Previously I have written about the power of sharing context in order to create high functioning teams. Some of the areas of context I talked about were: product direction, customer needs, business goals as well as organizational structure. Notice each of these dimensions points outward from the team. And this is key. High functioning teams cannot just be inwardly high functioning; they must be high functioning outwardly in how they collaborate with other teams to accomplish the larger mission. And for this type of collaboration to occur, there must be a common language understood by the different teams.

A big barrier between teams effectively sharing context or having a shared understanding is the fact that different teams speak different languages.

Amusingly it is bit like the Tower of Babel story from the book of Genesis (Bresheit) in the Bible/Torah:

Continue reading “Creating a Tower of Babel”