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Meeting Performance and Group Dynamics ETM5361MSIS5600 Managing Virtual Project Teams

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Has meeting performance improved over time with the availability of technology? ... Time Period. Source: Reinig, B. A., & Shin, B. 2002. 45. Summary ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Meeting Performance and Group Dynamics ETM5361MSIS5600 Managing Virtual Project Teams


1
Meeting Performance and Group DynamicsETM5361/M
SIS5600Managing Virtual Project Teams
  • Nicholas C. Romano, Jr., Ph.D.
  • Nicholas-Romano_at_mstm.okstate.eduPaul E.
    Rossler, Ph.D., P.E.
  • prossle_at_okstate.edu

2
Overview
  • How efficient and effective are most meetings?
  • Has meeting performance improved over time with
    the availability of technology?
  • What are the causes of poor meetings?
  • What tendencies do groups exhibit?

3
  • Are these tendencies exacerbated in virtual team
    settings?
  • What are the processes and structures associated
    with effective meetings?

4
Meeting analysis Findings from research and
practice
  • Why consider meetings in virtual teaming?
  • Defining meetings
  • Meeting productivity metrics

Romano, N. C., Nunamaker, J. F. 2001. Meeting
analysis Findings from research and practice.
Paper presented at the Proceedings of 34th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences.
5
Why consider meetings in virtual teaming?
Research and practice illustrate that meetings
  • Are essential for accomplishing work
  • Dominate employees and managers time
  • Are considered costly, unproductive,
    dissatisfying
  • Are steadily increasing in number and length

6
  • "Almost every time there is a genuinely important
    decision to be made in an organization, a group
    is assigned to make it -- or at least to counsel
    and advise the individual who must make it."
  • -Hackman

7
  • "We meet because people holding different jobs
    have to cooperate to get a specific task done.
    We meet because the knowledge and experience
    needed in a specific situation are not available
    in one head, but have to be pieced together out
    of the knowledge and experience of several
    people.
  • - Peter Drucker (1967)

8
Meetings do not go away in virtual teaming
  • We need to understand todays meetings as
    thoroughly as possible in order to move toward
    collaborating in a virtual world
  • One way to do this is through Meeting
    Productivity Metrics

9
Existing meeting productivity metrics
  • Types
  • Purposes
  • Time
  • Number
  • Cost
  • Efficiency
  • Problems

10
Types of meetings in Corporate America
  • 45 Staff
  • 22 Task
  • 21 Information Sharing
  • 5 Brainstorming
  • 2 Ceremonial
  • 5 Other

Based on 903 meetings (Monge, P. R., McSween,
C., Wyer, J. 1989)
11
Meeting purposes 66 involve complex group
processes
(Monge, P. R., McSween, C., Wyer, J. 1989)
12
Time spent in meetingsshows an upward trend
  • 1960s Average Exec. 3 1/2 hrs/wk (3-4
    Meetings) Additional time in informal meetings
    (Tillman, 1960)

13
  • 1970s Average Exec. 6-7/wk (2x 1960s Study -
    Rice, 1973)
  • Managers up to 60 of their time. (Mintzberg,
    1973)Program managers up to 80 of their time.
    Middle managers 3 or 4 full days a week. Some 8
    straight hours in one meeting. (Van de Ven, 1973)

14
  • 1980s Typical middle managers 35 of their
    work week. Top mangers 50 of their time. (Doyle,
    1982) Typical managers up to 80 of their time.
    (Monge, 1989)Average technical
    professional/manager 1/4 work week.Top and
    middle managers 2 days/week.Executive managers 4
    days/week. (Mosvick, 1987)

15
  • Mosvick (1982, 1986) in 2 studies over a 5 year
    period of 950 junior-senior managers and
    technical professionals in large-scale
    technology-intensive industries U.S. and abroad
    Major finding "a notable shift toward an
    increase in the number and length of meetings
    with an increasingly high level of
    dissatisfaction with meetings."

16
Reported length of meetings 51 between 30 and
90 minutes
(Monge, P. R., McSween, C., Wyer, J. 1989)
17
Time spent in meetingsshows an upward trend
(contd.)
  • Up to 20 of a managers work day is spent in
    conference room meetings. (Panko, 1992)
    Managers spend 20 of their work day in 5
    person or larger formal meetings and as much as
    85 of their time communicating. (Panko, 1994)

18
Meeting frequency is increasing
  • Fortune 500 companies hold between 11 to 15
    million formal meetings/day and 3 to 4 billion
    meetings/year (Doyle, 1982 Monge, 1989)
  • A 1997 survey found that 24 of respondents
    expect to hold more meetings in 1998 and 85
    predict the same length or longer meetings

19
Meeting costs
The 3M Meeting Productivity Study and Harrison
Hofstra Study found that
  • 11-15 Million formal meetings / day
  • ? Million informal meetings / day
  • 3-4 Billion meetings / year
  • 30-80 Managers time in teamwork
  • 7-15 of personnel budgets on teamwork
  • billions of spent each year

20
Meeting efficiency
  • On average, by managerial function,
  • 33 of meeting time is unproductive (Sheridan,
    1989)

