The intelligent player realises the team is the real star

……the team is the real star

Léon Benjamin, Dec 2014

“The intelligent player realises the team is the real star” Arsene Wenger



• About sei mani

• We create extraordinarily high levels of participation in enterprise collaboration technologies – Vendor neutral

(partners: Jive, Cisco, IBM)

– Proven methodology• Human centric, the

psychology of addiction, behaviour change

• Law of marginal gains, right brain thinking

80% WebEx Adoption$1.1m uplift in Cisco revenue

25%-80% WebEx Adoption (3 months)100% Jabber adoption (group)

Building high performance teams to ‘make the car go faster’

67% WebEx Social adoption6 months

Managed the replacement of BT MeetMe with WebEx. 9k users



• The Big Picture– The networked economy



• The Big Picture– Markets are conversations



• Big Picture– Nature of work has changed

• Until the 1900’s accumulation of knowledge doubled every 100 years

• Today the sum total of human knowledge doubles every 2-3 years

• 70% of all information was created since the internet began

• Average life of an S&P 500 company is 15 years, down from 63 years in the 1930’s

• Just in time learning



• Team work– The next small thing?

Slime mold

The surprising truth about too much talent

Letting go

The story of number 1

NASA: ClickworkersOpen Source, Crowdsourcing



• Team work– Givers take all

• Quiet invasion of US intelligence community following 9/11 tragedy– Surveys, interviews, analysis of thousands of analysts

• 64 agencies, multi year research

• Identified factors that drive team effectiveness– Clear vision, challenging/rewarding work, recognition, appropriate rewards,

strong leadership, well defined roles and responsibilities• NOT ONE of these was a predictor of team effectiveness

– Any guesses of which factor enabled researchers to accurately predict team effectiveness?

• Are you a giver, taker or matcher?– Most organisations are ‘matchers’

• Improves collaboration but favours are exchanged in closed loops– Givers can be exploited by takers, reverting team dynamic back to matching

• Solutions?– Reciprocity rings

• Pharma & professional services in US have made major breakthroughs in this area



• Team work– Barriers

• People are unwilling to go outside their own unit to seek input from others

Not-invented-here

• People are unwilling to help and share what they knowHoarding

• People who look for information and people who cannot easily find themSearch

• People are unable to transfer knowledge easily from one place to anotherTransfer



• Team work– Change comes from within

• Communication mainly inside a group• People who work together develop an

insular cultureInsular culture

• Don’t want to cross status lines or are penalized for doing so

• People tend to “choose the right pond” Status gap

• Deep-seated belief that people should be able to solve their own problems instead of asking for help

Self-reliance

• Do not want to reveal problems because may be interpreted as failure or vulnerability

Fear

“lose the fear and you will thrive”



• Change comes from within– Institutional thinking versus network thinking

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a community. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” Jane Howard



• Summarising– The team is the real star

• People, teams and culture– Network centric organisation out performs command and control– In a high performance teams you aren't afraid of ideas, you exchange them– You don’t need to be a superstar to make a difference

• “Quiet people have the loudest minds”– Can your team members have influence without authority?– Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority– Simplicity versus complexity

• “Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behaviour. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour.” Dee Hock, Founder of Visa

• Change comes from within– It’s a journey!– Don’t need to boil the ocean

• Small incremental changes in every area delivers results– Leaders can be in control without controlling

• Control is a good thing when it’s the right type of control– Adapting to the rate of change

• Develop the personal capacity to change before the case for change becomes desperately obvious

Business

The intelligent player realises the team is the real star