Occasionally, I would be assigned to work  on a project with representatives from other departments.  I served on these projects to contribute my experience and knowledge of marketing and promotions.  We were a team, working together to achieve a common goal—for example, to design and implement a new database system. 

I assumed that my work group skills would translate to the team experience; they needed marketing input and that was my knowledge base.  I was eager to get started, and being used to seeing results, I waited for an assignment.  The team leader, on the other hand, seemed in no hurry to delegate.  She appeared more interested in what we were thinking and what we were saying, rather than what we could demonstrate.

Another meeting. Still waiting. 

Another meeting.  Still waiting.  When would the talking end and the work begin?

Still waiting. Why so many meetings? Didn’t the team leader know you can work much more quickly and efficiently by yourself?

I was proficient at marketing, but I was learning a new skill—how  to be a team member. 

The team experience demanded more than my marketing experience and skills.  I needed to become comfortable with interdependence—no easy task for someone who was used to getting things done on her own.  I had to learn to speak up—quite a challenge for someone who is more likely to listen.  Teamwork required determining what was at stake and how we would approach our project—frustrating for someone used to being told what to do and getting to the task at hand. 

We were taking the first step in team building:  forming. We were getting to know each other, what we brought to the project, how we would work together, and what was at stake in our common goal. My most valuable contribution to the team would be the relationships I formed.  We were accountable to each other for the success of the project, and we needed to learn what that meant.  The leader/facilitator wisely did not rush this important step.

Teams learn some important basics in the forming process. It can be tempting for teams, even those with experienced members, to skip over the forming process and jump directly to the project task activities. This can be detrimental to the team because forming helps members shift from their work group experience to their team experience. Team members learn to shift from

• being accountable to a manger/leader to being accountable to each other,
• focusing on individual goals to working to achieve a common goal,
• accepting assignments to planning, determining an approach, and executing,
• using meetings to share information and opinions to using meetings to accomplish the work itself, and
• delivering a work product to building relationships.

As the team learns these first lessons, they establish the groundwork for high performance:

              trust

              comfort with interdependence

              the ability to share information

              holding each other accountable

              the ability to resolve conflict

It is  worth taking the time for this step, and a good team leader will always allow time for it.  Be sure not to rush it or skip over it.

 In a nutshell, here is how the forming process applies to communication, collaboration, and project management:

Communication:  Building relationships is the key to good communication.  Taking the time to learn about each other and the working style of each team member helps to establish relationships.  The better the relationship, the more open and genuine the communication and the more productive the team.

Collaboration:  Cross-functional teams collaborate to deliver a common goal. The forming stage is important for learning how to work together to accomplish this goal.  Collaboration is less likely to be learned in a work group environment where individuals are directed by and accountable to a manager who rates their individual performance.

Project Management:  For the project manager, facilitation skills are as important as the traditional project management skills of planning, budgeting, and executing. The project manager’s success is often determined by the manager’s team/people skills. Good project managers know that mastering the stages of team development and guiding the team through each one of these phases quickly builds a high-performing team.  Mastering the forming process is the first stage of building a successful team. 

Resources to learn more about the forming stage of team development.

 http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/toolkit/workgroup/forming/index.html.  (includes links to tips)

The Wisdom of Teams,  by Jon R. Katzenbach & Douglas K. Smith, Harvard Business School Press, 1993
http://www.douglasksmith.com/wisdomofteams.htm 

Simple Lessons for Change Leaders and Teams: Communication, Collaboration, Project Management (book available on this site )        

The core we found while kayaking.

The core is sitting on my desk now. It’s a daily reminder of three things.

1. Understand what makes a good core resource for your organization. For the Native American concerned with tool making, he understood a good core needed to be durable, easy to flake into different shapes, and easy to sharpen. For change leaders and project managers, our core resource is our staff or team. When we hire people and recruit team members, we must have a good understanding of what basic characteristics are required for that new person to be a core resource and choose only those people who are a fit.
2. Know the resources that surround you. For the Native American, each core could have different properties. For example, they could have different colors, sizes and shapes. The different properties would make one core more suitable for use in one tool than another. For our organization, even though we share basic characteristics, we all have a combination of strengths, traits, and skills that are unique to us. As leaders and project managers, it is our challenge to make sure we understand what that unique combination is for the people we work with and make sure they are assigned to roles that make the best use of them. Using Gallup’s StrengthsFinder and Geier’s Disc Assessment to identify individual characteristics is a good start.
3. Make use of all sides. Once the Native American chose a core, he saw the full value in it. He inspected and used every side of it to create arrows and tools of different sizes and shapes. In this way, he was able to produce a larger and more diverse set of tools than if he only used the core to produce a single thing. Likewise, it is our challenge as leaders to let staff apply all of their strengths and skills to their work. By understanding the different facets each person brings to the organization, we are able to complete more diverse work without finding a new core for each new idea.

All of these points tie back to this blog’s theme of communication, collaboration, and project management. In a nutshell,

Communication: It is through communication that we can identify the people who have the core characteristics we are looking for. It is also through communication that we can identify what strengths and skill sets each person brings with them. Communication is the essential piece to knowing the resources that surround you.

