Taking a break before YOU break!
Last week I took a half day, and went to MASSMoCA with my wife, along with two of my sisters and their fiances. I needed a break, and we had been wanting to spend time with my three sisters, who are now all engaged at the same time!
It was a great time, and I love just getting away for a while and surrounding myself with the creativity of others.
I mentioned this to a colleague of mine, and he shared with me a GREAT story that illustrates the importance of taking breaks from things:
A professor gets up in front of his class and holds up a jar full of beans. He asks his class how much the glass weighs. He gets all sorts of answers, 1 lb, 2 lbs, 5 lbs. Then the professor tells his class, “What if I tell you that the weight does not matter, but rather how long you have to lift it. If I kept holding this jar up for 5 more minutes, there will be some discomfort. If I do it for 1 hour, I’ll be in total agony. After 5 hours, you’d have to call an ambulance! So understand that stress is like this jar. You can lift some pretty heavy loads, but you HAVE to put it down every once in a while. Otherwise, you’re just asking to be put in the hospital.
So “put down the jar”, go to a museum, take a long nap, go for a walk. Get Away. You’ll be glad you did.
Why It’s Time To Hire A Community Manager
I thought this was an excellent quote by Yihong Ding, found in this RWW post about the value of Community Managers:
“As we know, most of the Web 2.0 companies are built upon user generated content. Philosophically, User Generated Content is embodied human mind. This embodied mind is generally the fundamental asset for the company. Maintaining a proper community so that users may embody their mind with high quality is thus a central issue for the growth of the company. The duty of community managers is to supervise and maintain the high-quality production of the fundamental mind asset used by the company. Therefore, I would say that community manager is a critical job title for most of the Web 2.0 companies.”
This holds true for any company, not just Web 2.0 companies.
Every company today needs to recognize this. While user generated content may be a core component of many Web 2.0 companies’ business models, the conversation and “content” provided by a company’s users/customers is of the utmost value to all businesses.
Therefore, ensuring that it is sought after, provoked, nurtured and communicated appropriately and applied correctly is of immense importance.
Still not satisfied?
- Jeremiah Owyang created a score card that you can use to help you determine your need for a community manager.
- Connie Bensen also lists some good questions that you can ask yourself, to gauge your readiness to take the plunge.
I’ll give you one question: Who in YOUR company is responsible for listening and engaging your community?
If you have to think about it, you’re in trouble. It’s time.
Three A’s That Fuel Visionary Thinking And Performance
Yesterday, I came across this amazing series by Jonathan Fields entitled: CEO’s Secret Weapon: little-known tactics that fuel visionary thinking.
The Three A’s that Jonathan talks about in the series are:
Get Away
Train Your Attention
Time To Get Active
I won’t even give a quick summary here. Read the whole three part series. When reading it, think about the people you know that really seem to stand out as visionaries and top performers. The people that consistently excel in most everything they do. Maybe that’s you? You are probably doing these things in some form or another.
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.
When 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.
Working 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.
Freshbooks = Awesome!
I’ve written about freshbooks in the past and many of you who I’ve spoken with know that I’m a huge fan of the product in general. It’s one of my favorite applications on the market.
Aside from their product being awesome, I also love the company culture that comes across in their blog and in this great video from standoutjobs.com:
They just do so many things right. Here’s the latest example.
At the recent How Design Conference they actually had a Freshbooks user hand paint and design their exhibit booth on the show floor, while the show was going on. Check it out:
Check out the full details here on the Freshbooks blog.
Great, great stuff guys! This really blew me away.
About
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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