Observe the conversation below:

“When I say that Jack is the Module Lead and anything that goes right or wrong in the module, Jack is responsible, I’d like to know how you acknowledge it, Jack?”

Jack replied: “It means that I’m the Module Lead and anything that I code or test is my responsibility. For the items I couldn’t have a look, the person who has written the code, is responsible.”

“Vikram?” I asked Jack’s peer.

“It means that Jack should do most of the coding and testing within the module.”

“Peter?”  Finally, I asked Jack’s immediate manager.

“It means that we should tell Jack about anything that happens inside that module. After all he is the module lead. ”

I hear what you guys say. Now, let me ask you this: How should I communicate if I mean that Jack owns the module. That’s why he’s the lead. He owns good and bad things that happen inside the module. If it succeeds, all credit goes to him and if it fails, he bears all the consequences of the failure. How?

“You might say that Jack is the Module lead and anything that goes right or wrong in the module, Jack is responsible.” said Peter and Jack together.

“I hear what you say…” I said.

People respond to their own images of the past rather than the facts represented by the words. Recognize that “Not being specific” is a bigger problem than having mere skills to write the software code.

Reward who’s able to be specific and reprimand who’re not or else you’re gone.

See Also:

1. Can I work on this project while I’m on vacation!?
2. What Matters Most? Hard Work or Getting It Done?
3. Importance of Being Specific While Stating Requirements
4. Are You Limited by Your Own Creativity (Which used to work earlier but now not)?
5. Are You (too) Searching for Someone to Check Your Work?

1. Can I work on this project while I’m on vacation!?
2. What Matters Most? Hard Work or Getting It Done?
3. Importance of Being Specific While Stating Requirements
4. Are You Limited by Your Own Creativity (Which used to work earlier but now not)?
5. Are You (too) Searching for Someone to Check Your Work?

Effective leaders believe in developing their team members.

First, they recognize potential in a team member and then do everything possible to make sure that the selected team member play to his/her own limits and reward him/her self, the project and the organization at large.

Often team members guess that their boss uses their skills just for the sake of squeezing more juice from him/her. Many times, that’s not the case, for example read below mini-saga:

Reward

Sure-handed Peter was disappointed playing different roles in a big software project. Analyst, Tester, Architect, ScrumMaster…Multiple. Every few months his boss would move him to take over another role. One day, he decided to resign but: A promotion letter was awaiting him saying “Congratulation, you’re ready for the next gig!”

Evaluate from this lens as well when you feel like being squeezed.

Photo Credit: Artotem’s Flickr Photostream

See Also:

1. Mini Saga – Decision Making
2. Mini Saga – Executing The Dream
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Mini Saga – Lights, Camera…Action!
5. Zen of Team Handling for Software Projects

1. Mini Saga – Decision Making
2. Mini Saga – Executing The Dream
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Mini Saga – Lights, Camera…Action!
5. Zen of Team Handling for Software Projects

Though it brings rewards in the end, most of us are afraid of challenging our own thought patterns as if it were an invasive brain surgery.

We’re designed this way, right?

Wrong.

But yes, we’re conditioned this way.

Few weeks ago I had a weekend discussion with one of my friends who shares a rare frequency and runs a successful design firm.

We talked about building the business, creating a-list teams and providing a-class customer service.

He was discussing with me about a customer feedback: designers working with his firm were otherwise very good but lacked innovation. He said that it was true for even their Chief Designer who had experience as little as 18 years in the design industry.

Conclusion was to hire a fresh (but brilliant) design graduate whose job would be to passionately challenge each one of the designs that the design team come up with.

Last week, I meet my friend again to hear the good news that his customer is very happy with recent design innovations that his team produced.

It worked like a charm. Why?

Because the beginning of the end of any great endowment is: “Falling in love with your own creation”.

Sure, you’ve to believe in yourself, your vision and your abilities. But, at the same time, following the same way of thinking just because that’s the way you’ve always done it, is the sure-fire way to attract devolution at the lightning speed.

The decision of bringing in fresh talent to challenge generated healthy conflict. The conflict was to challenge their designers’ fixed way of being and to ensure that only best comes out in the end.

