I personally have found that every project I start I find myself re-integrating with a new team. On one project I may be working with a local group of people I know well and the next day (or even a few minutes later) the team I work with may have oceans between them both geographically and in our experience/knowledge base. I find myself constantly searching for a new role to play on each team. Every time the team changes, new expectations or even demands are imposed upon me.
Being able to succeed in these constant environment changes isn’t easy; it demands that I develop myself to be flexible in the roles I play on each team. I cannot always be the best communicator or the best analyst or the best manager; I may be assigned projects for which I am the least knowledgeable person on the team. Yet, I need to always find a role to play that adds value if I am to be successful.
In Amy C. Edmondson’s blog she describes “The Three Pillars of a Teaming Culture” that fuel successful teams in this rapidly changing environment. She states that we should create a culture of; curiosity towards each team member’s abilities and knowledge, be passionate about the task at hand to motivate cooperation and be empathetic enough to not only hear but rather comprehend other opinions.
These three “pillars” have already helped me re-think the way I approach my constantly changing environment. By listening and engaging more with the people I am working with, we have collectively gained an understanding of where each other’s frustrations and inspiration comes from. We are exponentially increasing the quality of work we do collaboratively and independently, as we are now able to gather thoughts, debate them and decide on a direction more efficiently without hesitation.
Do you think the three pillars can help you get more out of yourself and your team? Are you able to constantly find a way to bring value to a changing environment? Do you feel that working in a team is making you more productive? Do you teach others, learn from others or truly collaborate as a team? How do you team?
More on the 3 pillars:
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/the-three-pillars-of-a-teaming-culture/
As I reflected on Professor Noonan’s closing remarks last week, I thought about how can I make a difference to my team. How can I bring value not only to my department, but also to my employer. Professor Noonan emphasized that everyone has the potential to make a contribution, to think of some process or task that can help drive results and improve productivity.
I came across this article on Forbes that drove home this point for me, “4 Ways You can Drive Seismic Performance”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericschiffer/2014/08/13/3-ways-you-can-drive-seismic-performance/
The article suggests the following key takeaways:
1) Face Yourself On the Stand And Fire Away – Step back and reflect on what matters most to the company to elevate it. It can be as simple as automating a report.
2) Act to Kill – This sounds a little violent :), but it is just a sensational way that the article suggests that you should be deliberate and consistent in achieving your daily professional goals. Act!
3) Commit or Go Home – Commit and do not fear failure.
4) Rewire the Jet at 36000 feet – Keep progressing even in the face of hindrances.
Recent polls suggest Americans have had enough at work. The labor market seems to require more and more of the workforce – balancing continuing education, extracurriculars, and networking all while doing the job leads many of us to feel burntout. As a class of Evening MBA students, I’m sure every one of us can relate.
I’m quite a collector of “better living through research” materials and have noticed three burnout coping strategies that have proven themselves useful again and again.
1. Schedule daily quiet time.
“Everyday I start off happy, but then your boss is calling, your phone is ringing, and the dogs are barking. You’re trying to write an email and suddenly three people text you about a firedrill involving an SVP and a rejected project proposal. How am I supposed to manage stress if I can’t escape it?”
It’s a stress management trope for a reason: it works. Some call it unplugging, prayer, or meditation but no matter how you label it, humans were not designed to have constant stimuli interrupting their thoughts and functions. I subscribe to meditation twice a day, and have recently picked up transcendental meditation as a way to further my own practice.
2. Make time for nothing. Yes, nothing.
As my mother likes to say, “It’s your job to take care of you”. Schedule downtime and protect it fiercely. Sometimes that means protecting it from yourself – leave an hour a day to unwind and relax, and resist the temptation to fill that time with distractions like housework or chores (unless that means relaxation to you).
3. Learn to recognize burnout behaviors and have an action plan at the ready.
“I left the stove on last night, really? Yes, that is a nervous eyelid twitch. No, I will not stop watching Parks and Rec and eating waffles – Leslie Knope gets me.”
Humans are creatures of habit and when threatened, we tend to revisit the same patterns that make us feel safe – whether it’s drinking too much, sleeping in, or even becoming selectively forgetful; when we’re burntout or stressed, our personal coping mechanisms rear their ugly heads.
If there’s a behavior in your life that seems to appear every time you’re facing a heavy workload or are scraping the bottom of the energy barrel, it’s a safe bet that burnout is on the horizon. Once you recognize these patterns, have a plan ready to address them.
Emotions: Friend or Foe?
