Are your teams REALLY healthy? - PART II
Given the metrics you tracked over the previous part & here’s what you ought to do in case any of them point to some pain…
Over the previous part we identified a few important headers & also enumerated the metrics that could help establish that very specific trait if tracked within the teams. There were totally 12 of them mainstream metrics that could help determine if a team is healthy, leading to the last & the one that really matters – “EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION” which of course relies heavily on TRUST.
Corollary:
“Employee Satisfaction in product orgs. ought to be down to individually tracking each of the 12 metrics listed here over this visual & putting in efforts to improve them continually so as to help anchor those 6 major sectional headers / traits & cohesively leading towards building a brand of impeccable TRUST amongst XfN teams, stakeholders & individual team members“
Over this write-up we’ll unpack what exactly ought to be done when those metrics point to some ill-health in the team & the future course of action towards establishing, stabilizing & further improving each of those traits individually.
COMMUNICATION
Communication is the lifeblood & often tends to dictate how teams actually function. All good teams would be impeccable at communication with most possessing a deep knowledge of when to dive into the details & when to keep it all abstract, when to zoom-in & zoom-out. But is there a possibility of teams struggling to keep abreast with situations even in spite of being good at communication?
Good teams do have meetings at a shorter cadence as they tend to see that as a basis for allowing / facilitating better collaboration. But, if you happen to be in a set-up where meetings are pushed to bear a lower priority & happen ONLY when something goes wrong / gets escalated, that’s probably not going to work well, especially if one is talking of a high performing product team.
Here are some things that would help:
The Agile manifesto suggesting teams to resort to Daily Standup could just be the first step towards betterment which ought to be a start when everyone shares a high-level detail / summary about their work & puts forth concerns if any, making collaboration seamless & helping find quicker resolutions to problems working its way through to improving the [PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY] & also solving for the [TOTAL NO. OF PEOPLE ON CALL] given how these meetings are very short & happen within small teams
Embrace the open culture devoid chambers / cubicles where teams large / small share a common floor giving a team member the authority to just walk to the other’s desk & discuss blockers sans any frills could do away with the [CADENCE OF MEETINGS] & the [ACTIVE PARTICIPATION RATE]
Exclusive forums for internal teams with restricted access where one could just post any blocker / query & get many inputs in with an additional feasibility to follow that up with more detailed 1:1 discussion could help unblock many sans getting noticed by the management which could firstly work positively over the [ACTIVE PARTICIPATION RATE] & intern help address the [PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY] aspect as well in due course
OWNERSHIP
It could be natural that one takes more ownership as they tend to climb up the ladder & grow as they tend to learn how to tie their quantum of work to the overall objective. But that could also mean a gateway to unending stress if it is just one person in a team doing it all, taking the onus & being more proactive. When that could have deep motivations that are very personal, allowing that to develop as a culture could soon begin to act as a deterrent towards building high performing teams.
And one way to cope with [OVERALL STRESS RATE] & keep it at manageable levels is:
Ensure that the workload is getting divided amongst all the members & also make sure that’s being followed meticulously across all teams
If you observe how one of them is still taking the lead & the others are finding deep comfort in working around that one person just try & find a way to talk the respective stakeholder / manager towards ensuring all members pitch in with significant contributions
Ensure managers / stakeholders prioritize the smoothness of teams as everything is done under a thoroughly professional setting & nothing ever is personal
Incentivize teams & stakeholders accordingly so as to help them understand the gravity of building, managing, maintaining & leading a smoothly functioning team
RESPONSIBILITY
Being responsible is so often construed & firmly associated with oneself. But in the parlance of teams & more so high performing teams it could easily stretch to include the whole team at a very basis level & of course the entire org. if one is a leader operating at that level. As one could presume that may not happen sans a few conflicts along the way & need to navigate / nip them in the bud as they arise.
