and personal responsibility

in all relationships.

Coaching to GROW

Source: Sir John Whitmore

GoalsWhat do you want to achieve?- in the session?- in the long runWhat is the desired end state?

AwarenessResponsibility

RealityWhat is the situation?What are the facts?What is the context?Who is involved?

OptionsWhat can you do?What are your alternatives?What else can you do?

WillWhat will you do?When will you do it?Hermann Brain Dominance

Source: Ned Herrman

DStrategize

PersonalizeC

AAnalyze

OrganizeB

HolisticIntuitiveIntegratingSynthesizing

InterpersonalFeeling BasedKinestheticEmotional

OrganizedSequential

PlannedDetailed

LogicalAnalytical

Fact BasedQuantitative

A performance styles assessment model.

A skills competency assessment model

A coaching and feedback model.

Suggested Solution Approach

Our solution approach can leverage some of the validated thinking about teaming and collaboration in the business press and leverage best practices from the enterprise around teaming, collaboration, assessment, feedback, technology and project planning tactics.

The form of delivery for our solution should be in a seminar that can be completed by students and faculty in a two-day period. Ongoing support for the learning should be sustained by monthly lunch and learn teaming workshops, key principle reviews in core ID classes, a persistent repository of teaming and collaboration knowledge on SeeID and via the creation and distribution of a teaming and collaboration toolkit that details the standard operating procedures that ID students are expected to be familiar with to work effectively as student and faculty members at the Institute of Design.

Our solution needs to focus on teaching the following:

1. Assessment We need to understand both the skills and goals of our fellow students. We also need a commonly accessible profile that gives all students insight into how their fellow classmates typically function.

2. Management styles We need to educate students on effective management techniques to use within teams, including both method of application and techniques to use with specific personal styles that our diverse student body utilize.

3. Tactical characteristics of team effectiveness and how to address team dysfunction

We need to teach tactical techniques for getting teams to have shared values and alignment around understanding. We need to give students concrete techniques for addressing communications issues and in leveraging data they will have about fellow students skills, capabilities and interests.

4. Project management We need to teach the fundamentals of project management to team members so they can practice effective time management in identifying tasks and activities that need to be performed collectively versus individually.

5. Technology and remote collaboration We need to educate ID students on a tool set that can enhance their collaboration with students and faculty and understand how to use it most effectively.

6. Giving and receiving feedback We need to teach students how to give and receive feedback, not just after a project is completed but also during the course of an effort. We need to teach techniques and capture data at the conclusion of projects in a format that’s much easier to use than now.

7. Logistics and continuity Students need a persistent playbook so they can easily reference these techniques, in both a physical an online setting. Finally, every student and faculty member needs to participate in this effort in order for it to be effective.

Suggested Solution ComponentsThe following are examples and suggestions for specific resources that could serve as a

foundation for addressing the following learning modules.

Assessment There are a number of recognized frameworks for assessing personality and styles. The simplest and easiest framework for us to leverage would be Myers Briggs6

—which allows insight into a subjects personality styles. A more rigorous, but still affordable model, may be to explore the usage of the Hermann Brain Dominance Assessment7. This framework is used by companies such as IBM and Intuit to access a test subjects ‘whole brain thinking.’ It’s purpose is to raise personal awareness of the test subjects thinking style and the thinking style of others and provides insight into how to work effectively with individuals that have different thinking styles and to enable yourself to think outside of your own preferred style.

In advance of the Fall term ID students could take this assessment online and then have their results communicated to them during the first session of our seminar. The model maps individual preferences around their preferences in analysis, organization, strategy and the need to personalize information.

A tangible way to understand how this information helps us is to understand how personal styles influences how we make decisions. For example, some individuals will naturally be very factual in how they make decisions, which is in fact a cornerstone of systemic design. However, other members of the team may approach the understanding of a solution more from a planning or an emotional context. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know which team members process information in a similar fashion to you versus those that do not? The enterprise finds that these insights are critical in optimizing performance, shouldn’t we?


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Management stylesAn understanding of how our management styles impact our ability to plan, organize, motivate and control and influence our own performance and that of others is a natural extension to leveraging the insights we’ve gained about our peers during assessment work. Many individuals rely on one dominant style that might not be effective in all teaming and collaboration instances.

