Abstract
The authors created the experiential and team-based Jarvis Manufacturing exercise to help students learn about the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that are fundamental to effective teamwork. In the exercise, students are asked to assume the role of the CEO of Jarvis Manufacturing, a fictional manufacturer and retailer of skis and snowboards. They are tasked with choosing the members of a team that will decide the new strategy for the company’s snowboarding business. Students choose their team from a core management group of 12 employees, for whom descriptions are provided in the case. They first make their choices as individuals, then in teams. We provide a description of the exercise and suggestions for how to debrief it. The exercise provides an opportunity for students to reflect on the KSAs that they should consider in choosing and managing a team and to develop these KSAs in themselves.
Keywords
It is widely acknowledged that teams are an essential part of organizations: Practically all individuals will work in teams to some extent throughout the course of their careers (Nielsen, Sundstrom, & Halfhill, 2005). For this reason, organizations are demanding that business schools prepare their graduates with the “softer skills” that will help make them effective team players (Halfhill & Nielsen, 2007). In this article, we introduce the Jarvis Manufacturing exercise, which is designed to help students acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that will allow them to thrive in teams (Stevens & Campion, 1994). Specifically, after completing the exercise, students should be better able to
Recognize the role of goal setting and performance management in teams and understand what kinds of goals are appropriate for teams
Identify and prevent potential barriers to collaborative team problem solving through decisions around choosing members for teams
Manage team conflict by promoting functional conflict while minimizing dysfunctional conflict
Appreciate the importance of communicating openly and listening nonevaluatively in teams
Overcome planning and task coordination challenges to ensure that there is individual accountability and equitable distribution of work in teams
Overview of Jarvis Manufacturing
These teamwork KSAs are applied as students read a hypothetical scenario where they are asked to imagine themselves as the new CEO of Jarvis Manufacturing, a manufacturer and retailer of skis and snowboards. They are told that the snowboard part of their business is struggling, and they are instructed to assemble a team of managers that, in 3 months, will come up with a new strategy for their snowboarding business and make a presentation about that strategy to the company’s board of directors. The exercise includes short descriptions of 12 managers, including information on the managers’ functional background, demographics, and relationships with other managers (see Appendix A for the complete exercise).
We have been using this exercise for 5 years, primarily in a 5-day intensive management course for midlevel executives, but also in an MBA course on Leadership and Teamwork and in undergraduate-level Organizational Behavior courses to support discussions of teamwork. Next, we summarize below the practices that we have found to be the most successful. Our intention in this section is to clarify what we have done in the past and why, not to suggest that these are the only ways of conducting the exercise. We encourage instructors to adapt how they administer and debrief the exercise, and even in some cases the content of the exercise itself (which we have done numerous times over the years), to fit their personal teaching styles, the needs of their students, and their institutional environments. We discuss materials and resources needed, preparation from students, as well as an overview of the steps that comprise the exercise. For ease of reference, we summarize these steps and the recommended time frames for each in Table 1.
Steps and Time Frames for the Jarvis Manufacturing Exercise.
The italicized steps are those where instructors can exercise discretion based on available class time, as further elaborated in Table 2.
Materials and Resources
Students must be provided with a copy of the exercise, either before class or at the beginning of the class session. If instructors choose to provide electronic copies by email or through a course management system, we suggest that they encourage students to print and bring their own copy of the exercise to class, as they will need to be able to easily reference the information during their team discussions.
The exercise works best when student teams can engage in deliberations without being able to overhear other teams, so it is useful to have a breakout room for each team to use. Students also appreciate having whiteboards in those rooms so they can record the choices of their fellow team members. When students return to the classroom, we ask students to publicly display their choices, so the classroom itself should have enough board space (or flip charts) for teams to write down their selections.
Student Preparation
Whether in or outside of class, we require students to first review the exercise on their own, make their own choices for who should be on the Jarvis team, and prepare a 60-second presentation for their classroom team about their choices. By requiring this individual deliverable we reduce social loafing, where some students disengage from the learning experience and let others do the work (Bacon, 2005; Michaelsen, Watson, Cragin, & Fink, 1982). Another benefit of the period of individual work is that it can encourage contributions from students who, for example, lack confidence in their communication skills or ability to contribute to a team’s efforts (Hall & Buzwell, 2012), and who might otherwise tend to remain silent while their team members discuss the case. We have found that 20 minutes is usually sufficient time for most students, although students for whom English is a second language may appreciate having 30 minutes to prepare.
Team Formation and Exercise Timing
We form students into teams ourselves because we want to ensure that there are diverse opinions in the discussion, and students who select their own teams may be more likely to choose friends with opinions similar to themselves. If students are in a program or a course where they will be working in learning teams for other projects, we organize them into those teams. With regard to the size of the team, the goal is to have teams that are large enough for members to experience true team dynamics, while not so large that team members find it difficult to actively participate in the discussion. We typically select teams that have between four and six members.
