Migrated more articles

apps/website/data/blog/2020-08-18-dont-leave-juniors-alone.mdx

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 In this article, I’ll share my thoughts about why junior team members need to be well accompanied, for a sufficiently long period of time.
 
 ### History repeats itself

apps/website/data/blog/2020-08-20-10-ways-to-kill-a-team.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
+---
+title: "10 ways to kill a team"
+summary: "Great teams are hard to craft but much easier to break."
+publishedAt: '2020-08-20'
+image: '/static/images/blog/2020/broken.jpeg'
+slug: '10-ways-to-kill-a-team'
+categories: [management, leadership, teamwork, collaboration]
+keywords: [management, leadership, teamwork, collaboration, organizational culture]
+published: true
+---
+
+Great teams are hard to _craft_ but much easier to break.
+
+<Image
+  alt={`Broken. Picture courtesy of https://unsplash.com/@jilburr`}
+  src={`/static/images/blog/2020/broken.jpeg`}
+  width={770}
+  height={513}
+  priority
+/>
+
+In this article, I’ll discuss some issues that can quickly _destroy_ a team.
+
+Whether you’re the management/team leader or a member of the team, there are many aspects of team dynamics that you can deeply influence. Be careful because what you do and what you accept can have a long-lasting impact on your team.
+
+## Don’t listen to your team
+
+If you’re leading a team, then you need to have enough confidence/trust in the group as a whole. If you don’t listen to what your team says, then you’re a sort of dictator and it won’t take long before people get demotivated.
+
+You might have a solid vision for the future, but if your team doesn’t believe in it or at least share it with you, then you won’t get where you want. For a team to be acting as one, it must be listened to.
+
+Your role as a team leader is to get the best out of everyone, and that starts by listening carefully to what everyone has to say. Including when making project plans!
+
+If you’re part of the team, then your duty is to do everything to be heard. Do share your opinion and your ideas, even if not asked specifically. It’s way too easy to let others decide and criticize later on.
+
+## Don’t have empathy
+
+Listening is one thing, but being empathetic is another. This is much harder because it’s not something you can (or should!) fake. Either you are able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, or you aren’t.
+
+If you’re a manager/leader without true and honest empathy, then I must say that I somehow pity you. You might be the perfect corporate drone, but you’re certainly not ready to support the work of others.
+
+The same is true within the team itself. If you’re not truly paying attention to your teammates, then you’re not helping to create a positive and motivating environment to work in.
+
+Personally, even if I keep a barrier between work and personal life, I don’t like being in a team of strangers. It’s weird and feels bad. I care about the people I work with and I’m always listening and reflecting on what others think/feel. It’s indeed tiresome, but it helps to find out how to ask for something, whether now is a good time to have a certain discussion, etc. This eases collaboration and usually helps the team be more efficient. Moreover, I feel more connected with my colleagues and try to help whenever I can.
+
+## Set impossible deadlines
+
+Deadlines can be great productivity boosters. Up to a certain point.
+
+If a deadline is impossible to meet, then it puts too much needless pressure on the team. A good project manager must have confidence in the timeline. And for the timeline to be somewhat realistic, it needs to take into account the resources, the constraints, but also the estimates provided by the team itself. This indeed relates to the previous points: listen to what your experts have to say. If you don’t, then why did you hire them in the first place?
+
+Putting too much pressure on a group is a perfect recipe for breaking a team. People that are under too much pressure for too long will either burn out or leave to protect themselves (and rightly so!).
+
+## Don’t set clear goals
+
+A team without clear objectives is just a wandering soul, stuck in a dead zone. If you start each day without a clear goal in mind, then you’re going nowhere; the same is true for your team and their career.
+
+Not setting goals at all or setting unclear ones is a great way to quickly demotivate everyone. Teams need to be challenged all the time. It’s good to have a north star to go towards or a higher camp to climb up to.
+
+If you’re in charge, then it’s your duty to gather ideas, create a shared vision, make plans with your team, set realistic goals, and push towards those.
+
+If you’re in the team, then it’s also up to you to try and get clarity. Otherwise, how are you going to move forward with your career? You need to know what you can achieve for the organization to bring value to it.
