I’ve worked with many teams over the years. The most effective teams did great work because they mastered other sets of interactions that mattered more than the actual work.
Here’s 5 that I noticed and how I approach them.
1. Accountability
Accountability is where expectations and outcomes meet, usually at the layer of the individual team member. It’s not really a count of how good a person is at staying accountable, but instead describes the culture of the team.
Strong accountability cultures often know the outcome of a certain expectation.
In “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, Ben Horowitz describes accountability as a 3-dimensional object:
- Promises (expectations)
- Results (outcomes)
- Effort
Promises
Words matter a lot. If we reason backwards, then we shouldn’t say things we know we can’t follow through on (results). You’ll know this dimension is strong when you don’t question the promises of other people.
A great place to litmus test this is meeting follow-ups. Pay close attention to what others say they’re going to do, and see if/when it actually gets done and by whom. Great teams can be trusted with their proposals.
Results
The heart of this is “doing what you say you’re going to do”. Great promises mean nothing if they aren’t executed on.
When disrespected, this dimension of accountability quickly erodes culture. Once people know they can get away with lip service it becomes commonplace.
It takes a lot of courage and open discussion to correct this ship. Combat with radical transparency, honesty, and crucial conversations to move towards a place where broken promises are addressed head-on.
Effort
Low accountability means limited effort. Remote work makes it easy to mask this, but people can’t usually produce great results with poor effort.
When this becomes a problem it’s worth exploring the root of low effort, which can often be boredom (not challenging enough) or defeatism (too challenging/overwhelming).
Some tactical methods for improving and building more accountability into your team:
- Wrap promises, results, and effort in numbers and data. It’s easier to manage discussions when reacting to facts instead of perception.
- Have monthly crucial conversations with teammates about their (and your) work. Don’t be afraid to challenge answers or ask tough questions to understand more about the problem.
- Hone the craft of Follow-Through. When you’re certain that others will expect that you did what you said you would do, and others expect that from you, it becomes a more sustainable system of accountability when you know someone is going to ask about it.
2. Context
On a camping trip near the desert, my grandma once asked my grandpa how she could help. Bored, she figured she could at least be useful.
Grandpa didn’t want help, but appeased her with a simple task.
“Go stack rocks over there”, he said while pointing to the edge of the campsite.
Pleased to have work, she happily began to stack.
“What are we using this for?”
“What does it matter?” Grandpa questioned, “It’s something for you to do”.
I’ve been part of plenty of rock-stacking efforts in my time. Tasks and work that seems to exist for its own sake. They’re usually items that had a purpose once upon a time that has faded from relevancy but the work behind it wasn’t questioned.
Rock stacking gets old really fast because it lacks meaning or context. Knowing “why” something needs to be done is motivating, but also allows us to solve problems more creatively. An absence of “why” should lead teams to delete that work from the queue permanently.
On the other hand, low performing teams invite rock stacking because they’ll settle for the perception of busyness instead of making a meaningful impact together.
I digress. Great teams build context in the following ways:
- Conversations with each other about why things were created or built a certain way in the past
- Building your teamwork around the highest mission and vision of your company
- Intimately learning the value your team creates for your customers
Strong context leads to better problem solving because when you know the Why, it’s natural to build a comprehensive How and What.
3. Assignments
Grand vision and a talented team don’t matter if you can’t cooperate together.
The best teams I’ve worked with have all used a system for organizing around their work. Some of them used agile-based methods like Scrum or Kanban. Smaller teams I’ve been part of used a very active whiteboard and high levels of pairing up.
Where I’ve been most confused was when there wasn’t clarity around “who” is doing “what”. You wouldn’t think this matters, but when assignments aren’t clear:
- Tasks are left undone because we assumed someone else was doing it
- Tasks are done twice because we assumed no one was doing it
- We were wildly unsure if we were on track to hit our goals
Conversely, implementing almost any sort of system yields fruitful efficiencies on the team. All of a sudden we had clear lines of accountability for our work. Clear assignments also allowed us to objectively measure work, team capacity, and gaps in our skills (what do you mean no one knows how to support AngularJS???).
Strong teams use assignment systems to improve their throughput, not to micromanage. Most teams have a pace and procedure that works best for them (not to mention online tools geared towards their preferences too), so working a certain way for the sake of it isn’t always the best move.
4. Shipping
Work only matters if it solves a problem. Being busy doesn’t create value for anyone else. Remember the rock stacking?
The ability for a team to ship their work into the hands of customers is a different skill than planning, meeting, and completing work. Although they’re all important, they usually don’t matter if they don’t result in external value creation.
One exception to that is learning. Learning about your team dynamics and processes on the way towards shipping work is valuable, but only if that education bolsters a future shipment of work. Otherwise your team is no different than someone who learns everything about the world but keeps to themself.
A few principles for building better shipping habits:
Ship before you’re 100% ready.
Moving the completion dial to 100% is usually too much for what really matters in your value proposition. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Learn if the work you shipped made the difference you expected.
Sometimes this means shifting into “research” mode and talking with users or businesses impacted by your work. It’s easier to ignore the impact and start work on the next version without assessment.
Look for patterns after you ship the work.
Don’t become super defensive when someone doesn’t like your work, but don’t lock onto a single piece of information either. Look for patterns in the macro to steer your team’s approach to support and improvement.
Actually following through is a risk. It’s scary. And it separates mediocre teams from high performance teams. How well you execute is the true measure of your team’s capabilities.
5. Decision Making
Decisiveness is underrated. It can be argued that the best companies in the world made it there on the backs of good decision making and supported by talent.
Decisions can be boiled down to two phases:
Learning
Gathering all the information needed around the issue. For teams this typically involves a level of independent research which is then presented to the team (or even leaders outside the team) for scrutiny and review.
If there’s an element missing from most decision making, it’s learning.
Deciding
Working through all the information gathered during the previous phase to figure out what is relevant and analyze the strategic implications of these decisions.
It’s poor advice to jump to the first idea that seems good without considering how other options might play, but this is easy. Especially with larger teams used to building group consensus. Killing this habit of “least controversial decision making” requires courage and leadership in the team to encourage a more holistic approach.
Poor decision making is a byproduct of culture, and absolutely flattens momentum and progress. There’s also far too many teams that relegate decision making to large compromises (where everyone leaves equally unhappy about the result).
A few ways to approach decision making:
Make one person accountable for an element of the work
Selecting a single person who is “on the hook” for some portion of your team’s product/project makes it very clear who gets to decide. Does that make this an authoritarian decision? In a healthy team, the accountable person weighs the Learnings, Research, and Opinions on the matter before proceeding with a timely decision.
Seek voices, but not consensus
Consensus-based decision making, where everyone has to agree, is a bloody and inefficient battle of egos and opinions reserved for only extreme circumstances.
Instead, healthy and high performing teams work to make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak up and be heard (being heard is more than just decibels landing on ears, but a real reaction to one’s thoughts). The idea being that people are more likely to get on board with an idea they don’t like if they at least had a chance to speak up about it.
If you’re a leader, build an environment where everyone has an opportunity to do this. Your approach should vary depending on the personality of the individual… a topic for a later time.
Good decisions on a team with mediocre skills goes a lot further than poor decisions on a team with great talent. It defines the work and shapes your team’s attitude towards it too.
Conclusion
The work is important, but the systems behind it are what produce success.