Dilema managerului

Preluata de la o postare LinkedIn a lui Steve Boen

Eu am camasa rosie...

Spun asta in apararea mea :P

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[Team velocity 4] Exit points

Copyright:http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org

A key factor in designing the team according to Highway Theory.

A well designed highway has the quality that you have a smooth exit, well signaled with kilometers ahead, for an easy transition. A well designed team has the quality that there is a smooth development of the team, as well as the smooth leave of a member. There is no wonder that some team member choose to leave for  various reasons. There are sophisticated reasons behind, that are hard to grasp, as well as easy to understand ones like "My wife wants to move to another city" or "I need to change the city, my kids go to college and I want to be close to them". It's hard to cope to objective reasons, even harder to cope with subjective ones. 

Doesn't matter now. The change will happen and it's always about how smooth the transition will be. As a manager, you will be measured according to this. As a team member, you will suffer the consequences, good or worse. The art of designing a smooth exit stays at manager, the art of implementation stays in the team.

For the knowledge workers, a critical aspect is to have a comprehensive knowledge transfer. Corporations are selling their know-how and pay the employees even to distribute their know-how within the organization. This is not a coincidence. The people are the keepers of the know-how, but it cannot be only one to have the knowledge. You need small communities, little circular relationships where people learn one from another. Thus, the knowledge transfer can be done continuously, having in mind the win-win principle. Putting two great guys and one novice in the community, you can stimulate the experienced ones to work together, as well as to foster the development of the beginner.
The other principle to have in mind is that knowledge is overlapping. The knowledge is nowadays like a niche. I am the expert in X or Y. This is not fun for the team member. Sorry to disappoint you again, the professional life cycle is about 40 years. The expertise is useful for about 15 to 20 years. Afterwards, the technology will change, maybe the niche will disappear, therefore it's highly appreciated when the team offers the opportunity to slightly extend your expertise. On one hand, the manager has the famous back-up solutions. On the other one, the employee intrinsic value on the market is increased. Everyone has something to win.
The overlapping of skills is not done by accident or just based on the interest of the team members. This shall be based on skill inventory for the team and the team's replacement strategy. In both cases, it's a little bit about strategy. To have the team skill inventory you need to understand almost perfectly the needs of the business and !!! the future of the business. You need some years to build the needed skills for the knowledge workers. You need some days to loose a key person. It is highly dependent on you the impact such a change (resignation, promotion) is having on your business. We will speak more about skills inventory, how this can be transformed in a powerful tool. But I will not speak about the future of your business. This is your job to understand and to deploy a meaningful replacement strategy. Overlapping knowledge, distributing tasks in such a way that you can share the work of the guy who leaves the team could be the secret of a smooth exit point.

The most powerful team is that where people feel free to remain. This should be no coincidence. When the team members can choose at any moment to leave or stay (and THEY STAY), this should be the best motivation strategy you ever imagined. Any exit point they will encounter will be skipped.

Stay tuned for the next ideas about exit points:
Communication of changes,, trusting in the people leaving the team, preparation of the future collaboration.


Read also

Team velocity [1] - the idea
Team velocity [2] - the relation between the mission of the team and its velocity
Team velocity [3] - The entry points on the highway
Team velocity [5] - The signs

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Team velocity [3] - the entry points

Teams are for the members what are highways for the cars. It makes no sense to have highways unless there are cars to use it. There are different types of cars, different age and different journeys to take on the highway. There are as well different types of human beings, with different skills and interests, they have a huge range of interests and career perspectives.

I am speaking now about entry points and exit points. When designing a team, a manager should consider, besides others, two main aspects : how to integrate a new team member and how to cope with the leave of an experienced one. This things are critical in order to cope well with the change.

