A Team Building Lesson from the World's Most Popular Team Sport

When thinking about team building, most people think first of successful sports teams. Even in a work context many managers and leaders often use sports examples and methods as ways of inspiring and building teams. So what can one of the most successful teams in the world’s most popular sport teach us about team building?

The sport is soccer. When it comes to soccer people think superstars: Pele, Zidane and Diego Maradona. Even if you're not a fan, pop culture has absorbed famous footballers like David Beckham and teams built from the best of their leagues, such as the US Women's World Cup team. However, the most successful team in terms of championship wins, revenue earning and brand worth is arguably Barcelona.

Unlike most teams, Barcelona is largely made up of local players. Think about that—with one of the richest cash accounts in sports Barcelona prefers to grow their own players through their own school rather than buy superstars from elsewhere. The players often grow up together, share a common culture and local values and see their careers as being intimately tied up with something bigger than themselves.

Not only that, but instead of trading shares in the club to the highest bidder (or highest local millionaire) the club is owned by club members. It is managed through a process of deep engagement with the fans and a customer council made up of randomly chosen and senior members in good standing.

Too many organizations try to hire superstars and run the business divorced from the feedback of their customers. Barcelona is an example that shows that even in sports, employee engagement and customer intimacy build crushingly successful teams.

New Koliso Brand Receives American Graphic Design Award

For the last four decades, the American Graphic Design Award competition has recognized excellence in advertising and design. The national competition receives more than 8,000 entries from ad agencies, graphic design firms, corporate, institutional and in-house departments. Graphic Design USA publishes a monthly magazine for creative professionals, with a special 300-page edition in December that features a selection of the year's winners.

The new Koliso brand was recognized with a 2011 American Graphic Design Award. The brand was created by Adsoka, the marketing and creative agency that Koliso works with. Congratulations, Adsoka!

Adsoka is a Minneapolis-based full-service marketing, design and communications agency. To see more award-winning work by Adsoka, visit http://adsoka.com/work.

For more information about Graphic Design USA, visit http://gdusa.com.

There's More to International Non-Profits Than the Nobel Prizes

This time of year the Nobel Prizes get major media coverage, and rightly so. They represent recognition to the best we can achieve in the sciences and arts. They are an inspiration to those who want to contribute a higher-level of work to something meaningful.

Unfortunately, the coverage of the Nobel Prizes crowds out the good work done by many other international non-government organizations. Knowing the work of some of the others can broaden your leadership horizons. There are many international agencies and non-profits that take a broad perspective on the issue of improving the quality of life, especially the quality of work life. One such organization is the World Future Council based in Hamburg, Germany and with offices in Brussels, London, Washington and Johannesburg.

Of particular interest to leaders might be the council's views of effective organizational culture.  To quote their literature, effective organizational culture is "an essential part of helping the planet to survive, since so many world-change organisations suffer from inadequate process and communications skills, resulting in the waste of much time, energy and money."

World Future Council identifies a few key elements of effective organizational culture, including

1. Values and principles
2. Respect
3. Responsibility
4. Transparency
5. Conflict as opportunity
6. Emotional maturity

We notice in our work that, while many organizations have good values, show respect for their employees and stakeholders and try for a culture of responsibility, it gets tricky when we get down to cultural behaviors such as transparency, constructive conflict and maturity. We are currently working with clients on major projects in which they have comfortably embedded the first few elements and are working to implement the others as well.

The take-away for businesses? Values, respect and responsibility are fairly obvious and easy to apply, but are not enough. You have to work on the deeper cultural values such as how you demonstrate openness, handle conflict and use your emotional IQ.