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New research on management teams from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including team diversity and knowledge boundaries, how to improve the performance of temporary teams, and overcoming the challenge of teams separated by geography and language.
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Make Your Employees Feel Psychologically Safe

by Martha Lagace

To do their best work, people need to feel secure and safe in their workplace. In a new book, Amy C. Edmondson details how companies can develop psychological safety. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

How 'Teaming' Saved 33 Lives in the Chilean Mining Disaster

by Amy C. Edmondson

Teams composed of people from across expertise areas can create solutions beyond what any one agency can deliver, says Amy Edmondson. Just ask several dozen Chilean workers rescued from a mine collapse. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Leading a Team to the Top of Mount Everest

Re: Amy C. Edmondson

In a podcast, Amy Edmondson describes how students learn about team communication and decision making by making a simulated climb up Mount Everest. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Unpacking Team Diversity: An Integrative Multi-Level Model of Cross-Boundary Teaming

by Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

In a growing number of cases, cross-boundary teams span organizational boundaries, not just functional ones. This paper explores how newly formed temporary groups may be able to develop rapidly into high-performance teams. The authors integrate research streams on team diversity and knowledge boundaries, and present a framework that considers the kinds of specific knowledge boundaries that must be spanned to achieve high-level, cross-boundary teaming.

Master the One-on-One Meeting

by Julia B. Austin

The one-on-one meeting between supervisor and staff is an invaluable tool for managing, but requires much attention to detail. Julia B. Austin explains best practices for getting the most out of the 1:1. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The Problem with Productivity of Multi-Ethnic Teams

by Michael Blanding

Ethnically diverse teams can be less productive than more homogenous teams, according to research in Kenya by Vincent Pons. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Build 'Scaffolds' to Improve Performance of Temporary Teams

by Roberta Holland

Many critical tasks are performed by teams created on the fly, but lack of stability can hinder their performance. Amy Edmondson and Melissa Valentine use the idea of scaffolds to produce greater collaboration and efficiency on temporary teams. Open for comment; 9 Comment(s) posted.

The Challenges and Enhancing Opportunities of Global Project Management: Evidence from Chinese and Dutch Cross-Cultural Project Management

by Ying Zhang, Christopher Marquis, Sergey Filippov, Henk-Jan Haasnoot & Martijn van der Steen

In a study of how project management is handled cross-culturally, the authors conducted observations and interviews with Chinese and Dutch managers in a variety of industries from food to engineering. Focusing on three key elements—process, people, and technology—the authors found that people of two seemingly opposite cultures are able to work together in a project-based environment to complement each other and reap mutual benefits for a win-win result. These findings will significantly help managers who work on cross-cultural projects in a global economy. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

FIELD Trip: Conquering the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

by Michael Blanding

Forget what you remember about school field trips. Harvard Business School is in its fourth year of a bold innovation that ships all first-year students on global excursions. FIELD leaders Alan MacCormack and Tony Mayo describe lessons learned so far. Open for comment; 6 Comment(s) posted.

Leading Innovation is the Art of Creating ‘Collective Genius’

by Kim Girard

As Linda Hill sees it, innovation requires its own brand of leadership. The coauthor of the new book Collective Genius discusses what's been learned from 16 of the best business innovators. Open for comment; 4 Comment(s) posted.

Book Excerpt: ‘Collective Genius’

by Linda Hill

Leaders of innovation teams are successful when they collaborate, engage in discovery-driven learning, and make integrative decisions. Read an excerpt from the book Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, by Linda Hill and coauthors. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces

by Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein & David Lazer

How can managers create organizations that bring people together to successfully solve problems? One increasingly popular managerial tactic to improve problem-solving performance is to increase the connectedness, or what academics call clustering, of the organization. Using everything from transparent, open offices to open social collaboration platforms, connecting everyone and everything, the theory goes, will produce better solutions. True or false? In the lab, the authors randomly assigned individuals to 70 sixteen-person organizations—some more clustered than others—and asked each organization to solve a complex problem: divine the who, what, where, and when of an impending terrorist attack (akin to the famous Clue® whodunit game). They did so using a platform not unlike real intelligence problem-solving environments: Through their computers, individuals could search for information, share information with each other, and share theories about the solutions, while the platform tracked all behavior. The results? Connectedness had different effects on the "facts" and "figuring" stages of problem solving. Search for information (facts) was, indeed, more efficient the more connected the organization. But performance in interpreting the information (figuring) to develop solutions was undermined by too much connectedness. The same connections that helped individuals coordinate their search for information also encouraged individuals to reach consensus on less-than-perfect solutions, making connectedness a true double-edged sword. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for both theory and practice in our increasingly connected 'small world' and suggest directions for future research. Key concepts include: Problem solving requires two important and complementary forms of search: searching for information (for the facts that may be important pieces of the puzzle) and searching for solutions (for theories that combine puzzle pieces into an answer). The same network structure can promote or inhibit knowledge diversity, depending on whether that knowledge consists of information, or interpretations of information. 'Good' communication structures may only be good for parts of the process of collective problem solving: structures that are good now may be bad later. Organizations might be wise to adopt different communications structures for different phases of collective problem solving. Rather than allow the march of technology to dictate organizational performance, it is possible to imagine how technology could be harnessed to achieve different performance goals. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Language Wars Divide Global Companies

by Kim Girard

An increasing number of global firms adopt a primary language for business operations—usually English. The problem: The practice can surface dormant hostilities around culture and geography, reports Tsedal Neeley. Closed for comment; 19 Comment(s) posted.

