| Teambuilding: The Meaning of Shared Meaning - Page 2 |
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It would be easy for us now to understand the meaning of shared meaning. To illustrate shared meaning let's examine a fictional story. Lets imagine that we have a simple object, a triangle made of a cardboard whose planes are painted blue and yellow. And lets also imagine that we have a wall with a narrow peephole that we can see the triangle through. We will need five test subjects (volunteers) that will look through the peephole independently from each other. Before the first person looks through the peephole we position the triangle at a distance and turn it sideways to be aligned with the line of sight and slightly turn it up. The resulting effect (fig. 1, first position) will look like a bar with some sort of "disturbance" in the lower end. The second subject will be shown the object in the same position, but the third tip will be turned further up. It will look again like a bar, but the small "disturbance" created by the tip will show up on the upper part of the bar (fig1, position 2).
fig. 1
The reports from the five subjects will differ into what they have seen, two saw a bar and three saw a triangle. The "bar" observers will report same features (the "disturbance" created by the third tip), but at different locations. The triangle observers will report same object, triangle, but will disagree about its position and/or sides length, not to mention that one will insist that the triangle's color was yellow instead of blue. They reported what they decided to see. No report will contain speculations that this may be a different figure turned into a particular position, none will speculate about colors, structure, material, etc. In other word everyone will have a different view of what the object is, but none will know what it really is. Now lets imagine that the five people meet and start discussing the object. Obviously at the beginning they will differ and we will hear things like "I know what I saw." If they survive the first clash of opinions and genuinely try to find why the other person differs. If they try to find out way they think the way think about the object, they will discover the filter of assumptions each one applied and understand its inadequacy. The next step is to discover the facts that they did observe (not the conclusions) and start piecing together a more complete picture of the object. The facts in the groups possession are probably not enough to discover that this is a triangle with two colors on the front and back, that has equal sides like the one on fig 2.
fig. 2
They will however establish that this is a triangle, that it is made of some type of a sheet material and that it is possible to change its position in space and time. What will emerge is a new mental model that is better and more complete than the models each individual had on his or her own. Further, all of them will have the same model of the object in their minds and this is what we call a shared meaning. Just because you gathered good people in your team does not mean that it will be productive. Hard work is required to establish and maintain shared meaning as models is shared and enriched. As it is with so many other things, the key to better understanding of shared meaning is to understanding our own meaning. Shared meaning does not produce full or complete model, rather it produces a better model that all people in the team share. The benefits of the shared mental models are numerous, for example the shared models build trust among team members. Since our understanding of a subject drives our behavior, a shared understanding will invoke similar and predictable behavior by individual members. If we know in advance what the other person will do under certain circumstances, than we feel secure. Another benefit is the improved communications. You no longer need to render long explanations in order express your view on something. Indeed, good teams develop a team lingo and sometimes understand each other with just a word. Military people often expect that in each other, because the training and experience they receive is building shared mental models. When new people are added to a team initially they complain that they don't understand a word that is said during a meeting. This is a sign that this group has evolved into a team. Teams who possess shared meaning achieve better work results. This is because the new understanding developed by team members encapsulates not only the knowledge and experience of the individual, but the knowledge and experience of the entire team. This situation results in a personal growth as well since the knowledge of members increases dramatically. Shared meaning takes you further by enriching your personal models, therefore providing you with a rapid knowledge accumulation. A word of caution, Group Think is not a shared meaning or a teambuilding tool. In a Group Think situation, we have one or two people expressing opinions and making decisions while everyone else agreeing without questioning. This behavior is often mistaken as "team play" but it isn't. Sooner or later though, that behavior gets the entire team into trouble since the leaders are not perfect and the rest of the team does not pitch in. No personal growth, no synergy is produced in that situation, just a mere compliance. Peter Dimov (c) 2006 About the Author
He earned Bachelor and Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Technical University (Sofia-Bulgaria, 1988) and studied Managerial Finances at the University of Virginia (1994). He is a Certified Business Manager (AAPBM, 2002), PMP® (PMI, 2002), and Graduate of PMI Leadership Institute (2004). During his 17 years career in information technology, he worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies among which are IBM, Northrop Grumman, Exxon Mobil, MCI and GEICO. Some of his significant work is the creation of system processing 1040PC form for IRS, a system processing business taxes for Georgia Department of Revenue, IBM's product Visual Info, suite of applications for monitoring trading on NASDAQ for regulation purposes, global billing system for the Air fuel division of Exxon Mobil to name a few. He serves on the Board of PMI College of Scheduling; PMI Standards Consensus Body and is a Panelist for Project of the Year Award. Recently he managed the update of "Government Extension to A PMBOK® Guide". Previously, he worked as a VP Communications in the Board of Directors of PMI Washington DC Chapter. Mr. Dimov has published on management and technical subjects in various professional magazines including PMI's PM Network Magazine ("Why Delivering to Spec Makes Clients Unhappy", July 2003). Other publications include "Great Teams are Made By Great Leaders" (AllPM, Oct 2004), "Building Great Teams" (PROJECTMagazine, July 2004) and "Design Pattern for Diagnostics and Code Monitoring in Visual Basic" (ASP Today, May 2002).
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Peter Dimov is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Enterprises Inc., a Virginia based corporation providing information technology and management services to clients in the Public and Commercial sector since 1994.
