Great teamwork needs great architecture
Stumble It!Despite all the advantages of virtual working and teleworking most people would agree we still need to physically meet our colleagues to some extent. The most likely place for these meetings to happen is a ‘bricks and mortar’ office.
The bad news is that most offices are total disasters from the viewpoint of inspiring great work.
The Guardian reviews Alan de Botton’s latest book The Architecture of Happiness.
De Botton describes how a new survey reveals that 30% of workers in the UK are depressed by the architecture of their offices.
He concludes:
“In an age when one has to harness workers' emotional sympathies rather than merely their physical strengths, an ugly office comes to seem like a false economy indeed. Housing an organisation in a beautiful office could be the ultimate form of hard-headed common sense.”
The only other point to add is to make sure the virtual architecture for teamwork is beautiful too!
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Effective Brainstorming: Top Tips
Brainstorming, despite the popularity of the term, is one of the most challenging collaborative activities to carry out. While most people think they know how to brainstorm, very few really understand how to consistently make a session work. Ken Thompson and Robin Good share some of the secrets gleaned from "The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm"
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Are you smarter than a goose? Sure you are -- one on one. But when it comes to working efficiently, you and your colleagues can't touch the gaggle. According to author Ken Thompson, geese and other animals that naturally form groups have a lot to teach us about business. In a theory he calls organizational biomimetics, Thompson lays out the principles underlying nature's management strategies. So what can you learn from a bird or an ant? Take a gander. Katharine Gammon at Wired Magazine reports.
Wikipedia bans anonymous entries
Good collaboration needs accountability
Buzzle.com reports (7 Dec 2005) that wikipedia has been forced to change its policies to ensure that contributions can only be made by logged in users. Recently there have been possible libel cases around "false and malicious" wikipedia entries, 'vanity editing', and the question of how any of its entries can be trusted without author identification. To read the article.
The team brain concept
James Thornton in “You Have Three Brains” reports on research that we each have, not one but, three brains nested within our skulls – a lizard brain, a dog brain, and a human brain. This got me thinking – if teams are really living systems then they might have 3 brains too?
To whom it may concern,
Could you please give me more details about the building which is in the picture above.
Regards
Roderick camilleri