CHIC Scale

Team Creation

When putting a team together for a special project, coverage of duties is important. PI / QI departments are chronically understaffed and must use employees from within the organization for their knowledge, influence, and labor. In addition to using the instrument to recruit team members, it is also helpful to have a sense of their characteristics. The sub-values from each of the factors are extremely relevant in this situation. The factors of Reconciliation, Environment, Encouragement, and Awareness are particularly helpful when navigating the interface between collaborative leadership and transformational leadership.

In his book Good to Great¹, Jim Collins advocates for getting the "right people on the bus". This metaphor illustrates the need to discern which employees are best suited for a collective task. The CHIC Scale provides a means to understand which employees are best positioned to collaborate for specific projects or cases. Knowing which team member has the highest score in one of these factor areas may provide important support when working with stakeholders across the organization.

New Collaborations

Imagine knowing that a new project was going to be successful before it started. Many collaborations fail, not because of resources or interest. Instead, often the limiting factor is a lack of current capacity of key team members. This method could be used for the development of new projects, especially those with high visibility and importance. Those with strong total scores are good candidates for inclusion on the team.

Team Development

Once the member of a team has been selected and the scope of collaboration has been clearly defined, it is important to equip that group and mission with the tools they need to succeed. Here team development means intentionally investing in the dynamics of the group to improve the quality of the interactions between group members and the overall value of their collective effort.

Comparing factor scores of team members provides insight into which elements collectively support or hinder the group. For example, if the group scores for the resilience factor have particularly low, then the group is likely spread too thin and the collaboration will be affected. In this case, the CHIC Scale can be used to petition for additional resources for the project.

The other use of the factor provides insight into individual scores that can be used to share insights among team members who have strong scores in a given area or coaching opportunities for those with weak scores.

In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard² authors Chip Heath advocate for an innovation technique highlighted in the book called the Brighspots approach. This technique emphasizes the dissemination of innovative practices in challenging environments through positive deviation.