Sometimes, it’s better to have someone in your team who has eyes to look at the things from fresh lens.  Maybe it’s good to have ‘No, but, Can we not…?’ kind of people rather than yes-men.

Photo Credit: livingonimpulse‘s Flickr Photostream

See Also:

1. What’s better? Being able to be specific or being able to do the work?
2. The Guaranteed Way To Best Manage A Project
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
5. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work

1. What’s better? Being able to be specific or being able to do the work?
2. The Guaranteed Way To Best Manage A Project
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
5. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work

Photo Credit: familymwr's Flickr Photostream

1. Decide to do something;
2. Then take a pen and a paper, even paper-napkin will work and doesn’t matter if the pen is a borrowed one;
3. Write a Goal to work on – make sure it is SMART;
4. Write down the steps you will take to achieve that goal;
5. Assign the deadline to the goal;
6. Follow up with the self everyday morning to consciously be aware of its progress;
7. Inspect and adapt. If what you’re doing is moving you forward to the upward direction, repeat it. If not then try something else.

See Also:

1. Your Fundamental Goal
2. Project Manager Who Is Most Likely To Produce Great Results 60
3. Smash The Problems By Analyzing, UnAnalyzing and Reanalyzing The Assumptions Attached
4. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office

1. Your Fundamental Goal
2. Project Manager Who Is Most Likely To Produce Great Results 60
3. Smash The Problems By Analyzing, UnAnalyzing and Reanalyzing The Assumptions Attached
4. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office

… then focus on having a great project team. You can learn about how to have a great project team may be from a book or a senior colleague but the best way to truly learn it is to start building one.

Photo Credit: rkramer62's Flickr Photostream

Focus on learning by doing. Read on for some tips on the same and start building a great team.

1. Have A-grade or potentially A-grade people in your team. Also make sure they’re coachable. If not, they should not be in our team.
2. Consider attitude first, skills second. In an interesting analogy, skill is just like an important software while attitude is like an operating system. If you don’t have reliable operating system, how can you expect your important software to be reliable?
3. Make sure that your people focus on one thing at a time – inspire them to become world-class in whatever ONE thing they do. Multitasking is a big excellence killer.
4. Mentor, coach, train and arise your people because quality of your project is a reflection of the growth of your people.
5. Take care of people and they’ll take care of your project (and the business at large).
6. Make sure your BEST team member works on the MOST valuable part of the project.
7. Inspire them to take massive actions and fail fast. Deliver often. Get feedback of their work. let them learn from mistakes. And, get it repeated what they do best.
8. Perfection is a myth; what matters is excellence. Excellence comes only when they do something excellent…and to do something excellent it is very important that they do ‘something’ and then seek to understand client’s feedback on whatever they’ve done. Then empower them to improve in whatever areas they need to.
9. Connect your team with a more meaningful purpose. For example, if you’re building software for doctors; make them aware that what they are building is going to help save thousands of lives. It is more motivating than  ”I’m building a data-form to capture some patient data.”
10. Inspire them to start small, deliver early; deliver often. Inspect and adapt.

See Also:

1. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
2. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?
3. Dependable Project Manager 9
4. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
5. The Inordinate Team Member

1. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
2. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?
3. Dependable Project Manager 9
4. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
5. The Inordinate Team Member

A zero-conflict workplace is like living in fool’s paradise and wiser is one who is able to make profit even from the conflicts.
To do that, your primary focus should be on how to prevent it. Once, Max Lucade wrote,

“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.”

So prevent it. Here are some tips:

