Experiential Learning Paper

"A Sociometry Analysis within a Punctuated Equilibrium Model."
by
Rick Marriner

Pepperdine University
MBA 669
Fred Richardson, Ph.D.
January 26^th, 1998

Description

The seniors at the US Merchant Marine Academy are given a yearlong task as a final and paramount test of their leadership, organization, time management and logistic skills. This task is to run the regimental system of the academy in line with the mission. This was no easy task given the nine hundred plus members of the regiment. The task is led by the regimental staff of midshipman officers; seniors who, throughout the previous three years, have maintained the highest level of regimental, academic, and physical scores. The Regimental Commander (RC) is in command of the entire regiment with three direct reports. These reports are the Regimental Executive (RX), who is second in command of the regiment and in charge of a twenty-six member Regimental Staff (Reg. Staff) and the first and second Battalion Commanders, each with their own staff and responsibility for the health and welfare of four-hundred and fifty midshipmen (BC1 &BC2). The RX heads the Reg. Staff with five direct reports. The Reg. Staff includes the Regimental Operations Officer (ROPS), Regimental Adjutant (RADJ), Regimental Public Affairs Officer (RPA), Regimental Logistics Officer (RLOG) Regimental Honor Board Chairman (RHBC) and the Regimental Training Officer (RTO). Each department head listed in the regimental staff has three to five direct reports, but their inclusion is beyond the scope of this analysis.

It is necessary to provide further background on the unique characteristics of this leadership cadre before describing the task to be analyzed. It is important to note that for three years prior to the attainment of rank all of the members mentioned above were equals in the regiment. All are roughly the same age, all of them over-achievers with huge personal self-esteem and natural leadership ability. In retrospect, I believe, anyone of them could have filled any post and all of them aspired to the command position at one point during the three-year journey. It is also critical to know that prior to this formal group forming there existed friendships within and outside the group. There also existed animosity. In the highest sense of peer competition, the academy inadvertently pits midshipman against midshipman for the prize of academic recognition, regimental rank, and overall class ranking. In short, there are many informal groups and barriers that exist prior to the formation of the formal group of the midshipman officer corps.

The larger task of running the regiment took place over the academic term and changed and evolved as the members and groups matured. The experience that I will describe is that of the most dreaded of regimental affairs, the Formal Command Inspection/Parade. The culmination of efforts is simply a two-hour inspection of the entire regiment by the admiral, his staff and roughly a hundred dignitaries and VIP’s. The inspection is followed by a formal pass and review style parade. These occurred once a quarter and the one of most interest is the first our staff had to put together.

The start of the process for planning was a series of meetings held over a week. The first had in attendance the full 26 members of the Reg. Staff. This turned out to be a waste of time. Since we were all fresh back from sea, the agenda turned into a melee of sea stories and small conversations. The group adjourned and the RC and I retired to our staterooms to try to get our arms around the mess. We had an excellent mentor in our commissioned officer advisor and he indicated that we should use the chain of command to bring together the top brass instead of the full staff. The next meeting had the six department heads and three commanders and the RX, a much more manageable group. The next obstacle was that none of us were strong enough of a personality to really emerge as a leader. The RC, formally in charge, was a poor speaker and a bit shy in small face to face meetings with his compatriots. No one else ranked any higher than the other nine, officially or socially. It was an internal fear of stepping up in case someone was to "shoot you down". This amorphous group of over achievers was to sit for the better part of the evening and finally hash out a consensus on a timetable and plan of action. The initial meeting took place four weeks to the inspection. The timetable was a series of goals that we all knew had to be done. There was no consensus on who would be tasked with what. In a separate informal meeting that same week the RC and I sat down and divided up the jobs across the department heads. It was in a series of informal one on one meetings that I, the RX, communicated to each of the staff members what their set of goals were to be. I left it to them to delegate within their own departments who would do what. In two of the cases (RTO and RLOG) I could not rely on my good friendship with them and instead had to "pull rank" and lay the law on their responsibility. If nothing else they were at least professional enough to take the order. Progress was slow over the next two weeks and many of the milestones were not completed. We did not have any formal meetings over those two weeks and I relied heavily on informal contact with the staff to gauge where they were. I was running myself ragged and there did not seem to be any great results.

Two weeks prior to the inspection the RC and I called a department head meeting. Our mentor had advised us to have each member of the staff prepare in advance a short presentation for the rest of the staff as to where their staff was on their part of the process. It was a very embarrassing hour for the entire staff. Our frustration turned to anxiety and the old lines of friends and enemies sprung up with accusations and stinging remarks back and forth. In melee the RPA, a otherwise quiet academic mind (in the end he was ranked 3^rd academically in our class) shouted over everyone, "Guys! There are 12 days left to the inspection and we are not even halfway there! We are going to look like a bunch of idiots real quick if we can’t pull this thing together. In fact we are going to look like idiots in front of a hundred taxpayers who just happen to be the some of the most influential dignitaries in this industry." He proceeded to name off a few of the Sr. Officers and political figures that would be in attendance in 12 days.