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

by Michael Blanding

Managing cultural friction not only creates a more harmonious workplace, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, but ensures that you reap the creative benefits of multiculturalism at its best. Closed for comment; 13 Comment(s) posted.

J. Richard Hackman (1940-2013)

by Ruth Wageman & Teresa M. Amabile

This paper—a tribute to the lifework of the late scholar J. Richard Hackman, a professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard—recalls his many contributions to our understanding of work design and team effectiveness. As the authors note, Hackman's research changed the face of work design in countless industries, from service and manufacturing jobs, to education, health care, and the performing arts. His theory (with Greg Oldham) of job characteristics, and his evidence about how one could redesign and enrich jobs, made it possible for workers not only to perform well but also to develop and make meaningful contributions through their work. The author or coauthor of 10 books on group effectiveness, Hackman revitalized teams research with his insights into the conditions under which effective collective work processes emerge. Key concepts include: Hackman began studying the impact of work design on motivation at a time when decades of "scientific management" had had the widespread impact of reducing jobs to a few minimum repeatable steps, requiring little knowledge or skill, and experienced as stultifying and dehumanizing by the people doing them. While many scholars focused on pay and rewards, Hackman turned his attention to the work itself, asking: What are the qualities of jobs that make them inherently meaningful, motivating through a sense of accomplishment? His model of groups has informed the design of countless task-performing teams, from cockpit crews and chamber orchestras, to teams leading organizations, performing surgeries, and gathering intelligence - all performing work that matters, in real time. Hackman's focus on context was a fundamental insight into both how to understand complex social systems like groups and how to facilitate their effectiveness. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Should We Rethink the Promise of Teams?

by James Heskett

Summing Up: Teams that are properly structured and managed can support innovative thinking that depends on contributions from both extroverts and introverts, according to Professor Jim Heskett's readers. Closed for comment; 24 Comment(s) posted.

Collaborating Across Cultures

by Michael Blanding

Learning to collaborate creatively with people from other cultures is a vital skill in today's business environment, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, whose research focuses on a key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition." Closed for comment; 24 Comment(s) posted.

The Importance of Teaming

Re: Amy C. Edmondson

Managers need to stop thinking of teams as static groups of individuals who have ample time to practice interacting successfully and efficiently, says Amy Edmondson in her new book, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy. Closed for comment; 10 Comment(s) posted.

Team Scaffolds: How Minimal In-Group Structures Support Fast-Paced Teaming

by Melissa A. Valentine & Amy C. Edmondson

It is increasingly necessary for 24/7 shift operations to include some component of team-based work. But how can organizations support such work among constantly changing groups of people in a setting where stable teams are not feasible? This research investigates an organizational structure the authors call team scaffolds: a role set with collective responsibility for accomplishing interdependent tasks. Studying the implementation of team scaffolding in a high-stakes setting, a city hospital emergency room, the authors observed that workers readily affiliated with the temporary teams—even without ongoing relationships—and worked together intensely during the short duration of these groupings, even developing a competitive dynamic with other team scaffolds. The role sets established job placeholders in an interdependent group so that people starting up a shift could take their places in the set and immediately understand the interdependence and accountability they shared with others. Overall, this design improved the ability and motivation of clinicians to engage in teaming. Key concepts include: Team scaffolds, as team shells that can be instantly populated with transitory teams, is an organizational structure that may have broad applicability for supporting teams of people who work intense shifts together in virtual or actual settings. Implementing the team scaffolding organizational design in a city hospital triggered significant changes in teaming networks and behaviors in ways that improved operational performance. With team scaffolds the hospital supported teaming among people who were often strangers and among people who might work together intensely for six hours and then not again for a month. In the team scaffold, people starting a shift would come in and occupy their place in the role set. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Measuring the Efficacy of the World’s Managers

by Carmen Nobel

Over the past seven years, Harvard Business School's Raffaella Sadun and a team of researchers have interviewed managers at some 10,000 organizations in 20 countries. The goal: to determine how and why management practices differ vastly in style and quality not only across nations, but also across various organizations and industries. Closed for comment; 19 Comment(s) posted.