(RGB Group: members
including Alice, Fanny, Yoyo)
We
have developed two different scripts about two types of kitchenware products
from two exercises, as below.
Product pitch 1: "A type of multi-functional pot that could fry, boil, steam and stew
food in a short time. This product is made especially for young white collars,
and will be launched to market in 2nd quarter of 2015." This is an
ordinary and common pot we could see often. It’s not
special, as there are many similar products existing in the market. In
other words, it failed to differentiate itself from others. So, it’s far from a
remarkable pitch.
Product pitch 2: "The cheap, small size, easily washing and storing
auto-cutting-fish-tool will not only benefit those who working in canteen and
restaurant, it also enables people like you to cook delicious spicy
shui-zhu-yu-pian at home easily." This is a unique kitchenware we invented. As
we did research online, there is no similar product in the market. It is a tool
widely needed by many people, and could help them slice fish fast and easily.
So, we think it’s a more remarkable pitch than the first one.
We
organized two exercises within same time period of 30 minutes. But why have such big differences? By
reviewing how we went through our discussions, we found the things that are not
helpful in producing the first pitch.
In
exercise 1, Fanny who acted as the supervisor controlled discussion from the
beginning in a negative way. Firstly, she started the meeting saying like “As your
supervisor, I NEED to present a new pitch to boss for launching a new
kitchenware by end of first quarter of 2015. Do you have any ideas? Yoyo, start
with you first”. Then Yoyo was unprepared and replied reluctantly like “I think
to have a good pot is important for housewives, a good pot that can cook in
many different ways”. Then Yoyo stopped with silence. Fanny turned to other
teammate Alice to seek her opinion, by saying like “So what’s your opinion,
Alice? Do you agree with Yoyo?” Alice said she agreed with Yoyo but she specified
the pot should target at young white collars, who didn’t have much time to
cook. Fanny pointed out that was a good idea, but she challenged Alice how she
would define the target group as young white collars, and how she should set
the price. Yoyo kept silence so the discussion was limited to other members
only. In the review section later on, Yoyo said that she was reluctant to share
ideas, for she thought it was supervisor’s work to do the present.
Secondly,
Fanny’s approach to manage the meeting inhibited active engagement of team members.
According to principles settled for Exercise 1, every member has to get Fanny’s
approval before they speak up. And every opinion would be challenged by her.
That obviously prohibited members’ participation in discussion. With low
participation, few ideas with high quality were brought up, which caused the
low quality of the final first pitch.
While
by reviewing exercise 2, we also defined good things that were helpful in
producing the 2nd pitch. According to the principles of exercise 2, the
team will go to present the pitch to bosses and everyone is equal to
communicate their ideas, so Fanny opened the meeting saying like “We need to
propose a new kitchenware product to our bosses by end of 1st
quarter. Let’s work together to get some good idea, and get it approved by our
bosses”. That short opening aroused different reactions fast, with one member
asked “what do we have currently in our kitchen?” and the other asked “what do
we lack in our kitchen?” Then the team made a hot discussion and brought up
abundant ideas. We came up rich ideas to solve pain-points of those who cook in
kitchen. For example, we thought about making a new tool to peel the onion
easily, and a new tool to mash the garlic without flying everywhere in kitchen.
But finally, we decided to make an auto-cutting-fish-tool that would facilitate
people to cook dishes like shui-zhu-yu-pian. Though we had many different
opinions, there was no conflict or quarrel. And it seemed every member was just
eager to contribute to create a pitch that could be approved by boss. Later, we
judged that such free communication climate ensured full participation of team and
finally brought up a remarkable pitch.
By reviewing concepts from collaboration course,
we further found that the
teamwork, trust and creativity played very important roles in producing the 2nd
pitch. We will discuss more in following part of this paper.
Just as Ed Catmull mentioned, Creativity
involves a large number of people from different disciplines working
effectively together to solve a great many problems. (Ed,
2008). That means, only effective teamwork could unleash
binds to people’s creativity. However,
what is teamwork? According to Eclipse
Research Consultants’ study of 2003, there are 6 key aspects of effective
teamwork. They are Team identity, shared vision, communication, collaboration
and participation, issue negotiation and resolution, reflection and
self-assessment (Eclipse Research Consultants,
2004). They also created a matrix with 5 different levels of practice of
teamwork for each aspect. We find that in exercise 1, we did so bad that we
could only rank the lowest level for every aspect. For example, as a team, we
lacked Team Identity and Shared Vision, because we had team member showed
reluctance to share ideas and avoid being involved into communication.
Why
this happened? Because there was no trust built among team members. “Trust is the act of placing yourself in the vulnerable
position of relying on others to treat you in a fair, supportive, honest way.” (Frank,
2015) Yet, we were put in a stressful climate that we could not even laugh.
