One of the challenges for teams is that the achievement of some of their goals are not fully under their own control - they need to be achieved in partnership with, or even in spite of, external parties (stakeholders) who are working to their own agendas and priorities. The Stakeholder Collaboration Game allows teams to simulate increasingly complex scenarios involving multiple goals and multiple stakeholders.

One of the most important things in any team, network or partnership is to define the rules of engagement (aka Ground Rules). The first step is to agree the major "trust destroyers" which would stop collaboration stone dead in its tracks. Enjoy this hilarious 3-minute video clip from Only Fools and Horses where Rodney tricks Del into a solo hang gliding flight to learn how NOT to build trust with somebody.

Sometimes the most obvious business process improvements are totally overlooked and the 'no-brainer' process improvements we confidently implement only make things worse. In today's challenging economic climate understanding the hidden physics of your enterprise's business processes could be the trick which delivers timely and significant performance improvement in your key revenue generation processes.

The huge interest in Serious Games, where gaming technology is used for serious or business purposes, has made it feasible for far-sighted organizations to gain enduring competitive advantage by creating their own business simulation labs to regularly present their senior teams with possible future business scenarios to improve decision-making and to allow the big mistakes to happen in the simulator and not in the business. My new white paper explains how.

One of the most powerful team exercises is to explore team leaders and team members "mental models" of teams, networks and groups. Mental models are the, often invisible, dictators of what actually happens in a team as opposed to what team leaders would like to happen. Here are some practical techniques for uncovering these "icebergs of the mind" before they sink your teams.

When you are leading or facilitating any kind of collaborative business network or venture you need to know that these are very different kinds of team than you encounter inside organisations. These are "bioteams" so-called because each team has a life of its own and the normal team "command and control" simply does not work. To be successful you need to know The Ten Rules for herding cats!

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!

According to Marcus Buckingham in his book The one thing you need to know mediocre leaders think of each of their team members as draughts pieces (interchangeable) but good leaders think of them as chess pieces (unique)...

Is leadership superfluous in a self-managing team? Aren't self-managing teams supposed to be self-sustaining and self-sufficient? Associate Professor Paul Tesluk, writing for INSEAD Knowledge, wants to correct this misconception in a short article with supporting video clip.

When Father Ted finds himself trapped with 7 other priests in Ireland's largest lingerie department he does not panic but appoints himself leader to rescue his colleagues from embarrassment. Enjoy leadership without formal authority in this short video clip (6 mins).