Setting Conditions for Optimal Team Learning

Human Systems Dynamics (HSD)^[2] blends ideas from hard-science complexity theories and behavioral sciences. You can use HSD as a lens for understanding teams and planning liftoffs. The HSD perspective helps you see and understand complex adaptive human systems. Organizations, agile teams, meetings, and product-delivery efforts are examples of these systems.

Like any complex adaptive system (CAS), teams exhibit a set of conditions, which in HSD parlance are called containers, differences, and exchanges (CDEs). Identifying the particular nature of the conditions in your team, organization, or liftoff will give you insight into how to take action in diverse situations. When you have a common set of definitions for these conditions, you can plan, design, implement, lead, and execute more effectively.

Containers

Containers establish the boundaries, framework, tensions, and identities of the team. They can be psychological, as well as physical or organizational. A purpose or shared interest can create the container that draws people together. Containers contribute to group identity and trust. Belonging to a team or sitting together in a workspace holds the system in place while patterns of behavior form.

The size of the container also influences the system. You don’t want a container for a team of seven to be the same as the container for a team of twenty or an entire engineering department. Your liftoff design establishes a temporary container and needs to match the participants (parts) at hand.

Differences

Differences among the parts of a CAS create patterns of behavior and action. Patterns of team behavior are also known as the team’s culture. Team culture holds existing patterns in place until something happens to shift them, such as a disruption in team composition or receiving new work assignments. Differences contribute the conditions that bring creative tension, which can result in innovation or conflict. Differences facilitate changes in the container and in its parts.

Differences can show up as the familiar forms of diversity in the team. They can also come from more subtle sources. For instance, it might make a status difference which universities team members attended (public versus private, research versus practical, Stanford versus Cal), or tension might come from differences in perspective or approach associated with a primary role on a team (builder, tester, or business liaison). Your liftoff planning, design, and facilitation choices might amplify or dampen differences. Both can be useful.

Exchanges

A system connects to itself or its environment through exchanges. Exchanges include interactions, connections, or transactions, whether short or long. Exchanges create connections between and among team members, product managers, and customers. Exchanges can also cross team boundaries to the rest of the organization. Exchanges can look like reports, presentations, or conversations. They can look like meetings, settlements, or agreements. Each exchange results in some kind of shift or transformation for the sender or receiver or both.

You’ll find it useful to remember that every system, every liftoff, and every team is a whole—a container. The container holds the parts that express differences and make patterns of behavior through exchanges. Those patterns create team culture. Every container fits within a greater whole. Containers have a fractal nature as well, with each part, whole, and greater whole reflecting self-similar attributes.

Keep these conditions in mind as you begin your liftoff planning, designing, and facilitating with a system-wide perspective. The language of HSD enables you to understand, name, and influence patterns. You must be able to see patterns before looking for ways to strengthen or mitigate them. For your core team, the CDE model is especially useful in understanding the work context. After the liftoff, continue to think about the team’s work through the lens of the CDE model.