Maximising the potential of a team approach
Working in teams has long been a practice in certain disciplines and activities which come within the ambit of charity work, e.g. social and medical care, and research. It is also increasingly utilised in fundraising. Also, at the top level, many charities increasingly reflect the management practices of business where senior management teams operate as distinct from boards. Generally, in organisations the emphasis is often increasingly on “teams” rather than “departments”, there being greater participation in decision making within particular groups.
Nowhere is the concept of teams more obvious in the charity sector than with volunteers working on projects. Work by these volunteers is the epitome of teamwork. For charities, just as with other organisations, “team spirit” has turned into “team input” and the challenge is to make the most of it.
Collective intelligence
Teams hold so much potential. The benefits of sharing ideas or of approaching problem solving from different perspectives are clear, especially when it comes to complex challenges that are constantly shifting and have many dependencies. And now, more than ever before, our ability to access expertise and insights has been enhanced by digital technologies. In the 21st century we call this collective intelligence.
However, many teams fail to make use of the different skills distributed across their teams. In fact, it is likely we have all witnessed or even been involved in poor team work or group decisions. Despite the potential, teams don’t always get it right.
What’s more, despite the proven potential of group problem solving, the majority of research on decision making tends to focus on the individual rather than exploring how teams and organisations make decisions. This is surprising given the difference collective intelligence can make when it comes to many emerging challenges in the charity sector, from the transition towards hybrid working patterns to increased frequency of crises marked by uncertainty and complex long term issues like climate change.
The good news is that charity leaders and managers can take practical steps to tap into the collective intelligence within their own organisations and to tackle some of the natural stumbling blocks. There are a plethora of factors that can prevent groups from reaching their full potential. These won’t be unfamiliar to charity sector leaders and can include social biases, poor communication and competition between employees. A focus on tackling these, can ensure teams work more effectively and charities reap the benefit of group decision making.
The right members
Who is in a group and what roles the different members play is a vital part of effective team work and strong group decision making. Group composition includes topics like diversity, skills, leadership, expertise and group size. Charity leaders will be aware that many businesses, public institutions and indeed charities lack diversity in their workforce. This is particularly true for senior leadership teams, which tend to skew white and male.
Paying attention to group composition, to decide the right size, who should be in the group and what roles the different members will play will affect the quality of decisions.
As far as possible, charity managers should be deliberate about group composition and build diverse decision making teams. It’s important to have diverse members, in terms of identity, demographics and cognitive style as well as different levels of experience and expertise. Cognitive style diversity relates to differences in how people think about problems and how to solve them – for example, analytical vs intuitive styles.
Mixing cognitive styles improves performance on tasks that rely on both judgment and creativity, but these groups can struggle to arrive at a strategic consensus about how to approach a task. To help avoid this, leaders should take extra time to establish shared goals and agree on communication norms. This enables strategic consensus about priorities when carrying out tasks.
The right experience
Groups made up of high-status leaders typically aren’t good at cooperating, share information less effectively and struggle to stay focused on the task. In order to overcome these challenges charities should incentivise collective goals and prompt leaders to collaborate. This may involve setting collective KPIs to maintain attention on shared goals or using a facilitator to prompt group members to share relevant information.
Most teams are made up of members with mixed ability levels. But research shows that groups become demotivated when members think the gap between themselves and others is too large. You should try to level the playing field and avoid creating groups where there is a large discrepancy in ability between members, unless a facilitator can help bridge the gap.
The right numbers
Many leaders make the mistake of believing collective intelligence means getting anyone and everyone involved in the decision making process. This is not necessarily helpful. Although increasing the size of a decision making group is an obvious way to increase access to information and expertise, a larger group size by itself offers no guarantee of improvement in collective accuracy unless diversity and multiplicity of skills are maintained.
Leaders should consider the type of decision that needs to be made. For simple crowd judgment tasks there are linear gains in accuracy for groups of up to 20 people and minimal gains thereafter. Whereas for more complex problem solving, there is some evidence that smaller groups, around five people, are better at tolerating uncertainty. Groups with five to seven members need little formal coordination but still allow significant interaction to help establish trust between members. This makes them optimal for decisions that rely on information exchange and discussion.
Confidence in uncertainty
We have all become familiar with uncertainty over the past year, but even before the Covid-19 pandemic, uncertainty was still a key player in all decisions. It’s impossible to avoid it when it comes to strategic decisions. Charities may turn to external consultants to help them navigate uncertainty rather than tapping into the skills already available within their organisations, or cultivating them through dedicated training, but they should look first to see what is on offer internally.
Group decision making can be a particularly effective tool in uncertain circumstances. Teams simply need to learn to adapt the decision making process to avoid biases that are amplified by uncertainty, and leaders must provide the training and tools that can help prepare decision makers at all levels in the charity.
The first step in managing uncertainty is acknowledging that it exists and understanding what is causing it. Uncertainty can interfere with the ability of the group to make the best decision in the present moment; for example if the group doesn’t have access to accurate or up-to-date data about an issue. It can also emerge after implementation to influence if a chosen strategy fails or succeeds in the future.
Three key tactics
There are three key tactics to keep in mind here. Firstly, agree if you can that you should reduce uncertainty and try to quantify the level and source of uncertainty. For example, are you missing data or is the evidence you’ve gathered unreliable in some way? Start by reviewing your group norms for decision making to check if they need to be adapted.
Secondly, avoid exploring uncertainty if it won’t impact the decision. Groups should ask, “Would perfect information change the decision?” Sometimes the level of uncertainty and associated risk are not significant enough to justify the time and additional resources needed to explore them. Before gathering further information to resolve uncertainty, groups should agree how much new information is needed to change the decision and if it is needed at all.
Finally, choosing the wrong tool can cause groups to waste valuable time or even add to the uncertainty. You could try using statistical modelling and structured expert judgments to reduce uncertainty on the parts of the problem that can be predicted. Uncertainties caused by ambiguity or value differences require a more reflective approach. To frame these discussions, turn to methods that consider trade-offs like multi-criteria decision making, cost-benefit analysis, and ranking.
Focus on understanding
Emotions influence the way we make decisions and, for many people, uncertainty is associated with negative feelings like fear and anxiety. While this might seem obvious, it’s rarely taken into account during decision making. Taking action to reduce uncertainty is often motivated by the desire to reduce negative feelings and find closure on the issue rather than to improve understanding of a complex issue.
In order to tackle this, you could seek to introduce dissenting views gradually and capture individual views first, then form groups that have a mix of different perspectives. Building groups in this way helps to reconcile and integrate different perspectives. For complex or controversial topics, opposing views should be introduced into the discussion gradually. At each stage the group should recap their overall understanding of the problem. Following a highly structured process can help groups to cope with uncertainty.
As charities begin to rebuild and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, they should have the confidence to successfully utilise collective intelligence as a tool. And it’s possible to start small to make a big difference overall helping charities get back on their feet over the coming year.
