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.

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.

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!

The 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'.

I 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!

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.

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.

On the road to Effective Team Collaboration there seems to be two intermediate phases of 'naïve collaboration' which many teams seem to go through - Hyper-Communication and Over-Delegation.

The word 'RAPPORT' is an excellent mnemonic for remembering the 7 key elements of a great Team Game Plan as RAPPORT is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as: 'A close and harmonious relationship in which the groups concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well.'

So to have RAPPORT in your team you need to quickly agree your team's:

ROLES
AGREEMENTS
PROCESSES
PRIORITIES
ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES
RESULTS
TARGETS

My friend Charles Jennings who introduces the book kindly notes in his foreword that 'it provides a deep analysis and clear guidance to help practitioners develop effective social game-based learning solutions'.

** BREAKING NEWS **

*** Stop Press Ken's new book on teams is out A Systematic Guide to High Performing Teams ***