Teamwork
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If you've read much of my writing, you probably realize that I place a premium on teamwork in a work environment. Maybe it's my love of sports and the enjoyment I've had playing on various teams or maybe it's just important to me. In either case, I think it's important for the group of people working together to be a team.
I caught this interesting post about trusting your team. One manager trusted his team to handle user training while the head of a project didn't agree.
You have to trust the people working for you. Without a doubt there will be people that take advantage of that and will need to be reigned in, but for the most part people will do a good, professional job. It's important to trust those doing the work to do so, both for your sanity, and for the good long term effect on the team.
There will always be someone that doesn't pull their weight and it's the manager's job to either motivate this person to do better, assign them less work (with less bonus/reward), or move them out of the team.
However it's also important to understand that people are not resources; they're not robots that build x widgets in y hours every day. People have good days and bad ones, they get sick, have personal issues, or just didn't get enough donut or banana sugar this morning. Some will have a big baseball or World of Wargraft event at night and not concentrate that well during a particular day or week.
A good team pulls together and deals with the individual issues, understanding that on any particular project things might not get distributed evenly, but in the long haul it all works out.
Building a team is hard, but it produces a group that can bond together and accomplish more together than they could as individuals.
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Anyone that has read my posts will quickly realise that I used to be in government and now I am in private enterprise. If you've been smart and haven't read my rants, I will say again that there is NO such thing as teamwork in government. In fact, what you find is usually a mix of disloyalty, dishonesty, feigned friendships and constant politicising.
Example: I was a DBA in a team of 3 at one stage - yet, because I did not fit the image of what the manager thought was professional* , I was deemed to be unfit for the role and not worthy of the time to supply information with regards the running of the system.
[* Sorry to all the females out there but this "manager" is the reason that solidified my feelings on the subject of why there are so few female CEOs out there of the Fortune 500 companies and why a larger majority of women make bad managers than males. I won't go into detail here unless requested to do so but I will warn that the response will be politically incorrect.]
That all being said, I have a mate who is a manager of a team in a government department and his team are tight. There is no bickering; no politics; no bitchiness *and* they're efficient. I won't mention the name of that department as they will be disbanded if anyone finds out that someone enjoys going to work in a government office
The team I am in now is great. The management don't skimp on little things and waste huge amounts of money on crap and the people are friendly and dedicated. The systems are a bit behind and I'm working on bringing them up but, apart from that, it doesn't get much better than this.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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I agree, though it isn't just government - its politics of the office kind - I was an IT Manager/Developer in a commercial company with a small IT support team and always felt that the other IT staff were there to help me do my job rather than do what I told them.
However, my MD and line manager disagreed and wanted stronger leadership - never mind that the jobs got done and users were satisfied. This enabled another member of the team to undermine me and, to cut a long story short, he is now IT Manager and I am out.
Team building is difficult and requires full support from the top down. Dissenters in positions of influence can undermine the process badly.
Politics? Pah! I'm in a small company now where all I do is develop and maintain existing software - it could be more stretching, but it pays well and the whole company is a team that works as it should - we all have the same goal - to sell more software and make sure the users are happy, - surprising how much easier that is when you don't need to watch your back.
Pat
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The best team I worked on had three of in a remote office. We were all good at what we did, got it done ahead of time, and planned/worked towards stuff that we knew or thought would be coming. Winning often leads to more winning - because its fun!
I agree about trust, but that doesn't make it easy. I had lunch with a friend recently who manages a dev team and he was telling me that his team wanted him to let them decide when & how much extra time to put in to make sure work got done. His problem with that was that he been observing them over a couple months and found that really only two people on his team would do that, the rest were done at 5 pm regardless. Teams are complicated and it's hard to know how everything evolved, but the net for him - from his viewpoint! - is that he doesn't trust the entire team to be self motivated in this particular area. I suspect at this point 90% of managers just move to a more directive style to make sure the work gets done, %5 don't care, and 5% try to resolve the trust issue. Not easy stuff.