The silence that followed that statement was a false symbol of the flourish of activity that occurred during the next week. The lines of communication were wide open and I was getting updates daily from the staff on where they were. My job went from prodding individuals to coordinating cross-functional staff members in accomplishing their goals. One example is when the BC1 and BC2 were looking to standardize their inventories. I was able to set up a quick planning meeting between the RLOG and the commanders to look at the process in which supplies were ordered for each battalion. In short time the problem was settled and the RLOG was able to use his comparative expertise in logistics to alleviate one of the tasks of the commanders. In return, the commanders promised to implement the recommendations of the RLOG. Prior to our project you could not have gotten the RLOG to even talk to the BC’s since they all came from different, rival parts of the regiment. There were many other similar transactions and by the last meeting we had completed our goals and submitted the inspection accounting report under the projected budget! That the inspection even happened was a relief for all of us. That it was hailed as one of the best organized and executed in the Superintendent’s memory was icing on the cake. Securing from the inspection tired and beat the RC turned to me and in a cynical tone mumbled to me, "Great, now we have to outdo ourselves three more times before they let us graduate."

Analysis

There are two means by which I would like to analyze this group. The first is through the tool of sociometry, an analytical technique for studying group interactions. The second means of analysis would be to look at the group as it handled the project in terms of the Punctuated-Equilibrium Model To properly use sociometry I should have conducted a series of interviews to gauge who people did and didn’t want to work with. Without this I still feel I can safely assume the initial dynamic that people had between the other members of the group. With this information I can set up a sociogram to analyze the group, a sociogram is a diagram that graphically maps the preferred social interactions between members of the group. The sociogram for our Reg. Staff is shown in Figure 1.2.

The arrows in the diagram depict the linkages between people and their individual preferences. These social networks, who people like to work with, set up clusters. There are two types of clusters in our group. The solid line clusters are the formal or prescribed clusters (departments or work teams) and the dotted lines indicate the groups forming the emergent clusters (Informal groups). As you can see the RC, BC1 And BC2 form a command group, the RC, RX and ROPS form what is known as the Reg. Wedge, the understood three most senior midshipman, and the RX and Reg. Staff form the last group. The emergent groups include three major groups. Interestingly enough the emergent group of the RC, RX, RPA and BC1 emerged because all four of these members were of the same major and studied regularly together. The emergent group of the ROPS, RADJ and RLOG emerged because they were all drinking buddies. Lastly the BC2 and RHBC both played football and had no real use for the rest of us.

The Emergent cluster of ROPS, RADJ and RLOG might even be described as a clique, or an informal group that is generally permanently organized around friendship. This served to keep the rest of us out of their inside jokes and in some ways isolate themselves except for the times their formal group required them to interact. The temporary emergent cluster described in the first part of this paper including the RLOG, RX and two BC’s was a demonstration of a coalition, a group temporarily formed to achieve a specific task or goal.

There were two stars in the group, the RC and RX. These people have the most links of the group and are often likely to be the most influential because of their larger networks. The group shows no true liaisons. In order to be a liaison a member must have the ability to link two or more groups without really being a member of either one. The closest the group comes to maintaining a bridge is between the RX and ROPS. A true bridge, however, is an individual who forms the "linking pin" between two groups by being a part of the two otherwise separate groups. It turns out that the ROPS and the RX were from the same original company during their plebe year and still had some connections although over the three years they had formed different groups. There is a sure isolate in the group, the RTO. He depicts the characteristics of an individual not connected to the social network perfectly. In our group he was the one person least likely to be part of the group and took a bit of prodding to get to work with us. However, his social group was outside our formal group and that external tie helped in selling our ideas across the entire first class.

Focusing on the second analysis tool, our group, seemed to fall perfectly into the Punctuated-equilibrium model of group development. Using the phases of this model we can depict the group development as shown in figure 1.3. The first dot we see is the mess of a meeting that occurred at a very low performance level early in the process. The actual work begins at the first departmental meeting and we set the pace of the first phase, albeit a slow and inefficient phase. This is called the first inertial phase and is traditionally not reexamined. The transition phase (step three in the process) took place as it traditionally takes place at the midway point and was characterized by a radical change in the way we approached the problem. This transition was sparked by the comments of the RPA and the realization of the group that our reputations were on the line and only half of the initial time allotted was left. This transition led to a higher performance level over the last half of the project and with a last push moved the team to completion and success.

Teaching Points

The most important point I take from the use of sociometry is the importance of non-formal groups within a larger formal group. By accepting their existence I can predict the communication patterns that will be easy to set up and those that are going to take development. If as a manager I notice that a member is an isolate I would be aware that he or she may not be in the informal communication loop and may need to be actively reached out for to keep them involved. I can also see the benefit of having liaisons and bridges within the group. If one had the means, it would be beneficial to run a quick sociogram prior to forming a formal group so that they could form the prescribed group along the lines of the emergent groups thus reducing the strain on the system. In this case it would be important to ensure that there were a few bridges that would be able to communicate between the groups so that no group isolates itself and becomes more of a clique that an effective and communicative team element.

Knowing the stages of a punctuated equilibrium model I can be more ready to accept that a group will struggle and coast for the first half of the project, realizing it will take an almost revolutionary transition to bring the group to the level at which it must perform in order to complete a project in the last half of the available time. This patience and understanding might also promote a more skewed model that places the transition earlier in the time frame such that the level of performance needed in the later portion of the project need not be so difficultly high.

In either case, and in the case of the hundreds of other models provided and being developed, the understanding of group communication and group development will allow members to participate more fully in the scheme of group dynamic.