Self organizing virtual communities
Stumble It!Major Oil Company, Schlumberger, exploits self-organizing virtual communities.
David Wessel reports in an article in the Wall Street Journal by David Wessel entitled Motivating Workers By Giving Them a Vote how in multinational organisations with thousands of employees spread all over the globe effectively sharing knowledge, expertise and experience can be a real headache.
The article describes the success Schlumberger have had in using online communities of practice with some 23 communities ranging from chemistry to well-engineering supporting 140 special-interest subgroups, and involving more than 11,750 employees as members.
Schlumberger attribute much of their success in this area to the decision they made to make the communities self-governing and even allowing each community to elect its own leaders.
Self-organisation is a critical success factor in sustainable biological communities.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Leadership and Self-Deception
A few months ago I read the book "Leadership and Self-Deception". Then I became a friend of the Arbinger Institute, went through some training with them in London and may be involved with them in the future. So I suppose the book inspired me – here’s why! Guest book review by Mario Gastaldi.
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Capable or popular: which would you rather be
Research published in the Harvard Business Review , Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools and the formation of social networks, (June 2005) shows that when people need help getting a job done, they will usually choose a congenial colleague over a more capable one.
The maximum team size for effective working
Your teams are too big: break them up.
Newspapers sometimes run contests to see who can produce the best summary of a epic book in one hundred words or less. Here is my 100-word version of "The maximum team size for effective working" drawing from an excellent article by Christopher Allen entitled The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes.
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What do Ants, Termites, Graffiti Artists, Cavemen, Teenagers and Town Planners all have in common? They understand the power of Stigmergy to leave marks in their environment as important sign-posts to friends (or foes). Even more importantly they all know the difference between sign-posting and dialogue.
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