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Research Article Open Access
Jacobsson, Clin Exp Psychol 2017, 3:2
DOI: 10.4172/2471-2701.1000151
Review Article OMICS International
Clinical and Experimental
Psychology
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ISSN: 2471-2701
Clin Exp Psychol, an open access journal
ISSN: 2471-2701 Volume 3 • Issue 2 • 1000151
The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing Shared Cognition in Teams
Christian Jacobsson*
Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present a model for developing shared cognition in teams, called the goal matrix.
The theories and research behind the model is presented along with practical guidelines on how to use the model
within a team. The model starts with the overall purpose of the team, why it exists in the rst place. Then it denes
an internal perspective, concerning team members and their roles, and an external perspective, concerning the
stakeholders of the team. The purpose and the relationship between the internal and external perspective denes
the context of the team. Further, the model describes three aspects of goals depending on the time horizon; process
goals, future results and visions. The place and the time dimensions on goal achievement form six types of goals.
These are internal standards and external standards, development goals and operative goals, guiding stars and
vision.
*Corresponding author: Jacobsson C, Department of Psychology, University
of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden, Tel: + 46 31 786 1669; E-mail: christian.
jacobsson@psy.gu.se
Received: June 09, 2017; Accepted: June 13, 2017; Published: June 20, 2017
Citation: Jacobsson C (2017) The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing Shared
Cognition in Teams. Clin Exp Psychol 3: 151. doi: 10.4172/2471-2701.1000151
Copyright: © 2017 Jacobsson C. This is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.
Keywords: Goal setting; Goals; Context; Model; Teams; Shared
cognition; Team cognition
Introduction
As work has become ncreasngly complex and work teams has
receved ncreasngly ntellectually demandng tasks, nterest n
nformaton processng n teams has grown [1]. e nformaton
work teams need to process and ntegrate, .e., share, are for nstance
nformaton about the task, characterstcs of the team and ts members,
cooperatve patterns and the wder context n whch the team exst.
Shared cognton [2] or team cognton s an mportant drver of team
eectveness [3]. e purpose of ths artcle s to present a model that
suggests what a team needs to share cognton about. e model gudes
team members to clarfy the teams’ purpose, roles, stakeholders and
sx types of goals dependng on tme and place. e emphass on goals
n the model s motvated by research fndngs on the eectveness
n clarfyng shared goals [4]. e model has been presented n short
before [5], but s here further elaborated.
Time
According to Austin and Vancouver [6] goals are dened as “internal
representations of desired states, where states are broadly construed as
outcomes, events, or processes” (p. 338). e goal construct is wide in
psychology; it does not only concern future states to be reached but
also present processes to be upheld. To distinguish the former from the
later Frese and Zapf [7] described performance goals in the future as
“End state goals”, and goals concerning processes to uphold as “Process
goals”. Process goals can be described as being a standard that is to be
maintained, every day and in each individual situation, end state goals
are something we strive to achieve in the future. e main dierence
between the two types of goals is the time, which is the rst dimension
in the goal matrix. In the model, there are three categories of goals
depending on time, goals to achieve now, later, or maybe later:
• Now - Goals to maintain (process goals), standards, explicit
norms or rules.
• Later - Goals to achieve in the future (end-state goals), i.e., a
future state to reach or performance to achieve.
• Maybe later - Goals to strive towards (visions), goals that are
attractive to team members and gives a direction but is dicult
to reach or belongs to the far future.
Place
Agazarian [8,9] describes in her “eory of living human systems”
contextualizing as a way to develop a systems (e.g. a team) function.
According to Agazarian [9], contextualizing is a way to increase one’s
awareness of the context of one’s experience. From another standpoint,
Hackman [10,11] studied why some teams were more successful than
others. He identied three areas that they were successful in; they
satised internal and external clients, the members found meaning
and satisfaction within the group, and they developed capabilities to
perform in the future. e third area was described as something that
grew from the second one, members nding meaning and satisfaction
in their teamwork. Taken together, the importance of contextualizing
actions and experiences, and the two main areas of team achievements,
within the team and with regard to clients or stakeholders, contributes
with a second dimension in the goal matrix, place:
• e internal perspective is about the team, what is important for
us to do in order to do meaningful and satisfying work.
• e external perspective concerns what the team shall deliver to
others, the stake-holders, what the customer wants or what other
organizational parts expects.
Goals Depending on Time and Place
Together, time and place forms a matrix of 3 × 2, altogether 6,
categories of goals for teams:
1. Now, internal - Internal standards, standards of cooperative
behavior within the team.
2. Now, external - External standards, standards of interacting
with or approach towards stakeholders.
