TSoT also creates a context for value analysis, decision support, requirement analysis (translating business requirements into team designs), competitive advantage, and overall team effectiveness.

The TSoT Principles are:

  1. TSoT is a science that bridges theory into practice producing value
  2. A TSoT practitioner evaluates and uses TSoT tools to increase the possibility of positive innovation 
  3. TSoT tools are based upon repeatable evaluative logic, meaning differently skilled objective individuals can independently reach the same conclusions given the same data and goals
  4. A TSoT practitioner accepts that the most valuable team system is one that contemplate the concept of ‘taking out’ as much as ‘putting in’
  5. A TSoT practitioner believes it is necessary, from time to time, to develop thinking outside of specific processes, specific industries, and specific historical ways of thinking about and performing actions, even if uncomfortable, to foster new viewpoints and ideas.

The implications of team system are an integral part of TSoT. Team systems exist all around us, in nature, in the products and machines that humans build, and in the social, philosophical, and economic constructs that humans create. Being able to identify team systems and use the capabilities within them to solve contradictions and create better new team systems is a key component to creating value. 

Beginning to view “isolated” problems as part of larger system contradictions will help you to begin creating team system designs using a wider range of strategies that allow for original and innovative results.