Jack mentions the movement of the group through Tuckman's phases.
In designing Interactive Management, we took Tuckman's phases as a
challenge, and wanted a system that would eliminate the "forming,
storming, and norming", and allow "performing" to begin at once.
I have a feeling that behaviorally-oriented people will quickly write
this off as either (a) behaviorally insensitive or (b) impossible or (c)
both.
The great value in the Tuckman description is that it is right on target,
and can be observed almost anywhere that people congregate.
Another great value is that it tells us what to eliminate in effective
group work. A lot of people try to deal with the four phases
separately. The virtue in integrating them by eliminating the first
three is that all the benefits (?) of the first three can be gained by
focusing intelligently only on the fourth.
John Warfield
Jwarfiel@gmu.edu
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Host's Note: I asked John to give us a pointer to Tuckman's work, and he
replied with the additional comments below...
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Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 10:11:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: "JOHN N. WARFIELD" <jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu>
To: Richard Karash <rkarash@world.std.com>
Richard, I wasn't completely sure of what you were asking, though I think
I got it.
While the following is probably overkill, here goes:
Tuckman's paper is titled "Developmental Sequences in Small Groups",
Psych. Bull 63(6), 1965, 384-399.
I first wrote about this paper in the book
SOCIETAL SYSTEMS: PLANNING, POLICY, AND COMPLEXITY,
New York, Wiley, 1976, pages 78-88.
In my later book, I described Tuckman's first three phases using the term
"social overhead", referring to things that behavioral scientists would
suggest have to happen. Our view was that descriptive work does not
describe what has to happen as a rule, but only what they have seen
happening in the past. As such it is very valuable because it tells us
what has to be done to improve. The reference to this later book is:
A SCIENCE OF GENERIC DESIGN: MANAGING COMPLEXITY THROUGH SYSTEMS DESIGN,
Iowa State University Press, 1994, page 38, in a section titled "Multiple
Characterizations of the Human Being".
One of the major reasons for eliminating the social overhead in group work
is the very high value attached to the time of people working in groups.
The social overhead does have to emerge, but it doesn't have to emerge
during the group process. As it turns out, performing seems to be so rare
that when people actually experience it in an efficient way, a lot of the
things that would otherwise have to involve forming, storming, and norming
seem to be byproducts of good experience in working with others.
The three phases of Interactive Management are discussed in the book:
J. N. Warfield and A. Roxana Cardenas, A HANDBOOK OF INTERACTIVE
MANAGEMENT, The Iowa State University Press, 1994.
Chapter 4 is titled "IM Phases", and occupies pages 29-34. This chapter
does not fully explicate how the design of the phases eliminates the first
three Tuckman phases from the group setting. The book has been split into
chapters that deal separately with various aspects of Interactive
Management, because we have discovered that practitioners understand it
better if they can study parts separately.
Best wishes,
-- JOHN WARFIELD Jwarfiel@gmu.edu