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…Hens and a Rooster

Black Minorcas in their breeding shelter. Murray’s Farm, Cambridge Ontario. Recorded with my Samsung Galaxy S3 device.

One of my favourite breeds, the Minorca is a breed of chicken originating in Spain. They have red faces, huge red wattles and large red combs. Their earlobes are large and white. They lay large white eggs.

Pastured eggs are the rage of the food world right now, mostly because of flavour. A heritage chicken takes three times as long to mature and start laying eggs regularly as its factory equivalent. What it lacks in speed, it makes up for in taste. A textbook example of slow/real food.

Related Post:

• The Heritage Farm & Sustainable Living – Experiencing A Way Of Life

2:30pm Saturday February 23, 2013 | Bloor-Yorkville, Toronto Ontario, Canada

Strolling down Cumberland Avenue…

…on a beautiful Toronto wintry February afternoon looking at the process of making ice sculptures at Bloor-Yorkville’s Icefest. It was fun! Packed with guests, and hard to get good shots.

This year’s theme was “Wonderful and Whimsical” and took guests on a journey through a magical enchanted garden. IceFest transformed Bloor-Yorkville into a wonderland with fantastical sculptures including whimsical winged fairies, charming and adorable gnomes, oversized butterflies, magical flowers, trees and plants carved from 35,000 lbs. of ice.

The downtown Toronto neighbourhood just sparkled with excitement as Bloor-Yorkville IceFest introduced whimsy and warmed some of our hearts during this chilly winter. ^

Click on a thumbnail to view photo gallery

Set up for success: A leader is needed to provide direction and guidance throughout the development process. To ensure the leader is well-accepted, a supervisor should not appoint a team leader; instead, the team should nominate and agree upon which member should assume that role.

When planning a team training event, development plan or learning cascade the 5 Stages of Team Development is a useful tool to consider.

Teams learn, develop and progress through five different stages of development. These include forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Here I summarize the five stages and identify the expected outcomes and challenges.

Forming

• A group of people come together to accomplish a shared purpose.
• High dependence on the leader for guidance and direction.
• Little agreement on team aims other than received from leader. Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear.
• Leader must be prepared to answer lots of questions about the team’s purpose, objectives and external relationships.
• Members test tolerance of system and leader.
• Little ownership that this is their group. Leader directs.

Storming

• Disagreement about mission, vision, and approaches combined with the fact that team members are getting to know each other can cause strained relationships and conflict.
• Decisions don’t come easily within group. Team members vie for position as they attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members and the leader, who might receive challenges from team members.
• Clarity of purpose increases as goals and expectations are outlined, but plenty of uncertainties persist.
• Cliques and factions form and there may be power struggles.
• Resistance to losing individuality and becoming a group.
• The team needs to be focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationships and emotional issues.
• Compromises may be required to enable progress. Leader coaches.

Norming

• The team has consciously or unconsciously formed working relationships that are enabling progress on the team’s objectives.
• There is an acceptance of working in a team and the quirks of other team members.
• Agreement and consensus forms among team, who respond well to facilitation by leader.
• Roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted.
• Big decisions are made by group agreement.
• Smaller decisions may be delegated to individuals or small teams within group.
• Commitment and unity is strong.
• The team may engage in fun and social activities.
• The team discusses and develops its processes and working style and members feel that they now have a voice.
• There is general respect for the leader and some of leadership is more shared by the team. Leader facilitates.

Performing

• Relationships, team processes, and the team’s effectiveness in working on its objectives are synching to bring about a successfully functioning team.
• The team is more strategically aware; the team knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing.
• The team has a shared vision and is able to stand on its own feet with no interference or participation from the leader.
• There is a focus on over-achieving goals, and the team makes most of the decisions against criteria agreed with the leader.
• The team has a high degree of autonomy.
• Disagreements occur but now they are resolved within the team positively and necessary changes to processes and structure are made by the team.
• The team is able to work towards achieving the goal, and also to attend to relationship, style and process issues along the way. team members look after each other.
• The team requires delegated tasks and projects from the leader.
• The team does not need to be instructed or assisted.
• Team members might ask for assistance from the leader with personal and interpersonal development. Leader delegates and oversees.

Adjourning

• The team has completed its mission or purpose and it is time for team members to pursue other goals or projects.
• Members may go through separation anxiety.
• If the group experience has been positive there will be a letting go and grieving process.
• Members may need help in moving on. Leader facilitates the letting go process and discusses ways to apply the learning to outside situations.

Understanding these five stages of team development and implementing these suggestions can help ensure teams have the necessary skills and tools to move through each phase, especially the storming phase, and to ensure successful outcomes and growth.

Set up for success: The team leader must redirect the team toward the end goal, help reinforce defined roles, address unacceptable behaviors, provide feedback, and facilitate team communication.

Related Readings: Workshop Structure To Maximize Learner Engagement

Original source material: Bruce Tuckman’s 5 stages of team development. Adapted by John Zeus.

Photos by John Zeus | Tamworth piglets at play. Photographed at Murray’s Farm in Cambridge On.

Have you seen the little piggies, Crawling in the dirt…THE BEATLES

The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed. – Martina Navratilova

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. -George Bernard Shaw

Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. – Christopher Hitchens

Tamworth Pig
The Tamworth is a breed of domestic pig originating in Kettlebaston, United Kingdom, with input from Irish pigs. Wikipedia

Tide was the first to react when the power went out.

Brand Engagers are discovering that many of us watching the Super Bowl and other major events on our big screen TV’s at home are also surfing online using our iPads and digital devices. The “double screen” as it’s known has penetrated our media consumption habits. There were 24 million tweets on Twitter during the Super Bowl!

It was a great game, one for the history books. The Baltimore Ravens edged out a 34-31 win over the San Francisco 49ers to win the 2013 Super Bowl. Right at the beginning of the 3rd quarter there was a power outage. For 35 minutes Sunday, the Super Bowl ground to a halt.

What left me impressed was how quickly Social Media reacted to the blackout as marketing teams were empowered to act! Tide was the first to react posting the image above on Twitter. The Oreo team posted the image below on twitter shortly after. It was retweeted about 11,000 times during the game!

The Oreo team posted this on twitter shortly after.

The clever adds were also posted on their company Facebook pages receiving many comments from fans. I’d like to share with you 10 replies from Tide’s timely Facebook post:

1. Impressed! Very clever and so timely. Well done

2. wow!! how did you know??

3. Impressively quick- tide marketing on the ball

4. Whoever came out with that idea should get a promotion or at least a raise. I am very serious as a businessman I can tell you that is good on the fly thinking at a management level. Great marketing, thumbs up, get your promotion!

5. AWESOME…made me laugh!

6. Awesome response and timing! Only the best marketing from the best company!!

7. good response for the blackout.

8. excellent working in the superbowl! Did Tide cause the lights to go out???

9. Hilarious! Somebody was really “working it!”

10. Best Ad Of The Night!

Source: Twitter, Facebook | John Zeus