We had to check in with the supervisor when we had an idea to speak. What’s
worse, no matter what idea we offered, we would be challenged and criticized by
the supervisor. We lacked of security
and so we chose not to express too much to avoid being challenged. So, we
can see that without trust as team’s base, there was bad teamwork demonstrated,
and not to mention there could be any creative ideas being generated in exercise
1.
While,
things got be better in exercises 2. We can rank the highest level for every
aspect within the matrix since we did so well. By stating and emphasizing “WE
NEED to propose a new product to our bosses”, the team identity and shared
vision were created. To achieve this common
goal, all team members were moving towards the same direction. Unlike in exercise 1, team members were encouraged to share their ideas openly
and fully with others, and no need worrying about being criticized. Meanwhile, everyone’s
opinions were fully considered in the team. Team members became more creative
under such circumstance, for we noticed that one idea raised by one member soon
aroused one more idea from another team member. And as more ideas generated, more likely the
team would reach an agreeable result. That kind of small achievement of team finally reinforced confidence of
the team, leading its members believing in that “We can do it together”,
and “We are a great team, each of us is important to the team and can make
contribution to it”. Once team members
put trust on each other, they would be more willing to share their ideas and
receive opinions from others, thus
being more collaborating with each other. It then ensured a good environment for more creativity; And for
better issue negotiation and resolution.
Overall,
by finishing the two exercises mentioned as above, we concluded from our
observations that trust is a basis of good teamwork, which guarantee high
creativity in a team; meanwhile, good teamwork helps to reinforce
trust and also helps to generate creativity.
References
1. Ed
Catmull, (2008). Week 5. How Pixar
Fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business Review
2. Eclipse
Research Consultants, (2004). Effective
Teamwork: A Best Practice Guide for the Construction Industry. Constructing
Excellence
3. Frank,
(2015). Week 3 Lecture Trust in
Collaborations.
I agree with this group's conclusion: trust helps team work, and effective team work promote team members trust in turn. So a good team shall have a good leader who is willing to trust members, encourage team member to work free, think creatively etc.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
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ReplyDeleteDear Group (6) RGB
ReplyDeleteIt’s teacher Frank here. I have a good learning from reading your group’s blog on reflecting on your group innovation processes. I especially appreciate your team introduction where you clearly indicates the plan and strategy of reflective inquiry: to examine how and why the two decision contexts lead to two different group performance outcomes that compared especially marked in the level of creativity in the products of the group innovation processes. I also appreciate the conceptS behind your team name.
Nice use of visuals and graphics. I like the clarity and coherence your group arrives at in writing with clear subsections. I especially appreciate your group’s wrestling with the group and individual experience of the group innovation processes in the two decision contexts WITH PRIMARY DATA OF YOUR OWN CREATION DURING YOUR OWN GROUP PROCESSES. You recalled immediate individual emotional reaction and perception changes in response to changing group processes in reaction to decision contexts by having done good documentation prior, and applying them in the points of the argument development and extension in furthering your group reflection.
The group has done nice analyses and reflection on your group innovation processes and individual experiences in the group by examining the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience in separate decision contexts? How do feelings and perceptions relate to each other? What do you do when they are in contradiction? How do the different decision contexts create anticipation and expectation of your roles that affect the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience? What might this experience mean in the context of your course?
I recommend you work on having a nice introduction that situates your analysis and your readers well about the issues and thesis statement you intend to address and the concluding insight or culminating lesson learned about the group process of the innovation process that sums, typifies, extends your thesis statement in the introduction. Your introduction is nice orientation for the readers, but there is no thesis statement yet: a thesis statement here based on the information given in your analysis would be a concise, coherent statement that describes the roles would include the roles teamwork, trust, and creativity play separately in two decision contexts in group innovation processes that lead them to different group performance differentiated by the level of creativity. If your thesis statement is about group performance outcomes differentiated on the level of creativity, then your follow up group reflection should primarily focus on the impacts of decision contexts as mediated by group processes and teamwork in engaging in the individuals involved.
This is a pretty nice first draft, though there is still room for improvement. Please adopt suggestions as you see fit. Please post a separate new post of this assignment, and keep the old post intact with comments from me and others. This way it shows your revision effort and gets you bonus points. Enjoy writing and learning!
Also, this is not meant to be a blog comment as a peer; rather, it's written as recommendations for improvement. So, please do not emulate my style in making blog comments on each other's blogs. Please see Trello cards on tips on making constructive comments. Thanks. Best, Frank
FYI, we have uploaded a Revised version in blog, pls kindly check it. Thank you for your comments and suggestion.
