Ruminations About the Issues Assignment

One of the things that I noticed being mentioned in a number of articles that I reviewed in Performance Improvement Quarterly was the relative effectiveness of project groups or collaborative teams that are assigned to work together to produce a product, develop an innovation, problem-solve, etc.  I also have some personal experience with this as a former coach and now in my work here at BYU where I often find myself leading or being parts of committees that are charged with producing certain things (usually ideas that can be implemented).  I have seen both the blessing and burden of working in groups and am interested in those factors that push a team in one direction or the other.  Based on my quick review of some of the recent PIQ issues, it seems like this is something that is receving a fair amount of attention in the corporate world.  I also feel like it is an issue that has implications for almost any setting, from the church, to families, to corporate America.  There seems to be a lot of power in using groups of people to generate solutions to problems (especially performance problems), but I feel like there are critical factors that are sometimes quite subtle that can make a big difference in group effectiveness.