Tend to notice these things when encountering healthier / more effective teams
1) Lots of organic/spontaneous functional and cross-functional collaboration
2) A sense of “flow”. Challenge w/meaningful (not theatrical) progress. Difficult but not dissonant. Focused *and* fun.
1) Lots of organic/spontaneous functional and cross-functional collaboration
2) A sense of “flow”. Challenge w/meaningful (not theatrical) progress. Difficult but not dissonant. Focused *and* fun.
3) Fewer “emergencies” (things breaking, ppl freaking out, last minute meetings). When things do happen (rarely) the team is able to approach things calmly w/o blame
4) Shorter distance between the team and customers/users. A human connection. A partnership (of sorts).
4) Shorter distance between the team and customers/users. A human connection. A partnership (of sorts).
5) More “let’s give it a try” or “that might work” or “we can always reverse that decision”. The team’s mission has gravity and resonates, but the day-to-day is not “do or die” or “this HAS to work or else!”
6) Fewer elephants-in-the-room/chronic issues dragging the team down. Way less “that will never change” and the “well, you know what happened the last time we brought that up”.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. They just get worked out.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. They just get worked out.
7) Fluid “process” to accommodate the work at hand. No singular mono-process (unless the work is highly highly repetitive). The team is able to form and re-form working agreements as needed.
8) A more stable strategy quarter to quarter.
Less of a “whiplash effect” whereby company leadership has dramatic change-of-hearts and is scrambling for a silver bullet...and before they can see the current strategy through, switch things up
Less of a “whiplash effect” whereby company leadership has dramatic change-of-hearts and is scrambling for a silver bullet...and before they can see the current strategy through, switch things up
9) A sense of a single team vs. a team of one-person teams. Fewer individual projects, individual backlogs, “well only Jerry can do that”s, etc.
This isn’t to say there isn’t specialization, rather that the specialization is in service to the team’s mission.
This isn’t to say there isn’t specialization, rather that the specialization is in service to the team’s mission.
10) Often...there are just way fewer dependencies and drag overall in the org. How much of this is immediately controllable I never know, but some large % of the levity and momentum is a factor of the surrounding org.
