ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 8, 2012, 9:34 am
RepKnight is an exciting Belfast-based software start-up in the reputation monitoring, crowd-sourced news and public opinion space. Even though they have only been going 12 months and without any external funding they are already in profit and fast becoming the "go-to" company for major private and ...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 7, 2012, 5:58 am
The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina recently published a useful white paper on the topical area of developing skills for virtual teams. It is available online and in PDF. What I found most interesting was the section on Virtual Team Challenges.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 7, 2012, 4:52 am
My windows 7 PC got infected by an innocent looking piece of malware (mystart incredibar) which took over my search bar and home page on all browsers. Yuk! I checked it out on the web and found that it is definitely malware and I want to get rid of it. That was my first mistake!
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 5, 2012, 7:45 am
A tradesman does their work as a means to an end whereas a craftsman does their work from a desire to do the job well for its own sake. Which are you or are you a bit of both?
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 3, 2012, 9:58 am
Data Mining, a hi-tech buzzword for many years, is about excavating useful patterns which are hidden deep in your data to give you valuable insights you could not otherwise find. I was looking for a data mining tool in the same broad price bracket as Excel but which was also robust and did not requ...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 2, 2012, 6:08 pm
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. In doing this they are effectively solving the challenging 'Travelling Salesman Problem' and de...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 23, 2012, 8:13 am
I have been looking for way to monitor and track all my websites/blogs plus all my social media accounts (linkedIN, Twitter etc) from a single dashboard. I figured this would be pretty easy - a thing that most people would want to do! Not so - despite the abundance of great social media tools I foun...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 7, 2012, 5:34 am
Here is an excellent web link plus two great books which address the question which diagram or chart should I use to best communicate different types of information visually. With at least 40 types of diagram and new ones/variants constantly being invented this is a hot topic!
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 5, 2012, 7:12 am
One of the most useful aspects of Microsoft Excel is its ability to quickly slice and dice customer data from live systems to identify important trends and behaviors which can inform strategy. In this article and screencast I share a 7-step plan, illustrated with a worked example, for Instant Custo...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 4, 2012, 4:54 am
In early December 2011 I upgraded from an iphone 3G to iphone 4s on the Orange UK network. Since upgrading, a month ago, the iphone 4s has been losing the mobile signal at least 10-15 times per day for periods ranging from a few minutes to one hour. During this time it is not possible to make or rec...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Dec 12, 2011, 5:40 am
I am always on the lookout for good simple visualisation techniques to support change management. Chris Collison has introduced me to The River Diagram - a great strategic tool for moving a community of groups forward via common initiatives and best practice sharing.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Dec 6, 2011, 2:07 pm
I have been piloting a radically different approach to meetings which I am calling "Egoless Meetings" which addresses three popular unwritten rules about good meeting practices which are unfortunately totally wrong. RULE 1 is that everybody gets to speak. RULE 2 is that discussions in themselves can...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Nov 29, 2011, 6:11 pm
One of the most interesting collaborative business networks to emerge recently is a group of ambitious Northern Irish technology companies who have founded Whisple and are now actively recruiting new members from software and service companies who need a ready-made platform into the multi-billion gl...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Nov 24, 2011, 12:17 pm
Team Beliefs are the fuel which can really energise or kill team effectiveness. Unfortunately this is often the most neglected aspect of a high-performing team initiative. In this article I remind people of the key beliefs of high-performing teams.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Nov 7, 2011, 9:04 am
Most collaborative ventures don't turn out quite the way we envisage. It would be great if we could determine in advance if a particular collaborative project or joint venture will be worth the required investment. Here is a simple way you can assess the merits of any collaborative endeavour BEFORE...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Oct 18, 2011, 8:16 am
Building Community and Computer Simulation are two of my hot topics. So it really grabbed my attention when Channel 4 Education announced a forthcoming game, Fallen City, to let us explore how our cities might be mended by empowering communities.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Oct 14, 2011, 7:24 am
