Self organization in natures teams
Stumble It!Richard Conniff in his excellent paper, The limits of the alpha male, gives an excellent introduction to self-organizing behaviour in flocks of birds, termites, red deer, whooper swans and gorillas.
These groups don’t depend on hierarchical leaders.
Instead each member is constantly aware of its external environment and the other members in its group and instantly synchronizes its behaviour with them according to very simple rules.
These individual behaviors, taken together, produce complex and seemingly intelligent group behaviour.
Richard also points out that natural self-organizing behaviour, such as the infectious fidgeting when a meeting reaches a natural end, is present in human teams but often our team leaders do not recognise or respect it.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
The coming shape of organizations and teams
Belbin sees Bioteams as the next step. Dr R Meredith Belbin, regarded as the father of "team-role" theory and one of the worlds foremost experts on teams predicts that we will evolve into bioteam forms. In his book "The Coming Shape of Organisation" Belbin picks out five observations human teams need to learn from "a diminutive masterclass" of social insects such as bees, ants and termites.
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