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.

Many networks and communities seem to require constant attention from the leaders or facilitators. Its always the same old people who seem to do all the work. Take away the leader, perhaps because the funding runs out, and the community just withers and dies - sometimes within a matter of weeks. Often this happens because the network has not cultivated the 3 critical dialogues in a community: taking care of business, grooming and emoting. These dialogs must take occur across the 3 key network encounters: one-one, one-many and many-many. Heres how you can make your networks and communities less fragile!

When a group reviews how well they are collaborating they usually discuss two questions: Is it working for us? and Is it working for me? I suggest they have missed a third totally crucial question, Does it feel fair?

In 1964 psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne published a wonderful book Games people play in which he identified the different games people play, often unwittingly, in social situations based on his concept of transaction analysis. People in teams play games too including Freeloader, Pseudo-engager, Chase-me, Senior Partner, Inquisitor, Stop-Starter, Overcommunicator, Email Fixater and Attachmentitis.

One of the biggest problems in teams, communities and networks, whether co-located or virtual, is freeriding (aka freeloading or lurking or loafing) where certain team members do not pull their weight. Here are 5 things you can do about it.

Major Oil Company, Schlumberger, exploits self-organizing virtual communities.

Using Far-Flung Virtual Teams for Managing Knowledge in Global Companies, reports on research into 54 far-flung teams in 31 different companies, including Intel, Textronic and Royal Dutch Shell

Some of the approaches applied to conflict resolution apply equally well to the development of on-line and virtual communities, teams and networks. One of the most interesting is "The Flight of the Flamingos" scenario.

We can learn the secret of rapid evolution from the most evolved non-human species on the planet – but it is not who you think it is!

In 1964 psychiatrist Dr.Eric Berne published a now famous book Games people play in which he identified the different games people play, often unwittingly, in social situations based on his concept of transaction analysis. The advent of the virtual team has created a whole new set of games including Freeloader, Pseudo-engager, Chase-me, Senior Partner, Inquisitor, Stop-Starter, Overcommunicator, Email Fixater and Attachmentitis.