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The 7 Secrets of High-Performing Teams: New Bioteams Video

In this new short audio/video I share 7 secrets on how teams can significantly improve performance by adopting simple techniques from Bioteams. These techniques are particularly relevant to large cross-functional teams and multi-enterprise teams whose members are not co-located and spend much of their working days on the road or on client site.

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Poor Mental Models fail teams before they even start?

One of the most powerful team exercises is to explore team leaders and team members “mental models” of teams, networks and groups. Mental models are the, often invisible, dictators of what actually happens in a team as opposed to what team leaders would like to happen. Here are some practical techniques for uncovering these “icebergs of the mind” before they sink your teams.

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The Virtually Networked Enterprise: Letting small fish act big

In How To Innovate And Create New Business Opportunities When You Are A Small Fish: Here Comes The VEN, Robin Good and Ken Thompson argue that when you are a small fish, it may appear pretty difficult, if not altogether out of your reach, to be able to “network up” with other small firms to provide higher value services to major clients. But is it a real physical limitation or is it just that small companies lack a proven and effective business collaboration model – The Virtual Enterprise Network (VEN)?

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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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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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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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Bioteaming: A Manifesto For Networked Business Teams

A Conceptual Framework For The Successful Management Of Physically Distributed Collaborative Business Networks And Highly Mobile Virtual Teams
By Ken Thompson and Robin Good

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