The Organizational Operating System - cordin8

“when is the CPU down”? Team members simultaneously entered responses to the question which were
displayed on the group screen in the front of the room. In SAMM, ideas were posted without the team
member’s name. By not having their names associated with the idea, the theory was that the team could
focus on the idea rather than the contributor of the idea. Following the display and discussion of all the
ideas, the team realized that the answer to their question depended upon the perspective of the person
answering the question: software, operations, or tuning.
Several effects of SAMM were notable. Firstly, the teams used their processes. They planned for their
team meetings. By using SAMM to collect ideas, all team members generated ideas simultaneously,
which provided a more fair participation in the process. Without SAMM, it was not uncommon for one
or two members to dominate the meetings because they took a great deal of ‘air time’ or because shy team
members wouldn’t say anything. Over a long period of use, however, brainstormed ideas generated in
SAMM could stand-out even though the team member’s name was not associated with it. For example,
one team member was dyslexic and other members could identify ideas by that team member based upon
spelling.
About halfway through our study, the building that housed our Decision Room was being renovated. We
had an opportunity to build a new facility, which was far larger, about 1500 square feet and incorporated
other technologies, including video conferencing, PCs instead of basic terminals, and access to the full
Texaco network. The new Decision Room is shown Figure 1.
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Figure 1 - New Texaco Decision Room (circa 1992)