Real Case Stories

This HBR video explains how Management teams can have a good productive debate and fight to get positive outcomes Teams that worked best embraced conflicts It highlights 6 points 1. Work with more rather than less information. A healthy supply of information can switch the focus from guesses & personal opinions to a debate on hard facts. 2.Enrich the debate with multiple options. Having only 2 options can split the groups into 2 teams. Teams that have multiple options can expend their energies then into coming up with creative solutions 3. Establish common goals 4. Inject Humour. It releases tension and promotes collaboration. 5. Maintain a balanced corporate power structure. 6. Resolve issues without forcing a consensus

Planning poker is a consensus-based, gamified technique mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development. In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. src Wikipedia . It is also called Scrum poker. Planning poker is based on a list of features to be delivered, several copies of a deck of cards and optionally, an egg timer that can be used to limit time spent in discussion of each item. At the estimation meeting, each estimator is given one deck of the cards. All decks have identical sets of cards in them. The meeting proceeds as follows: A Moderator, who will not play, chairs the meeting. The Product Manager...

MIT's Richard Locke researched  2 Nike tshirt factories in Mexico. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. Plant 1 gave workers complete freedom to decide production targets, team organization and managing production plants and schedule. Employees work in teams and are also responsible for routine maintenance of equipment. Jobs are rotated and they value knowing how to perform a variety of operations and claimed that this opportunity to work on several operations plus in teams significantly improved working conditions. Every morning, the supervisors communicate to each team the style and quantity of products they need to produce. The workers would get together and discuss amongst themselves how much they can actually produce and then meet with the supervisor and agree on the production target f...

In 1987, Psychologist Benjamin Schneider in an article titled " The People make the place " lays out a model called ASA. Attraction - Selection - Attrition. He writes about how organization cultures are defined by the people that work there and not by people at the top. He asserts that “the people make the place” and that organizational culture, climate and practices are determined by the people in the organization. Attraction: People are differentially attracted to careers as a function of their own interests and personality. They have stated that people search environments that fit by their personality and that people would like to obtain their outcomes by selecting a specific organization. Selection: Organizations select people who they think are compatible for many different kinds of jobs. In that way organizations end up choosing people who share many common personal attributes, although they may not share common competencies. Attrition: The opposite side of...

In their book "How Google Works" Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg speak about the Google work culture. Google encourages people to stay longer in office and keep them in cramped quarters. In order to do this they have free food, games on campus, bring your family to work and an open cluttered and cramped office where people are in close proximity to each other. This constant interaction with people in the office brings out new ideas, breaks communication barriers and keeps the flow of information which is difficult in the case of a work from home environment. A very good example cited in the book is that Google's Adsense product which developed into a multibillion dollar business was invented by a group of engineers from different teams who were playing pool in the office. Read the book

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is of the view that too much Communication is really a bad thing.  This WSJ article quotes an Amazon executive who says that during an offsite when some employees suggested that there should be more communication in the organisation, Bezos declared that "No, Communication is terrible" Bezos preferred a decentralized company where independent thinking prevails over Grouthink. In order to achieve this, he implemented a company wide policy, the concept of the "2 Pizza team". Any team should be small enough that it could be fed with 2 pizzas. Small teams generally tend to function like families, fighting, bickering but eventually getting the work done. Larger teams tend to be more political. Source: Birth of a Salesman, WSJ article by Richard L. Brandt