Insights for the day 10/12

Trouble brews in the team:

Today’s class started with a discussion on the functioning of a group with our CAN groups as an example. We talked about what are the common goals of a particular CAN group.

 I realize that different people have different objectives in a group some of which may be common among its members. In the CAN group example people listed group learning, team work, better grades, completing projects on time, etc as common objectives. However I have a different viewpoint on this. Since in our CAN groups, the performance of one member has no impact on the performance of the others, there cannot be too many common objectives. With the exception of completing projects that have to be submitted by CAN groups as a whole. And such projects are few and far between. With that said, members are mostly guided with their own independent objectives which seldom have other members in the scheme of things. I believe that for a CAN group to really work as team, the performance for the team members should be interrelated. How my fellow group mate does should have at least some bearing on my grades as well. Most of the academic learning happens during the classes and self study sessions. Hence what I expect to take away from my CAN group is experiential learning in terms of group dynamics. The eventual work environment will mostly be marked by working in groups. What I study in MBA will only be useful if I am able to reflect my learnings while working in a group; and frequently a difficult group to work with.

The ideal objectives of working in a CAN group should not be purely academic. I would want to learn how people's behaviours change while working in a group. I would want to learn what works in a group and what doesn't. For some others I see an opportunity to learn things like leveraging other people’s knowledge about a particular subject, experiencing how to make oneself heard in a competitive group, assuming leadership among peers, etc. The CAN groups provide us with a low stake practice ground as compared to the real world. And this opportunity should not be lost in purely maximizing academic learning. While studies are a medium and enhanced academic learning a useful by-product, it is group dynamics that is the real take away for me.

When I reflect back to the case in discussion today, I again realize the importance of understanding the working of a group. It should not have taken Larry Franco as many emails to realize that the group "HAS" to work together. From my experience I believe that it is more important to get the group working together towards a common objective even if it means letting go of the top performer. One cannot hold the cohesiveness performance of the group a ransom to the performance of a single member. While star performers are valuable, it does not necessarily follow that they cannot work in a group. A small amount of counselling and perhaps a stricter action sometimes can do the trick. There will however still be a few exceptions and I know them as "Brain Boxes". For such people to be most productive and successful an individual contributor role would be most suited.