During my Sophomore year in college I was hired by the Division of Public Safety to work as a Student Patrol Officer for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The organization was composed of 36 students who were divided into three teams: A team, B team, and C team. The organization wanted one team on duty every night so the year was structured such that the teams would alternate making it so individual teams would work every third night. This was a crucial element to the organizational structure because student patrol officers are students by nature and thus have other important obligations such as school work and clubs. In addition, working every third night gave us time to recuperate as our hours (9pm to 3am) were rather long as well as mentally and physically demanding.
Even though there were 36 student patrol officers I only got particularly close and comfortable with 12 because my team, C team, consisted of 12 students. Every 3rd night my team would meet at 9pm to be briefed on crimes that had taken place recently, what areas to be specifically mindful of, and to address the concerns we were having with regards to how our team operated. After briefing we were partnered into 6 pairs and given specific areas on campus to patrol. Our team would map out the entire campus and divide it into zones of different sizes based off amount of activity, student density, and traffic. Each pair was given a zone to patrol and everyone on the team was required to remember who was in each zone.
The true test of our team coordination began when we separated and each pair went to their respective zones. Every student patrol officer was equipped with a vest for identification and travel purposes as well as a radio in order to communicate with other student patrol officers and the police department. Even though we were all equipped with the same gear our shifts were generally very different due to the differences in what we came across. Even though we had 6 pairs, only 5 pairs were on the ground patrolling. The 6th pair consisted of our team leader and his assistant for the night whom were both driving around campus all night in a university vehicle.
It was important for our team leader to be "detached" from the rest of us because this allowed him to focus on campus as a whole rather than being confined to a specific zone. Even though all of our radios were connected to the police department's informational traffic, it gets very difficult to interact with people on our patrol while filtering what information is useful to us at the same time. To counteract this, our team leader was in charge of absorbing all the information from the police station, decide which pair is in the correct position to handle and make use of that information, and then relay that information to whomever is capable of taking action.
In chapter five of "Reforming Organizations" Bolman and Deal talk about fundamental team configurations. "One Boss", "Dual Authority", "Simple Hierarchy", "Circle Network", and "All-Channel Network". In my opinion the student patrol organization works very smoothly and successfully almost entirely as a result of our team organization. I believe every night's team configuration is a combination of the "Simple Hierarchy" and the "All Channel Network". The "Simple Hierarchy" model creates a middle manager between the boss and everyone else and supervises everyone accordingly. In the case of student patrol's team configuration our team leader would be our middle manager. Our team leader reports and listens to the police station and communicates those details with the rest of us.
While the "Simple Hierarchy" may characterize our team configuration in a general scope it's not a completely accurate depiction of our team configuration. This is because even among us "regular" student patrol officers we are able to communicate to each other through our radios and have input as to how each other should act separate from the middle manager or boss. The "All-Channel Network" accurately models our communication paths to each other. A combination of the "Simple Hierarchy" and the "All-Channel Network" would be the most accurate depiction of our team configuration. Even though we are all able to communicate with each other and give each other input like the "All-Channel Network" models, in the end we are still subject to our team leader's orders and final decisions. Our team leader is similarly constrained to the decisions of the "boss" or the police station.
I believe a few of Katzenbach and Smith's key features of highly functional teams were very pivotal in the success of my team at student patrol. In the book there are six characteristics that are highlighted, but the ones that I found to be the most evident in my team were that high-performing teams are "of manageable size" and "develop a common commitment to working relationships". If our team was much bigger than 12 it's possible that we may have been able to cover more ground each night, but at the cost of the high level of communication necessary to make each night successful. Having a small team size made it easier to keep track of each other so that we could all move with coordination and efficiency.
In conjunction, having a small team made it easier to get to know each other and understand who is good at what. Our working relationships were extremely important because some people were better at certain tasks than others. What made us functional and efficient was knowing who possessed the correct skills to handle particular situations. However, I also believe that the fact that we enjoyed one another as people and as friends also played a crucial role in our team's abilities and behaviors outside of team configuration and structure.
Here are a few questions about the setup you describe. Did you have the same partner each time or did you rotate through the other 11 in your group as far as who your partner was? That seems to me to be an important distinction and it would be good if you can elaborate on it.
ReplyDeleteThe second question is about the relationship between the student patrol members and those at Campus Safety who provided oversight for the student patrols. Did Campus Safety monitor this. (I'm confused about your use of the term team leader. Was that person actually a member of Campus Safety or was that person a student?) You described each team as having 12 students. But, I was surprised about a student being allowed to drive a university vehicle. So this part didn't add up to me.
Then I wondered how this work if, for example, you had a couple of midterms the day after a patrol. Could you swap out your times or not?
With those questions out of the way there is then the issue of measuring team performance. What are some indicators that the team did well? (In other words, what does good performance look like?) If you had a bit on that, then you might be able to say something about how the structure encouraged good performance.
Finally, this essay might benefit from a particular example with "an event" and how the patrol handled it, not the gory details, just about the communication among the team members. That would give a better sense of what was going on.
The methods that we used to choose our partner for the night were very spontaneous and casual. It could be as simple as just asking someone if they wanted to be partners for the night or by just by being placed with whomever if you didn't have a preference. However, throughout the night we would all end up communicating with everyone on the team whether it be through the radio, casually through the phone, meeting up, or just by crossing zones. We always felt like one team rather than 6 units despite the partnering system.
DeleteThe Division of Public Safety at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign kept the student patrol program on a tight leash, making sure we were working productively with regards to the scope of our job. Though due to the nature of our work most of the micro actions we performed were at our own discretion. The Division of Public Safety was more concerned with keeping us up to date on campus security issues and training.
I wrote that my team consisted of 12 students and my team leader is no exception. Much like how a soccer or basketball team has a team captain that is still a player on the team. There are 3 team leaders at any point in the student patrol program (one for A, B, and C team). The person elected to be team leader is generally someone that is respected by the team and has been a part of the program for a few years. The team leader communicates with overseers from the Division of Public Safety and relays that information.
With regards to your confusion about allowing a student to drive a university vehicle, you may be less surprised to know that the vehicles we were permitted to drive were not how you would imagine stereotypical police cars to look. The exterior of the cars had no visuals that would associate it with the police department. A pedestrian would not dissociate our vehicles from normal vehicles without knowing who was in it. However, the vehicles were still issued by the Division of Public Safety and had their licence plates marked like every other university vehicle.
I initially had a paragraph on how scheduling conflicts worked, but omitted it due to crossing the word limitation and deeming it redundant with regards to the prompt. If you had a midterm the day after a shift you were allowed to file for an "Academic Day" which permitted you to take the night off. The student patrol program is run by the university and they know we are students first and patrol officers second. Also, you are allowed to drop shifts so long as someone from another team picks it up. Shift attendance is recorded and dropping too many shifts in a month has consequences.
I wrote in my post that communication is very important. Naturally it is an integral part of our job. The measurement of team performance I was hoping to articulate was how well we communicated and how efficiently we relayed information to specific individuals or pairs. The Simple Hierarchy and All-Channel Network configurations were mappings of how our communication structure worked which directly impacted performance positively by enabling easy verbal information transmissions.