Teams that interact effectively achieve better results. Traditional approaches to improving team effectiveness involve facilitators spending extensive time with a team over a period of weeks or even months doing a subjective analysis of the team’s dynamics. This approach is expensive and also varies substantially in its ability to affect change because:

• Insights are often not delivered to the team in a timely manner.
• Recipients that receive development feedback perceive the facilitator as biased or at least subjective, and dismiss the feedback
• Interventions are short in duration and any improvements can easily erode with time

Monitor’s Human Asset Practice has teamed up with Monitor Software to create an application that enhances a facilitator or team’s ability to analyze their dynamics by enabling them to objectively measure, and quickly report on behavior in real-time, while interactions are occurring.

OBSERVATION Deck™ or O-deck™ is a desktop application that gives a meeting observer the ability to

record behaviors and interactions as they occur and to report on and discuss them during or at the conclusion of a meeting. The structure of the application and the behaviors it measures are based on cutting edge theory and practice of Monitor’s human asset experts, David Kantor and Chris Argyris.

The O-deck™ application enables users to capture a wide range of behavioral measures, including individual participation levels, conversation tone, quality and type of each contribution, and group performance against predefined objectives. The application provides an intuitive, easy to use interface for recording the behaviors and generates an in-depth behavioral analysis of the meeting with one click of the mouse.

O-deck™ is a critical resource for bringing about improvements in team effectiveness because it:

• Provides immediate, objective insight into observed behaviors of individuals and their team members
• Creates an environment and provides a lexicon for enabling teams to raise and address behavioral concerns
• Introduces a framework and metrics for assessing individual and group development over time
• Enables teams to understand their interaction tendencies and to identify and develop areas of weakness

The concepts and frameworks on which O-deck™ is based are straightforward enough for both observers and participants to understand with just a few hours of exposure. They are based on the work of David Kantor and Chris Argyris and have been used extensively alongside O-deck™ in the consulting work that Monitor’s Human Asset Practice has done with its clients. If you are interested in learning more about O-deck™, contact us at o-deckinfo@monitorsoftware.com