INSYNC
Bio-teaming : taking a cue from nature
Today’s organisational teams are much more complex than what they were a decade ago. Virtual teams are replacing traditional co-located teams. These virtual teams are large, widely dispersed and the team members work in different time zones. Rapid advancements in communication technology have paved the way for the emergence of virtual teams. Face to face communication is minimal and they depend to a large extent on e-mails, SMSes and instant messages to exchange information.
Despite the availability of high-speed communication technology, the major challenge present day organisations face is to increase the speed and responsiveness of their teams. Project failure rate is alarmingly high due to co-ordination problems.
Ken Thompson, a team dynamics expert, has done extensive research on the most successful teams to understand their methods of interaction with each other and how they achieve perfect co-ordination through non-verbal communication. According to him nature’s teams link every move to speed in action. They transmit information relating to threats and opportunities in the surrounding environment. They have evolved a simple approach to communicate urgent information widely and instantly by sending out just-in time (JIT) information and letting every one take action independently. For example, if an ant spots a predator, it immediately broadcasts the information to the other ants through scent trails. Similarly, when a honeybee spots a good nectar spot, it does the waggle dance to show the other bees where it is. Each team member takes immediate action independently to overcome a threat or to grab an opportunity.
There are three most important principles underlying the natural team’s interactions:
• They operate as self-managed teams. This means there is no single leader but every member is a leader in some domain.
• They do not issue orders. There are no rigid permission structures. Upon receiving vital information from any team member, all the others take appropriate action independently just in time.
• The communication is only one way. They do not wait for or expect replies. Thus they act, they do not ask questions.
Ken Thompson has introduced a concept called Bio-teaming. It is about building organisational teams on the natural principles that most successful teams follow. Though the information exchanged by human teams is much more complex, we can still pick a leaf or two from nature’s way of communicating to enhance the speed and agility of organisational teams. Changing from the command and control mode to self-managed teams is not easy but certainly worth a trial. Learning from nature implies training team members to expect information rather than orders. They should be able to work out appropriate responses independently. Organisational hierarchy should give way to teams of peers. Every team member should understand that it is not the duty of any single leader. All of them are equally responsible to gather and disseminate information vital to the team as a whole. Also organisational teams work under rigid permission structures. They wait for responses to electronic communications. This method of functioning reduces the team’s speed and responsiveness. The team members should be given sufficient autonomy to act independently. They should be permitted to act on information but their actions should be tracked through regular review sessions.
Just as nature’s teams thrive while acting on natural instincts, the success of high performing teams is based on the following strong beliefs that team members share:
• Every team member is aware of what is expected of him and what he can expect from others.
• Team members believe that each member can perform the job entrusted independently
• Help is forthcoming from the entire team when needed
• Team members receive timely information to take decisions.
• Entire team strongly identifies with the company’s mission
• They are highly confident of accomplishing the mission, successfully crossing every hurdle that comes their way.
Taking cues from nature, according high importance to collective or team intelligence can significantly enhance speed and productivity of human teams.
