商业团队6大样板盘点

    IBM靠1985年的一招领导艺术搞定了大项目。

    IBM是全世界技术最先进的公司之一，但当IBM的一位高管需要建立一支由200多名不同领域的最优秀的科学家组成的、横跨8个IBM实验室、2个政府实验室和5所大学的科研团队时，他却得向一本写于1985年的书寻求帮助。

    IBM首席科学家达曼德拉•摩德哈领导着一项由政府出资支持的科研项目，项目致力于开发出一款能摸拟人脑功能的芯片。但是这个团队在电子邮件和数字通讯上难以形成共识。这时摩德哈使用了发明家爱德华•迪•波诺在其著作《六顶思考帽子》中使用的方法，他告诉科研团队把他们的论点用颜色表示出来：白色表示事实，黑色表示洞察，红色表示情绪，绿色表示调查一个观点，黄色表示乐观。这个想法的实质是：把事实与情绪分开来，借此提高客观性。

    摩德哈表示，这种方法有效地鼓励了比较内向的参与者说出自己的好点子，而且有助于大家消弥思想的分歧。为了确保大家的工作朝着一个共同的方向前进，摩德哈还订立了一个合同，概括了各方需要构建的具体技术规格，避免了某一项关键技术无法与其他人的工作兼容的可能性。摩德哈说：“它使我们可以充分同步地工作。”

    如果有团队对如何最好地解决某项技术挑战产生了分歧时，他就会把这个团队分成两个团队，每个团队可以继续按照他们的方法工作，然后等到一段特定时间后分别评估他们的成果。这样做的目的是永远不给任何人打上失败的标签，而且让它成为一个让大家学习的过程。

    2011年，摩德哈的团队成功展示了一款模拟人类大脑的芯片架构，而且这个项目还在继续开发使电脑模拟人脑思考的技术。不过现在我们还没听说电脑是否会用颜色来区分自己的分歧。

    Surprise! an old-school organizational technique (not software) saved the day.

    IBM is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world, but when one of its executives needed to organize a sprawling team of more than 200 of the brightest scientists at eight different IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) labs, two government laboratories, and five university campuses with diverse areas of expertise, he turned to a book written in 1985.

    IBM Fellow and chief scientist DharmendraModha, charged with overseeing an ambitious government-funded project to develop a chip that would mimic the human brain, used a method called six thinking hats, described in a book of the same name by inventor Edward de Bono. He told the team members, who struggled to find consensus in their email and digital communications, to characterize with colors their arguments: white for facts, black for discernment, red for emotions, green for investigating an idea, and yellow for optimism. The idea: Drive objectivity by separating fact from emotion.

    Modha says the method worked to encourage quieter participants with good ideas to speak up and allowed everyone to reconcile diversity of thought. To ensure a common direction, Modha created a contract, outlining the technical specs of what each party would build. It eliminated the ambiguity of whether a key piece of technology would fit with the work done by others. "It kept us working in complete synchronization," says Modha.

    When groups differed on the best way to tackle a particular technical challenge, he split people into two groups. Each group pursued their approach and measured the results objectively at the end of a set period. The idea: Ensure that failure was never a mark against anyone's reputation but rather a learning experience for everyone.

    In 2011, Modha's team successfully demonstrated a brain-inspired chip architecture, and the project continues to develop technology that helps computers think more like humans. No word yet on whether the computers divide their arguments by color. --J.A.