High Performing Teams and Improved Collaboration through Biomimicry
Continue readingPredictably Irrational teamsTeams, networks, groups and their members behave in an irrational way but quite predictably so. A good team leader will understand this and use it to everyone’s advantage. One key point is to knowing each team members motivations and whether they are operating in “social economy” or “market economy” mindsets.
Continue readingSeven team decision-making methodsThe way a team decides to decide is one of the most important decisions it makes. In the excellent book, “Why Teams Don’t Work” the authors, Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley, identify seven key decision-making methods for teams.
Continue readingFive tips for a perfect meetingGood operational meetings, whether co-located or virtual, are the engine of organisational and project governance. However often their success is left totally to chance. Here are my five key tips for making them more effective:
Continue readingBioteaming is biomimicry of social structuresJanine Benyus, talking at TED, describes biomimicry as learning an idea from an organism and then applying it – the conscious emulation of life’s genius. Bioteaming, then, is the biomimicry of social structures- taking ideas from Nature about how groups perform and intra-operate, and applying them to enhance how we humans work together in groups and teams. Doug Philips aka teamite#222* and bioteams guest author muses.
Continue readingA great free Social Network Analysis ToolI have been checking out social network analysis (SNA) tools which allow social network data (directly input or imported from external systems) to be displayed, manipulated and analysed graphically in a number of ways. I was also looking for SNA tools which are free or have a free version. Here’s 4 tools which look very useful!
Continue readingConference Calls: Twelve Golden RulesThe most widely used tool for mobile, distributed and virtual teams is still the plain old telephone conference call. However it is also the most badly used! So whether you are talking over Skype, mixing it with screen sharing and messaging, using your corporate PABX or just calling in to an external service if you follow these 12 simple rules you will get much better calls.
Continue readingTeam Swarming: are your team wasps or beesSometimes the Bee-team is the A-team: the importance of an automatic team swarm response to threats and opportunities.
Continue readingThe law of requisite variety and team agilityAn obvious characteristic of nature’s best teams is that they seem to have just the right amount of structure to handle their environments. Too much and they would be slow and cumbersome; too little and they would lack the sophisticated responses to protect their position in the food chain.
Continue readingCollective stupidity and the madness of crowdsThe Wisdom of Crowds and Collective Intelligence are very useful concepts but not if they are used in the wrong places. Confusing these two concepts will only produce bad results for your groups and teams.
In this article I contend that you will have a much better understanding of social systems (teams, groups, networks and communities) if you start to look at them through the unique lens of the well-established philosophical principles of living systems know as autopoiesis.
Continue readingUnderstand Teams and Communities better through Living Systems Theory