306. Trust the Process: How to Design Teams That Actually Work

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1:11Visit strawberry.me slash smart to get 50 % off of your session and make sure you tell them Matt sent you. Thank you. Her research focuses on how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and algorithms, are fundamentally transforming work, organizational design, and team dynamics. Melissa, along with her co-author Michael Bernstein, wrote the fascinating book Flash Teams, leading the future of AI-enhanced on-demand work. Well, welcome, Melissa. I'm really excited to have you join us. Thank you.

2:11Melissa Valentine: This show is so fun, and I love the guests you have, so I'm delighted to be here. Well, thank you, and thanks for being one of them. Shall we get started? Let's do it. Excellent. I have to say, I really enjoyed your book, Flash Teams, very much. Really, really interesting. Can you define for all of us what a flash team is and explain what people processes and infrastructure enable flash teams to get aligned and execute quickly? Yeah. So my PhD is in organization science, basically. So I got my PhD at a business school. And then my collaborator is a computer science professor, and he was doing a lot of work on crowdsourcing.

2:42Melissa Valentine: So what's cool about crowdsourcing is the crowd is like millions of people online, And you can get things done quickly because you just put a task out. And then there's millions of people who are available to come work on the task. But what he was seeing at the time that he and I started working together was crowdsourcing was stuck because they were doing like really, they call them micro tasks, but just really like small tasks. And then I had this toolkit, organization science, and my dissertation had been about how you can use team scaffolds or lightweight team structures. and then you populate the team structure with experts and the team structure and the role structure helps them know how to work together.

3:17Melissa Valentine: So we sort of were able to combine the logic of both of these. So you have these like lightweight structures that allow people who are like relative strangers to come together and work together on really complex stuff. So this system that we built with a great team of a PhD student, Daniela Ratelny, she organized this great lab at the time we first did our flash teams. So we built a platform that basically took all the logic of organization science and team science and then the speed and scale of crowdsourcing and then put them together. So the way the system works, we have this platform where I'm somebody who wants to get something done.

3:49Melissa Valentine: So I go to the platform, I design the team, and then the platform integrates with something like, we used Upwork. So there's like 10 million freelancers who are on Upwork. And then, so I'll say, here's the task that I need done, here's the role I need filled. And then the platform can integrate with Upwork. And then it's open call to the 10 million freelancers who's got the right expertise, they join the team. So you can just convene teams really fast. And what we showed with this research is that you can get things done really quickly. You can pull teams together. They build really complex stuff.

4:18Melissa Valentine: And it was really inspiring. I mean, it's even faster now with Gen AI. So you set a framework and expectations and then leverage a tool that pulls people in. And then the Flash team is really the focused, concerted effort that it's all about. One of the essential elements of any teaming or groups coming together is trust. What are some of the communication skills or other skills that people can deploy to establish trust quickly? I'm assuming part of what flash teams do besides accomplish their work is they're able to coordinate action, perhaps through building trust. Yeah, trust in flash teams is essential and complex, right?

4:51Melissa Valentine: Because it is relative strangers. You get together and you work together really intensely and then you disassemble. So I think that there's this idea in the literature called swift trust. and there's an assumption that you just assume trust. You just meet somebody for the first time, you assume they're competent, you assume that they know how to do their role, you assume you're both there for the same reason, to work hard, get it done. So that, yeah, the assumption of swift trust is really useful. It doesn't always work out, but the sort of like offering of swift trust is part of it. And then paying attention to when it's not going right and being willing and able to repair quickly is also important.

5:25I love this idea of swift trust. So you approach from a place of trust, assuming that you are trustworthy and I will trust you and you will do the same, can expedite things. Because there's a lot of this testing that goes into trust and time. And if you start from that place, and obviously it might fail or people could take advantage of it. But the second part, what you said, I think really is the helpful part is to have that meta-awareness and watching for it and then being willing to speak up and try to repair it. So I think it's not only swift trust being open to trust, but being open to repair when it's not there.

5:56I really like that idea of swift trust. So much in my life, I think, would be better if we just approached everything with this notion.

6:03Melissa Valentine: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there is a real difference because I think of the person I wrote the book with, Michael, he and I have worked together for 15 years now, and that is a different kind of trust than like swift trust. But swift trust is a tool that's useful. Right. And it's a way to at least initiate and then you can build deeper the trust and relationship. That can only happen, I think, after repeated exposure and time. You talk about discursive diversity, and I had to practice saying that multiple times, by the way. Can you share what you mean by discursive diversity and how can teams recognize when they need to shift their communication style from a more open-ended brainstorming, ideating to a very highly coordinated approach?

6:41Melissa Valentine: Yeah, so that is from the dissertation of one of my really brilliant PhD students. So her name is Katerina Lix and she invented that measure. So what she was able to do, she had all of the Slack transcripts of different flash teams and And she was able to, she did this NLP processing. And NLP is natural language processing. Yeah, before it was cool, she learned how to do it. And she was able to create this measure where she was looking at the similarity of the language that people were using. So you have all of the Slack interactions and you can basically compare people talking on the team and how similar are the words that they're using, the sentence structure, right?

