The Bumble Bee: Ken Thompsons blog on bioteams, virtual collaboration and team dynamics

Time 2020-09-26 20:04:56

Web Name: The Bumble Bee: Ken Thompsons blog on bioteams, virtual collaboration and team dynamics

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Collective Intelligence For Teams Inspired From Nature December 11, 2019 | article by Max Bhanabhai in Collaboration Research & Science (59)Whilst it's true that the rise Artificial Intelligence threatens industries and jobs alike, it also presents an opportunity for humans and teams to embrace the new paradigm by staying one step ahead and making themselves smarter and more capable in harnessing collective intelligence. The term collective intelligence refers to the resulting knowledge or wisdom that ensues when many agents or individuals are involved in a group and where this type of 'intelligence' cannot exist through an individual endeavour. It is therefore important that in the face of tectonic shifts in technology and the rise of intelligent machines coupled with the threat of automation; teams and humans embrace a form of 'swarming' in order to not only future proof themselves but create the right type of environment to achieve outcomes that could not be reached through individual pursuits. In this article, I refer to various examples of how Nature's team achieve this 'swarm intelligence' and appropriate how these can be achieved in the organisational setting through Bioteaming.Customer Intelligence and Teamwork Drive InnovationNovember 24, 2019 | article by Max Bhanabhai in Think Differently (35)Innovation happens in many places and has many faces. Enterprises are required to nurture internal processes that work in sync like ecosystems to encourage front line intelligence to feed ideas through to management so that services, products, processes and teamwork ensues collaboratively to deliver benefits to the Value Chain. This requires effective team work and a supporting methodology that aims to treat your team more like an agile soccer team if you think about it so that anyone can effectively take control of the ball and score the goal. In the book "Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice" by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen; the core concept of the "Job To Be Done" theory is introduced which is hugely relevant for enterprises wanting to leverage collaborative team work in creating value. The theory stresses that in order to drive organisational product, service and process excellence; we need to focus on alleviating the forces of anxiety, inertia, substitution and resistance across both the customer and employee value chain. Christensen articulates a mechanism to achieve this by firstly creating "specs" that define what outcomes and values are required in order to lead to customers or employees firing old methods, solutions, products and services and adopting new ones. In doing so, the product development team (as an example of a department vested with solving consumer problems) will be satisfied as they have induced consumer adoption either by bringing non-consumption into consuming contexts or working on incremental product and service innovation. Christensen states that "The circumstance is fundamental to defining the job (and finding a solution for it), because the nature of the progress desired will always be strongly influenced by the circumstance". This is important as traditionally, managers usually follow one of four primary organising principals in their innovation quest (or some composite therefore) being product attributes, customer characteristics, trends and/or competitive response. The challenge here is that these are not bad or wrong but they are essentially sampling of the most common and are insufficient and therefore not predictive of customer behaviours. In this article, I allude to how the Bioteaming action rules across the Organization, Execution and Connectivity Zone facilitates the dynamics required to solve the 'job to be done'. | Permalink continue readingCommunication Frameworks For Virtual Teams Inspired From NatureNovember 15, 2019 | article by Max Bhanabhai in Virtual Teams (49)I previously wrote about the most effective communication methodology using pheromone messaging inspired from Nature to identify and augment a robust, team focused unified collaboration system here. In a followup article, I write about how online collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams embody the tenets of the pheromone messaging system that Nature has employed to foster effective collaboration and teamwork within their environment. The integration of these virtual collaboration tools leads to the incubation of high performing virtual teams. Through simple changes in mindset and a reconfiguration of existing protocols, organisations can benefit from increased productivity, communication efficiency and trigger serendipitous collaboration within, across and beyond enterprises. | Permalink continue readingCreating Effective Team Communication SystemsNovember 10, 2019 | article by Max Bhanabhai in Collaboration Research & Science (59)Project and enterprise teams across all organisation types are perpetually exposed to a stream of information flows that ebb the natural tempo of processes, policies, system mechanics, codes of conduct and collaboration protocols. These collectively bring upon the information and knowledge economy and the biggest problem here is that everyone is constantly in flux amidst a conundrum of competing batches of instruction, directives and stimuli whilst being overwhelmed with attention deficits. So how do we nurture distributed and collective intelligence in a setting where directives, knowledge and information are constantly fighting for prioritisation? How do teams effectively manage communication and leverage unified communication platforms to drive smart behaviours that lead to focused outcomes? We do this by looking at how Nature has employed the