The question of team consciousness

The question of team-consciousness Håkon Fyhn Chapter in Physual Designing 2002, ed. H. Fyhn Abstract An examination of the phenomenon of consciousness may throw an interesting light on the work processes of teams that mostly meet by the aid of technology. In particular we will focus on two typical tasks for a team: One is the task of making decisions, the other is to engage in intense creative work. Problems in decision making and creative flow We have seen that on of the greatest challenges for product-design teams is to make proper decisions. This is particularly the case for distributed teams. Our teams consists of 4 to 5 students, where half the team is located in Trondheim, and the other half in Grimstad, some 800 km south of Trondheim. Their task is to design and make a prototype of devise during one term. It is either a water-powered woodcutter or a motorised pogo-stick. In part one of this chapter, we will introduce and question the concept pf consciousness, as this will provide the essential perspective for the whole chapter. In part two we shall see that the teams have problems sharing knowledge between Trondheim and Grimstad, in particular knowing for sure what the other half of the team knows. This made it hard to make common decisions; in particular the right decisions at the right time. The teams lacked a shared vision of their ideas, making it difficult for them to discuss them in a proper way. In order to discuss an idea properly it is necessary for all to take part in the idea. The idea must be conscious. The problem was to actually make the ideas conscious for the team as one. In part three we will focus on another type of situation in teamwork. These are situations of intense creative work and communication, like for example in a brainstorm, or when the team eagerly discuss something. This kind of situation has much in common with what is often called flow. Also here the idea of a team-consciousness may be helpful in order to understand what is going on. This chapter will focus on the question of consciousness to see what it might teach us in regard to teamwork. We ask: What does it mean to develop a common consciousness in a team? Why was it so difficult for distributed teams to develop such a team-consciousness? Part one: Consciousness Before we approach some cases of team consciousness, it is necessary to take a careful look at the phenomenon of consciousness itself. What is consciousness? What is experience? These are questions thinkers have attempted to answer since the beginning of civilisation. We still do not really know what consciousness is. 1 Consciousness is our awareness of things. When something is present to us, when we experience it, we say that we are conscious of it. Imagine yourself lying in bed at home. Your bed is now present in you consciousness. But we can also say that your consciousness is in the bed. Both these views are right at the same time, but in one respect they are also both wrong. The problem is that consciousness is not an object in time and space or a material thing. It is not something that something else can be in. neither is it something that can be somewhere. Let me explain: the nature of consciousness is radically different from that of material things. As long as we try to understand consciousness as having the nature we assign to material things, we will not understand its true nature. Consciousness does not abide the same laws as objects. It is not subject to natural laws, like gravity. Neither is it subject to the logical laws governing all objects in time and space. These are the Aristotelian principles for logic, like for example the law saying that something cannot both be and not be at the same time. We normally take these principles for granted in our everyday thinking to such an extent that our relationship to them is almost unconscious. Our unconscious relationship to these laws makes us commit the mistake of assigning them to consciousness itself. But if we do so, and think of consciousness as an object, it will create paradoxes. If it is like an object: how can consciousness be in the bed at the same time as the bed is in consciousness? If consciousness is not an object we can try to say that it is experience. Whatever we experience is what consciousness is. Right now, as I focus on this paper, my consciousness has the form of this paper. Still consciousness is something more than the everyday flux of things, feelings and thoughts that we experience. We experience some sort of continuity. What is it that holds the different impressions together? Consciousness does not only show things like a TV-screen does, it also gives the things identity, continuity and meaning. This aspect of consciousness will not be explored here, but is still essential. If we cannot say that consciousness is a thing: what we can say for sure is that consciousness is. This is indeed the one thing we can be most certain of. The philosopher Renè Descartes, who my many is considered to be the founder of modern thought, wanted to start his philosophy from something he could be absolutely certain about. This led to the famous sentence “Cogito Ergo Sum”, I think therefore I am. The only thing he could know for sure was that he thought, in other words that he was conscious of something. If we think of it, it is true. We cannot be 100% sure that the material world actually exists. What if you are only a brain in a glass tube in some laboratory that is kept alive and being fed with false image of a world? (This paper itself being a part of the delusion like everything else.) Actually, we could not even know if our consciousness came from such a thing as a brain. This is only something we assume as we acknowledge the reality of the material world. After the time of Descartes we seem to have lost some of the old faith in our own experience on behalf of the material world. It is now matter that we take for granted, it is matter we believe to be the most certain thing and take departure from when wee seek truth. The Cartesian dualism is turned upside-down so mind is believed to be a product of matter, not vice versa. This way of seeing things has lead to some new insights, but it has also prevented us from understanding certain aspects of consciousness. Modern studies of consciousness Consciousness has been studied in modern time by philosophers, psychologists as well as neurobiologists. 