The teams are then given 45 minutes to reach agreement about the members of the Jarvis team. Thus, the minimum length of time necessary to run this exercise is 50 minutes: 5 minutes for an introduction and 45 minutes for teams to reach agreement. Subsequent activities can then be adapted based on the time available to the instructor. In Table 2, we suggest how the Jarvis exercise could fit into 50-minute, 80-minute, or 3-hour sessions. In an 80-minute session, we recommend that instructors choose either (a) finishing with student team presentations and then engaging in a longer debrief during the next session or (b) instead of presentations, asking students to write their Jarvis team selections on the board and then leading a longer debrief during the same session. For 50- and 80-minute sessions, students do their individual preparation outside of class. In a 3-hour session, instructors have more flexibility around how they structure the process. We suggest devoting the first half of a 3-hour session to student preparation, team deliberations, and team presentations, and then using the second half for a more extended debrief. We have found that the best learning comes from a 3-hour time frame.
Jarvis Manufacturing Exercise Adapted for Different Class Lengths.
Running the Exercise
When the time frames and deliverables have been explained, and students have done their individual preparation, we instruct the student teams to meet and make their decisions. We try to briefly observe all the teams at the beginning of the exercise, to correct any misunderstandings about the process and to observe initial team dynamics. As time passes, we continue to rotate around the teams, in particular, looking to see how team processes are managed and how the teams handle any disagreement that emerges.
When running and debriefing the exercise, we have seen much more commonality across students with different levels of experience (i.e., undergraduate, master’s, executives) than differences. The one exception is that students with less actual work experience (i.e., undergraduates) tend to have more theoretical discussions (e.g., I think this will happen if this team is selected), whereas more experienced students are more likely to relate the concepts to personal experiences in teams. One discussion issue where this can be salient is personality conflict, because students who have not experienced personality conflicts in teams sometimes downplay the impact it can have on team performance, believing that teams should be able to set aside personal animosities to focus on performance. In these cases, we have always been able to find at least one student who can share an example of how a personality conflict affected the performance of a work or nonwork team.
Debriefing the Exercise
The Jarvis exercise enables students to not only develop the KSAs of effective teamwork through practice but also consider how these KSAs will play out in the hypothetical Jarvis team. These dual levels of learning provide fertile ground for discussions on teamwork. We organize the debrief around the five aforementioned KSAs (Stevens & Campion, 1994): goal setting, collaborative problem solving, functional conflict, clear communication, and effective coordination. We include a list of our usual discussion questions in the appendices, and we next explain the main points we strive to cover during the debrief.
Goal Setting
To begin, we ask a question along the following lines: “Did you discuss whether or not you should just make a decision yourselves?” Most students are surprised by this question, because the instructions told them to pick a team and they followed instructions. Occasionally, a team will have had this specific discussion, in which case we ask them to describe it. More often, teams will have had debates about whether they are choosing a team to come up with a strategy (which is what the instructions say), or whether they are choosing a team that will support the strategy that they as the CEO choose. We use the latter case to make the point that a team should not be chosen to confirm a decision that has already been made.
We continue by emphasizing that teams must have a clear goal whose achievement requires the ability and effort of multiple people (Hackman, 2002). We ask the students what the goal of the Jarvis team is, and typically they reply that it is to come up with a strategy. This is an incomplete answer: The Jarvis team must also prepare a presentation for the board in 3 months. We tell students that a clearer goal for the Jarvis team is to develop a compelling presentation for the board about the new strategy.
Collaborative Problem Solving
People with collaborative problem-solving KSAs are able to identify when group problem solving is needed and determine the appropriate level and approach to group member participation (Stevens & Campion, 1994). We get students to think about obstacles to collaborative problem solving through their decisions with regard to Jarvis team composition. We begin by discussing the size of the Jarvis teams. We deliberately do not specify an optimal size (usually at least one student asks), and instead we encourage students to be mindful about the tradeoffs involved in choosing the size of a team: balancing the benefits of having more skills and horsepower to get work done against the challenges of coordination, social loafing, and diffusion of responsibility (Mueller, 2012).
Students usually spend the most time discussing which functional backgrounds are necessary for the team. Their choices tend to focus on desired knowledge and skill sets, particularly knowledge of product markets, manufacturing processes, and financial issues. We often play the student teams against one another, asking why different teams made different choices, and whether one choice is right and another wrong. We also make the point that there is not a best Jarvis team. Rather, what is most important is for the student teams to be clear about the Jarvis team’s purpose so that they are able to select Jarvis team members with skill sets that will contribute toward accomplishing that purpose.
Conflict Resolution
The conflict resolution KSA relates to the ability to encourage functional conflict in teams, such as vigorous debate about team tasks, while discouraging dysfunctional conflict, such as personal criticism (DeWit, Greer, & Jehn, 2012). In Table 3, we provide a summary of the team-based and relationship-based conflicts that are present in the Jarvis case. We raise the topics of conflict and conflict resolution by connecting them to member diversity in the Jarvis teams. We focus on two kinds of diversity: functional (referring to heterogeneity in skills and performance-specific knowledge) and demographic (referring to heterogeneity in traits).
Jarvis Manufacturing Exercise Conflicts.
