Penguins reveal the true essence of bioteams
Stumble It!Many people have been enchanted by the amazing video “The March of the Penguins” and most know that they have no leader. However few people go on to ask the obvious next question “If they have no leader then how do they know where to go?”....
We all know more than any of us
This is a very important question because it is right at the heart of the difference between traditional human teams and nature’s teams.
The answer is, of course, no one penguin knows where to go but collectively together they know where to go. In other words no single penguin may know the whole route – perhaps only fragments but if you add all these fragments together then the group as a whole know the route.
This is known as ‘collective intelligence’ and is also a key feature of other biological teams such as ant colonies and bird flocks.
Humankind is the only species who trust that a small group of "leaders"can know the best way for their whole group
Human team management is classic 'command and control' leadership – great for warfare but lousy for organisational teams especially when they are distributed or mobile or semi-formal or with loose boundaries.
Biological teams use a style known as “self-organising teams” where instead of relying on a few leaders every member of the group has the potential and capability to be a leader in some domain and at some time.
This is the first pillar of bioteams – converting ‘command and control’ teams with elite leadership structures into ‘self-organising teams’ with distributed peer-peer leadership structures.
This does not mean leaderless teams – nothing could be further from the truth – rather teams with many leaders each of whom operate in different domains - all interacting together in a highly co-operative and effective way.
Recover your lost 'group messaging instincts'
The other major pillar of bioteams is the use of short messages rather than documents to produce effective action – this is described in more detail in Group Messaging Instincts: how to recover them.
For a copy of The Bioteamming Manifesto visit changethis.com where you can download the full 35-page manifesto written by Ken Thompson and Robin Good for free.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
The Truth about Office Life
David Bolchover, author of The Living Dead: The Truth about Office Life, writing for the UK Times Newspaper in “Sickness at work: the big story” asks the big question: Why do smaller companies have fewer absences? And what can the big corporations do?
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Bioteams Features Articles
Bioteaming: Natural Models for Virtual Teams
I presented Bioteaming: Natural Models for Virtual Teams at the Collaborative Tools Conference (CTC2006) at the Seaport Hotel in Boston, MA, on June 22. We discussed what nature's teams might teach us about messaging, swarming, networking and personal collaboration strategies.
Team Swarming: are your team wasps or bees
Sometimes the Bee-team is the A-team: the importance of an automatic team swarm response to threats and opportunities.
Human swarming: the mexican wave
Those who don’t believe that humans can swarm and flock must not have been watching the World Cup in Germany. The Mexican Wave, or La Ola, is a spontaneous activity involving very simple individual behaviors which produces an amazing collective result.
Fantastic picture & comments pl send me more individual devlopment poster i.e. good observer ,team work ,goal setting, time manegment,effactive communication etc.