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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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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Managing Teams: David Brent of ‘The Office’ offers ten tips

David Brent, the manager in the hugely popular satirical comedy drama about organisational life, The Office suffers from ‘delusions of grandeur’ concerning his leadership skills and the value of his personal philosophy of management. I have compiled a collection of his top tips in the area of teams, leadership and collaboration.

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Teamwork: learning from dolphin pods

The seven habits of highly effective dolphins.
According to a excellent site dedicated to Dolphins at Western Illinois University (Illinois) Dolphin social behavior is one of the most complex and advanced in the animal kingdom and offers us a number of insights into effective bioteaming.

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Natures four teamwork systems

What is Teamwork? Although there are many different definitions, in nature the definition of ‘teamwork’ is very precise. There are four different types of “teamwork” in biological teams: Solowork, Crowdwork, Groupwork and Teamwork itself. A bioteam knows how and when to use all four forms – the choice depends on the specific task at hand.

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The maximum team size for effective working

Your teams are too big: break them up.
Newspapers sometimes run contests to see who can produce the best summary of a epic book in one hundred words or less. Here is my 100-word version of “The maximum team size for effective working” drawing from an excellent article by Christopher Allen entitled The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes.

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The secret DNA of high-performing virtual teams

Bioteaming – the secret to high-performing, self-organising, virtually networked teams

In my research into bioteaming I have (so far) identified four action zones and about a dozen action rules.This article provides a brief introduction.

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Complex adaptive systems and virtual team collaboration

Leading complexity thinkers apply biological principles to enterprises: The Biology of Business is a set of essays by ten researchers and practitioners in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).

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