This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University with Talking Management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am delighted to be in Vancouver with a former colleague from McGill who is now at INSEAD, Mark Mortensen.
You have been studying teams for years now. What are some of the latest findings you have about the teams of the future?
MORTENSEN - So Karl, one of the things that is a challenge for us is that teams are a moving target, they are not the same today as they were a few years ago or even further into the past. So what we are trying to understand is basically how do we keep pace with the trends as they are now and where are they going into the future.
One of the things that we are seeing quite a lot of is this model of a team where you have this one thing you are doing, with the same set of people, for a long period of time - that just doesn't happen really anymore. What we see in particularly in professional service firms but across the board whether it's R&D, whether it's product design teams, or whatever is people aren't working on one team.
It's not about team, it's about teams and how do you work on multiple teams and try to untangle the complexities of what that means for you as an individual, as an individual team member contributor, for a team leader or someone who is trying to manage one and then multiple teams and then for an organization a little bit larger.
MOORE - From the viewpoint of a person being on multiple teams, what are some of the challenges they face and how should they manage it more effectively?
MORTENSEN - One of the big things is just how do you manage the transition? No two teams are the same and every time you have to switch from working on team A to team B you introduce some amount of cost, a transition cost, and you have to shift your thinking. This idea of transition costs, and how do you manage that, is one of the big challenges at the individual level that people are really wrestling with.
That and the multiple stakeholders: I'm not just on one team, I'm on two teams or three teams, and every one of those teams has something they want from me, every one of those teams has different deadlines, and much as I may say today I am working on Karl's team and I'm not woking on the other one, it doesn't change the fact that other people are knocking on my door, sending me emails, and asking me questions.
MOORE - How do you move effectively, Mark? Any practical advice on how do I go from shifting from one team to another in the midst of a day?
MORTENSEN - We today without our smart phones and with all the technology we have a tendency to flip back and forth. As soon as an email comes into our email, we switch our attention. Another one comes in, you switch attention to the other one. The problem is that puts you in thrash and you spend all your time switching back and forth.
So one of the really simple things is just being a little more strict with yourself, a little bit more ordered and saying you know what right now I am on this one task with these people, you give it your full attention, and you say this other stuff is going to wait.
That's not always that easy. We always feel like I have to look and pay attention to what is going on, and it's really important that we are able to be disciplined with ourselves in organizing our time, structuring it so we cut down on the amount of back and forth.