2 Neurobiological studies of consciousness tend to examine the phenomenon as something that is produced by our brain. This usually implies that consciousness is treated as something that is located in our brain (as if it actually where an object). No matter how correct this might be in terms of being confirmed in laboratory experiments, it does not give the whole and true picture. If you again think of yourself in bed: is your consciousness then in your head or in bed? Is it not in your bed? The point is that consciousness is experience. No matter how much it is connected to neuro-electrical processes in our brain, it is not those processes we experience. We experience the world around us, far outside our heads. The problem with the neurobiological study is that its focus on our personal physical brain which has the quality of being separate from other brains and the rest of the world. This point of departure tends to make consciousness appear as something very personal, something which’s natural position is alone and separate. What we on the other hand study in the classroom, is people that work together in teams. As we shall see, this kind of work calls for a new understanding of consciousness: as a collective phenomenon. Consciousness as experience is explored by modern philosophers in the tradition of “phenomenology”. This was founded at the beginning of the 20th century by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. He wanted to found a “science” of human experienc. Phenomenology explores the phenomena as they are experienced, not as we think they exist in the physical world. We may learn a great deal about consciousness from the study of phenomenology, but also here we meet the problem that this tradition (with some exeptions) is based on the experiences of individual persons. I think this has to do with the facts that phenomenology is developed by “table-desk philosophers”, sitting alone behind their desk, thinking and writing. This is a state of mind quite different from the collective state of a team in eager collaboration. We should notice that it is not only the “content” of consciousness that may change, but also its nature. The consciousness of a calm state of mind is very different from the consciousness of a brainstorm. We should also notice that the whole idea of what consciousness essentially is, what we mean by the word, can vary, and has varied a lot through out history. The ancient understanding of consciousness as a collective phenomenon The ancient, classical meaning of the word does not limit it to a personal experience. According to that tradition, what is conscious is what we know fully and together. What is conscious in a group is what the whole group knows. If we examine the etymology of the word, we find that “con” means “together” and “fully” (like for example in “con-ference”), and “scious” means “knowledge” (related to for example “science”). The history of the word “conscious” does in other words point to both “knowing fully” and “knowing together”1. What does it mean to know together? It does not just mean that all the members of group know something. They have to know it together. For you and me to know something together, we must both know it. As a start: you must know it and I must know it. But there is also another level of knowledge necessary: you must know that I know, and I must know that you know. We must know that we know. This is what signifies consciousness: it knows that it knows. It is a reflection of knowledge, and as such allows us to reflect on that knowledge. It is 1 According to Skeat 1999. 3 this ability to reflect that distinguishes us humans from animals. It is this ability that makes civilisation possible. Rather than meaning something like “experience” or “personal experience” the ancient understanding of the word pointed to a certain quality to experience. This quality has to do with reflection, which implies that we know that we know. This understanding of consciousness can in some cases be more suitable for understanding collective phenomena (like teamwork) than the modern understanding of the word. The consciousness of a team Reflection is done both by individuals that know that they know, and by groups. But for a team it is more difficult to know that we know. In addition to the two levels of knowledge mentioned, a group of people will need a third level. It is not enough to know that we know. We must also know that we know that we know. This becomes a bit complicated so let me make it clearer: it is not enough for you to know that I know, you must know that I know that you know. Only when both of us know this, and what we know in a way is “declared”, can the knowledge be said to be fully conscious among us. This kind of knowledge requires communication between us. An example can be if one of us let out some air during a formal meeting. I can pretend that I did not hear it even though you know that I heard it. This is so even though I know that you know that I heard it. For the sake of etiquette, you can pretend that you do not know, and the uncertainty will benefit the suspect. The knowledge is not conscious. But the moment it becomes conscious is when the third level also is present: I know that you know that I know, it no longer possible to pretend that we do not know. The knowledge is brought out in the light so to speak. This may happen in a