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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John Austin, writing in his excellent blog, Tag your Team, references research by Robert Kelley on ‘followership’ which examines two different traits of behaviour in team members: critical thinking and pro-activity.

The Discipline of Market Leaders (TDML) by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema (1997) equips the leadership of an enterprise with a choice of 3 strategies for competing in the marketplace - Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence or Product Leadership. TDML says you must excel in one of these AND maintain minimum thresholds for the other two. Here is a little web-based management simulation which lets you to test TDML strategies virtually before betting your business on them!

There are many ways to diagnose dysfunctional teams: lack of shared objectives, poor co-operative working practices, weak leadership etc. However taking a purely biological perspective opens up exciting possibilities for significantly improving dysfunctional team performance.