STRATEGIC BEHAVIOURAL TRAITS ANALYSIS

Only teams that are able to conduct a thorough dialogue on the pro’s and con’s of the extremes of a paradox (a wicked problem) will be qualified enough to find the innovative synthesis for these types of problems.

SBTA Strategy Synthesis in LDpe's Team Effectiveness Program

In LDpe's Team Effectiveness Program, the third workshop TE III Solving Complex Problems, will use the theories of De Wit & Meyer to cope with wicked strategic issues. And the Workshop TE IV Initiate Innovation & Change is the initiating step in the program 'Gearing Up Innovation', in which a larger number of the organisation's employees involve in attacking the firm's innovation need. In this program we will compose a number of Natural Working Teams.  that will have a diversity of thinking styles. For this team composition we will use the SBTA as part of the Advanced Team Design Tool. We will apply the tool based on Thinking Style paradoxes.


SBTA
Every person will be, based on his/her personality, biased when considering solutions for a challenging problem. Different personalities tend to arrive at different solution alternatives.
To both eliminate individual biases and make use of the differences of personalities in the team LDpe uses the Strategic Behavioural Traits Analysis Tool (SBTA) to design a number of creative subteams for the different issues.

By designing (sub-)teams that include representatives of the extreme solutions perspectives, we can see to that the dialogue in the group will cover both qualities and disadvantages of the extreme alternatives; this is a good precondition for identifying creative new solution alternatives that combine ’the best of both worlds’
But already the awareness of one’s biases will help participants to be open for the arguments of the supporters of the other perspective; and the awareness of the team of a possible bias will help them to pay more attention to different perspectives.

However, teams must deliver! And only ‘complete’ teams will…    This is why LDpe’s Team Design Tool (based on Belbin team-roles concept) will help to design (in potential) successful teams, that are able to analyse the different perspectives with a good chance to find creative new ways to cope with wicked problems.

Below you see an example of a team´s individual biases concerning the perspective of Strategic Thinking.

Example Strategic Behavioural Traits Analysis for a Management Team
Example Strategic Behavioural Traits Analysis for a Management Team

The SBTA tool

The LDT-add on SBTA (Strategic Behavioural Traits Analysis) is develop by LDpe, in cooperation with the Center for Strategy and Leadership, for analysing individual biases of individual team members and as a support in composing sub-teams when searching for hybrid solutions for strategic problems.
The SBTA gets its input from the LDT-measurements.
No separate measurement therefore is necessary, since the team members, by the time the Team Effectiveness program has come to the third workshop, will have been participant in the tool-based LD-process.

The design of sub-teams with the help of the SBTA and the Team Design tool is part of the preparatory work for the TE 3 workshop.