https://emilywebber.co.uk/the-role-of-transactive-memory-systems-in-great-teams/ Skip to the content Emily Webber A blog about people, culture, organisations and teams. Show menu Hide menu * Home * About me * Contact me * Public Speaking * RSS Feed * Home * About me * Contact me * Public Speaking * RSS Feed Search the blog [ ]Search This month's most popular posts Why can't we all just get along? Explaining the role of a Delivery Manager Quick icebreakers for online meetings (that don't suck) The role of Transactive Memory Systems in great teams The team manual, an exercise to help build empathy in teams Team exercise: Building empathy and understanding with the Capability Comb Building Successful Communities of Practice Measuring your community of practice A framework for thinking about team memory, joining up and serendipity in hybrid organisations Should you call people resources? My other websites * Tacit (consultancy) * Communities of practice work * The Team Onion * Agile in the Ether * Liverpool Digital People * The Diversity Charter Connect on * LinkedIn * Bluesky * Mail Licence and usage of content All work on this website is by Emily Webber unless otherwise stated and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Creative Commons Licence An illustration of 5 people's faces on different coloured circles The role of Transactive Memory Systems in great teams 24 October 2024 / Emily Webber / 0 Comments Reading Time: 5 minutes While researching for my talk, A Framework for Thinking about Team Memory, Joining Up, and Serendipity in Hybrid Organisations, I came across a term that was new to me but summed up something I had seen and gave me language to describe it. That team was the Transactive Memory System. This post talks about what it is, why it's important and some tactics to help build it. If you have ever worked in a team, you'll likely know what a good and a bad team feel like. Great teams gel well; they instinctively know who knows what and who is best placed to pick up or lead on tasks. They collaborate towards common goals, support each other and know how to blend their expertise and styles. I've often heard the saying that when one person on a team changes, it becomes an entirely new team. I don't fully agree with that statement, but there is some truth to it, and the transactive memory system helps explain why. Three Types of Team Memory In my talk, I described three types of memory that help a team function: working, long-term, and transactive memory. 1 Working memory: the information readily available for a team to use in their work, which lives in team norms and habits, working boards and current artefacts 2 Long-term memory: the story of the team's journey from when they started, as described in decision logs, team timelines, documentation and the story arc of blog posts, weeknotes and show and tells. 3 Transactive memory (system) read on below. What is the Transactive Memory (System)? Daniel Wegner introduced the term " transactive memory System" in 1985 as a counter to more negative perceptions of group behaviours.. Transactive memory is like an index of where to find things rather than knowing them yourself. A person's face on a circle. One one side is a link to a circle with the word memory on it. On the other is a link to a circle with "Transactive memory" on it. That circle then links out to other circles. For example, we don't need to know the exact directions to a place, but we know that Google Maps will do; or we don't need to remember how to cook a particular recipe, but we know a friend has it memorised. We use it all the time, and it's particularly relevant in interdisciplinary teams, where members bring different knowledge and expertise to the team. In groups, this is called the Transactive Memory System, the system of how the members' transactive memory overlaps. Wegner describes it as a mechanism through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. Five faces on different coloured circles, there are lines between each one to represent the links. Or a system of who knows what, how it connects and how it's managed. Transactive memory in teams A Transactive memory system has two components: 1. the habits and patterns that link those members, allowing them to coordinate that expertise 2. the expertise that each team member has This system gives everyone on the team access to each other's expertise and creates a greater sum than its parts. "Transactive memory systems have generally been found to improve group performance (Ren & Argote, 2011)." Transactive Memory Systems: A Microfoundation of Dynamic Capabilities, Linda Argote and Yuqing Ren What happens when the team forms or changes Now, back to why this is important when a team forms or a team member changes. When a new team forms, they have to start from scratch, build their working and transactive memory, and lay the foundations for their long-term memory. Five faces on different coloured backgrounds. One is a new face, the links to that person are now broken and unknown. When a team has a member change, the transactive memory system is no longer current, so they need to start rebuilding it together. The change might even mean they need to reset the links and balance between the existing members. This means all team members should take some time together to learn and review their expertise and how they will coordinate them. The Conditions for a Transactive Memory System As stated in Transactive Memory Systems: A Microfoundation of Dynamic Capabilities, researchers have identified three indicators of the existence of transactive memory systems. A venn diagram showing members' Knowledge or specialisation, Team members credibility and Team coordination and collaboration Knowledge or specialisation The tendency for group members to remember different aspects of a task or to develop specialised and complementary knowledge and expertise. Team members credibility How much group members trust each other's knowledge and expertise. Team coordination and collaboration The ability of group members to work together smoothly and efficiently while performing a task. Some tools to help build your team's Transactive Memory System A team build their Transactive Memory System over time by regularly working together, but there are some tactics to help do this faster. The Capability Comb The Capability Comb is a model for teams to share how they describe their unique capability profile. What they excel in and areas they want to learn more. It helps teams learn about each others' areas of expertise, build empathy and identify opportunities for collaboration. Learn more here The Team Manual The Team Manual is a team exercise built on top of the Manual of Me and is intended to build empathy and understanding between team members. It can help shortcut learning about each other and start to help agree on some team norms. Learn more here Deliberate practice Deliberate practice as a team is an approach to learning that helps teams explore situations while learning more about how they work as a team. The team finds a problem to work on that doesn't impact their work, like a test incident or a hackathon problem, and spends time dedicated to it. This allows them to learn in a safe-to-fail environment while learning new skills and building their transactive memory system. Share this: * LinkedIn * Bluesky * Mastodon * Pocket * Email * Like this: Like Loading... 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