Advice

When your team at work isn’t working as a team

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I saw something like this at the BBC a couple of times:

If your team deals with important issues and team members have strong views on those issues, you can end up in a deadlock. When that happens, people dig into their own preferred solutions, operating from a unilateral control mindset where everyone believes that he or she understands the situation and is right, and that those who disagree just don’t understand the situation and are wrong. When all team members are thinking and acting this way, it creates a vicious reinforcing cycle. The more people try to prevail, the more people stand their ground, and the less likely it is that the team will ultimately resolve anything.

How to Break Through Deadlock on Your Team – Roger Schwarz, Harvard Business Review (7 July 2015)

I admit I read that and thought oh, bless. It assumes everyone on the team wants the best for the group, that the only difference is in how they think it should be done. In this positive kind of world there are no people out for themselves, nobody who sees this job as a temporary stepping stone to a better one if they come out looking good.

So I’m not recommending you follow every piece of advice in this boy scout kind of article but this is Harvard Business Review, they ought to know what they’re doing, so I am saying you should read the full piece.

The short answer is that talking to everyone and learning what brings them to their conclusions can help. It can, it’s true. Firing a few people focuses the mind too.

Networking tips from the smug and irritating

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That’s very unfair. But Jon Levy who described by Lifehacker as a behaviour expert is also called a master networker by Business Insider and you just aren’t warming to him, are you? This will seal the deal:

At one of Jon Levy’s house parties you could find yourself, as we recently did, making fajitas with Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Regina Spektor and leading snake venom expert Zoltan Takacs before watching live presentations from Bill Nye the Science Guy and break-dancing pioneer Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón.

A Master Networker Shares His Top 20 Networking Tips – Richard Feloni, Business Insider (27 January 2015)

O-kay. Not sure why that irritates me so but it does and I’m man enough to be open about it even as I tell you I’m a fan of Regina Spektor, I’ve only heard of Bill Nye the Science Guy via The Big Bang Theory and I’ve no idea who the break dancer is.

Nonetheless, Business Insider was happy to be in this party and I wasn’t invited, so what do I know? I know that it wasn’t a casual get together, it was a show: Levy runs what he calls Salons for getting people together. That feels contrived and artificial to me because it’s contrived and artificial. But among the things Business Insider got out of Levy there are some undeniably good ideas, if crouched in corporate-speak:

[You] should be thinking of how you can add value to a potential connection without expecting anything in return, at least immediately. Levy is a proponent of Wharton professor — and Influencers member — Adam Grant’s theory on “givers,” those who seek out opportunities to help people they respect and appreciate. “If you’re a giver, then you build quality relationships, and with those relationships you’re exposed to opportunity over the long term,” Grant told Business Insider last year. “You actually increase your own luck so far as you contribute things to other people.

I can’t disagree: when I’ve done things for people just to be a mensch, it has often led to things for myself later on. I just think that if I went in expecting that, doing something nice becomes less nice. Plus, it is just exciting to see two people you’ve introduced go off to do something brilliant together. Isn’t that enough?

It’s not network leverage, it’s being a mensch. So, okay, I have the kind of wet and liberal arts mind that means I have to translate corporate-speak into Yiddish, but in principle I agree with Levy on this one. I just don’t on this:

“When people ask me what I do, I try to be a little elusive just to create some interest. So I tell people I spend most of my life trying to convince people to cook me dinner. Which is true,” he says, laughing. “A lot of my time is really spent around logistics, phone calls, and emails and all that. But the benefit of [my introduction] is that it sounds so different and then it’s much easier to connect.”

I haven’t just walked away from him but my mind’s switched off. If you ask me what I do, I tell you I’m a writer and then we can get on to what you do and what you care about. I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it, I have zero interest in tricking you into hearing my CV, I have full and complete interest in knowing about you.

All of which is, I think, a slow way of saying that there’s this article about a right article who does networking and that with some caution, you might like to read it. I could’ve just said that, couldn’t I?

Minimum Necessary Change

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I’m not going to quote you anything here because I got this idea from a book that has no quotable excerpts from. Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity is brilliant when you’re a teenager, substantially less so when you’re not. It’s a novel with eye-poppingly great ideas, it just makes you close your eyes wincing at how poorly it’s written. Asimov was a permanent schoolboy, that’s all. Yet there is an idea that sticks with me.

It’s called the Minimum Necessary Change and in his millennia-spanning time-travel tale, it means this. The most gigantic event can be traced back to the very tiniest of things. I think an example he gives is of a war being prevented because a tea cup is moved. In the book’s world, this cup or whatever it is being moved to a different shelf means it’s not where some fella expects it to be and it takes him a minute to find it. That delay means he leaves the house a minute later than he would have done and so he gets caught up in traffic or something, he’s late getting to a big meeting, he doesn’t annoy someone who therefore doesn’t start a war.

Okay, I may have skipped on a few steps there but you got the idea and you saw where it’s going.

It’s in my mind because I read a thing this morning, a factual article rather than a naff novel, recommending what it said was the Minimum Effective Dose. You can read that here but the piece says that’s a medical term to do with finding the very least medicine dose you can give someone before it works. With the idea that giving them more than that is a waste and/or dangerous. The article takes that idea and applies it to productivity and says that you should look for the least you can do to get what you want.

And I don’t like that.

