 to look at very interesting field of OD intervention that is group level interventions or team level interventions. In fact, field of OD or field of organization development is started with the group level interventions and group dynamics was the very first topicwhich was developed in the in the national training laboratory at MIT and this has been the context of OD for very long time. So, we are going to look at the group level team intervention today. Can we question the importance of teams at workplace in present times? If you look at most of the work is carried out in the form of some teams. So, we have execute teams which are running the corporations and the management teams who are responsible for making the most important decisions about the corporations. We have project teams which create new products, new services and now we see the IT and ITS industry in India is contributing about 8-9 percent of the GDP mostly it works in the form of teams. Matrix teams help develop everything from banking service, pharmaceuticals to delivery of services in consulting firms and charitable agencies. So, ranging from the consulting in business organizations to the charitable agencies and developmental agencies. We have matrix teams operating wherein there are dual line of authorityat one at some location or for some specific project team operates under the team leader and for the specific functions people report to the corporate office or to the regional office. We have marketing and sales teams which deliver product and services to the customers. So, these examples are just to make us conscious that how pervasive the presence of teams are, how pervasive is the phenomena called team is affecting our life and organizational life. Whether it is institutions, development agencies and corporations, importance of team cannot be undermined and most of the work is carried out in the form of teams. Before we talk about the group level or team level intervention we must distinguish the group and teams and according to most of the researchers and according to the literature at large more specific roles of members and more complementarity in the competencies distinguishes teams from group. So, the group members may have commonality of the purpose and approach, but teams a group can be called team only when there is a more specific roles for the members and there is complementarity in the their competencies. So, think about working in team and identify the problem or challenges you might have faced. You can take example of the work life or you can take example of the college life, campus life. Here also you are working in teams for many projects and assignments. Think about what are the problems or challenges you come across while working in teams. So, if you look at the team the problems about the team work, it may range from in the schedule or negative leadership, conflict, suboptimal output, not able to make decisions, poor team norms, incompetence, freeriding, team mission not clear, personal likes and dislikes, unable to allocate resources, team do not connect to the larger organization, poor time management, unable to manage the project, poor project management etcetera etcetera. So, if you look at these are the multiple problems about the team work and if you remember our diagnostic model about looking at what is going on in the organizational level and group and individual level. We are reminded of this model that is a group level diagnostic model. If I have to understand an organization, if you remember we are following the open system approach in the in this course on OD and any system has input, process and output and any system is part of a bigger team and made up of the smaller team. So, like organization which is a system and input for the organization is industry and society. Similarly, for the group level the input is organization design itself. Organization design is input to the group. If we have to look at the group, if we have to analyze this or diagnose the group what we need to look at that is the essence of any diagnostic model. And if we look at the groups, if we want to study groups we need to look at five things as defined by Verlian Cummins in their text book. This model as Verlian Cummins is the synthesis of many models like V's board model, Bergletmin model etcetera present in the literature. So, if we have to diagnose the group we need to look at the goal clarity, task structure, group composition, group functioning and performance norms. All these five design component lead to certain type and quality of output. So, if we have to look at the groups we need to look at what is the input to the group that is organization. We need to look at these five components and we need to look at the output. Output is result of the interaction of the design component and the quality of the input the group receives. So, most of the team problems are basically coming from some or other aspect of this model. So, if you look at lack of clarity in the team goals it is it can be traced to which component goal clarity. If you look at people not coming on time, interrupting each other in the during the meeting interactions, meeting and interactions it can be traced back to performance norms. People not competent enough to deal with that task that can and that can be traced back to group functioning yes. So, now you can look at most of the group related problems can be traced back to some of these design components. So, there are different types of challenges while working in teams. These challenges have certain symptoms and in order to address those challenges we need to have certain intervention and types of intervention that is what we are going to discuss in detail in this session. So, for the simplicity we call it type 1, type 2 and type 3 problems. Type 1 problems are related to team building. Team is not built properly from the very initial phase and stage when there are problems and when there are certain things which are important and not taken care of we say this is a type 1 problem. So, problem in team constitution, lack of clear expectations, lack of appreciation for difference in the style of working, lack of appreciation of the different competencies all these are the symptoms of the team building related problems. So, when there are problems in the team building itself the focus of intervention is goal setting, role clarification and working on the task structure. Then you might have seen some problems related to ineffective group norms. Few group members not getting along well with each other, inefficient time and resource management, lack of competency in decision making or project management or project planning, problem solving. These are the symptoms of type 2 problems which we call team performance problems. Team performance problems which have these symptoms can be addressed through certain interventions which are about first of all examining the performance norms and correcting those and look having the inputs on the group function. There is a third type of team problem, team might not might be passionate about their work, team leader might be very integrated and liked by team members but many a time teams develop their own personality and that happens that becomes so strong that they at times forget their association and their connection with the larger