3 Ways to Help Your Team Recover from Disruption
在这个快速变化的时代，很多机构都在思考如何脱颖而出。有时候，他们会遇到一些挑战，并因此被迫改变行事方式以满足客户期许。在这方面，有些机构做得更好，而且通常取决于机构对其团队应对业务中断的能力有多大信心。那些能够从中断中成功恢复的团队都有哪些特质？此前和当前的研究显示，群体智慧或许能够提供一部分答案。
Many organizations wrestle with how to excel in rapidly changing times. At some point or another, they encounter challenges that force them to modify the ways they do things so they can continue to meet expectations. Some do it better than others, and it usually comes down to how confident they feel about their teams’ ability to absorb disruptions. What is it about teams that are successful at recovering from disruption? Previous and ongoing research suggests swarm intelligence could be part of the answer.
群体智慧指的是去中心化的自发有机体行事方式。这是蚂蚁、蜜蜂、鸟和鱼展现出复杂集体行为的原因，甚至有些行为给了人类很大启发，例如，这些动物搜索食物以及在种群中分配任务的方式。
Swarm intelligence refers to the ways in which decentralized and self-organized organisms behave. It’s what makes ants, bees, birds, and fish display sophisticated collective behaviors that even humans can find inspiring — for example, how they search for food or distribute the work that needs to be done in a colony.
在蚂蚁种群中，蚂蚁可在受到干扰时迅速地交换场地，它们生来便具有相互交换的能力。例如，如果它们外出寻找食物，而一条狗挡住了去路，它们会意识到有干扰因素出现，并迅速转换任务，以保护种群。这种无需任何人告知便知晓何时应该转换的能力，让它们能够恢复和适应危及生命的局面。由于这种行为仅在种群中能够出现，我们将其称为集体修复能力。
In ant colonies, ants can quickly exchange places when a disruption happens — they’re instinctively interchangeable. For example, if they’re out looking for food and a dog gets in the way, they recognize that something disruptive has happened and quickly swap tasks in order to protect the colony. Their ability to know when to switch — without anyone telling them to — is what gives them the capacity to recover and adapt to life-threatening situations. Since this behavior is only possible at the level of the colony, we refer to it as collective self-healing.
如果将集体自我修复这一理念推及人类，它会在团队而非个人层面出现。当团队成员主动交换任务时，这种行为就会出现，哪怕这些任务超出了其传统职责。在这种情况下，他们会表现出互换能力，并将其作为应对突发状况的策略，这一点与蚂蚁的行为类似。
Extrapolating this idea to humans, collective self-healing happens at the level of the team, not the individual. It’s enabled when team members take the initiative to swap tasks, even if those tasks are outside their traditional roles. This way, they become interchangeable — in the same way as ants do — as a strategy to adapt to unexpected situations.
在我们当前的研究中，同事和我在此前工作的基础上又对行动小组成员进行了深度采访，包括应急响应团队、特警队、创伤救护队和军队医疗团队。我们发现，通过培训，这些团队养成了一种角色互换的本能，让其能够非常有效地进行集体自我修复。事实上，我们目前了解到，有三个重要的特征会赋予这些自我修复型团队强大的应变能力。以下三个技巧能够激励你的团队更快地从中断中恢复。
In our ongoing research, my colleagues and I have built on previous work by conducting in-depth interviews with members of action teams, including emergency response teams, police SWAT teams, trauma teams, and military healthcare teams. We’ve found that through training, these teams have developed an instinct for interchangeability that makes them very effective at collective self-healing. In essence, we’ve learned so far that three key features bestow these self-healing teams with a formidable capacity for adaptation. The following three techniques can inspire your team to recover from disruptions more quickly.
完成任务，不要在乎由谁来执行
Get things done — regardless of who does it.
由于自我修复型团队的每一个人都专注于同样的目标，他们不会耗费时间来争论谁该做什么，而只会关注需要做什么，然后去做。 Since everyone on a self-healing team is focused on the same goal, they don’t get stuck arguing about who should be doing what — they just see what needs to be done and do it. 这是我们疫情期间在创伤救护队中发现的一种行为。例如，作为新冠疫情规划的一部分，医院会问临床医生，如果需要的话，将他部署在哪个岗位不会让其感到反感。在思考这个问题时，很多医疗团队的成员意识到，即便他们长时间没有在某个科室工作，他们也可以去那帮忙。其中一些医师说：“哪需要我，我就去哪。”在过去，医院需要遵循严格的等级和异常死板的职责分工。医院不允许医生执行其职责以外的任务。 This is a behavior we observed in trauma teams in the midst of the pandemic. For instance, as part of Covid-19 planning, clinicians were asked about where in the hospital they would be comfortable being deployed if needed. In thinking about that question, many members of these health care teams realized that even though they hadn’t worked in a particular service for a while, they would be able to go there. And some of them ended up saying, “plug me in wherever you need me.” In the past, a strong hierarchy and very rigid roles had to be respected. Nobody was allowed to perform tasks outside their role.
