This is a True Story

Why did I read this Book?

I don’t like to admit this, but this book slipped through my reading programs for far too long. In heinsight I should have read this book in my first year. I would have understood more, what Tiimiakatemia is really about and how processes behind the things we do here work. Nevertheless, I have read it now. In this essay I would like to express my thoughts about what parts of Team Academy methodology and practices we, in Tiimiakatemia Prague, should focus on, to ensure bright and successful future of our community, and what I myself will try to implement. I belive that I am somewhat qualified to make that assessment because I have been very active in this community for almost three years. 

ATP

Team Academy is an unique concept. We do things very differently from others around us. We feel this at our university. We are new, different and trying to disrupt the status quo in education. Explaining the principals behind our practices is very much needed. It is a bit Sisyphean work but vital to come to mutual understanding and cooperation. 

I’ll start with the future and the easaist change / innovation we’re gonna do. I am currently working on the program for our next Rocket Days, and this true story inspired me in several areas especially Team Academy Awards. Last year, for the first time, we gave out awards for various achievements in the previous year. The categories were fun, but I don’t think, that there was any meaning behind them. I’d like to change that. In the book there are 10 different awards, on our Rocket Days there will probably be less. But what is the most important to me are the categories and the voting process. Award for the best team, the Head Coach’s special award and the most fun person in the community will for sure appear. The rest is in the works. I’d like to change the way the awards are given as well. System, where each team nominates one person for each award and than Team Leaders in cooperation with the Head Coach select the final recipient is in my view the best approach. Also to me it is important not to forget, that these awards should be individual, because team are built on individual people that deserve recognition. In retrospect, I see these awards as a vital part of the culture, we created here. 

But still, Team Academy is about learning and business blended together. I explained our three main tools for learning in my previous essays (Training, Reading, Practice). Here I’d like to show on what principles our process of learning and knowledge creation is based on. 

The knowledge creation process by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, often referred to as the Nonaka-Takeuchi Knowledge Spiral or SECI model, is a concept that explains how knowledge is generated, transferred, and recreated within organizations. Team Academy being such an organisation. The process is described as a spiral, representing the continuous forward movement of knowledge.

The SECI model consists of four stages:

1. Socialization: This involves sharing tacit knowledge through direct interaction and experience. Tacit knowledge is personal, informal knowledge or a skill that is learned by experience. In my view this part of SECI model occurs very informally in our Team Academy. Whenever you go work in our open office you can encounter this sharing. 
2. Externalization: In this stage, tacit knowledge is articulated into explicit concepts. Over all this happens in our training sessions. 
3. Combination: Explicit knowledge is systematized and combined with other explicit knowledge. This can involve sorting, adding, categorizing, and reclassifying newly created explicit knowledge. Combination occurs in our training sessions, where we share the newly crated knowledge and provide others with our insight. 
4. Internalization: This is the process of embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. It is closely related to "learning by doing“. We try to use our newly obtained explicit knowledge in practise thus creating new tacit knowledge. 

Beautiful example of the SECI model is in my Birthgiving process, where firstly you socialise - share your expirience with the problem, than you externalise by drawing your own ideas for the solution, than you combine by sorting through all the ideas and rearranging them or explaining them and lastly you internalise, because you have to create a prototype of your solution. Learning by doing is vital in our methodology as well. It is the main saying we explain to anyone interested in Team Academy. 

Team Academy Prague Organization

Right now we are creating a body, where everyone in the community will be represented. It is assembeled by all the houses and teams we have on a community level. This group should be the beacon, that shows TAP the way forward. Yet we still are a flat structure, but we had to srengthten the flow of information and unifying the way our TA should head. It will be called TAP Spirit. 

What I think our Team Academy lacks the most

In my view we do not have a unified mission or mission statement, that would last for long time and everyone in TAP would know it and live by it. Thats paired with the lack of a proper goal, that everyone would know and try to achieve. The vision we have now is not concrete enough and there is no one left from the people who set it. So I think we should create a new one or at least refresh the old one.