Full Circle Associates

I have been involved lately in a lot of projects with distributed communities and groups of many types. They are complex. Sometimes they are darned complicated. The challenge I find in talking to people about these kinds of groups is that they want a simple explanation, a tidy set of easily describable practices to make them work.

I don't succeed very well in that.

So I've been playing with metaphors. Here is one: a distributed group is like a delicious layer cake (in this illustration, a souped-up German chocolate cake with an extra addition of layers of ganache - more chocolate. Always more chocolate.)

When you look at the whole assembled frosted cake, you see the final product. It looks like a single entity.

As you look closer, you see the texture of the icing. Drips may be on the edge of the cake plate. Sprinkles of coconut slipped off to the side.

Cut in an the layers reveal themselves. A layer of chocolate sponge cake. The thick-gooey coconut/pecan/caramelized milk layer. A thin separating wash of ganache.

These are not random layers. The cake balances the sweet, chewiness of the filling. The dark, creamy ganache keeps the flaky cake from falling apart and absorbing too much moisture. The light and the heavy. The sweet and the almost bitter. The smooth and the crunchy.

It is the marrying of that diversity, each into a bite of cake, that makes it great.

Same for distributed teams. By dint of being able to be anywhere, they can be diverse. But they need their "flavors" to find a point of harmony. Still distinct. Still identifiable, but sublimely successful when taken together.

Categories: collaboration, distributed_teams, CoPs, community, chocolate