1. The Tower Building Experience

This exercise was to sucessfully build a tower given certain criteria in the assignment outline. The purpose was not only to build the tower, but to observe the dynamics that occur within a team when working to complete a project, given a set of requirements.

The group focus was to build a strong base for the tower. By having a strong base, the tower would be strong enough to withstand the wind turbulance test. After much brainstorming and building of prototypes, the concentration went from design of the tower base to the number of blocks to be used for the entire tower.

The group calculated that to reach a height of twenty-two inches, sixty

blocks were needed, so it was conluded that:

Number of Blocks x 60 = Number of Inches (height of tower)

In the initial design, the tower would consist of six blocks per row but

after calculation,

6 x 60= 360 blocks, which was unacceptable.

As group members continued to build prototypes, the focus then went to body of the tower. The group came to the conclusion that a '2 x 2' design would save the amount of blocks that would be used, therefore, it would be cheaper and it would be faster to build. During all the brainstorming the group analyzed all prototypes and came to conclusion that:

The goal of the group was to meet thrity inches, requiring the least amount of blocks (2x2 design) yet, strong enough to withstand wind.

Due to time constraints during the design process, there was not enough time to fully build and test the tower so it was decided that the maximum time allowed for construction would be used.

Roles were not assigned to the members of our group, but rather the roles were taken on when one recognized an opportunity to fulfill these positions. The roles that were adopted were often temporary, and greatly influenced by the current situation of the team and our progress.

As our group settled down in our new quarters, everyone had their own individual thoughts and ideas brewing in their heads, yet it seemed nobody felt comfortable making the first move. [A] detected a lack of progress, and immediately took the initiative to force the project into action. Pulling out her pen and paper, she encouraged others to share their ideas and objectives. She pushed the group to work towards common goals, and began analyzing the different strategies that the group began spitting out. [A] was consistent in keeping our goals clearly visible during the brainstorming process. This helped us advance from one idea to the next, immediately discarding the ideas that clearly would not satisfy our goals, and building upon ones that showed potential. Not only did [A] get the ball rolling, but she kept it moving at, what seemed to be, a reasonable pace.

With out a lot of time to build relationships amongst the group, some of the members felt uncomfortable sharing their thoughts with strangers. Team members withheld their thoughts, fearing the group would not accept their design, thus losing credibility. [M] helped the group overcome this shyness by praising any valid contribution and acknowledging individuals for their worthy efforts. This extra support by [M], extracted input from all members of the group, increasing our probability of success.

Certain ideas presented by group members, were possibly abandoned too quickly. Instead of completely rejecting a design, [Y] attempted to build on these ideas, improving and transforming them until a brand new idea arose, with much more potential. Unfortunately, [Y] had difficulties communicating his ideas to the rest of the group and by the time the group realized the possibilities [Y]'s design possessed, we lacked the time needed to organize and build a structure of its complexity.

Once the individuals of our group became more comfortable with one another and began to identify themselves as a member of the team, suggestions started streaming out from members into a pool knowledge and thoughts. With a stronger resemblance of a team now, we soon found ourselves diving deeper into this pool. While gaining a sense of identity within the group, we were rapidly losing a sense of reality. Fortunately, [R] was able to bring us back to the surface by reminding us of how much time remained and what progress, if any, we had achieved up to this point. With [R] as our link to the outside world, we were able to produce a structure on time, which satisfied all requirements.

With several ideas evolving, decisions were found hiding behind every corner. In a newly developed group, where structure and roles are not yet fully established, decisions prove to be extremely time consuming. [E] eased this strenuous decision-making process by clearly acknowledging the advantages and disadvantages of the suggestion under inspection. This made it more obvious as to which path to choose and also helped get everyone travelling down the same path.

[V] maintained a close watch on the project specifications and made sure we were always satisfying the minimum requirements. He analyzed different proposals, calculating any profit or losses. This prevented us from making false assumptions and blindly travelling down the wrong trail.

Nearing the end of our given time, [R] pointed out we had very little time left and had made very little progress. As the fear of not producing a finished product, spread throughout the group, we began to panic. [T] recognized the trouble we were in and saw the immediate need for a strong group leader to pull things together. Wasting no time, he firmly identified exactly what needed to be done and transformed our panic stricken group into a fully functioning and fully focused team. This fresh team was driven by, a simple yet common vision. The new vision introduced new goals that were accepted by each member and achieved by the team.

Overall the work was divided fairly evenly. During the planning stage each individual contributed in his or her, own way. Tasks were not explicitly assigned to group members until the building stage. Each member was given a portion of the tower to build, to ensure we could produce the finished product in the desired time.

As the group members are approaching the goal that is maximizing profits under the limited time, each group member contributes his/her own idea and knowledge to accomplish the goal by allocating our given resources diversely.

