Flash mobbing and team work

This is just a really quick comment on the idea of team working and encouraging discussions in a way that resembles flash mobbing.

What do I mean by that? Well, in the last few years I have become increasingly impressed with techniques for facilitation that rely on the wisdom within the room and push the participants to self-organise as much as possible.

Often the best results from team work come when there is a broad theme to be explored but plenty of space for participants to work their own ideas and their own creativity into the end result. I have worked extensively with World Cafe and Open Space methods to look at ways in which participants can truly feel like they are part of a happening where their input was as valuable as everyone else’s.

End result – plenty of opportunities to build social coherence, generate strong groups, and create ideas that are greater than could be developed by the individuals alone.

So, why is this anything like flash mobbing? Well, within the confines of the corporate world, it is possible to borrow from the spontaneous self-organising space occupied by flash mobs and harness the talent and creativity of large groups. Both of these approaches take ideas from complexity theory and apply them into the ways in which groups of people can organise given some simple rules and lots of space to take the initiative.