glance as two pair of eyes meet. Part two: Consciousness in making decisions One reason individual persons often are much better in making decisions than teams, is that it is so much easier for individuals to be conscious than teams. Every day we make many decisions that are unconscious to us, for example the decision to run after the ball in a football game. But some decisions demand reflection and must be conscious. Not that decisions like the football example, necessarily are of a much simpler nature, but we are so drilled in making them that we do not need to reflect before we make them. When making decisions about things we are unfamiliar with, or uncertain about, it is necessary to reflect and be conscious. For a team to be effective in making decisions we must be conscious, we must “work in the light”. We must see the ideas clearly in reflection, and we must know exactly what the others know. When these things are in place, a team can in theory be just as effective as an individual in making decisions, like we can see a drilled football-team act as one. In a physical meeting it is quite easy to develop a collective consciousness if we are not too many. When I speak, I observe you others all the time. I see if you get the message. Every time our eyes meet, what is said is made conscious. All the three levels of reflection take place in one glance. As two pair of eyes meets, two minds meet. We share consciousness so to speak. In that very moment, both of us know that we know that we know. To declare something when we are gathered around a table is to make it conscious. This is why we get 4 together in order to discuss tings and make decisions. This is the challenge of teams that are not located together. Our research on two distributed teams’ problem in developing team-consciousness Let us now turn to our research in the “classroom laboratory”. Before we start, we should note that we deal with very complex situations and problems. It always is when we try to understand people, so the different reasons that things happened the way they did cannot only be assigned to the things I now point out. Many other factors play a part, like the different personalities of people and other events taking place in the team and in the lives of the teammembers. Our experiences are based on two teams that both had members from Trondheim and Grimstad. They both worked and collaborated across that distance, but team A only used their personal computers and phones in their work, while team B worked from the Deign-Studio. An examination of the problems the teams faced shows that much of it has to do with a lack of a common consciousness regarding the things they where working with. Why did they not meet properly? One reason for this is simply the fact the whole team did not meet often enough with the necessary tools. The most important reason for this has to do with practical problems, or as we call it: “prack”. In product design it is necessary to use drawing in order to present ideas. In addition one should be able to speak while sharing drawings. This was for a long time a problem for team A that had to use mobile-phones in addition to the computer for meeting. There was often a problem with these phones, for example if one of them was out of battery. Time after time we saw that this group had problems getting together with both their drawings and a proper phone-connection working simultaneously. Also for team B, many more or less small technological problems kept making it difficult for them to meet in the most useful way. After a while they got fed up with having to use so much time solving all these “small” problems with computers, programs and phones that they stopped making attempts to use technology like shared whiteboard and phone conferencing. The problems that stopped them seem small when we know their solution, but if you don’t know it, they are big. The problems become enormous when they are many. There where also other reasons why the whole teams did not meet together. They had all different courses to attend, and where consequently busy at different times. This was particularly the case for team A. They did not find time to work together for several hours in one string. They had to work two hours here and two hours there. Having uninterrupted time together seems necessary in order to develop a common consciousness for things. It takes some time to “get into it” before work becomes effective. We have seen this earlier in the project2. 2 Hildre, Feilberg et al 2000 pp 34-39 5 The consequence was that the teams spent more time than they should working individually or in pairs, and too little together as a team. Half way into the term, team A had still hardly met each other as a whole team, apart from the first day when they met physically. The communication that had taken place between Trondheim and Grimstad, was (apart from documents they had shared on the web and chat), phone-calls between individual members. They had not developed a common consciousness and was not able to see the whole problem they where working with and as a consequence they where not able to make the necessary decisions. Observing them we got an impression that they stumbled around in darkness. Four ways to make a decision It is this kind of common consciousness that is necessary for working as a team. This is particularly present in situations where decisions need to be made. The way the teams where unable to find initiative and make the right decisions, could be likened with a group of people walking down the high street on their way to a bar, but not being able to make a decision regarding which bar to choose. They keep walking until they have passed all the bars, because they do not have a common consciousness about the problem. All knows that they are looking for a bar, but the initiative to actually do something about it, demands that that group realise that they must