Googles 5 foundations for a successful team.

Googles 5 foundations for a successful team.

Sep 25, 2017 | Collaboration, Leadership

Teamwork, collaboration, and all sorts of clichés relate to the workings of teams.

Over the last 25 years they have invaded and become pervasive in our workplaces, but most often they do not deliver the hoped for outcomes.

On Saturday night, those of us who watch Rugby League saw a display of teamwork we should remember. A busted, down on personnel Cowboys team coming from an unwinnable position on the seasons table, beat the favourites who were full of enthusiasm, confidence and with a full playing roster, to get a shot at the title.

How does that happen?

We all mumble about ‘team culture’ without knowing really what it is, and where it comes from, while working to find it for our teams.

Google uses teams as the core of their operational and development processes, they have not become one of the most successful companies in history by getting it wrong. However, like the rest of us, they did not really know what made a team successful, so set out to find out by deploying their formidable skills and resources to answer the question.

The answer they came up with surprised them, although it should not have, as once seeing it written, it is pretty obvious.

  • Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
  • Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?
  • Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?
  • Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us?
  • Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

For someone like me who has worked with teams for a very long time, the response on seeing this list, reproduced in summary above, is ‘of course’. However, when constructing teams, how often do we take the easy way, grab who is available, allocate a superstar and expect them to carry the load. Meantime we do not make sure the dynamics of the group are the focus of the construction, give insufficient consideration to the mix of skills and personalities, and then be less than specific about the outcomes required, the plans to get there, available resources for the team to use, and the time frames required.

I am not even a great fan of Rugby League, but the quality of the Cowboys team on Saturday night would indicate that a test along the lines of Googles 5 headline requirements would return a very high score.

It will be fascinating to watch the grand final next week against the Melbourne Storm, a team that has made the culture of the place a core of its success since entering the league in 1998.

 

Photo credit: AAP Dan Himbrechts

 

Don’t believe everything you think

Don’t believe everything you think

Sep 22, 2017 | Change, Leadership

 

Leaders who are unable to see another point of view, listen to others, and absorb and engage with diversity are destined to make mistakes.

Good leaders have a point of view, but they allow others to put theirs, see when their ideas can be improved, and sometimes utter those amazingly strong leadership  words ‘I did not know that’

Your beliefs, powered by experiences are powerful barriers and filters to the way you see the world, they reinforce the status quo for you.

Have you ever made a mistake, seen a better way with the benefit of hindsight that should have been obvious with a little more information, thought, time and effort?

Yes, most of us have.

If you answered no, seek counselling, quickly, before you do  any more damage.

Cartoon Credit: Hugh McLeod at gapingvoid.com

 

The single most common question I ask myself

The single most common question I ask myself

Sep 20, 2017 | Change, Governance, Marketing

How do I demonstrate value?

As a senior marketing bloke in a large business, being heard around the board table was always a problem, as it is hard to quantify the impact of what you do. Try as hard as possible, there are still holes in the case, as the reality is that you are setting out to tell the future.

‘Do this, and that will happen’

While marketers are no longer seen as the corporate equivalent of ‘Zelda the fortune teller’ it remains hard to compete for scarce resources with those who are able to table hard data, and are able to quantify the holes in your logic, should they choose to do so.

While pointing out that one is in the past and cannot be changed, while the other is in the future, and therefore is able to be shaped by sensible and informed investment, there remains the uncertainty of the future. Success depends on the confidence that a management has in the ability of the marketer to assemble facts and suppositions into a credible projection of outcomes, in line with the risk profile of the corporation

It is even harder in consulting to small businesses. Every dollar spent on marketing with the promise of better outcomes in the future is a dollar out of the owners pocket. They have all been stung by the purveyors of various forms of marketing snake oil before, so are a wary and appropriately cynical lot.

I have concluded that the answer is a bit like motherhood, the value off which is only visible over a long period, but is then indisputable.

Photo credit Ali Alhosen via Flikr

Is being ‘sticky’ the key to success.

Is being ‘sticky’ the key to success.

Sep 18, 2017 | Branding, Marketing, Strategy

Those flogging business coaching to the owners of medium sized businesses seem to focus on one of the oldest sales techniques in the book, the ‘Before &  After’ pitch.

Describe the current situation, and make it as down and dirty as possible, then describe the new world, the joy of the state achieved by the application of their great coaching/technology/process, whatever it is they are selling.

No mention of the challenge in the middle, abracadabra, all is well, just $109/month, less than the cost of coffee and a roll every day and you are on your way to the ‘laptop lifestyle’.

Tangled up in the bullshit, never articulated, at least  to my hearing is a very valid notion, that of ‘Critical Mass’.

The critical mass in a nuclear reaction is the point at which the process becomes self- sustaining. It may take only a nanosecond, but there is that critical point, below which the process is not self-sustaining, and past which, it is.

At what point does a cloud, which is just an accumulation of moisture, suddenly change from being a cloud to dropping rain?

For small business owners, the point of critical mass, from where the business is self-sustaining, is usually that point from where they can take time out of the business, and enjoy the financial rewards of success.  The road to that point will be different in every case, and most in my experience never actually consider what the elements of critical mass may be in their particular business, and how they might influence them.

I think it might be about how ‘sticky’ you can become.

‘Sticky’ is not a term often seen in any form of business writing, it is more usual in kids books, but how is this for a definition:

‘Stickiness’ in business is the function of: Share of Wallet  X Propensity of customers to advocate for you.

The stickier you are, the more likely you will be to have your customers buy from you everything you can reasonably provide, and then go one step further and tell their friends, peers, and wider networks.

If you are  not sticky enough, you will be sub self-sustaining, but pass that sticky test, and the business will sustain itself, with some ongoing tweaking, which is different from the 80 hour weeks most small  business owners put in, to make a living, but often  not have a life.

 

Cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod and Gapingvoid.com.

 

 

 

Who do we sue?

Who do we sue?

Sep 15, 2017 | Governance, Management

I had never thought of the question ‘Who do we sue’ as being of strategic importance until a few weeks ago.

Having coffee with a friend who has worked for a long time for a US  multinational corporation that developed and commercialised a very useful chemical component technology, long since copied by low cost manufacturers  in China, he explained it.

While my friends employer retains a significant market share in the US, everywhere else it has almost disappeared, although perhaps ironically, pockets do remain in Asia.

His analysis was that the nature of US corporations is that they like to know who to sue should something go wrong. This was the one and only reason his employer retained their US market share. Their US customers knew their chances of success in suing a Chinese supplier in the event that something  went wrong were somewhere between none and a snowflakes chance.

Therefore they continued to pay double the component price to his US owned employer as a sort of unstated insurance.

They knew who to sue.