{"id":472,"date":"2007-08-13T18:25:32","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T18:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2007\/08\/13\/more-on-teamwork-how-individual-team-members-knowing-and-doing-makes-the-team\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:38:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:38:07","slug":"more-on-teamwork-how-individual-team-members-knowing-and-doing-makes-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=472","title":{"rendered":"More on “teamwork” – how individual team members’ knowing and doing makes the team"},"content":{"rendered":"
In\u00a0a post last week<\/a>\u00a0I talked about “teamwork” not being a warm and fuzzy concept to me.\u00a0\u00a0 To me\u00a0the concept of teamwork has meaning due only to a result<\/em> a group of people produces due to their work together.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0well-functioning team that exhibits “good teamwork” is\u00a0made up of individuals each taking personal responsibility for having an impact on the project from what they know and believe<\/em>\u00a0– and what they do<\/em> with what they know and believe.\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
One important instance of this definition of teamwork is how individuals work together to make\u00a0critical decisions\u00a0early\u00a0in a project.\u00a0Each person’s knowledge of what it will really take to get the whole<\/em> job done<\/em> is critical – \u00a0and each person needs a voice early on along with an understanding of how and when to maximize the impact of\u00a0that voice!\u00a0 How does an individual contributor do that?<\/div>\n
To answer that question, first think about the people you respect, colleagues whose opinions you seek out and trust. What landed them on your “trusted expert” list?\u00a0\u00a0 If they’re on your ‘list’, it means you listen to them when they speak up even if they have unpleasant things to say;\u00a0 you seek them out when things are iffy or touchy or outright horribly uncertain;\u00a0 you want and need their contribution and it’s second nature to go after it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can illustrate what this concept looks like from personal experience – the time I first recognized the qualities that made me buck up and listen to someone I had previous (frankly) written off as a problem to deal with.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n

I once worked\u00a0with\u00a0a number of different teams at a\u00a0particular fast-growing start-up company. The projects were intense and challenging, with many technical alternatives to consider, many feature decisions to make. One particular project stands out in my mind because of one team member and his ultimate influence on the project team’s decisions.<\/p>\n

“Steve” was a senior engineer with the project. He’d been around since the early days of the company. Frankly he could be a bit hard to be around.\u00a0 He was very opinionated, very forceful in his communication;\u00a0 some thought he was a troublemaker.\u00a0 But he knew the products inside and out.\u00a0 \u00a0Beyond that, he cared about the business itself : what the company was trying to achieve through all their technical projects. When he sat in a team meeting or investigated design alternatives, he brought both sets of knowledge to the table.\u00a0\u00a0 I can remember sitting in meetings with him where he just blew other team members away. He continually challenged assumptions about the project. Just because management thought the product should have feature A and B, this guy didn’t necessarily buy it. He knew something about the customers, too, and didn’t hesitate to assert his opinion about what they needed. I watched him take on the CTO and head of Marketing several times : he was passionate about getting the customer the right product at the right time and cost.<\/p>\n

Steve also had a keen eye for technical risks and made sure they got intense scrutiny before anyone committed to including them in the project. He understood what the technology could do and had innovative ideas for product design, but he put considerable effort into balancing the technical capabilities with pragmatism about project risk. Needless to say, project managers wanted him on their teams.<\/p>\n

Steve also took considerable initiative to bring new ways of working to his projects. Just because they’d “always done it this way”, no process or methodology was sacred. For example, as the company’s custom integrated circuit capability developed, Steve suggested new ways of approaching the design process and new ways to use the tools, to help get projects completed quickly with high yields.<\/p>\n

So ultimately where did Steve’s influence come from? It had nothing to do with any job title or position. His influence resulted from the strength of his multi-faceted contributions to the project team, the information they needed, and the decisions they made with that information:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • He demonstrated detailed, practical technical knowledge of the technology and the company’s products.<\/li>\n
  • He showed appreciation of customer needs and considered the business ramifications of project decisions.<\/li>\n
  • He brought experience and judgment from previous projects into each new project, doing whatever he could to make the effort go well.<\/li>\n
  • He took the initiative to suggest new and better ways of doing things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The result? He had the ear of team members and decision makers. They listened to his opinions, they sought his advice, they depended on his judgment.\u00a0 I personally wanted his discerning mind, rich experience, and strong opinions on my projects. He wasn’t Superman;\u00a0and remember, above I said I had initially almost written him off as “way too hard to deal with.”\u00a0\u00a0 He wasn’t always right; he\u00a0COULD seem hard to work with because he could be very abrupt and abrasive in his delivery, aggressive in his communication –\u00a0although out of passion for what he felt to be right, not out of some desire to be difficult!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But\u00a0 by virtue of his contributions to both technical product development and to the good of the company’s overall business, he was very valuable to me and others, and therefore very influential.\u00a0 He was a key element in teamwork – team decision-making – that produced a good result for the project.<\/p>\n

    So I maintain that one of the most important things we can do to achieve great teamwork on our projects is to make sure each individual understands the contributions they can make – of information, opinions, insight, passion, and drive for what’s right.\u00a0 And we can be willing to work with them even if they have different personalities or approaches.. that’s our part of the teamwork effect.\u00a0\u00a0 I think it’s the individual contributions put into actoin\u00a0to lead to\u00a0truly great teams.<\/p>\n

    .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In\u00a0a post last week\u00a0I talked about “teamwork” not being a warm and fuzzy concept to me.\u00a0\u00a0 To me\u00a0the concept of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[166,123,118,193,46],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-cooperation","tag-decision-making","tag-project-kick-off","tag-teams","tag-teamwork"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13766,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/13766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}