BOOK NOTES

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

Gilkey begins his stream of ideas regarding team habits with a metaphor he calls the broken printer. Nearly every organization has a broken printer that everyone knows about, but no one fixes it. It may be the printer that randomly eats paper, leaves a streak down the middle of the page, or needs constant reprogramming. The downstream effects may seem small but over time they lead to massive waste, inefficiency, and demoralization. Maybe your “broken printer” isn’t even a printer. Maybe it’s the cc thread from hell or some other similar adventures that over time costs a lot of money and heartache.

Our work ways are determined by team habits, organizational policies, technology, our organization structure, etc. While countless books focus on changing individual habits, Gilkey suggests everyone has the power to change team habits—which is how people work together. That’s the real value creation unit of business. 80% of our time is spent with the same 4-8 people. If we make our team’s work life better, we will make 80% of our work life better. Improving team behavior is the path to changing organizations. And why not? Two thirds of all organizational change that is top-down fails.

Gilkey advises not to focus on the people of the team but rather their collective team habits. Team habits are the practical components of culture and what we DO as a collective is who we ARE as one too. He adds, “the delight of teamwork is in the day-to-day interactions that lead to wins and belonging.” Covid shredded existing habits—exposing some habits that had become invisible and giving us an option to create new ones. We learned we could create new habits. And we are ALL either participating in broken team habits or working to change them. But when others are brought into the process of change (not top down)—belonging and retention improve, teams start performing better, and people want to show up for each other.

TEAM HABITS

It’s simply easier and more productive to move stones instead of mountains. Teams are self-correcting units and the bigger the proposed change, the more resistance you face. While talking about tackling big change sounds impressive, it really goes against making lasting change. Gilkey offers eight categories of team habits:

1. Belonging
2. Decision making
3. Goal setting and prioritization
4. Planning
5. Communication
6. Collaboration
7. Meetings
8. Core team habits

Any of these categories can feel like a starting point. Belonging may seem the most important because it’s the foundation that everything else is built on. Building better team habits is not rocket science but rocket practice. For example, the IKEA effect refers to feeling more ownership over things we have had a hand in. Start with a spark, a pain point—not trying to fix everything at once and staying open to the outcome. (Gilkey offers a team assessment to help you get started) Team habits are how a team or organization breathes.

BELONGING

Gilkey describes a Boy Scout camp swim race where four boys each did 50 yards and passed a watermelon to the next boy. The catch: the watermelon was caked with Crisco making passing it a hilarious event. He likens this as a metaphor for collaboration—simple to describe, chaotic in implementation, and as it changes hands becomes very slippery. Groups are collections of individuals that turn into teams with a sense of belonging. Their shared context becomes the glue.

Belonging is created or destroyed by the team’s daily habits. Put your values on the floor not the wall by talking and then acting on behaviors that manifest your organizational values. Belonging is built through our ties to each other and teams with high belonging build time for casual conversations and primes meetings with reminders of recent positive wins. Good meeting agendas can help create belonging by the habits you build in regularly.

DECISION MAKING

“The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” Gilkey offers the RACI framework for helping others to make decisions. It’s who needs to be Responsible. Accountable. Consulted. Informed. A healthy way of thinking about decisions can be viewing them in three levels. One is decisions that can be made without informing management. Another is decisions that can be made without input but letting management know and the third is decisions that must be deferred to management. Healthy teams’ leaders spend only 5-10% percent of their time on the third type.

You must decide who owns the decision. Decision making should be closer to the point of the work. Perhaps the worst is when “somebody” owns it…meaning nobody does. Good team decision making habits are about lessening the cognitive, emotional, and social load of the people around you to keep the project moving forward. Remember decisions aren’t just social, they are emotional. Ignoring this piece is where many teams get stuck.

GOAL SETTING AND PRIORITIZATION

Everyone wants to be on a winning team. Readiness is important. You might have the Dunkirk spirit where despite poor planning and decision making, a team rallies and accomplishes a goal. The fastest way to get to readiness is improving a team’s habits. Push goals require more motivation while pull goals require less management. Push goals usually require you to remind others of what you are doing and why. Pull ones tap into our meaning and purpose.

Gilkey suggests that every project requires four things (TEAM)…Time. Energy. Attention. Money. If something is a priority, those four components will be reflected. The shout out (acknowledgement) is the force multiplier.

PLANNING

Where are we? Where do we want to go? Planning answers how will we get there. It’s the air between strategy and execution. A great plan is something the team runs with, not into. Good planning has a goal, timeline, people, and commitment. The plan provides alignment at the start and keeps updated so people know where they are. Gilkey suggests using the 1/3-2/3 rule here. Spend 1/3 of your time planning and 2/3 completing the project.

The best planners decide what NOT to do and can change their plans frequently.

COMMUNICATION

Information is giving out; communication is getting through. Think of communication patterns like volume, fade, equalizer, etc. Too much is noise; too little is confusion. Some things need to be communicated like priority shifts, additional resources, or critical changes in capacity (teammate out) or updates that will change the work in the short term. You must determine the right communication cadence as a habit around projects. When in doubt, defer to everyone knowing.

The three rules of clear communication include: PROACTIVE. PREEMPTIVE. BRIEF. Proactive is taking the initiative and removing anxiety. Preemptive is answering the next questions that people will have so you don’t have to respond to the same question numerous times. Brief is limiting responses, using simpler terms, and practicing how to make longer communications formatted with bullet points or subheadings to make it scannable. You still want it to be communication rich—just brief.

COLLABORATION, MEETINGS, and CORE TEAM HABITS

Good collaborative teams know who the default person for various issues is reducing small number of decisions. Assigning team owners to projects is an effective team habit. Meetings can be a force multiplier or diminisher. Remember to look at the real cost of meetings in time and money. Try to reduce crutch meetings where things that should have been addressed at other meetings weren’t.

Meetings affect people differently. For social types, even a mediocre meeting might be the highlight of their day while for an introvert just showing up for one is an energy drainer. A good habit is to define what meetings are for…decision making? Brainstorming? Planning? Bonding? Or a combination but know what purpose(s) the meeting serves. Dropping people from a meeting they don’t have to attend is a kindness.

Highest performing teams know each other’s strengths and weaknesses thoroughly so they can lend support. To quote Tao Te Ching, “Because the sage is aware of her faults, she is faultless.” Normalize that we all fall behind and build team habits of support. Ask people what they need. Team habits exist to make things easier. Teammates need enrolled in a shared vision. Team habit changes are about alignment, not power. Improvement is a marathon but think in sprints—small wins first.

Choose tangible over intangible. For example, what does excellence or productive mean? Instead shoot for carving out an extra hour a week for everyone by eliminating unnecessary meetings.

Publisher: Hachette Go, New York, NY, 2023