GENERALDADES DE LA INDUSTRIA GALVANICA

Clark’s methodology (Clark, 2009), is a structured way of assessing team formation processes along Tuckman’s model of sequential stages of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing teams (Tuckman, 1965 and Tuckman and Jensen, 1973). The results of such team surveys indicate the stage at which a team generally operates. Through a structured questionnaire, that contains 32 statements about teamwork, the team members are requested to score (ranging from 1 for never to 5 for almost always) each of the statement indicating how often in their perception their team demonstrates those teamwork behaviors. There are eight statements related to each of the stage. To ensure that there are no systematic biases, the statements reflecting a particular stage are not asked in a single sequence. The respondent’s scores are then summed up for each of the group of statements relating to various stages. An aggregate score below 16 for a stage indicates that the team almost never operates at that stage, while a score higher than 32 indicates that the team operates at that stage almost always. A score between these two values indicates that the team transitions through that stage. If scores are close to the same in two or more stages, it implies that the team is going through a transition phase, except when:

The score is high in both the Forming and Storming Stages then the team is in the Storming Stage; and

If the team scores are high in both the Norming and Performing Stages then the team is in the Performing Stage.

Only a small difference between three or four scores indicates that the team members have no clear perception of the way their team operates, the team's performance might be highly variable, or that the team might be in the storming phase, as this phase can be extremely volatile with high and low points.

The results of the teamwork survey, that was carried out in early May 2009, almost fifteen months after the first FTI training, are summarized in Table 5.6. The results indicate that by the time of the survey almost all teams perceived that their respective teams were at the performing stage. It can be noted that the difference between team scores between Norming and Performing stages were relatively low, indicating that the teams often tended to transition between these two stages.

Table 5.6 Team Stages for various FTI Teams in May 2009 FTI Team

(No.) Mean Scores (min-max) Forming Storming Norming Performing

WUA (6) 24.3 (22-26) 23 (17-26) 29.7 (28-31) 33.4 (27-38)

CA (6) 24.6 (22-27) 21.5 (16-29) 28.8 (23-31) 32 (25-35)

AL (5) 23.6 (20-26) 18.2 (16-21) 30(26-32) 35.6 (31-40)

SA (3) 23.0 (21-25) 18.3 (13-23) 31 (28-36) 32.7 (28-35)

Overall (20) 24.5 (20-27) 20.7 (13-29) 29.9 (23-36) 33.4 (25-40) Source: Teamwork Survey, May 2009

As the team scores were relatively higher for the performing stage than other stages for all the teams, these can be attributed to the outcomes of capacity building events, such as the second FTI training in June 2008, literature discussions, training on effective communication and team facilitation, and the first internal review workshop. These capacity and team building events had provided a number of building blocks for the team members to work together. Besides, the teams while preparing their work plans and road maps, carrying out stakeholder engagement activities, and actually engaging with stakeholders and fine-tuning their IDR plans had already gained considerable experience of working together.

What can also be noted in the table 5.6 are the relatively close average team scores for sets of stages. The differences in average scores between forming and storming stages as well as those between Norming and Performing stages are relatively low. In case of the first two stages, the minimum difference (WUA and CA) ranged between 1 and 3 respectively, and maximum difference (AL, SA) ranged between 5 and 4 respectively. Likewise, the range of the lowest score differences between norming and performing stages was observed to be around 3 in case of SA, CA and WUA teams, whereas the

differences imply that there were occasions when the team members viewed their teams to be in a continuous transition- sometimes moving forward, sometimes falling backwards. This hints on a gradual but non-linear progression of teams from forming to performing stages. This non-linear progression of teams, that the Tuckman’s model has not much elaborated, has attracted some criticism by others, for example by Gersick (1988), who argues that groups' progress can rather be triggered more by a few members' awareness of time and deadlines than by completion of an absolute amount of work in a specific developmental stage. This appears to be the case for the FTI teams, as the teams were required to prepare and follow their road maps, indicating major activities and timelines for the identified activities. The senior team members pushed by those deadlines pursued delivering on time. The quality of work, for example, adequate levels of discussions within the teams or with the stakeholders, appeared to be compromised (Field Note May 2009) in pursuit of the deadlines.

One implication of the discussion above is that building and nurturing IDR in teams should be carried out as an organic process, and not as an engineering input-output process. Imposing stricter deadlines for achievement of outcomes could compromise on quality of the process as well as on the IDR research. However, within the Uzbekistan project, the IDR was already delayed due to contextual and foundational conditions that delayed the start of the process, and the project management, the process facilitators and coordinators, as well as the IDR teams did not have much time left for giving the process adequate time that it needed to develop organically.