After
13 weeks in semester B, we have finished the course MGT6201 high performance collaboration, it was really
a great journey to be with lovely Frank and enthusiastic guys from management department,
I really felt a totally different learning and teaching experience compared
with my own department-Information system, and the virtually collaboration experience with the evening course team
members who have work experience to some extent reshaped my thinking from
different aspects and angles .The relaxed class atmosphere and many small
presentations in class make me realize that it is a management course which
gives me many tips and ideas of how to collaborate
with others to make a team more efficient and effective in terms of conflicts,
creativity, negotiation ,also knowledge management we have learned in my own
program, etc.
Collaboration
Process
We
collaborated with team Wings from the evening class, three girls from mainland
China and one guy from Hong Kong. I think we have finally reached a nice
collaboration project in spite of some disagreements and even conflicts in the
process. I will elaborate the online communication pattern, negotiation analysis,
conflicts solutions and then reflections to reach the win-win result.
ü Inner
group collaboration
For
the inner group communications, we communicate among team members of Quartet
through both offline and online approach .For offline method, we discuss with
each other through face to face meeting, for online approach, and we share
ideas through Wetchat, Dropbox, Gmaila and Skype. At first, we discussed the
meeting time that we should hold the inner group meeting once a week at the
starting stage to share the course content and also pilot ideas everyone came
up with, because this course was relatively a new subject for us who are from
Information System department, we should gather together frequently to share
the feelings and insight of what we have learned to make sure that team Quartet
is in the same perspective to continue the high collaboration performance
journey. And also Wechat is a effective instant message tools for us to coordinate
the meeting time and some small discuss. And then we use online communication
tools wechat and cloud storing tools dropbox and Gmail to upload the documentations
just like proposal we write and the paper we find which we want to share to
other team members. In this way the information including informal(through
wechat like deicide the discussing time and other coordinate things) and
formal(through Dropbox and Gmail, documentations like proposals we write and
paper) can quickly and freely be accessible to all the team members which
enhance the efficiency of the previous preparation to consolidate the
foundation for the later inter group collaboration. For the conflicts happened
in Quartet, to be frank, there were little conflict happened, we all have a cordial
working relationship during this course. Because we are from the same program,
on one hand, we have the same knowledge domain to some extent (e-business,
information system, knowledge management, IT strategy, etc.), so the ideas we proposed
are almost in this domain, and we all can understand what team members what to
express, the technical terms, the case work we have did in the previous
semester and so on, we almost don’t need time to explain too much; on the other
hand, because we are in the same team in almost every course from semester A to
semester B, we build solid trust of each other and we also share the same value
and know the strength and weakness of each other. So I think the inner group collaboration
was smoothly and well, and everyone was arranged the most suitable work which
can guarantee the efficiency and quality of the work. What’s more, we made our
decision quickly and consistently in terms of the same value and same knowledge
domain but also with the help of the technology we used, such as wechat,
Dropbox, Gmail, etc, we make the process more effective and online platforms
provide us more resource to do the collaboration among the inner group Quartet.
ü Inter
group collaboration
The
inner group collaboration seems good and smoothly. However, the inter group
collaboration indeed had some problems in term of conflicts, negotiation, creativity,
etc, in the end we really reach an agreement and realized the win-win
situation.
At
first, we also use one of the online communication tools emails to make contact
with the evening class team Wings to exchange proposals which we have done of
inner group from the separate teams. And then, after we read it carefully, we created
Wetchat group, Skype group and Dropbox sharing file to make the meeting
appointment. The online meeting we decided to hold once a week, discussing the collaboration
method. And because of the different background: they have work experience and
we don’t; one team member of Wings is from Hong Kong ,so there is the different
culture background and a little bit communication problems. We do the informal
discussion in the Skype through voice chat, because in this way we can exchange
our ideas and different thought directly and in time, two teams can modify the
ideas, and make it as a whole gradually.
Picture: Example
of Regular Meeting Summary
Ø Inter
group conflicts
Due
to the difference of background among two teams, we really were confronted with
many problems. At first, we didn’t reach the agreement of the online meeting
time because of the different time schedule of team members; we choose to confront
this conflict and then Quartet compromise and make the meeting in night we
Wings were off the class. To some extent, it was “choosing a winner”; we
compromised and followed the time schedule of Wings. And I think it was not a
big problem, but for team collaboration especially from different class it
really exists. And we should solve this problem to make the discussion process
more smoothly. The second conflict that we faced with was about the task
conflict, I think we have some conflicts in the content and goals of the
project. Also I think it is because of the different background of us: they
have work experience so they are more focusing on the doable and also profit, we
were focusing on the social value with can be added into the organization. We
solve this conflict through the negotiation part; I will elaborate it in the
next part.
Ø Inter
group negotiation
Because
of the task conflict in terms of the project content and goals, we negotiated
to reach the agreement. At first, most important thing I think was our two
teams both agree that “we are making the cake bigger” rather than “dividing the
cake”. We didn’t want to hurt the benefit of both team, so the method we use
was seeking common point from both our proposals. First we split these
proposals into many key words (shown in the follow table)
The
dark orange words are common points we have in both our proposals, the light
orange words are similar concept we have. We were both interested in low cost
marketing, website, easy use and so on. So the method we use was to mix these
common and similar points into a brand new idea, which will be of possibility of
expandable the pie.
Through
this interest-based negotiation, though the problems were hard, we handle this
in a soft way, and then it could be changed into a win-win situation. And in
this negotiation, we were trying to make both of two teams to say yes instead
of no, the more positive decision we made, the more agreement we would reach to
this collaboration. What’s more, the trustworthy and relaxed atmosphere will be
built between Quartet and Wings, which enhanced the effective and efficiency of
the project.
In
summary, this collaboration journey taught me a lot, from creativity,
negotiation about how to reach an agreement etc, which are really useful in
future life. Thanks Frank, thanks all you guys!
