“Through the lens of convention a lot of the features of Extra-Dependent Teams are misdiagnosed as faults: working apart is seen as working in silos, lack of interdependency is seen as uncollaborative, and working only towards their individual goal is seen as not being a team player.” So writes Dave Kesby, organizational coach and author of the book Extra-Dependent Teams.
In his book, Dave proposes an alternative to the conventional model of team leadership. Over 900 years ago in Medieval London, work was organized into Guilds. Today, we might call these groups “communities of practice”. Often what we call a team is in fact a community of practice, and in several organisations that I have worked in we describe the process of leading this type of group as “herding cats”, which is the title of the first chapter of his book.
So if you lead a team, or are trying to make your organization more innovative and agile, and to break down silos, you will, I have no doubt, benefit from hearing what Dave has to say on the topic of team leadership, management and development.
