Innovating a New Kitchenware in a Team Setting

Introduction:
We have a lot of teamwork, varying from simple ones to complex ones. In this paper, the topic is we are going to design a kitchenware within a team. Different groups lead to different product results. As we can see from the kitchenware design pictures, different leadership and different working environment delivers different styles. Those picture vividly illustrate the idea. Leaders decide the final design.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages of teamwork, in this kitchenware design project, we basically design the kitchenware from 2 perspectives in the first place. In the first exercise, we have this teamwork under the supervision of a team supervisor, who actually controls the direction of the whole design and has absolute power in this team and the second perspective is much tenderer, it leads by common team members and everyone has certain right to say something. So in the end, actually the 2 exercises deliver different product designs.

And in this blog, the whole idea of us is to analyze different exercises and by comparing different situations getting our own optimized solution. So, the first part is that we are going to talk about these 2 exercises based on 2 different teamwork environments. And some detailed principles would be presented later. And also we will mention the different elements, such as trust and leaderships in building a team, which actually play important roles in teamwork.

Exercise A1 (With a Supervisor)

1) Elect one group member to be the supervisor. Everyone must check in with the supervisor when they have an idea and the supervisor has to approve it. The supervisor will instruct the rest of the team on what is the next direction to proceed with the script writing process.

2) Any time the supervisor decides something is a good idea (such as he/she gives a compliment,) the supervisor also has to point out two negative aspects.
3) No laughing is allowed. The company believes that laughing is not conducive to productivity.

4) No team member is allowed to talk without the permission to speak from the supervisor.

5) The supervisor presents the pitch.

Actually the whole process is instructed by a supervisor. We designed a Classic Saucepan during this process. Here is the pitch address.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXHF2biPng

We can get the picture and development ideas from this  

Refer to http://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-1453406/%0AScanpan+Classic+Saucepan

When you do the cooking, it would be like this

 This reason for this product is because this whole kitchenware is under the control of one single person’s idea. Even though there are a lot of other team member’s voices, but there could only be one final voice for the product. Supervisor is the top person of the whole team and project. During the teamwork discussion, the supervisor tended to hear the voice he liked, and easily form the bias of trusting those with the similar idea of his own. The design of this product’s core idea is environment friendly, so we just focus on this main function of the saucepan, during the innovation session, when we discuss about the span design, the environment became very intense because as long as we provide with different ideas and wanted to explore more function of a kitchenware, the supervisor just denied the discussion and just jump to the conclusion of the design disobeys the environment friendly idea. So everyone just does not want to talk, because if they exploit their fresh idea, it would be denied immediately. Employee trusted the supervisor and told him what they thought about, however, under the dictatorship of the supervisor, their trusts turned out to be supervisor’s denials. All of this is because the supervisor obviously trust himself even more. With the procedure of the whole process, the trust among team member and supervisor became thin. The supervisor tends to be biased. So the final result of the product is a simple with single product concept-----“environmentally friendly” saucepan.

 The disadvantages of this mode are obvious, people don’t trust their supervisor that much with the passage of time, they are afraid of being denied. Who would choose to stay in a stressful, divisive atmosphere if offered a productive, supportive one?(Robert F. Hurley, 2006). Also, team could not take advantage of brainstorming, they could not get enough good ideas to show their creativity, which, are even more significant than the good people(Ed Catmull,2008). Their behaviors and ideas are restricted. Those restrictions indicate in the product, which simply focuses on one single function and is less convenient for multiple uses. The overall environment of the team is quietness and the culture of their team is restriction. But it obviously against the Pixar’s Operation Principle (Ed Catmull, 2008), they are not free and they are afraid of being scolded. They were not allowed to laugh, the teamwork they did could not really pressurize them and they are afraid of announce their claims. Whenever there is some facts, the supervisor would be very easily to ignore the ladder of inference and jump to his own conclusion or even build a biased belief to inhibit him explore the real insights. Also, people tend to think their own ideas right, but if you conduct this whole idea to a teamwork, it might sometimes result in the whole work’s failure.

However, there are some advantages concerning the governance of a team. It made the whole team organized with regulation and did not conflict with each other at the same time because they just could not speak at the same time. And also, the team is very quick to act with a single order. And they might be very concentrated on the single goal. I think this could contribute to goal-fixed projects but contributes less to the creative projects.