1. Have people with integrity on board: Make sure your people have integrity and character.  Team is not a team but just a group of people if team members cannot trust one another.  Remember, trust without integrity is just not possible.
2. Invest in developing listening skill: Make sure they possess good listening skills. If you recognize that some people lack such a skill, work on it. State clearly what specific steps they need to take in order to develop listening skills. For example, encouraging them to attend Landmark Forum could be a good option.
3. Have them read the One Minute Manager: Make sure that they have not only read The One Minute Manager, they really understand it from its deepest insights. Remember, we are just not an individual but an individual managing our own behavior – and this book focuses on some of the most powerful management principles.
4. Don’t accept anything but solution focused approach: Many people have a habit to complain or criticize about something. That’s okay when they also come with the possible solutions. In fact, a problem presented with a possible solution is a key weapon in grinding success faster. Encourage people to look at problems as opportunities to go to the next level.
5. Encourage Life-long relationships: Make sure your team members have nurtured internal relationships which are going to stay alive for their remaining life. Situational leadership is good not situational relationships.
6. Develop tools to pre-handle conflicts: Invest in developing tools and techniques which handle conflicts even before that happen. For example, you can have a list of the causes of conflicts or invest in team-training where team members are taught how to self-handle conflicts etc.
7. Choose leadership over bossism: Choose to be a leader over just being a boss. E.m Kelly said, “The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, ‘Go!’ while a leader says, ‘Let’s go!’.” Leader leads regardless of a title and takes accountability for what his people are doing. He leads from the front and makes optimum use of techniques like Responsibility assignment (RACI) metrics to prevent conflicts.

If prevention doesn’t work and still you find yourself in the middle of a conflict, next best thing is to systematically attack the problem, resolve it, record the lessons learned and prevent it the next time. Here’s how:

1. Develop Problem Charter: Understand the problem very precisely. Go to the maximum possible detail level and get the clarity. Develop a problem charter which clearly states Who, What, Why, When Where and How of a problem.
2. Develop a plan: Develop a plan which clearly states how you will perform steps to overcome a problem.  Meet the entities identified in the first step, collect other relevant information, keep alternatives ready and be ready to attack the problem.
3. Execute: Now you have two good things. Necessary clarity about what the problem is and one or more ways about how you will act on it. So execute. Call meetings, exhibit different situational leadership styles and management practices.
4. Evaluate the outcomes: Captivation of execution is such that the executor forgets to pause and think about how he is executing. So monitor and control your execution. If you feel that your execution needs to be altered, do that. Nothing is permanent and ‘execution’ should also not be an exception. If needs be, restart from step 2 and refine the plan.
5. Close the problem: Once planned outcome has come, close the problem. Make all the required people aware about the updated status of the problem and record the lessons learned.

You don’t need to always formally develop problem charter or a plan but you need to do that process mentally in order to execute from the correct context.

So profit from it. Like a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung said,

“The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.”

See Also:

1. Do You Want to Win the Battle or the War?
2. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
3. If You Want to Have a Great Project Team
4. Stop Being A Hero
5. Seven Habits Of Highly Ineffective People

1. Do You Want to Win the Battle or the War?
2. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
3. If You Want to Have a Great Project Team
4. Stop Being A Hero
5. Seven Habits Of Highly Ineffective People

Photo Credit: kchbrown's Flickr photostream

When you were a child, your grandmother told you, “You’re special, you possess a unique charm; you’re like a hero!”

First, you laughed…then you consciously started liking it and eventually started believing that you’re a hero… someone very special.

Then, after years of education, you became a software professional and got a good job with one of the top IT organization, but still, in the back of your mind, you have treasured the old image, “I’m a hero!”

That’s where the problem rests for many software teams.

Since you consider yourself a hero, you inevitably strive to reinvent everything. Right from what other team members should have done to organizational processes or what the customer should have expected instead.

Your coarse argument would be, “No one in this organization can work like me. If I were not in that team, that big problem could have never been solved.” Or “People out here do not know even 10% of what I know and I don’t think they will be able to perform the task so effectively when I am not in the team.”

Instead of being open and learning from past mistakes of colleagues or everything else around, you insist on doing everything on your own; at the cost of the client or the organization.

You spend most of your time in beautifying your own code, debugging your less experienced colleague’s code or re-creating architecture of half-developed business application.

You need to understand that you’re not a hero. At least not at the workplace. If you become one, it is not going to give you benefits after a certain point. Reserve that narcism for your visit to your grandmother’s house.

Be less heroic. Be less special. Be more agile.  Focus more how your team can add value. Ship early; ship often rather than investing your time in less necessary artifacts in order to build a product or a service that works. Inspect and adapt. Remember, none of you is as powerful as all of you.

See Also:

1. Stop Talking
2. Stop using Instant Messenger

1. Stop Talking
2. Stop using Instant Messenger