systems_review_takeaways

index.md

#Summary, Take Aways, and Further Reading

Below is a systems review for the topic of "Decision making processes", specifically the issue of balancing 'collaboration vs. too many cooks'. A survey was distributed on this topic, which can be found here

Survey Summary

Take Aways: Two main themes

1. Small Teams vs Large Teams

2. Synchronous vs Asynchronous Discussions

Further Reading: Small Teams vs Large Teams

Small Teams Pros (Large Team Cons)

• Meets the Andy Grove (Former Intel CEO) Criteria of 'Lowest Compentent Level'

  "Decisions should be made at the lowest competent level by someone with both detailed technical understanding and past experiences, both good and bad, from different implementation approaches. When no one has both, create a composite opinion from the people available."

• Reduces the number of links between decision makers that have to be managed

  "Another fallacy is that bigger teams are better than small ones because they have more resources to draw upon. A colleague and I once did some research showing that as a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate. It’s managing the links between members that gets teams into trouble. My rule of thumb is no double digits."

• Reduces the Ringelmann Effect

  "This effect, discovered by French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann (1861–1931), illustrates the inverse relationship that exists between the size of a group and the magnitude of group members’ individual contribution to the completion of a task. While studying the relationship between process loss (i.e., reductions in performance effectiveness or efficiency) and group productivity, Ringelmann (1913) found that having group members work together on a task (e.g., pulling a rope) actually results in significantly less effort than when individual members are acting alone."

Large Team Pros(Small Team Cons)

• Small teams have less deviants

  "Every team needs a deviant, someone who can help the team by challenging the tendency to want too much homogeneity, which can stifle creativity and learning. Deviants are the ones who stand back and say, “Well, wait a minute, why are we even doing this at all? What if we looked at the thing backwards or turned it inside out?” That’s when people say, “Oh, no, no, no, that’s ridiculous,” and so the discussion about what’s ridiculous comes up. Unlike the CFO I mentioned before, who derailed the team by shutting down discussions, the deviant opens up more ideas, and that gets you a lot more originality."

• Reduces potential for 'Cockpit Culture'

  "Gladwell argued that in Colombia, as in Korea, cultural norms tended to dictate that people avoid directly questioning authority—in this case, the authority of controllers who had asked the Avianca plane to keep holding."

• Kohler Effect in Conjunctive Tasks

  "No one wants to be the weakest link of any group. As a result, weaker individuals in the group respond to this by expending more effort than they would had they been working alone. This is known as the Köhler effect, where performance gains are seen in weaker individuals who are striving to keep up with the accomplishments of other group members."

• Potentially increases sense of purpose

  'During a visit to the NASA space center in 1962, President John F. Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said, "Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?"

  "Well, Mr. President," the janitor responded, "I'm helping put a man on the moon." '

Further Reading: Synchronous vs Asynchronous Discussions

Asynchronous Pros (Synchronous Cons)

• Meetings are a medium of work...or, 'That meeting could have been an email'

  "People’s time is highly valuable so all meetings should be purposeful and well executed according to its type. Process-oriented meetings are held regularly to process substantive matters in batches, and come in three sub-types: First, one-on-one meetings between one manager and one staff member, are used to exchange information, discuss “thorny” issues, uncover problems and review important but not urgent items. Second, there are staff meetings among a manager and team for structured free discussion, sharing of different points of view, and decision making. Managers here balance being leader, observer, expediter, questioner and decision-maker — but avoid lecturing or weighing in too soon or too heavily to bias decisions that should be owned by the team. Third, there are operational reviews, where one organization presents to others to share information and receive questions and feedback."

• Allows individuals to allocate their most precious resource, attention, on their own terms

  'Basecamp's focus on asynchronous communication stems from the leadership's philosophical stance that "a person's most precious resource is their attention." Jason spoke at length about how Basecamp intentionally keeps interruptions to a minimum through carefully-considered processes, software features, and design decisions.'

• Automatically creates an employee 'handbook' or meeting notes

  '"I said 'Read the last few weeks of these channels,'" Butterfield says. "In an email-based organization, she would start with an empty inbox. But instead, she has the history of everything. She can search over all that, she can scroll back, she can see how people interact with each other. Statements that people made, or discussions that happened, or links that got posted, or files that got exchanged. Who knows the answers to what kinds of questions. Who really makes the decisions."'

Synchronous Pros (Asynchronous Cons)

• No, that meeting could NOT have been an email

  'Researchers asked participants to rate the intelligence of two people they interviewed, with half of the participants giving the interview over email and the other half over the phone. Before the interviews, all participants were given fictional bios of the interviewees that leveraged racial and social stereotypes...

  ...The answers each interviewee gave were the same...

  ...the participants who used email rated the double-majoring interviewee as more intelligent than the ex-football player. However, participants in the telephone condition rated the two interviewees as equally smart.

  These findings suggest that, when we interact via email with someone we don’t know well, we overly emphasize whatever information we have to replace the missing contextual information. This suggests that when we receive an email from a little-known colleague, we might overly rely on what little we know, such as where people are from or what department they work in, to judge them (with mostly faulty verdicts).'

• Async can create thinking a line at a time rather than a thought at a time

  'Because chat is presented one line at a time, complete thoughts have to unfold one line-at-a-time. But since people can jump in any time before you’ve had a chance to fully present yourself, making a point can become really frustrating really quickly'

• Synchronous communication forces decision-making

  '“I find that many executives avoid conversation because they may be forced to make a decision or express an opinion,” said one respondent. “If they can keep communications within e-mail, they can continually pass the buck around or back without having to commit. Management by failure to act may be the new favored process.”'