The role emotions play in negotiation, collaboration, and team work intrigues me. We are instructed to be skeptical of emotions and in fact being professional is synonymous to being stoic.
Yet, this is at odds with the evolutionary development of our brains. According to the triune model of the human brain, the three parts of the human brain are: reptilian brain- responsible for unconscious actions like flight, fright, or freeze response; limbic brain (mammalian brain)- responsible for attachment within society, care for young ones; and finally pre-frontal cortex- responsible for analysis, planning, communication etc. Hence, we can see that our analytical abilities are in fact a recent addition to our brain structure and ignoring the emotions can have insidious effects.
But how can we use our emotions genuinely and strategically. This article from HBR lists out some great points( which are listed below in my words):
Being aware of ourselves and emotions
Recognizing the trigger causing the particular emotion.
Reinterpreting the trigger to elicit a positive emotion.
Lesson Learnt: Emotions are not bad we just need to use our superior analytic abilities to use them strategically.
The phrase “work can be fun” may seem like an oxymoron. But it doesn’t have to be! Now it doesn’t mean we all should start coming to work in Hawaiian shirts and drinking mai tais at the office (as fun as that may sound). But we all can certainly make work less monotonous in a few easy ways — and help motivate your team as well.
One simple way to boost morale is to throw a potluck. We frequently do this at my work to celebrate promotions, new babies, weddings, etc. Everyone on the team contributes, so it’s a nice way to celebrate relatively inexpensively. We usually set it up in the office so people can stop whenever they get a moment. This way, people can take a quick break from the normal workday, but it doesn’t cut into productivity. Plus, it’s just a nice way to make your co-workers feel appreciated!
I also love Barbara Corcoran’s idea of “surprising” your office or team with something fun. Corcoran is a successful businesswoman and judge on the show “Shark Tank”. In her article below, she described how she got some of her best ideas while “playing” outside the office. Of course, she has the resources to rent hot air balloons or camels to ride at the company picnic. But I don’t think the surprises have to be grand. It could simply be letting everyone wear costumes to work for Halloween, or buying the first round of drinks at the company happy hour.
One thing I would not recommend is cutting “fun things” from the budget, especially when times are tough. I know it may seem like an easy way to save money, but it can really affect morale in the office. A few years ago, management decided to cut out the annual holiday party. When they made the announcement, it was like someone had let the air out of the office. People complained for days about how unappreciated they felt. I also remember the level of animosity toward the management. Luckily, a few astute supervisors saved the day by putting together an “unofficial” party at a nearby restaurant. But it really affected the mood of the office for weeks.
So the next time your team needs a little motivation, take some advice from Barbara — and go have fun.
Recently I made a presentation what I think every successful leader needs for management practice. It’s what I called the 4p’s of successful leadership. Those 4p’s are Performance, Perception, Personality and Passion.
I found this article because after presenting I was interested in seeing what other people’s opinion are on what qualities should leaders possess and I thought it would worth sharing. This article asked 332, 860 professionals-what skills have the greatest impact on a leader’s success in a position the respondent’s currently hold?
What is interesting is number one with 38% said Inspires and motivates. That aligns right with one of my P’s, personality.
See the full article to see the rankings on characteristics of a leader.
Effective leaders tend to find a strong balance between data analysis and intuition. Many times, the aspect of intuition comes from recognizing patterns or trends. A big part of problem solving is recognizing these trends and finding ways to minimize its reoccurrence. Additionally, it is important for leaders to understand the true essence of the problem rather than finding a temporary fix that will likely rise again in the near future. This gives leaders more time to focus on other areas of the business rather than continuing to fix the same problem over and over again.
Understanding the intricacies of every aspect of the business is one way to develop a strong sense of how your decisions can affect specific areas of the business. Effective leaders don’t look at problems as a nuisance; effective leaders see problems as an opportunity for ongoing improvements.
Forbes has come up with four characteristics that make an effective leader:
1) Transparent Communication: The main takeaway is that transparent communication allows for other people to be heard. It fosters an environment where people are willing to speak up if there is an issue.
2) Break Down Silos: The importance of this characteristic is to eliminate boundaries. It is important to solve problems that affect the overall business rather than one segment of the business.
3) Open-Minded People: Effective leaders are ones who are not discouraged to find innovative ways to solve a problem. They are individuals that do not avoid the problem; they are not afraid to face problems head-on.
4) A Solid Foundational Strategy: As we have learned in our Strategy course, a business without a strategy is dangerous. Effective leaders go beyond figuring out the problem; they find ways to implement a strategy to solve the problem. This includes resource allocation and budgeting.