I read the article (Dean Tjosvold Alfred S.H. Wong, 2000)The leader relationship: building teamwork with and among employees. For my opinion, team leader is building the teamwork among the team while a supervisor is building the teamwork with the team member. Supervisors don’t get themselves involved in the real environment and easily to judge the work and people. I wish it could be improved by applying some practical theories or based on this failed case, they can reflect on it and for a better performance in the future.

Exercise A2

In this exercise, because the environment and leadership assessment changes, the principles are as follow:

1) Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with everyone.

2) It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.

3) The team collectively presents the pitch.

We gathered different staffs from different departments to enhance our new product’ s creativity. Actually we built a virtual team, as they didn’t have responsibility for our kitchenware development.

We are crazy! Finally we achieved a series of high-tech kitchenware that can fit nearly all-family members’ need. They were not just product improvement but the concept changing. They can tell you exactly what’s in your food including what chemical makeup of food and will also give you calorie and fat information.

 This is just a beginning that can help people cook. We also dreamed a 3D food printer uses edible inks and electronic blueprints. What’s more, we considered the kitchen safe not just using a clock but a smart controller. We even cared about the cooking feeling. We connected the cooktop with social media and even bring people together! It’s amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffiTEBRKbA

Supervisor cannot supervise running ideas!  Although we can find some problems objectively in our proposal. For instance they cannot get business value in return quickly. And we only strive to make a great kitchenware but didn’t operate within time, budget, and people constraints, as we didn’t have a supervisor to limit us. But what the “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity” tells us that talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe for us to tell the truth then we run out so crazy ideas excitedly.

Creativity is not a lonely dance！Our discussion gathered product department, sales department, marketing department, technology department, or even HR department to share their brain trust. They know what is the kitchen trend in the future, the market share in current marketing and even what can lead the kitchen revolution.  With the encouragement of unrestrained mind sharing, they created the future. People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act. However, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems.

What should be noticed next is that it’s really hard to get talented people to work effectively with one another. That takes trust and respect, which managers can’t mandate; they must be earned over time. What we can do is construct an environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity.

When thinking back to the whole process of the past two exercises, we find out that a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character which will allow him or her to put the interests of the whole above everything is more important than their professional ability in promoting a high performance collaboration and the entire success of a project and further more the whole organization.

Analysis and Comparisons:

As we mentioned above, actually we have already did the 2 exercises we described and got different results even doing the same kitchenware design work. In exercise A1, the biggest problem was the supervisor could not actually communicate with other members efficiently so that a single person conducted the project and that person easily believed itself and biased others. During the teamwork exercise, we could not really talk about what we were thinking and felt really embarrassed about the processes and even doubted that we could make a functional kitchenware.

So when it came to the second exercise, when we adjusted our communication methods and sharing ideas in an equal and comfortable environment, we tended to think more freely and come up with more innovative ideas that would definitely not happen in the first situation. The whole process is smoothly and innovative, even though we did stray from the project’s point, we tolerated it as viable atmosphere committing to our project. And at the end of our exercise, we reflected of what happened during the whole process and thought out of box with the intention of integrating to support our group work and avoid similar problems in the future. Such as the launch of Group Decision Support System. The whole process was comfortable and team members trusted their team members that their ideas could be heard. They would commit themselves to the work more compared with the first situation and we were willing to working on another project together in the future.

So we come to the conclusion of different leaderships promoting different product styles and analyze human nature. The concerns of trust among team members and how to deliver an innovative project would also be covered in the later discussion.

First of all, there are always some leaders who taking every of their employees as threats and afraid to be replaced. In such condition, they consider more about how can they perform well in front of their leaders and prevent their employees from any opportunities that may make the big boss 

 find their value even though such an idea may be very valuable for the interests of the whole organization. They decline to promote talents despite those good guys will have a big contribution to the organization in the future. Such leaders always tend to be stable and safety in the daily works and avoid taking any risks, which greatly restricts the innovation of a team. Nobody will exert all their energies when under such a negative organization culture and as time passed, the team members will be risk aversion and accept such atmosphere. In the exercise A1, as the script and pitch will be shown to those senior executive, the team leader may eager to show his or her opinions to the big boss and hope to be agreed and even appreciated, which will consequent prevent him or her from listening to the others’ advice. This has beyond the simple trust and rational decision making field; there are about the human nature.