然而，疫情向这一规则发起了挑战，而团队成员开始从事其传统职责以外的工作，以减轻团队的工作量，并提升其能力。一开始，从事属于其他专业科室的任务会让人感到不安，然而团队成员告诉我们，当情况变得十分危急时，这种职责的转换可能就会发生。
However, the pandemic challenged that hierarchy as team members began to work outside their traditional scope to ease the team’s workload and enhance its capabilities. While at first, the idea of doing tasks that conventionally belonged to another specialty was unnerving, team members told us that when things become grim, it’s possible to become interchangeable.
利用去中心化的领导力
Capitalize on distributed leadership.
自我修复型团队采用的是交叉培训的思维模式，以帮助每个人了解如何在团队成员缺失时填补其位置。这一点与其是否是领导者无关，关键在于，在必要的情况下，每个人都准备好主动承担这一职责。这点在应急响应团队中十分常见。与已经有稳定组合的创伤救护队不同，应急响应团队由当前可用的人员组成。因此，这个团队可能由众多医务人员或少数医务人员构成，可能有消防员，也可能没有，甚至可能由学生组成。他们在执行任务时必须利用一切现有的团队成员，而这些局面必然涉及任务转换，在训练有素的专业人士之间更是常见。在这种情况下，我们经常看到，领导职责被重新分配或由当时更适合领导的人去担任。因此，即便出现突发事件，他们都可以尽快地回归工作。
Self-healing teams adopt a cross-training mindset to help each other learn how to fill in the gaps when a team member can’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re the leader or not. What matters is that everybody is ready to step and to take on tasks outside of their role if needed. This often happens in emergency response teams. Different from trauma teams, which have an established composition, emergency response teams are made up of whoever is available at that moment. Therefore, a team could end up with many paramedics or a few paramedics, with the fire department or no fire department, or even with a student emergency response team. They have to function with whoever they’ve got, and those circumstances inevitably necessitate swapping of tasks, particularly among the trained professionals. It’s not uncommon for leadership tasks to get redistributed or assumed by whoever is better equipped to lead in the moment. Therefore, if something happens, they can get back to work as quickly as possible.
意识到自身专长局限性，必要时寻求帮助 Realize the limits of your own expertise and seek help when needed. 自我修复型团队认为，当事情出岔子时，那些自负的人很难成事。他们知道自己必须揪出不良行为，而且如果存在问题的是自己，那么最好及时止损，这样，团队才能继续作为一个紧密的单元运作。 Self-healing teams understand that when things go awry, there’s no place for people with big egos. They know they must call out bad behavior, and if you’re the one being called out, you better shake it off fast so that the team continues to operate as a cohesive unit. 等级是人类生来便存在的一种现象，任何由人类组成的团队都无法摆脱其影响力。尽管等级有着显著的作用，但在应急响应团队中交换领导职责并不是件简单的事，它需要具有一定洞察力。有时候，触发事件会促使消防局的某个人意识到，他们必须承担某项领导职责，尽管该职责的主体本应是医务人员。在这些情况下，我们必须仔细斟酌如何进行沟通，这样，团队中的每个人都会知道，交换是形势所迫，而不是断定某人能力不足。 Hierarchy is an innate condition of humans, and no human team is exempt from its influence. While highly effective, swapping leadership tasks in emergency response teams is not straightforward — it requires a certain degree of insight. Sometimes a triggering event prompts a person from the fire department to know that they must take on a leadership task even though the paramedic was supposed to perform it. In those situations, the conversation must be crafted carefully so that everybody on the team knows that the switch happened because of the circumstances, not because of a judgment of incompetence.
在军队医疗团队中，等级分为两重。一重是军衔，另一重则关乎医疗文化。在这些团队中，自我意识的问题自然而然就会出现。然而，当面临资源匮乏、极度危险的部署环境时，团队成员需要保持开阔的胸襟。在很多情况下我们都听到过这种案例：“那位”医师属于“全能型选手”，其解决问题的能力甚至比外科医生都强。
In military health care teams, hierarchy is doubly established. There’s a hierarchy regarding military rank and also one regarding the health care culture. On these teams, the issue of ego naturally arises. However, in deployed situations where resources are scarce and danger is imminent, team members need to remain open-minded. In many instances, we heard stories of “that” medic who was the “jack-of-all-trades” and knew how to troubleshoot better than even the surgeons.
