We derive lessons from the ripening of fruits to improve teamwork, leadership and performance of employees

1. Ripened Teams Lessons from Plants Ali Anani And Bas de Baar

2. Opening Thoughts When we look at plants we get important lessons in successful information distribution. When we consider fruits we learn a lot about cultivating team success

3. Lessons in information distribution

4. Goals Achievement Plants have a goal: to disperse their seeds To achieve this goal plants attract dispersing agents (animals) by giving them fleshy parts. Animals eat the fleshy part and in the process disperse seeds The plants answer the question that animals ask “what is in it for me?”

5. Plants Have Goals Too Goals of Plants: Seeds Dispersion Fruits give off ethylene gas Faster ripening of fruits Plants cover their hidden goals with sugar Animals to eat the fleshy portion Goal Achieved More dispersion of seeds

6. Goals- Time Relationship

7. Suggested Business Distribution Applications What distribution ideas we may get from plants?

8. Attract Potential Distributors Sugar-coat your goal

9. An Example- Co-authorship One of the authors of this presentation (AA) has the hidden goal of attracting more viewership of this presentation. What is in it for me? The answer is wider viewership The other author (BdB) has great experiences and a website that attracts thousands of readers Equally important is that the articles by Bas gets embeds in other blogs such as Project Server Blog

10. An Example- Co-authorship AA not only benefits from the experiences of Bas, but ensures that he presentation gets wider distribution Check the number of embeds of this presentation in few days Presentations by AA allow Bas to offer quality content to his readers and benefits him directly

11. Creative Sugars Think of creative sugars to attract distributors So, If you want effective information flow you have to find the sweet, so people want to distribute the information. The sugar can be found in making it fun, social and playful What in it is for me? This is your sugar covering your cake (goal) What is your social sugar?

12. A Simple Formula To get distributed, viewed, embedded, or whatever you want use this simple formula Give people what theywant in which embedded is what youwant

13. Lessons in Cultivating Successful Teams

14. Ripening Behavior and Employees Behavior Not all fruits and vegetables have similar ripening behavior So do employees

15. Why is the tomato such an uncertain hit and miss? Why is the tomato such an uncertain hit and miss? With roughly 400 acids, sugars and other volatile elements comprising the tomato its not surprising that they can be a complex thing to harvest. The constantly varying ratios of these unstable compounds within the tomato dictate what the state of your final crop will be. The colour change from green to red, for example, is indicative of a chemical transition within the fruit, as the acid balance moves from the weaker malic acid to the sharper citric acid concentration, and the dominant sugars are shifting from glucose to the sweeter fructose Convertible sugars and convertible sugary goals

16. Ripening Behavior and Employees Behavior For example, tomato goes in a six-stage ripening process from green to red

17. Tomato Ripening Colors at each Stage Light Red Stage Turning Stage Red Stage Pink Stage Breaker Stage

18. Stages of Tomato Ripening and Team Ripening Green Stage Green stage of forming teams Minor changes of teams. The team starts to enter the storming phase Breaker Stage… Teams turning from storming to norming Turning Stage Pink Stage More advanced norming stage Light Red Stage Performing stage of teams Red Stage High performance stage of teams Fruit Ripening Stages: Find Out Which Fruits Never Ripe After Picking and Which Dohttp://www.suite101.com/content/fruit-ripening-stages-a74859#ixzz1DBU8wE00

19. Derived Business Lessons Tomato ripening stages are reflective of team development stages Ripening starts from the core, with the outer surface changing last. By the same token, it is important to build a solid core of teams before “its outer skin” may reflect its maturity Core behaviors and values dictate changes for teams Blame culture, mistrust and loafing (Loafing is the tendency for individuals to lessen their effort when they are part of a group – also as the Ringelmann Effect) are the indicators for low productivity and that performance is deteriorating. We need powerful and yet simple indicators to indicate performance.

20. Derived Business Lessons- 2 A very interesting lesson is that ripening increases the attractive power of tomato; so businesses have to develop similar ideas. Tomato decomposes the complex starch sugar into simple sugar molecules that increase the sweetness of tomato. Business that have developed ideas along these line are successful. Frequent Traveler Programs, for example, increase their attractiveness by increasing the rate of collecting points as the traveler stays longer with the company. As fruits decompose complex sugars into simple sugars with increased sweetness, so decompose your offers into simple, but become sweeter with time

21. Derived Business Lessons- 3 Decompose incentives. Think of starch-like incentives that decompose into simpler, but sweeter incentives

22. Ripening and Employee Quality Fruits That Ripen in Appearance but not in Sweetness After Picking Fruits That Never Ripen After Picking Fruit That Only Ripens After Picking Fruit That Ripens in Every Way After Harvest Fully engaged employees “Cosmetic” employees with sweet appearance, but no sweetening value Slow, but sure employees with sweetness value increasing with time Passive employees who will remain disengaged

23. Compare Results The previous slide provides a different approach to the work by Joyce on Team Interaction- Part 1. This article is worthy of the readers’ time, in which team behavior is divided into four groups. These are: the “mummy”, the "windbag”, the “Rambler” and the “homesteader”.

24. Ripening Leaders Great managers stimulate the release of ripening agents so that workers productivity go higher Like tomatoes and ripening fruits, good managers release something like ethylene that ripen employees and put them in their respective sweet spots; promoting their productivity in the process

25. Ripen Your Team The container of the fruits influence the ripening process. Tomatoes in a brown bag ripen perfectly. Making them more sweet. The container around your team determine team success. The brown bag of team success consists of 7 elements

26. Team Success Requires Proper Goal Ripening Poisonous- Free Members Balanced of Proper Sizing Trust Team Success Flowing Communication Self-Organizing Adaptive and Avoiding Group Think) Goal-Oriented

27. Conclusion Creative management ideas may be cultivated from the ripening process of fruits Understanding nature drives the understanding of leadership, team building and the generation of new ideas Green metaphors lead to green leadership