Teams in CSIRO: Reorganising for national research imperatives.

SUMMARY

CSIRO is the pre-eminent Australian research organisation. In this paper, we discuss how CSIRO, with its new focus on Flagship research, collaborative research, and 'theme and stream' research, faces some major challenges. In our analysis of teams at CSIRO we draw on statements made by CSIRO leaders about team function and importance. We also draw on empirical evidence from studies of CSIRO teams over the past decade for insights into how they are performing and some of their principal characteristics. This provides a point of departure for discussing the challenges ahead.

The paper also touches on the psycho-social challenges of working in Research and Development (R&D) teams, particularly those that cross discipline and organisational boundaries. We look at some design features of CSIRO teams, such as long tenure and practices used to support team formation and development. Our evidence shows a positive profile of CSIRO teams on leadership, resources, and team dynamics and a high level of trust. The Organisation's attention to training its project teams is an important factor in its ability to meet its goals and will become increasingly important as it moves from 2007 to the matrix structure needed to conduct large scale programmatic research of national significance.

KEYWORDS

teams; research projects; collaboration; matrix research organisation

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COLLABORATIVE CHALLENGE

CSIRO is the largest research organisation in Australia, with around 6500 staff. As a publicly-funded multidivisional R&D organisation, it conducts scientific research in the public interest across a wide spectrum of fields including agribusiness, energy and transport, health, information and communication technology, manufacturing, minerals resources, natural resources, and environment. CSIRO has a significant degree of independence in defining its own research theme and project priorities. From the mid-1980s, CSIRO was subjected to government appropriation cuts and pressures to find more of its own funding. Consequently the organisation has become more commercial and customer-focused.

By the opening of the 21st century and seen from a global as well as national perspective, CSIRO has been a success. In 2001 it was ranked by Science Watch as in the top one percent of the world's scientific institutions and a 'heavy hitter' of world science. In 2002, it was Australia's leading patent holder, with over 3500 granted or pending patents, and more than 70 spin-off companies were by then based on CSIRO research and technology (Dr Geoff Garrett, National Press Club, November 6, 2002). By 2005-2006, CSIRO's citation per publication rate was more than 30% higher than the world average (Institute for Scientific Information 2005/2006). In sum, CSIRO is a highly successful research organisation which tackles many of the important scientific problems of an advanced nation. It is able to do so thanks to the successful work of its teams.

The work of these teams has been expanding in scope in recent years. In 2003, CSIRO launched a National Research Flagship program to establish large, multidisciplinary partnerships to tackle some of Australia's most important challenges. The Flagships program was established in order to assemble teams of scientists from multiple institutions--CSIRO, universities, other government research organisations and industry research laboratories--to build knowledge and find solutions in the key areas of health, food, water, oceans, energy, metals and, from April 2007, in the area of climate change.

The research conducted by the 19 CSIRO Divisions and seven Flagships is carried out in hundreds of project teams varying in scope, size, and duration. A feature that distinguishes CSIRO from other Australian research organisations is the long time scale of its projects (see Mann 2005: 35), an indication of the Organisation's strategy of programmatic, long term blue sky research as well as more applied work. Many of CSIRO's project teams are established in partnership with other major organisations, such as Australia's approximately 70 Cooperative Research Centres, many of which carry out research in areas central to CSIRO's core mission.

In this paper we examine some characteristics of CSIRO project teams, describe CSIRO's emphasis on team training and development, and then report evidence profiling CSIRO teams on several indicators of team processes such as trust, conflict management, and psychological safety. We make the point that CSIRO, with its new focus on Flagship research, collaborative research and 'theme and stream' research, faces challenges that will affect both its own future and that of other Australian research organisations. Because it is the pre-eminent Australian research organisation, how well CSIRO designs, selects, and manages its project teams to perform large scale, programmatic, multidisciplinary, and multi-partner research will have a significant effect on other Australian research organisations. In our analysis of teams at CSIRO, we draw on statements made by CSIRO leaders and we also draw on empirical evidence we collected for insights into the features of CSIRO teams and how they are performing. This will provide a point of departure for a discussion of some challenges that lie ahead for teams at CSIRO.

This paper also touches on the general challenges of working in R&D teams, particularly teams that cross discipline and organisational boundaries. We look at some practices used by CSIRO to support team formation and development, including a methodology for assessing the effectiveness of teamwork as a lead indicator of team performance. We also look at some measures of perceived team effectiveness that suggest that CSIRO's commitment to supporting and training its project teams is important for meeting its goals.

We conclude with some observations about the challenges teams at CSIRO face in the new R&D environment and following the organisation's change to a new matrix structure in 2007.

Strength of teamwork: A CSIRO advantage

CSIRO's strength is in bringing teams together

from different scientific fields to find solutions

to major problems facing Australia and the rest

of the world. (http://www.bio.csiro.au/)

The quotation from CSIRO's Biotechnology website proclaims a major feature that differentiates CSIRO from other R & D organisations in the Australian innovation system. The capacity to assemble outcomes-focused, multi-disciplinary teams has been used successfully by CSIRO as a marketing strategy and an argument to government for continued support and, at times, even survival as the national research institution.

Much has been written about structural, cultural, and financial incentives to encourage collaboration within and between research organisations. However, relatively little attention has been paid in the innovation literature to the psycho-social issues involved in the formation, development, and performance of R & D teams. This is surprising, given the reliable evidence that team dynamics and interpersonal relationships are critical in determining the success of team performance (see eg Lencioni 2002).

Strong emphasis has been placed on project teams in CSIRO for almost twenty years. In 1989, a management planning meeting led by then Chief Executive, Dr. Keith Boardman, determined that the project team would be the core work unit for performance of research. Boardman's successors as Chief Executive reinforced and strengthened this position. Through the mid-1990s, Dr. John Stocker, then CEO, championed the value of multi-divisional programs in leveraging CSIRO's diverse capability and capacity to solve major national problems. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Stocker's argument was powerful with the government of the day in helping avert serious consideration of disbanding CSIRO and moving to a New Zealand Crown Research Institute model or a totally competitive grants model for research funding.

Since the appointment of Dr. Geoff Garrett as Chief Executive in 2001, the core role of project teams has been strengthened and greater emphasis placed on collaboration across Divisions and with other research agencies through initiatives such as the National Flagships Program (CSIRO Annual Report 2005-06: 52). The move in 2007 to organising and funding research under 'streams and themes' through the Science Investment Planning (SIP) initiative also supports the team approach together with goals of transparency, accountability, flexibility, and relevance. In sum, project teams have traditionally been and will continue to be the main vehicle for research in CSIRO.

What is a team?

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) distinguish between groups (people who happen to work together) and real teams. Real teams have members who are equally committed to a common purpose, common goals, and a common working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. There are many interpretations of the word 'team' both in general and at CSIRO. However, a definition of teamwork has been introduced at CSIRO through various staff development programs, including the current Project Leadership Initiative. In this definition, adapted from Reddy (1998), a team consists of between 4 and 15 members, working collaboratively and interactively to achieve a common goal, with shared resources, using consensus decision making on core issues and achieving synergy through their interactions. Synergy, the most significant characteristic, is the capacity to achieve better outcomes through interaction between team members than could be achieved by their working separately, sequentially, or in parallel.