正是因为其派遣经历，他们曾接触过各类局面，如果有需要，他们在特护病房可以执行麻醉师或护士的任务。他们可以验伤，能够协助气道管理。这一点是没有问题的，因为这些团队十分愿意接受这种在专业方面不怎么对路，但却能在危急时刻大展身手的人员。
Because of their deployment experience, they’ve been exposed to a variety of situations, and if needed, can perform tasks as an anesthesiologist or a nurse in an intensive care unit. They can do triage. They can assist with airway management. And that’s fine, because these teams are willing to accept that someone with less professional pedigree might possess the skills needed at a critical moment.
正如这些团队所展示的那样，集体自我修复要求团队成员意识到，团体比个人更重要。尽管这一点理解起来并不难，但要做到却并不容易。在蚂蚁这种群居昆虫中，集体自我修复是一种与生俱来的能力。蚂蚁是十分原始的生物，它们无法自行做出决定，其组织系统是生物性的，而非社会性。正因为如此，它们没有能力去争论什么更重要，或谁的主意最好。然而人类却有这个能力，这样便带来了挑战。
As these teams have taught us, collective self-healing demands that team members understand that the group is more important than the individual. While sensible, it’s not an easy premise to embrace. In social insects, like ants, collective self-healing is a natural ability. Ants are very primitive — they can’t make decisions by themselves, and their organizational system is biological, not social. Because of that, they don’t have the ability to argue about who’s more important or who has the best ideas. But humans do, which creates challenges.
人类团队中的集体自我修复并非是与生俱来的特征，必须加以培养和打造。正如应急响应团队、特警队、创伤救护队和军队医疗团队所展示的那样，它要求人们养成强大的学习和教导思维模式。这种思维模式意味着，团队成员任何可用的时间都会用来培训或再培训，这样当出现意外事件时不会存在缺位或不熟悉业务的情况。人类团队中的集体自我修复并非与生俱来，必须加以培养和打造。正如应急响应团队——特警队、创伤救护队和军队医疗团队所展示的那样，它要求人们养成强大的学习和教导思维模式。这种思维模式意味着，团队成员任何可用的时间都会用来培训或再培训，这样当出现意外事件时不会存在缺位或不熟悉业务的情况。
Collective self-healing in human teams is not a natural trait; it must be nurtured and developed. As emergency response teams, police SWAT teams, trauma teams, and military health care teams showed us, it requires a strong learning and teaching mindset. You know you’ve struck gold when you have a team member who’s willing to gain knowledge and learn skills and attitudes outside their professional scope. And this mindset implies that any time that’s available to team members is used to train and retrain so that there’s no gap or lack of proficiency when it comes to an unexpected event.
如果想要尝试应对社会中充满挑战、不断变化的问题，领导者应思考以下几个问题：
Leaders trying to keep up with the ever-changing challenging issues of our society should reflect on a few questions:
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你的团队当前是否通过某种形式的互动来培养其集体自我修复能力？
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如果没有，我们是否能够以打造集体自我修复能力为目标来培养组织的价值、角色、责任和思维模式？
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如果我们为员工创造机会，让他们从事指派任务或职责以外的工作，此举可能会带来什么样的影响？
- Do our teams currently interact in ways that enable a collective self‐healing capacity?
- If not, can our organizational values, roles, responsibilities, and mindset evolve in ways that will enable collective self‐healing?
- If we opened up opportunities for working outside of our assigned tasks or roles, what would that make possible?
尽管我们难以简单地回答这些问题，但它们至少应该引起人们的思考。最终，创伤救护队、特警队、应急响应团队和军队医疗团队的终极目标是打造一个更具凝聚力的团队，并提升带来积极成果的可能性。这难道不正是各大机构梦寐以求的吗？
Although the answers to these questions might not be straightforward, they at least should provoke thought. Ultimately, the end result for the trauma, police SWAT, emergency response, and military health care teams is a much more cohesive team and a higher probability of a positive outcome. Isn’t that what any organization is looking for?
*本文节选自《哈佛商业评论》中文版 2021年5月刊文章《团队怎样免受业务中断影响》。
萨拉·克里斯坦乔（Sayra Cristancho） | 文
萨拉·克里斯坦乔是加拿大西部大学（Western University）教育研究与创新中心(CERI)外科与科学家系副教授。她在90sec网播方面的研究专注于“sowhat”方向。
刘隽 | 原文编辑
马冰仑 | 公众号文章编辑
