Controlling for level of skill/capability, the strength of a team is proportional to the percentage of folks within the team who’d put the team’s interest ahead of their own.
When that percentage is less than 50%, it is a disaster. Conversely, when it exceeds 80%, you’re generally looking at greatness.
Every person, team, and organization has a culture – a set of norms that governs how decisions are made. Since the quality of our execution is a by-product of our decisions, our culture becomes our strategy in the long run. “This is how we do things here” becomes “this is what people like us do.”
There are two ways we shape the culture of our own self, of our teams, and organizations every day –
1. People: The people we decide to hire, fire, or promote (whether via titles or via praise) are the single biggest lever we have to shape culture. While this appears to apply only to organizations and teams, the same holds true in our life. The people we choose to spend time with and, more importantly, the people we choose not to spend time with shape our personal culture.
2. Systems/Processes: The systems/processes we create do two things at once. First, they guide and incentivize certain kinds of behavior. And, second, when done well, they provide transparency into how decisions are made. A great resource planning process, for example, clearly lays out the decision criteria. In our personal life, habits are examples of the systems we create to guide behavior and help us make better decisions consistently.
I’ve spoken to many folks who ask questions about the cultures of the teams they’re considering joining. While this is a very important question, I think it is also important to remember that cultures aren’t set in stone. Instead, like wet clay, they can be shaped.
And, as we make daily decisions (whether consciously or unconsciously) on people and processes, we play our part in shaping it everyday.
The research on great teams has concluded that the key ingredient is psychological safety. That, to me, is just another word for trust. Great relationships and great teams are built on trust. If you’ve ever worked in a team which operated with 100% trust, you know what such experiences are like. They are a thing of beauty and are experiences you’ll cherish forever.
It turns out that there are no shortcuts for trust. Trust is predicated on knowledge and then understanding. We can claim to know someone when we know who they are and what their story is. We begin to understand them when we begin to understand how they make decisions and why they do what they do.
Building diverse teams, as a result, requires this investment. It needs to begin by taking the team out for a day or two and spending time understanding each other’s stories. No devices, no distractions, 100% presence. It is only after such a day that we can begin to understand how and why people operate the way they do. We hear stories we’ve never heard and find ourselves opening up to perspective that we’d never have considered. Only then are we ready to get work done. We have to go slow to go fast.
This sounds like a painfully intentional approach to building diverse teams. It is. Diverse teams are rarely built by accident. When that happens, it happens because the team members are stuck in the trenches – in very difficult situation that requires them to go through the same process under stress. Such situations often creates friends for life. The process of building and operating in a great teams isn’t different.
This process also speaks to why we naturally gravitate to building teams with people who are similar to us. It is easy to understand people who are similar to us. They share similar back stories, similar backgrounds and the process of understanding takes little effort. But, in my limited experience, such teams are the equivalent of getting five guitarists together. You may have a great jam session.
But, you rarely build a great band.
And, you never have a shot at being a part of an orchestra.
3 things I’m thinking about as I complete my 26th year –
1. Self confidence and the unwillingness to compromise on what matters. The primary reason for starting this blog was to learn to get over my own insecurities and build self confidence. I’ve learnt a few things about confidence over these past few years and a key part of this learning has been the understanding that confidence doesn’t come from dots, it comes from lines. So, a consistent set of small wins does more good for your confidence than an out-of-the-blue big achievement. It is that realization that’s led to an intense, obsessive, sometimes pedantic, focus on process over the past few years. This focus on process has resulted in better results, more happiness and, over time, more confidence.
I’ve begun to observe that this increase in confidence has had an interesting side effect – an unwillingness to compromise on what matters to me. I think that’s because confidence brings with it a sense of comfort in your skin. And, a mix of this comfort combined with a sense of purpose that’s been a result of all the thinking on the topic for the past 2 years has led to more clarity on why I do things. This, in turn, has helped with making all those little decisions that make up our days. And, as we live our days, so we live our lives.
It is a fascinating evolution though. And, I’m enjoying the change.