make the decision. They must be conscious about it, together. The group can make the proper decision in four ways: 1 2 3 4 If the group at the end of the street comes to the common realisation that they have passed all the bars; that they should have walked into one of them; and that they must make a decision now in order to fulfil their mission. They would now have a common consciousness about the problem. If they where drilled in handling this kind of situation. If a leader steps forth, and makes the decision. If they have a strict routine in handling the situation. In other words, if there was a structure there to help them. Point 1 and 2 are about the group actually developing a team-consciousness about their problem. Point 3 and 4 are ways to deal with the problem in darkness, without having to be conscious about it together. The problem for team A was that they did not have any of these four ways of making right decisions. They insisted on a flat structure without a leader, they did not have a routine for making decisions and as they hardly had met, they had not been able to develop a common consciousness of their problems. After some time we helped the team by arranging a web and phone-meeting with the teacher of the course. Here the necessity to make certain decisions where stressed and they where helped to see the most essential problems in their project. After this meeting everything started to work better for team A and they soon had a healthy project going. Wholeness 6 One essential thing that made the meeting with team A and the teacher work is that in this meeting, the teacher helped the team to see their project in a holistic way. Only by seeing the thing in a holistic way do the essential problems present themselves for the team. Only by being able to visualise the whole woodcutter in its right context and in action is it possible to see all the possibilities and problems in the construction. You never see this if you only focus on details or parts of the construction. You need to see the whole thing in one vision. You also need to see the vision of the whole project. What is it that we want with this project? What kind of woodcutter do we want to make? Such visions are difficult even for one person to see clearly, for a whole team to see it together is a real communication challenge. The paradox is that the team shall develop a common consciousness about something they still do not know what is. In order to develop this consciousness they should really have known what it was they where about to design. Still, in order to know that they need to design it and in order to design it they first need to develop a common consciousness of it3. In the case of team A the coaching from the teacher helped them to overcome this paradox4. Another problem the teams face is that while details are quite easy to discuss on a net meeting, wholeness is very difficult. Member of team A: “In my opinion, in the early phases, when the discussion is wide, when you shall give names to things; the portal [our tool for distributed work] is almost useless, at that time you must sit together. But as you start working on the technical details, it is very good to use.” “When the lines are drawn up and we know how we want it, then we can sit and work for ourselves.” It is the wholeness-questions, like visions and the general structure of the product that needs to be discussed by the whole team together. It is the details they can work with individually. This was a problem for the teams: they ended up working on the details without having a common picture of the whole thing. It takes extra effort to work in darkness In general, the virtual teams have to put in more work in order to accomplish the same results as the physical ones. Member for team B: “At the end of the day, when we are completely exhausted, we realise that during the whole day we have only produced one simple drawing. That is depressing.” 3 This problem is related to problems reflection-in-action discussed by Donald Scön (1983). We have seen earlier years that distributed collaboration is difficult if we do not know exactly what we are going to do as we meet. This is typical for early phases of designing. See Hildre, Fyhn, et.al. 2001, chapter 3. 4 Another question is how we should understand such paradoxes. This is an essential question in regard to the question of consciousness, but too big for us to discuss here. Let me just point out that whenever we deal with wholeness we cannot rely on the common linear logic typical for science and technology. Another and very different kind of logic is necessary. 7 Even if the technology is working well, does it take more time to share ideas and make them present for each other. We have observed before in phone meetings, that people tends to overexplain everything to be sure that the others get it. This is because they do not have the ability we have in physical meeting to check if the others are following us, for example by just meeting their eyes. In order to develop team-consciousness they must either ask all the time: “Do you follow?” or explain so detailed that there can be no way the other does not get it. In both cases it takes extra time and effort. In addition it makes subtlety difficult. A normal phone-call can serve as a similar example: If we make a deal on the phone we tend to end the conversation saying something like: “ok, let’s agree on that” or like we say here in Trøndelag: “denn e grei, da si vi det sånn!” In both cases we make the deal conscious by stating it out load. We make sure that we both know, and that we know that we know. How can we help creating a team-consciousness? We have already seen a few possibilities. By providing the virtual collaboration with a rigid structure or by assigning a responsible leader we may allow the teams to progress despite the lack of team-consciousness (point 3 and 4 above). This progression