enous communities. This tradition, which might be called “hierarchical uniformity,” is no longer valid for many groups. Instead, many groups are confronted with what might be called “diversified nonuniformity.” In this context, teams are multicultural, deadlines are short, actions are automatic (nonreflective), decision making is distributed, leadership is earned, performance assessment is purely merit based, in-person meetings are infrequent, resources are insufficient, information is overwhelming, and sensory data is conflicting.

It is no surprise that hastily formed networks for disaster relief are fertile grounds for miscoordination: they violate the tradition dramatically. 2 Participants from hierarchical uniform organizations have little need to practice coordination in pluralistic networks. When they convene in such a network, they are unprepared to work together.

The hierarchical uniform tradition goes hand in hand with three other beliefs about effective teams. One is the notion of “best practices”: the leadership finds a “best” way to do something and requires everyone to do it that way. In our experience, this notion is incompatible with pluralistic networks. There is no one “best way” for a diversified team to accomplish its mission. It must adapt and flow with a constant stream of new possibilities.

Second is relativism, the notion
that all team member worldviews are
equally valid and, hence, the common
ground must be found in the absence
of universal values. We believe, to
the contrary, that there are universal
values. Seven of them motivate the
practices we recommend below. For
example, asking for and receiving
binding commitments is universal,
although the style of making requests
and promises varies among cultures.
Another example is that everyone be-
lieves in “do not kill any person,” al-
though many do not hesitate to kill
those whom their culture defines as
“non-persons.”
Third is team stages of development,
the notion that teams move through
the stages that Bruce Tuckerman called
“forming, storming, norming, and
performing.” 9 This is useful guidance
for leaders of relatively homogenous
teams. In pluralistic networks, the for-

the main issue of
pluralistic networks
is that the members
bring different values
and do not see the
world the same way.

mation of leadership itself becomes a central concern. There is no externally appointed leader who can guide the team through those four stages. The team’s emergent leadership must do this by itself. The possibilities of miscommunication and dramatic mood shifts are constant threats.

Practices for Diversified
Coordination

We have been conducting experiments to understand a small but important piece of the problem: What practices do small teams need to function well in a pluralistic network? Answering this question is the first step toward building helpful computational tools.

The main issue of pluralistic net-
works is that the members bring dif-
ferent values and do not see the world
the same way. We have investigated
whether there are universal values
that would bridge the diversity, gen-
erate mutual respect, and support ev-
eryone’s dignity. We have found seven
universal values and associated prac-
tices that realize them in the team:
Proficiency in a practice essential 1.
to the team;

Capacity to articulate a vision of 2. the team’s value in the world that others embrace and commit to;

Capacity to enter into binding 3. commitments and fulfill them;

Capacity to spot and eliminate 4. waste;

Capacity to share on the spot, real- 5. time assessments of performance, for the sake of building and maintaining trust, including disclosures of moods and emotions inspired by the environment and action of the team;

Capacity to observe one’s own 6.

history and how it interacts with the
histories of the others on the team;
and
Capacity to blend, meaning to 7.
dynamically align one’s intentions,
movements, and actions with those of
others.

Research and experience support the hypothesis that these practices constitute the essential core for coordination in pluralistic networks. For example, Womack and Jones11 promote “lean thinking,” a practice of seeing and eliminating waste. Gladwell4 reports on how airlines discovered that most accidents could be traced to cross-culture miscommunication in the cockpit; accidents dropped significantly after the airlines put pilots through multicultural communication training. Multicultural group processes such as the Barrett-Fry Appreciative Inquiry1 and the Straus-Layton method7 have been very successful at developing shared interpretation and solidarity in pluralistic communities. Strozzi-Heckler8 reports that Leadership practices for making assessments and blending have been very effective for teams and groups. Tuomi10 concluded that loosely formed volunteer networks of collaboration frequently fall into practices like these.

An experiment

We recently completed a four-month experiment to examine whether an MMOG could be used as a learning environment for the core practices listed here. The diversified group consisted of 28 people who did not know each other. They came from about half a dozen countries and varied professional backgrounds. The MMOG was the WOW game. We chose WOW because it is an amazingly complex synthetic world created by a social machine from the interactions of millions of players. John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas have already brought WOW to the attention of the business community as a possible training ground for leadership. 5, 6

Within the WOW context, it is possible to define precisely what it means for a small team to be proficient by extending the Dreyfus definitions3 from individuals to teams. The definitions enable us to measure the progress of teams toward proficiency. The game