Question

Give some examples (at least three) of team mental models (ones you hold currently, or have held in the past). Consider the Cuyahogacollision example. What went wrong with the team mental model in this situation in terms of both accuracy and correspondence?

Answer 1

Example-1

While playing cricket team as a Captain of the team, I used mental model to analyse and understand my team players strengths and weakness so that I can utilise them to increase team’s performance efficiency and make a win situation in higher probability. I figured out which 5 batsmen are better among all, who can bat from 1 to 5 order and in bowlers I figured out which are better faster and spin bowlers and asked them to bat and ball accordingly as a team strategy.

Result was we scored 170 runs in 20 overs and knocked out opponent team on just 110 all out and won the match.

Example-2

While handling my sales team as a senior sales executive, I understood the synergy between my peer workers as how we can better up-sell and cross-sell to our customers, and as a team together achieve individual as well as team target. As our team was struggling to achieve each members’ targets before, I figure out which are weak ones and strong ones among us, and how we can help each other in handling each other and achieve targets together.

Result was after 2 months of such synergy and working together, we kept over achieving our individual and team targets consistently for next 5 months.

Example-3

As a Sales Operations Senior Manager, I have helped my team of 1 Manager and 5 Sales Associates to improve their cognitive capabilities by training and mentoring them all together via several roleplay situations as how to handle different sales customers and critical situations. As my Manager was less experienced to handle other sales associates and well mingle with them, I had to train as how to understand his associates’ weakness and strengths and how to organize which sales associate is better for field sales and which one for inside sales, so that we can increase entire team’s confidence and productivity.

Result- we have been the most successful team in the company who are rated as high in team work and target achievers.

Cuyahoga collision example-

Issue was Situation understanding failure (inaccuracy) and wrong communication between Captains and Mates.

Captain figured wrong about fishing boat approaching to them instead it was a Ship. This lead to possibility of both ships coming in front of each other and collision and huge damage of lives on both ends. It was a big human error in in-accuracy of judging the situation wrong.

Another mistake was communication gap between the Mate and Captain of 1^st ship and No communication between Captains of both the Ships. End result- collision and death