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