We’ve all seen this at ID when we encounter the aggressive student that may be more experienced than other students and uses an authoritative style to dominant the opinions and insights of their team. We’ve also probably encountered the MDM student who forgets that they are not a manager at ID, but a student, and persistently use a coercive style that frustrates their team. Finally, we’ve all seen teams that get paralyzed by trying to make every decision democratically.

Techniques to generate awareness of management styles could be leveraged from a group like The Hay Acquisition Company8, which has developed a framework for identifying and employing situation appropriate management styles.

Project managementProject management is an exhaustive subject that needs a rigorous but brief explanation as part of our seminar. In addition, the introduction of some basic time management techniques should be required so that all students can manage their time effectively. Something that becomes evermore critical at ID as the average age of students increases and a larger part of the student population starts going to the school part time.

Two excellent texts that can be provided to students, and briefly covered in the seminar and leveraged extensively after the seminar via our toolkit and persistent messaging are “The Art of Project Management9” by Scott

Berkun and “Getting Things Done10” by David Allen.

Technology and remote collaborationAs the student body at ID continues to work in a more disconnected fashion from the ID campus we need to ensure that we provide a toolset that is easy to use and conducive to the evolving nature of our work.

The areas where this is most important are around both the technology, and how we instruct individuals in its effective use.

Technological considerations include:

• VPN off-campus access to ID servers

• Shared collaborative workspaces, that support threaded discussions, posting of files, chat, calendaring, and notification that can be created, managed and archived by the student

• Access to tools that support asynchronous and synchronous group and individual chatting via text and voice

• The ability to conduct real time remote meetings

• (Future) Video conferencing and audio recording of work sessions.

Operational considerations include:

• Teaching remote team effectiveness

• Establishing common working environments

Much of our technical issues can be resolved by engaging a third party such as 37 Signals11 to support the team-based nature of projects cost effectively via a modest student assessment. Much of our operational considerations can be addressed by leveraging remote collaboration best practices used by organizations such as IBM and other institutions that manage remote and telecommuting workforces.

Giving and receiving feedbackGiving a receiving feedback is a critical part of the learning process that needs to be addressed at two levels. The first level is

around making a set of decisions around how team versus individual performance will be assessed in ALL classes at ID and enforcing that principle and expectation. The second level is around giving students the skills, practice and knowledge to engage in the conducting and receiving of feedback. Examples of existing frameworks that be leverage include mentored coaching models such as the GROW model12 and feedback and evaluation education around effective listening and assessing against a set of performance competencies that ID feels are important. Most important, is that this is done consistently across ID’s classes.

Logistics and continuity Logistics and continuity represent the biggest challenge for this program. The amount of content proposed for this two day seminar could easily fill up a semester long workshop. To mitigate this factor we need to ensure through communications planning that the methods introduced in this seminar are considered standard operating procedures for collaboration at ID and that they are to be practiced in all ID classes.

In addition we must provide the environment that makes the practice of these skills feasible. This means the seminar needs the belief and support of the faculty at ID and that our technical environment and resources support its practice.

Some tangible ways we can accomplish this is by creating a physical toolkit or guide that we give to every student that enters ID that serves as a guide to these principles. We also can make sure that at the start of each team or project focused class that these principles are quickly reviewed. In addition, we can ensure that the principles and methods are persistently hosted in an easy to access environment on SeeID. Finally, we can offer brown-bag refresher workshops on these topics by conducting team-based workshops to allow students and environment to practice these skills and be evaluated.


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Alternative ApproachesThe biggest challenge with teaching a seminar on collaboration and teaming is the volume of material that must be covered to introduce the basic tactics that are required to enable a positive environment where effective teaming can occur.

Alternative approaches to a seminar would be to consider teaching this at a 1.5 credit hour course with a heavier focus on facilitated in class workshops. The seminar class could also be supported with additional short, but mandatory sessions, that occur over the lunch hour, in the same term, or the course could be taught in a more rigorous and extended format during intercession breaks.

In its initial deployment it might

be necessary to conduct the

class in a variety of formats to

introduce these features

effectively to the student body

and inculcate the methods with

ID faculty.

ConclusionIn conclusion we should teach ID students and faculty how to collaborate and team if we want to arm our students with the ability to influence others with the full cannon of design methods we teach at ID.

