The PR framework shows Academic Performance of teams on the vertical axis and Professional Relationship among team members on the horizontal axis. The four-quadrant framework is represented in the figure.
Quadrant 1 – High-High: Teams in this quadrant score high on both academic performance and professional relationship. These teams are effective in weeding out minor differences in view of the main driver of unity, which is the final goal (36% of respondents). This is the ideal quadrant for a team to be located in. Teams in this category would require minimum training spend and can be assigned more complex projects to enhance the overall productivity and profitability of the organization. Some members from these teams could be redistributed to teams in other quadrants to enhance their performance.
Quadrant 2 – Low-High: In this quadrant, the team members have a good understanding between each other, but score very low on academic performance. One of the main drivers of unity in such teams is homogeneity (36%); the presence of sub-groups is negligible, since the team members gel well with each other. The team here is seen as an immediate support system almost 60% of the time. However, the issue is that the team may not be technically sound to deal with complex problems. The team could potentially operate in a “zeal too often” mode, where the members are having fun but performance levels drop considerably. This could also lead to a lack of motivation to deliver the best results. This makes this quadrant the trickiest to deal with, since the team members are in harmony with each other and would resist any form change. Creating sub-groups or restructuring these teams with technical experts or swaps could lead to a lack of fit and may hence worsen the situation. The ideal way to enhance productivity and performance would be by improving specific skill-sets of existing members of the team through technical training.
Quadrant 3 – Low-Low: Almost sure-shot candidates for relationship discord and performance failure, teams in this quadrant need immediate attention and a complete revamp. There is a high incidence of Unconscious Sub-groupism in such teams (77%). The main reason for this is that members in the team may not be in the best of terms with each other, leading to selective avoidance of certain members in the team, resulting in an unconscious formation of sub-groups. It has also been observed that the main driver for unity in such teams is the presence of external competition (50%). The team is never the first support system (~28% of the time). Team members often look outside the teams for support and motivation to perform. The challenge is to try to move these teams to either of the adjacent quadrants – improve professional relationship or academic performance. This would involve get the members to understand each others’ differences, subordinate their goals to the team goal, thereby arriving at a ‘common’. Improving one may often be easier than the other depending on the environment and the composition of the team. In a professional environment, it may sometimes become necessary to restructure the team to counter its weakness – include a technical expert or swap members from another team to improve dynamics.
Quadrant 4 – High-Low: Teams in this quadrant score high in academic performance, but low in professional relationship. These teams show high levels of capability and end up performing against odds, coping with bad team member dynamics and hence high levels of unconscious subgroupism. As in teams in the 3rd quadrant, the main driver of unity in these teams is also external competition (56%) and the team is seldom the first support system. In such teams, it may be alright to maintain the status quo for short-term projects. In the long term, there may be two approaches depending on the degree of discord in terms of the professional relationship between the members. In situations where it may be difficult to bring the team members together to arrive at a ‘common’, it may make more sense to introduce some level of conscious sub-groupism – where the team is split explicitly into smaller groups with sufficient functional expertise, but people who can work better with each other.
This framework works best when conducted at an ex-post, i.e. after the teams have worked on projects for a couple of months. Suggesting the most optimum team composition ex-ante is highly dependent on the nature of the projects and the environment in which the teams operate. This could be done based on personality analysis & psychometric tests conducted on the team members before they are allocated to a team. Further research is being conducted to extend the framework to help address the bigger issue of resource allocation in companies.
Niranjan Srinivasan (along with Ashish Khushal Dharamshi, Indian School of Business, Class of '10)
For more details, please contact me at ninja.srini@gmail.com
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