The Retrospector

Today’s post is a continuation of the series for the 5 Steps To Help Your IT Team Concentrate. The full list of steps is recapped for you here, with a link to the previous posts in the series (step 0 being more of an introduction):

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.

Today we’ll elaborate more on the first step:

1. Identify how your employees concentrate and perform

It is very important to identify how your members are able to concentrate and perform their best in the first place. Being able to concentrate isn’t something you can just tell someone to do. It’s a trait that is different for all kinds of people.

I’ve simply never seen a group of people where everyone was able to concentrate with the same environment. Some like it quiet, some like it loud. Some like it bright, some like it dark. It would be great to have a team full of productivity chamelions, but the truth of the matter is…team dynamics generally implies figuring out how to get the team to work together without expecting much change on the part of the individual team members.

Start with the basics

In order to identify how they concentrate and perform, you need to let them try some things on their own. When getting a feel for a team member, make sure you spend enough time to let them understand what is needed. Then let them loose and see what happens.

Pay attention to everything that happens as they prepare to dive into the project. During implementation, how much interactivity was there? How many distractions did the employee encounter? How often did their eyes wander around the room with a look of boredom? These are key questions to ask when diagnosing what type of environment would be best for a person on your team.

Interactivity

Some people work best when collaborating with others. They like to bounce ideas off of others and feed of other member’s creativity and enthusiasm. Synergy is the corporate term for this phenomenon. I actually prefer this in limited quantities, but if it brings the best out of your employee in long spurts you should definitely note it.

Distractions

I don’t know many people that are able to concentrate through many distractions. However, I’ve witnessed a few multitasking powerhouses too. This almost fits in with the synergy point above because many of the distractions are from other members of the team via chat or phone.

What I want to include on this is people that can interrupt that aren’t related to the project. Noises, music, flickering lights, or a lack thereof can all play a part too. Uncomfortable furniture can really distract someone enough to not focus too. Pay attention to anything that catches their attention too often and too easily.

Boredom

One of the ultimate issues with getting someone to really dig their feet in to concentrate on a task is how interested they are in it. In a state of heightened senses, the athlete that’s “in the zone” can reach their goal far more easily than someone that’s out for a leisurely game just so they can think about other things for awhile. Try to fit appropriate work to each member of the team. Sure, every job has stuff you don’t want to do, but try to keep your people motivated so they don’t let boredom get in the way of their concentration.

Make the work interesting! Managers do cheezy things all the time to get people excited about a bunch of crappy work that nobody wants to do. Give incentives outside the norm to get their minds off how boring the work is and how exciting it will be to get it finished.

Bottom line is, take notice of what the team member perks up about. Get a feel for what their interests are and try to make things easier to concentrate on by taking advantage of their interest level.

All these factors are good ways to get a feel for how someone prefers to get “in the zone” when on a project. Is there some other method you use to discover your employees concentration catalysts? How do you get a feel for a new employee on the team?

The next post in this series will discuss creating an entire process where your team members can be most effective. Continue on to Part III.

Tags: concentration, productivity, focus, IT, team+building, management

I stumbled onto an article the other day from The Chief Happiness Officer blog about the effects of starting a meeting off with a positive round. This sure triggered some memories about countless tips on project management I’ve gathered in the past, but my first reaction was that this applies to more than just meetings. Granted, it’s most applicable in a meeting environment, but I think that conference calls, emails, even the occasional self-reflection is better off when you’re able to think of something positive first before heading into a full analysis.

Effective meeting structure

I don’t want to sound like I’m advising you to misrepresent anything. By all means be totally honest with everyone about things. However, the structure in your delivery can really have a positive or negative impact on your message as a whole.

At one of the first companies I worked for, I noticed right away that there was a pattern for meetings and for most any form of communcation to a group:

1. Start with a summary of what the discussion is about.
2. Point out something positive.
3. Describe the overall goals and objectives.
4. Recap the direction and action items, if any.
5. Motivate as much as possible during the recap.
6. Thank everyone.

The part that stuck out here was the point out something positive. With any project, something is happening. It’s really not hard to find a positive to point out and give credit for in group projects unless you’re just in a really shitty project with a total set of losers for a team. If that happens, at least try to highlight something good that you’re going to do.

Having felt a sense of accomplishment and recognition is highly motivating. One of the points I’ve made in a previous article about motivating geeks elaborates more on why this is a crucial step in keeeping motivation in the group. Starting off with postive points in a meeting is a great opportunity to give that recognition in there where it’s deserved before diving deep into controversial materal for the rest of the discussion.

May as well make the best of the unavoidable

I really hate meetings. They are, however, a necessary evil sometimes to keep effective collaboration amongst a group. The one-man-show should have no trouble with just communicating status upward because all the other coordination is simply happening in his mind. Having others to work with complicates things because if there’s communication barriers mistakes work their way into flawed designs or implementations.

