GRPI Needs
An introduction to the hierarchy of team needs and its impact on team performance.
Section 1
A Hierarchy of Concerns
In This Section
1. What Is Organizational Information?
2. What Is GRPI?
3. Why Is GRPI Important?
What Is Organizational Information? Organizing teamwork requires more information than just a list of team members. The core information teams need is about structural concerns. At a high level, these concerns are usually described as goals, roles, processes, and interpersonal relations.
What is GRPI?
GRPI is an acronym for goals, roles processes and interpersonal. It is a model describing team needs for organizational information.
The model arranges the four elements into a hierarchy. Goals are at the top of the hierarchy, followed by roles, and so on. The position in the hierarchy indicates how foundational the type of information is.
That means that goals are considered to be needed earlier, and are more important to team organization and functioning, than roles are. More than that, the hierarchy suggests that defining, for example, processes without setting up clear goals and roles first is not likely to work well.
Why is GRPI Important?
GRPI tells us where to focus our attention first when organizing and operating a team. It also shows how to tackle problems with the least amount of effort.
The people who came up with GRPI did so by observing how teams work in the business world. They noticed two useful things:
• Troubleshooting problems is easier the higher up the hierarchy they can be addressed
• Problems are typically caused by lack of clarity in roughly a descending Pareto series
The first point is straightforward: clarifying goals is far easier than untangling interpersonal relationships.
The second point is a bit trickier to understand and is more impactful. It refers to the 80/20 rule. The point is that about 80% of teamwork problems stem from unclear goals. Of the remainder of problems, about 80% of those stem from unclear roles. Again take the remainder and about 80% of those are due to unclear processes. Whatever small amount is left is due to interpersonal issues.
This insight tells us that we will not only have an easier time troubleshooting at higher levels in the hierarchy, but that we will also solve more of the problems when we do it.
Further it means that in most cases interpersonal friction is more an effect than a cause. Solve the higher, simpler prob- lems and most people will find a way to get along.