More on High Performing Teams

Last month Prasoon posted thoughts on high performing teams - what is a high performing team, what are their foundational qualities and behaviors.

Here are few more thoughts on what can we do to create high performing teams:

• Focus on Team Composition:
  
  • Ability: Generally, IT project team staffer / manager focus on this well
  • Personality: Mostly ignored, but very critical to reach to high performing state. Right mix of Personality Types (Introvert vs. Extrovert, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, Judging vs. Perceiving) is required to complement each other.
  • Size: With Scrum, we have increased focus on not exceeding the optimal size. What about the minimum team size? Can I say a 2 members team (even if both are generalists) is optimally sized?
  • Diversity: Put all Java "gurus" on one project for 6 months and ask them to do pair programming. They may not literally fight, but will definitely get fed up and prefer to work individually!!! Diversity is key to gel the team and to establish trust and respect within the team
    
  • Roles: Leaderless team is hot these days... But, lets not mistaken it with team without any roles and responsibilities. A high performing team should have at least one or more people playing each of the following roles:
    

• Focus on sustaining and improving motivation level of teams. It's a well established fact that motivated team perform better.
  

Motivational Potential Score = [(SV+TI+TS)/3]*A*F
where,
SV= Skill Variety
TI= Task identity (is it ideal for me?)
TS= Task significance (does it make difference in organizational affairs)
A= Autonomy
F= Feedback

So, what should we be doing to increase motivation level of our teams? Thoughts?

Is 80-20 rule justified for investment in IT?

The heat is on! With every day passing by, the financial tsunami is rapidly spreading across the globe. The key issues are:

• Liquidity
• High cost of capital
• Unavailability of credit
• Volatile forex markets
• Very low levels of confidence in economy

While the Indian regulatory system seems to have minimized the impact on banking system, the impact on IT industry deserves detailed look.


Mr. Sudhakar Ram, CMD, Mastek Ltd and India Business Leader of the Year 2007 has written an insightful article in The Economic Times yesterday.

"Impact of the crisis on the Indian IT" - Mr. Sudhakar Ram

He highlights a very interesting point that "when we dig into the reasons for the crisis, while we can blame blind optimism and greed, at a more fundamental level it is a failure of systems... ...Better controls and risk management systems governing individual firms as well as the entire financial system would have helped to track the quantum of leverage and the risks associated with it — both from the perspective of board governance and regulatory oversight."

While every CIO is contemplating on what is the right amount to invest in IT during 2009, Mr. Ram has a perspective that I can't agree more.

"For too long, large institutions have been trying to get away with spending 80% of IT dollars just on maintenance — keeping the lights on — and only 20% on new initiatives.

In fact, in a recent Information Week article, Rob Preston says that IT’s Number One priority is to release money for new projects. He says: "If you think you can lay low under the corporate radar or continue to argue that the 80-20 rule is an immutable law of IT physics, then you're due for a wake-up call."


It really boils down to what goals we set for ourselves - 'tide over the tsunami' or 'prepare to emerge as a leader'. What are your thoughts on "right" investment in IT?

Mumbai Update

It's been more than 24 hours since the Mumbai came under an unprecedented terrorist attack, the rescue operations are far from over. The visuals on TV are disturbing and situation is very very tensed out here.

I wish and pray that all your friends and families are safe. Fortunately, my friends, colleagues and relatives are safe here. Hope the situation becomes normal very soon.

It's holiday time in US. I wish all of you a very happy thanksgiving!

Situational Leadership

So often I find organization "culture" influencing the leadership style so much that just to align to the "culture" or style of the boss, people miss out on the common sense of leadership styles. I firmly believe that you need to have different strokes for different folks.

Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard have done a phenomenal job of explaining this through 'Situational Leadership". Effectiveness of a leadership style - Directing, Coaching, Supporting or Delegating- depends on development level of the follower. Hersey and Blanchard use four development levels to explain the concept.

* D1 -“Enthusiastic Beginner”: Low Competence, High Commitment
* D2 - “Disillusioned Learner”: Some Competence, Low Commitment
* D3 - “Reluctant Contributor”: Moderate to High Competence, Variable Commitment
* D4 - “Peak Performer”: High Competence, High Commitment

Suggested leadership styles for each levels are:
* Directing for Enthusiastic Beginner
* Coaching for Disillusioned Learner
* Supporting for Reluctant Contributor
* Delegating for Peak Performer

There is a lot of literature available on this topic, but there is, unfortunately, a very few people / organizations practicing them:-(

So, which leadership style works for you?

“Gully Cricket” Strategy

I have played Gully cricket a lot. It's a ball game played on street with whatever equipment you get and using any rules that you feel like.

Here is an observation of a gully cricket game and field setting strategy of a team (use the diagram if you are unfamiliar with the game):

• When a batsman hits the ball over the top of bowler’s head, the captain immediately ensures that long on and long off fielders are in place to catch it next time
• The next ball flies 2 meters right to the wicket-keeper and the captain immediately sets two fielders in sleep cordon
• The batsman now pushes for a single run in "mid-off" area and the captain decides to bring "long off" fielder closer to stop the runs on next ball
• Guess what, the next ball is hit over the head of "mid-off" fielder!
• The fielders oblige to the captain, because the captain owns the bat and ball. Once he leaves, there is no cricket for that day:-)

[source: http://www.abcofcricket.com]

Well, there is a lot of common sense learning in this example that may sound very stupid, but not very unreal.

Do we observe somewhat similar behaviors at work?

• Knee jerk reactions and stop-gap solutions to day-to-day problems
• Temptation to solve all the problems and solve them NOW
• Kick-off a new initiative without thinking through the aspects of sustainability, measurement and accountability
• Not questioning the boss, because he/she is THE BOSS (he/she does my evaluation and decides my career progression)
• Fighting battles hard and loosing wars

A common sense solution would be to answer following questions for any new initiatives / solutions that we implement:

1. Is the problem really "the problem"? (Don’t take problem on face value. Identify root cause. Try to spot a pattern / trend)
2. Do the stakeholders (project team, sponsors, customer service,...) affected by the problem acknowledge the problem and seek a solution? (Or we are giving them solution just because we have the solution, time and money. What are the pain-points that we are trying to address?)
3. Do we need to solve it now? (How does it align to our vision? Would it create more distraction for the team than benefit them? Is there a pressing need to solve it now? Don’t you think constrains bring more creativity?)
4. How do we sustain the solution? (If solution is to do monthly assessment of project, how do you put it in the workflow of project life-cycle to ensure that it gets done every month in right spirit? Who will own it?)
5. How do we communicate the solution and its benefit?
6. How would we measure success of the solution?
7. How would we collect feedback and make improvements in the solution?

Does it make sense? How do you solve such problems?