Creating Cohesive Teams
photo by jczart
I never would have imagined that my beloved Boston Red Sox would ever cross paths with my day-to-day work; presenting company and team culture analyses at RoundPegg.
Then, over the weekend, The New York Times published an article by Neil Paine in Keeping Score: Collapse of Red Sox Offers Stark Lesson in Team Chemistry that tied these two worlds together.
“If you could quantify Boston’s chemistry for the 2011 season, it probably would be revealed as the worst in baseball. But therein lies a major problem for objective baseball analysts: team chemistry, as perhaps baseball’s most beloved intangible, defies all measurement.”
The reality is that you can quantify team chemistry – that is, you can assess the cultural preference, personality traits, and communication style of individuals and aggregate those results into a quantifiable profile of the team.
That is the analysis we at RoundPegg are doing for our clients via our automated TeamPegg software. The output is a development guide that summarizes strengths and misalignments of individuals in comparison to the team, and recommended actions to improve team cohesion.
Would the Red Sox have won another Championship had they been aware of team misalignments – probably not, bad pitching is bad pitching. But much of the “historic late-season collapse” may have been avoided had Terry Francona been aware of his player’s attributes and worked to develop a well-aligned squad.
One of the reasons RoundPegg came about was because of this very reason. Quantifying people isn’t easy, but it’s a data point.
Maybe next year the Red Sox will take my advice and even start scouting for players that are well aligned with their clubhouse culture – call me John Henry…
Moneyball for HR
photo by j9sk9s
Three years ago this month I started the research behind RoundPegg. I’m a bit of a baseball nerd and love the assorted flavors of statistics that have brought evidenced-based management to the sport.
My goal was to help business professionals replace some of the subjectivity within talent management with statistical rigor. We are still on step 2 of this process now, but the vision hasn’t changed.
At the risk of seeming narcissistic, I thought it was a good time (given Moneyball’s huge box office opening last weekend) to trot out a soliloquy I wrote to my soon-to-be business partners about the opportunity we had to make an impact.
———RoundPegg: The Beginnings———–
I’ve been thinking a lot more about RoundPegg’s place in the changing the future and why I get so fired up about all this. I tried to elucidate the concept through an incoherent story I told on Friday about the conversation I had with a friend at the Houston Rockets and how they were using statistical measurements to assemble teams to predict the outcome of highly inter-connected interactions. Particularly in a sport where individual success often comes at the expense of team success and the stats reported are selfishly obtained. Like our workplaces.
Coincidentally that same conversation he and I had was recently played out by Michael Lewis (author of MoneyBall) in what makes a tremendously long article to read online, but if you’re into sports or using statistical measurements to build teams, an interesting one.
With that, I hope, a better explanation of why this is so huge and the direction we could take this is such a game-changer.
Ultimately, I see RoundPegg completely changing how people work together by changing how we evaluate, grow and utilize people.
Where we begin to de-emphasize previous experiences (having already done a task) and recognize the inter-connectedness of our work teams and the importance the ‘softer’ skills play on our work outcomes. Where we stop managing and supervising and start coaching and leading. Where we let people put their strengths to use and the current ‘managers’ are only there to herd energy and keep the bus running straight. I wrote a post on why I thought this was important over the weekend.
A couple sentences that illustrated this point for me in the NYT article:
“Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding.”
What we’re trying to do now by making sure we get the right people on the bus is just the beginning. It’s vital and quite lucrative, undoubtedly, but if we succeed in forcing the conversation to acknowledge that our working relationships are as much or more important than the tasks I’ve previously completed then it’s a foot in the door and we can continue that story into the workplace.
After that it comes down to providing the tools for personnel development on an ongoing basis. Eliminating the bullshit, demoralizing annual review and collecting regular data on our performances, like box scores, that will enable organizations to develop and get more out of their employees and allow RoundPegg to collect data about how we all work together and what drives success.
We’ll be able to recognize whether someone is a net positive or negative to a team regardless of what his individual track record may be. We can identify strengths and weaknesses in a far more objective measure than ever available before. We will be able to put them in a position to capitalize on their strengths, figure out the secret sauce behind work teams and cobble them together for organizations in a way that drives the business like we only hope for today.
We’ll also change what we acknowledge as contribution. Our organizations will foster collaboration as a way to move ideas forward instead of internal competition (e.g. boxing out the right guy so your teammate can grab the rebound). And we’ll be able to measure the intangibles. Where it’s not always the guy who speaks loudest or most or with the most conviction who is construed as having the best ideas. It comes down to evaluating people for their unselfish play that often gets overlooked now.
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It’s been fun to re-read this. Our vision remains and we’ve made a lot of progress to the goal. But, obviously, this is something that is going to take time, but we’ll get there…for the good of us all.
