I was thinking to myself the other day with regards to teams, and how you can make them stronger.
Let’s say that you have a team member that is unable to come to work one day, for whatever reason. Now, as the manager you have a specific workload to get done, so you need someone to do it, but the person you wanted is not able to get the job done. What do you do? The way I see it, you have two choices: force them to get it done, or ask for someone else on the team to help out (I suppose a third option is to do the work yourself, but we’ll lump that in with having someone else on the team help out).
If you force that person to get the job done, do you end up with a better, stronger team as an end result? If we are talking a military situation, the answer may very well be “yes”. You could have the situation arise where you need for someone to go above and beyond their capabilities, but usually that involves a life or death situation. Let’s consider a sports team as another example. Most sport team management is about putting the right people in the right places at the right time to be successful. In sports, it is often finding a way to limit your mistakes that allow for you to win. So, forcing someone to play a role that they are not very good at could be disastrous for the team as a result. I have seen teams rally around such individual efforts but by and large this is always a short-term gain. The end result is not always a stronger team, just a team that managed to get through one or two games while short-handed.
Now let’s consider our world of Information Technology. Unless you are working in IT for the NSA, chances of your role having life-or-death implications is very slim. And you are not exactly equivalent to a sports team unless everyone in your office is living and showering together. So, we have a different dynamic at play here. As a manager you have the need for someone to come in on a Saturday. You have your mind set on a specific individual. That individual informs you they are not available on that specific day. And then you essentially “force” them to come in to work, making them change whatever plans they had, and tell them that they need to “be a team player”.
What about being a “team manager”? If your team relies on one specific person to perform one specific role on one specific day, then I would argue that your team is far too specialized to ever be considered effective, or successful. The best teams have interchangeable parts, allowing for flexibility when it comes to roles. That way, should a team member not be available, someone else can step in and you have no loss of service. And teams function well in this way because we all have times when we need to be unavailable, so we all look to help out when we need to step in to fill a temporary gap left by others.
Nice post. Where I am currently has issues with too much specialization, in my opinion, combined with a lack of documentation as well.
Your Saturday workday example is a great one and one issue with forcing an employee to work on the weekend is that can lower morale and also make that person less likely to go above and beyond at a later date.
Like your approach and analogy to sports. I equate much of what you describe as a lack of transparency between folks on the team. I feel there needs to be more transparency between team members. Folks need to build trust. To do this you need work close enough together sharing ideas and things you learn to build that trust.
It’s one thing to be great and another to make those around you great. The first one gets you more work and the second one helps you to share the load with everyone.
thanks Keith!