I’m not sure why since it makes sense and any effort you don’t apply to this job you can apply to another. Yet somehow I read that and I take away an idea of not trying. Of pushing papers around, of getting by. I want to do things that matter to me more than that.

And as I pondered away about this MED thing, Asimov’s MNC popped into my head from a couple of decades ago. His is a time travel thing and works by seeing this great big war and tracking back to the smallest possible origin, finding the point where with the least twiddling you can get the result you want. I just prefer that.

The reason for the Minimum Necessary Change is not laziness or the conservation of energy, it’s that you could accidentally set off a different war if you do the wrong thing. That’s it, I’ve got it now: both Asimov’s MNR and this article’s Minimum Effective Dose are about getting the most by doing the least, but MED is apathetic and MNR is precise. Minimum Necessary Change says you do this and exactly this to get that. MED says you do enough to get what you want.

I don’t know how doctors calculate the MED, though presumably there’s a lot of research data to call on. I also don’t quite know how you can time travel back to a point where moving a tea mug will save the world.

But I really like the idea that the smallest thing you do right now can make massive changes in your life later. Plus, I’m going to tidy my shelves, so there’s that too.

Being smart about stupid productivity killers

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In fairness, you could probably call reading this a productivity killer but I like having you here. Let me make it worth your while with this piece from Oskar on Growthzer.com that sets out four things you do that you could change and feel better about.

One of them is a reasonably involved idea about your To Do list and I’m less taken with that but the others are so simple as to be hard to disagree with. Here’s Number 1: today your desk.

My personal rule for keeping a clear desk says: keep as less as possible on your desk. At the moment when I’m writing this, there’s nothing on my desk except a keyboard, mouse and screen. But I used to have a really chaotic workplace. Books, notes, office accessories and souvenirs. And a cork board above the desk with countless sticky notes. Generally, a lot of distracting stuff which hindered concentration.

Now with hindsight, I wonder how I even wanted to work surrounded by so much equipment. It became obvious that a clear desk is a starting point for having more control over your productivity.

4 Stupid Productivity Killers You Should Be Aware Of – Oskar, Growthzer.com (8 April 2015)

Read the full piece.

Talk to your team when you can’t talk to your team

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I’ve been working with a firm who has the problem that its very many staff all work different patterns so it’s difficult just knowing who is in today and who you don’t have to worry about why they’re late. Many can and some do work from home, too, so keeping track of everyone is tough and scheduling company-wide meetings is murder.

Don’t tell them, but when I go back in next week, I’m going to recommend they use a certain type of technology to help. In fact, I was going to recommend Slack for certain until I read the Huffington Post’s research into all apps that can help large teams function together. I still almost certainly will recommend it as the HuffPost is certainly praising of it too:

Slack claims to be changing the way teams communicate, and looking at testimonials, it appears to do just that. The desktop and mobile allows teams to chat in channels with conversations divided by subjects, and you can chat and share photos, videos and music. So it’s a bit like having an ongoing meeting which you can dip in and out of. Slack is free to download, with Standard, Plus and Enterprise ($49-99/month) options with enhanced features, like Google apps integration and usage stats.

7 Workplace Chat Apps to Keep Your Team in Sync – Jack Flanagan, Huffington Post (28 March 2015)

Read the full piece to see what all of these apps do and just what they are. And then take a look at Slack. Also, take a look at this video from the Slack company:

The morning routines of writers

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There’s a website called My Morning Routine and it collects people’s accounts of how they start their typical working days. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on yet tickles me, the site includes more writers than any other profession. Maybe everyone else is getting on with their day instead of writing about it.

But I took a stroll through the collection and found this pull quote from writer Amber Rae. I’ve not heard of her before and I was drawn to her section only by the description that she is a ‘fire starter’. I’m glad I looked now because her account is headed by this, which I do very much recognise:

For many years, my morning routine was a result of how other people expected me to show up. I was overwhelmed and off-center because I was ignoring the messages my body was sending me.
My Morning Routine – Amber Rae, My Morning Routine (25 March 2015)

Read the full piece of hers plus, currently 58 other writers and more ordinary people.

Animated guide to the 4-Hour Work Week

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A four-hour working week? I think I need to sit down. Can I have a glass of water, please?

There’s this book called The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. I haven’t read it. But someone who calls themselves FightMediocrity has done an animated version. It’s really FightMediocrity’s review with doodles and arrows but it’s busy and absorbing. See what you think of it and this entire concept of decimating your hours.

Short thought: productivity is like gardening

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Chiefly because I’m just back from looking around a National Gardens Scheme spot, this has just popped into my head.

You plant stuff, you water it regularly, it grows. Just concentrate on the soil and the garden grows.

This is all far too cutesy for me, even though I mean it, so I will just add that sometimes you have to get the builders in to reroute that stream.

Don’t ever say or think ‘that’s good enough’

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Brian Grazer, producer of 24 and Arrested Development on how there are no rules to how you achieve success – except maybe on.

“Every once in a while I rationalize quality,” [Brian Grazer] continued. “There are so many decision you make, and you’re trying to do excellence. We know what excellence is. We know what better food is versus not good food. But there’s a rationalizing process—that’s good enough. Anytime the light bulb goes, that’s good enough, it’s shitty!”

Brian Grazer Talks ’24,’ ‘Arrested Development,’ and Regretting ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ at Aspen – Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic (4 July 2015)

Read the full piece.