10 Tips for Developing High Performing Teams

As a leader of several high performing teams, I have identified the most important reasons I feel these teams excel. These traits apply to all teams, not just work teams.

1. The team must have clarity and direction

• Make sure your team knows what is important and why.
• Repeatedly share your team roadmap and goals.

2. Hire and recruit great talent

• Surround yourself with people smarter than you.
• Don’t settle for “ok” talent.
• They must be team players.
• They must be hungry and driven to succeed.
• I always try to hire from referrals of people I trust.

3. Empower and grow your team

• Employee growth is a powerful motivator. Sending staff to training and giving them the responsibility to make decisions is satisfying.
• If you do not grow your staff, you may miss out on your next promotion, because nobody can fill your shoes.
• Mentor and guide staff rather than do the work for them.

4. Address gaps in staffing or talent

• If your team is expected to provide a service, yet nobody owns this service or has time for it, you will have a very unhappy group. Hire, train or free up staff’s time.
• If you can’t hire a full-time position to fill a gap, start by hiring a contractor.
• If you can’t fill the gap, then stop doing the service all together until resources are made available to your team. If it is important, resources will be available; otherwise, it is not important to the organization.

5. Create a safe environment

• If your team is afraid to make mistakes, they will also be scared to make progress.
• The process of failure and the ability to quickly adjust is vital to creating a safe environment. We fail all the time, yet I never see it as a failure because “You never fail until you stop trying” Albert Einstein

6. Right size the work and expectations

• Don’t take on everything. High performing teams will be in constant demand. Be realistic about what your team can accomplish and stay focused on what is important.

7. Promote work-life balance

• We all have personal lives, which is the most important. If things at home are not in order, people cannot focus or do a good job.

8. Lead your team by example

• If you want people to act in a certain way, make sure you act that way. For example: If you expect folks to keep the place clean and tidy, then pick-up any garbage and clean up after others. The impact is amazing, and others will soon be doing the same.

9. Be decisive

• As the leader, make a good decision at the time but don’t get bogged down with perfect, good is good enough, there is no such thing as perfect.
• Be agile and flexible enough to identify when it’s time to change your decision. As more information becomes available, it is imperative that you can confidently change your plans.

10. Be your team’s cheerleader and shield

• Always represent your team positively.
• If your team does not meet expectations, as the leader, you accept the blame to shield your staff. Your team needs to know that you have their back and that they can trust you.

If you’re on a team, or lead a team, striving towards these 10 traits will help your team outperform expectations.

 

Why You Need a Roadmap

It’s quite simple, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra

If you, your team or your organization are unclear about what you should be working on, a roadmap might be just what you need. Simply put, a roadmap is a strategic plan that describes the steps one needs to work towards to achieve future goals.

My key focus, as the Enterprise Architect is to identify “Where are we going?” and “What should we be focusing our efforts on?” To do this, I have created many roadmaps and have taken many people on the journey of creating them.

The top reasons we do roadmaps include:

• To provide alignment and direction for your team
• Communicate your plans with other business units
• Set expectations
• Used to justify and prioritize investments
• Identify new desired capabilities to work towards
• Improve and grow current capabilities
• Provide focus on what’s important

The process can be quite fun and extremely rewarding! Based on my experience, the process of developing the roadmap is the most important part. During the process, relationships are built, and the alignment needed to execute the roadmap are created.

Depending on the scope, the roadmap process can take anywhere from a few weeks to months. No matter how long it takes, the effort is well worth it!

Additionally, A good roadmap is a living document that must be continually updated or risk becoming obsolete. So, make sure you have a business partner and people responsible to keep it current.

In summary, if your team is “spinning their wheels” or unable to focus, a good roadmap is the answer. It will provide your team, direction, focus, and alignment, allowing them to move forward and get more done.  Good luck and feel free to use my Get Started with Roadmapping Presentation.

Plant the Seeds of Innovation – Five Ideas How to get Started

The word Innovation is perhaps the most overused word in business. If you were to ask 5 people the meaning, you would get 5 different answers. I have researched numerous definitions of innovation and there is no single good definition. For that reason, I combined the best definitions into one simple phrase for the purpose of this article. Innovation is executing on an idea that addresses a real problem and adds value to someone.

Anyone can be innovative under the right circumstances. Innovation does not just happen, it is purposeful and requires the right environment for it to take root and grow in your organization. Below are five ideas to create an innovative environment for your staff.

1. Create time for employees to do special projects and explore

As an IT leader, we need to communicate, encourage and allocate time for staff to learn and grow. We all need dedicated time to play around with new concepts and ideas. Start by encouraging your staff to block off 1-2 days per month or some reasonable amount of time for special projects that relate to solving a business problem.

2.  Reward new ideas and proof of concepts

People like rewards. Create an incentive program for people that come up with new ideas. Encourage staff to experiment with new solutions or concepts. The reward can be something simple like a gift card, free lunch, award certificates or just good old recognition. You could establish a challenge and make it fun. No matter how you do it, rewards are a good way to encourage participation and reward their efforts.

3.  Create a safe environment

A playground that is segregated from the main IT environment is needed. People need an area where it is safe to play around with new technology without fear of impacting the production environment. This is very easy these days with virtualization, containerization and the use of cloud services. Check out why Docker is such a popular tool.

4. Share ideas

It is very important that ideas are shared. You could create a user group that is open to all and schedule regular meet-ups. Or, deploy an idea platform where ideas can be submitted, viewed and commented on by others. There are hundreds of such idea platforms such as BrightIdea. The possibilities are limitless.

5. Stay informed, attend training and go to conferences

Lastly, encourage your staff stay current and learn about new technologies. Go to a conference and bring your staff with you. Every time I attend a conference I try to include as many folks as possible. I always come away with a gigantic list of new ideas. This does not need to be expensive or require much time. There are many local conferences, user groups and tons of free training.

My final thoughts are, innovation does not just happen, leaders must thoughtfully provide the right environment for it to grow and take root. There are many additional ways to create an innovative environment. You can use these five ideas or come up with your own. Creating such an environment is just like planting seeds in your garden, you need fertile soil, water, and sunlight for the seeds to grow. The same concept applies to your staff, they are the seeds, you give them the right environment and a new innovative culture will begin to take root. It does not need to be perfect, it just needs the commitment by you and your seeds will grow.