The Bumble Bees Top Collaboration Techniques Mini Site

Overview of The Bumblebees Top Collaboration Techniques Mini Site

This mini site provides concise and well tried techniques in the areas of Team Mobilisation and Team Operations for a wide-range of collaboration scenarios including:

• virtual teams
• cross-functional teams
• collaborative business networks
• virtual communities
• supply chains and clusters

Each tool in the toolbox includes:

• An Introduction to the topic
• The overall process for introducing and using it
• A Detailed Checklist
• A Worked Example/Supporting Spreadsheet

The current toolbox contains the following items

1. Defining team objectives, success criteria and required outcomes
2. Establishing Team Capabilities for the job and spotting the gaps
3. Defining Team Ground Rules
4. Assessing Team Culture and new required behaviours
5. Agreeing the Team Karma ("what’s in it for me?")
6. Effective Personal Collaboration Strategies
7. Conducting Effective Team Meetings
8. Good Team Decision Making
9. Creating network collaboration opportunities
10. Assessing a teams beliefs versus High Performing Teams
11. Profiling a virtual team
12. Collaborative Document Development
13. Autonomous Behavior Modelling
14. Team Social Network Analysis

15. Team Member Feelings about change: the 10 second test

16. How to detect an “Inverted Team”

17. Organizational Team Turbocharger Tool

18. Virtual team satisfaction assessment

19. Identify team communication problems via “communication distance”

20. An holistic test of collaboration: the 3 greens check

21. Assess Team culture: the 3-colour technique

22. Spot Team member “responsibility” problems

Even though I have described many proven techniques for collaboration there is something you should know… you only need 3 of these techniques to sort out 90% of the problems in the team setup phase ..... and if this phase is not done properly none of the other phases really matter anyway!

So if you need to sort out your team or group in a real hurry - check out The 3 magic techniques for setting up any team

Even though I have described many proven techniques for collaboration there is something you should know… you only need 3 of these techniques to sort out 90% of the problems in the team setup phase ..... and if this phase is not done properly none of the other phases really matter anyway!

So if you need to sort out your team or group in a real hurry - check out The 3 magic techniques for setting up any team

The 3 magic techniques for setting up any team

Even though I have described many proven techniques for teams there is something you should know…

SECRET No # 1

You only need 3 of them to sort out 90% of the problems in the team setup phase

And if this phase is not done properly none of the other phases really matter anyway

A team in this phase must get 4 things straight:

1. WHY should we work together?

2. WHAT should we do together?

3. WHO should do what?

4. HOW should we work together?

So if there are 4 questions then how come only 3 techniques?

SECRET No # 2

You always have to answer 2 of the questions at any one time - never just one – like double entry book-keeping! Imagine the 4 interlocking rings of the audi car company:

SECRET No #3

So heres the 3 magic techniques:

Instant Team answers the Why and the What

Team Karma answers the What and the Who

Ground Rules answers the Who and the How

Tech#01: Defining team objectives, success criteria and required outcomes

1. Defining team objectives, success criteria and required outcomes

It is seems obvious stuff but surprisingly is omitted or carelessly done by many teams and networks.

If you don't do this one properly then all the rest won't matter - things to be considered here are:

• Team Objectives
• Phases and Timelines
• Sponsor(s)
• Customer(s)
• Outputs
• Leading Indicators
• Deliverables
• Outcomes
• Critical Success Factors
• Risks
• SWOT
• USPs/Uniques (for networks)
• Competitor/Collaborator Identification

Tech#02: Establishing Team Capabilities for the job and spotting the gaps

This technique is used by a business network or organisational team to assess its collective capabilities and then compare this with what capabilities are required to achieve its objectives.

There are 4 main steps

Step 1 – Create the Blank Capability Matrix

Step 2 – Consolidate the Team Capabilities

Step 3 – Review and refine the Consolidated Team Capabilities

Step 4 – Identify the required capabilities

The technique is supported by a spreadsheet to a) gather individual capabilities, b) consolidate them and c) create a visual capability heatmap

Tech#03: Agreeing real and effective team ground rules

Keywords

Ground-Rules, Etiquette, Norms, Standards, Sanctions, Trust, Issues, Conflicts, Information-Sharing, Decision-Making, Meetings, Induction, Mentoring, Communications

Context

It is important for a Team to establish ground rules for how it intends to operate

In my approach to teams I split this into two:

Ground Rules

Covering in general the negative team member behaviours we wish to discourage – this tool addresses Ground Rules.

Team Culture and Behaviors

Covering in general the positive team member and group behaviours we wish to encourage and adopt. Team Culture and Behaviors are covered in a separate tool (Tool#8).

Applicability

* virtual teams

* cross-functional teams

* collaborative business networks

* virtual communities

* supply chains and clusters

Click here for a spreadsheet of typical ground rules which you can tailor for your group.

