This week’s lectorial, as you all know, touched on collaboration as the driving force in the media industry today; it’s the ability to manage teamwork and, as creativity expert Keith Sawyer puts it in this week’s first chunk of reading (Group Genius: The creative powers of collaboration, pg. 39-57), enact group flow. The idea of flow, a term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly to describe a ‘particular state of heightened consciousness’, and known colloquially as being in the zone, is built upon by Sawyer in his writings. He expands the singular flow into a grander group flow; ‘a collective state of mind’, ‘a peak experience, a group performing at its top level of ability’ (he also bases much of his research on jazz musicians of which I have a growing interest thanks to my PB3 interviewee, so I can dig this). Csikszentmihaly records four important characteristics of one’s environment that determine whether they are likely to get into flow (which I will list for future reference):
- First, and most important, they’re doing something where their skills match the challenge of the task (is the challenge is too great for their skills, they become frustrated; but if the task isn’t challenging enough, they simply grow bored).
- Second, flow occurs when the goal is clear;
- and third, when there’s constant and immediate feedback about how close you are to achieving that goal.
- Fourth, flow occurs when you’re free to concentrate fully on the task.
while Sawyer devises a comprehensive list of the 10 Conditions for Group Flow, from The Group’s Goal to The Potential of Failure (again, listed for my future reference, and because I feel like they’re fairly useful guidelines):
- The Group’s Goal
- The key to improvised innovation is managing a paradox: establishing a goal that provides a focus for the team–just enough of one so that the team members can tell when hey move closer to a solution–but one that’s open-ended enough for problem-finding creativity to emerge.
- Competition, mixed with loosely specified goals, can be just the right recipe for group genius.
- Problem-solving creative tasks (if the goal is well understood and can be explicity stated) VS problem-finding creativity (the group members have to “find” and define the problem as they’re solving it)–the two extremes.
- Close Listening
- Group flow is more likely to emerge when everyone is fully engaged–what improvisers call “deep listening,” in which members of the group don’t plan ahead what they’re going to say, but their statements are genuinely unplanned responses to what they hear.
- Innovation is blocked when one (or more) of the participants already has a preconceived idea of how to reach the goal.
- Complete Concentration
- Creativity is associated with low-pressure work environments–even though many people think they’re more creative when they work under high pressure.
- In group flow, the group is focused on the natural progress emerging from members’ work, not on meeting a deadline set by management. Flow is more likely to occur when attention is centered on the task.
- Being In Control
- People get into flow when they’re in control of their actions and their environment. This implies that groups won’t be in flow unless they’re granted autonomy by senior management.
- Group flow increases when people feel autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Unlike in solo flow, control results in a paradox because participants must feel in control, yet at teh same time they must remain flexible, listen closely, and always be willing to defer to the emergent flow of the group.
- Blending Egos
- Group flow is the magical moment when it all comes together, when the group is in sync and the performers seem to be thinking with one mind.
- In group flow, each person’s idea builds on those just contributed by his or her colleagues.
- Equal Participation
- Group flow is more likely to occur when all participants play an equal role in the collective creation of the final performance. Group flow is blocked if anyone’s skill level is below that of the rest of the group’s members; all must have comparable skills. It’s also blocked when one person dominates, is arrogant, or doesn’t think anything can be learned from the conversation.
- Managers can participate in groups in flow, but they have to participate in the same way as everyone else by listening closely and granting autonomy and authority to the group’s emergent decision process.
- Familiarity
- Group flow is more likely to happen when players know the performance styles of their teammates and opponents. When members of a group have been together for a while, they share a common language and a common set of unspoken understandings, aka tacit knowledge.
- Group flow requires that the members share an understanding of the group’s goals (because clear goals are so important to flow); they need to share enough communicational style to response mutually to each other (because immediate feedback is critical to flow).
- But if group members are too similar, flow becomes less likely because the group interaction is no longer challenging. If everyone functions identically and shares the same habits of communicating, nothing new and unexpected will ever emerge because group members don’t need to pay close attention to what the others are doing, and they don’t continually have to update their understanding of what is going on.
- Familiarity helps more for problem-solving creativity. If there’s a specific goal and the participants don’t share enough common knowledge, the group will have difficulty accomplishing its goal.
- Problem-finding groups are more likely to be in group flow when there’s more diversity; problem solving groups are often more effective when more tacit knowledge is shared.
- Communication
- Group flow requires constant communcation. Everyone hates to go to useless meetings; but the kind of communcation that leads to group flow often doesn’t happen in the conference room. Instead, it’s more likely to happen in freewheeling spontaneous conversations.
- Moving It Forward
- Group flow flourishes when people follow the first rule of improvisation acting: “Yes, and . . .” Listen closely to what’s being said; accept it fully; and then extend and build on it.
- The Potential for Failure
- Group flow happens when many tensions are in perfect balance: the tensions between convention and novelty; between structure and improvisation; between the critical, analytical mind and the freewheeling, outside-the-box mind; between listening to the rest of the group and speaking out in individual voices.
- The paradox of improvisation is that it can happen only when there are rules and the players share too much cohesion, the potential for innovation is lost.
His writings on group flow tend to pose it as a thing of spontaneity, something that requires the group to be on their feet at all times or as he calls it ‘improvised innovation’. Yet the guidelines he gives are so specific that for me, it seems hard to imagine what group flow is at all. All of these things must fall directly in place, ‘you can’t have this’ followed by ‘you’ve gotta have this’ followed by ‘you need this to have this‘. I don’t know, maybe if flow didn’t sound like the wrong word or some extra-sensory state maybe I would be more understanding.