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We got together this morning at tBBC HQ over muffins, fresh cut mango and copious amounts of coffee with Alan Moore and Axel Chaldecott of SMLXL, as well as Adrian Bailey and Kate Whalley of PeopleFanClub.

The bunch of us see each other fairly regularly, and I am pretty familiar with Alan and Axel’s business, but today was the first time that I had had the chance to see the nitty-gritty of what Kate and Adrian do for companies. By the end of our time together, my hand was somewhat sore from note-taking, and my head was buzzing with ideas. (No, really: I was the only one who abstained from coffee.)

One of the important points behind what Kate and Adrian do for organisations via PeopleFanClub is the fact that, in trying to improve teams and teamwork, many companies ignore completely the individual. Anyone who has ever been on a “team away day” or retreat will likely be familiar with all of the probing into how one sees the company’s values, or the team developing, or the company moving forward...with no consideration given to the individual’s values or goals or aspirations.

This reminded me of the tired line, often fed to us at sports practice when I was growing up in America, that “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team.” Total disregard for the individual for the sake of the group is taught to children as axiomatic. Leaving aside how truly disturbing that is, let us concentrate on what utter garbage the idea is. As we were all talking about it this morning, I could not help but think of someone who makes a sandwich with bread from the bakery that was once good but allowed to mould, fine meat from the butcher that has been sitting out on the counter for a few days, cheese from the fromagerie that has been poorly stored and so dried out, and organic, gourmet mayonnaise that has not been refrigerated. The person then sticks the sandwich in a plastic baggie and leaves it on the dashboard of their car in the hot sun all morning. And when they are finally hungry and take a bite of the thing, they’re surprised that it tastes like crap (and maybe makes them ill). Okay, so it’s not the most brilliant analogy, but that’s what I think of when I hear of companies who expect to produce great output with components that, while they may be of fine quality at their core, have not been treated properly and so cannot be expected to deliver the kind of results the organisation wants and needs.

Adrian and Kate also talked a bit about the idea from research done by psychologists Richard Ryan, PhD, and Edward Deci, PhD - and central to the self-determination theory - that the intrinsic motivation of individuals flourishes when three key human needs are satisfied: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

People feel competent when they get feedback on what they say and do, and when they are able to respond effectively to challenges they face.

People feel they have autonomy when they feel they are trusted - “empowered,” even (it is a word that has been abused by far too many, but it is still appropriate) - to take initiative, to learn and develop their own skills and talents, and to explore and expand their horizons.

People feel relatedness when they can tell that others are sitting up and taking notice of the fact that they are doing good work and thinking interesting, clever thoughts.

Far be it from me to be a blog bore, but it seems fairly obvious that these three needs are all met when a company opens itself up and lets selected employees use a blog to talk to the world about what they do, what they think about what they do, what they think about what others in their field are doing, and about the new things they’d like to be doing. The benefits of blogging are not just felt in the areas of a company marketing itself and relating to the public; the very people who are producing those benefits will also feel the benefit, and - no small matter, this - deliver a tangible commercial pay-off to the organisation when their needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are being satisfied in this way.

Oh, and you can achieve this with a blog that is either external (public) or internal (exclusively engaging those within an organisation).

So it was an interesting morning all round: I learned some new things, had some new ideas, and was further assured that there really is more to this blogging thing than most people realise - even though the b-word never actually came up.

And the muffins weren’t bad, either.