will hopefully lead to the development of such a consciousness in the end. We have also seen how effective the guidance of a coach with a holistic overview can be. Still there are more factors that may help the teams develop a common consciousness. Communication-platform If the teams are allowed to get to know each other properly at the beginning of the project, it will make communication better through out the project making it easier to achieve teamconsciousness. Member of team B: “I see what I would have done differently if where to start all over again. Let’s say I started with a group that had not done this before, I would first and foremost have stressed that we had got to know each other.” Member of team B: “Such things that do not seem important at all while you do them prove to be essential in the long run.” By getting to know each other at the beginning of a project, they will have a chance to develop a common “communication-platform” that the rest of the communication could rest on. What we call a “communication-platform” is the tacit knowledge that tells us what we need to say and how we need to speak in order to make the others understand. It is in other words knowledge of each others ways of speaking and understanding. This is essential for knowing that the others know. Such a “platform” may also include a common vocabulary that may be specific for that particular team, for example in regard to the product being designed. Still it mostly points to an approach to communication rather than a specific vocabulary. In general this “platform” may be a necessary condition for a common consciousness in communication. The development of such a “platform” can be easy in a face to face relation, (often achieved in seconds without much thought), but not so easily on phones and 8 Netmeeting. When the bandwidth is limited it therefore is particularly essential to know in advance who you speak with in order to develop a common consciousness5. Common references A communication-platform may also be supported by some common references. These can be like supporting-sticks in a conversation. They are something those who communicate have in common and may refer to in order to explain things. They may be helpful in creating a common consciousness. One thing that is important is that these references should have something to do with the subject the team is working with in order to be most helpful. This year we have provided the teams with certain common references, but this can be done more systematically and effective. The good ting with many of these references is that they not necessarily demand that the team meet physically. Let us examine some of these references. The lectures are obvious references, which directly address the topics the teams struggle with. They are a rich source of reference the discussion in the tams can relate to and be supported by. This year we also streamed the lectures so that students could follow them from a distance. Unfortunately the live-streaming did not always work properly so that the whole teams could not relate to them in their main working-time, which is between and directly after the lectures. Member of the Trondheim part of team B: “Those in Grimstad where totally dependent on the broadcasting [of lectures] and a third, or half of the term the lectures did not transmit directly … they was suddenly hours behind us.” If we manage to make the broadcasted lectures better and more stabile they may serve as very good tool for the teams, not only technically, but also for their communication and development of a team-consciousness. Apart from the lectures, it also seems that other happenings the teams shared (like the theatre-days) may provide good support for their communication. We also aim to let the presentations from the different teams take place in public so that the teams may learn from each other’s experiences. These presentations may also provide common references for the communication in the teams. It would have been good for the distributed teams if we managed to broadcast these presentations like the lectures. The rooms also provide an important common reference in communication, in particular when the room is decorated with the spirit of the project. Each week the teams have to put up a poster on the wall, telling about their project. Short and graphically they inform us about their visions, last weeks work and their plans. They provide an effective way of orienting the students and the different teams in the project as a whole. To put a poster up on the wall is like declaring something in public; it is a way to make it present to everyone and conscious. As such they may also provide an effective point of reference and orientation in the teams’ communication and development of a team-consciousness. Member f the Grimstad part of team A: “the first thing we did the theatre-day [when they met physically] was to look at the posters. We went through everything that had been made to see We have discussed this kind of problem in an earlier report in relation to the term “forståingsrom” (understanding-space). See Hildre, Fyhn, et.al. 2001, chapter 3 and 5. 