21
(No Transcript)
22
Meeting problems Agenda (or lack thereof)
  • No goals or agenda 2nd most commonly reported
    problem (Mosvick, 1987) 50 had no written
    agenda
  • However 73 of respondents felt an agenda is
    "essential" for a productive meeting. (Burleson,
    1990 Sheridan, 1989 - Harrison-Hofstra Survey)

23
  • 32 No stated agenda 17 Prior Verbal agendas
    9 Written agendas distributed at start 29
    Prior written agendas (Monge, 1989)

24
Workers express the desire to work in groups
  • 3 year survey of 10,277 U.S. workers from all
    levels of employment that 97 reported they
    needed conditions that encourage collaboration to
    do their best work. (Hall, 1994)

25
A recent survey of executives found that
  • 43 of them admitted dozing off at least once
    during a meetingThe majority concluded that
    20-30 of meetings were unnecessary
  • (Erickson, 1998)

26
Findings
  • Decades of study show that meetings dominate
    workers and managers time and yet are
    considered to be costly, unproductive and
    dissatisfying.
  • Yet meetings are essential, because no one person
    has the knowledge, insight, skills and experience
    to do the job alone. (Erickson, 1998)

27
Look whos talking
  • Traditional Teamwork
  • Boss talked 33 of time
  • Next person 22
  • Technology Supported Teamwork
  • Boss talked 5
  • Next person 8

Source Romano
28
A quick review of difficulties with groups
  • Some tasks are simply not well suited for group
    methods or processes
  • Often develop preferred ways of looking at
    problems that can inhibit innovation
  • Synergistic effect can be absent
  • For example, brainstorming doesnt exceed
    performance of individually produced and combined
    results

29
  • Politics, power, and position can dominate
    methods or results
  • Or can suppress contributions of others
  • A group fulfills social needs, but group seldom
    has ways of regulating amount
  • Fairly reliable characteristic of groups to get
    off track and get stuck there

30
  • Groups tend to have relatively low aspiration
    levels with respect to quality of solutions
    accepted
  • Once some level of acceptance is inferred, little
    further search happens
  • Often lack concern and method for dealing with
    way to best utilize and communicate members
    knowledge

31
  • Strongly influenced by cultural norms
  • In natural groups, members tend to be
    conservative, circumspect
  • If the groups efforts do not appear reinforced,
    effort is reduced
  • As group size increases, effort contributed by
    each individual member tends to decrease

32
  • Reliably exhibit norms against devoting time to
    planning their methods
  • Move immediately to attacking problem, relying on
    implicitly shared methods
  • Considerable likelihood that method is poorly
    adapted to task and only modestly effective
  • Seldom have ability to change the method when
    things not going well

33
Effective use of roles and process help direct
dynamics
  • Group process management roles
  • Group process member roles
  • Task
  • Maintenance
  • Non-productive
  • Group process communication patterns
  • Team member roles

34
An input-process-output model of teamwork
Group
Task
Process
Outcome
Context
Technology
(Source Doug Vogel)
35
Process gains
  • More information
  • Synergy
  • More objective evaluation
  • Stimulation (encouragement)
  • Learning

Source Nunamaker, J.F., R.O. Briggs, and D.D.
Mittleman, Electronic meeting systems Ten years
of lessons learned, in Groupware Technology and
applications, D. Coleman and R. Khanna, Editors.
1995, Prentice-Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. p.
149-193.
36
Process losses
  • Air time fragmentation
  • Attenuation blocking
  • Concentration blocking
  • Attention blocking
  • Failure to remember
  • Conformance pressure
  • Evaluation apprehension
  • Free riding
  • Cognitive inertia
  • Socializing
  • Domination
  • Information overload
  • Coordination problems
  • Incomplete use of information
  • Incomplete task analysis

Source Nunamaker, J.F., R.O. Briggs, and D.D.
Mittleman
37
Common process losses
38
Process losses (contd.)
39
Process losses (contd.)
40
Process losses (contd.)
41
Process losses (contd.)
42
Process oriented model of virtual teamwork
Social Interactions and Dynamics
GSS Structures
Meeting Outcomes
Time
Reinig, B. A., Shin, B. 2002. The dynamic
effects of group support systems on group
meetings. Journal of Management Information
Systems, 19(2) 303-325.
43
Hypothesized relationships
Evaluation Apprehension (?)
-
-
Production Blocking
Group Cohesion

-
-
Time Period
Free Riding
Self-Reported Learning
GSS

-
Sucker Effect
Affective Reward
-

Source Reinig, B. A., Shin, B. 2002.
44
Some (preliminary) findings
-
-
Production Blocking
Group Cohesion

-
-
-
Time Period
Free Riding
Self-Reported Learning
GSS


-
-
Sucker Effect
Affective Reward
-


Source Reinig, B. A., Shin, B. 2002.
45
Summary
  • Most meetings are not efficient or effective
  • And the increased availability of technology
    hasnt helped reverse this trend
  • Unmanaged group dynamics seem to contribute to
    this inefficiency and ineffectiveness
  • Structure and process play important role in
    virtual team meeting performance
  • Group support systems help to mitigate or reduce
    the negative affect of process losses on
    performance
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