The dynamics of teamwork – whether in the workplace or in the context of collective action – are complex Read more at straitstimes.com.
Throughout the 21st century, teamwork has come to define the modern work environment. Driven by advances in communication technology, working collaboratively is – as management experts will tell you – how you harness the “collective intelligence”.
I led a recent study looking at whether training and team composition might affect how efficient people are when working together. We found that the benefits of collective intelligence can be outweighed by the cost of having to coordinate between team members.We designed an experimental study using an existing online citizen science project, Wildcam Gorongosa. Participants analyse webcam photos taken in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, to find and identify animal species and behaviour.
We found the type of training did indeed affect their performance. For those with general training – the “generalists” – efficiency initially improved, but then declined once they were tested on the specific set of test images. In contrast, those with targeted training – the “experts” – consistently maintained or improved their performance.
We also found that while having an expert in a group improved accuracy for the more complex tasks, it did not improve the group’s efficiency. In other words, the team got more correct answers but took considerably longer to do so. And for simple tasks, there was no improvement in accuracy from having an expert. Ultimately, the time that team members lost in coordinating with one another outweighed the benefit of adding an expert to the group.
Research also shows the importance of social learning in the context of effective collaborative working, which our study highlights. The experimental method we implemented involved individual training sessions followed immediately by testing the teamwork – this precluded opportunities for people to learn by observing their co-workers’ performance, and therefore one of the advantages of being part of the group during the learning process was eliminated.
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