Tech#04: Assessing team culture and required behavior changes

Identifying Critical Team Behavior Changes

Step 1 - Identify the current member experience of Teams - "OldTeam"

Step 2 - Identify the required approach to Teams for this project to succeed - "NewTeam"

Step 3 - Establish Most Critical Team Behavior Challenges

Step 4 - Establish Priority Team Behavior Changes

All references are to a team behaviour change spreadsheet.

This technique uses "Cultural Polarity" based on international best practice in categorising different business cultures with specific extensions for teams.

This technique will also identify if conflicting dominant sub-cultures exist within a team.

Tech#05: Creating The Team Karma

How to balance personal team member expectations with inputs

Here’s what the leader needs to do – step by step!

Click on this link to see a fully completed karma spreadsheet which you can tailor for your group

Tech#06: Effective team member personal co-operation strategies

Natures most effective co-operation strategy

Most team members don’t have a practical technique for what they do when another team member lets them down. 'Win – win' is an outcome not an effective collaboration strategy.

Without a personal collaboration strategy many team members inevitably feel taken advantage off by others and simply “silently disengage” from the team in terms of their commitment and participation.

This technique uses nature’s most effective collaboration strategy “Tit for Tat”.

Tech#07: How to run great team meetings

It is said meetings take minutes and waste hours

but it does not have to be like that.

This technique provides:

• A Roadmap for “focusing” a virtual project team
• Guidance on where the different types of meeting fit in team development
• Running good Operational Meetings
• Effective Strategic/Senior Management Meetings
• The Perfect Brainstorm

Detailed Technique Description

Tech#08: 7 Team decision-making techniques

“The way a team decides to decide is one of the most important decisions it makes!”

Though fashion occasionally underscores one or another of these approaches, there is no right or wrong way to decide an issue.

The important thing is that the team decide, in advance, what decision-making method will be used. No surprises.

If members are appraised of the process, even autocratic methods acquire the consent and blessing of all.

Depending on the type of decision an effective virtual team will discuss and agree on one of these 7 styles – BEFORE the decision-making discussion starts.

Typically the leader of the team describes the decision which needs to be made and proposes a decision-making style which is then discussed and agreed.

A good leader will also state how the decision about the decision-making style will be concluded (usually through style #2 or style #7).

Tech#09: Instant Team or Network

The Collaborative Opportunity Mapping Process

Objectives

• To find if real collaboration opportunities exist within a potential network
• Motivate the network companies to consider collaborative networks
• Create new potential channel partners for the companies

Format/Approach

A full day (10-4pm) workshop or two half-day (3 hour) workshops

For overview click

For full process click

Tech#10: The seven beliefs of high performing teams

Beliefs are what makes the difference between good and "high performance" In this article I suggest the seven hidden beliefs of high performing teams are :

1. Clear and Public Accountability
2. Trusted Competency
3. Give and Take
4. Total Transparency
5. Shared Glory
6. Meaningful Mission Value
7. Outcome Optimism

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Tech#11: Profiling a Team

How to avoid nasty surprises in supporting virtual teams

From my experience of working with teams, often due to business deadline pressures, we do not spend enough time at the start taking a quick look at the overall shape of the team. This means we often start trying to apply our toolkit of team effectiveness techniques and supporting virtual technology before we fully understand the precise nature of the complex, living and multi-faceted entity we are dealing with.

This generally results in nasty surprises which occur too late to do much about them. For example in a previous article I discussed three broad types of teams – “Recommending”, “Managing” and “Doing” Teams and the very different problems they each have.

Recommender Teams are often part-time; great for reviewing work but can lack a “team engine” for getting detailed work done.

Managing Teams are often staffed with senior executives who have serious time management challenges and are unlikely to engage with traditional team communication and meeting approaches.

Doer teams are great for doing things but their networks may be limited to their own functional areas which can blind them to some innovation and cross-functional opportunities.

Tech#12: Best Practices in Collaborative Document Development

Text is often the main output of many teams however effective collaborative authoring requires an understanding of:

• The stages in collaborative document development
• The different collaborative authoring styles
• Effective approaches for document review
• Which “channels”, technologies, tools and techniques are appropriate for which activities
• How to recognise and avoid some of the potential difficulties including “Information Overload”
• How to plan a collaborative document production

Detailed Technique Description

Tech#13: Autonomous Responsible Team Member Behavior

Creating controlled self-management in teams

Almost all team leaders want their teams to take more ownership and initiative.

However team leaders may shy away from “self-managed” teams because of a perception that this would be an abdication of their leadership or the fear of it leading to anarchy and chaos.

This technique identifies 7-generic behaviours of “responsible autonomous team members” which can be discussed and refined to suit the specific team, members, environment and objectives.

