When it is just a nail, all you need is a hammer and if your trying to guess the weight of a cow, the collective wisdom of a team is likely to be more accurate. It’s true, diversity does trump ability, but not always! A more sophisticated considered approach to identifying our performance problems will help us to deploy the correct solution to addressing it.
Tags: Collective Wisdom; T-Skills in Teams; Transformational Behaviour; Perspectives; Cognitive Load Theory; Decision Making Process; The Power of Questions; Group Think; Dynamic Team Performance; Normal Accident Theory; Knowledge; Heuristics
When deciding on a course of action, identifying a performance problem or identifying an appropriate solution to solve it, we are encouraged to be collaborative and consultative throughout. Large organisations, with ‘meta teams’ and tightly integrated systems and ways of working no doubt need this approach, because of the complexity involved. Even if we consider the Multi-Disciplinary Performance Support Team, addressing athlete injuries, trying to reduce them, identifying performance deficits or gaps and planning and programming to bridge them, we can see that there is ‘complexity and coupling’ that again direct us to a more collaborative approach.
Is collaboration and consultation however, always the best solution? In some cases, not likely. At times, it is easier and faster to just get the task done. An important consideration when deciding whether to tap into the team or go with an individual’s ability, is in identifying whether the problem is Wicked (VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) or tame. This highlights the need for some form of process that enables the team to be able to establish WHAT it’s going after and WHY. Once this process is embedded it may perhaps be easier to decide what bits of your performance approach need an individuals ability and when it is better to tap into multiple abilities or cognitive diversity.
So what are our individual abilities?:
- Heuristics – cognitive shortcuts that are born out of expertise or passed down/on from others
- Mental Models – How individuals make sense of the world and perceive reality
- Tools – Specialist expertise and solutions we can apply
- Knowledge – Our declarative, procedural, professional and propositional knowledge structures
- Perspectives – The way we look at ‘a reality’ from our stand point
There are threats and risks to success when relying on one individuals ability – think the ‘all knowing leader’ or the ‘most important and know it all’ practitioner. When you have one person driving the approach or a loud and persuasive voice it can lead to rapid funnelling of options and narrowing on task focus that alienates the teams, creates blind spots and essentially delivers a sub optimal outcome. Similarly though, in the team, there are the pitfalls of councils, endless debate, talking shops and passivity that drive a culture of indecision, politics and group think. When the solution is obvious and the task simple, it doesn’t require a great amount cognitive diversity because it can be easily addressed.
When you’re dealing with VUCA, you need to recognise this and engage the team. You don’t need a super computers processing power to solve simple math but it sure is helpful when querying large complex data sets with multiple algorithms in very short time periods.
The challenge is how we create ‘processes’ that enable us to access cognitive diversity when required Vs an individual practitioners ability. It probably isn’t good enough to assume that either approach is optimal and perhaps we should apply some thought to this. The organisational climate/culture, leaders and teams will play a significant role in walking the tight rope between empowering individuals and granting autonomy which can lead to large egos, loud voices, over simplifying complex problems and seeing every problem through the same lens (Hammer/Nail) whilst balancing the need for cognitive diversity and the team, which can make things overly complex, incoherent, lack clarity, struggle to deliver outcomes, suffer from group think and create significant political unrest if not aligned against clear task focus…
So how do we tap into the individuals ability whilst maximising cognitive diversity? Guessing the weight of a cow is a difficult task, but not if you 100 dairy farmers informing you. Rehabbing an injury or getting an athlete stronger is difficult, but not if you have expert practitioners working together with some deliberate processes to support this.