Very interesting article in The Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, Bacteria and the power of teamwork, which reveals the amazing ability of bacteria to "quorum sense" - i.e. know when they have critical mass to achieve their objective. Quorum Sensing is hugely important for human groups and one ...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Oct 8, 2011, 2:42 pm
The latest report (September 2011) on Virtual Teams, Virtual Work Environments in the Post-Recession Era, from Brandman University, includes very interesting results of a survey commissioned from Forrester in 2010 on Virtual Teams.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Oct 8, 2011, 1:06 pm
When trust levels are high, so is the quality and performance of business and the reverse is also true. These facts are demonstrated dramatically when we look at the financial outcomes of companies that are among the best to work for and their peer companies that aren't.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Oct 7, 2011, 11:16 am
I was part of a fascinating panel session "Mobility, Teams, The Cloud and Collaboration" at the recent Mobile Cloud Summit (London: 21 September). The summit and the session was chaired by Jeffrey Peel of Quadriga Consulting and my co-panelists were Brian Caulfield of DFJ Esprit and Chris Horn of M...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Sep 23, 2011, 3:09 pm
Congratulations to the Socialcast blog for an excellent summary of Bioteams plus a truly awesome poster "Unlocking the Bioteams formula" which gives a great introduction to bioteams - all in a single picture.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Sep 19, 2011, 11:55 am
Brainstorming is one of those things which some people believe is natural and easy - they are wrong! There are 7 things which will make your team brainstorm go brilliantly .... and 6 things which will absolutely kill it. Find out what they are here.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Aug 21, 2011, 7:12 pm
I thought it might be useful to provide a single page link to the full collection of videos and animations I have posted on Vimeo over the last year. I upgraded to Vimeo Plus which allows me to publish videos in HD and also to view the videos very effectively on the leading smart phones.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Aug 4, 2011, 10:49 am
I have been amazed at how many people have asked me for a really simple and very short guide to LinkedIN for small businesses and independent consultants. So here it is:
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Aug 1, 2011, 1:27 pm
Very nice short article by Harold Jarche in his blog "Life in Perpetual Beta" which revisits the 4 key zones of Bioteams: Leadership, Connectivity, Execution, Organization.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jul 18, 2011, 8:42 am
Bioteams.com has previously published a number of articles on Social Networking which have addressed the Analysis perspective. I am delighted to round out the coverage of this crucial area with an excellent guest article by business networking guru Tony Altham which offers ten practical tips for cre...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jun 23, 2011, 8:21 am
The BBC Nature site reports on research published in the journal Naturwissenschaften which has discovered that a certain species of stinging ant may grab a fellow worker in their jaws and take them with them to help manage large food items they cannot carry by themselves.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - May 31, 2011, 8:31 am
I am looking forward to speaking and running a workshop on High Performing Teams at ECCIXII - the 12th European Conference on Innovation and Creativity in Portugal (Faro) from September 14-17.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - May 17, 2011, 6:30 am
In an excellent article in The Observer, Keith Stuart argues that the reason video games are so popular is not because we are simply escaping reality but because the best of these games provide us with valuable experiences in learning, autonomy, authority, feedback and risk-taking. This argument al...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - May 11, 2011, 10:04 am
I have been thinking for a long time about developing an online game for High-Performing Teams which was complex enough to be useful but simple enough to be usable! I am pleased to introduce the A4 Team Game (Alignment, Attitudes, Attention and Autonomy) which can be configured for different team...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - May 5, 2011, 7:54 am
I spoke at the inaugural TEDx event in Belfast on March 23. My argument was that we have all experienced high-performing teams but mostly not at work (sports, music, adventures, holidays, family etc)! In the video The Lost Secrets of High-Performing Teams I remind us of what we may have forgotten a...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - May 4, 2011, 5:08 am
Mark Dowds, from Brainpark, is a leading thinker and practitioner in the emerging area of Workforce Democracy - an innovation which is beginning to radically change work places by replacing 'command and control' with self-organisation. I invited Mark to write a short intro on the subject as part of...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Apr 27, 2011, 10:38 am
Very interesting article by Matthew Syed, a former Commonwealth table tennis champion. which suggests that experts (Unconsciously Competent) can suddenly flip under stress to "beginner mode" (Consciously Competent) with the accompanying degradation in their performance.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Apr 8, 2011, 5:19 am
This week marks the 6th anniversary of the publication in April 2005 of The Bioteaming Manifesto by ChangeThis. The manifesto is the foundation of the Bioteams book, published March 2008, and is a comprehensive conceptual framework for the effective management of today's Virtual Teams, Multi-Enterp...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Apr 6, 2011, 4:13 am
