Team Coordination in Extreme Environments

Conclusion

In order to meet demands in terms of performance, change management and innovation, businesses are increasingly organized around project teams. These teams must plan to meet high demands, mainly linked to the reduction in time to market, shrinking budgets and strong constraints in terms of supply management. They suffer a high failure rate, mainly linked to coordination faults: collective skills and intelligence are difficult to build in a context in which career plans and individual expertise are emphasized, frequently to the detriment of the construction of a collective [FRO 15].

By asking the question “how can teams coordinate themselves in extreme environments?”, this book has aimed to offer businesses insight into now to improve coordination within their teams. It has, therefore, offered a thorough analysis of coordination practices developed by military personnel when they are subjected to the pressures of uncertainty, change and risks (which characterize extreme environments), emphasizing the main challenge that teams must face: managing the sudden switch between a routine operation and the different unexpected situations likely to call their standard action modes into question. They succeed by articulating communication reflexivity and socialization practices that they develop and shape according to their cultural values and the context’s demands.

Based on these observations, this book has suggested three concrete avenues through which managers facilitate ...