Such human nature may always come from the flattery from the subordinate. There are always such people who try their best to please leadership favor no matter whether the leader is right or wrong wherever organizations or countries. These kinds of flatteries can lead to the arrogance to varying extent and this is why those leaders in power for a long time may lose themselves in some circumstance. Leader like this are more easily to take many things for granted; and the enjoyment of the leadership will also make them afraid to lose such power. In the end, it will form such character we discussed above, which does harms to the teams and entire organization greatly.

The second exercise A2 seemed to show us an ideal and nice organization atmosphere. But a voluntary team also needs some conditions to guarantee its formation, continuity and even the final success. First requirement is the degree of freedom of the organization. In our exercise, we just consider the ideal condition that the firm is willing to see that many departments are working together for one project voluntary. But when launching such thoughts in reality, there will be many challenges such as the employees also have works in their d epartment, the funding issues, and support from all the department managers. Without freedom organization culture, it will only be a beautiful dream. The spare time and extra energy is the second necessity to guarantee such collaboration. I think the prevalence and prosperity of the poetry in Tang Dynasty, China is a very good example for both of these. If you are familiar with the Chinese history, you can easily find that it is the enlightened policy (degree of freedom in the organization) and wealthy government (spare time and extra energy) that lead to and guarantee poetize during the spare time.

Let us think about a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character. When involving in a negotiation, they will show another kind of way of bounding. Instead of just focus on the immediate interests, they can bound across time and space. Such farseeing character allows them to give up some interests for now but establish the relationship of cooperation in the long term. Today’s concession may bring us bigger interests in the future. This kind of human nature may cater the basic of trust more suitable. Bypass their personal interests and pay more attention to the motivation of employees’ enthusiasm and innovation towards the project and also form a culture of knowledge management which encourage even award those knowledge discovery, knowledge sharing, knowledge exchange and knowledge application. Make a big pie rather than the life-and-death struggle. After all, only when they find someone properly for their current occupation can they leave it and get the further promotion; otherwise, the senior managers may also feel intractability when they want to promote you.

Conclusion:

After overall consideration, we draw a conclusion that such a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character can play a role which is very essential for the success of high performance collaboration. They just play as link and hub in the team. Instead of be a leader, they are more of a coordinator without any authority that may pressure on others no matter tangible or intangible. Solve the conflict, do proper promotion, right the wrong direction and monitor the whole process of the project so as to guarantee the success in the condition that also meet the standard of budget and schedule. Comparing with exercise A1 and A2, the result of this may be more beneficial. And only if a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character can afford to play that role. The wealth and benefits they bring to the collaboration will be inestimable.

Reference:

1.Tjosvold, D., & Wong, A. S. (2000). The leader relationship: building teamwork with and among employees. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 21(7), 350-354.

2.Catmull, E. (2008). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business School Publishing.

3. Hurley, R. F. (2006). The decision to trust. Harvard Business Review, 84(9), 55-62.

4. Y., Tong. (2013). Spontaneous virtual team: Improving organizational performance through information and communication technology. Business Horizons, 56, 361-375.

                                                           Below is old version                                                                                                                         

In this blog, we are going to talk about 2 exercises based on a working team intend to innovate a new kitchenware product for market. But based on the 2 different teamwork environment.

Exercise A1 (With a Supervisor)

Principles:

1) Elect one group member to be the supervisor. Everyone must check in with the supervisor when they have an idea and the supervisor has to approve it. The supervisor will instruct the rest of the team on what is the next direction to proceed with the script writing process.

2) Any time the supervisor decides something is a good idea (such as he/she gives a compliment,) the supervisor also has to point out two negative aspects.

3) No laughing is allowed. The company believes that laughing is not conducive to productivity.

4) No team member is allowed to talk without the permission to speak from the supervisor.

5) The supervisor presents the pitch.

Innovating a kitchenware in a team.

 Kitchenwares make a different. The leader decides the final design.

In this Exercise A1, actually the whole process is instructed by a supervisor.

We designed a Classic Saucepan during this process.

