Ripened teams lessons from plants
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Transcript of Ripened teams lessons from plants
Ali Anani
And
Bas de Baar
Ripened Teams
Lessons from Plants
Opening Thoughts
• When we look at plants we get important lessons in successful information distribution.
• When we consider fruits we learn a lot about cultivating team success
Lessons in information distribution
Goals Achievement
Plants have a goal: to disperse their seeds
To achieve this goal plants attract dispersing agents (animals) by giving them fleshy parts. Animals eat the fleshy part and in the process disperse seeds
The plants answer the question that animals ask “what is in it for me?”
Plants Have Goals Too
Fruits give off ethylene gas
Faster ripening of fruits
Animals to eat the fleshy portion
More dispersion of seeds
Goals of Plants:
Seeds Dispersion
Goal Achieved
Plants cover their hidden goals with sugar
Goals- Time Relationship
More ripened plant
Less acid
More sugar
More animal
attraction
Suggested Business Distribution Applications
What distribution ideas we may get from plants?
Attract Potential Distributors
Sugar-coat your goal
An Example- Co-authorship
• One of the authors of this presentation (AA) has the hidden goal of attracting more viewership of this presentation. What is in it for me? The answer is wider viewership
• The other author (BdB) has great experiences and a website that attracts thousands of readers
• Equally important is that the articles by Bas gets embeds in other blogs such as Project Server Blog
An Example- Co-authorship
• AA not only benefits from the experiences of Bas, but ensures that he presentation gets wider distribution
• Check the number of embeds of this presentation in few days
• Presentations by AA allow Bas to offer quality content to his readers and benefits him directly
Creative Sugars
• Think of creative sugars to attract distributors • So, If you want effective information flow you• have to find the sweet, so people want to
distribute the information. The sugar can be • found in making it fun, social and playful• What in it is for me? This is your sugar covering
your cake (goal)
What is your social sugar?
A Simple Formula
• To get distributed, viewed, embedded, or whatever you want use this simple formula
• Give people what they want in which
embedded is what you want
Lessons in Cultivating Successful Teams
Ripening Behavior and Employees Behavior
• Not all fruits and vegetables have similar ripening behavior
• So do employees
Why is the tomato such an uncertain hit and miss?
• Why is the tomato such an uncertain hit and miss? • With roughly 400 acids, sugars and other volatile elements
comprising the tomato its not surprising that they can be a complex thing to harvest. The constantly varying ratios of these unstable compounds within the tomato dictate what the state of your final crop will be. The colour change from green to red, for example, is indicative of a chemical transition within the fruit, as the acid balance moves from the weaker malic acid to the sharper citric acid concentration, and the dominant sugars are shifting from glucose to the sweeter fructose
• Convertible sugars and convertible sugary goals
Ripening Behavior and Employees Behavior
• For example, tomato goes in a six-stage ripening process from green to red
Tomato Ripening Colors at each Stage
Green
Green
to T
anni
sh
Varyin
g sh
ades
of c
olor
sPin
k
Ligh
t RedRed
020406080100
Stages of Tomato RipeningMaximum Color Percentage
Green Stage
Breaker Stage
Turning Stage
Pink Stage
Light Red Stage
Red Stage
Stages of Tomato Ripening and Team Ripening
Green Stage
Breaker Stage…
Turning Stage
Red Stage
Green stage of forming teams
Minor changes of teams. The team starts to enter the storming phase
Teams turning from storming to norming
Pink Stage More advanced norming stage
Light Red Stage Performing stage of teams
High performance stage of teams
Fruit Ripening Stages: Find Out Which Fruits Never Ripe After Picking and Which Do http://www.suite101.com/content/fruit-ripening-stages-a74859#ixzz1DBU8wE00
Derived Business Lessons
• Tomato ripening stages are reflective of team development stages
• Ripening starts from the core, with the outer surface changing last. By the same token, it is important to build a solid core of teams before “its outer skin” may reflect its maturity
• Core behaviors and values dictate changes for teams• Blame culture, mistrust and loafing (Loafing is the tendency for
individuals to lessen their effort when they are part of a group – also as the Ringelmann Effect) are the indicators for low productivity and that performance is deteriorating. We need powerful and yet simple indicators to indicate performance.
Derived Business Lessons- 2
• A very interesting lesson is that ripening increases the attractive power of tomato; so businesses have to develop similar ideas. Tomato decomposes the complex starch sugar into simple sugar molecules that increase the sweetness of tomato. Business that have developed ideas along these line are successful. Frequent Traveler Programs, for example, increase their attractiveness by increasing the rate of collecting points as the traveler stays longer with the company.
As fruits decompose complex sugars into simple sugars with increased sweetness, so decompose your offers into simple, but become sweeter with time
Derived Business Lessons- 3
Decompose incentives. Think of starch-like incentives that decompose into simpler, but sweeter incentives
Ripening and Employee Quality
Passive employees who will remain disengaged
“Cosmetic” employees with sweet appearance, but no sweetening value
Slow, but sure employees with sweetness value increasing with time
Fruits That Never Ripen After Picking
Fruits That Ripen in Appearance but not in Sweetness After Picking
Fruit That Only Ripens After Picking
Fruit That Ripens in Every Way After Harvest
Fully engaged employees
Compare Results
• The previous slide provides a different approach to the work by Joyce on Team Interaction- Part 1. This article is worthy of the readers’ time, in which team behavior is divided into four groups. These are: the “mummy”, the "windbag”, the “Rambler” and the “homesteader”.
Ripening Leaders
• Great managers stimulate the release of ripening agents so that workers productivity go higher
• Like tomatoes and ripening fruits, good managers release something like ethylene that ripen employees and put them in their respective sweet spots; promoting their productivity in the process
Ripen Your Team
• The container of the fruits influence the ripening process.
• Tomatoes in a brown bag ripen perfectly. Making them more sweet. The container around your team determine team success.
• The brown bag of team success consists of 7 elements
Team Success Requires Proper Goal Ripening
Team Success
Poisonous- Free Members
Balanced of Proper Sizing
Flowing Communication
Self-Organizing
Goal-Oriented
Adaptive and Avoiding Group Think)
Trust
Conclusion
• Creative management ideas may be cultivated from the ripening process of fruits
• Understanding nature drives the understanding of leadership, team building and the generation of new ideas
• Green metaphors lead to green leadership