oldest and most evolved form of biological signalling, using chemicals to communicate through smell and taste, but appropriating it for the organisational context. | Permalink continue readingCompetition and Collaboration Creates High Performing TeamsOctober 29, 2019 | article by Max Bhanabhai in Collaboration Research & Science (59)Many of us have heard the story about the classical race between the tortoise and hare but did you know that there is a version 2.0 of that metaphor? In essence, there was a re-match as the rabbit wanted to prove that being the fastest and ergonomically conducive animal, it would win the second race. Here, the tortoise was obviously left behind but the hare came to a major roadblock in their race track i.e. the bank of a river. How could it possibly transcend this obstacle when it has no mechanics to swim and isn't designed by Nature to even glide over water? The tortoise eventually caught up and in seeing the hare; offered to carry the hare on its back so that they could both cross the river bank and reach the finish line together! | Permalink continue readingImage Source: Wolf Pack Explains 'Alpha' BehaviorThe law of requisite variety (a term originally rooted as the first law of cybernetics) states that "If a system is to be stable, the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled" . In enterprise contexts, this means that that teams and organisations need to nurture their ability to handle dynamic and complex changes stemming from the external environment and have enough structured capacity to react with collective resources in the face of these stimuli so as to not fail and become a 'un-viable system'. | Permalink continue readingThe Prisoners Dilemma, Trust, Cooperation and Effective TeamsJuly 1, 2017 | article by Ken Thompson in Team Leadership Development (78)Image Source: Chalkdust MagazineI have been reading Lord Sacks daily thoughts "Celebrating Life" and was impressed by his piece on "The Prisoners Dilemma". The Dilemma in a nutshell is that 2 prisoners are given the chance to do a deal and betray each other. If you want more background I have written about the dilemma previously and it also features heavily in my new book. Lord Sacks is the UK's chief Rabbi and highlights one vital aspect of the dilemma which I had not previously paid enough attention to - the fact that the two prisoners are not allowed to speak to each other! | Permalink continue readingHigh Performing Teams Video Course launched by Ken ThompsonJune 21, 2017 | article by Ken Thompson in Team Leadership Development (78)High Performing Teams and High Performing Virtual Teams are topics very close to the heart of almost every leader irrespective of the size of their organization. In this new course Ken Thompson blends material from his four books on teams into a modern and totally up-to-date course on how to successfully build and sustain High Performing Teams in today's virtual 24x7 world. | Permalink continue readingInstant Team: Game-Based Learning for Accelerated Team DevelopmentJune 14, 2017 | article by Ken Thompson in Team Leadership Development (78)Sadly, you cannot create a High-Performing Team in a day or afternoon or even over lunch. However, if you are put in the position where you, as a leader, simply must get the very best out of a group of your colleagues in very short timescales you can fast-track them towards more effective team-working using 3 simple ingredients:1. Mechanisms such as competitive business simulation games or other short team challenges. 2. Briefing for the teams on these challenges with specific deadlines and goals but without any instruction about how they are to behave other than that "they are a team".3. Facilitated team self-analysis sessions at the end of each round or chunk of work in the challenges to let teams review what kind of collaboration they are employing and how they might improve it. | Permalink continue readingThe Superintelligent Organization: create total competitive advantage?April 26, 2017 | article by Ken Thompson in Virtual Teams (49)I have been studying one of the most highly regarded books on the future of AI (Artificial Intelligence), "Superintelligence - paths, dangers, strategies" by Nick Bostrom. Bostrom meticulously reviews the five most likely paths to "superintelligence" which he defines "as any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of (individual) humans in virtually all domains of interest." One of Bostrom's conclusions is totally unexpected and requires immediate consideration within today's major organizations and enterprises! | Permalink continue readingThe Huffington Post: Biohacking the Organization July 21, 2016 | article by Ken Thompson in Bioteams Features (110)An excellent article on Bioteams by Doug Kirkpatrick, US Partner at NuFocus Strategic Group concludes: "The power and elegance of bioteaming is indisputable. Whether organizational leaders will detach themselves from the perceived security blanket of traditional, artificial hierarchy in order to fully experience that power is another question entirely?" | Permalink continue readingHow good a team leader are you? Try my Team Leadership Assessment!April 12, 2016 | article by Ken Thompson in Team Leadership Development (78)As a team leader you have two distinct leadership responsibilities - Managing the Individuals and Managing the Team. Leaders who fixate on managing the individuals tend to have happy teams which unfortunately under-perform in terms of deadlines, quality, customer satisfaction and budgets! Leaders who obsess on managing the team may hit most of these targets but at the expense of team member Alienation, Burnout, Compliance, Disinterest and eventually Exiting (easy to remember - ABCDE!). Great Team Leaders manage both responsibilities. Here is a simple framework with a nice supporting spreadsheet to help you assess and improve your leadership: | Permalink continue reading

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