Team Production

The most common sort of team projects I have worked on have been group projects for my classes.  In these projects, most of the time we are assigned a group to work with, then once the project is completed we all receive the same grade.  This to me seems, in some sense, opposed to the theory discussed in the New York Times article we read about collaboration.  In essence, the article claims that when people are forced to collaborate in order to get any sort of outcome, they are much more likely to share the benefits of their work equally.  The idea is that, when forced to work together, people will share the outcomes of that work equally by choice.  In group projects, however, the sequence of events is inverted.  Group members are encouraged to collaborate, yes, but not matter how they get their work done, they are forced to share the “benefits” equally (in this case, the final grade).  All members of the group will receive the same grade regardless of how the work gets done or who does most of it.  To use the metaphor from the article, it is almost like there is one giant rope which gives the same marble to everyone in the room, regardless of whether they play the game or not.  Teachers and professors set the “game” up so that students will all pull on that single large rope together, similarly to a tug-of-war match, but this is often not the case.  One or more group members can easily “sit out” and still receive their marbles at the end.

    Knowing this, it is true that the more members sit out, the less likely the group is to pull the rope far enough to obtain the marbles - so there is risk involved.  Some group members may decide they don’t care enough about the outcome to do any work on the project; they make up the laziest of group members.  Others may act opportunistically, gauging the difficulty of different aspects of the project and only pitching in when it is easiest or most convenient for them.  Other members may be dedicated to the project because they want to ensure that they get something out of it; whether that is a good grade, improved skill sets, an impressed professor, just to put in their best effort, or all of the above can differ based on the student and on the project.  The students who put in the most work may also be those who are the most risk-averse; if they don’t put in their fair share, then determinance of the grade is in large part up to the rest of the group.  The members who do not contribute as much are the ones more willing to accept that risk.

    The article talks about the idea of hitting the “shared sacrifice” button in people’s minds in order to get them to “share the spoils”.  In a group project scenario, the “share the spoils” button has been pressed by an outside force before group members had to even start thinking about what kind of sacrifices they might need to make.  This alters the group’s motivations and puts sharing sacrifice on the back burner.  

    Giving the entire group the same grade is also a form of turning shared group efforts into a transaction.  The group is rewarded for completing the project, which, similar to the ideas of article on selfishness vs empathy/altruism, turns it into a utilitarian transaction.  This puts group members in selfish frames of mind, encouraging them to think “How can I maximize my grade using the least time and energy?”  When group members think about using less time and energy, it makes sense that they will also think less about how to help their fellow group members - their mindset is not focused on compassion and gratitude, but on efficiency and outcomes.  To get rid of the “shared grade” idea could change group members’ motivations for the better.  The question, then, is how to grade the members of the group and the project itself without undermining the human propensity for compassion and altruism.

Risk & Uncertainty

As a freshman in college, I had lots of ideas for what I wanted my career to look like, but no solid idea or plan of what I actually wanted to do.  I thought of many things but nothing seemed exactly right to me.  I came in as an Engineering student, but switched to the division of general studies shortly after.  I have explored a different major pretty much every semester, including English + Secondary Education, Pre-dental, Psychology, Architecture, and finally Economics.  I have joined clubs and organizations in many different realms -  I even became a CA (similar to a TA) for an introductory computer science class and was a member of the pre-law honors society.    After all of this, I have discovered more of what I like and do not like, and learned even more about myself. However, I still don’t fully know what I want my career to look like, or “what I want to be when I ‘grow up.’”

One thing I do know is that I want to do something that makes me happy.  To me, this means working in a field that is interesting to me and that pays decently well while leaving room for me to pursue other things (hobbies, fitness, family, etc.)  As a college freshman I thought so much about how to make that tangible - I tried to find the “right answers” and figure out all the specifics of what my career, job, and salary would look like so I would never have to be uncertain.

    Unfortunately, the certainty that I strove for is impossible to find.  Instead of searching for perfect, simple answers to complex and ephemeral problems, I have learned (and am still learning) to be content with uncertainty.  One way I do this is by focusing on the things that I already know and by keeping an open mind to explore the things I am passionate about.

After reading the book Choose Yourself! by James Altucher (as well as other similar books), I have been more comfortable with the idea that doing the things I want most now will lead to happiness and success later on.  The book emphasizes doing only the things you feel excited about and to make time for only the people and places and events that you really want to.  As a dedicated student who has always strived to exceed the expectations given to me by my parents, teachers, and society, I found this idea liberating.  Before, I was so wrapped up in achieving goals that were set for me and looking for the answers. At the end of the day, I didn’t know what to major in or focus on career-wise; I just thought “I don’t really know what I want to do, but it’s definitely a good idea to get good grades and build a resume that recruiters want to see so I’ll just do that.”  I spent so much time on these things that I never really got to explore my own passions and interests until I read this book.  Since then, I have shadowed teachers, dentists, endodontists, and lawyers; participated in job shadows for large corporations, small companies, and start-ups; and completed a month-long Architecture boot camp.

