A balanced teamJohan Oskarsson, Senior Consultant at Knowit

At Knowit Breakfast seminars 2013-05-15 & 16

The super efficient

highly productive

ultra responsible

customer focused ideal

agile team

Does happy teams perform better?

Let’s get theoretical

Meet: the META LEARNING MODELLosada & Heaphy 2004

“the ability of a team to dissolve attractors that close possibilities for effective action and to evolve attractors that open possibilities for effective action”

META LEARNING

“attractors are like a gravitational field pulling behaviors toward it”

The most flexible is the chaotic attractor, known as strange attractor, or complexor. Meaning complex order.

Each one of these attractors are associated with

DIFFERENT PERFORMANCE LEVELS

Point Limited Complexor

Bipolar dimensions in

verbal communication

other

self

inqu

iry

ad

voca

cy

positive/negative

Emotional space

[positive]

Codification

[negative]

[inquiry]

[advocacy]

[self]

[other]

“that’s a good idea”

“dumbest thing I’ve ever herd”

“please explain more”

“this is how it is”“our team is the best”

“that team over there is

the best”

The goal is to increase the

emotional spaceother

self

inqu

iry

ad

voca

cy

Emotional space

positive/negative

Dissolving attractors

“undoing hypothesis”, positive emotions undo the effect of negative emotions

Evolving attractors

“broaden-and-build”, positive emotions broaden one’s awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and action. Innovation!

{8-)

other

self

inqu

iry

ad

voca

cy

High performance

Medium performance

Low performance

positive/negative

positive/negative = 5.614

inquiry/advocacy = 0.935

self/other = 1.143

{8-)

Hence, happy teams perform

better

Balance is key

Diversity helps

Self-diagnosticteam must learn

What can we do?

360 Poker

• Better understanding• Multiple perspectives• Balanced evaluations• Leveled feedback

19

Proximity Management

• Move manager’s desk to the teams• Management by walking around• Gemba walk / go & see / face-time

20

Kudo Box

• Don’t promise rewards in advance• Reward publicly, not privately• Reward peers, not subordinates

21

22

Celebrate!

• “What did we learn?”• “What did we do well?”• (reinforce learning & good

practices)

Identity Symbols

• The team defines its own identity• Name, logo, mascotte, website, etc.• Generates team work / team spirit

23

Exploration Days

• Everyone spends one day of learning

• Try to deliver something within 24 hrs

• Demo the results to colleagues24

Slack Time

• Aim for 80% utilization of people• Use the remainder (20%) for slack• Use slack for experiments and

emergencies25

Self-Organized Team Formation• Let people organize themselves in

teams• However, give them some

constraints• Diversity, team size, team duration,

etc.26

Business Guilds

• Let people organize around certain topics

• Such as specific technologies or disciplines

• Have them form virtual communities

27

”Management is to important to be left to managers”

Help team manage themselves.

{8

-)

Johan Oskarsson

@johanoskarsson

www.captaintrouble.com