I just came across this picture of Bonzai from December 2010. Like many indoor cats, she had a thing for lying near—and ideally laying on—laptop and computer keyboards. She preferred our older Mac laptop, which put off more heat that our PCs and newer Mac laptop. Like many cats of her generation, she felt that lying on newspapers was just too old school, too 1995 … [Read More]
Happy holidays! And happy Wednesday if you don’t celebrate holidays this time of year or ever! If you’ve read the Collective Self blog in the past, you may suspect that I’m unlikely to be capable of writing a concise post on this subject. If you’re one of my own self-organizing group members, you’ll know that on my own I’m about as capable of writing a concise … [Read More]
Three years ago when I was asked this question for the first time, off the top of my head I said something like “That with the right group of people, I can do anything.” Luckily for me, because I’m a researcher, that impromptu comment was recorded. I got to listen to it over and over for an entire year as I sought to understand what … [Read More]
This extra blog this week is for my dear friend (and self-org work group member) writing an important paper that’s due today. Good luck, D! From my perspective as a researcher (studying 18 self-organizing groups) and my perspective as a group member (having been consciously part of more than a dozen of these groups myself since 2004), my answer is yes. There are small work groups … [Read More]
An interviewer asked me this question last year—you can still find my response on the Web if you look for it. I’m still fairly satisfied with what I said to him, with one glaring exception. In my three-paragraph answer (good Lord, will I ever be able to say anything concisely?!), I said “I think you have to be a human being to be in a … [Read More]
Across the differences in the self-organizing work groups I’ve studied and been part of, there are also commonalities. One apparent commonality is the internal experiences that people have (and how people feel) as they let go of these groups. Here are eight internal experiences you might have as you let go of your self-organizing work group and its work: Feeling a deep internal sense of accomplishment and pride … [Read More]
When your self-organizing work group succeeds in accomplishing the work-of-the-moment that it came into existence to do, it may be obvious that the group needs to end. But it may also be unclear at what point–exactly–you as an individual should let go of the group and its work. From my perspective today, here are five signs that it may be time to let go of your SOWG and its work and ideas…
How do you evolve a planned group into a self-organizing work group? It’ll look a bit different for everyone, but for me it appears to be mostly about letting go as an individual. Let go of the individual plans you thought you needed. Let go of the group or people you thought you needed. Pay attention to the people who always show up to talk about what matters most to you (particularly to those who show up for you again and again). Who are they? What does that diverse group have in common? What’s making all of you give up your time with your individual work, families, and lives to be together? What’s drawing you together? That’s where your self-organizing work group lives.
I’ve studied and been part of at least 14 self-organizing work groups in the past 7 years. You don’t have to encourage active participation in self-organizing work groups. They form in response to personally felt needs of the moment, people stay with them until those needs are met, and then move on from them as what matters most to them as an individual changes.
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