2. History lauds the individual but it is teams that make history. Hat tip to Walter Isaacson and “The Innovators” for this one. I’ve really been struck by how every great innovation in the past 150 years was brought forth by teams. I always considered myself reasonably well acquainted with the history of technology and I associated many technology shifts with lone geek genius. I’ve been blown away by the recurrence of this very simple idea – history is made by great teams. That, in turn means, if you want to really make a positive difference, you want to hone your ability to build great teams. (Note: build doesn’t necessarily mean lead)
I have 3-4 interesting team projects in progress and, in the remaining year or so of being a student, I am really interested in digging deep and understanding how great teams are built. It is nice to be able to experiment with no serious consequences. :-)
3. Learning to “see” and learning to make the most of an inch by going a mile deep. A close friend recently said he thought I was very observant. I found this to be an interesting observation as I have always thought of myself as someone with really bad observation skills. And, in some senses, that is very true. I am lost in my own thoughts and world far too often. But, observation in his eyes was to be able to view a situation and take insight from it. And, I think what he described as observant is what the wonderful Seth Godin describes in his post about “learning to see.” 7 years of looking for interesting ideas to blog about has inadvertently taught me to scratch beneath the surface a lot more. Allow me to digress for a moment here – it never ceases to amaze me as to how often people around you can point out things you never knew. I’ve learnt nearly everything about myself, especially about my strengths, thanks to insightful notes from people around me. I do my best to do the same to others around me. These observations around strengths are very valuable – we focus on weaknesses far too much.
His comment, however, led me to think about the idea observation some more. And, the more I think of it, the more I realize that observation is as powerful an idea as it gets. Great learners don’t need too many experiences to learn powerful lessons. They make the most of experiences by extracting an unimaginable amount of insight. I’d like to be able to do that more. And, perhaps that’ll be a great theme to take forward into this 26th year – to be able to make the most of the experiences I choose to immerse myself into by learning to make the most an inch… by going a mile deep.
Thank you to you for reading these notes, liking, sharing, and sending in your thoughts and comments. It is always lovely hearing from you. You make this blog a blog. And, for that, I am very grateful. Thank you for all you do.
I am reading “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks” Created the Digital Revolution.” I realized I didn’t know much about the early history of the digital age and have, so far, found it fascinating. I’m still only 25% into the book and am beginning to see a trend in how innovative teams that shaped the digital age were built.
1. Multi-disciplinary teams. Great technology breakthroughs were not made by a group of computer scientists working together. Instead, they involved groups of theoretical physicists, chemists and programmers who came together. This was the case in the creation of the early computers at University of Penn and in the case of the semiconductor at Bell Labs.
Bell Labs was a great example of a place that was simply bustling with innovative ideas. Its DNA was built on the fact that it kept exposing scientists to others with different expertise. Steve Jobs was so inspired by Bell Labs that he designed the Pixar headquarters (and, perhaps, Apple, too?) to mimic Bell Labs. At the Pixar headquarters, you are forced to bump into others from different parts of the organization at the large Atrium. It is, as Jobs described it, a place that “promoted promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.”
2. An intersection of science and the arts. Ada Lovelace, John von Neumann, Steve Jobs were examples of people who brought together two seemingly unconnected disciplines. This is, in some ways, related to point 1 but still worth a separate call out. All 3 were credited with visionary thinking that shaped the digital age and, perhaps, it was only made possible by their position at that intersection.
3. Teams that combined individual genius and great team spirit. We like building tales of the individual inventor. But, great inventions were largely built by teams. What is distinctive about nearly every one of these teams is that they combined individual genius (often one or two within the group) and great team spirit from working really well together. Not all these times lasted long because of recurring issues around ego, but when they did, they worked fantastic.
This point is a great guide to anyone looking to build a great team. You want to encourage individual genius in your team and, at the same time, do your best to foster team spirit. It always feels safer to just bring people whose egos don’t clash. But, then, you lose edge. And, edge is often what make teams great.
A Learning a Day 