I was introduced to an interesting book and web site, The Organizational Zoo, by Arthur Shelley which offers humorous observations of the characteristics and behaviours of the other creatures in your "organizational Zoo".

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

I am pleased to announce the release of a new Flash-based Bioteams Instant Team Assessment tool which provides an online snapshot of how much a team is operating like a bioteam by calculating its bioteams footprint across 5 key areas: beliefs, leadership, connectivity, execution and organization.

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.

Instead of issuing orders, nature's teams such as ants, geese, dophins, jellyfish and microscopic life forms, function by providing timely information to the team members and then allowing and expecting them to take the appropriate action. Curiously, this information is not provided by the Queen nor a leadership group but by the 'rank and file' members. Team Intelligence provides a team with a much more sensitive and long-range early warning 'radar' than the conventional approach which enables them to spot problems and opportunities sooner and to react to them more effectively.