Have you ever wondered what truly drives the success of agile methodologies? Is it merely the technical benefits of speed, efficiency, and continuous improvement, or is there something more profound at play? [...]

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash My students are my best teachers. In a recent High-Performance Team Building™ class, my students asked some great questions. I had to pause, ponder, learn something [...]

  Before it was an app, “slack” was already a useful word. As a verb, it meant to take things easy and even be a bit lazy, but the noun hints at its more exciting [...]

An interview with Richard Kasperowski on High-Performance Teams Stephen Harrison: Let me introduce Richard Kasperowski. Richard and I worked together a while back and have been friends ever since. Along the way, Richard has become [...]

Want to Know More About High-Performance Teams? Hi, friends! We did a webinar on high-performance teams a while back. In case you missed it, here are the video and slides: [...]

Cue the piano: If you don't want to see me... I did a full one-eighty, crazy Thinking ‘bout the way I was - from Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” I did a full one-eighty in [...]

Joanne Stone and I recently had a great conversation about wicked problems. I love the word wicked. It’s a wonderfully positive word in my native New England vernacular. We use it to amplify or express [...]

Team Communication in Times of Crisis Once upon a time, a very long time ago—also known as “February 2020”—my personal and professional life consisted of being together and communicating with other people face to face. [...]

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash Continuous Integration of People: a how-to guide Share emotional connection continuously. On a regular cadence: Do an emotion check-in with your teammates on a regular rhythm. Check-in [...]

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash Core Protocols for Remote Teams Check In frequently. Stay connected with each other emotionally. Explicitly Pass on an activity by typing or saying, “I pass.” Explicitly Check Out by [...]

“I feel unsafe here!” Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash Millennials get a bad rap for snowflake-like sensitivity and delicacy. It’s impossible to criticize anything a Millenial says or does – so the [...]

Cuando era un bebé, viví con las monas durante tres meses. When I was a baby, I lived with the monkeys for three months. Photo by Tj Kolesnik on Unsplash My Spanish teacher [...]

Want an easy tool to help you start building the best team of your life? That’s what the Team Transformation Canvas is: a practical worksheet to help you and your teammates discover the best [...]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This includes the fundamentals of human nature: what motivates us, how we work together in groups, how we collaborate and communicate. The essential truths are [...]

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash Real-world cases and challenges—this is the exciting part of my work in high-performing teams. Real people have complicated and unpredictable lives and behaviors. This is where [...]

Photo by Thomas Drouault on Unsplash Like every good citizen, I was glad to do my civic duty. Juror service never comes at the most convenient of times, but it’s a responsibility that’s [...]

Original photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash When’s the last time you got good feedback? Not pat-on-the-back, puts-a-smile-on-your-face feedback. I mean effective feedback, feedback that helped you make a positive change in yourself. [...]

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash Hands up, who loves work meetings? Stupid question? You’re probably rolling your eyes, not raising your hand in affirmation. A slew of workplace memes and Dilbert cartoons [...]

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the [...]

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash Conversation is a big part of human dynamics. How we talk, how we listen, how we communicate our intent: our interactions affect the emotional state of the [...]

The end of the year is a great time to reflect on what the last twelve months have brought you and what you’ve learned or done—and to look ahead to the promise of the coming [...]

What is love? Many great writers, artists, and philosophers have tried to define love over the years. They’ve all approached it from different perspectives and produced some interesting answers. I won’t compete with the romantics here. My [...]

Photo by Henri Pham on Unsplash In last month’s blog, we looked at some of the reasons we find it difficult to ask that simple question, “will you help me?” I wanted to [...]

Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash I get by with a little help from my team… Or I could have called this, Help, I need somebody, not just anybody There are lots of [...]

I’ve been reflecting on some recent research into workplace motivation published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (and reported in The New York Times) by Kathleen D. Vohs and Andrew C. Hafenbrack, which concluded that [...]

Credit: jurvetson@Flickr Hi there! I'm so glad you visited! After you read this article, check out my courses, latest book, podcast, and other blog articles. Enjoy!  Most people don’t want internal memos leaked [...]

The Italian Job* My colleague mentioned, “By the way, I was thinking of Sicily, for the September conference.” Me: “Mmm… Where?” Colleague: “Southern island of Italy. Nice climate for the time of year, and I [...]

Last month we had a look at the ‘Pass/unpass’ core protocol, used to indicate whether you are actively engaged with your teammates in an activity. Today let’s go a bit deeper into what being actively [...]

Being part of a great team doesn’t mean showing up and being awesome about everything, every second of every day. Great teams aren’t formed from robotic supermen and women who never have conflicts, contradictions, or [...]

My work with teams builds upon a body of knowledge developed across decades, applying the latest thinking to fundamental and well-tested theories of human behavior within groups. Repeatedly, and in many different settings and industries, [...]

Many manufacturing businesses follow a predictable rhythm of activities based on a production and distribution cycle. And Santa’s North Pole-based outfit is an excellent example. Everything builds to a single tight annual shipping window, and [...]

Have you heard? Psychological safety is the key to high-performance teams at Google. Google is full of high-performers, both individuals and teams. Some teams at Google really stand out—they are the highest of the high-performing [...]

A team is a group of two or more people aligned with a common goal. A high-performance team is a team that is objectively better than other teams doing similar work (or with a similar goal, if it’s not [...]

Have you ever tandem-bicycled? Molly and I cycled across Upper Austria on a tandem this summer. We enjoyed the vistas of the Danube River with its lush green hills, medieval towns and castles, and vineyards. [...]

Here’s a great Scrum scaling pattern based on the pattern that one of my clients uses. They use this pattern to scale their 500 people into a very successfully business unit of a huge [...]

Which is better, Open Space Technology or Lean Coffee? We explored Open Space and Lean Coffee at QCon London 2014. We put 15 facilitated peer sharing sessions on the program. We thought we would hold a series of 15 short [...]

This is an edited transcript of my presentation at Rebel Jam, a global 24-hour long conference on positively changing business, government, education, healthcare, and the world itself. You can find my slides here. I do [...]

What is the perfect job?  I'm playing Perfection Game with myself.  If I were to give my job a perfection rating, the criteria would be: I do great things with great people--my personal vision. I'm [...]