We ask if student teams have chosen Jarvis members who represent differences of opinion on important strategic issues. If students did this, we ask them how they plan to manage the disagreements that arise; if not, we ask them what is likely to happen when that issue is discussed, alerting them to the potential threat of groupthink and arriving at a consensus without a full discussion of the issues. We praise the intention of creating productive disagreement, especially for teams that choose members who disagree. We also alert students to the risks of picking team members who have personal disagreements, because this can lead to dysfunctional conflict.
Communication
We also discuss students’ own team communication processes in terms of how they shared their ideas and listened to their fellow teammates. It is common for student teams to have some members who dominate discussions and other members who remain relatively silent. We challenge teams about whether they recognized these patterns and what impact such uneven communication might have on team outcomes. If there are teams that had more equitable participation, we ask them to share the communication practices they used. We have found that teams that use the whiteboards to track members’ choices tend to better ensure that everyone has a chance to be “heard.”
At the cross-section of communication and conflict resolution, we encourage students to reflect on how they handled disagreement in their own teams. It is common for students to vote for each Jarvis team member, and we discuss pros and cons of this approach: pros include efficiency and the appearance of fairness; cons include failing to account for the strength of members’ feelings and ending discussion on issues before they have actually been resolved (Levi, 2014).
Planning and Task Coordination
This aspect of teamwork involves coordinating and synchronizing activities, information, and task interdependencies between team members (Stevens & Campion, 1994). To discuss timelines, we ask students to describe what should be accomplished between now and the board meeting in 3 months. Some good answers include having a set of meetings planned, gathering data, analyzing data, narrowing options, finalizing a first draft of a presentation, and rehearsing the presentation.
As we discuss planning and task coordination, we revisit the issue of performance management. We emphasize that someone must be a team leader, keeping them on task, adhering to timelines, and holding individual members accountable. We also discuss the importance of implementing the team’s output at the end of the process. Students sometimes say that if they disagree with the team they will ignore the team’s recommendations. We ask if that has ever happened to anyone, and how it felt. We make the point that not following through on the team’s recommendations will lead to cynicism about leadership and about teamwork. Leaders should either implement the team’s solutions or explain why they cannot.
Conclusions
Overall, the Jarvis Manufacturing exercise is an engaging and effective way of helping students identify and practice teamwork KSAs. It succeeds at building students’ awareness and understanding of the elements of effective teamwork, both as these elements relate to choosing members of the Jarvis team, as well as in terms of students’ experiences in their class teams. Running the Jarvis exercise makes students more attentive to how they approach teamwork in the many additional group projects and exercises that they are asked to participate in throughout the courses in which we run the exercise. Furthermore, students leave the exercise with an awareness of the KSAs that they should develop in themselves as preparation for entering an increasingly team-based workforce.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Suggested Discussion Questions for Jarvis Manufacturing Debrief.
| Teamwork KSA | Suggested discussion questions |
|---|---|
| Goal setting | • Did you discuss whether you should make the Jarvis strategy decision yourself as CEO? |
| • Have you ever been a member of a “guess the right answer” kind of team? How did this feel? | |
| • What is the goal of the Jarvis team? | |
| • Is this goal an appropriate challenge for a team? | |
| Collaborative problem solving | • How large were your Jarvis teams? Why did you choose this number of people to be on the team? |
| • What are the tradeoffs involved with having a larger versus a smaller team? | |
| • How did you choose specific people to be members of your Jarvis teams? | |
| Conflict resolution | • How diverse was your Jarvis team? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this level of diversity? |
| • Have any of the members you selected had personal disagreements in the past? Does this matter? | |
| • Have you ever been on a team where you did not get along with another member? How did this affect you? How did this affect your team’s performance? | |
| • How will you manage conflict that emerges in the Jarvis team (especially if teams are diverse)? | |
| • How will you prevent groupthink from occurring in the Jarvis team (especially if teams are homogeneous) | |
| Communication | • How did you share your ideas about the Jarvis team in your student team? |
| • Did certain members dominate the discussion in your team? How might this have affected your team’s performance? | |
| • Were some members reluctant to contribute their ideas to the team discussion? What did you do in response? How might this have affected your team’s performance? | |
| • How did you resolve disagreements in your team? | |
| • How did the pressure to conform change as you approached the end of the allocated time for the exercise? | |
| Planning and task coordination | • What is the Jarvis team’s final deadline? |
| • What are some smaller deadlines on the way to that final deadline? | |
| • How can you hold the team and individual team members accountable? | |
| • How did your student team plan to make your decision about the Jarvis team within the time allotted? What did you do to ensure you stayed on time and on task? | |
| Performance management | • Have you ever been on a team where one or more of the members were not pulling their weight? What did you do? How did you feel? |
| • How could you ensure equitable distribution of work in your Jarvis team? | |
| • What would you do as the Jarvis CEO if you disagreed with the team’s recommendation? | |
| • Have you ever been in a team where the team’s recommendations were ignored by the leader? How did this influence your attitude toward the team? Toward the leader? |
Note. KSA = knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.