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ReplyDeleteORIGINALITY AND AESTHETICS:
ReplyDeletePictures speak more than words, in your paper; you can insert pictures that can explain your thinking more clearly to the content. Otherwise, pictures are useless in helping you reduce the words if they don’t have a point or relate to the final concluding point.
Reflection is learning to learn from experience. Reflection is a skill, more accurately a cluster of skills, involving observation, asking questions, and putting facts, ideas, and experiences together to add new meaning to them all. Learning to learn in this way, and instilling the practice as a habit, can allow students to learn meaningful future experiences based on the roles they assume in a group experiential exercise or counterfactual, or pre-factual simulation. Reflection is thinking for an extended period by linking recent experiences to earlier ones or to other knowledge-based assumptions, to promote a more complex and interrelated arguments, insights, innovations, positions, understanding, or problem solving.
Comparing and contrasting the outcomes and group processes of two scenarios are probably most important in making sophisticated arguments that are broad and expansive in implications in theory and practice. You can engage in how and why new ideas such as brainstorming or stages of group development challenge what you already know, help you approach, assess, and analyze your group innovation processes differently that lead the group process as well as group outcomes differentiated on the level of creativity in both process and group outcomes.
INSIGHT AND PROVOCATION:
ReplyDeleteIn addition to describing your activities that stem from your group innovation processes, you can also examine how the decision context affects how the various group roles are manifested and how different roles in a group relate and interact with each other. I like how your play up the conceptual importance of different individual roles in groups and their effects on the process and outcomes. It’s a little underdeveloped at the moment; you can extend your arguments.
You need to engage in critical reflection about the dynamics of the group processes itself and the feelings and perceptions evoked at the individual and group level while engaging innovation two different decisions which constrain and channel both group and individual behaviors. In engage in critical reflection of group processes, one can identify what helped and what hindered the quality of learning and whether certain behaviors had a positive or negative effect. Team members can reflect on both the processes and products of group work by asking additional group reflection on questions such as these in addition: What actions did you engage in most and least as an individual in a group, and how do these actions relate or not relate to your group roles? What actions would have helped the group work more effectively? Decide on a personal goal to increase your effectiveness and share it with the other group members” (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1998).
Reflection on group processes is the process by which participants mentally and emotionally synthesize direct group processes with their attendant individual experiences, group processes and outcomes. Reflection is important for both individuals and in groups, as reflection helps internalize the lessons learned and connects those lessons to personal choices and a basic discussion that addresses the progressively sophisticated inquiry that addresses what? so what? now what? The reflective inquiry continually builds insights on prior insights. Analysis of “what” questions is descriptive observation that deals with facts, what happened, with whom; it provides substance of group interaction and later group reflection. Analysis of “so what” questions shifts from descriptive to interpretive, from meaning of experience for each participant to feelings involved, lessons learned and addresses how and why they occur? Analysis of “now what” questions interprets Contextual nature of this situation's place in the big picture, applies lessons learned/insights gained to new situations, and set future goals, creating an action plan.
How would you explain what you just experienced in your group processes in different contexts to someone else? Would you change the way you describe and explain depend on who the individual is? What about the individual’s feature and characteristics encourage you to communicate differently?
SUPPORT AND EVIDENCE:
ReplyDeleteIn this part, you have applied and integrated a nice set of systemic and complex concepts on team work, innovation, and collaboration to extend and prove your positions via developing arguments that build on one prior progressively. Many nice insights are made throughout the analysis, but they are not building on each other to make more sophisticated arguments that can lead to a culminating final concluding point that impacts and influences your reader’s perception about certain issues, or position on moral debates, or even future decision going forward. Aim bigger; make greater impact on your readers.
As Donald Schon has demonstrated, reflective practitioners must know how to frame a question from a group dialogue, What Is it that the group wants to know but does not have the background and information to come up with a reasonably correct answer? This is the facilitator's and commentators main task in working with the group to frame out the future direction of learning for the group. This becomes the crucial part of the process otherwise the group is left to wander aimlessly in a sea of unrelated incidents or facts. It’s Schon’s famous in sight in his renounced book called “Reflective Practitioner”: “Through reflection, practitioners can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialized practice, and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness which he may allow himself to experience.” How does good teamwork influence success in innovation activities when time and resources are limited? As everyone had their own point of view, many different ideas could be produced in a group. How the energy of group participation influences and encourages other team members to feel more energetic about contributing something.
You can provide alternative interpretations or different perspectives on what you have read in your course or what you have done in your group process that help you engage in the group processes to arrive at better outcomes in activities such as problem solving, coordination, communication, allocation of resource, negotiation, etc.
You can additionally draw come comparisons and connections between what your are learning in this class during lectures or during the readings to your prior knowledge and experience; your prior assumptions and preconceptions; what you know from other courses or disciplines. Critical, reflective thinkers must have the ability to frame questions. Teachers are in the business of framing questions when they decide what they are going to teach. They have framed out the lesson for that day.
