Avatars and office decorations - sometimes little things matter

I've never been one for personal office decorations - family pictures, inspirational posters, desktop golf putting games, etc.  I always kind of felt like putting up pictures of the family or the pets on my desk or walls was sort of dumb - after all it was just work, I wasn't going to prison or on some kind of arctic expedition. I'd just seen all these people and animals in the morning, and I'd see them all again that night. I would put a calendar on the wall maybe, but that was about it.  And for me, that was perfectly normal and acceptable. If other folks wanted to 'personalize' their work environment with photos and other items, more power to them, I mean to each their own, right?

Except for some folks, and surprisingly even some leaders I have known over the years, my decision to leave my office free from flair was (at least sometimes), interpreted as a demonstration of a lack of commitment to the position and to the organization. For some folks, a colleague that doesn't take the time to put up a few pictures reads to them like someone that doesn't really intend to stay very long, and/or doesn't really care enough about the job to make the space more warm, welcoming, and personal. While I wish that workplaces would be free from these kind of petty and trivial situations, I am also enough of a realist or pragmatist to understand that is often not the case.

I thought about that former job of mine when I caught this recent piece on Business Insider, A Simple Illustration That Shows How Steven Sinofsky Wasn't a Team Player, about former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, who up until a few weeks ago, ran the huge and lucrative Windows business. Apparently, and for reasons that remain unclear, (probably forever), Sinofsky did not join the rest of the Microsoft executive team by replacing their corporate website headshots with a cutesy Microsoft Kinect-style avatar.  Check out the image below, and notice how this lack of participation stands out.

According the BI piece, this seemingly small, unimportant detail spoke to a larger point, that it "symbolized Sinofsky’s reputation inside Microsoft — (he) focused intently on controlling the success of his own division, and not all that interested in playing along with the rest of the company."

Silly right?  I mean Sinofsky was an important, busy executive. He probably couldn't be bothered to supply an avatar image, (or more likely, just approve one), for the website. I mean, who cares anyway? What does that have to do with building great products?

I suppose nothing. But somewhere, someone, maybe more than a few folks, interpreted this as Sinofsky's lack of 'buy-in' to the team.  It's likely people that felt that way probably felt it all along, and this little example helped to cement their feelings about him.

Either way, and whether we like it or not, sometimes these tiny, insignificant things matter. It would not have killed me to put a few photos up in my office, heck, I could of just bought a couple of new frames and left the stock images they usually come with in them. No one would have known the difference.

But it would have at least made them feel like I was more like one of them, and I was indeed also part of the team.

And that is not insignificant.

It's hard to build teams when we secretly hate each other

Quick observation for what seems like another 'No one is working so no one will read this post' kind of day. 

First, two pieces related to teamwork and group dynamics that caught my attention, then some thoughts from me follow:

One - Yup, Your Girlfriends are Purposely Posting Those Ugly Pictures of You on Facebook - the title sort of explains it all, essentially, we like making each other look bad on Facebook

Two - Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the Executive Emails and Cannibalistic Culture that Felled a Tech Giant, the big point here, 'Stack Ranking', a performance management process that forces managers to rate employees into high, average, and low performance buckets, with set percentages of each, effectively crippled Microsoft's ability to innovate, as staff became obsessed with the rankings themselves, and competing with each other, instead of the company's real external competitors.

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Over and over again we read, think, and explore ways to make our organizational teams work with each other more effectively, efficiently, and simply better. It seems to be a common assumption that working well in teams, and the ability for organizations to harness and mobilize teams of disparate and often dispersed and virtual team members to meet the needs of a fast-changing business environment is one of the keys to long-term, sustained organizational success.

I suppose I believe that is true. Certainly in larger organizations, in order for individuals to progress their ideas, to make important contributions, and to impact on a major scale the organization's efforts and direction will usually entail and require that individual to operate in a team concept. In large organizations, and even in smaller ones usually, significant projects don't advance much past the 'idea' stage without a pretty high level of team-based work.

But the trouble with all this team-based work, and at least one of the reasons, (at least I am submitting this as a possible reason), why it can be so hard to keep the momentum from one person's great idea alive as the singular idea transitions to a collective or team goal?

It's because we all secretly hate each other. Well, perhaps that is too strong. If not hate, then for many of us there exists a quiet, below the surface, but undeniable realization that business and life are often seen as a zero-sum game, or said differently, when you look good, I on the other hand, look a little bit worse. We know that credit, accolades, rewards, esteem - all the good stuff that comes from achievement, are usually not spread around equally. Even if we are on the same team, working towards the same goals, that for many of us we are certain that the honors will be parsed out individually.

