Under this headline the CEO of Hyper Island, Mattias Hansson, will share his views on education, business, technology, leadership... shortly, about:
Stuff That Matters.




Are your teams effective enough? The question is asked in offices all over the world right now. If you haven’t heard the question in your company yet, it probably means that you're too far away from budgets and decisions right now.

When company boards are trapped in credit crunch anxiety they tend to look into operations to make sure that everyone is working to the top of their capabilities. And since most modern work life today is about working together in teams to create more effective results, the question has to be asked over and over again. Are your teams effective enough?

The black hole of digital is ineffectiveness.

For those of you who clearly can answer “yes” to the question above - you can stop reading here and go on to find something else that will help you develop in New Media Age. For the vast majority of you who have to answer “no”, I say: Stay calm. There are solutions. And they are closer than you might think.

You can always use the inspiring findings of Dr. Susan A Wheelan. The US psychologist and researcher is a world leader in the field and her book Creating Effective Teams is a good read. “The trick to creating teams is to learn enough about how work groups function so that we can increase the chances that work groups will become high performance teams,” says Wheelan. This should be reason enough for digital media companies to use the downturn to boost what they already have.

Each and every day I get calls and emails from all over the world, from companies and organizations, in more or less desperate need of help to “go digital” and/or to create more effective work teams. Luckily we’ve been doing exactly this combo-training for more than a decade.

Of course the collaborative nature of digital projects alone forces you to understand what makes great teamwork. This fairly analog knowledge is what you really need to master in the digital era.

“The collaborative nature of digital projects forces you to understand what makes great teamwork"

When it comes to growing talent, our experience shows that top global digital talent is better off being given the tools about self-knowledge and group dynamics than they are just being given the best knowledge about digital and interactive communications.

Financial crises will come and go. The delivery of digital and interactive communications knowledge is subject to constant change. Knowing yourself and how to make your team effective is timeless and priceless.

Now, before a superior has to do it for you, go and ask my initial question to yourself, and to your team.

(This collumn was originally published in New Media Age on the 26th of March 2009.)