Page 2 of 4
Citation: Jacobsson C (2017) The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing Shared Cognition in Teams. Clin Exp Psychol 3: 151. doi: 10.4172/2471-
2701.1000151
Volume 3 • Issue 2 • 1000151
Clin Exp Psychol, an open access journal
ISSN: 2471-2701
3. Later, internal - Developmental goals, goals for how the team
wants to cooperate together in the future.
4. Later, external - Operative goals, goals for delivery in the
future to stakeholders.
5. Maybe later, internal - Guiding stars, Ideals of how to
cooperate, or what atmosphere is wanted within the team.
6. Maybe later, external - Vision, A possible future state with
regard to stakeholders.
ree Contextual Anchor Points
Further, there are three anchor points in the model, which couples
the team with its context. Firstly, the team members need to have a
common understanding of the organizational function of the team,
why it is a team in the rst place. Secondly, if we locate the starting
point of the internal perspective, who should work together in order
to serve the stakeholders, there are members of the team with dierent
roles. irdly, the team’s understanding of its stakeholders represents
the external perspective in the model. Together, the team members’
development of a common understanding of these three anchor points’
help them build a shared cognition of the team’s context.
Purpose
A team needs a common understanding of the purpose of the team
in order to develop a mutual interdependence that is conscious and
shared among team members. is is related to the concept of being a
“real team”, as suggested by Hackman [10], having a shared assignment
or mission. e purpose tells the team members why it exists; it denes
the team and describes its function in the organization. e purpose
also sets the framework for what tasks the team will perform and what
goals are reasonable to set. Team members having a common idea of
why the team exists is the most basic and therefore the most important
part of the goal matrix.
Members/roles
Members of a team will ideally have unique roles. e fact that
every member contributes uniquely to the team facilitates high
performance. Teams also need to be fairly stable across time with regard
to membership, in order for team members to learn how to interact with
each other [12]. Clarifying members roles is, together with clarifying
goals, generally an eective intervention in teams [4].
Stakeholders
Stakeholders are “those groups without whose support the
organization would cease to exist” [13]. Stakeholder theory usually
has the starting-point at a board or share-holders of an organization,
applying the concept of stakeholders to teams within organizations will
alter the scenery in the way that a board of an organization could be
important stakeholders to a team, e.g. a top management team. In most
teams, there are two types of primary stakeholders [14]. e rst are
those who have actually put a stake, who invested, in the team. ey’ve
either employed the team members or pay their salaries. e other
types of stakeholders are those who expect the team to help them with
something, for instance clients. Figure 1 describes the goal matrix.
Guidelines to Using the Model
Generally, to develop a shared idea, it is important to note dierent
team members’ answers and work together in order to nd a common
understanding of the team’s purpose, as well as sharing ideas and agree
about the other parts of the model. e rst steps, in working with the
goal matrix, are to agree upon a common purpose and be clear about
memberships/roles and stakeholders of the team.
Purpose - why are we a team?
Purpose is distinguished from the concept of goal in the sense
that goals are what we strive for, and the purpose is why we do it in
the rst place. Other concepts with similar meanings are: the overall
task, the mission or the (organizational) function of the team. Eective
teams have members that have the same idea about the purpose of
being a team. e purpose also determines what our tasks are. Guiding
questions for making the purpose of the team a shared cognition
between team members could be: What is the purpose of our team?
What function can or should our team have for the organization?
Member roles – Who is in the team and what roles do they
have?
When everyone in the team has the same idea about who the
members of the team are, the next step is to explore the roles in the team.
Roles can be divided into two types, functional and generic roles. e
functional role is basically what’s in the job description, responsibilities
related to the specic job assignment, and it’s oen unique for each team
member. Generic role concern behaviors that everybody can do that
support the cooperation. For instance, clarifying things for the whole
team, asking questions, summarizing the big picture, stating priorities
and providing guidance to other team members, remind of noting and
correcting by using feedback. Questions to explore for the team could
be: who are members of the team? And, in what ways does each member
contribute to fulll the team’s purpose?
Stakeholders - Who do we work for and who has expectations
on us?
Stakeholders are those who will benet from the team’s work. In
most teams, there are two types of stakeholders; those who actually
has put a stake in the team; who have employed the team member or
pays their salaries, and those who expect the team to help them with
something, or who have dependencies on the team. Many teams work
more eciently together if they have a clear and shared perception of
what stakeholders they have or for whom they work. As a rule, it is a
good idea that the team has a reasonable balance over time with regard
to which stakeholders it satises. A possible question to the team to
clarify their stakeholders can be: Who has an interest in what our team
achieves?
Goal-matrix for work teams
–
Purpose, members, stakeholders and goals
(Christian Jacobsson)
A. The purpose of the team is:
Place
Time
Process goals –
Now/all the time
Future results –
Later
Visions –
Maybe later
B. Internal focus:
Who are members &
which roles do they
have?