MASTERY AND UNDERSTANDING:
ReplyDeleteBecoming an expert in reflecting allows one to derive the right lessons from experience. In addition, reflective expertise enhances an awareness of changes in oneself under changing contexts. Meeting with group mates provides the opportunity to share successes and failures, to call on the help and advice of others, and to gain support, recognition, and a sense of belonging to some greater effort. It also develops a sense of ownership of the project, and a commitment to its success. Furthermore, reflective expertise allows one to take charge of life.
Being able to learn from experience gives us the power to influence the meaning and impact of things that we do or that happen to us. It also increases our capacity to influence subsequent experiences. It puts us in charge. It does this by providing a clearer understanding of the world, a heightened sense of who we are and can be, and an increased capacity and inclination to empower others. How do the individuals in your team find reflexive expertise enhances an awareness of changes in oneself under changing contexts.
Essential to any reflective practices in reflective moments in groups or other collaborative settings is an understanding of the difference between dialogue and discussion. When two people are having a discussion neither person hears or cares about the other person's responses. They simply state their ideas over and over again without recognizing the validity of the other persons argument. This is a technique (broken record) used in assertiveness training but is not appropriate for a learning situation. What is needed in verbal reflection sessions is a dialogue. In dialogue, people recognize and report their responses to one another. Each person learns from another. The process of interacting stimulates understanding if not always agreement.
You can provide alternative interpretations or different perspectives on what you have read in your course or what you have done in your group process that help you engage in the group innovation processes to arrive at better outcomes in activities such as problem solving, coordination, communication, allocation of resource, negotiation, etc. Collaborative practices and projects is a multifaceted and potentially challenging situation that encourages students to frame their own questions, reframe perspectives, and adopt alternative metaphors in examining social phenomena. Clearly the questions a student poses about collaborative practices such as group innovation processes are usually much more process-oriented, dynamic, and complex than are correct short answers to textbook questions. Group reflection focuses on how questions arise. This always requires greater synthesis and creativity than does simple answers.
You can additionally draw come comparisons and connections between what your are learning in this class during lectures or during the readings to your prior knowledge and experience; your prior assumptions and preconceptions; what you know from other courses or disciplines. Critical, reflective thinkers must have the ability to frame questions. Teachers are in the business of framing questions when they decide what they are going to teach. They have framed out the lesson for that day.
CLARITY AND COHERENCE:
ReplyDeleteAs Donald Schon has demonstrated, reflective practitioners must know how to frame a question from a group dialogue, What Is it that the group wants to know but does not have the background and information to come up with a reasonably correct answer? This is the facilitator's and commentator’s main task in working with the group to frame out the future direction of learning for the group. This becomes the crucial part of the process otherwise the group is left to wander aimlessly in a sea of unrelated incidents or facts.
It’s Schon’s famous in sight in his renounced book called “Reflective Practitioner”: “Through reflection, practitioners can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialized practice, and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness which he may allow himself to experience.”
Your blog lacks one culminating insight or classy, observant conclusion to help readers reflect of the whole paper, and that concluding insight can be on the one recommendation, insight, or observation of your own group’s innovation process and practice as the individuals experience and the group experience together through active engagement of dialogues, debates, negotiation, brainstorming, etc. Show, rather than tell. Use primary data such as the specific emotional responses or a specific dialogue that reframes and generates new metaphors at a particular specific relevant group process that is especially informative of group innovation. What is it that the group wants to know but does not have the background and information to come up with a reasonably correct answer?
The group has done an honest and direct group level reflection on the level of competency in engaging with this group level reflection practice. The group further suggests some extenuating reasons for some potential shortcoming in group process and outcome functions. The group also demonstrates its ability to reflect on feedback in a constructive way: how to use feedback for further development by open innovation practice through sharing and interactions within preferred audience and networks.
I like the clear descriptions of what happened in your exercises. They were very vivid. And also, you use the game illustrations to interprete trust is very useful because it would be very easy for us to have empathy on that individual. But I think in someway, if you could put some more detailed principle descriptions( the number1,2,3) to visualize different senarios, it would be better for us to read. Your evidence is abundant.
ReplyDeleteThe lovely photo of your team posted at the blog’s beginning that can show you all are high collaborative, every one smiles so nice and harmony! I totally agree what your group said TRUST is very important. As I believe if people work together lack of trust between them, it most likely fails to achieve the goal or even they may ruin the relationship easily from getting the misunderstanding situation.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, I think your team quite emphasizes the aspect of Trust, so if your team can give more analysis or elaboration on both Teamwork and Creativity, it could be enriching your blog content.