Natural Teamwork
I did a free presentation on (my version of) Agile Teams at the Village Building Convergence here in Portland, about two months ago. I value the dispersal of this knowledge to folks that will put it to good use.
Lo and behold, yesterday one of the attendees came up to me and told me that she and her friends had put all that info to work to get their grassroots herbal apothecary off the ground. She said, “We’ve never been so organized before! It’s so simple!”
She seemed really happy and energized about it, and I asked her, if she got a chance, to write up how it went to further boost for this particular team approach to work.
Anyway, it felt really affirming to hear that. I wish I could blog about this more here, but honestly it seems to work as one of those oral tradition things, person to person (with the aid of a whiteboard!). Maybe I’ll post a video sometime - that might work. Why I didn’t just video the VBC talk, I have no idea. They asked a zillion fantastic questions, hard, challenging, and aimed right for the throat (in a respectful way!). We even had a couple moments where I had to step up my facilitation skills to deal with energy and behavior that didn’t belong in that space. Good stuff.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Nice! This weekend we’re having a VBC here in Oly. And a free herbal clinic just opened here too…is there one in Portland?
What did you do a talk about?
July 25th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Yes, I assume the attendee meant a clinic in Portland.
I’ll cut and paste the description of the talk:
Real Teams for Non-Profits and Other Organizations
Self-Organizing Teams are the new paradigm for collaborative learning and leadership. Eliminate hierarchical systems and replace them with truly democratic models of working together. We look at a family, a village, and a community as a team where everyone has gifts to share. TrackersTEAMS principles come from a place you would not expect, the high-tech world of software development. Truly innovative software developers leave hierarchy behind and celebrate getting work done well and quickly with common effort. They call this model Agile Teamwork. With the blessings of our elder and internationally renowned team consultant Diana Larsen, we have combined the awareness of ecology with agile teamwork principles for a highly effective way of getting things done. We call it Natural Agile Teams. TrackersTEAMS helps you foster sustainability in both learning and working. As we work through our year we take on core routines of facilitation and find that coming together generates better communication and healthier results. While many models sound great on a whiteboard or flip chart, Natural Agile Teams yields results tested by some of the most successful collaborative entrepreneurs and companies today.
Check out the event listing on Friday, May 30th, and you’ll find it: http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc8/workshops