In the beginning group project process, nobody showed leadership that requires to confirm our strategy and specific implementation and directed the right implication and divided our tasks into functional team. Instead, each member shared free information and took his own role very intuitively. As soon as we had a seat, [A] took her pen and paper out and wrote it down and calculated the number of materials needed for a certain height and if we build the tower using our implementation then what amount of profit and loss we will achieve. It was she that made group members to visualize our constructing tower and made us clear what progress we accomplished. Also, [R] announced that how much time we had and she intended to avoid wasting time on inefficient and ineffective group performance.

However, our group did not come up with basic strategy and implementation that everybody agreed with from the beginning stage and tried every possibilities for designing tower for fifty minutes. As we were getting to close to deadline, we realized that we didn’t make any specific decision how to build tower, how many pieces we were going to use, what height we targeted for.

In that moment, [T] built the bottom of tower which is big transforming group performance and he showed us his tower then everybody agreed with his design since he implemented very simple and effective design then we decided to implement his base tower. Also, [T] and [A] suggested that we were going to use pieces as many as we can but in order to make the profit, we should focus on the height and time.

Finally, due to his and her contribution, we were able to nail down our decision, targeting for height and minimizing building tower time to make the maximum profit.

At the end of group process, each member’s contribution was very important to succeed the group project and especially, everybody accepted [T]’s base design and followed as he suggested, then finally we were able to establish our unique tower.

Each group member contributes his/her own thought to achieve to maximize the profit through building a tower by free communication each other and the implementation of decision making progress would be based on free information sharing. Since we had approximately one and half an hour to complete the project, we put each member’s solution together and then made a final decision at the end of group process phase.

Especially, [R] gave us milestone which how much time we left and made us to manage limited time. During the half of the group process, we tried to analyze our allocating resources for the maximum profit, so we adopted each person’s tactics and built tower based on each assumption, but we did not achieve the certain amount of progress.

Although the members realized that we did not have enough time to make a final decision, we did not even have specific plan how many pieces we were going to use and how much time we were going to consume to build entire tower and what design would be implemented.

At this panic moment, [T] and [A] suggested us that we should give up using minimum lego pieces, instead we should build high tower to compensate for loss of using many pieces as much as we can and must minimize to building tower time. Everybody agreed with their opinions then we were able to nail down our implementation.

From based on final decision, our group performing was highly accomplished and everybody was satisfied with our own decision.

Since disagreement and conflicts naturally emerge within a project team process, each group member had a different overview over strategy, priorities, allocating resources, solutions to build entire tower’s design. These conflicts were actually contributed to the group performance by sharing information, respecting each individual’s idea and suggestion rather than those prohibit group performance by refusing work together.

During group project, we did not have a big debate or argument to solve the problems but in the some period, we had different idea on the problems. Also, we even shared information, but we needed somebody to have ability to select the best alternatives, put it together effectively, and resolve the differences.

Even though we had same shared vision and everybody understood what we should do and how we should accomplish the objectives by allocating resources effectively, we often encountered some problems to require creative solutions. At that moment, the group members communicated with each other and tried to make these differences to contribute to construct and establish the objectives. Then each member gave us his suggestion to resolve the differences then we made a decision to choose the best and efficient idea.

By respecting individual’s opinion, and sharing same vision, accepting other member’s idea, we finally concluded the right decision and we solved small conflicts which lead us to go further to get the goal and objectives. Also, we acknowledged that these conflicts were very essential part of the group process and how to deal with these conflicts were crucial step of successful group performance.

In the opinion of group #2, effective team performance occurs when all members of the team are working together, under a consistent vision. In the most optimal cicumstance, the team will come together, each member with a clearly defined role, well-suited to his or her skills. We believe that everyone will add value to a project in an individual way, and in order to work effectively, members of a team should be contributing to the project in a way that will best utilize these individual talents, and differing personality types. We have learned that different personalities will lend to different skills and contributions when individuals unite in a team. It is clear that when a team member's role is best suited to his or her personality type, he or she will be most comfortable and most able to actualize his or her potential.

The members of group#2 worked well together in that all were polite and respectful of each other. We kept the conflict to a minimum and when ideas were rejected, it was done gently and valid reasons were given. The Tower Game exercise differed from a group project that might be undertaken in a job because most of us didn't know each other. We may have been extra polite and worked hard to be unobtrusive and refrained from criticizing ideas. Everyone was given a fair opportunity to contribute his or her ideas, and all ideas had an equal shot at becoming the final strategy. All of the members in group #2 were flexible and avoided being stubborn about decisions which helped minimize conflict.

We feel that our team performance would have been more effective if we had prioritized our goals from the beginning and ensured that everyone had a clear understanding of these goals and their priorities. We lacked focus, because we differed in our opinions of what "winning" The Tower Game meant. Some of us wanted the highest tower, some hoped to build a tower using the least amount of blocks and some would have liked to create a structure that was most aesthetically pleasing. The goal of winning was well understood by everyone, however we needed to clarify what that meant to group #2. Because of this, the individuals of the group tended to create individual agendas. We were all working on our own plan and not working efficiently together. From the readings, we have learned that "Efficiency is achieved primarily by breaking down complex tasks into simplified, repetitive activities, as symbolized by assembly-line production methods". (Organization, Chapter #8 page 222) If we had determined a common goal, and broken down the required tasks, distributing responsibilities appropriately, we would have accomplished more, in less time.

