Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 22, Issue 48;   December 7, 2022: Reaching Agreements in Technological Contexts

Reaching Agreements in Technological Contexts

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Reaching consensus in technological contexts presents special challenges. Problems can arise from interactions between the technological elements of the issue at hand, and the social dynamics of the group addressing that issue. Here are three examples.
Tuckman's stages of group development

Tuckman's stages of group development. Adding or removing members to the group during the course of its efforts to reach agreement can delay the achievement by causing the group to restart its path through the stages of group development. Bring together everyone you think you'll need from the outset, and keep them together until you have agreement. Image (cc) Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license by DovileMi, courtesy Wikimedia.

Reaching agreements about matters in technological contexts requires an approach that's similar to — but different from — reaching agreements in other contexts. Most of what's most readily available as guidelines for reaching agreements has been developed for other contexts, such as negotiations related to business formation, exchanges of assets, divorce, or matters of law. And these patterns can be helpful in technological contexts if suitably adapted. The key phrase here is suitably adapted. In this post I explore some of the distinguishing characteristics of technological contexts that make reaching agreements so challenging.

What a technological context is

For this purpose, a technological context is one primarily defined by a set of technological elements, either physical or conceptual. Examples of technological elements are devices or systems that exhibit behaviors or possess properties that are relevant to the disagreement, and which can be understood in terms of engineering or applied science. Another example is a representation of such a device or system, in combinations of diagrams, figures, and text.

The property of being technological is one of degree. The degree of importance of understanding the relevant engineering or applied science principles determines how technological the context is. Usually, and unfortunately, assessing the importance of such understanding requires a high level of that same understanding.

For example, a discussion regarding the weight-bearing capacity of a concrete driveway is a fairly technological context. By contrast, a discussion regarding sweeping leaves from that same concrete driveway is less likely to be a technological context.

How troubles arise in technological contexts

Attributes of Attributes of technological contexts
that are especially troublesome are
those that challenge interpersonal
skills of group members
technological contexts that are especially troublesome are those that challenge the interpersonal skills of group members. Difficulties arise, in part, when people believe they are conversing about a purely technical issue when they are actually confronting an issue that is essentially political or interpersonal. Below are three such attributes of technological contexts that create risks for groups seeking to reach agreement.

Breadth of knowledge
The knowledge required of a group involved in technical negotiations can be very broad indeed. In some situations the set of interacting technical artifacts can include items that are the responsibility of other groups or other enterprises. Or it can include legacy items developed long ago. In such cases, members of other groups or organizations might be detailed to participate in the negotiations as consulting experts. Or members of the group might be asked to "cram" a knowledge domain to help the group broaden its base of expertise.
Adding new members to a group — or removing members when you believe they've completed their work — can cause the group to traverse again several of the five stages of Tuckman's model of small group development. [Tuckman & Jensen 1977] This re-traversal can delay the arrival of agreement because it causes the group to revisit interpersonal issues that it had previously resolved.
If you anticipate the need to involve additional people, you can speed agreement by including them from the outset, rather than adding them only "when we really need their expertise."
Rapid evolution of domain knowledge
Rapid evolution of the relevant body of knowledge has two effects on groups as they reach for agreement. First, members must devote significant time and effort to maintaining their own knowledge currency. This workload can be so burdensome that members are compelled to be selective about what parts of the knowledge base they attend to carefully.
Second, members' personal grasp of relevant issues might not be synchronized. That is, some members might be aware of and have a grasp of a relevant change or innovation, while others might not.
When debates erupt, the first thing to check is the uniformity of knowledge currency across the group's members. The points of disagreement can often vanish when everyone becomes current.
Social skills deficits
"Soft skills" is a term that denotes a cluster of personal traits and abilities that enable members of social groups to form and maintain strong relationships. These skills include social facility, empathy, communication (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, literacy, numeracy, trustworthiness, and more.
Higher educational institutions do emphasize preparing graduates for dealing with the technical components of technological contexts. But they tend not to emphasize soft skill development to an analogous extent. [Matteson, et al. 2016] This bias is perhaps most evident in the education of students aiming for careers in technology.
Organizations that depend for their success on the technical skills of their employees would do well to install and pursue a long-term program for soft skills development of all employees.

