102 | www.ijar.lit.az INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 3. No. 5. September, 2011, I Part COG-SYNERGY: A MODEL FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Mumtaz Muhammad Khan 1 , Suleman Aziz Lodhi 1 , Muhammad Abdul Majid Makki 3 1 National College of Business Administration and Economics, Lahore, 3 Department of Commerce, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (PAKISTAN) E-mails: mumtazmkpk@yahoo.com, drlodhi@ncbae.edu.pk, abdul7896@yahoo.com.au ABSTRACT Work around teams for achieving targets, deadlines is becoming phenomena of today’s complex world. Team performance is being considered as an area of research with a view to achieve expected outcome. Each team member’s cognition culminating into group cognition is viewed a solution to this problem. This solution made mental models a center of interest for research. These mental models have so far shown limited progress. There exists a need for a new mental model schema for high performance. We propose a new cog-synergy model based on spatial cognition, social cognition and strategic cognition for high performance teams. Key words: spatial cognition; social cognition, strategic cognition, synergy, team performance. 1. INTRODUCTION The interaction among human beings has been a centerpiece of interest ever since, and the complexity of interaction kept on increasing, as the human beings went on exploring it more and more. This interaction takes the form of cognition to the niche, interaction among human beings and interaction for achieving strategic targets. The literature supports a great deal of working on human interaction at social level but social level alone without an understanding of the environment may not cope with the increased complexity. It needs to be seen holistically with its relation to niche, general description and adoption of strategy. The interaction with reference to spatial, social and strategic decisions as part of this human cognition, human and (AI) enabled agents’ cognition; AI agents’ group cognition is also under active area of research quite recently. There are emerging scenarios wherein human beings are interacting with (AI) enabled agents, and the level of cognition in such scenarios is of critical importance. It is here that human and machine and vice versa interaction becomes most important in today’s complex world. It is difficult to look at these problems separately; rather they need to be taken into consideration holistically. It seems, however, that firstly, spatial cognition i.e. cognition about the niche, physical descriptions has received relatively less attention in group cognition and is still regarded as an area to be further explored. The knowledge of the physical features of each group member, group working environment is of crucial importance and particularly, when critical decisions are to be taken, a slight error may lead to disaster. For example, when a group of terrorists has made people hostages in a building, the rescuers need to have complete spatial cognition for their counter action and a slight error may result either loss (minor or fatal) to the hostages or to the rescuers provided they confront each other. Secondly, social cognition i.e. cognition about the interaction among human beings as teams, human beings and AI enabled agents as team and AI enabled agents teams with human beings teams needs attention in group cognition and is also, an active area of research. Thirdly, some important inconsistencies regarding variations in group members’ understanding at strategic level have yet to be resolved. The literature does not currently enable readers to draw straightforward conclusions about the effects on group outcomes of variation in group members’ understanding at strategic level. The strategic decision whether to launch a new product or to improve the existing product needs to be taken with strategic cognition among the top team members. This paper therefore, takes into consideration the group interaction, as centerpiece of group activity for achieving the higher degree of performance. Group cognition is based on each individual’s cognition. Cognition includes mental process and experience of knowing e.g. perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, and reasoning. Group cognition is a social, largely linguistic phenomenon whereby a small group of people produce a sequence of utterances that perform a cognitive act. That is, if a similar sequence was uttered or thought by an individual, it would be considered an act of cognition or thinking. This individual cognitive act needs to be seen in groups, wherein they form mental models. 2. BACKGROUND Mental model refers to a person’s mental representation of a system and how it works (Johnson- Laird, 1983; Rouse and Morris, 1986). This definition takes into account (1) the variables included in the system, (2) the properties and states of those variables, and (3) the causal or other relationships among those variables. These mental models have so far been limited to shared mental models, situation mental models, transactive memory system, task mental models etc. Shared mental models extend the notion of individual mental models to a team context. A shared mental model explains a coordinated behavior that produces a mutual shared awareness, with which team members can reason not only about their own role with regard to situation, but also the status and activities of the other team