From past group project experiences and experiences with software development, all members of the team have an excellent understanding of how important the design phase in a project is. We, however had a lot of difficulty with our design and essentially lacked one. Instead of choosing a design and then working together to create it and perfect it, we had many designs on the go, with group members switching from one design to the other as one would emerge as the better one as it was developed. Essentially, we had small teams forming within the group, with members hopping from one to the other based on which idea seemed better. In a sense, this may have lead to some internal competition which can lead to an inefficient performance.

The team’s purpose for writing the group report was identical to our purpose during the ‘tower building’ exercise, to complete the written report by the designated due date. The outline of this report was determined by the guidelines specified on the assignment sheet.

Our performance goals for this project were to produce a well-written report, covering all dimensions specified, and minimizing the time required to do so. Unlike the tower game exercise, our goals were well defined and acknowledged during the elementary stage of the report writing. The team realized that the lack of such definition hindered the progress of the tower design project. Similarly, from the experience gained during the previous group exercise, each member of the team recognized the importance of a more structured and organized method of working on a project. For instance, we acknowledged the lack of time management that occurred during the tower design project and thus set intermediate goals or milestones. Also recognizing that each member of the group had many other pressing matters at hand, we scheduled for all rough work to be finished by the Friday before the due date. Thus leaving four days for editing and polishing.

--------------------------- needs work, can you help me:

The implicit allocation of roles and responsibilities during the report-writing phase was influenced greatly by the relationships that were developed during the previous exercise. From the tower building exercise, we gained greater knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and thus each member’s roles complimented them far more.

In order to begin the report early, [E] initiated communication with the group, and scheduled the primary meeting, which she suggested should be used for brainstorming and free discussion. Through out the report writing, [E] continued to highlight the importance of maintaining an effective schedule and keeping focused on the actual dimensions outlining the report.

As the group united for the brainstorming session, [T] was the first to begin relaying ideas. He maintained a constant flow of discussion and dictated notes for the report. Such notes were recorded, initially, by [R] whom volunteered to be the secretary for the meeting. Later, that responsibility was relayed to [M], as she took down the ideas brewed from the discussion during the rest of the meeting. [Y] and [V] both were consistent in offering suggestions. Allsion,

----------------------------------------------------------

Similar to the tower project, no explicit leader existed during the writing of the report. [E] took the initiative of organizing the first meeting and was perhaps the initial leader. However, during the primary meeting and the subsequent meetings to follow, [T] took on the responsibilities as a leader as he had the most to verbalize. From the tower building experience, we became confidante in each member’s ability to successfully complete tasks and were thus more willing to allow [T] to assume the role as team leader.

[T]’s role as leader emerged from his initiative to respond to the assignment and begin the initial brainstorming exercise. Furthermore, [T] ensured that all tasks were assigned to each of the individuals in the group and reminded us of our responsibilities regarding the report.

Even so, [E] transformed her role as the initial leader to that of a co-leader by pushing the team to focus on the actual requirements of the report. She ensured that the group did not stray from the task at hand and reinforced the need for a scheduled date for the rough draft of the work to be complete.

During the tower building exercise, out decision making process was greatly influenced by the limited time allotted. Thus, we were forced to make decisions faster and were not able to fully explore all possibilities or suggestions brought forth. During the report-writing phase, however, we were able to give all suggestions full exploration, since we ourselves set our own schedule.
Similar to the previous team project, free information sharing was encouraged, for instance in our brainstorming meeting. The team realized that such sharing allowed for team members to feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and increased the number of ideas suggested. The decision process was then based upon the group consensus after each idea was examined.

Limited conflict arose during both projects. During the tower building exercise and the writing of the report, the greatest conflict was that of time. The short period of time given for the first project contributed to the confusing perceptions concerning the most important priority (i.e. height, number of blocks, etc). The time restraints also deferred the group from building relationships and elaborating on proposed designs. Thus the team realized that such time restraints increased the importance of determining priorities. Similarly, during the second project, the report, the time conflict arose from the other responsibilities and engagements of all the team members. Each member was evolved in various other classes, assignments and projects thus finding a mutually beneficial time for the meetings became difficult. Also, minimizing the time required for the report to be written became greatly important. The team thus applied better time management skills, using the time restraints to ensure that the most effective schedule was set and that all work was completed by the time requested.

Therefore, though time conflict arose during both the tower building exercise and the subsequent report-writing, the group was successful in avoiding conflict of a more serious nature, that of conflict between team members. Furthermore, the nature of the conflict that did arise increased the team’s focus and concentration on the task at hand.