I will call entry points the way a new team member is introduced in the team. There are a few things to consider in order to enable the team member to act.
First, you need to choose a profile compatible with the values of the team. A little chemistry has to exist in order to have good start. Team members have to share the values and, ideally, to find common interests. The professional interactions are easier when people like each other, discuss about subject they are interested outside of business hours. Sharing same values makes less probable to have conflicts based on principles and the organizational culture is better adopted.
Having compatibility ensured, the manager should take care that the introduction is as smooth and fast as possible. The initial training phase has to be careful planned, disseminating the right amount of information, in a professional manner. No matter the seniority, there are information that has to be digested, methods to be adopted. Also, there is a good practice to increase gradually the complexity of the tasks. Assigning very complex tasks, from day 1, makes the saying "swim or die" really concrete and one might loose valuable team members that simply don't cope well with such environment. People do need success stories to be motivated and enjoy their time when do not need to overcome an initial failure.

Smooth interactions between team members improve performance. This is another important topic to consider when introducing a new team member. You should facilitate interactions: organize team meetings, some lunch or dinner together. Moderate dialogues, be there for the newbies and your effort will be rewarded soon.

Last , but not least, keep things in order. Good habits are to be shared. Information is replicable by anyone in the team and discipline is a value that should be shared by every team.

A good entry point on the highway ensures that you can speed up without other constraint than the power of the engine. A good entry point in a team ensures that each team member can live his career up to his maximum potential.



Read also:
                 Team velocity [1] - the idea
                 Team velocity [2] - the relation between the mission of the team and its velocity

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Team velocity [2] - the mission influences the velocity of the team

 As we have spoke last week, I come again to this subject of team velocity.

This week, more about the relation between the team's mission and velocity of the team members.

You may know that each team suppose to have a mission,  a reason to exist. Some teams are designed to generate new products. Some to run extended projects. Others to do average jobs. Depending on this mission, my opinion is that teams have already different velocities. A team to deliver constantly innovation will certainly have a higher velocity than the one responsible to maintain a plant.
Each team can ensure a broader on limited development path for its team members, without being a better or worse team. A better team is the one who can ensure a great development for a team member, without the need to change roles to often. The team itself can be organized in a way that knowledge is constantly exchanged, new challenges are introduced gradually and experiences are created in order to deliver better the results expected.
Let's take one example: John Smith is an excellent developer, mastering Linux kernel development. The team of John is a small team of 7, working for various platforms. Now, it is introduced Android and there is another good developer (Peter Horn) who has some experience already in porting Android. Of course, Android is based on Linux. What option does it have the team manager? One would be to put Peter in charge and give him some support from a junior developer. Another one to put John in the same position. I would put both in this task and give them complementary tasks. This way, John can increase his experience in Android and avoid some of the traps of porting *nix operating systems. On the other hand, Peter has a fairly good partner and could deliver fast, learn something new and satisfy one of the experts' needs: belonging to an exclusive group.

Team manager has the duty to adjust the velocity of each team member, in order to cope with continuous changes in the business development. Some team members may complain in certain situations and might be the need to change this speed. Other times, the velocity of the team might hinder the individual development. If there is a great talent, some alternatives has to be provided. For the normal persons, it has to be assessed if there is the need for backup immediately or the risk of fluctuation is limited. Discussing often with the team members about their perceived development needs is decreasing the demotivation and gives the manager the opportunity to cope with fluctuation risk. Additionally, he can make internal changes to optimize the results and facilitate the thrive of team members.

Senior team members, even they might be high on the development scale, still expect a progress. The challenge is to find this way.
Some of them look for new challenges in the technical field, other need to make a change to a managerial position, others would like to take more responsibility for an internal research project. There are many items that are perceived as progress and this are regarded differently by each of the team members. The more you can understand what moves ahead the team member, more you can adjust the setup of the team.

Managers have also to communicate their expectations and intentions in the setup of the team. The colleagues have the chance to choose if this enough for them or they need to make a change. They are still committed to the team, but they are showing their unhappiness. Might be contradictory, nevertheless the results are timely delivered and the transition to other team is made smoothly.

The adjustment of roles cannot be easily done. It's always a challenge.
Please remember an older post about choosing to be the "boss", if you think is to complicated.

