Quote:
Originally Posted by Peggy Painter
This has been our rookie year and, as of last night, our team is still eating meals together so we're not too bad off.....however, as the group leader (and a NEMO! ) my big challenge has been trying get the group--kids & adults to communicate their ideas and to make group decisions, especially on design matters.
I'm trying to keep our group a kid-led group, however the kids aren't technically skilled enough or developmentally ready to do everything and I'm afraid that when adults make suggestions the kids are reluctant to contribute. And I have noticed that kids & adults (myself included) can get emotionally attached to our design ideas.
How do other teams work through the process of developing a design & build plan?
Is there a standard process amongst engineers for collaborating on team building projects?
Do any of you mentors go to sleep at night after a meeting and NOT wake up in the wee hours concerned about how things went?  |
In the real world, it is very rare to find a group of equally skilled and developmentally ready people. You always have varying levels of experience, from the wise engineer who has been with the company for thirty years to the young engineer who just picked up their degree off the printing press and still has a problem finding their desk in the morning.
When an issue or design decision arises, would you hold both of these people's opinion with the same regard? No! The proverbial 'new guy' hasn't been around a long enough time to really pick up enough knowledge to be as useful as the 'old guy.' However, 'new guy' still gets a seat at the table and a chance to talk. The simple fact of the matter is that varying levels of experience inherently weight the opinions of some. It's foolish to equally weight everyone's input and vote. (I think John goes into some detail about 'vote is four letter word' in his white paper)
IMO, adults leading design sessions is absolutely 'OK', and in most cases probably the best thing you can do. 'Forcing' participation and breaking up into small groups is probably the best way to get everyone contributing. In a way you want people to grab and hold onto ideas -- that really gets the discussion going. After kickoff we did 'Big Picture' stuff as a very large group (and everyone had to say at least one thing), and then broke up into smaller groups to do more detailed work. These focus groups would then present their concepts to the larger group, and everyone had time to think about them and comment/question.
(As 'new guy' at work I just listen to every one around me talk, and I've never learned so much so quickly.)