Team Kaizen

1
Team Kaizen

• Jiahui Zhao
• Erica Wilson
• Heather Smallwood
• Jen Olson
• Ritu Mandal
• Kerryn Kletter
• John Graves
• Tom Graf
• Johns Hopkins University
• Self as a Agent of Change Individuals, Groups,
  and Organizations
• November 27, 2006

2
Organizational Development and Teams

• Past, Present, and Future

3
Wilfed Bion -- Biography
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion(1897-1979) well known
psychoanalyst
Main works (1961)Experiences in Groups. (1962) Learning from Experience. (1963), Elements of Psycho-analysis (1965)Transformations (1967) Attention and Interpretation (1967) Second Thoughts. Heinemann (1975). A Memoir of the Future, Book 1 The Dream. (1977). A Memoir of the Future, Book 2 The Past Presented. (1979). A Memoir of the Future, Book 3 The Dawn of Oblivion. (1981). A Key to A Memoir of the Future. (1982) The Long Weekend (1985). All My Sins Remembered (1992) Cogitations
4
Wilfred Bion the Past

• Book Title Experiences in Groups
• Author W. R. Bion
• Tavistock Publications Limited (1961)
• The Work group
• The Basic Assumption group
• Dependency
• Flight-fight
• Pairing

5
Key Elements of Bions Experiences in Groups
1 Group mental life is essential to the full
life of the individual, quite apart from
temporary or specific need, and that satisfaction
of this has to be sought through membership of a
group. (Bion 1961,p54) 2 ..It takes some
time.group is an end in itself. (p.63).
Rational work of task accomplishment and
emotional life of group are in conflict and that
groups are always involved in managing this
duality. 3. Groups can be engaged in two kinds
of mental activities simultaneously the work
group and the basic assumption group. 4. Bion
assumed human behavior in groups to be organized
in part to adapt to reality requirement and in
part to ward off fear of fragmentation.
5. Bion conceptualized a group mentality as the
pool in which anonymous contributions are made
and through which the impulses and desires
implicit in these contributions are gratified. (
p50) 6. Through silence and often without
awareness we give support to initiatives, thereby
..by doing nothing. (p58) All members of the
group are responsible for the behavior of the
group. 7. Bion conceived group culture as
resulting from conflict between the desires of
the individual and group mentality. 8. Bion
reserved the word cooperation for conscious or
unconscious working with the rest of the group
work (p.116) For the . Capacity for spontaneous
instinctive cooperation in the basic
assumptions, he used the word Valency.
6
The Questions Left Unanswered

• What consultative/leadership stance is most
  effective?
• What kind of leadership enables a group to manage
  its basic assumption activity?
• What forces move a group from one basic
  assumption mode to another?

7
Alan Drexler the Present

• Biography
• Ph.D. from Purdue University
• Began consulting in 1970
• Professional Lecturer at American University
• Team Performance Model

8
Alan Drexler The Present
9
Bion and Drexler Comparison
Work Group
Basic Assumption Group
Basic Assumption Group
Creating
Sustaining
Constrains
10
What will the teams look like in the
future?Will Bion and Drexler still apply?
11
Upcoming Talent Shortage

• The Intangible assets (Knowledge, Intellectual
  property, Skilled workforce) of American public
  companies has risen from 20 in 1980 to 70
  today. (Accenture Survey)
• Fortune 500 companies will lose half of their
  senior managers in next 5 years. Everyone will
  have to fight harder for young talent and learn
  to engage new talent. (RHR International,
  Economist October 2006).
• The richer countries are relaxing immigration
  laws and actively luring highly qualified people.
  Singapore has established an International Talent
  Division in their Ministry of Manpower.
  (Economist, October2006)
• The Yankee group estimates that over 2300 global
  companies have adopted talentmanagement
  technology and this technology market will double
  by 2009.
• In India IT sector, wage inflation is 16 a year
  and turnover is 40. NASSCOM predicts an India IT
  sector shortfall of 500,000 jobs by 2010. GE
  Capital has posted a sign in its office WARNING
  Trespassers will be recruited.

12
Factors driving dramatic change

• Retiring baby boomers
• Generation "Y"
• Competition for talent
• New practices and technology

13
Emerging Practices and Technologies

• Virtual Teams
• Group of individuals who work across time,
  space, and organizational boundaries
• Gartner Group says that by 2008, 41 million
  corporate employees will operate in a virtual
  workplace at least one day per week
• Collaborative Technologies
• Groupware divided into three categories --
  communication tools, conferencing tools and
  collaborative management tools.
• Flexibility, cost savings, knowledge management,
  asynchronous participation

If its all the same to you, chief, Id like to
work from home tomorrow.
14
Emerging Practices and Technologies

• Living a Second Life
• Multiplayer virtual world a user-defined world
  in which people can interact, play, do business,
  and otherwise communicate
• Has attracted "real world" investment

15
Teams of the Future

• What will teams look like in the future?
• Will Bion and Drexler still apply?

The future is already here, it is just not evenly
distributed. --William Gibson
16
Teams of the Future

• Exercise

17
Exercise Debrief and Conclusion
18
QA