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Team velocity

`First time I heard about team velocity has been when I read some things on Agile development. There are various descriptions of the team velocity in Agile and I invite you to read this one.
I said this is a great descriptor of the team performance and I should introduce it as objective reference for comparison with the other teams. Thinking back, I realized that it is not easy to implement this due to the way estimations are made and planning is implemented. Therefore, I put this on the shelf, for more reflection...

But, I came to the idea that there is another velocity of the team. I wrote some weeks ago about the team seen as road. If you are the vehicle, and the speed of this vehicle is the speed of your personal development, we come to the idea that the team velocity is actually the average development speed of the team members plus the development of the team itself (different than of the individuals).

According to physics, the speed is the ration between the distance and time. Of course, we will make, for this concept, a similar ratio between the personal development achieved and the time elapsed. When your are thinking
It's excellent for any human being to progress. The trick that manager has to master is the direction of development. How this direction is in the interest of the team, respectively of the company. It's the post-capitalism era we face now. Talents are important, this are the competitive advantage. Money are a fantasy.

Let's continue with some more considerations about team velocity, how can it be ensured and what are the consequences of it.

The first idea you could put in practice is the set of trainings for a certain role. This is obvious and there are not so many things to say on it. I would add that each training shall be discussed by the manager with the team member to underline the objectives for the team and to reflect on the objectives for self development.
This is putting me to a next suggestion: consciously or not, each individual is developing from point A to point B. Having identified the two points A and B, the manager can use specifically the trainings and other development measures to facilitate this journey. Enrolling the individual in irrelevant trainings for his journey makes the journey longer and decreases the team velocity.
Trainings are not enough. Everyone needs practice. With the destination point in mind, with the next role in mind, the manager can facilitate learning experiences within controlled environment. For instance, there is the need that John becomes a very efficient software release engineer (you, that guy that prepares the releases and makes sure that the others gets what they have been promised). So, John can prepare some internal releases, can do some less important projects where he can practice his knowledge and imagine own working style.
Of course, development is harder as one advance in seniority. Things become fuzzy and manager should add his visionary talent to identify possibles steps ahead. There is always the need of transformation. A team does not remain the same, in roles, activities and responsibilities.Team velocity cannot be measured objectively in all aspects, but there is one obvious output: the thrive of team members.
I've read recently a post on HBR.org on Creating Sustainable Performance. One of the main ideas has been that people thrive within an environment that supports learning and based on their inborn skills. You can read full article, I noted down two things I could do in my team to ensure a great team velocity.
Delegate decisions.
This comes with a bunch of benefits (see the theory of distributed computing power) and with certain drawbacks in dealing with mistakes. For me, looking for the rootcause, fixing it and not dealing with guiltiness and guilty people fixed most of the things. People love to decide and to participate to decisions, but they are afraid of mistakes. Having this fixed, manager can embrace a participative leadership style that prevents him on being part of every decision and leaves some time to think forward.
Constantly offer feedback
Based on my personal leadership style, I tried to improve the way I collect and give feedback. I've started with giving feedback only during evaluations, but I am trying (keep trying...) to offer positive and constructive feedback through out the year and make the evaluations only a sum of previous discussions. Additionally, I am looking constantly to facilitate the expression of feedback between team members. I think is not yet where it should be. Keep trying...

One thing it sure helps in team velocity is to explain and discuss. The journey should be a team journey. The development of one team member should be in the direction of the team development and should not do any harm to others. Constant discussions about the team's roadmap increase the awareness and facilitate contribution. Also, one can identify other potential leaders during these discussions, gather useful insights and include common vision of the future.

This is not all about velocity. Next weeks we will speak about:
- adjustment of velocity for each team member
- expectations for senior team members
- how to retain the know-how and release the humans
- how to make the development speed uniform and avoid internal turmoils

Read more on the same subject:
Team velocity [1] -the mission of the team slightly influence the velocity

Team velocity [3] - the entry points

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