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In their paper named ‘Team Coordination in Escalating Situations: An Empirical Study using Mid-Fidelity Simulation, the authors Bergstrom et al., talk about the different aspects of how teams coordinate in escalating crisis situations, such as Tsunamis or Hurricane Katrina. The definition of an escalating situation is given as – a highly unpredictable, deteriorating and spreading crisis.
In the event of such events, there is a marked increase in the range of cognitive and coordination skills needed to control the situation. Since the problem is escalating the demand for such skills only increases. These features are prevalent in team performance and determine success or failure for a team, which works in a coordinated manner towards a certain objective.
Successful coordination occurs due to three factors – “interpredictability, common ground and directability” (Bergstrom et al., pp. 221-229). The concept of interpredictability is the ability to proactively determine the actions of the other team members. Common ground is a mutual and shared goal among teams while directability is the ability to work towards and apply the process to the escalating situation.
Control refers to the strategic use of a process to guide a team or system towards its goals. Different coordination processes have an impact on these control mechanisms – scrambled, using trial and error, opportunistic – without planning, tactical which is process led and strategic, which covers long term objectives. Data for the study was collected from a mid-fidelity ship-bridge simulation process. Each team comprised of 5 to 7 participants with the simulation of a stormy Atlantic ocean.
The observations from the data were eye-opening. When there was low data overload, the process worked very well and the coordination was good but the established structures and process was found deficient when the escalation began. The clutter problem created dissonance in the roles and responsibilities with the attendant chaos.
The team leader or captain played a lead role but did not delegate tasks leading to overloading. The escalation of the situation and the resultant dissonance also did not help the teams find common ground. Many of them stuck to their role and responsibility without helping in the crisis. Teams were seen to use tactical and opportunistic modes of action.
Some teams displayed a very coordinated and strategic approach to the crisis with defined roles and actions. They showcased coordinated decision making and information sharing to a large extent. The teams that were successful were the ones with a common ground who made decisions made on the basis of shared information.
Proactive coordination was generally seen and practiced in the second simulation session and not the first. The study clearly shows that data overload can cause teams to focus so much on incoming data that the overall escalating situation becomes uncontrollable. Due to the misguided expectations, there arose a situation of paralysis due to analysis. In an escalating situation with multiple teams, it is evident that common ground has to be discussed and negotiated constantly, information has to be shared continuously and directability has to be maintained for the joint activity. It is critical that teams facing large amounts of data need to follow a process to ensure that all the data is analyzed and presented to them. This is a strategy for successful implementation of actions in a crisis situation. Differences in actions were also observed between professional seafarers, civilian managers and air traffic controllers.
All of these groups adopted different mechanisms with the seafarers using a hierarchical approach, the civilians using a data sharing approach and the air traffic group using more proactive engagements. The focus on sharing increasing amounts of data with the teams is detrimental and a focus on joint cognitive activity will likely yield better control in escalating situations.
References
Bergstrom, Johan, Dahlstrom, Nicklas, Henriqson, Eder and Dekker, Sidney. “Team
Coordination in Escalating Situations: An Empirical Study using Mid-Fidelity Simulation.” Blackwell Publishing, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5973.2010.00618.x.
