Welcome back. Now, we're here to talk about leading teams, in particular structuring the team for excellence. You'll recall in our first session we talked about designing the team. Composition, diversity and goals. In this session we're gonna focus in on structuring the team. You'll remember our team design framework. Again, in that first session we talked about composition And team goals. In this session we're gonna talk about team structure. Formal team structures. We'll talk about four dimensions of formal team structure. What we call departmentation, centralization, rewards, and now with the emergence of different technologies and globalization of the world that fourth dimension virtuality. Which is really referencing how virtual are our teams. Some are co-located, some are spread out all around the globe. How do you manage that virtual team, and how that might be different than structuring a team that's all co-located together? So, those are some of the formal team structures that we'll talk about. But then we'll also talk about some informal team structures. And here what we're gonna focus on, are roles and norms. The roles are responsibilities that people have beyond their formal job description or their formal role within the team. Some of those informal. Roles that people take on to really either facilitate the task work of the team or to really provide the relational, collaborative glue. Or that social fabric of the team. So, that people are able to work together effectively. We'll talk about some of those informal roles. Then we'll also talk about the norms that you as the leader really want to establish in your team. To drive success to drive the results so that people are held accountable and responsible and really able to work together effectively because of these norms that you've established n the team. So, these are some of the structures that we will Talk about in this session. I'll share with you some of the latest research, some of the cutting edge ideas that are coming out of that work, but then, importantly, some best practices, some tools that you can use to structure your teams. More effectively. To get us started, I want us to dive into a little bit of a case study. And that case study is one that I expect some of you will be familiar with, maybe have even seen the movie Apollo 13. Apollo 13 is a great example of a team that was faced with a crisis, was faced with a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity. Both the team who was in space, as well as the mission management team who was down on Earth trying to figure out and solve the problem of how to get this broken spaceship with these three astronauts in it, how do we get those people back to Earth safely. If you don't recall, the Apollo 13 mission, it was the Seventh manned mission to outer space in the American space program. It was meant to land on the moon. And one of the oxygen tanks on this spaceship on the way to the moon exploded and severely damaged the spaceship, making it almost inoperable. And this team had to obviously sacrifice its mission to the moon, but then more importantly really had to come together and adapt in terms of trying to figure out how to fix this spaceship and get it back to Earth safely. And I've always been fascinated by this story because I think it's a classic example and provides some really profound lessons in how to think about formal and informal team structures. So, what I'm gonna share with you in terms of this Apollo 13 mission is an interview done with the lead flight director Jean. And in this interview, it's about four or five minutes long. I'd like you to pay close attention to how he talks about the ways in which they managed roles and responsibilities, how they organized the team. Once they encounter this problem and had to think as a team creatively to solve this problem, how they adapted their both formal and informal roles and responsibilities, and how they approach this creative problem solving task in order to be successful. So, watch this short video and interview with Mr. Kranz, and then I'm going to have you come back and reflect on, in your discussion forum, some pretty critical, I think important questions that we can learn a lot from, this Apollo 13 mission You've a chance to watch the interview with Gene Kranz. Again who is the lead flight director on this Apollo 13 mission. Now what I'd like you to do is reflect on what you heard and share your insights from the interview with your classmates in the discussion forum. There's a range of questions. I invite you to ask your classmates your own questions and share with them your own insights, but just to serve as a thought starter and get you thinking. I hear some questions that I've often thought a lot about as I listened to Gene Talk thought his experience leading the Apollo 13 mission management team. The first one is to what extent were roles formerly defined in the team? Both before the accident as well as after the oxygen canister, or oxygen tank exploded. How did they then adapt those roles? Second is to what extent did those roles in formerly over time? Can you gather any insight from Gene's comments? In terms of, they had formal roles up front but then some roles may be merged informally over time. What do you think caused that? What do you think enabled certain individuals to step up and fill certain roles while other individuals were filling other roles, would be I think a really important thing to discuss and learn from. Thirdly is how did Gene determine what roles were most important or to play on words mission critical in this Apollo 13 mission? How did he determine given their problem solving task as a team, which roles were gonna be most important and the really the ones to focus on in the short term. And the other issue, you have to remember he's the formal leader here. He has all of the power, all of the formal authority. And we talked a lot in out third course on influencing people, about the importance of both formal power, formal authority, and informal power. And reflecting on those insights, those lessons. The question I have for you now is as a formal leader why do you think Gene decided to delegate formal decision making authority to certain individuals in the team? If you put yourself in Gene's shoes How do you think he made those decisions about who to delegate to and what decision making authority to keep for himself versus delegate to others. There's some really important lessons in Gene's experience with respect to how to manage that authority and decision making power within teams. And then lastly is what norms does Gene identify as being critical to the team's success? Now, you have to remember, this team faced with a really really significant complex Problem, where this team has to be creative in a very short amount of time. And so given those task demands, what norms does Jean identify as being critical to the team's success and why do you think he identifies those norms relative to any other norms that he could have identified for this team. So, go to your discussion forum. These again are just some of the questions you might entertain. But share with your classmates what you're learning from Gene's experience in the interview that you had an opportunity to watch.