Collaboration: Collaboration is the key to making use of all the strengths each person brings with them. Realistically, you may be asking one person to step out of their usual role to take on a new challenge. Collaboration is needed to be able to negotiate schedules, training, and backup while the person is working elsewhere.

Project management: Resources are often scarce, but if we look at our entire staff and the skills they bring with them, we may be able to expand our options for resources and identify new sources of information that will help us complete our projects successfully.

That changed a few weeks ago, when I had the opportunity to hear John Kao, author of Jamming, The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, play jazz piano and explain the structure of jazz.   Even though jazz is improvised, made up as the piece is played, it is built on a structure—the original composition, the rules of harmony, and the technical mastery of the musicians playing it.  It is communication itself, taking many directions but grounded in principle. Kao taught us to listen for the underlying harmonic elements that base the composition and lead us to a satisfying conclusion.  The audience is rewarded with creativity and delighted with the new and unusual.

Without this structure, the result is noise.

The same is true in collaboration.  Collaborative teams include members from diverse disciplines and departments. At their best members are innovative and creative, quickly shifting gears and improvising to solve problems. Collaboration, too, is successful when grounded in a structure—one that supports teamwork. The elements of this structure include

• trust
• accountability
• shared goals as the basis of resolving conflict
• embracing change
• honest discourse
• interdependence

Kao explains the years of training and practice required to achieve mastery of the piano before a person is prepared to express the artistry of jazz piano. He also cautions that technique is not enough to inspire improvisation. The player must follow where the music is taking him.  He is curious, experimental, open.  It is not chaos, however.  He remains in control of the sound through his mastery of technique and faithfulness to the laws of musical harmony.

Collaborative team members, like piano players, gain mastery through practice and coaching. Teams learn the principles of team dynamics, partnering, conflict resolution, problem solving, decision making, trust, planning, follow through, giving feedback, and accepting responsibility.  As their comfort level and skill with these principles increase, teams progress from good intentions to execution to innovation.

The innovative team is a high-performing team. Members gain experience and skill in each stage of the team development process: 

• taking the time to form as a team, grounding themselves in how they will work together, beginning to explore the work before them, and being curious;
• surviving team storming, the process of first struggling for and then releasing personal control, becoming open to the ideas of others and being willing to trust; and
•  mastering techniques that lead to solving problems quickly, experimenting with new ideas, holding each other accountable, and listening to and trusting each other.

Collaboration, like jazz, can seem unfocused and endless, especially if teams are not skilled in the basics.  It is worth taking some time to become aware of these basics and practice them.  The result is ongoing innovation.

Collaboration principles are described in our book, Simple Lessons for Change Leaders and Teams: Communication, Collaboration, Project Management.  Here are these principles applied to this blog in a nutshell:

Communication:  Learning to listen is a skill that grows with practice. The jazz musician is listening while improvising, being led to the next note, but ensuring it reflects harmony.  For the collaborator, genuine listening sparks creativity by opening you to new ideas.

Collaboration:  Collaboration spurs innovation. High-performing collaborative teams have weathered the stages of development and demonstrate a high degree of trust, working together to quickly solve problems, resolve conflict, and share leadership.

Project Management:  Training on collaborative skills for your team members pays off in better communication, innovative problem solving, lasting conflict resolution, better meetings, and trust.  Team meetings are the opportunity to practice these skills.

To see and hear John Kao’s jazz interpretation, here are some links.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl_TtBKfxb8 part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKQVOqY_XGA  part 2

http://www.jamming.com/jamming.html About John Kao

Enjoy!

Only certain people like Adam Richman on Man v. Food can eat all of a giant burger like this. Mere mortals are just not built to eat all that in one sitting!

Change is the same way: very few can stomach large amounts of it all at once.

 Now think of something small: the fun size candy bar. It’s delicious, easy to eat, and oh-so small. Tiny, really. And, of course, fun. So you have just one. . . and, before you know it, you’ve eaten half the bag!

 For the vast majority of us, change is easier when it is “fun-size”. Here’s an example. At our latest annual retreat, everyone said they wanted to get more up to speed on technology tips and tricks. Our staff is multigenerational with a wide range of tech savviness. While (thank goodness!) everyone was functional on the ins and outs of Word and Outlook, we collectively had room for improvement.

Our tech staff was tasked with increasing our staff’s technical competency. Thankfully, they didn’t try the Man v. Food approach and hold us hostage in an all-day tech training to force-feed us tech tips.

Instead, they wisely “fun-sized” the tech training by creating the Tech Tip Showdown. Ten minutes of every ICLE monthly staff meeting is set aside for two staff members to  showcase their favorite tech tip in a fun video format. Anyone can make a tip, and everyone cheers to determine which tip was most useful. The winner is awarded the coveted hat (positive reinforcement, like Karen’s previous post). As an added bonus, everyone who makes a tip is trained on using Adobe Captivate, the e-learning software program we use to record our tips.

