Saturday, September 27, 2014

My Successful Team Story- ISAC

This week, I am going to blog about my experience with a successful team. It seems a very interesting topic to me because the team I am involved with is actually facing with a transaction in management.

Last semester, a couple of international students within Econ Department figured out that the resources from the general Department of Economics are no longer enough to serve for the international students group. Then, with the assistance of some advisors in the Department of Economics, a couple of students co-founded the group of International Student Advisory Committee (ISAC) and sponsored by the Department of Economics. What ISAC does is assisting econ department to run and organize some events, especially with the growth of population of international students. This becomes a platform to give international students, who show some leadership skills to grow as a leader, and also provide more resources such as workshops, training, events and network to all econ students.

I joined the team this summer and I am very proud to oversee the transaction of the structure of our group. ISAC used to be a “Circle Network,” where everyone in the committee serves as a Chair in an area, or even multiple areas, and they share resources, and when it comes to organizing events, they become co-workers and in the events, they act more like a leader in the campus wide. This semester, after the first committee meeting, we decided to restructure our committee group. Problems are caught that from last semester that when it is closer to events, it seems like everyone’s schedule suddenly become get a little bit crazy, and all the committee members do things at the very last minute. I would say, for the result of the events, it might not be as perfect as what it was planned, and everyone seems to blame the “unexpected time and situation” for what has happened. So, in the first meeting of this semester, we made a deal that we want to change our group into “dual authority.” Instead of everyone is working at their same pace without any supervision except the econ department, we finally have a boss, which is our president, to supervise, or even “monitor” our work, as well as four different branches to support the team.

I learned a lesson from this restructuring of the company that sometimes we need a transaction in labor division of the management team, and the main reason for that is because it creates efficiency. There are some transaction costs in this transaction, when everyone in the management level is a little bit confused about their responsibility, and they have concern about the new system of the “dual authority.” However, it is already showing that this makes everything more efficiency. The communication is facilitated because a lot of dual communication is avoided, and everyone seems to be clearer about his or her responsibility, and put them into action. On the other hand, if the group does not make this transaction, talented might become confused, ineffective, apathetic or hostile. For example, if you are routinely asking a designer to take phone calls and take notes for the meeting, it is very hard to say that you allocate correctly and utilize people’s strengths to improve efficiency.

Another thing I find out from my experience is that structure does influence what might happen in the workplace. It is very important to make sure everyone is on the same page within your group or team. The beauty of division of labor is to make full use of everyone’s specialization, which enables the organization to benefit most from the labor allocation.

Followed with the change of the organization, network has somehow changes too. People are usually attracted by similarity. In an organization where everyone is specialized in their strong area, it attracts more people to join, and would like to be in the team. That is one reason why recruitment of new committee members can get benefit from the new distribution of the management team.

Last thing I would point it out is that there are a lot of “traffics” inside the transaction of the organization. Luckily, we have a “broker” people, which is me. I made my attempt to get in touch with people and make sure their voices are heard. It is time consuming but it definitely pay off in the weekly committee meeting, and it seems to improve the efficiency too and make the transaction of the organization more smoothly.

In conclusion, it is not easy to make a successful team, and sometimes we should make some arrangements or changes to improve the efficiency, to lower the transaction costs, and thinking in a blue point and in a bigger picture.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post. It is interesting. I would have benefited in reading it to know more about the size of ISAC, and if the management team is a subset of the larger committee or not. I couldn't tell that from what you wrote.

    I gather from what you wrote that you prefer the current dual head structure to the circle structure. But note that the circle structure might be best for a small team. It is less good for larger teams, which is why I asked you about size.

    Also, it is possible for different members of your group to have different motives for membership. Some might willingly sacrifice other things they are doing to make the group function well. Others may not view the group function as that important. This happens in the workplace too, though less so.

    I found it interesting that you played the role of broker. Were you doing that before taking my class, or did some of the in class discussion about effective committees have some impact on you? If so, I'd be interested to learn if you persist in doing this. Ultimately a cost-benefit calculation must be performed. The Whip puts in a lot of time to coordinate the committee. Are the results worth the effort?

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  2. Firstly, thank you for putting time to read and making comments. I do agree that you said about I should mentioned the size of the organization. It is a small team that we have a group about 10 people, but we are expanding right now. We have active customer about an hundred.
    One of the reason we are thinking about develop our structure is also for motivations for membership. We give active customers a chance to "upgrade" to committee members, and for committee members,we have one chair for each group, one president, and we are thinking about adding two vice president to motivate new members and old members. I am glad you mentioned about the reward system, because we just add a cross-function training to make sure our committee members can benefit from human resources.
    I actually start to play the role of broker before the class, but I never realized the importance of this function. Now I understand more and I am thinking about motivating people who take my chair position next semester to understand the importance of this role. I personally think the results worth the effort, because as you mentioned in the class, it saves a lot of time we put into the committee meeting, and it is better to understand everyone's situation, so it helps in any emergency situation and better internal communication, and it can make sure everyone can use their specialization to contribute to the group. Let me know if you have further question for our group, and I am very glad that you are interested.

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