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The management 'style', and I use the word very loosely, is a throwback to something in the 50's. My sympathy for those who have to work, albeit not even directly, with individuals of this sort. There is really no place in an organization for that 'style'. Kudos to those who have to and stand up/step up to the occasion. The greatest wrong is that of the managment of this 'stylish' one because they are not stepping up and doing their jobs !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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Andy wrote:
"...I had lunch with a friend recently who manages a dev team and he was telling me that his team wanted him to let them decide when & how much extra time to put in to make sure work got done. His problem with that was that he been observing them over a couple months and found that really only two people on his team would do that, the rest were done at 5 pm regardless. Teams are complicated and it's hard to know how everything evolved, but the net for him - from his viewpoint! - is that he doesn't trust the entire team to be self motivated in this particular area. I suspect at this point 90% of managers just move to a more directive style to make sure the work gets done, %5 don't care, and 5% try to resolve the trust issue. Not easy stuff".
IANAM, ("I am not a Manager"), so my response from the "team" is that being a manager is hard. They're stuck between two opposing sides, (at least most of the time, I guess), and seem to constantly trying to find a compromise that everyone agrees with.
Though in your friend's case, why not talk it through with the 'rest' and find out what they need to do their job. At the very least, he could have a trial of letting them decide; after all if they're not doing overtime now, then what has he got to lose!
Finally, isn't a manager's main job do everything they can so that their team can do their job?
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I suspect he will have the conversation with them, but I think they have burned the bridge a little!
I think your definition of a manager is right on target and a pleasant change from the standard Dilbertish portrayal. Not that we don't have some of those! I think that's an overly narrow description of a managers job. It may not seem as important, but they have to be good stewards of resources, retain employees, meet objectives and goals given to them (fair or not), train, reward, punish, etc.
Managers should set some expectations about whether the deadline is real, and employees should be asking. And if a project is falling behind due to whatever reason, nothing wrong the the team asking how hard they should push rather than just blindly throwing themselves into 80 hour weeks. In the scenario I wrote about there's no doubt that the manager & team are each failing in a way, and fixing it is hard, nature of things! It all comes down to communication and there's no harder task that I've found.
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Paul, I tend to agree with you on the last point. A manager should be trying to help people do their job, removing distractions and providing motivation.
However I do often see that people don't put in equal effort. Time measurement isn't the way to do it. Holding them to a deliverable is. If someone doesn't get the work done, the manager has to ensure they work harder to get it. Or find out why and move the work to someone else. You can't assign equal work to everyone and while you want to treat them similarly, that isn't the same.
Handling different levels of competence or motivation is hard for a manager. Really hard. You have to learn to treat people differently under the same rules and still keep the rules in place and the team working as a group. Often it's counseling the high performers to not get upset more than counseling the weaker ones to work harder.
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Time measurement does work for some cases. Here's the difference. If Steve can do a task in 35 hours that would take a normal/average DBA like the rest of us 45 hours, I'm not inclined to 'punish' him by giving him 5 more hours of work to hit the magic 40. Note that I have to balance that with the idea that as a manager Im paying him x dollars for his skill level at 40 hours a week plus the rare to often late night/weekend. Mgrs can't pay you $100k a year and have you work 20 hours a week no matter how great you are. Note that Steve & I have this argument often!
But it does work for a team. Give the team the project and require that everyone contribute equally in time. At that point an hour of work is an hour of work, even if Steve writes twice as much code. They are all doing whatever they can do in a hour and putting the same number of hours (though not necessarily on the same schedule). Todays so-so analagy for my western friend - four horses pulling a wagon. The strongest horse doesn't get to quit an hour early while the other three struggle on just because he was the strongest horse! Team shares the load and arrives together.
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Observations on teamwork gleaned over the years...
I have worked in some companies where someone with the most knowledge was 'proprietary' about that knowledge. They were reluctant to share for fear of someone either 1) screwing things up or 2) replacing them. It took a long time and a lot of trust for them to let go of their information. Sometimes they never did completely.
Have also worked for a boss with a management style we called "Oldager" instead of "Manager". You were considered late for your job at 8:01 am. He would call us in his office and say that someone upstairs had seen us come in late which, of course, was a lie. He would then ask "Do you really like your job?" Needless to say, this rigid style did not endear him to his employees.
There are also managers who DO NOT PLAN WELL. Always scheduling meetings the day of the meeting. Constantly asking you to come into their office for some small item. Not informing you as to the absence (vacation) of a team member until the day of...all of this is stressful and irritating to employees.
