The Discipline Of Teams

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Pages: 15

RSM100 Required Readings Summaries
Nov. 23 - The Discipline of Teams * Teams and good performance are inseparable * Teamwork represent a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others * Group work is NOT same as team * Working-group focuses on individual goals * strong, clearly focused leader * group’s purpose = organizational mission * individual work product * efficient meetings * measured by influence on others (ex. financial performance) * discusses, decides, delegates * Teams require both individual and mutual accountability * Shared leadership roles * Specific team purpose that differs from mission

* Our minds are “opposable” * It can hold 2 conflicting ideas in constructive tension, and use the tension to come up with a more superior idea * “First-rate intelligence” – F. Scott Fitzgerald * “Multiple-working hypotheses” – Thomas Chamberlin
Integrative Thinking shows a way past the limits of “either/or”. It allows us to integrate one advantage without sacrificing the other Ex. Four Seasons a hotel with the intimacy of the original motor inn yet the amenities of a large conventional hotel

Nov. 2 #1 – Becoming an Integrative Thinker
The 4 Steps of Decision-making: 1) Salience a. What do we choose to pay attention to? What features are relevant to our system? 2) Causality b. How do we make sense of what we see? What sorts of relations do we believe exist between the various pieces of the puzzle? 3) Architecture c. Model is being constructed 4) Resolution d. What is our decision?
Everyone builds their understanding of the world in similar manners through mental models, thus creating “clashing realities”. 2 ways to avoid clashing models: 1) Avoid – attempt to crush other models, believing that they do not exist; avoid conflict 2) Seek out and leverage model crash – enjoys tension; leads to insights of great insight and resolutions
3 elements of forming personal knowledge system: 1)