So, one could keep it all in check by:
Relying on an open brand of communication & an enterprising culture that allows everyone to be approachable & also available towards facilitating discussions as & when needed, brainstorming over the issue & the resolutions, arriving at what works best for the org. & themselves as teams to keep the [CONFLICT RESOLUTION RATE] at those healthy highs always
Strategically dishing out short questionnaires / micro-surveys towards ensuring whether the resolutions thus provided to the team members (even at the grassroots level) is to their satisfaction & to understand whether or not they are altogether happy about the opportunities, exposure, autonomy they are getting over their regular workflow so as to positively affect that [TEAM SATISFACTION SCORE]
CLARITY
When a team could comprise of many members coming in from eclectic backgrounds carrying multivariate experiences, not everyone would / is bound / entitled to understand / be abreast with the business / product side of things. But if you’re looking to build high performing teams, you ought to start thinking from one step above that & perhaps question yourself as to why each & everybody on the team can’t carry that very understanding?
To get there you could:
Float a short questionnaire to indirectly gauge whether or not the teams & individual members understand & get a total hang of what the [NSM] is & the rationale behind choosing it so as to be sold to the cause entirely, which could hint at a bout of training & at a regular cadence with repetitions thereof towards continuously improving their understanding
Get product managers to run an extra mile over gauging friction points between team members, collaborating an ounce more than what they usually do towards standing in for the goals of the org. & also the users facilitating & improving the [AGILIITY] of those teams making them more adaptable & ready welcome to any magnitude of change
INNOVATION
Nobody has ever got to the zenith by just doing one just thing right at some random point in time & hinging on that like a historic artifact. Yes, no doubt. Doing something right at that given moment may have landed someone onto some success. But for that to be prolonged & for someone to be successful for a really long stretch of time, one really ought to get back to the folds, analyze each & every aspect of it deeply towards optimizing for some (x) that doesn’t just add value right then & there but helps them teams get on a supreme state of comfort over doing all the right things at the right time. It is important that teams always do what matters even if that means coming out of that comfort zone.
The motivation teams would need to look into process changes could be a resultant of:
Consistently gauging & charting the values on a graph so as to give them a visual of their progress over the recent past & how they were effectively able to drive org. change & affect all the frontline product metrics positively, ticking off checkboxes over the goals depicting a healthy [PROCESS CHANGE RATE]
Also, additionally it could be crucial to get teams to clearly differentiate between consistency & complacency owing to which they don’t begin celebrating a metric that stays constant throughout & hasn’t moved much, but rather get their heads down to ideate over how they could improve again thereof & keep repeating that
RECOGNITION
We are all indeed social animals. The degree of elation one gets to experience when they are lauded publicly for their efforts, recognizing them for their hard work & how that helped the org. achieve something significant & take that leap towards success is more gratifying as opposed to say a one looking at a privately credit message from their bank apprising them of that cash reward they bagged. Also, most people choose & join orgs. because they are of the impression that they could get an opportunity to work on something great, be an integral part of a great team or even get the autonomy to go & build a great team. If someone is not being / not feeling optimally utilized or under-utilized there’s a good chance that may turn sour sooner than later bearing adverse psychological effects on the team member motivating them to leave the org. & look elsewhere.
Make sure your retention strategy mainly takes care of:
Creating leaderboards by grading the individuals & internal teams based on their ability to quickly get their acts together, prioritize & focus on the most significant things, the things that matter which ought to straighten out the [UTILIZATION RATE] to a large extent
Organizing small events at a quarterly / monthly cadence private to a whole business unit / specific product team to recognize & celebrate the effort of a team / an individual & the impact it has had on the markets over that given period towards addressing the [ATTRITION RATE] & in a pretty healthy manner as well
Public recognition of an individual team member by taking to social media, tagging them there so that the whole world is aware of their contributions & more importantly that person gets recognized amongst their immediate circle, ensuring that the right person gets the credit, perhaps a step in the right direction towards maintaining a healthy [RETENTION] rate
TRUST
As it is rightly said the culture of a team could make or break it. And when one says culture one is more often than not referring to the trust that’s built amongst the teams & their individual members where they know their efforts would be recognized & everyone would surely get their due given how the org. bats for equal opportunity sans taking sides / resorting to even a wee bit of favoritism.
If you want to build a culture that’s based on supreme trust & want to take [EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION] seriously, you just ought to:
Understand factors that make a team transform into great / high performing one from ordinary
Enumerate factors so as to focus on the you have not covered already with also a shorter focus on bettering the ones you have
Run through each & every metric listed above addressing & weeding out any issues that hinder them from being healthy