Grass Roots Management shows you how to grow initiative and responsibility in all your people. It might not appeal to purists, but using the narrative of a business based on a garden open to the public the author gives a very simple, accessible and readable account of 'self-managed teams'.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

Always on mobile devices need supporting etiquette

The Economist (Jan 2003) in a short article “Think before you talk” reports on how Ideo (the designers behind the Palm Pilot and Microsoft Mouse) have developed 5 prototype “social mobiles” known as SoMo's which modify their user’s behavior to make them less disruptive. Click here to view an excellent web presentation on the 5 SoMos. Other technologies like VoIP and IM can be equally disruptive and intrusive - its prompted me to develop a draft POLite Intrusive Technology Etiquette (PoLITE for short) a discussion starter of which you can find here.

I ran across an excellent article, Evaluating Social Network Services, by Christopher Allen in his very interesting blog, Life With Alacrity, which reviews four of the leading social network software/services:

How often do you go to a team meeting where you ‘time out’ and send everybody away frustrated simply because you could not get some of the participants to shut up? Or have you ever have meetings on ‘divergent topics’ where you feel you have opened Pandora’s Box so wide that there is little chance of getting back any consensus or convergence in the group? If either of these is your experience then you could really benefit from an innovative software/hardware/method combo called Zing.