7:17Melissa Valentine: Are they using the same adverbs, like adjectives, sense of urgency gets encoded and all of that. And what she was able to show is that the similarity of the language that people are using or the difference. So this is where, let's see, discursive diversity. Yes, different types of words and language. Exactly, yeah. So that sort of would predict the team meeting a milestone in different ways. So there were times when you really want the language to diverge. So this is a moment of brainstorming, ideation, right? You want a lot of creativity, you want a lot of divergence. But then as you get closer to the deadline, you really, for the team to meet the deadline, then the language needs to converge.

7:51Melissa Valentine: Like people need to start sounding more like each other to hit the deadline. So one, it's a measure, really. So you can look at, you know, if I'm a manager or somebody looking back at doing a post more after the project is done and I can look at the communication, be it Slack, JIRA, whatever the tool is, and I can actually see the language might be a hint as to where we are. And as you're trying to get closer to the decision, more similar language is a sign. What I'd be curious, and I don't know if there's any research on this, is can you actually use language to influence that? So can I, as a manager, encourage more diverse language through ideation, but want us to start moving towards a decision, encourage people to start using similar language?

8:33I wonder if it's causal in that way.

8:36Melissa Valentine: I think that's a great research question. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. So I encourage everybody listening to think about the language you're using for the different tasks you have and start to notice what that looks like. And maybe you can run your own experiment and play with that. I want to keep on flash teams, and I want to have a broader question, but when flash teams hit a snag, for example, like a miscommunication, what is the most effective way to fix that so they don't fraction and deal with too much friction in those situations? So I'm so glad you asked this question. I have an unpublished paper.

9:06Melissa Valentine: So we ran three really complex flash teams one summer and we had all of the DMs. So we had all the Slack front stage and then all of the Slack DMs, the backstage. And the thing that was really interesting and analyzing all of that data is a lot of repairs happen backstage. So something would happen in a public Slack channel and then a dyad would go to the back channel and they'd be like, what is this bug? And they would sort it out and then come front stage with the solution. So it created a lot of smooth operations. Like the Flash teams, they all accomplished their goal. There didn't seem to be a ton of conflict.

9:39Melissa Valentine: So this pattern of backstage repair was really interesting to discover. I think any human behavior, it's got different sides to it. So I think it did support smooth operation. But what I saw in the analysis that I have not yet published is that the people who are more involved in backstage repair ended up with more influence over time. So these are the workers and the managers who were like really helping make the decisions. So it's something about access to where the real problems get solved was like creating a lot of influence for people. I don't totally know what to do with that. As someone who is interested in flash teams going well, I would maybe say you need like a postmortem on a flash team.

10:16Melissa Valentine: What were the problems? Who helped solve them? What do we learn about this together? It's really intriguing that the people involved in that repair or that dealing with those problems end up being more influential. Yeah, because it's like they had the realer story of what was going on. And sometimes it was in the backstage repair that decisions were made and then presented as if they were quite done, if that makes sense. That's really intriguing. I'm putting on my manager hat and thinking if I were in the midst of any team, be it a flash team or a regular team, how I could be aware that the folks who are involved in helping fix, repair, dive deep into problems, what that means for them in terms of their currency and how we interact on the public stage.

10:57And I just think it's interesting that we now have these two channels and ways of communicating that can be measured. I know you think about storytelling and change. How can everyday employees in an organization use storytelling to drive broader systemic change and build coalitions to help achieve whatever it is they're trying to achieve?

11:16Melissa Valentine: Yeah, so one of the studies that I did when I first got to Stanford was actually an academic cancer center. I saw stories be really influential in this study. So it feels a little different than what we've been talking about with AI and algorithms and so forth. But it still to me is a study of organizational design, which is what I'm really interested in. What happened in this study, so I was studying as this cancer center was trying to do a transformation. They were trying to decrease the coordination burden on patients and their families. And during the study, there was a group of patient advocates or activists who really wanted the cancer center to understand how much coordination they were having to do.

11:53Melissa Valentine: So the way that they made their case, this is why I'm thinking of it, is they had an initiative they called patient stories. And so they went to great effort to collect a lot of patient stories where a patient just talked about, like a family member had to quit their job to become the full-time coordinator for the patient. So they came up with dozens of patient stories. And then in this paper that I have, I analyze how they basically use the stories to make the case and to spread the movement, spread the message across the cancer center. and at the end of the study, they had convinced the Cancer Center to take on some of the coordination work.

12:26Melissa Valentine: So it ends up being this end-to-end story of patient stories, patient narratives, actually changing the organizational design, which is why I'm thinking about it. It was like a very powerful thing that these patient activists did. Stories can really resonate and motivate people. Was there anything specific to the stories that you think were really important? Was it the fact that the stories accounted for all the specific coordination events or was it the emotionality or was it the fact that these people just collected a bunch of stories and the cancer center is like, wow, there are all these stories.

