Using self-selection you can empower your teams to choose the projects they work on and the people they work with. You can make them happier and more productive while still getting all the work done (even the stuff no one wants to do)!
What is Self-Selection?
Self-selection is an exercise that helps companies build high-performing teams by letting employees decide what to work on and who to work with. Sandy Mamoli and David Mole of Nomad8 developed the technique and wrote a book entitled: Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection Lets People Excel. In it, they describe a multi-round process by which large groups come together, share project details, self-select onto teams, and iterate until they’ve formed well-rounded, skilled teams. This has been done successfully for up to 30 distributed agile teams, all in less than a day.
How Does Self-Selection Work?
The self-selection process starts with preparation/socialization and ends with an iterative self-selection event where people make their team choices. The self-selection event held at the end of the process is run iteratively, with people physically choosing teams in real-time and making adjustments based on the needs of the business.
Where Can I Find Out More or Get Help?
- Read the Opower Case Study, which contains specifics about how we prepared for, set-up and ran our self-selection event.
- Check out Nomad8’s Self-selection One-Pager.
- Read Creating Great Teams by Sandy Mamoli and David Mole
- Contact me at team@amberrfield.com. I can do everything from answering your questions to helping you run your self-selection process.