+
+It might sound silly, but goals really do need to be S.M.A.R.T:
+
+* **S**pecific: if it’s too vague, then you won’t get where you want
+* **M**easurable: Goals need to be meaningful and specific enough so that people can remain motivated. Also, you need to have a way to evaluate progress towards those
+* **A**chievable: A goal that’s too large or too complex can take months to achieve or not even be within reach. People need to be able to witness actual/regular progress
+* **R**elevant: Goals need to make sense (heh). Nobody wants to do needless work; it’s meaningless and demotivating. Also, to be relevant, goals must take reality into account: available resources, skills, etc
+* **Time-bound**: If you don’t know if a task should take a day or a month, then it’ll probably take even longer. Goals are time-sensitive and should never be set too far in the future, otherwise, it’s hard to stay motivated for a long time
+
+## Don’t track progress
+
+A team that is not held accountable for its work cannot work efficiently. After a while, people will care less and less. If there are no regular progress reviews, course correction is not possible. Delays accumulate and sloppiness becomes the norm.
+
+A healthy team needs to track its KPIs and to try and improve those over time. Great teams go further and focus on _continuous improvement_. There are always opportunities to improve, don’t fail to identify those.
+
+## Don’t innovate
+
+Teams that are stuck in the past are bound to become obsolete at some point.
+
+Processes need to be reviewed regularly and ideas for innovation should be taken into account, even if it decreases throughput for a while.
+
+Without innovation, it’s hard to remain relevant. Techniques that were great 20 years ago might still be perfect, but they might also be completely irrelevant in today’s world.
+
+Things change fast, so you need to keep innovating. And this is true for all organizations.
+
+## Don’t pay attention to the bus factor
+
+I’ve discussed the [bus factor](https://medium.com/management-matters/whats-the-bus-factor-of-your-team-and-how-to-increase-it-8bdfb63361fc) in a [previous article](https://medium.com/management-matters/whats-the-bus-factor-of-your-team-and-how-to-increase-it-8bdfb63361fc).
+
+As a manager, you should keep track of the important knowledge within your team. There should always be at least two persons knowing about each process/task/ongoing work. Otherwise, you’re not far away from a disaster.
+
+## Don’t communicate
+
+Without proper communication, it’s really difficult for a team to be effective.
+
+Communication within the team is critical, but also communication between the organization and the team. The managers in place should make sure that information is passed down in an open and effective way. If you’re in charge and participate in meetings with other parts of the organization, then pay attention to share whatever you learn with your team. Don’t withhold information. Otherwise, you’re preventing your team from adapting to external circumstances and plan ahead.
+
+For this purpose, meeting management solutions can help as they make it much easier to share meeting minutes around and create visibility for outcomes and decisions. Hold a meeting? Take notes within the tool and share the link once you’re done. Clean and simple.
+
+On the other way around, it’s also important for the team to communicate with the outside world and to let others know about what’s going on, decisions that are being made, work that gets completed, and current plans. Without that, great work might remain unnoticed and coordination with other groups will suffer. In addition, people will not get the recognition that they deserve.
+
+## Create islands where everyone works on their own
+
+If you have a team of 10, but everyone works alone, then you don’t have one team, but ten teams of one.
+
+I’ve discussed this point in [my previous article](https://medium.com/@dSebastien/dont-let-juniors-alone-66762c5c0b7c) and I want to insist on the fact that a team should self-organize. A manager’s role is not to dictate how everything should be done and by whom. That just demonstrates a lack of trust in the team’s ability to organize itself and deliver on its own. Command & control is an outdated managerial model. In addition, that way or organizing work puts people in boxes, and that’s bad for many reasons (e.g., career development, creativity, motivation, etc).
+
+If you isolate team members, then you’re creating separate groups that are much less able to help each other. Ultimately you’re hurting the team’s productivity, creativity, morale, and well-being.
+
+Teams work together, not alone.
+
+Do this for too long and people will certainly leave.
+
+## Micro-manage your colleagues
+
+Micro-management is incredibly hurtful to teams.
+
+If you second guess everything, continually intervene to determine timing, scope, approach, and/or execution, then you’re killing the team.
+
+Once again, teams should be able to self-organize. If you’re in charge then you may act as a “client” (i.e., you need something), but you should not control how everything is done and by whom.
