90% of people believe that work would be better if it was organized like soccer
Posted on: June 20, 2008
SwarmTeams
I was at the NLabNetwork meeting in Leicester, England, on Thursday. Ken Thompson demonstrated SwarmTeams, the peer-to-peer messaging system. He asked the audience to text their answers to two questions. And the answers showed up immediately for everyone to see on the messaging systems “board” (which was projected onto the big screen).
The questions
1. What would your soccer team be like if it was organized like work?
2. What would work be like if it was organized like a soccer team?
What would you say?
Do you agree with our answers?
The audience was clear. 90% said a soccer team organized like work would lose; and 90% said work organized like a soccer team would be an improvement.
What do you miss most in your workplace?
I miss the sense of triumph, that roared “Yeesss!” as we achieve something that was hard. I miss the quiet satisfaction of a fist-thump as a long road comes to an end.
I would like to start a catalog of experiences that people enjoy in team sports and then we can mix and match – what is more likely to be experienced in a team with quick, p2p messaging?
So I miss triumph? What do you miss?
flowing motion 
March 4, 2010 at 7:40 pm
[…] Teams, Ken Thompson’s SMS system for teams. I am particularly keen to demonstrate how new social media allows us to capture the energy that builds up at conference that we have previously allowed to “run down the drain” at […]