Dealing with team tasks, systematically
A practical approach to dealing with tasks & relationships in a team (PART 1)
For any group or team to be effective there are certain functions or processes that need to be done by some person or persons in the group at some point or another. The processes or functions usually fall into two categories:
Task Functions — activities that keep a team headed towards decisions and action i.e. accomplishing things
Maintenance Functions — activities that help build the team’s sense of identity and develop the social relationships in the group, i.e. building relationships
An effective team will pay attention to both these functions and aim to strike a balance between accomplishing things and feeling good about being together. When a team is overloaded with either task or maintenance functions, the team will likely disintegrate and not operate as a cohesive group of people.
These two functions find mention in literature on group theory or organization theory but I like a practical approach or tools and tips to apply these concepts. I find these in Sociocrcay and wanted to share a note on task functions here in Part 1 and maintenance functions (team relationships) in Part 2.
Task functions
Task functions refer to those activities that help a team get things done and achieve the purpose of the team. The whole team maybe involved in discussing and/or deciding a policy or guideline, a workflow, defining a role or choosing people to a role and it’s useful to have a clear system or procedure to follow.
Task functions within a group usually comprise of:
1. Initiating
2. Information seeking
3. Diagnosing
4. Opinion seeking / generating ideas
5. Evaluating
6. Decision- managing
In problem solving situations all the tasks listed above and in that order will likely happen or should happen if the group wants to follow a systematic and consistent procedure.
The separation of information seeking or diagnosis from opinion seeking and evaluation will likely impact the quality of the decision or outcome. Skipping steps will often result in confusion, frustration and eventually erode trust because issues seem to be muddled through and decisions taken swiftly without adequate consideration. One person who is more familiar with a topic may want to rush through to exploring ideas, while the rest want to understand the context and background around the topic.
So, the team will need to define early on in the team’s ‘norming’ stage a clear task procedure and apply it to their work.
One practical method of applying a clear task procedure is the process of co-creating proposals that I learnt in Sociocracy.
To me, the proposal forming process seems to have the systematic steps that an individual or a team could use to address a problem or opportunity.
I have adapted this and imagined a 4-phase process that can be used to guide a group through all the task functions. The phases are Understand — Explore — Evaluate & Propose — Decide.
1. Understand phase
There is usually a need, tension or trigger that the team leader or a team member believes needs addressing and brings it up to the team. The first phase is to describe this need or tension and make sure every body in the team understands the issue. You could call this understanding the context or background of an issue. Depending on the perspective of the person initiating the discussion, the issue could be seen as a problem or an opportunity.
Either an individual can describe the situation or this can be done as a team. The outcome of this phase is a collective understanding of:
a. The current situation
b. It’s effect on the team or organization
c. What does the team need to do in relation to the situation and the impact of attending to the need
The final output of this phase is a summary in a few sentences so everybody understands, remembers and can communicate the rationale for the issue being addressed.
This phase would require collecting information and diagnosing what is going on. This can be done with the whole team or delegated to a member. But finally the team needs an opportunity to ask clarifying questions so they agree to the final outcome and output of this phase.
2. Explore phase
The explore phase would involve seeking wider input and gathering ideas to address the situation identified in the ‘understand phase’. This phase would involve
a. Understanding the scope of the issue and its dimensions
b. Exploring or generating ideas that address the dimensions
c. Synthesizing ideas into a few options to choose from
The team could design a facilitated process that takes the team through steps a and b above. For the sake of efficiency, a team member or a smaller group could synthesize ideas to form a proposal or proposals for the team to evaluate and choose.
3. Evaluate & propose phase
The team now has a proposal with a few options to evaluate. The evaluation procedure will have to be tailored to the context of the business. Again this could be a facilitated process that seeks the team’s opinions and concerns and integrates those concerns to make for a more robust final proposal. Once a final proposal is ready the team can move to making a decision.
4. Decision phase
Depending on what the issue is, a decision may lead to a concrete action, a policy, or a workflow or may even just be a synthesis and conclusion at the end of a discussion.
Decision making rule
It’s useful for the team to know how a decision will be made; whether by majority voting, by consensus, by authority/leader or some other combination. This is what I mean by decision rule.
In most working environments it’s almost a given that the team leader makes both operational and governance decisions. However, in decentralized organizations and especially ones that have participatory ways of working, the decision-making principles and decision rule are usually explicitly stated.
Some organizations have a standard decision rule that they follow in all situations; some have defined principles for decision-making and then choose the decision rule most suited to each situation.
Often the leader chooses the decision rule, and in more participatory models like in Sociocracy, the group agrees to the decision rule by consent in certain specific instances.
Decision by authority is most efficient in the case of operational decisions. Participatory systems usually delegate operational decision making to the person in whose domain the issue rests. For governance decisions (decisions that set objectives and determine how work is carried out) there is usually a need for clarity if ‘decision by leader’ is not the norm.
Here are some decision-making rules that a team can choose:
- Decision by majority
- Decision by consensus
- Decision by 2/3rd majority with no significant dissenters
- Decision by consent or no objection
- Decision by minority and ‘no response’
The last one is usually a negative decision where a minority group blocs or doesn’t respond, hence no decision is made.
Decision by consent is what Sociocracy follows. I hope to write about this in another story.
Whatever the choice of decision rule, the leader or management needs to choose and communicate to the team or organization.
While the leader has the power and responsibility to define a clear task procedure, they don’t necessarily need to perform all the functions themselves and can delegate them to team members; if that suits their style of leading. PART 2 of this piece delves into team maintenance functions and roles.