To enable this, we should have a seminar-based mandatory class that teaches collaboration and teaming skills for team-based projects that will provide techniques and practices that will enhance effectiveness.

But we should be different than courses taught at business schools and design schools like the ‘d-school’ at Stanford or pre-term programs that are offered at Northwestern University. Our instruction should focus on a concise set of activities that is specifically focused on the cultural

aspects that impact global teams and the issues that are important for cross-disciplinary teams that are required for breakthrough innovation.

Our focus should be on

exposing the entire student

body and faculty to these

processes.

Our seminar will solves teaming problems by teaching students and faculty how to determine when a team-based project is appropriate, what type of team to use, the skills required for that team, how to collaborate, give feedback and effectively set goals.


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Chris BernardMaster of Design Methods , 2006

[email protected]

Appendix

Teaming ToolkitThe teaming toolkit is an asset that should be given to all students that complete the teaming and collaboration seminar at ID.

It should be comprised of the following items:

A bound book that lists the bios of everyone that is in the teaming class.

A physical hard copy of the students Hermann Brain Dominance Inventory.

A flip book that serves as a quick reference guide for the following topics.

• Understanding whole brain thinking

• Understanding emotional intelligence

• Understanding cultural intelligence

• Understanding management styles

• Understanding collaboration types

• Understanding team effectiveness

• Understanding and resolving team dysfunction

• Understanding project management

• Understanding time management

• Understanding individual and performance evaluation

• Understanding how to give and receive feedback

Teaming SiteIn order to influence effective teaming at the Institute of Design we’ll need to ensure that the principles and practices introduced in the seminar persist physically and virtually at ID.

This is best accomplished with a collaboratively focused site that could be derived from a SeeID Course Structure or via a third party blogging solution from Open Type or 37 Signals.

The persistent site should contain all course materials and additional subject matter and work plans that can be downloaded to help with team effectiveness. These items may include planning and delivery templates,

forums to solicit expertise, and group-based and self-paced learning modules that can be used by students.

This solution should be live and in production in advance of the first teaming and collaboration seminar.

Communications and Implementation PlanMaking such a large change and commitment in ID will be challenging. If we presume the eventual goal is to have all faculty and students versed in the teaming and collaboration principles that will be taught we need to find away to address the following:

• Announcement of the solution and it’s mandatory nature

• Updating of marketing materials

• Updating of advising methods for all students

• Training of all full-time faculty

• Training of all adjunct-faculty

• Training of all new MDM, MDes and Foundation Students

• Accommodations for existing students to take advantage of the program

The following rollout plan is suggested.

• Announce focus on teaming and collaboration in late summer email to student body

• Focus only on incoming students for fall 2006 term before classes begin

• Offer seminar over intercession for existing students

• Offer seminar before Spring 07 term in January

• Begin normal session offering in Fall of 07

• Consider putting full-time faculty through the course in advance of incoming students

• Schedule addition training (perhaps by breaking up in parts) for all adjunct faculty


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Endnotes


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1 Clement Mok, 2003 “Time for Change: What the Future Requires of the Design Profession,” Communications Arts, (May)

2 Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, Rakesh Bordia 2005, "Money Isn’t Everything," Strategy+Busi-ness, (Winter): 54-55.

3 Jay Doblin, 1987, "A Short, Grandiose Theory of Design," STA Design Journal, Analysis and Intui-tion, 1–7.

4 Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith, 1993, The Wisdom of Teams, Harvard Business School Press, 14.

5 Patrick Lencioni, 2002, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Jossey-Bass, 188.

6 Myers Brigg Type Indicator, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs (May. 8, 2006).

7 Ned Herrman, 1996, The Whole Brain Business Book, McGraw Hill, 23.

8 Funny on a Horse: A Brief Guide to the Ins and Outs of Successful Leadership.,http://www.haygroup.co.uk/HGS/Downloads/Leadership_Booklet.pdf (April 1, 2006)

9 Scott Berkun, 2005, The Art of Project Man-agement, O’Reilly, 39.

10 David Allen, 2001, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Penguin Books. 85.

11 www.37signals.com

12 http://www.performanceconsultants.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs

http://www.haygroup.co.uk/HGS/Downloads/Leadership_Booklet.pdf




http://www.37signals.com

http://www.37signals.com

http://www.performanceconsultants.co.uk

http://www.performanceconsultants.co.uk

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