Creating the conditions for team development

Central to the living systems view of teams, networks and organisations, is the recognition and acceptance that their behaviour 'emerges' rather than appears in a controllable, predictable way.

The importance of team ‘early movers’

(or Why do I always have to take out the garbage?)

i,Team

The famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, forecasted the coming age of Robots with a series of entertaining stories involving dilemmas around the concept of the Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov's work was brought to the big screen in the recent block-buster film starring Will Smith “i, Robot”. But can these laws also be applied to teams?

IMPORTANT BIOTEAMING COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY

I am seeking interest from organisational team leaders who would like to collaborate with me in a unique mini research project into the beliefs of high-performing teams.

A blueprint for building an e-Workplace To Better Manage Your Remote Workforce

Pam Stanford, Director of IBM On Demand Workplace Solutions, in an article Success in a Virtual World published in Line 56 July 2003 establishes 4 useful principles for making a success of Organisational Telecommuting:

Copying biology's instant broadcasting systems

One of the things we learn when we study biological teams is that the communications used are designed to instantly reach the intended recipients wherever they are. For example, many forms of social insect communications are chemically based with the intensity and longevity of the scent (and the wind direction) determining who gets the message. In other words biological communications tend to be 'instant broadcasts'.

VE-Forum is an excellent source of information on European research activity in the virtual networks and clusters area. It has also just has produced a special edition of its Newsletter "DG INFSO D5 Enterprise Networking Clusters" which gives an overview of the huge amount of European Union research underway in this area which includes:

Human agents - learning from advances in distributed computing

I am delighted to republish a bioteams guest essay on “Agents: Technology and Usage” by James Odell which is attached in full as a pdf.

Community development as active waiting

Growing a successful virtual community is a lot like tending a delicate rose in your garden.
Both the rose and the community need to be carefully nurtured, fed and encouraged to grow. Both are under constant threats to their continued health and existence. Both will wither and eventually die if not carefully looked after. This is because, despite all our hopes and intentions for them, a rose and a virtual community are both living systems in their own right and will not just thrive and develop on demand – no matter how hard we push! So can you help such a creature grow and develop?

What virtual teams must learn from cavemen
(What is Anthropology)