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Conference Calls: Twelve Golden Rules

The 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.

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The law of requisite variety and team agility

An 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.

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Collective stupidity and the madness of crowds

The 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.

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Understand Teams and Communities better through Living Systems Theory

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.

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Delphi collective group intelligence tool: powerful and free

The Delphi Technique is a proven way to harness collective group intelligence (popularly known as the wisdom of crowds) in a wide range of applications.

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Penguins reveal the true essence of bioteams

Many people have been enchanted by the amazing video “The March of the Penguins” and most know that they have no leader. However few people go on to ask the obvious next question “If they have no leader then how do they know where to go?”….

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A philosophy of change management

When an organisation or team or network seeks to bring about any form of change they require and expect the individuals affected to behave differently in some way. Peter Fryer describes his philosophy of small changes.

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Social Network Analysis in practice

In Social Network Analysis: an introduction, Richard Cross, bioteams.com Guest Author, explains the importance of making organisations hidden social networks visible. In this follow-up article Richard discusses how Social Network Analysis (SNA) actually works in practice.

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Social Network Analysis: an introduction

Any social organisation from the smallest team to the largest enterprise carries with it a social network. Until recently these social networks were largely invisible to the organisations which depended on them. Now Social Network Analysis or SNA is a hot topic but what is it, where did it come from and how does it work: Richard Cross, bioteams.com Guest Author, explains.

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