It's not an easy game for leaders, getting to the right balance of team players, who are happy to see the team succeed and hope the rising tide will lift them up as well,  and superstars, who think the team only wins because of them.

It's easy in sports where we see this all the time, each team a mix of superstars and role players. It tends to work there because everyone knows who the stars are, or at least who are supposed to perform like stars.

At your workplace I imagine it is a little bit harder. Maybe everyone there is a star. Or everyone wants to be a star and naturally sees the guy in the next chair as competition. And programs like stack ranking just ensure the organization is seen as sanctioning the internal competition.

Good luck sorting that out.

Doc Rivers and Buying In to the System

Even though the Miami LeBrons dropped a discouraging loss on the Boston Celtics last night in the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs, the Celtics run over the last several years, (including an NBA title in 2008), has been one of the most compelling stories in all of sports. An experienced, veteran team, led by three aging hall of fame caliber players, (Pierce, Garnett, Allen), and driven on the court by a mercurial and fabulously talented young point guard, Rajon Rondo, that together present a unique set of challenges in terms of management and coaching. How to keep star players who were always the leaders and best players on every team they'd ever played on happy in a system that, in order to achieve sustained success, often demands that individual egos be sublimated to the greater good. How to blend in new and talented players like Rondo, and lesser (but still important), additional players to fill needed roles on the squad.

It is easy, and in fact every professional sports team and coach talks about the need for players in a team sport to be willing to sacrifice their individual goals at times for the benefit of the team's goals, but very often all the talk is well, just talk. For a myriad of reasons many players and teams never can reach that point where team goals are seen as more important that player's individual goals. Particularly on the professional level where each player might have one eye on his next contract, which very likely will be enhanced by his ability to post impressive individual scoring statistics, whether or not these statistics are achieved in the context of team play.

The fact that everyone talks about 'team play' and 'team goals' and very few teams ever seem to manage to actually buy-in to the concept, makes this short video (embedded below, email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), from Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers worth  two-and-a-half-minutes of your time on Friday. Rivers lays out the three simple, yet hard to pull off things a leader needs to do to get the best performance out of a team.

Short and sweet, but really a key point. Role players in the NBA, and perhaps even in your organization, don't necessarily see themselves as just role players. In order to get them, as well as the stars and former stars of team, to accept and truly buy-in to the overall team concept you really have to three things firmly in place.

One - First, the team has to buy-in to the leader as someone they trust and believe can lead them

Two - The team and each player has to buy-in to the actual business or team strategy and see it as a winning approach

Three - They have to understand their individual role and beyond that, have to see how the effective or exceptional performance of their individual role is essential for team success.

This last one seems to me the most important and often the most overlooked. We talk a lot in talent and performance management about things like goal alignment and line of sight and making sure employees and team members understand and buy-in to the organizational mission. And those things are certainly important and necessary. But that last bit that Rivers talks about in the video, that every player on the team needs to believe that their individual contribution is absolutely critical to the team's success, and that every contribution is essential in order to win, well it seems to me that part of the 'buy-in' formula often gets underplayed.

There are lots of variables and components that have to be assembled in just the right way to have a winning basketball team as well as a effective and productive work team. In the clip above Doc Rivers lays out his take on what a leader needs to install in order to get everyone on the team bought in and he does it in under three minutes. Nicely done Doc.

Now just take all the extra time on your hands and figure out how to keep LeBron from dropping 50 on you in Game 7.

Have a Great Weekend!

What should we pay your co-worker? No more questions for you 'Bro

It can be really difficult to rate your own performance at work as anyone that has stared frustratingly at their annual 'self-assessment' might agree. Trying to navigate that tricky tightrope between honestly, desire to reasonably match your self-ratings with the likely views of the boss, while making sure that a nice blend of ambition, honestly, and subtlety ends up painting a portrait of you in your best possible, (and defensible), light can be one of the most difficult exercises an employee has to deal with all year.

It's hard enough to be fair, objective, and completely honest about one's own perfrormance, and I think it at times is doubly hard to ask and to expect that same kind of fairness and objectivity when we are asked to participate in the evaluation of peers and colleagues at work as well. Whether it is in the context of a formal 360 degree evaluation, a less formal after-action or project review, or even in casual conversations with the boss about other team members, (the likely most awkward scenario of all), it is not all easy to be fair, accurate, and really honest sometimes. Judging, rating, evaluating other people's performance is an inexact science at best, and when self-interest factors in, ('If I say Steve did a great job, then does that make me look worse?', or, 'If I say Steve is a slacker, does that make me look like a petty schemer?', often resulting in 'I'll just say Steve did a good job in the most vague terms possible so that I can't be responsible for anything that happens.').