5 9 what had been done. Including our own which we had not seen before. … I found our project to be better than I had feared.” A poster on the wall (as well as other things in the room) may be used to create a common consciousness when we point to it, or declare what it reads. We then make it present as an event and the common reference makes it easy to be collectively conscious about the subject. It is easier to be conscious together when we can point to something common. Pointing to a poster also makes it easy to return to a certain topic, make it conscious again. The problem with the poster is that it so far is limited to the physical room. This makes it worthless for distant members of the teams. We need to develop a “virtual poster” that for example is posted on the front page of the web-portal or the teams’ common workspace. We should strive to make it as easy to point to, and browse through as posters on a physical wall. Member of the Trondheim part of team B: “this regards all kinds of information, it is completely impossible for them [Grimstad] to pick up anything being in a totally different place. Maybe we should have had a web-page with the last messages or something like that in the portal, the last changes, a kind of billboard, if the teacher gives new messages, for that happens quite a lot.” Not only presentations of the most resent work, but also other kind of information is important for the teams to share. All the small messages and informal information seem to play an essential role in the development of a team-consciousness, as they contribute to orient the teams and the different topics in a greater picture. Informal and even unconscious information should not me underestimated in the creation of consciousness. Grimstad member of team B: “We loose all the small information before the lecture, in the breaks and after the lecture and between the students. And that information, even if it is of varying importance, we miss it: all the informal exchange of information going on internally at the institute and between people.” “Even if we have seen the lecture, we ask the others what was said after the lecture and what they spoke with the other teams about.” The question is again how to make this information present for the distance students. Much of it is in itself to small and unimportant to be posed on a net-portal, even though the sum of it is totally essential as reference points. Much of it is also of such a kind that it is not very explicit. It can be anecdotes we just mention in a certain situation or something we suddenly happen to remember while discussing another topic. It may be joke, information about the fire exercise this morning, a comment to the new colour of the tables in the reception or a message that a guest-lecture will take place next week. All these are things that create the common reality we relate to in creating team-consciousness. It may well be that the most essential point of reference for team-consciousness is just the myriad of small and seemingly unimportant details. How may we let distant students take part in this? Thigs that have been attempted is for example to create virtual arenas for informal talk and a view of the everyday life on another place, like a video-wall by the coffee-machine. Our idea of letting the students work individually, but logged on the PD-portal, is also an attempt at letting informal communication come through6. 6 See Hildre, Fyhn, et.al. 2001, p28. 10 How to provide presence? One of the goals of this project has been to provide presence across distance. Taking part in team-consciousness is deep form of presence. There are many ways of being present; we shall focus on being consciously present for each other. This means that our mutual presence is conscious in the way we have discussed: I know that you know that I know that we both are here in each others presence. We shall focus on how we make our presence conscious for each other. Saying “Hello”: Co-located teams get a lot for free. This project has made us realise this. As we work with others do we constantly relate to our collective consciousness, and confirm it every now and then for each other. When we are co-located we normally do not think much of it. We just do it. When I arrive at the office in the morning I say “good morning” to the others. They answer. In this little ritual we have made our presence for each other conscious. If I arrived one morning, just sneaking into my chair and starting to work it would be a bit strange. The others would know that I was there, but there would not be a collective consciousness about it. If one of my colleagues where to ask me a question, it would then be necessary to start with, “hello”, or say “good morning, by the way” or something like that before actually asking the question. We would have to make our presence conscious together; declare it. This is much more difficult in distributed teams. Even if all the members great each others presence as they meet for example on Netmeeting, they do not have the constant awareness of each other that we do in our office. We see that in distributed teams members fall out of the conference, leave their workplace or for some other reason loose connection. In order for the team to know that they work together they will have to declare their presence to each other constantly. This is tiring for a whole group. For two people it is easier. A normal phone-call can also be an example: we have already discussed how we tend confirm and reconfirm what we agree on the phone phone. At the same time, we also constantly have to make our presence conscious by declaring it. As we talk, we will often come with small feedbacks like “yes”, “hmm”, “oh”, and so on. This informs the speaker that he or she is present in the conversation and listening. If it silent too long on the other end of the line, we will eventually ask: “Hello? Are you still there?” Technology for team-consciousness There are many ways in which technology may help distributed teams create a common consciousness. Most of them strive to represent the possibilities present in physical collaboration, but with technology it is also possible to bring in other aspects that only are possible in a digital setting. This is a reason it might be a pitfall to try to only create a digital representation of a physical setting7. In order to benefit from technology we really need to know what we are after. What is it that we want to mimic from physical meetings? What is it that makes us conscious together? These are questions we want to approach in this chapter. It is supposed to be helpful in this project’s attempt at making distance