5 Steps To Help Your IT Team Concentrate
Friday, August 4th, 2006The dynamics of a team can be a very fragile thing. As with many things, when properly maintained it can be a very powerful machine. How do you maintain your team? One good way is to help create an environment for each member to reach a fully concentrated state.
Many people have terms for being in a state of total concentration. A state where you are able to focus completely on the task at hand without distractions of any kind. A state where you are the most productive you can possibly be.
Generally speaking, I’ve known most technical people such as programmers, architects, system administrators, or designers to be much more productive when they’re able to concentrate. This probably holds true for a great deal of non-technical employees where a high level of concentration is needed to do the job, but I’m in IT…so that’s what I’ll write about.
So, I’ve managed to quantify 5 steps to helping your productivity machine get to that most optimized state of efficiency. For the next week or so, I’ll be posting the steps in a series for the following topics:
0. Coin a cool term for being fully concentrated
1. Identify how your employees concentrate and perform
2. Create a process where team members are most effective
3. Encourage collaboration in the group time, and support total isolation for the individual time.
4. Create the appropriate atmosphere
5. Don’t be afraid to change and experiment.
The first item may sound pretty unnecessary as a step of its own. Basically, everyone on the team needs to be on common ground with terminology. Managers, peers, and even business users need to understand what it is you’re talking about when you talk about your schedule. The other reason I threw this in here is because it’s probably the shortest piece of this series, and sort of makes for a semi-humorous intro to the rest of the steps. So here we go…
0. Coin a cool term for being fully concentrated
Some terms that I’ve heard to describe the total state of concentration where people can really produce some of their best work are:
- Crankin’
- Totally Focused
- Spewing (as in spewing code)
And probably the best of them all, and one I’ve been using since I first heard it:
- In The Zone (something I only ever heard used in sports-related descriptions for someone that was “on fire” and just couldn’t mess up.)
Now, I have to admit something. When I hear that someone is “In the Zone” I can picture a number of strange scenarios. The best analogy that comes to mind is someone being in the end-zone after making a touchdown at a football game. The person has struggled very hard to get there, and is at a total performance peak. Things are going well, and any slightest penalty could totally slow down momentum of the team as a whole even after one or two people took the ball to the end-zone.
Scientific people, engineers, doctors, etc. all need to be able to reach that “on fire” state where they just perform flawlessly with no mistakes and total coordination of their thoughts in order to really produce. Why wouldn’t you want to help get your team members to be able to focus and perform in the same manner? Stay tuned for more steps on how to help your IT team concentrate…
In the meantime, I’m really curious what other names people call their “zone”. What do you say to someone when you’re in the middle of concentrating on the super-difficult piece of code you’ve been working all morning to get your head around? How to you let someone know you’re going to go get “in the zone” for the afternoon and don’t wan’t to be interrupted? How many of you turn off your phone’s ringer when you’re busy like I do?
Continue on to Part II.
Tags: concentration, productivity, focus, IT, team+building, management
This amuses me to some extent. I’ve seen so many people try to weasel out of saying the three little words. It’s really not that hard, but for some reason there’s people out there that just never…ever…ever feel as if they’re wrong. I don’t really mind it so much when people think they’re always right, until they’re very quick to point out when you’re wrong. Not everyone can know everything all the time. Eventually, you are caught in a situation where you simply don’t know enough to sound intelligent with saying anything else.
I like to make as clear as possible that I dont’ understand something until I’ve seen it very clearly in my mind. I’m horrible at nodding during a conversation, but the best thing to do is to repeat what people are saying in your own words to help you get a clear picture of what’s going on. Being on the same page with others on your team is crucial to your success.
What I’m going to talk about in this post is the use of exaggeration. Many people use exaggeration so much, and since it’s just a really little stretch of the truth they don’t realize how often it’s happening. Exaggeration is such a powerful tool when trying to argue a defense for your side of the debate. Using “stretched” facts can help you win over someone else that isn’t totally informed of the facts themselves.
What I’d like to elaborate on concerns something nobody likes to really think about. What happens when things go horribly wrong? Well, when shit happens…there’s no point in polishing a terd. Someone has to shovel it up and get rid of it while the company has to figure out how to still end up with a jewel. (Or just a pretty rock will do. Some of us will take what we can get when things aren’t as they should be.) Regardless of what went wrong, if you were involved in any way with the problems…the best thing to do is to just suck it up and take what comes. The rest of the post will concentrate mostly on the what-to-do and what-not-to-do action items you should remember if ever caught up with an awry situation.
Be as informed as possible. If you’re caught in the middle of a bad situation, looking stupid is about the last thing you want to happen. Collect as much information as possible on why things went wrong, the source of the problem didn’t just happen out of thin air. Even if you weren’t expecting something and didn’t account for it, do your homework and find out as much information as you can as fast as you can so that when you’re in the room trying to explain what happens…you at least look and sound intelligent enough to be speaking on the subject.
Don’t mention names. This is probably the most difficult thing to do, but unless directly asked for a name just don’t throw them out there. Marching into your boss’ office and blaming the entire thing on someone else can be just as bad for you as it might seem good depending on the situation.
Now what? If you messed up, you better be ready to fix it. Being prepared is as good as you can do at this point. If you just shrug the entire thing off, your company may consider you an unnecessary expense. Who wants to hire someone who just messes stuff up and won’t even try to make things right? I sure wouldn’t. If I screw up, you better believe I’m in there pulling double-time until I make it right. Having other people dependent on me to do my part is pressure enough. Forcing teammates to dive in and bail you out all the time just sucks and makes you look incapable.