Than the dying system, if your staff treat it as a dying system and make no effort to improve it.
Category: Management (Page 8 of 8)
From the book, The Wisdom of the Flying Pig by Jack Hayhow:
“There was a time when the term manager implied someone who controlled. Today the manager must facilitate”. – Page 14
My last post triggered a few comments, with having a common goal for a team to rally around somehow also implied groupthink, and thus, Wisdom of the Crowds is a better alternative. I want to clarify a few things:
The point of the original post?
Organisations where I’ve seen them have successful delivery, they also had, what I would consider, true teams. People working together towards a common goal. I’ve also observed many other organisations struggling to deliver, and often, because of multi-project context switching, they had what I would describe as “groups of people” instead of a true team.
Not all teams have groupthink
When I think back to great teams I’ve worked on, the individuals complement each other strengths and, at least in my experience, respond better to unplanned events. Talking about the “taboo” topics is fine because everyone is already comfortable working with each other. I compare this experience to what I see around committees, newly formed teams, or even teams that remain unbalanced (due to a particularly strong member or something) where other participants are too polite, or don’t want to cause a commotion even though it may be the right thing to do.
Understandably, when Felix saw my diagram, he (rightly) feared groupthink. In my experience, I feel it is symptom of poor performing teams, and is more likely to happen with “groups of people” (think of all those traditional project managers who make a decision for the team!). I do acknowledge it can still happen in a high performing team.
I believe the trick to making this work is having a leader in the team that ensures that conflict is handled in a safe environment, not simply quashed, silenced or bullied away as these eventually lead to group think.
Wisdom of the crowds don’t necessarily mean all crowds are wise
When I see many groups of people, I don’t automatically see a lot of wisdom. It takes another step before you can benefit from wisdom of the crowds. Often it means asking the right question, the right amount of diversity, and a lot of independence to actually benefit from it. I see the right question the same as having the right goal shared amongst people. It doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is doing exactly the same thing to get there, it just means that everyone is pointing in the right direction.
An example: Brainstorming using sticky notes is one way that I’ve worked in that avoids groupthink and tries to harness the wisdom of crowds. In my last team, we used it to come up with different solutions to tackle a key design problem (note the shared goal!) We each wrote ideas down independently on sticky notes before presenting them to each other. We even spent some time investigating and proving out a number of solutions to gather some hard data about the pros and cons. What made it work was that we all understood what it was we were all trying to get to (the shared goal), not necessarily how we get there. I felt that this was an example of a real team, a situation where everyone was comfortable disagreeing with each other, and openly discussing each option. It certainly didn’t feel like a committee or a random collection of people. I can only imagine what the outcome would be if we did though.
Once again, your comments welcome.
When I go into different organisations, I see many of the people doing the work (analysis, development and testing) split across multiple projects. In my experience there are plenty of reasons why this is just a bad idea, and probably the biggest one that I see is that the split priorities for an individual conflict with a model for ideal teamwork.
What does your organisation have more of? Teams or groups of people “working together”?
There’s a big difference between the two, particularly if your organisation is interested in tapping into the benefits of teams. Unfortunately most of the time organisations miss the mark.
How can you convert groups of people into teams?
Split priorities create natural conflicts between groups. A lot of management theory I’ve read describes how to get the most out of teams by rallying them towards a shared goal or set of goals. At the individual level, setting different goals for different people establishes a dynamic that, at some point, individuals’ priorities will conflict and without a broader shared goal, will go unresolved. Setting the same priority for everyone is, in effect, putting everyone into the same team. Leaving people split across multiple projects, is in effect, setting different sets of priorities for an individual.
Definitely a post well overdue (think end of March), although I thought I’d still put it out. Four years at Thoughtworks for me has:
- Taken me to four countries (Australia, United Kingdom, India, Canada). Even more if you take into account conferences and other invites (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Italy, USA)
- Let me see eight different client organisations (from small to extremely large)
- Worked on seven different delivery projects
Picture taken from BFick’s photo stream under the Creative Commons Licence.
- Advised on two pure consulting engagements
- Presented and participated at five different global conferences
- Participated in five different internal conferences
- Seen me focus on two main programming languages and platforms (Java and .Net)
- Broaden my experience as a developer, technical lead, analyst, agile coach, full time trainer, and facilitator.
There’s been plenty of happy moments, sad moments, lots of learning, lots of growth, and plenty of insight balanced with plenty of humility (in that there is still so much to learn).
In the spirit of Goldratt’s understanding of metrics, “Tell me how you are going to measure me and I will tell you how I will behave,” here are some questions I ask myself when I play the role of a Technical Lead.
Picture of Einstein figurine taken from Dunechaser’s Flickr stream under the Creative Commons Licence.
- Have I fostered a learning environment? Do people feel safe to make mistakes, and more importantly, learn from them and share them with the rest of the team?
- Have I fostered an attitude of continuous improvement? Can people talk openly about what they see on the project, determine what impact it has or how people feel about it, and encourage more of it (if it’s a good thing) or try something different (if it’s less than ideal). Do people feel empowered to do things without feeling like they need authorisation every step of the way.
- Does the development team collaborate well with the other parts? Do they talk to other people with respect, and do they try to involve them as much as possible where it makes sense?
- Does the development team balance the needs of the business with the demands of the technology and toolset? Are they doing what’s right for the business in the long term? Do they share the same vision?
- Do I act as I say? Even though this sounds obvious, I’ve seen many people fail at this and, as a result, the non-verbal cues that conflict with verbal cues and confuse the team.
And of course, this resource is a useful one too.
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