Here is the pitch address.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXHF2biPng

We can get the picture and development ideas from this 

when you do the cooking, it would be like this:

Delicious?

Refer to http://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-1453406/%0AScanpan+Classic+Saucepan

This reason for this product is because this whole kitchenware is under the control of one single person’s idea. Even though there are a lot of other team member’s voices, but there could only be one final voice for the product. Supervisor is the top person of the whole team and project. During the teamwork discussion, the supervisor tended to hear the voice he liked, and easily form the bias of trusting those with the similar idea of his own. The design of this product’s core idea is environment friendly, so we just focus on this main function of the saucepan, during the innovation session, when we discuss about the span design, the environment became very intense because as long as we provide with different ideas and wanted to explore more function of a kitchenware, the supervisor just denied the discussion and just jump to the conclusion of the design disobeys the environment friendly idea. So everyone just does not want to talk, because if they exploit their fresh idea, it would be denied immediately. The trust among the team and supervisor has become very thin. The supervisor tends to be biased. So the final result of the product is a simple but environmentally friendly saucepan.

The disadvantages of this mode are obvious, people don’t trust each other, they are afraid of being denied. Who would choose to stay in a stressful, divisive atmosphere if offered a productive, supportive one?(Robert F. Hurley, 2006). Also, team could not take advantage of brainstorming, they could not get enough good ideas to show their creativity, which, are even more significant than the good people(Ed Catmull,2008). Their behaviors and ideas are restricted. Those restrictions indicate in the product, which simply focuses on one single function and is less convenient for multiple uses. The overall environment of the team is quietness and the culture of their team is restriction. But it obviously against the Pixar’s Operation Principle (Ed Catmull, 2008), they are not free and they are afraid of being scolded. They were not allowed to laugh, the teamwork they did could not really pressurize them and they are afraid of announce their claims. Whenever there is some facts, the supervisor would be very easily to ignore the ladder of inference and jump to his own conclusion or even build a biased belief to inhibit him explore the real insights. Also, people tend to think their own ideas right, but if you conduct this whole idea to a teamwork, it might sometimes result in the whole work’s failure.

However, there are some advantages concerning the governance of a team. It made the whole team organized with regulation and did not conflict with each other at the same time because they just could not speak at the same time. And they might be very concentrated on a single goal. I think this could contribute to goal-fixed projects but contributes less to the creative projects.

I read the article (Dean Tjosvold Alfred S.H. Wong, 2000)The leader relationship: building teamwork with and among employees. For my opinion, team leader is building the teamwork among the team while a supervisor is building the teamwork with the team member. Supervisors don’t get themselves involved in the real environment and easily to judge the work and people. I wish it could be improved by applying some practical theories or based on this failed case, they can reflect on it and for a better performance in the future.

Exercise A2

In this exercise, the principles changed to:

1) Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with everyone.

2) It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.

3) The team collectively presents the pitch.

We gathered different staffs from different departments to enhance our new product’ s creativity. Actually we built a virtual team, as they didn’t have responsibility for our kitchenware development. And they can communicate with each other like this.

We are crazy!

Finally we achieved a series of high-tech kitchenware that can fit nearly all-family members’ need. They were not just product improvement but the concept changing. They can tell you exactly what’s in your food including what chemical makeup of food and will also give you calorie and fat information.

This is just a beginning that can help people cook. We also dreamed a 3D food printer uses edible inks and electronic blueprints. What’s more, we considered the kitchen safe not just using a clock but a smart controller. We even cared about the cooking feeling. We connected the cooktop with social media and even bring people together! It’s amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffiTEBRKbA

Supervisor cannot supervise running ideas!

Although we can find some problems objectively in our proposal. For instance they cannot get business value in return quickly. And we only strive to make a great kitchenware but didn’t operate within time, budget, and people constraints, as we didn’t have a supervisor to limit us. But what the “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity” tells us that talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe for us to tell the truth then we run out so crazy ideas excitedly.

Creativity is not a lonely dance！    

Our discussion gathered product department, sales department, marketing department, technology department, or even HR department to share their brain trust. They know what is the kitchen trend in the future, the market share in current marketing and even what can lead the kitchen revolution.  With the encourage of unrestrained mind sharing, they created the future. People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act. However, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems.