Tech#14: Team Social Network Analysis

Good teams have a network of weak and strong ties

Most teams are highly dependent on external relationships but do not have a way to identify and nurture these relationships so that they are there when they are needed. You can't do this 'just-in-time'.

Also most collaborative product is produced by sub-groups within the team and reviewed by wider groups. If these sub-groups are not right or missing key players or involve some poor relationships then this will damage the team’s productivity and quality.

This technique uses best practices in social network mapping to identify the relationships, both strong and weak, the team needs for success and the actions it needs to take to nurture these relationships.

These team network actions are for the whole team and not just the leaders as they need to build on existing team relationships where they exist

Tech#15: Team Member Feelings about change: the 10 second test

Instantly discover a persons main worry about an upcoming change by how they speak just five words: “We cant do that here”.

I found this in a book a long time ago – “The Secret Language of Success: Using Body Language to Get What You Want” by Dr. David Lewis (1989).

I confess I never got round to testing it properly but it sounded intriguing so I pass it on - "buyer beware".

Imagine you are the leader of a new team or network.

How can you quickly find out what each team member's number one concern is about working in this scenario?

Dr Lewis recommends you get each of them to repeat the following 5 words out loud without thinking about it too much:

"We can’t do that here”

Listen carefully to which of the five words they stress – if its:

1. We – they are worried about their Identity
2. Can’t – they are worried about their beliefs and values
3. Do – they are worried about their skills
4. That – they are worried about their behavior
5. Here – they are worried about the environment

It might be nonsense, they might laugh at you or you might just learn something important about one of your fellow team members!

Tech#16: How to detect an “Inverted Team”

Isaac Asimov, forecasted the coming age of Robots and developed the famous Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov’s laws can be easily adapted to teams to determine if your team is Performing or Inverted (a team where the individual, team and other member priorities have got muddled).

But can these laws also be applied to teams?

I believe the answer is yes - these three laws not only apply but can be used to do an instant health check on a team by asking just three questions

Tech#17: Organizational Team Turbocharger Tool

Here is a brilliantly simple technique, which I call The 4 Team Stressors, for waking a team up to some serious problems which, in the pressures of work, it has somehow managed to totally ignore and which might just sink it!

Tech#18: Virtual team satisfaction assessment

The Virtual Team Opportunity Iceberg is a very simple tool for letting you and your fellow team members instantly spot the potential for improvement in your teams. It's not intended to be precise - a show of hands will do - but it can be a great team ice-breaker!

Download spreadsheet

Just answer these 3 simple questions individually and then aggregate the results for your team.

Q1. EFFECTIVENESS: Do our work teams mostly fulfil their potential?

Q2. SATISFACTION: Do we get as much satisfaction from our work teams as our social groups and voluntary teams?

Q3. TECHNOLOGY: Do virtual technologies noticeably improve our work teams performance?

(Typical responses are Q1: 5-10%, Q2: 15-20%, Q3: 30-40%)

Tech#19: Identify team communication problems via “communication distance”

Gerold Keefer, in a paper "Project Success Prediction Based on Communication Reliability Analysis"  suggests that the effectiveness of a teams communication can be assessed in 2 dimensions: Reliability and Distance.

Communication Reliability is well understood.

However the concept of Communication Distance is novel and could be very useful for virtual teams.

Distance attempts to measure how much is getting in the way of our team communications due to various factors.

The greater this ‘distance’ the more chance of miscommunications.

Gerold suggests 5 factors which contribute to Communications distance in software engineering teams :

1. Geography
2. Clarity of Focus
3. Team Cohesion
4. Team Experience
5. Process Capability

The concept of communications distance could be applied to any kind of team and the factors which contribute to it defined accordingly.

Tech#20: An holistic test of collaboration: the 3 greens check

Much has been written about why people collaborate and the pay-offs. Key concepts include Tit for Tat and The Prisoners Dilemma discussed in Dysfunctional teams: bioteam them. In this article I introduce three critical tests which I call the '3 greens check' by which any collaboration should be continuously judged by all its participants: Test1: Is it working for us? Test2: Is it working for me? Test3: Does it feel fair?

Tech#21: Team culture: the 3-colour technique

The cultures of organisations and teams can be colour coded according to Jerry Connor and Lee Sears authors of “Why Work is Weird”. Red is achievement oriented, Yellow is people focused and Blue values Professional Expertise.

Most teams have a dominant colour but with shades of the other two. This approach can be very helpful as the first stage in harnessing culture in a positive way is always to recognise it.

Tech#22: Spot Team member “responsibility” problems

One of the main dilemmas for team leaders and members is the thorny issue of responsibility. We often fixate on the problem of leaders and members not taking enough responsibility but according to Dr Scott Peck they can also do damage if they try to take too much!