Four Groups

I stumbled across Ken Thompson’s blog which looks at Bioteams. This is a new idea to me, but I like the sound of self organising teams, developing some of the biological metaphors and applying them to organisations and teams.

Ken’s posted a glossary on bioteams which outlines some of the core ideas. The entry for Bioteams reads

A Bioteam is an organisational team which operates on the principles embodied by natures most successful teams including ants, bees, geese, cells. micro-organisms and termites. All these teams share common traits which have emerged through millions of years evolutionary experience and include self-organisation (autopoiesis), indirect communications (stigmergy) and emergent behavior….

I’m looking forward to learning more and to see how the Bioteams idea overlaps or connects with 4G, or not, as the case may be! If nothing else, it looks like a great metaphor though.