Employee Retention – Good or Bad?
photo by antkriz
Dueling philosophies on hiring and employee retention at the latest Web2.0 conference (via WSJ Blog).
Mark Zuckerberg touted the Facebook culture of hiring entrepreneurially inclined people who burn brilliantly and then fade away (presumably of their own volition). Tony Hsieh of Zappos provided the counter philosophy of finding the folks who fit the culture and aspire to stick with the company for 10 years or more.
Who is right?
Both. The key that makes both of them right is that everyone is aware of the culture. Each CEO knows exactly what they’re looking for and how to identify it. Success is achieved by aligning the culture/working philosophy and getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
Corporate success comes from recognizing what you want to achieve and defining the culture accordingly.
Facebook is about changing our relationship with each other and the Internet. Thus, they need people who can conceptualize a radically different world and execute to get everyone there.
Meanwhile, Zappos is about customer service. So it makes sense that Zappos creates a very cultivative company. How employees are treated is how they’ll in turn treat customers.
There aren’t necessarily good or bad cultures. But there are good or bad cultures for you.
The ability to explicitly describe what each company is looking for enables people to opt-in or out of the application process. And that same explicitness enables everyone hiring at the company to hold all applicants up to the same light and identify the ones who will be successful by honoring the company’s philosophy.
Unfortunately, most companies can’t state their cultural philosophy as passionately or clearly as Zuckerberg and Hsieh. And, it’s not much of a surprise there aren’t many companies doing as well as these two either.
Do What You Can, Not Your Job
From the Amazing Mind of Jessica Hagy
Your job description is the bare minimum required to do your job. It’s a suggested starting point not a prescriptive action plan.
Seeing that Venn diagram reminded me that I’ve never been more frustrated than when I felt constrained in my ability to make a difference. When I failed it was because I succumbed to the thinking that ‘this is how things are done’ and allowed myself to be defined by my title, job description or the perception of others.
A couple off-the-cuff thoughts on what I was doing differently during the times I was successful:
- Rewrite the rules in your favor. There is something you can do better than most people. Usually it’s what you really enjoy doing. Know what that is and find ways to put more of it into your job.
- Pay attention. Two eyes and ears. One mouth. Use them accordingly. Identify the holes that need filling even when the person needing them filled can’t define the hole.
- Ignore others. Not everyone, of course, but there are people who will defend the status quo. There is always a better way to do something. Don’t stop looking for it when others tell you to.
- Shed the ego. It’s difficult for others to argue when you have the team’s or the company’s best interests at heart. Likewise, when you focus on the positives and what could be you aren’t attacking anyone personally or how they’ve been doing things. The professional rewards are a byproduct of putting the team ahead of yourself…usually.
- Find like-minded people. To me, this is different than finding allies. That turns it into a contentious political game. To me, it’s about finding people who will help strengthen your resolve and help you get things accomplished. Many hands make light work after all. Completed action usually has few detractors. Ideas have a shitload.
These aren’t universal, of course. And there will be work environments in which this is easier to do than others.
But, the bottom line is that to make yourself invaluable you have to do more than check the boxes. Be proactive in defining your role. It certainly makes the game easier to win.
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For more intelligently funny truisms in diagram, graph and equation form, check out ThisIsIndexed.
Leaders Adjust to Their Followers
photo by annadriel
A recent Towers Perrin post reveals a conversation the author had with former NFL coach Tony Dungy. Football is known for its gruff, abrupt, in-your-face style of ‘leadership,’ but Tony Dungy was far from that. He succinctly states his philosophy to leading and getting the best from his players three points (from the post):
- His parents were both teachers and they believed that it was their responsibility to make every student an “A” student. But not every student learns the same way, so you have to tailor your style to each individual to bring out the best in them.
- You have to make each player on the team understand that the good of the team is greater than that of any individual, and that you can only be successful as a team.
- You have to earn your players’ trust — this is foundational to the first two. They have to trust that your coaching and advice is what is best for them and for the collective team.
I like this for several reasons:
First, if your leadership style is inflexible and you see people as cogs in the wheel then you dramatically limit the field of potential individuals who could excel in the job. Finding good people is hard, why should we further constrain ourselves?
Secondly, you are limited by the boundaries of your own imagination and thought process. If you only know one way to go about things then you won’t be open-minded to new, potentially better approaches.
Further, by acknowledging that people are unique you are connecting with them on a very personal level. In order to motivate you have to know them. That connection is usually a two-way street. By taking the time to understand someone you’re proving you care about them. Reciprocation is then difficult not to grant. You wind up getting a lot more effort in return.
Finally, you don’t want your people to compete with each other too much. That devolves into a race to the bottom. It is far easier to push another down than it is to lift oneself up. Putting the team first means that you won’t reward pushing others down in order to shine.
