Coordinating groups is about aligning a group of people around a purpose, a goal, and activity. At the management level, this means coordinating your team. At the leadership level, this means coordinating your organization. Coordination Models are useful frameworks for achieving this alignment.
Schelling Points are options that people naturally converge upon. Since real world projects are not random and indistinguishable, and people are allowed to communicate, picking options is not like the schelling point scenario. However, the model is still worthy of interrogation since these real world complexities still push towards failure patterns of being unable to converge or converging on the wrong option. Alex Komroske1 discusses some options to improve convergence:
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce collaborators | Easier to gain consensus | excludes worthy viewpoints |
| Reduce options | Less to choose from | excludes possible breakout/creative options |
| Compelling leader | Easy for group to follow | success hinges on the individual being right |
| Shared mental models | Decision making flows from way of analyzing decision | difficult to build and disseminate |
| Convincing argument | Group is swayed by rhetoric and lead toward option | convincing arguments can just be rhetoric and not correct |
| Response to external threat | Motivating and clear | may be only perceived, and not of highest value |
| Compelling North Star | Long range strategy to site off of informs decision | needs validity and buy-in |
| randomness | amongst options that are all to be pursued, pick one randomly at first | any sort of long-term usage of this is not strategic or sane |
Splitting your balance point: sometimes a compromise or balance needs to be struck between options. E.g. most users like a simple option, but provide a more complex option for power users.
Aggregate options: Some options are quite similar and so it makes sense to group them rather than trying to pick the best of them.