+
+If you bring your car for a check-up, then you probably won’t stay next to the car the whole time and make comments about everything. Just picture the situation; do you think the mechanic would appreciate you doing that? I guess not.
+
+Team members that are constantly micro-managed tend to either leave out of frustration/resentment or stop thinking and wait for the next instructions to come in. Either way, the team’s losing productivity, motivation, and creativity.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+There is a myriad of ways to destroy a team. It’s actually quite simple if you ask me. In this article, I’ve listed a few of those, hoping that you can avoid those and create awesome work environments for you and your colleagues to enjoy.
+
+In the next article, I’ll explore some other issues.
+
+That’s it for today!
+
+<BlogPostSignature />

apps/website/data/blog/2020-08-26-10-more-ways-to-kill-a-team.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+title: "10 more ways to kill a team"
+summary: "Teams are way more fragile than you can imagine. Here are ten more things that can demolish one."
+publishedAt: '2020-08-20'
+image: '/static/images/blog/2020/crying.jpeg'
+slug: '10-more-ways-to-kill-a-team'
+categories: [management, leadership, teamwork, collaboration]
+keywords: [management, leadership, teamwork, collaboration, organizational culture]
+published: true
+---
+
+Forming a team is no easy task; you have to find the right profiles at the right time, with the right set of skills, with a ton of motivation and a little bit of alchemy. Making one great is even harder. Great teams form and stay strong thanks to a number of factors. Small changes can have devastating effects.
+
+<Image
+  alt={`Broken. Picture courtesy of https://unsplash.com/@tompumford`}
+  src={`/static/images/blog/2020/crying.jpeg`}
+  width={770}
+  height={474}
+  priority
+/>
+
+In [my previous post](https://medium.com/management-matters/10-ways-to-kill-a-team-1de48e80c8c4), I’ve explored some of the things that can quickly destroy a team. In this follow-up post, I’ll explore more anti-patterns.
+
+## Don’t take breaks
+
+It’s easy to burn a team out. If you ask everyone to give 120% all the time, it cannot last for long.
+
+It may help when closing in on an important milestone, but you always have to pay it back at some point. Asking too much for too long is a productivity killer. The turnover rate will increase quicker than you imagine.
+
+Team members need to take regular breaks during the day, to breathe, walk, change their minds. If you don’t let team members breathe, then you’re creating a toxic and unhealthy environment.
+
+In any case, whatever your colleagues/boss says, do pay attention to your health. Also, don’t burn yourself out because everyone else does it. If someone criticizes you for taking small breaks during the day, then maybe you should think about finding greener pastures.
+
+## Always talk about work
+
+As I’ve said in [my previous article](https://medium.com/@dSebastien/dont-let-juniors-alone-66762c5c0b7c), we are social animals. People that are in love with their work and/or that follow their passion or only care about their own goals can be overwhelming and, sometimes, even insensitive. They tend to focus on work all of the time and even forget that life is much more than that.
+
+If your team and one-on-one meetings/discussions focus on work all of the time, then you’re working in an environment that is dangerous for your health.
+
+Work is, of course, important and we should remain on top of what needs to be done, but for a real team to exist, people must also discuss other subjects from time to time. Indeed, you don’t want to become close friends with everyone, but if you only focus on work, then you’re missing the social and human aspects of teamwork.
+
+Whether the situation is caused by a toxic manager or by your colleagues doesn’t really matter. But you can always try and initiate other subjects.
+
+To me, focusing on work all of the time creates a weird atmosphere in a team. If I’m going to spend so much of my precious time with other people, it might as well _feel_ good; which brings me to my next point.
+
+## Don’t care for colleagues
+
+If you never take time to discuss other things than work with your colleagues, then it means that you don’t get to know them all that well.
+
+You know about their skills, their work ethics, etc, but you don’t know them. And if you don’t know your colleagues well enough, then you can’t ever become a strong and tight-knit group.
+
+In a team, there should be a morning coffee break (with or without caffeine, doesn’t matter), where everyone can chit-chat, and not necessarily about work. The team can still have a quick stand-up meeting right after to discuss what’s planned for the day, but the coffee break should be about _people_, not necessarily work.
