I have always loved science fiction. I grew up on Star Trek (TOS). Richard Hackman once asked me where I got my optimism about people, and I admitted that I was pretty sure it was from spending so much of my childhood immersed in Gene Rodenberry’s vision of a humanity that had solved all its earthly problems. I was thoroughly taken with the notion of exploring space, of using all our accumulated knowledge to forge new relationships and discover new places and technologies. I still am, and I still take most of my inspiration from groups of determined, clever, mission-driven people who work together to imagine better futures and solve wicked problems.
Richard Hackman and I created the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS) because we shared the belief that if our research could seed and support brilliant collaborations, then people would use that capacity to solve complex problems that would only yield to many intelligences, to determined groups working together. Opening the doors to new thinking about the different kinds of teams and collaboration in industry & community, we have been busy during the past couple of years taking the 6 Conditions framework beyond scholarship and education to teach and empower coaches, learning practitioners & leaders across the globe to use the TDS in a wide range of teams & contexts.
We have long made the TDS available to any scholar seeking to advance the theory and practice of effective teams, and any educator of kids and college students aspiring to develop their ability to work in teams. We are now sharing it more widely as a revised, commercially robust toolkit. Spreading its use is core to our values, so with the TDS now in the market space we continue to support research and educational uses of the TDS through special access arrangements.
Our continuing mission is to help any determined group apply our research-based model of 6 conditions for team effectiveness, to build their own discovery, exploration, and problem-solving teams.
In that spirit, we’re hosting a dialogue next month to explore some of the most inspiring examples of team collaboration in the service of creating the future we all want to live in.
Come join us on April 11 and explore about how determined people build their own extraordinary teams on our newest frontiers.