Mix things up to re-energize your team
Here’s a great exercise to help re-energize your team:
Tell every member of your team that you want each of them to forget about everything that they are currently working on, and take the time to come up with what THEY think they should be working on. What THEY think should be their highest priority.
In addition, ask them to look at what every other member of the team is currently working on, and come up with what THEY think each person’s highest priority item should be.
Then, have a meeting to discuss all of these things, brainstorm and re-align your priorities.
Read MoreWhen Team Dynamics Become Team Dynumbics
Sometimes a terrible thing can happen to a team. Team dynamics become what I call team “dynumbics”.
People become numb. They become lulled to sleep, not willing to participate in the overall team effort aside from doing their individual tasks and calling it a day. They no longer have a drive to disagree, to be creative or to voice their opinions and ideas.
Why does this happen? In thinking about it, I’ve come up with the 5 dysfunctions of a team as I see them. (I know of Patrick Lencioni’s book with the same title, though I’ve never read it.)
1) Poor Leadership – Poor leadership causes everyone else to suffer. In reality, poor leadership is really the only thing to blame for poor team dynamics. Leadership needs to recognize the signs of the remaining four dysfunctions, and fix them quickly.
2) Poor Process – Poor process will quickly lull people to sleep and drive teams apart. A poor process can be defined as: no process, a process that is clearly broken, or a process that changes all the time. A process changing and improving from time to time is one thing. However, if you have a fire drill every time a certain task needs to be completed, you have a poor process and you need to spend the time needed to fix it. A poor process just frustrates people.
3) Poor Relationships – Strong professional relationships are key. This needs to be fostered by leadership as well. One simple way to foster strong professional relationships amongst team members is to stress their importance frequently. Like most things, just bring it up. Tell your team that it’s important that they all have good relationships with one another, and that they feel comfortable providing constructive criticism and asking each other for help/input.
4) Lack of Shared Vision – If your team doesn’t have a shared vision for what you are trying to accomplish, how do you expect to accomplish it? Don’t expect that everyone will have the shared vision because you mention it once a year. It needs to be reinforced, brought up frequently, and you need to be evaluating the things that your team is doing to make sure they are furthering that shared vision. Without a shared vision, people can easily become disengaged and feel like they are doing busy work.
5) Lack of Ownership – This is vital for two reasons:
- Ownership motivates people to do their best. If you tell someone that something is “theirs” and that they “own it”, most people are going to do the best they can. If no one owns it, it’s going to be mediocre.
- If no one owns it, there is no one to hold accountable when it doesn’t get done. This also means that people will feel like someone else should have done something, which weakens relationships between team members.
Don’t let your team become numb.
Read MoreWorking Together to Create a Culture of Innovation
One of the things I love most about working is having the opportunity to sit down next to someone else and work side by side with them on something. I literally go out of my way to work with people this way if at all possible. I learn so much, and it’s an opportunity for me to hopefully impart something worthwhile to the person I’m working with. Sure, there are always things that you simply need to just focus on and get done on your own. But when you need to interact with someone else on your team, why not work side by side with them whenever possible?
Working this way is a powerful tool you can use to help create a culture of innovation within your organization/team. Here’s how:
1) Preface your interaction/work session with something like this:
“My goal every time I work side by side with someone like this, is not just to accomplish the task at hand. I have two other things that I explicitly want to accomplish. I want to learn something from you – I want YOU to teach ME something. At the same time, I hope to share some bit of knowledge, or teach you something as well. So please, try and teach me something, I will try my best to do the same.”
It’s important to set expectations this way, especially if you are working with someone that reports to you. Some people will feel like you are micromanaging, so just be clear about your intentions and goals.
2) Recap – When your work session is over, tell your co-worker what you’ve learned and ask them what they learned. THEN, ask them if what you learned is what they were trying to teach you and vice-versa.
3) Encourage everyone on your team to do the same when working with one another.
4) Periodically talk about the things that you’ve learned over the course of a given week or month, and ask the rest of your team members to do the same. It’s probably good to vary the frequency of these discussions.
This accomplishes a number of great things:
1) It shows that you respect your team members, and that you don’t think you know it all.
2) It shows that you are not just task oriented, but that you have an interest in your team members’ development.
3) Knowledge sharing happens, respect for one another increases, and stronger relationships develop throughout your team.
4) Your team members learn, grow, and become more engaged.
All making your job as a manager/team leader that much easier, and helping to create a culture of innovation within your team.
Read MoreThe new Starbucks “Idea Engine”
I walked into Starbucks Friday afternoon for a cup of tea, and came across this:
I knew what was coming… 
Starbucks recently launched a new site called mystarbucksidea.com, powered by Salesforce Ideas.
I love it when I see a company (especially a large name company like Starbucks), utilizing technology to listen to and involve their customers in more of what they do.
I thought it was cool that they were populating ideas that were brought up prior to launching the site, like this one:
“Please go back to your original idea of an European coffee house and get rid of the
extraneous items like cds, stuffed animals, countless foods and all that factory
holiday junk. I love the original Starbucks better. And Howard Schultz, I love you.
- An idea from our Annual Meeting of Shareholders on March 19, 2008 in Seattle”
Jeremiah gave some good quick thoughts here, and Jim Bruene over at NetBanker added some great thoughts here as well.
Great move Starbucks, and wonderful execution on the roll out of the site and marketing campaign. Now the challenge will become being agile enough to respond and execute on the top rated ideas as soon as possible. Do it now, as early as possible. It will really pay off.
I’d love to talk to the individual at Starbucks that was responsible for making this happen.
Read MoreThe best “APP” for getting things done
APP = Accountability, Purpose, Priority
These are three things that I’ve found critical to have when trying to get things done. Really, this goes for personal productivity and team productivity.
Accountability – You need to have someone that holds you accountable to doing the things you commit to doing. This could be your spouse, a business partner, a friend, a co-worker, etc. Find someone that will hold you accountable.
Purpose – You have to have a purpose for doing things, and that purpose should be clearly defined and stated/published somewhere. Being reminded often of the purpose for doing something helps to keep you focused.
Priority – How important is something compared to other things you want to do? Without priorities, you’ll flounder and jump from half finished item, to half finished item.
Purpose and Priority are also good ways to evaluate whether or not you should work on something at a given time. It’s easy to let “something cool” or “something new” steal your attention. If the purpose for you doing something is not clear and it doesn’t take priority over other items, don’t work on it.
In trying to really stay focused and get more things done, these are a few of the things I’ve realized I need. I also have a new filing system I’ll share soon, that some of you may find useful as well.
Read MorePolitweets: Great example of Twitter’s “Track” feature!
One thing that I failed to mention in my last post, which is an extremely useful feature of Twitter that has enabled me to find many of the people that I currently follow is the “Track” feature.
You can simply type “track X”, or “track X Y Z” and twitter will automatically send you anything that anyone says that includes that word or combination of words.
Politweets is a great, and recent example of this awesome feature in use. It tracks what people are saying about all of the presidential candidates, and presents the comments side by side in a nicely designed interface.
Steve O’Hear gives a great overview of this over at ZDNet, as does Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb who also gives some other great examples of the power of the Twitter “Track” feature.
Just one more reason to start using Twitter!
Have you come across any other extremely useful Twitter mashups? I’d love to check them out.
Read MoreAbout
Metricz was started as a way for me (Jesse Kliza) to communicate my thoughts and feelings about business process, strategy, marketing, entrepreneurship, and anything else that may be on my mind related to my professional life.
Email: jkliza at metricz dot com
Phone: 518.229.1723
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