+
+By getting to know your colleagues better, you’ll discover different facets of their personality, that might help you better collaborate later on, or understand when/why they’re underperforming. They might be building a house, working hard on a side project, be sick, etc. If you don’t discuss anything other than work, then you won’t know. If you don’t know, then you may make judgments based on false beliefs.
+
+A team is made of humans, not numbers. If your team only cares about what it needs to deliver all of the time and never about the individuals and their well-being, then there’s no team; there’s just a bunch of busy bees.
+
+Real strong teams are made of people who get to know each other and truly care about each other.
+
+## Don’t be available
+
+As a manager/team leader, you must make yourself available for your team. Otherwise, you’re not there and you’re not playing your role. Your role as a leader is to be present and make everything in your power to let others do their best. If you don’t do that, then you’re not serving any useful purpose.
+
+But this is not only a leadership/management issue. All team members need to try and make themselves available for others; especially more senior members.
+
+## Don’t propose/ask for help
+
+Team members must care for each other. If you see that someone is struggling, then do whatever you can to help, even if it means putting some work aside. It’s the team leader’s role to arrange that the most important/urgent things get taken care of. If there’s not enough buffer, then it’s a management failure.
+
+In any case, team members should be able to count upon each other. If you notice that team members rarely help each other, then it may be a sign that there’s something wrong with the group.
+
+Also, team members should never be afraid to ask for help. A good team is _honest_ at all times. If someone’s stuck, then he/she should be able to shout out for help and get it.
+
+If you need to go to your manager to get a green light for help, then that’s also a red flag. Managers should never do micro-management. The team should self-organize.
+
+## Criticize each other
+
+Criticism is necessary for improvement, but only if provided in a safe environment, with a motivation to improve.
+
+Gossips and behind-the-back criticism is deadly for teams. If you talk behind the back of your teammates, then you’re destroying the team by breaking trust relationships that are so crucial to a team’s health.
+
+If a colleague criticizes another in front of you, then what might they say about you when you’re not around? Don’t be that person.
+
+## Ignore bad behaviors
+
+We’ve all witnessed bad behavior on occasion. Sometimes, we simply don’t realize the damage that can be done with simple remarks.
+
+Whenever you hear a sexist/racist/aggressive remark/gesture, it should raise a huge red flag in your head. It might sound like a joke, but it never is. You never know how things can evolve, how hurtful it can be, even if it looks “innocent” and even if everyone seems to be laughing about it. Do react; passivity means acknowledgment.
+
+Again, this concerns everyone, not only managers/leaders. As a team lead, I’ve failed to react appropriately a few times, and I’ve always regretted it. Don’t do the same mistake.
+
+## Don’t defend your colleagues
+
+Whether you’re in charge or not, you should always be there for your teammates.
+
+If they’re in trouble and you’re not there to support them, then there’s no team. Of course, it all depends on the specific situation, but generally speaking, you should have their back.
+
+And again, this is true whether you’re in charge or not. If you can’t count on your team leader to be there for you, then you certainly won’t be there in return.
+
+## Don’t care for diversity
+
+Monoculture is a real issue. We tend to hire people that are like us; it feels easy, more natural, and even obvious. But in reality, we’re not giving everyone an equal chance and we’re diminishing the creativity of the group.
+
+Every leader/manager needs to care and pay attention to diversity and avoid monoculture.
+
+## Don’t celebrate your wins
+
+If successes are considered “normal” and never celebrated, then it’s really bad for team morale. Showing gratitude and celebrating what the team achieves is the least we can do to create a positive and cheerful atmosphere in the group.
+
+How happy can you feel about your achievements if all you hear is “Ok, now we need to…”.
+
+Take time to celebrate all of your wins. You deserve it and your colleagues do too. Whether it’s a gigantic software release or a tiny improvement, it’s _progress_. And progress deserves celebration. Of course, don’t go overboard ;-)
+
+## Conclusion
+
+In the [previous article](https://medium.com/management-matters/10-ways-to-kill-a-team-1de48e80c8c4), I’ve listed issues that can be deadly for teams. In this article, I’ve covered a few more issues that can be at least as damaging.
+
+There are so many things that we do or fail to do, that hurt the work environment we spend so much time in. Everyone on the team needs to do his/her part to create an awesome and enjoyable work environment.
+
+That’s it for today!
+
+<BlogPostSignature />