What should be noticed next is that it’s really hard to get talented people to work effectively with one another. That takes trust and respect, which managers can’t mandate; they must be earned over time. What we can do is construct an environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity.

When thinking back to the whole process of the past two exercises, we find out that a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character which will allow him or her to put the interests of the whole above everything is more important than their professional ability in promoting a high performance collaboration and the entire success of a project and further more the whole organization.

Analysis & Suggestions

There always be some leaders who taking every of their employees as threats and afraid to be replaced. In such condition, they consider more about how can they perform well in front of their leaders and prevent their employees from any opportunities that may make the big boss  find their value even though such an idea may be very valuable for the interests of the whole organization. They decline to promote talents despite those good guys will have a big contribution to the organization in the future. Such leaders always tend to be stable and safety in the daily works and avoid taking any risks, which greatly restricts the innovation of a team. Nobody will exert all their energies when under such a negative organization culture and as time passed, the team members will be risk aversion and accept such atmosphere. In the exercise A1?, as the script and pitch will be shown to those senior executive, the team leader may eager to show his or her opinions to the big boss and hope to be agreed and even appreciated, which will consequent prevent him or her from listening to the others’ advice. This has beyond the simple trust and rational decision making field; there are about the human nature.

Such human nature may always come from the flattery from the subordinate. There are always such people who try their best to please leadership favor no matter whether the leader is right or wrong wherever organizations or countries. These kinds of flatteries can lead to the arrogance to varying extent and this is why those leaders in power for a long time may lose themselves in some circumstance. Leader like this are more easily to take many things for granted; and the enjoyment of the leadership will also make them afraid to lose such power. In the end, it will form such character we discussed above, which does harms to the teams and entire organization greatly.

The second exercise A2 seemed to show us an ideal and nice organization atmosphere. But a voluntary team also needs some conditions to guarantee its formation, continuity and even the final success. First requirement is the degree of freedom of the organization. In our exercise, we just consider the ideal condition that the firm is willing to see that many departments are working together for one project voluntary. But when launching such thoughts in reality, there will be many challenges such as the employees also have works in their d epartment, the funding issues, and support from all the department managers. Without freedom organization culture, it will only be a beautiful dream. The spare time and extra energy is the second necessity to guarantee such collaboration. I think the prevalence and prosperity of the poetry in Tang Dynasty, China is a very good example for both of these. If you are familiar with the Chinese history, you can easily find that it is the enlightened policy (degree of freedom in the organization) and wealthy government (spare time and extra energy) that lead to and guarantee poetize during the spare time.

Let us think about a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character. When involving in a negotiation, they will show another kind of way of bounding. Instead of just focus on the immediate interests, they can bound across time and space. Such farseeing character allows them to give up some interests for now but establish the relationship of cooperation in the long term. Today’s concession may bring us bigger interests in the future. This kind of human nature may cater the basic of trust more suitable. Bypass their personal interests and pay more attention to the motivation of employees’ enthusiasm and innovation towards the project and also form a culture of knowledge management which encourage even award those knowledge discovery, knowledge sharing, knowledge exchange and knowledge application. Make a big pie rather than the life-and-death struggle. After all, only when they find someone properly for their current occupation can they leave it and get the further promotion; otherwise, the senior managers may also feel intractability when they want to promote you.

After overall consideration, we draw a conclusion that such a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character can play a role which is very essential for the success of high performance collaboration. They just play as link and hub in the team. Instead of be a leader, they are more of a coordinator without any authority that may pressure on others no matter tangible or intangible. Solve the conflict, do proper promotion, right the wrong direction and monitor the whole process of the project so as to guarantee the success in the condition that also meet the standard of budget and schedule. Comparing with exercise A1 and A2, the result of this may be more beneficial. And only if a leader with magnanimous and farseeing character can afford to play that role. The wealth and benefits they bring to the collaboration will be inestimable.

Reference:

1.Tjosvold, D., & Wong, A. S. (2000). The leader relationship: building teamwork with and among employees. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 21(7), 350-354.

2.Catmull, E. (2008). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business School Publishing.

3. Hurley, R. F. (2006). The decision to trust. Harvard Business Review, 84(9), 55-62.

4. Y., Tong. (2013). Spontaneous virtual team: Improving organizational performance through information and communication technology. Business Horizons, 56, 361-375.