Problem solver teams

Problems can get solved very efficiently in a team, but some precautions must be observed:

• the team members should have different know how

• all team members must be willing to cooperate in an open minded manner

• the results of the team work must be attributed to the team and not to one member only

In companies with a hierarchical structure, the team moderator is in many cases also the boss. This can be a problem, if the boss is very dominating.

Nowadays problem solver teams can get formed globally, using the internet with video conferencing. A core team can do the main structuring and organizing of the meetings via internet and distribute problems to other more specialized teams.

The results of the meetings must be documented in a well structured way, and distributed to all team members, so that all are informed, what is going on.

It is helpful to build a common data base, using a good text retrieval program, like for instance asksam.

Such programs have following features:

• structured ( using templates) and non structured information can be stored in the same data base.

• Boolean search functions and indexing of each word or number in the database is possible. The indexing is very important, because when one does not know, which words are used in the database, then the Boolean search is useless.

• Reports can be written to create sub data bases or print outs of the relevant information

• The database can get encrypted and access to it can be limited to only parts of the database.

Besides a text retrieval program also a visual data base like TheBrain is very useful. TheBrain is an associative database, using hyperlinks. It has also indexing. It is very easy to navigate in it and find any piece of information.

But it is not easy, to create sub data bases or reports. Therefore I recommend TheBrain to collect information and thereafter to use asksam.

asksam:
http://www.asksam.com/

TheBrain
http://www.thebrain.com/