Last words

There are certainly many more attributes of technological contexts that create risks for groups seeking agreement about issues they face. For example, knowledge deficits in management ranks can cause managers to impose unreasonable or even irreconcilable constraints on teams that are engaged in problem solving. And because some organizations keep outmoded devices or practices in service alongside more modern components, enterprise asset bases are unnecessarily heterogeneous. That heterogeneity extends the persistence of the need for otherwise-obsolete knowledge for groups that must attend to those assets.

When teams have difficulty reaching agreements in technological contexts, the root cause might lie not in the team or its members, but in the context in which they work. Go to top Top  Next issue: Straw Man Variants  Next Issue

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More about Tuckman's sequence of small group development

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Some teams, business units, or enterprises are led not by individuals, but by joint leadership teams of two or more. They face special risks that arise from both the politics of the joint leadership team and the politics of the organization hosting it.

Tuckman's stages of group developmentTuckman's Model and Joint Leadership Teams  [January 18, 2023]
Tuckman's model of the stages of group development, applied to Joint Leadership Teams, reveals characteristics of these teams that signal performance levels less than we hope for. Knowing what to avoid when we designate these teams is therefore useful.

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If you work in an organization likely to conduct layoffs soon, keep in mind that exiting voluntarily can carry advantages. Here are some advantages that relate to collegial relationships, future interviews, health, and severance packages.

A white water rafting team completes its courseWhite Water Rafting as a Metaphor for Group Development  [December 4, 2024]
Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies better to development of some groups than to others. We can use a metaphor to explore how the model applies to Storming in task-oriented work groups.

Tuckman's stages of group developmentSubgrouping and Conway's Law  [December 18, 2024]
When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks.

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Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies to today's task-oriented work groups — if we adapt our understanding of it. If we don't adapt, the model appears to conflict with reality.

Image of Hurricane Isabel by Astronaut Ed Lu, taken from the International Space Station, September 15, 2003The Storming Puzzle: II  [January 1, 2025]
For some task-oriented work groups, Tuckman's model of small group development doesn't seem to fit. Storming seems to be absent, or Storming never ends. To learn how this illusion forms, look closely at Satir's Change Model and at what we call a task-oriented work group.

National Weather Service Director Jack Kelly presents civil engineer Herbert Saffir (on right) with a framed poster of Hurricane Andrew depicting the Saffir-Simpson scale for rating the strength of hurricanesThe Storming Puzzle: Six Principles  [January 8, 2025]
For some task-oriented work groups, Tuckman's model of small group development seems not to fit. Storming seems to be either absent or continuous. To learn how this illusion forms, look closely at the processes that can precipitate episodes of Storming in task-oriented work groups.

An informal meeting geometryThe Storming Puzzle: Patterns and Antipatterns  [January 15, 2025]
Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies to today's task-oriented work groups, if we understand the six principles that govern transitions from one stage to another. Here are some examples.

A diagram of the cross section of a boat with a single water ballast tank at the bottomStorming: Obstacle or Pathway?  [January 22, 2025]
The Storming stage of Tuckman's model of small group development is widely misunderstood. Fighting the storms, denying they exist, or bypassing them doesn't work. Letting them blow themselves out in a somewhat-controlled manner is the path to Norming and Performing.

The Eisenhower Matrix of Urgency by ImportanceA Framework for Safe Storming  [January 29, 2025]
The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration.

People in a conference roomOn Shaking Things Up  [February 5, 2025]
Newcomers to work groups have three tasks: to meet and get to know incumbent group members; to gain their trust; and to learn about the group's task and how to contribute to accomplishing it. General skills are necessary, but specifics are most important.

An apple and an orange. The phrase "comparing apples and oranges" is idiomatic for "false equivalence fallacy"On Substituting for a Star  [February 12, 2025]
Newcomers to work groups have three tasks: to meet and get to know incumbent group members; to gain their trust; and to learn about the group's task and how to contribute to accomplishing it. All can be difficult; all are made even more difficult when the newcomer is substituting for a star.

Footnotes

Comprehensive list of all citations from all editions of Point Lookout
[Tuckman & Jensen 1977]
Bruce W. Tuckman and Mary Ann C. Jensen. "Stages of small-group development revisited," Group and organization studies 2:4 (1977), pp. 419-427. Available here. Retrieved 22 November 2022. Back
[Matteson, et al. 2016]
Miriam L. Matteson, Lorien Anderson, and Cynthia Boyden. "' Soft skills': A phrase in search of meaning," Libraries and the Academy 16:1 (2016), pp. 71-88. Available here. Retrieved 22 November 2022. Back

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