Exploring as much as I did helped me manage the “risk” of taking classes without knowing what I want to do after graduation and helped me figure out where and how to direct my future.  There is still plenty of uncertainty ahead of me, so for now I am just trying to make the most of my college experience by doing valuable things that I love.  I am pursuing a minor in Art and Design, working as a Resident Advisor, and planning to study abroad in the fall.

I chose these things mostly just because I am drawn to them; the practical value is just an added bonus.  I can definitely say that I love each of these things (my minor, my job, and the chance to study abroad), but there were other things I did or considered doing before coming to this point.  Now, I weigh each option individually when deciding whether to pursue it, but I don’t even weigh things that I would not enjoy doing - those get tossed out right at the beginning.  

Overall, the techniques I have used in college to manage risks associated with an uncertain future include exploring many fields and pursuing the ones I find myself most passionate about.  I am not as concerned about financial uncertainty for now because I am focused on increasing my human capital wealth.  Exploring the things I love and succeeding in my classes now will pay dividends for the rest of my life.  Most importantly, these things will help me find a job that will support me financially and help me grow intellectually so that I won’t have to worry too much about the future.

Synthesis/Connecting the Dots

After reading through all of my blog posts in order, I saw several connections, common themes, and a basic logical progression of thoughts that built upon each other.  Common themes included reflections on experiences from my own life, especially during high school.  They all related in some way to the efficiency (or lack thereof) within an organization.  

These common themes worked as connections to tie together a thread of ideas that progressed with each new post.  I started off with the general, explaining my experience in an organization (the track and field team).  I answered basic questions about what the organization was like, how it functioned, and what I got out of it.  In my next post, I spoke on opportunism - a behavior quite common in most organizations.  I shared a time when I did not display opportunistic behavior (a National Honors Society election) and contrasting my actions with a person who did behave opportunistically (one of the students I was running against). I lost the election to my opportunistic peer - this led me to beg the question:  is opportunism good? As I write this reflection, I am thinking about whether opportunism is beneficial in some cases but not others.  How does it effect the common good (in this case, the Honors Society as a whole)?  Rachel (the winner of the election) went on to practice opportunism in her day-to-day responsibilities as an NHS leader.  This helped the society deliver a successful 5k run for charity in which over 100 students raced and raised funds.

I did not think of this at all when I was writing my opportunism post, but while reflecting, I asked myself how the idea of opportunism might relate to my experience on the track team.  I thought of one example: in my junior year of high school (my first year on the varsity team), the varsity girls were supposed to meet on Saturday morning at a nearby hill to train on an incline.  I showed up most Saturdays, along with two or three other girls, but the senior captains never showed up.  Back at school on Monday, they were the ones responsible for telling the coach who showed up for the Saturday hill run.  They asked me and the other juniors who showed up, then they proceeded to tell the coach that they showed up along with whoever else actually came.  The seniors behaved opportunistically, taking advantage of their positions as senior captains to make their lives easier.  In my opinion, this behavior had negative externalities for our team as a whole; the girls who actually showed up were given less credit than what they deserved, and the team was less cohesive.  The seniors were supposed to be leading the workouts, but the juniors were left to figure it out on their own.

In this case, the senior captains’ opportunistic behavior existed in direct opposition to teamwork (the topic of my next blog post).  I gave the example of the team of lifeguards I was part of over the past few summers.  I emphasized the ways that the lifeguard team worked systematically to achieve desired outcomes.  This worked well most of the time, but humans are imperfect, and even with a near-perfect system, performance sometimes fall short.  This was something I did not go into depth on in my original blog post, but it is something I realize after reading my teammates’ and professor’s comments.

Our most recent post was on transfer pricing.  I had a hard time seeing how Illinibucks would be effective and how exactly they would be used; even so, the idea of transfer pricing is an interesting way to look at solving inefficiencies in organizations.  If I had to write another post on transfer pricing, I would look at the ways it might be used in organizations other than Universities (particularly the organizations I have been part of/written about recently).

In short, I believe that the blog prompts were artfully arranged so that each idea complements or contrasts the next; they were created to allow, upon deeper reflection, new ideas to form out of the connection/synthesis of all posts. I learned even more after reading over my posts, finding common themes, and synthesizing ideas.  Though this method of learning has been really helpful, in some ways I still find it hard to connect the different ideas we are learning about in class.  I am not sure which ideas are the most important/which I should emphasize over others. I also feel a bit uncomfortable with the terminology and would like to take a bit of time out in class to look over the most important concepts in a manner more objective than discussion.  I think one way to do this outside of class would be to write a blog post about an article we found (on a credible source such as the New York Times, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, etc.) and directly connect it to the themes we discussed in class.  The prompt would be focused on defined and specific terminology/definitions or economic models that we would try to connect to an article.  I think that the prompts have been pretty useful so far, this is just an idea for something new.