1. Internal standards 3. Developmental
goals
5. Guiding stars
C. External focus:
Who has an interest in
our work/ for whom do
we work?
2. External standards 4. Operative goals 6. Vision
Figure 1: The goal matrix, clarication of goals depending on time and place.
Page 3 of 4
Citation: Jacobsson C (2017) The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing Shared Cognition in Teams. Clin Exp Psychol 3: 151. doi: 10.4172/2471-
2701.1000151
Volume 3 • Issue 2 • 1000151
Clin Exp Psychol, an open access journal
ISSN: 2471-2701
Internal standards - what behaviors do we need to show in
order to have a smooth cooperation?: Internal standards set the
frame of reference for what behaviors team members expect from each
other. Internal standards concern the team only. ey’re standards to
uphold in the present moment that are possible to start to implement
immediately. For example, we shall start our meetings on time or we
shall listen to each other and don’t interrupt. A way to test if the internal
team standards are written as behaviors is to ask: Can you perceive when
this particular behavior happens and when it fails to happen?. Internal
standard could preferably be made as a short check-list of expected
cooperative behaviors in the team and serve as a brief that the team
follow up in debrief sessions [15].
External standards - how do we want to be perceived by our
stakeholders?: External standards concern the stakeholders. In other
words, standards of interacting with or approaching stakeholders that
is possible to display in the present moment – and that are possible to
start to implement immediately. External standards concern how the
team wants the stakeholders to perceive them as a team. Does the team
want to be perceived as for instance service-minded, competent and
responsive?. From the stakeholder perspective, the teams capability to
meet expectation is to a large extent captured by the concept of service
quality [16]. A question to discuss might be: what impression do we
want our stakeholders to have about us?.
Developmental goals - what do we need to develop in our
ways of cooperation?: e team’s developmental goals aim to clarify
how the team wants to work together in the future. Team diagnostic
surveys, such as Team Climate Inventory [17] or Group Development
Questionnaire [18], usually provide with information on development
areas of the team. ey might for instance concern that only a few
members talk at meetings, the goals of the team has not been discussed
enough, members hesitate to give each other feedback or that the
team is reluctant on following up decisions. A question to explore
development goals could be: in what ways do we want to cooperate better
in the future?.
Operative goals - what are we paid for?: e operative goals
represent what a team aims to achieve with regard to their stakeholders.
Basically, it answers the question: what are we paid for? High-
performing teams have clear and shared goals related to their purpose,
they have the same idea about what they are devoted to accomplishing.
Most research on goal setting has been made on this type of goals, for
instance much of the research on goal setting theory [19]. Operative
goals concerns task performance of the team. A possible question for
the team to explore is; what do we have to deliver to our stakeholders in
the near future?.
Guiding stars – how does our dream team look like?: e team’s
guiding stars are about shared ideals in the team on how they should
work as a team. ey are team virtues and values to relate to, but that
is not always easy to live up to. For instance virtues like transparency,
integrity and trust [20]. Internal standards are more concrete and
possible to follow up compared with guiding stars. A possible question
is: how does the cooperation look like in your dream team?.
Vision – what is our valued direction?: A vision is best in the
singular form because it is supposed to set one direction for the team.
e vision concerns the team’s stakeholders and is basically a picture
or words describing a future state desired by the stakeholders and the
team. It is an oer or promise from the team to the stakeholders. A
vision should be challenging and possible to reach in the future. A vision
involves formulating a relatively abstract and far-reaching idea, while
eective (operative) goals involve formulating specic, challenging and
time-constrained objectives [21]. A start-up question to formulating a
vision is: if we use the team’s full potential - what can we then oer our
stakeholders in the future?.
Summary
In summary, there are three contextual anchor points in the goal
matrix, which connects the team to its organizational context and
creates borders between the team and its stakeholders. Further, the
model is based on two dimensions for setting goals, time and place.
e place dimension is twofold, internal and external. e internal
perspective concerns the team and the cooperation of its members.
e internal perspective has three types of goals depending on time
for delivery: internal standards, development goals and guiding stars.
e external perspective concerns the stakeholders of the team. Again,
there are three types of goals depending on time for delivery; external
standards, operative goals and vision.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
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Citation: Jacobsson C (2017) The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing Shared Cognition in Teams. Clin Exp Psychol 3: 151. doi: 10.4172/2471-
2701.1000151
Volume 3 • Issue 2 • 1000151
Clin Exp Psychol, an open access journal
ISSN: 2471-2701
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Citation: Jacobsson C (2017) The Goal Matrix – A Model for Developing
Shared Cognition in Teams. Clin Exp Psychol 3: 151. doi: 10.4172/2471-
2701.1000151
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