Our old friend the spider gets a lot of bad press. For example he/she has been used as an example of the weakness of centralised leadership models versus so-called “leaderless organisations” in The Starfish and The Spider. However spiders can teach teams, enterprises and networks two very important lessons: Strategic Readiness and Appropriate Response.
Predictably Irrational teams
Teams, 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.
Bioteaming is biomimicry of social structures
Janine 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.
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Team Swarming: are your team wasps or bees
Sometimes the Bee-team is the A-team: the importance of an automatic team swarm response to threats and opportunities.
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Can a team have just one member
The best team is Me. It might sound like heresy but sometimes the most effective way to produce something is not through collaboration but by just doing it yourself.
Freeriding in teams, communities and networks: 5 tips for fighting it
One of the biggest problems in teams, communities and networks, whether co-located or virtual, is freeriding (aka freeloading or lurking or loafing) where certain team members do not pull their weight. Here are 5 things you can do about it.
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Belbin on bioteams
Dr R Meredith Belbin, regarded as the father of “team-role” theory and one of the worlds foremost experts on teams, predicts that our organizational teams will evolve into more biologically inspired forms.
Organisations are living complex systems claims physicist
Fritjof Capra says organisations are not just like living systems – they are living systems!
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The secret of accelerated organisational learning
We can learn the secret of rapid evolution from the most evolved non-human species on the planet – but it is not who you think it is!
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Group Messaging Instincts: how to recover them
Biological teams make extensive use of short messages as their main means of communication: Ants use chemical messages, Bees use visual messages conveyed through dance and Dolphins use sonar, however most human teams seem to have forgotten their Messaging Instincts.
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