12:55We should probably do something.

12:56Melissa Valentine: I think a lot of us interface with the healthcare system and we could just see ourselves. So the patient stories were just like, this is us, this is you and me. And then it illustrated the problem really specifically. So somebody is sitting in a wheelchair in a hallway because they'd been dropped or something like that. And so it's like, wait, like, I think the cancer center is so full of people who care. And then hearing like the specific instance in a really relatable story, they were just like, oh, that's a problem that I can help with. I think you hit on it. It's relatable and real and we can connect.

13:24Thank you. Can you take what you've learned about flash teams and give us any insight that we can just apply to a normal team? So I've got a team that's been around for a while and we meet regularly. Is there any insight from your work on flash teams that could perhaps help my team be more efficient, feel more connected, ideate better?

13:42Melissa Valentine: One thing that Michael and I used to say when we were writing the book, we were trying to think of what's the mindset here that any manager would find empowering. And the phrase we came up with is experts everywhere all the time. So you've got your trusted team. Great. Keep working together, taking good care of each other, working hard, but really recognize that your organization, the world, the internet, the world is just full of experts who can help and people like helping and bringing their expertise to something. So it's just having a mindset of recognizing how much collaboration is available, how much expertise is available.

14:16Melissa Valentine: And maybe it's like invites you to think of the boundaries of the team a little more. That's funny you said that because that was exactly the word I was thinking as porous is that it can be very easy to insulate a team and say, this is the team, but being a little more open and pulling in expertise. When I was managing a team, I ran a learning and development group and we had this very tricky thing we had to train people on. And it turned out that somebody in the company who was an admin was using our tool and they actually knew how to do things that we were trying to figure out how to train people on better.

14:46That person was an expert. And by just dumb luck, we figured that out and incorporated them into the team. And I like that idea.

14:53Melissa Valentine: I think that there are a lot of tools that can be very helpful to managers in terms of how the team works together, coordinates and stuff like that. The other thing we said in the book is AI driven team design. So just making use of the tools to be very thoughtful in how you're structuring your team. So AI can help us structure the team and maybe even identify who some of the experts are that we might know. I love that. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of production so we can bring you this show for free.

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17:26Melissa, this has been great. Before we end, you know I like to ask three questions when I make up just for you. and too, I've been asking everybody, are you up for that?

17:32Melissa Valentine: Yeah, let's do it. Beyond the academic research you do, you're also a creator and you study the algorithms that serve up information on social media. What advice do you have for others who are creators? Okay, so I love Instagram and TikTok. I don't, like I have, I think it's, people have complicated relationships with social media. So the attention stuff is real. My attention span is shot, but I have learned so much from content creators. I am such a fan. My advice is keep going. If you're an expert, put it out in the world. Like people will find it. Different life transitions I've gone through, different like health stuff, different fitness stuff, different hobbies.

18:09Melissa Valentine: Like I have learned so much from the internet. So thank you, content creators. You know, as a creator myself, and it took me a while to identify as a creator, but I think many of us are motivated to help people. And it's that motivation that actually helps us get through. It's hard to put out the content and the algorithm can sometimes help you and sometimes not. So it's that passion, desire to learn and to help, I think, that really motivate. And I can hear that in your voice and see it in the things that you post and create. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why?

18:40Melissa Valentine: So I'm at a moment where I'm thinking a lot about communication, where we really take each other in in a really deep way. So I have a friend who is a therapist and a Buddhist. She has a quality of listening and expression that allows for like true communication. So I would say I'm going to nominate her. It's a fascinating thing about being very aware of yourself that allows you to be very aware of others. And just, yeah, like it is a lot of presence, as you're saying, like a lot of kind of presence and connection. Yeah, I like that. Self-awareness and other awareness. Thank you. And final question.

19:13What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

19:18Melissa Valentine: Something that I've come to appreciate is how useful, like a deep awareness of your own experience is. because then you're even more able to take in another's and all of its complexity. So yeah, self-awareness, other awareness. And then working from there, I think what's possible between you is like new. It's like something that neither of you would have done without that kind of connection. I sort of bristle at the word synergy, but in this case, that's exactly what you're talking about is it's the power of the two is greater than either individually. But that comes, as you said, from a self-awareness and an other awareness.

19:51Thank you for the three ingredients and thank you for the conversation. Your work to me is really intriguing because it focuses both on technology, but the human aspect of people coming together. And the fact that there are structures that we can rely on to help expedite and make things more efficient. Melissa, this has been fantastic. Thank you. And thank you for the work you do.

20:09Melissa Valentine: Totally. Really fun for me too. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about groups, listen in to our episode 241 with Colin Fisher. And to learn more about social media algorithms, please check out episode 268 with Anjali Christine. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

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21:13Melissa Valentine: Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.