Two Heads Are Better Than One

Dyadic work - the work of two people is almost always more powerful than the work of one.

Have you ever participated in a team problem solving exercise? I remember one in particular that challenged the solver to identify certain items they would need on a life raft if left in the middle of the ocean; like a compass, a fish hook, a bucket, a knife, etc. The idea was to select a certain number of items from a list and then to prioritize them in order of importance. Everyone filled out the information as best they could individually then we broke up into groups of 4 and, without failing, the group work was always better than the individual work. People do better work when working together almost every time.

In organizations, it is the same. Almost all "productive work" that is done, i.e. work that adds meaningful value to the organization, is done in groups. And most group work is done in groups of two - more than 50% of the time. There are exceptions of course. Some creative people need time alone, some work is best done alone. When it comes to real breakthrough work, that is usually accomplished in small groups.

Now, our business at MBI has one simple mission: "To Help People Work Better". Because of this, this fact about how work is best accomplished is very important to us. One reason it is important is the simple fact that most organizations do not use the tools and space we have to optimize the work potential of the people in the organization.

There are two important factors when optimizing the work done by two people:

1. The physical space where they work
2. Where they get their information and how they use information

Most space planning that is done accounts for two things: individual work space design and large work group design (i.e. conference rooms and the like). We exalt the individual and the large group but we do a poor job usually of granting the right spaces to the work of small groups, especially groups of two. In your organization right now, where would two people go to work on a problem together for an hour? This question will become more significant addressing the second factor above - using information.

Where does most information come from when two people work together? Today, most of us would say paper - information printed off the computer, reference materials or notes. We also know how important the internet is along with other information sources (files, folders, presentations) which reside on the computer. As we improve technology, use of computers to get to information is only going to increase. So, if two people are now working together in the space you thought of earlier, how do they conveniently access and work with the computer together?

What we are trying at MBI is to provide spaces where two people can work together conveniently with a computer that both people can use, and/or a screen or monitor that both people can see together. If we can make dyadic work easier with convenient internet/computer tools for both parties, then we should see a significant improvement in real value-added work. We should also see improvement in the attitudes of workers and their satisfaction with their work space and work tools. In addition, other learning will probably occur - like where web sites might exist that weren't known; document sharing or real-time data updating on servers; sharing of important information faster with the larger groups.

We all know two heads are better than one so, let's work toward making it easier for those two heads to meet and use the tools of today better. Planning the spaces for small groups and providing the technology is a simple and easy way to improve organizational performance.

posted by Scott Messmore @ Thursday, June 07, 2007   0 comments