 After 6 months, this incremental, fun-size change has had a noticeable impact on our staff. The videos are housed on our intranet, but I’ve noticed that we are actually turning to each other more for reminders. Before I knew it, I found those fun-size tips creeping into my work habits. I’d catch myself extolling the virtues of default double-sided printing (I didn’t even know we had the capability!) and using the Outlook conferencing and calendaring tricks I learned from my co-worker Jason.

So, how have you brought about change in fun-size increments? Share your story in the comments below.

As in the cartoon, even common words such as “mouse” can have a different meaning based on someone’s frame of reference.  This small example of a mix-up in meanings points to one of the hardest areas to address when you are trying to make changes in your organizational culture—unspoken assumptions.

I’ve been reading Humanize, how people-centric organizations succeed in a social world, by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant.*  They highlight three levels of organizational culture. 

The walk:  “how you do things around here”.  This includes your facilities, processes, practices, etc.  Do you have a specific approach to running staff meetings or hiring new employees? Do you have a dress code? These are fairly obvious, even to new people coming to your organization.

The talk:  what you say about who you are and what you do; what you value.  This includes your policies, core values, mission statement, marketing materials, etc.  These may not always align with the “walk,” how you actually do things, and they can serve as motivators for change.

The thought:  the unspoken assumptions behind actions and decisions.  This area is the hardest to pinpoint. They are things that are taken for granted, often providing a sense of stability.  They can work against change.  Unspoken assumptions are not openly identified and challenged, so they keep things the way they are. 

It makes sense to pay attention to the “thought” level of culture.  When we communicate, for example, how often are we focused only on what makes sense to us and not on what the listener might be thinking?  Taking the time to uncover our unspoken assumptions and provide extra detail brings clarity and understanding to what we are saying.

Here are some tips to uncover unspoken assumptions:

• Tune in to the listener. Ask:  What do you already know about this? Give background information first – these explanations often help people understand why things are the way they are –before beginning your actual training or discussion.  If you are seeking change, these points of knowledge can strengthen your case, especially if the reason for a policy or action is no longer relevant. 
• Find out who the decision makers are. Project leaders may assume that they are the decision makers by authority of the project itself. Question that assumption – do you indeed have authority to make decisions? Find out up front if you cannot give a directive without first checking with the department head. 
• Develop a shared vocabulary of terms.  When cross-functional teams work together, have the members share what they think of when they are using a specific word.  The earlier you adopt your shared vocabulary, the easier change implementation becomes.   Start with terms that are in your vision statement.  We found that even the word “new” meant different things to different team members. Be sure to get the meaning, including any context or history, from the vision writer.
• Be proactive.  Say what you are thinking.  When I say, “new” I mean products that we have not done before and existing products that have been enhanced or improved so they are up with the times.

Unspoken assumptions often come with stories, and it’s fun as well as instructive to hear those stories.  They explain the basis for what may now be a tradition, a practice done from habit rather than strategic reasoning.  Make opportunities to share that knowledge and open new discussions that will lead you forward.

In a Nutshell, here is the application to communication, collaboration, and project management, the approach used in our book, Simple Lessons for Change Leaders and Teams.

Communication:  A rule of thumb in communication is that people often hear what they are thinking. To avoid meaning mix-ups, provide context and detail so your meaning is clear to the listener.   It’s also helpful to ask what the listener is thinking or what they already know about the topic.

Collaboration:  Developing a shared vision is the foundation of collaboration and requires trust.  Identifying unspoken assumptions will clarify the vision, promote trust, and foster teamwork by building a shared understanding.   

Project Management: Identifying unspoken assumptions can help overcome resistance to change by uncovering practices that are no longer strategic or relevant.  Clearing up assumptions that lead to misunderstandings will help project managers  avoid rework, delays, and cost overruns.

*To find out more about Humanize, here is a link to the site http://www.humanizebook.com/

1. Knowing what information is missing before the project starts helps will help her track the progress of the work and change her plan early if decision dates cannot be met. The ability to circulate this list outside the team, provide reminders, and check in with decision makers will increase their awareness of the deadline and increase Stephanie’s chances of getting the information on time.
2. Identifying which decisions will affect her project will help Stephanie discuss the cause and effect of certain decisions as it relates to her projects. It provides the opportunity for her to collaborate with team leaders to reach a decision that benefits both teams.
3. With more frequent communication comes better relationships. Frequent conversations about these decisions may prompt team leaders to tell Stephanie when other changes to their projects may affect her work.
4. Including decision points in the plan also encourages the documentation of the final decisions. These can be a hand reference as the project moves forward.

Our book, Simple Lessons for Change Leaders and Teams: Communication, Collaboration, Project Management  summarizes the application of communication, collaboration and project management in a
Nutshell. Here is our Nutshell for this post:

Communication: Identifying decision points and staying connected to decision makers will help spot problems and delays. It will also help build relationships with other project managers and teams.

Collaboration: Making the effect of decisions known to the decision maker and putting your needs on the
table may help you reach a decision that will benefit both teams.

Project management: Including decision points as part of your plan helps track progress, identify delays, and
resolve problems early. Documenting decisions gives you something to refer to throughout your project work.