collaboration work. The specific technology we have 7 This is discussed in Hildre, Fyhn, et.al. 2001, p 34 and also pp 22 ff 11 used in this project is discussed in part one of this report. Let us still have a brief look at technology in relation to team-consciousness. There are two aspects that are important for a technology based team-consciousness: One is the band-with; how much “information” is it possible to “transmit” from one place to another, and how fast can this happen? The speed of the connection seems to be totally essential for team-consciousness. In particular to flow-like states of consciousness (which we will discuss at the end of this chapter). The effect of the quantity of bits transmitted is more problematic. Seemingly, the more you can transmit the better should the possibility for teamconsciousness be. Still, the situation is not as simple as that. Even though a better picture on the monitor and better sound is helpful, the question of what and how we transmit seem to be more important. This brings us to the second aspect. The second aspect regards what we want to transmit, and by which surfaces this shall relate to the subjects in action. In engineering design it is essential to focus both on visual tools (drawings, chairing of documents) and audio (voice). In addition we let the distant collaborators see each other on the screen. Using specific rooms for distance collaboration seem to be a good way to go, as the rooms play such an essential role in co-located collaboration; also in making decisions. In relation to team-consciousness in decision-making, it also seems important to let technology provide as much overview as possible for the teammembers. This may help the team step out of the “unconscious darkness”. Here it is still much work to do in our project. Many things have been tested for letting technology create a good base for a common consciousness. These are for example virtual eye-contact and mixing people from different places together in the same picture so that it looks as if they are in the same room8. Still the one thing we have found to be most important for a technology based teamconsciousness is simply that the technology works; that the users know how to use it and that they will trust it. These two factors has proved to be essential because if they are not in place the distributed teams will simply not meet and therefore never develop any teamconsciousness. Summing up the consciousness of decisions We have discussed the perspective of a collective consciousness in relation to the task of discussing a problem and making decisions. Our point of departure has been an understanding of conscious as knowing together and fully. In teams, this has much to do with what we described as “knowing that you know that I know that you know”; a knowledge that is declared so to speak. We have mentioned some ways in which such a consciousness is developed, but should note that there are also others, and more subtle mechanisms for this. We shall not explore these here, but return to the question we started with: what is consciousness? The kind of consciousness we have explored so far is of a reflective and lasting character, not the flux of things, feelings and thoughts that pass in our stream of experience. I have tried to show that it makes just as much sense to understand this reflective consciousness as collective as personal. 8 See the face2face project (http://www.amt.kth.se/projekt/face2face/index.html). 12 Let us now turn to another side of collective-consciousness that we see in the more creative situations. We now leave the reflexive consciousness and turn to the flux of experience. We are more likely to think of this fluxing experience as personal, but: is it only personal? Part three: Consciousness in creative flow The kind of consciousness we experience in situations of creative flow, is of a different quality than the one we tend to experience in relation to making decisions. The fact that consciousness appear in many different qualities is something all of us have experienced if we think of it. Think of the different consciousness we experience when we dream at night; when we just have woken in the morning; when we are in the middle of an argument; when sitting quietly in the good chair, reading a book; when we are drunk; when we have just eaten flyagarics; when we meditate, and so on. The kind of consciousness we experience while being in the middle of creative activity is a very characteristic form of consciousness. It has been called “flow” 9, as everything we do seems to happen by itself, the activity just flows on by itself. The subject’s self awareness is typically redrawn from consciousness as consciousness is totally filled with the activity one is doing. The energy level is high and we perform at an optimum of what we are able to. We are in other words at our best. Typical flow situations can be while athletes perform their sport, while artists are at work and whenever we are engaged in something that really fascinate and challenge us. The creative part of a product design process is one such activity that often leads to the flow-state of consciousness. The phenomenon of flow is explored in depth by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. The problem with that approach is the same as with most psychology, the phenomenon is treated as personal. What we are looking for is an understanding of the creative state as a collective phenomenon. The concept of flow proves to be just as relevant for a team working together as for individuals. The case of flow provides a more radical example of a collective consciousness than the case we discussed in the last chapter. The typical state of flow is observed in teams of product design when they are in more brainstorming-like phases. When the work reaches its peak, it is like the ideas leave the heads of the individual participants and form a “sphere” that