One of the challenges for teams is that the achievement of some of their goals are not fully under their own control - they need to be achieved in partnership with, or even in spite of, external parties (stakeholders) who are working to their own agendas and priorities. The Stakeholder Collaboration...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Apr 5, 2011, 10:40 am
I wrote an article on the use of simulation technology in the field of "Sales Performance Optimization" for The Effective Executive Magazine for the May 2011 edition. They have very kindly allowed me to offer a free PDF download of the paper to bioteams.com readers.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Mar 30, 2011, 5:00 am
I have collaborated with Jeff Peel and his Business Evidence Thought-Leadership blog to produce a new 4-minute video on Natural Teams - how we can use simple ideas from nature, sports teams and families to radically improve our work teams.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Mar 28, 2011, 10:16 am
I spoke at the inaugural TEDx event in Belfast on March 23 on "The 7 secrets of High-Performing Teams". Here is a link to a nice blog post by Alan in Belfast on the whole Belfast TEDx event with a collection of short video interviews with all the speakers.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Mar 15, 2011, 6:45 am
In a 12-minute video Michael Cavanagh discusses the difference between complicated and complex projects and describes the additional project management techniques needed to succeed in the latter. Michael also demonstrates an on-line assessment tool to allow the whole project team to quickly establis...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Mar 7, 2011, 2:54 am
The Guardian reports David Cameron as declaring war on "The public sector procurement managers who think that the answer to everything is a big contract with a big business and who shut out millions of Britain's small- and medium-sized companies from a massive potential market."
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 28, 2011, 4:32 pm
These days lots of businesses are trying to use social media to enhance their online presence. Unfortunately only a minority are really succeeding. Many of these are businesses that are highly digital or naturally global. However many businesses do not fit this model and are working in local markets...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 28, 2011, 6:29 am
In the second short video "Complex or merely complicated?" in his series on Project Management Michael Cavanagh explains the difference between "complicated" and "complex" and why you really need to know which of the two you are dealing with as a project manager
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 25, 2011, 3:19 am
The Guardian reports on the growth in "Persona Management Software" which individuals use to engage in web conversations using multiple identities on forums and social sites. The aim is to create the perception of a (fake) upswell in sentiment on a given topic (a practice is known as astroturfing). ...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 23, 2011, 5:46 am
In this excellent 3-minute video Michael Cavanagh explains how familiar 'first order' project management tools are vital, and perform well up to a point; but as project complexity increases, less prescriptive '2nd order' techniques must be deployed. The difference in outcomes are as great as playing...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 8, 2011, 11:38 am
New McKinsey research shows that a payday could be arriving faster than expected. "A new class of company is emerging--one that uses collaborative Web 2.0 technologies intensively to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend the organization's reach to customers, partners, and supplier...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Feb 2, 2011, 5:42 am
Major Article in Stategy + Business Magazine about how companies, governments, and other organizations are working together across traditional boundaries to solve problems which are too big for one enterprise to solve by itself.
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 24, 2011, 1:46 pm
I recently worked with colleagues to identify savings through collaboration between different local councils. Each council delivers the same basic services to their citizens and the brief was to identify potential shared savings which would not compromise service quality. We used a simple but novel...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 21, 2011, 5:23 am
Last night I asked my 12-year old son Jamie to design a logo for a new idea I had. He came up with a neat three cogs logo on the theme "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts". However the process was somewhat fraught.....
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 19, 2011, 7:27 am
One of the most important things in any team, network or partnership is to define the rules of engagement (aka Ground Rules). The first step is to agree the major "trust destroyers" which would stop collaboration stone dead in its tracks. Enjoy this hilarious 3-minute video clip from Only Fools and ...
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ken t. posted an article on The Bumble Bee - Jan 12, 2011, 7:47 am
#1 The Social Media Healthcheck Reference Card #2 The Seven Secrets of High Performing Teams (AudioCast) #3 Leading collaborative business networks - 10 rules Get all 3 here!
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