Team Tips – 13 {What's in a name?}

On April 21^st. Vickie Gray and I will conduct another Great Teams BootCamp. The details are here.

You'll notice right away we are calling this one a “Creating Time BootCamp”. Over the years since 2003 that we've attended, helped at, or held a Camp ourselves we've always debated with ourselves what we should call each session.

Jim & Michele McCarthy coined the original name of “BootCamp”. The common explanation for this choice is that over the week each attendee adopts new “software for their head” (taken from their book of the same name). So then everyone “boots new software” - using computer jargon. But this stuff isn't a computer Operating System. It's the commitments and protocols that make up the CoreProtocols that have emerged from teams being great. And adopting these best practices gives you a new way to operate in the world. Your own new mental operating system.

So if you're into software, or are in any tiny way computer literate, you get the idea.

But.... We've also had parents call us that wanted us to straighten out their teenagers. They hoped we were running a Marines style drill Bootcamp. And of course if you are leery of the military, or drill sergeants, or pushups in the rain, then the name BootCamp is not so exciting.

Then we got keen on “Results Camp” because the whole outcome of BootCamp is to generate a team that knows how to produce great results every time.

And I like “Great Teams Camp”. After all, the Core Protocols emerged from great teams in action and have been handed on to help others become a great team, and it's the team that produces the great results, and ...

Later, Vickie and I found out about Human Systems Dynamics, a whole discipline generated by the doctoral research of Glenda Eoyang. Glenda's certification course taught us about the importance of simple rules and tools. And bingo! We realized that the Core Protocols package was just that. The commitments were simple rules for teams to follow and the protocols were tools of behaviours for them to be great.

Now we had the name “Simple Rules and Tools Camps”.

Then we conducted a BootCamp where the team was astonished by the time-dilation effect. They were getting much more accomplished much faster than anticipated. That lead to Vickie's first book: Creating Time.

So as you are signing up for our next session above, you'll see it's a “Creating Time BootCamp”.

And when you get your manual once you've registered you'll see it's called the “BootCamp Manual”.

If this is all confusing, don't worry

Under the covers, it's still the same fabulous content. The week is your time to immerse yourself in the best understanding there is of what makes great team work. And you get to experience it to produce a great product. Yourself. Sweet!

A rose by any other name ...