New corporate team leadership approach: treat team members like adults
Stumble It!Harvard Business Review proposes radical new approach: Treat employees like adults
A cornerstone of bioteaming is that all team members should be treated like adults
This is the foundation of a self-managed team where its members operate responsibly but with autonomy.
For example see my bioteam article on distributed team leadership.
Adults expect to be given information not orders.
They expect to have to think some things through for themselves and to be trusted to act in the best interests of the team.
Ok so it can always be abused and people can make honest mistakes.
But with some organisation usually neither of these should produce project showstoppers and with the right transparency system mistakes should happen only once or twice as people learn under the spotlight of peer review.
There will, of course, be new mistakes but thats progress!
Remember a key principle of governance is that the cost of the control should never exceed the cost of the losses without the control in place.
Bioteams constantly challenge their "permission structures" and where possible replace them with "forgiveness structures" based on transparent visibility of all team member actions.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Organisational teams: thin slice for responsiveness
Humans and animals do not need complete information to act; they can operate on various clues provided there is a sufficient context. Organizational teams can also use this thin slicing technique in conjunction with short messaging to enhance their performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s introspective book Blink digs deep into the abyss of human cognition to illustrate the human ability to think at a subconscious level. The idea of thin slicing is used where one is introduced to only a few snippets of information which lead to a series of conclusions based on moments of rapid cognition – an ability claimed to be intrinsically dormant in most humans. By bioteams guest author Max Bhanabhai.
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