sort of hovers in the air above the group as a living organism in its own10. Communication becomes a bit strange if read out of a transcription, as the members of the group stop using complete sentences and “precise language”. It is enough to say: “but..”, or point to a line on the drawing, and the whole team instantly know what is meant. It could seen like the team together where building a common idea-complex that some how is clearly visible to all. But it is rather the idea-complex, the thing that is being constructed, that builds itself in the collective and ecstatic consciousness of the team. The members of the team are consumed in the ideas, which in this moment actually is their common consciousness. We said that in a flow state we loose our awareness of our self. In a team-flow the individual consciousness redraws on behalf of the collective. The individuals do not have any awareness of themselves, neither of the team, but only of the ideas that are created. These ideas are 9 See Csikszentmihaly 1997 This is mention in Hildre, Feilberg et. al. 2000 p 12 and pp 34-39 10 13 shared, so consciousness is also shared. This state implies a complete presence for the teammembers and a complete presence for the ideas in or as the collective consciousness. In this state the team-members and the ideas are one. Total presence is in other words total unity. It is typical for people of today to think that this collective consciousness may be a good way of understanding teamwork, but consciousness is still really personal. This is confirmed every time we return to ourselves after a “collective experience”. I will argue that we should start to think of the collective experience as just as real as the personal. Why do we not say that we return to the collective experience when we again brainstorm? Is not what we experience during teamwork just as real as a personal experience? In this case table-desk thinkers have much to learn from creative designers and others that are at home in collective states. Other examples of people that experience and dwell in the collective consciousness is for example jazz musicians, football players, performers and practitioners of oriental arts like some forms of meditation, tai chi or aikido. Taking the collective consciousness seriously we should start to ask more careful how it occurs. Which conditions needs to be present for it to occur? Collective consciousness of flow in virtual teams Surprisingly enough we have found that it is fully possible to reach a collective consciousness of flow in a virtual meeting11. It is of cause not as easily accomplished as in a physical meeting, but still possible. What we found was that the state of collective flow needed some time to develop. The state also seemed to be quite fragile. It was sensitive for interruptions. For example if the network-cable caused a delay of some seconds, the state was broken. Everyone fell back into themselves so to speak and the team needed time to return to the flow state. They needed at least a few minutes if they managed to return to the state at all. This also happened if attention suddenly was turned from the problem they where engaged in to technical problems with the computers. Timing seemed to be the most important element in helping the state to appear. The team was discussing their ideas using Netmeeting, being in a regular phone-conference. The phone was both stabile and did not create any delays. The state of flow seems to be a state where rhythm is essential. Brake the rhythm and you break the state. If we want to prepare for flow in distributed teams we should focus on avoiding delays and breaks in communication. We can do this by providing stable and fast technology. It is also clear that the users need to be skilled in using the tools in order for the tools to become invisible. It seems a good idea to provide tools that are as simple as possible. If basic qualities like good sound, speed and visualisation that works is present, it is more important to make this work well than to provide more complex equipment (at least from a perspective of flow). The moment the user has to ask: “how do I do this?” the flow of consciousness is broken. Summing up 11 ibid. 14 We have examined two forms of consciousness. The first is one characteristic of reflection; the other is one characteristic of flow. These are two very different forms of consciousness, but still forms of consciousness. What these two examinations share, is that both have questioned the concept of consciousness. In doing research it is important that we constantly question and challenge the concepts we rely on in our work. Even those we are most familiar with and take most for granted. A lot of work is still to be done before we can say to understand the phenomenon of consciousness in a collective perspective, in particular in regard to flow-states. But it seems that such work can be helpful in understanding what happens when teams work together; in particular if they wok in a distributed setting. What has been most important in this study is to question and challenge the idea of consciousness as something that only belongs to the individual. If we want to understand teamwork properly I think this is necessary also to see consciousness as something that is shared in a team. Litterature Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1997: Creativity, flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. Harper Perennial. New York. Hildre, H. P., Feliberg, J. Et.al. 2000: IKT i læring. Klasserommet som forskningslaboratorium. Samarbeid i virtuelle rom. NTNU og Norges Forskningsråd. ISBN 82-91917-09-4 Hildre, H. P., Fyhn, H. et.al.: Produktutvikling i Virtuelle Rom. NTNU og Norges Forskningsråd. ISBN 82-91917-10-8 Schön, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action. Ashgate Arena. Skeat, W. W. 1999. Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 15