| Bunch of Grapes: |
One of our key interests across the last 5 years is how to really build a self organized team. We have worked with many networked or virtual teams that exhibited some of the characteristics of self-organisation but who lacked a framework to understand their practice and how to take that practice forward.
As a way of contrasting the practice of traditional organisation, team working and networked self organised teams we used a simulation game of Poker where the participants first play alone, then in given teams then in self organising cells and then finally as a self organised group. After the Poker games, which last for about one hour, we have a period of reflection about how people feel when working in the different formations, when would such formations be relevant and what formations and when are relevant for their own work.
There is often a period of 'enlightenment' when groups realise that the traditional method is based on a military model where people need to follow orders and that it might be valid in times of deep crisis when there is little time for 'democratic dialogue'. They attest that it is not valid in their own work but they agree that the organisation as a whole is rather strange as it does employ such a working model, but only at the top of the organisation, especially to do with change. They draw a model of organisation which looks like an orange with a pointed hat on top.
The second model of team working which is analogeous to small sports teams seems to be valid for them when they work on specific small projects where one person is named a team leader and where they all share a small work space for a limited period of time for example during 'bug killing' at the end of a software project. Many of them report that they like this form of working as long as the team leader is a facilitative leader.
The third model seems to be generally valid for their typical dispersed, virtual, networked working where there are no clear leaders, where people take turns in being leaders, where the project is unclear. In this complex systems thinking, given sufficient connectivity amongst the people , we find that the 'free' system can self organise overall to a state called the edge of chaos. It is from this conceptual model that the group then draws some practical elements for their self organized working and then we think about how would we improve or self-organise their work practices. There is, like always, a realisation that communication and exchange of ideas, beliefs, values and practices need to be improved in order to have more 'generative' relationships and to truly add value through 'diversity' rather than forming defensive cliques and fighting such diversity. At a group level they realise that they do not share a deep common purpose and this is what hinders their cohesiveness and trust. We work to define this common purpose and some simple, guiding principles. We put together action plans as to how to improve the generative exchanges and work on defining the format , process and content of different styles of meetings (single loop, double and triple loop ) within their 24/7 global environment.