Some final takeaways are:
Always step back and assess the situation; never take a blind guess when solving a problem.
Find ways to solve the cause of the problem to eliminate it from reoccurring.
Learn from your previous failures and use those lessons learned to solve future problems.
Don’t avoid problem solving; challenge yourself to solve the problem head-on.
A little over three years ago I was watching the evening news. Towards the end the broadcast there was a segment to remember the life of a lifelong television producer, Mr. Jeff Gralnick, who had recently passed away. At the conclusion of Mr. Gralnick’s successful life story, the Anchor mentioned quote from him, “Always demand what is right, never accept second best.”
These words have stuck with me since and have been used as one of my own personal motto’s and guiding principles. They don’t mean that one needs to always have the “best of something,” but to strive for what is the most appropriate in a given situation.
As we continue to progress throughout our careers and develop into leaders, these are great words to operate with each day. I’ve used this philosophy when working with teams to ensure that tasks are not only completed successfully, but carried out in the correct manner, and have seen great results.
Why do so many people choose not to speak up at work? Interestingly, it’s not always because we fear retribution or other negative consequences. In fact, the biggest reason people do not speak to their managers concerning feedback or suggestions is that they feel nothing would change even if they did speak up. According to a survey from the Cornel University Survey Research Institute, respondents chose not to speak up to their managers because they think it is “a waste of time.” This feeling of futility can have far reaching effects on employees and the work environment as a whole.
The problem reminds me of the psychological theory of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is the idea that depression and other negative mental states and illnesses “result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of the situation.” Although the theory was originally studied in animals, it has applications in people too, particularly in the workplace. When employees feel like they have no control, they begin to feel helpless; and when they feel helpless or like all of their feedback ‘falls on deaf ears,’ why would they speak up at work?
Treat people that do speak up with dignity and respect. Ensure that they know they are being heard.
Explain why you are not doing something. If there’s no explanation for not following their suggestions, employees will assume that the new ideas brought to the table are simply being ignored.
Act on your employees’ suggestions. Claire states that the best way to encourage employees to speak up more and create a positive workplace is to act on the feedback offered – no matter how small.
These changes are relatively small and very easy to implement, but they have a huge impact on the company culture and on the employees working there. The next hurdle might be actually getting managers to listen to feedback about feedback…
I’ve always been fascinated by the Space Race of the 1960s. I am particularly amazed by the fact that in less than ten short years we went from considering space the realm of Hollywood and science-fiction to the kind of reality that you could watch live on the television in your living room. How did they do it? Computers? A bottomless budget? Sure, there were major advances in computer processing and increases in federal financing, but how did they go from being behind the Soviet Union to surpassing them en route to being the first nation to rendezvous, dock and land on the moon? I believe it has a lot to do with the team management practices that were exercised by NASA’s space flight leadership team. In former Flight Director Gene Kranz’s book Failure is not an Option he described how the NASA team was able to advance quickly through the Apollo program towards landing on the moon by saying, “Apollo succeeded at critical moments like this because the bosses had no hesitation about assigning critical tasks to one individual, trusting his judgment and then getting out of his way.” The basis for this trust was largely due to the emphasis NASA leadership placed on communicating, mapping out systematic solutions to complex problems, and establishing clear responsibilities for solving those problems and executing their designed solutions.
What’s interesting is that this is exactly what we were taught to do in MP. Upon reviewing the slides Professor Noonan presented during the Fall Semester, it is apparent that many of the lessons shared by our own “decision Jedi” were actually put to use by NASA in their effort to win the Space Race. Two slides, in particular seem applicable, which I’ve paraphrased below:
Intro Deck, Slide #24:
MP learning objectives and topics include: (a) defining the central problem in a situation; (b) connecting that problem to effective teamwork; (c) developing and delivering valuable insights; and (d) connecting those insights to effective action. “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” – Aristotle
Part 3 Deck, Slide #2:
How can we organize and manage team effort? (A) Appropriate work stream: (i) Targeted analyses, (ii) Spanning the tree, (iii) Driven by issues, and (iv) Focused using hypotheses; (B) Productive: (i) Focused info, resource needs; (ii) Clear, specific deliverables and declines; and (C) Effective use of team: (i) Responsibility and (ii) Coordination.
