Title: Meeting Performance and Group Dynamics ETM5361MSIS5600 Managing Virtual Project Teams
1Meeting 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
2Overview
- 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?
4Meeting 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.
5Why 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)
8Meetings 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
9Existing meeting productivity metrics
- Types
- Purposes
- Time
- Number
- Cost
- Efficiency
- Problems
10Types 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)
11Meeting purposes 66 involve complex group
processes
(Monge, P. R., McSween, C., Wyer, J. 1989)
12Time 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."
16Reported length of meetings 51 between 30 and
90 minutes
(Monge, P. R., McSween, C., Wyer, J. 1989)
17Time 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)
18Meeting 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
19Meeting 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
20Meeting efficiency
- On average, by managerial function,
- 33 of meeting time is unproductive (Sheridan,
1989)
21(No Transcript)
22Meeting 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)
24Workers 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)
25A 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)
26Findings
- 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)
27Look whos talking
- Traditional Teamwork
- Boss talked 33 of time
- Next person 22
- Technology Supported Teamwork
- Boss talked 5
- Next person 8
Source Romano
28A 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
33Effective 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
34An input-process-output model of teamwork
Group
Task
Process
Outcome
Context
Technology
(Source Doug Vogel)
35Process 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.
36Process 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
37Common process losses
38Process losses (contd.)
39Process losses (contd.)
40Process losses (contd.)
41Process losses (contd.)
42Process 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.
43Hypothesized 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.
44Some (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.
45Summary
- 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