Beyond the difficulty of rating peer performance, when the questions directly or indirectly go to 'How much should your colleague, Joe or Mary be paid', well then the fun really begins. Check out this video clip below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), where Oklahoma City Thunder star Russell Westbrook is asked by a reporter if Westbrooks' teammate James Harden should receive what is known as a 'max contract', i.e., a contract for the maximum salary that league rules allow.

The question, and Westbrook's answer is essentially a little 360 degree assessment played out on camera. Westbrook is asked to 'rate' Harden as a player in the context that matter most in the NBA, the value of the contract that Harden should have. After a long pause, Westbrook answers in the only way he can, (and likely feels comfortable with), by giving a positive but vague review and endorsement of Harden as a player and team mate, (which is obvious to anyone that knows Harden and is familiar with the team), and completely avoids responding to the contract or compensation area. Finally, Westbrook issues a classic 'No more questions for you 'Bro', an indication that he in no way wants any part of participating in a discussion about another teammates contract status.

Westbrook shows on camera what many of us and our co-workers are thinking when faced with the same types of questions in the workplace, when 360 time comes around I think. Uncomfortable, generic answers, wanting nothing to do with the hard questions, (like compensation). Don't get me wrong, I think peer reviews and 360s can be really important and valuable, but I also think that you have to remember the at times tough spot you put the team in when asking them to do something, (rate each other), that often, they want no part of doing.

No more questions for you 'Bro.

The one thing you bring to the (operating) table

Oh the Linsanity...

Over the weekend New York Knicks phenom and new starting point guard Jeremy Lin was diagnosed with a more serious knee injury than was originally thought, and with the necessary surgery and rehab it seems likely that Lin will miss the remainder of the NBA season, and this development may quite possibly derail the team's chances at a playoff run. Bibby - Sans headband

Upon learning the news, I (sort of) joked over an email to the 8 Man Rotation team that perhaps the Knicks should ask for a knee ligament donation for Lin from (backup point guard and veteran player on the last stretch of his useful career), Mike Bibby's cadaver. A bad joke I suppose, and perhaps an unfair cheap shot at Bibby, who even with his best days as an NBA player far behind him, by all accounts has been a good team player and citizen on this current Knicks team.

But the 'cadaver' joke led me to thinking about how at times it can be really easy to see contributors on a team or in an organization for what they can't do or what they can no longer do, instead of seeing (and admittedly looking harder for), what they still can bring to the table, even if it is only that one thing.

In sports it could be the late career veteran or that single-skilled expert that you might only need once in every five games, but when you need that skill, he or she can be counted on to deliver, whether it is a timely three-point shot in hoops, or in soccer to be calm enough to come off the bench and cooly and efficiently take a penalty kick.

At the office it might be that past-his-prime account rep that landed the 'Big Account' fifteen years ago and has not been doing that much since. But every year at contract renewal time the client still wants to have him in the deal and his presence and stability ends up being a big part of getting the deal done, and a nice chunk of revenue locked up.

Or it even could be one of those 'been there forever and is skating the last three years until retirement' guys that has pretty much checked out, but whenever one of the junior staff is in a jam, and wakes him up long enough to ask a question, he always knows what to do, who to talk with, and (maybe more importantly) who not to talk with.

The key that ties these kinds of scenarios together?

That the unique contribution, that 'one thing', that these types of contributors bring to the table - the donated ligament, the long-term customer relationship, or the deep understanding of organizational politics, are all really personal, really hard to replicate, are extremely important, and can't truly be captured in any kind of database or information management system.  They're 'owned' so to speak by the one person alone.

Two things to take away then. One, as a manager or leader that you'd be wise to make sure when you are cutting people loose or shipping out so-called dead weight or low performers, that you are not losing some critical 'one thing' that no one else can bring to the table. And two, if you are one of those 'one thing' kinds of contributors yourself, well you better make sure you are ready and willing to step up on those rare occasions when your number is called, and that you are still willing to do what it takes, even if it might not be easy.

Even if, possibly, it involves donating a ligament to the new hotshot on the team.

Note: Hat tip to Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist for his help shaping up this post as he is very concerned about the playoff prospects for the Knicks.