This is an excerpt from my book, Tribal Alchemy: Mining Your Team's Collective Ingenuity. The excerpt explores one quality of collective ingenuity: how a group behaves when they "circle" a challenge or opportunity. How You Enter and Behave in the Circle Matters I live my life and do my work in the shadow of a simple [...]
This is an excerpt from my book, Tribal Alchemy: Mining Your Team's Collective Ingenuity. Dave Fleming, 2016. -- Productive complaining has a purpose, and that purpose is alchemy. Productive complaining occurs when the complaining highlights something that is wrong in the system, something that needs to change. The issue can be frustrating and even cause tribe [...]
In part one of this article we explored what a cognitive bias is and how they can wreak havoc on our thinking and living. In part two we'll look at how cognitive biases infect groups and I'll give you a four-step process to reduce the influence of biases. -- What Do You See? Take a [...]
Yesterday I sat with a team that had to make a pressing decision. The decision was fraught, as many decisions are, with "if-then" possibilities. You know how these conversations go, right? "If we do A, then B could happen. But if we do C, then D might happen." And of course, none of the possible [...]
Setting The Stage This excerpt is from my book, Tribal Alchemy: Mining Your Team’s Collective Ingenuity. It comes at a point in the book where I discuss personal practices that increase collective ingenuity. Throughout my coaching and research, I’ve discovered that high performing teams are populated by individuals who are vigilant about their own self [...]
Distorted Thinking I'm currently reading, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, an d 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself , by David McRaney. The book explores the many cognitive biases that plague our thinking. A cognitive bias is a fallacy we apply to [...]
Alignment between people is a powerful dynamic. When it exists, there is strategic and emotional engagement. This engagement enables important work to progress. When it's missing, wheels grind and progress slows. However, alignment is not a "one and done" affair. Alignment between partners, of any type, is an ongoing dynamic that requires attention and intention. [...]
