Good morning,
Last time, I shared my imitation of Ben Horowitz’s ‘Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager’ expectations. The version I came up with used my reading notes from Peopleware to compare and contrast a variety of different managerial behaviors.
Today, I’ll do the same as it relates to teams.
Signed,
The Business Bro
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Good teams coach each other. They recognize that internal competition has gone too far when peers no longer coach one another. Bad teams do not coach. In bad teams, those learning fear being seen as weak while those teaching suspect a student will use the new skills to leapfrog them in the team hierarchy.
Good teams establish reliable methods of self-coordination. They naturally mitigate problems by knowing how to form ad-hoc coalitions in response to a problem. Bad teams do not coordinate themselves. They must eliminate risk because they are unable to come together to solve simple yet unpredicted problems.
Good teams tolerate error, initiative, and experimentation. Their members do not treat each other as interchangeable pieces and benchmark themselves against challenging but achievable standards. Bad teams create conformity pressure and stamp out all signs of individuality in team members. Their members benchmark themselves against the average team member.
Bad teams talk freely about change without understanding its nature. They assume the new status quo comes quickly and without additional effort. Good teams know that change means chaos. They prepare for the challenge and support each other when outsiders try to reverse the change. Good teams recognize that with change comes a loss of mastery. They teach others how the change will benefit them and work with them to help them achieve a level of mastery in the new status quo. Bad teams do not understand that their colleagues fear making fools of themselves in the process of learning a new tool, method, or process.
Good teams lock into a productive goal and focus on the work until the goal is met. Bad teams constantly stop to refocus attention on company or individual interests.
Bad teams look for overnight solutions to team building problems. They do not make small, incremental contributions to the team every day. Good teams recognize that strong teams are built over time. They watch out for all the ways progress can be undone and intervene whenever they notice a problem in progress.