During the Space Race, the engineers and test pilots at NASA trained religiously, and spent extensive time developing rules and procedures for their flights. Since no one had ever flown in space before, each new mission provided an opportunity to literally “write the manual” on how certain objectives should be reached. Because the lives of the colleagues and friends, as well as the future of the nation, depended upon their precision, these engineers would try to consider every step of every mission from all angles before lighting a single rocket. In doing so, they were essentially asking themselves closing their eyes and asking themselves, “what do we need to do to achieve X?” and then building out mental “issue trees,” branches of which were then assigned to specific departments or team members to research, resolve and execute.
Apollo 13 (Theatrical Poster)
Although this kind of structured team management and leadership was a part of each stage of the Space Race, the most enduring display came in April of 1970, during the Apollo 13 mission. One of the most detailed accounts of how the Apollo 13 problems were tackled can be found in Flight Director Gene Kranz’s account in Failure is not an Option. Kranz describes how he broke the task down into key parts (e.g., power, trajectory, using the LM as a lifeboat for three men when it was designed for two, etc.) and then began in a structured and disciplined form of “brain storming” (or what some might call “brain steering”) during which every option was explored to ensure that the issue tree was mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.Short of reading Kranz’s book yourself, you can get an idea of what happened during the Apollo 13 mission by viewing the 1995 film starring Tom Hanks. Below are some key points in the film and links to YouTube clips that help provide a nice representation of this kind of team management:
Flight Director, Gene Kranz – sporting his famous “white team” vest
1) Shortly after the explosion occurs on the Command Module, mission control begins to devolve into chaos over the news that the Apollo 13 spacecraft is mysteriously venting oxygen into outer space. Gene Kranz focuses the group by saying, “Let’s work the problem people, let’s not make things worse by guessing.” (NOTE, only the first 42 seconds of this clip are from the scene that I’m referring to here, you can ignore the rest). Kranz’s statement reframes the crisis as a problem that can be solved, not a moment for mindless panic, and in so doing he returns his team to the tasks they’ve been trained to do: solve space flight problems in a systematic fashion. Moreover, although it’s hard to appreciate from this short clip, you can get a sense for how direct the lines of communication are in mission control. Every person has a role to play and their area of expertise is distinct. Gene Kranz sources information from each of them and provides specific instructions to each group. He never says, “somebody go do that” it’s always clear communication directed at a specific individual or sub-team so everyone knows who is responsible for generating the answer to a specific question.
2) After relocating the astronauts to the LM (a/k/a Lunar Module, LEM), Gene Kranz makes it clear that the old flight plan is being tossed out the window and he focuses the team’s brainstorm efforts on the key question, “How do we get our people home?” When the sling-shot around the moon idea is presented a debate ensues, displaying how team members are wearing “different colored hats,” to essentially test the strength of the proposed solution.
3) When faced with the challenge of managing the power supply, a man named “John” proposes that everything must be turned off otherwise the LM will run out of power in 16 hours, not 45 hours. A cacophony of negative responses fills the room but Gene Kranz assesses the situation, makes the decision to power down the LM and moves on with the remaining team members to say they need to find a squeeze every amp out of the electronics in the spacecraft –“failure is not an option!” This particular scene displays the trust Kranz placed in his team members and their expertise, and, again, the power of positioning each challenge as a problem that can be solved by specific team members or sub-groups of team members.
4) As one team works on the electronic power issues, another is just discovering that the CO2 levels in the LEM are rising and that the filters from the Odyssey and the LEM are not compatible. This leads to the famous “Square peg in a round hole” problem. This might be the most incredible problem solved during the mission, and if you’d like to read more about it, you can do so here. The work done by Ed Smylie’s “tiger team” unquestionably saved the lives of the three astronauts, but again it shows the value of breaking a big problem (“how do we get our guys home?”) into smaller questions and dividing the task of researching and resolving those problems up to be the responsibility of smaller groups or individuals.
Years later, the Apollo 13 the flight commander, Jim Lovell, during a separate interview, suggested the Apollo 13 mission and provides several key takeaways for business leaders:
Identify the problem and figure out what you have to solve it;
Communicate – you need to share information with your team members in order to solve the problem;
Good leadership and good teamwork are marked by perseverance and initiative.
Thanks to this structured approach to problem solving and team management, NASA was able to bring the crew of Apollo 13 home and in the process they achieved what is largely regarded as the administration’s finest hour. If you’re interested in learning how you too can achieve this level of success within your own organization, I would invite you to review the aforementioned slides and check out the movie Apollo 13 on iTunes or your preferred viewing platform. Remember, “FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!”
Apollo 13 crew members Fred W. Haise, James A. Lovell, and John L. “Jack” Swigert, arriving at the USS Iwo Jema after safely landing in the South Pacific Ocean.