So, if you have to sit through or coordinate meetings every week. I would say a good idea is definitely to start off as Alex mentioned in the link above, with a positive point that can set the pace of the conversation for your entire encounter be it a group meeting, call, or email.

What ideas do you have to put a nice positive spin on things before you get started? Do your meetings ever start out with a totally negative feel where you just get totally torn between wanting to work somewhere else and digging in your heels? Maybe putting the positive note somewhere else in the meeting structure has worked well for you. Share some insight, I’m interested in what you have discovered.

Tags: communication, meeting, positive+influence, collaboration

The 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

To complete the series, I’m going to touch on something that overlaps some points I’ve already made in the earlier posts…but I think it merrits just a little more attention. I want to talk a little bit about saying “I don’t know” and when to recognize that’s exactly what you should say.

Before I get into it, here’s a list of the other posts in this series:

• Avoid Taking Undeserved Credit
• Don’t Defer Blame
• Don’t Exaggerate

If you haven’t read them already, please take a look before continuing and come on back.

No excuse for being unprepared

First off, I want to throw out my disclaimer. By promoting the use of saying “I don’t know” when appropriate, I’m not encouraging you to be unprepared or even being put in a position where you look stupid and just have nothing else to say. I most certainly think it’s better to be as familiar as possible with every aspect of your job to the point where you shouldn’t have to ever use the phrase in front of other people.

This is not rocket science. I’m almost looking at some of these posts and just thinking to myself “why the heck are you writing these things anyway, isn’t this common sense?” Well, if it were that obvious, there wouldn’t be so many people sending comments to me about these subjects. (I’ve gotten a number of comments via email from this series for some reason.) So knowing that, I continue on.

The art of saying you don’t know

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.

Here’s a simple little list of ways to say “I don’t know” and still save your dignity. Sometimes you just can’t help it because you truly don’t know, but sometimes it’s just because you can’t joggle the memory well enough to bring some hidden thought to the tip of your tongue and back.

1. Here’s the obvious. “I don’t know.” Sometimes that really hurts to say, but c’mon. It’s not going to kill you once in awhile.
2. “That looks really familiar, I just can’t put my finger on it.” Ok, this is kind of lame because anyone can say that to sound like they’ve at least been familiar with your subject once upon a time and just have a short memory lapse.
3. This one cracks me up…the generic statement of knowlege. “Oh yeah, that’s the thing we were doing a few months back. I remember that.” This is very dangerous if you’re really clueless. You may have to elaborate if you invite discussion on the matter.
4. “I’m not as familiar as I’d like to be.” This implies some knowlege to begin with, even if you don’t have it. This one is much more careful than #3, and is very similar to #2. But it also implies that you really don’t know…without you actually having to say it.
5. Nod and smile, staying quiet. Then blurt out a “oh yeah, mmhmm.” This is probably the biggest scapegoat of “I don’t know” avoidance I’ve ever seen. There’s so many people that will just give you that half-blank stare while acknowledging your statements when they’re totally clueless. Don’t fall into this trap. Many people will hold you responsible for being on the same page and lose total confidence in you if you proove that you were totally clueless while totally agreeing with them.

Keep in mind you don’t want to mislead

There’s a fine line between trying to save face in a conversation you’re having with coworkers where you get by without having to admit you don’t know or understand what they’re talking about…and being depended on by those workers when you walked away really not knowing while they all need to you understand to fulfill your role properly on the team. Be careful how you admit to not knowing.

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.

Put a positive spin on not knowing

Something I like to do is to make an opportunity out of not knowing something. (Assuming it’s a lost opportunity because you’re just unprepared.) When I catch something in a conversation I don’t understand, I try to ask for a simple elaboration or explanation. Usually a one-two line description is enough to go on for a research project after the fact.

If you knew everything right now, life would be kind of boring. Learning is a huge part of life’s variety. So don’t be discouraged when you’re caught blindsided by some term, technology, or algorithm that others are talking about. Raise your hand and get involved by being interested and curious.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’d love to get more information on that.” -or- “Wow, what is that? That sounds interesting…”

So, what do you do when put on the spot in front of a group about a subject you don’t know much about? Are you the know-it-all type that just can’t admit to your knowlege gaps? Are you the doornail that sits there never saying anything when you don’t know what others are talking about? Perhaps you’re the curious one that also doesn’t know when to quit asking questions and go learn something on your own…

There’s plenty of variety here that I’ve seen. I’m curious what you’ve experienced. Share it with us and think up one of the funniest scenarios you can remember when catching someone claim knowlege of something they are really clueless about.

Tags: integrity, i+don’t+know, prepared