Then there are team members who will not 'do what it takes' to get a job done. Meaning they arrive at 7:59 am and leave at 5:00 - each day - no matter what the existing situation is. In other words, a sense of urgency is non-existent for some folks - and sometimes it's needed.
I have found that the smaller teams seem to get the most done and are the most enjoyable configuration for productivity. Communication is rapid, and the more the members have in common regarding work ethic, the better.
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The most important thing of a good team is people dynamic. I was in many teams. In some teams, some developers were so arrogant that they thought they knew everything, it ended up the team was falling apart. There was no communication. No one talked to each other and hated to work.
In some teams, some people had no skills but had the biggest voice, they complained about everything, they thought they knew everything. Don't ever pretend you know everything. People would find out very fast. It ended up no one want to work with them.
People's attitude is the most important when creating a team, it does not mean there is no argument. It means people working towards their goal and finish the project. I was in such a team and enjoyed it every minute of it. Even we argued sometimes, but we learnt from our conflicts. We also learnt from each other. No one was jealous of anyone's accomplishment. We helped each other whenever there was a problem. Everyone on the team was professional.
my 2 cents.
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Everyone on the team was professional.
Which leads me to the next phase of this discussion....
- Does professionalism or perceived professionalism help team dynamics?
- Has anyone else (like me) been intentionally punished and excluded from the team by a manager because *ahem* her idea of "professionalism" was clean shaven and wearing a tie and was not based on performance?
It's quite interesting at the moment as I'm now in a team with a bloke who is hugely popular with the staff as he's very friendly and very skilled at what he does but he appears to be making similar mistakes to those I made at about the same age. The result is that his requests to management get all sorts of roadblocks or ignored yet when I champion his requests, there is little problem and the requests usually get passed. The main difference I see is that my colleague is often unshaved and wears a polo shirt while I wear normal business attire.
It's a sad state of affairs when a DBA has to wear a tie in lieu of the traditional stubbies & thongs* so that he can get things done.
[*stubbies & thongs. Aussie lingo... stubbies - daggy shorts & thongs are ONLY ever those rubber things you wear on your feet! Why someone would want to wear a hunk of rubber under their trousers (or skirt) is beyond me.....
]A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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Professional does not mean you have to dress up to work. Of course you don't wear a short, a pair of flip flop and a torn T-shirt to go to work. One time an operator wore a pair of worn jeans, you could see his underwear. My manager just yelled out 'Why bother to wear the jean?'
Professionalism means you are responsible for your work. co-operate with your co-workers instead of yelling at them when they asked you a question. Do not pretend you know everything. Treat others liked what you want others to treat you. Help your co-workers and don't be afraid to ask for help.
Just my 2 cents.
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Yet you would be surprised just how much differently you are treated in an office environment, even when a propellor-head, when wearing a shirt & tie. I have seen the difference already between a colleague and myself and I put it down to appearance.
I hate ties! I think they're stupid and impractical - especially when living in a sub-tropical climate where even now where it's almost winter (southern hemisphere) and it's still 20-odd-degrees at 6am (about 68F) and around 29-to-30 degrees at midday (around 88F) - and we're still 800km south of the Tropic of Capricorn! It can be 90F at 6am on some days yet some still declare unseen support staff to be "unprofessional" if they're not in "proper" business attire.
Funny thing is that my brother used to work in a major federal government department back in the late 80's. The all-knowing sysprog would wear matching-coloured thongs to work if he felt like dressing up
Of course, the bloke was a bit eccentric as well - he officially changed his name to be 'The Lump' (no joke).
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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There is an organizational change in my company and I was moved to be under a new manager and a new team. My manager works in Indiana. Some of my teammates work in the same office with me - Rochester, NY. Two works in other office - one in California, one in Buffalo.
Next week my new manager is coming to Rochester, so are the other two developers. One developer here decides to have a BBQ at his house, he thought it was good for team building - the whole team get together after work and do something 'fun'.
I told him I would not go because after work, it was my personal time. Besides I do not think getting together after work will help team building.
I used to work with a team, we never went out after work and yet we got along fine and did the the best job.
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