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
Mobile phone users: are we now cyborgs
The term cyborg is used to designate an organism which is a mixture of organic and synthetic parts so designed to enhance its abilities via technology. William Mitchell a professor at MIT Media Lab believes that through our mobile devices we are all becoming mobile cyborgs and its for the better. In his book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City which he discusses in an interview with James Harkin Mitchell describes how the new communications technologies have overlaid our city spaces with central nervous systems connecting us into the wireless ether via our mobile devices which act as umbilical cords to anchor us into the information society's digital infrastructure.
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Biological teams live
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Our old friend the spider gets a lot of bad press. For example he/she has been used as an example of the weakness of centralised leadership models versus so-called "leaderless organisations" in The Starfish and The Spider. However spiders can teach teams, enterprises and networks two very important lessons: Strategic Readiness and Appropriate Response.
Fantastic picture & comments pl send me more individual devlopment poster i.e. good observer ,team work ,goal setting, time manegment,effactive communication etc.