centraldogma: Andy Sack told me a secret.  Since he started doing TechStars Seattle, he’s found that successful teams have one (1) thing in common… And no. It’s not that they all love what they do and would be doing it for free.  They all rate their team efficacy at a score ranging from 8-10 on a 1-10 scale, week to week. I started doing this at random, sometime once a week about a month ago. Since I started gathering data (and managing more actively as a result of a low initial score of 6-7), we’re consistently ranking ourselves at an 8-9. How I implemented this: 1. I ask each person at Habit Labs to rate efficacy on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest possible score. 2. I vary the ask (time of day, day of the week, communication channel). 3. Then I shut up. And listen. And wait.  I don’t tell the team members what my rating is until after they’ve told me theirs, and I don’t share other team members ratings (although now I’m sharing the ‘average’ rating with the team after gathering everyone’s number).  After the results are in, sometimes I share them. I’ve been answering the question solo for about 6 weeks and keeping track of the trend in my own subjective evaluation of efficacy. When I rated team efficacy low, it was obvious that I needed to kick my CEO/founder ass back into gear and make sure communication amongst the team was clear and constructive.  I also started asking each member, about every 48 hours, if they know: 1.) What their next deliverable is and 2.) If the deadline has been clearly communicated to them.  If the answer to either question is ‘no,’ or ‘not really,’ or ‘I’m not sure,’ I track the communication flow back to the person in charge and make sure expectations are clear and overtly stated.  We’re all ridiculously passionate about our mission and vision at Habit Labs. But passion alone does not a successful startup team make. Managing effective internal communications has stalled many a high-performance team at times, ours included. Now, if there’s a potential breakdown in the works, we can find the fault line early before it causes a company-wide quake. The best way to avoid root cause analyses/postmortems is to isolate a potential issue and fix it BEFORE it becomes a negative influencer.  In another post, I’ll bug Buster to share the Promises + Delivery tool he created to help us quantify our evaluation of individual and team efficacy. You #quant geeks will love this simple way to measure how well you’re doing, almost as much as you love doing it. 
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centraldogma:

Andy Sack told me a secret. 

Since he started doing TechStars Seattle, he’s found that successful teams have one (1) thing in common…

And no. It’s not that they all love what they do and would be doing it for free. 

They all rate their team efficacy at a score ranging from 8-10 on a 1-10 scale, week to week.

I started doing this at random, sometime once a week about a month ago.

Since I started gathering data (and managing more actively as a result of a low initial score of 6-7), we’re consistently ranking ourselves at an 8-9.

How I implemented this:

1. I ask each person at Habit Labs to rate efficacy on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest possible score.

2. I vary the ask (time of day, day of the week, communication channel).

3. Then I shut up. And listen. And wait. 

I don’t tell the team members what my rating is until after they’ve told me theirs, and I don’t share other team members ratings (although now I’m sharing the ‘average’ rating with the team after gathering everyone’s number). 

After the results are in, sometimes I share them.

I’ve been answering the question solo for about 6 weeks and keeping track of the trend in my own subjective evaluation of efficacy.

When I rated team efficacy low, it was obvious that I needed to kick my CEO/founder ass back into gear and make sure communication amongst the team was clear and constructive. 

I also started asking each member, about every 48 hours, if they know:

1.) What their next deliverable is and

2.) If the deadline has been clearly communicated to them. 

If the answer to either question is ‘no,’ or ‘not really,’ or ‘I’m not sure,’ I track the communication flow back to the person in charge and make sure expectations are clear and overtly stated. 

We’re all ridiculously passionate about our mission and vision at Habit Labs. But passion alone does not a successful startup team make.

Managing effective internal communications has stalled many a high-performance team at times, ours included.

Now, if there’s a potential breakdown in the works, we can find the fault line early before it causes a company-wide quake. The best way to avoid root cause analyses/postmortems is to isolate a potential issue and fix it BEFORE it becomes a negative influencer. 

In another post, I’ll bug Buster to share the Promises + Delivery tool he created to help us quantify our evaluation of individual and team efficacy.

You #quant geeks will love this simple way to measure how well you’re doing, almost as much as you love doing it. 

Source: centraldogma

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