organization. Many a time group or team starts enjoying itself and start taking their work itself so seriously, but in a narrow scope that they are not able to see their connection with the larger organization. So, that is a third type of what we call the type 3 problems in the team function. It is very important to study and set the teams right because team building is an effective approach to improving teamwork and task accomplishment which is very obvious things, but lot of other OD interventions also based on team function. So, OD functions, OD interventions like employee involvement program, work design, redesigning the work, restructuring of the organization, bringing about a strategic change, all these are the examples of OD interventions which are techno structural nature and strategic nature. They cannot be successful without effective teamwork. So, team building is important for its own sake because it is important for the team effectiveness. It is also important because other OD interventions rest on the well functioning, effective, cohesive teams in the organizations. Let us look at the team building activities. What is the first step in starting team based OD intervention? So, if you are assigned a team and since there are so many teams in our in our school as well because you are assigned a team to do some intervention, you are taking this course on OD, suggest few interventions what should be the first step diagnosis. We should not start with team building activities straight away. For any OD intervention and equally so with the OD based intervention, when a team when a project is assigned it must start with the diagnosis. How? How do we diagnose the team? In the diagnostic model we looked at the input design component and output. Now, how do we collect data on these factors? By interviewing people. Group discussion. Group discussion with teams is good if team is not functioning well and they are not in if their interpersonal relationships are not very positive. Do you think focus group discussion is appropriate? If team is not functioning well, if there are task related conflicts as well as relational conflicts, do you think group group focus group discussion will be effective? People will not speak. One to one interview may help. What else? Anonymous survey. Anonymous survey may be effective, yes. Observation. Yes, very important. So, how also to answer the how question as well we need to look at the diagnostic model. What is the first component in the diagnostic model? Organization design. Look at what is the bigger system within which this team is operating? What is the input to the team? Then for the goal clarity, what is the appropriate method to assess? Interview. And only interview? Interview data checked against the senior management perspective about the goals of the team. Only interview will not give you sufficient knowledge. We need to look at the interview data, but we also need to talk to the reporting manager of this team who can give his or her perspective. For the group functioning, what is the appropriate method to assess the group functioning? For the group functioning, whether group is functioning well, whether team is functioning well or not, what is the data you will ask for? Performance data. And performance data only about output? No, not only about output, but also the process data. For example, there is a recruitment team of HR in a function in a business organization. You not only look at how many people they have recruited, but you also look at what was the turnaround time for one recruitment means what is the average turnaround time which means how much time this team takes from inviting the application to the till the placement. So, we there are some of output data and there are some process data through which we can look at the group functioning. What is the good way of assessing group norms or team norms or performance norms of the team? The best way of looking at the performance norm of the team is observation. When team is going through a meeting, a consultant can just observe. So, you can look at there are different methods of looking at the different design component of the team. And these method generate data and their data has to be corroborated with each other that is called triangulation means looking at one phenomena, one setting from two, three, three different angles. So, we need to look at the performance data, we can look at the time law, perception of the manager, business leaders approach, members of the team, observations of the other stakeholders, all this data can help us to identify what is the current level of team activities and what is going on in a team. Let us look at some situations and think about what will be the unit to actually speculate because not this is a very brief information, but I think it is useful to tickle our mind and think in terms of the OD intervention. So, these are certain situations and conditions where I like you to speculate and suggest some of the OD interventions. So, this is a story about the members and consulting team that do not follow the timeline for the communication, they interrupt each other during the meetings and do not follow through the team decisions. What is the appropriate interventions? What is the focus of intervention or appropriate intervention? So, having one-to-one discussion and making people realize the outcome of their behavior. Second condition, members of an executive committee of a manufacturing plant and the executive committee of a manufacturing plant generally comprises of the operations head, quality head, production head, HR head, etcetera are giving separate and sometimes contradictory instructions to the team members and that is why people on the shop floor sometime feel confused about what should be the priorities of their work, what kind of intervention we can think about. Another situation, a cohesive team where members are committed to the team objectives are not able to deliver the expected performance of late. Excellent team, very competent, suddenly there is a derailment in the performance. There might be shift and change in the environment and as a result of that organizational priorities might have changed, but that those organizational priorities probably might not have understood well by this team. So, there might be lack of understanding and lack of common understanding of the organizational priorities and the team priority. Another situation is a team getting outcomes of their activities which nobody feeling proud of. During designated leader and the member, they all are busy doing something, but whatever is the outcome nobody is feeling proud of. Can group functioning just happen? Even if there is a data, even if there is a performance data, process data, even if it is very clear that what they are pursuing is not common, what they are pursuing is not audacious, what they are pursuing and the way they are working is not the best. Do you think group itself can pursue, start pursuing the right objectives and start performing with the right processes? You need to have a good leadership, it is a leadership problem. So, now you can see that there are a lot of different types of teams and different teams go through different challenges and for those different teams to tackle the different challenges you need, different types of intervention.