Want to get a network started? Here are the first few steps, based on the five principles. You can hold an afternoon meeting and get a huge amount done, just by drafting answers to some questions.
This is your first quick pass at applying the principles, which you will plumb further in the Launch Phase.
Use the principles as a mental checklist for a set of conversations or a simple start. Ask people:
- Does everyone have a common view of the project?
- Do you consider yourselves colleagues?
- Do you have rich connections among you?
- Can you hear many voices within the group?
- Are you inclusive of the levels of organization?
This checklist of questions provides a quick summary of how far along a group is on the teamnet path.
Common View?Does everyone share a common view of the work? There is an easy way to test this. Separately ask three members what the group's purpose is. Three quite different answers indicate that the focus is fuzzy at best. You are not necessarily home free, however, if everyone repeats the same mantra. This may suggest groupthink, the uncritical acceptance of a group ideology.
The answers you are looking for show strong common themes with unique twists and special applications. In healthy teamnets, people share deeper levels of vision, values, trust, and core beliefs while holding diverse viewpoints and arguing over individual issues.
Teamnets never really jell and cannot succeed without a real, shared purpose. A teamnet faces the clearest of danger signs if it once had a purpose that is no longer clear. Rarely will it be successful by maintaining the ongoing organization in its current form. A purposeful organization that completes its work, delivers its results, and goes out of business is a graceful and natural end to a useful but transient teamnet.
Colleagues?To come to life, teams and networks need a purpose that everyone understands.
Who is involved? Quite practically, this means "get names." Whether recorded on the back of an envelope or published in a directory, names of people and organizations that need representation indicate membership in the teamnet.
You gain early clues as to the potential size and multiple levels of the teamnets by understanding who the members are and what talents they bring. These are the part-icipants, the components, the most tangible elements of the basic network ingredients.
Listen to how the participants talk about one another and the organizations they represent. Do they refer to and treat one another with respect, communicate as peers, and possess elements of independence? These are all nuances of the word "colleagues."
Quickly assess how independent, dependent, and interdependent the members are. Dependent members are a drag on the whole group; totally independent members rip it apart. Interdependence is a necessary balance.
Look for the obvious. Can participants stand on their own if the group as a whole fails?
Will companies remain independent in an alliance? Do individuals on a cross-functional team have a home organization and other responsibilities? Do physically distributed sites have control over their budgets? Does a line-of-business profit center also have personnel authority?
Connections?Just because people regard one another as colleagues and share a vision does not mean they have a teamnet. The third sine qua non is links. There are no relationships without communication around joint activity, and without relationships among participants, there is no team, no network.
Look for the "1-2-3" of the links. The channels (1) allow people to interact (2), which is how they form relationships (3).
- 1. Look for the physical channels.
- 2. Identify the tangible interactions.
- 3. Recognize the relationships among people.
In what ways does your group link now? People create links with all kinds of media-frequent face-to-face meetings, conferences, conventions, off-sites, phone calls, faxes, newsletters, video, e-mail, and a rapidly growing list of exotic electronic technologies. Only preferences, time, and money limit this cornucopia of connections.
Groups that work together across the separation of locations or times, such as shifts of nurses, need to be extremely explicit about communication. How do people communicate with one another? Are they clear and intentional, or vague or inconsistent about the channels they use? If so, they'll be frustrated in getting needed information across boundaries.
Two, look next for the interactions, the actual use people make of the group's communications systems. Get a feel for the levels of activity. A simple survey can yield dramatic findings. Do higher-ups respond to lower-downs, or do they ignore them? Do people only talk to others at their own level? Are actions and reactions of senders and receivers sparse and distant? Or is there a buzzing, booming confusion, which is the profuse, immediate, and spontaneous stuff of real communication?
Three, rise up to the 30,000 foot view (see chapter 1), where you can see the whole communication pattern. Can you see the basic relationships, the standing waves of interactions over time? Are there broad streams of communication that indicate a history and a culture together? On a fast moving team, bonds form quickly through intense interaction within a quickly clicking culture. If there are voids here, brainstorm ways to increase meaningful interactions.
Relationships can become real in an instant, or they may emerge slowly as a pattern of interaction establishes itself in response to change. This is true for people and for organizations-except for organizations "in an instant" will be a lot longer. Regardless of time, relationships form the bonds that build trust. The teamnet goes nowhere without trust.
Voices?Do you hear one or many voices when you listen to the group? Heard from the outside, one voice might sound like a coherent teamnet with a spokesperson. Now look inside. It's likely to be a hierarchy at heart if the same one voice drowns out the rest.
Ask a few people in the group who the leaders are. Listen for a plural response if you ask the question in the singular. Better yet, stand corrected as people talk about how important everyone's role is.
All groups, including teams and networks, have leaders. Teamnets, however, have a greater "density" of leaders than hierarchy and bureaucracy. Where a hierarchy insists on one leader, a network has several.
Bureaucracy seeks terms of office for single leaders, and appoints subordinate bosses, while a network sees a number of leaders rotate through diverse responsibilities.
Is this healthy? The answer is no if fluid leadership indicates a fragmented, out of control group. But it is just right if this indicates a dynamic capacity to continuously self-organize to meet changing conditions.
Whether many voices indicate useless babble or deep bonds depends on the purpose that unites them. Are the shifting leaders also keeping the group's focus on the overall purpose? Are people stepping up to responsibilities as needed, then stepping aside as new expertise is required? In the end, is the purpose being accomplished?
Inclusive?Finally, to put all this information together, you need to sort out the levels. What part of the organization does the teamnet include and what is it included within? What is the overall context, the greater environment? What are its major internal components? What makes them up?
Inclusion works both ways, internally and externally. You include the participants when you take the point of view of the teamnet. When you take the point of view of the participant, the teamnet is external and includes you.
It is essential to adopt various points of reference in the 21st century organization. At minimum, people need to be able to understand the point of view of the organization as a whole, as well as the reference point of their part of it.
Though multiple points of view are free, they are like mountain tops, requiring effort to attain.
Once you see the levels, look for the relationships across them. Crossing boundaries often involves traversing levels from someone's point of view. In a world of wholes and parts, there is no other way.
Quite practically, this means looking to have a diversity of ranks working together. Are there ongoing connections with the hierarchy that your teamnet sits within in the larger organization? Are there links to the operating "lower-archy"? If your teamnet spans two companies, is the alliance simply a relationship at the top or the middle, or are there interactions at many levels among the allied organizations?
