Workbooks
The workbooks on this page are companion resources to The Flow System Playbook — a 700-page practitioner guide co-authored by Dr. John R. Turner and Nigel Thurlow. Each workbook is drawn from the Team Science helix of The Flow System and is designed as a hands-on participant resource for teams, managers, and facilitators. They can be used independently for self-directed team development or as structured guides within a facilitated training program.
The Flow System Playbook — Turner & Thurlow
The Flow System Playbook is a comprehensive educational resource for employees, managers, leaders, and practitioners working in complex organizational environments. With 700 pages of fully indexed content, 400 visual aids, and 40 downloadable workbooks, the Playbook covers the Triple Helix of Flow: Complexity Thinking, Distributed Leadership, and Team Science. The eleven workbooks featured on this page come from the Team Science helix and apply research-based frameworks directly to team practice.
The Playbook is available in paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon. The workbooks are freely available to download for individual and team use.
The Eleven Team Science Workbooks
Each workbook includes a brief summary of its content and focus. Click Download PDF to access the full participant workbook.
Teamwork Training
Provides leaders and managers with an evidence-based checklist for implementing team training programs. Covers five key lessons from the science of learning: developing standardized programs, grounding training in research, engaging trainees interactively, sustaining behaviors on the job, and conducting regular evaluations.
Download PDFHuman-Centered Design
Applies design thinking methodology — Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation — to team problem-solving. Uses IDEO’s field guide framework to help teams frame design challenges, identify solutions and constraints, and move from problem definition to actionable implementation.
Download PDFTeam Design
Guides teams and leaders through the essential decisions involved in composing an effective team — including required knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), team size, task demands, and diversity of composition. Includes structured exercises for designing or redesigning a team.
Download PDFGoal Identification
Applies Locke and Latham’s goal-setting framework to help teams establish clear, challenging, and committed proximal goals aligned with broader organizational and multiteam system distal goals. Covers goal specificity, difficulty, multilevel effects, and the distinction between learning and performance goals.
Download PDFSituational Awareness
Develops team situational awareness across three levels: perception of elements in the current situation, comprehension of what they mean, and projection of future status. Uses Tannenbaum and Salas’s framework to guide teams in monitoring one another, team performance, and operating conditions.
Download PDFDeveloping Cognitions
Builds shared mental models and transactive memory systems within teams through structured exercises targeting four knowledge types: procedural, declarative, conceptual, and conditional. Helps teams clarify who knows what, who is working on what, and what resources are available.
Download PDFInfluencing Conditions
Explores the conditions and core processes that shape team behavior: context, composition, and culture (influencing conditions teams cannot control) and the six Cs — coordination, cooperation, cognition, conflict, communication, and coaching — that teams can actively manage.
Download PDFTeam Learning
Assesses team learning readiness and behavior across eight dimensions: co-construction of meaning, exploring different perspectives, error analysis, error communication, reflection on processes, reflection on outcomes, feedback-seeking behavior, and experimenting (Savelsbergh et al., 2009).
Download PDFTeam Effectiveness
Introduces the Team Effectiveness formula — TE = (TW + IP) + TK(TP + AP) + PF + CV — and provides evaluation tools for assessing team performance across task and process dimensions through transition, action, and interpersonal phases.
Download PDFRed Teaming
Develops critical thinking and decision-making through red teaming techniques rooted in cognitive science. Guides teams through premortem analysis — identifying potential vulnerabilities, weak signals, and risks before committing to a decision — to improve collective judgment and reduce bias.
Download PDFMultiteam Systems
Guides leaders and managers implementing multiteam systems (MTS) — covering boundary spanner roles, cross-team communication, goal alignment between proximal and distal goals, and the compositional, linkage, and developmental attributes that enable MTS to function effectively.
Download PDF