A successful team that I have been part of was when I was working in The Leadership Committee (TLC) as part of the RSO TAG (Transfer Advisory Group). TLC was one of several committees under TAG, but worked autonomously from the rest of the committees and even TAG. The other committees included Marketing Committee and Social Committee which both worked together with each other and the rest of TAG to plan events and get new members to join. TLC on the other hand was more of a special projects committee which focused on completing projects that helped transfer students. These potential projects had an unlimited scope, so they could be anything. When I was just a member of TLC the committee chair, Lauren, was leading a project whose goal was to bring attention to the unique needs of transfer students to the Dean of Students of LAS, in the way of a presentation. The way she organized her committee was dividing the committee into two sub-committees which focused on two different aspects of the presentation. These two sub-committees worked together to make one presentation, one sub-committee focusing on gathering the data required for the presentation and the other sub-committee focusing on the actual presentation of materials.
A structure described in Re-framing Organizations that most accurately describes the was TAG was organized, is the Simple Hierarchy diagram on page 105. The president of TAG did not have much control over TLC but still sometimes sat in on meetings to see how things were progressing. Although he did meet with Lauren regularly as part of the exec board to make sure TAG as a whole was running smoothly. Lauren was the sole person in charge of TLC but delegated people to be in charge of each sub-committee. I was in charge of the presentation sub-committee and led my small group to finish the specific way we wanted the presentation to look as discussed with Lauren. Lauren was also in charge of the data gathering sub-committee, so the simple-hierarchy model does not match exactly how TAG and its sub-committees were structured.
In terms of how Katzenbach and Smith describe a successful team, TLC did not match most of the 6 characteristics of a high-quality team. We did all have a common goal of bettering the transfer experience, but we did not have the right mix of expertise, at least in my opinion. And because this is an RSO and not a professional working group, there was not much accountability for the work produced. This caused some people to do more work than others and others to drop the project completely with out any repercussions.
A structure described in Re-framing Organizations that most accurately describes the was TAG was organized, is the Simple Hierarchy diagram on page 105. The president of TAG did not have much control over TLC but still sometimes sat in on meetings to see how things were progressing. Although he did meet with Lauren regularly as part of the exec board to make sure TAG as a whole was running smoothly. Lauren was the sole person in charge of TLC but delegated people to be in charge of each sub-committee. I was in charge of the presentation sub-committee and led my small group to finish the specific way we wanted the presentation to look as discussed with Lauren. Lauren was also in charge of the data gathering sub-committee, so the simple-hierarchy model does not match exactly how TAG and its sub-committees were structured.
In terms of how Katzenbach and Smith describe a successful team, TLC did not match most of the 6 characteristics of a high-quality team. We did all have a common goal of bettering the transfer experience, but we did not have the right mix of expertise, at least in my opinion. And because this is an RSO and not a professional working group, there was not much accountability for the work produced. This caused some people to do more work than others and others to drop the project completely with out any repercussions.
A few years ago I was a mentor to an Illinois Promise student who was a transfer junior in Engineering. Based on that experience I can concur with you that there are a lot of issues with transfer students that the campus should be more sensitive to. Further, it is my understanding that there is some imperative for the campus to support what is called a 2 + 2 mode. The first two years are living at home and going to community college, to keep the cost down. The last two years are done at the U of I. It is meant as a way to make college affordable. If it really is to work, then transfer students need to feel welcome on campus.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I wonder what you found about how folks in LAS administration understood (or weren't aware) of transfer student issues. I'm curious about that.
Regarding what you described as group function coming up short in the Katzenbach and Smith framework, you could have elaborated much more on what skill sets you needed but didn't have. Also, on the accountability front, I wonder if the issue is different than what you described. It is that real change at the U of I takes time, maybe more than two years, but members of your team then wouldn't see the changes that they wanted to see. You might benefit future generations of transfer students but not yourself. If that was/is an issue, I wish you had elaborated on it.
LAS administration was aware of the transfer student issue, but was focusing on international students rather than in-state students. There were many programs in place to assist the transition of international students, but none for other transfer students. One of the successes we've had was creating a orientation class specifically for transfer students, and is currently in its pilot semester this Fall.
DeleteI think that the main issue with accountability was not that there were no tangible results being produced, because we were preparing for a specific meeting with a specific presentation, it was more of an issue that there was no way to ensure that each member completes his/her work. This was an issue especially when we were trying to meet deadlines and it was difficult to track people down who promised to do a portion of the work.