How do you manage intercultural issues in your teams?
Distributed and virtual teams are a reality of today’s world. It is not just limited to well-heeled MNCs – we see countless everyday examples of such teams with NGOs, startups, voluntary efforts, college project and so on. There is more to working with people from different time zones and cultural contexts than we realize. Problem is, most of us haven’t been exposed to, or adequately trained to handle such diverse teams – not just as a manager but even as a team member. ...
How does manager’s proximity to team affects team dynamics and decision-making?
Congratulations! You’ve got the long-cherished promotion that will make you manager - of your own buddies! You don’t quite know what it means for your relations with the team - are you better-off as their manager or as their buddy? One key challenge with first-line managers, especially those fairly new in their roles, is how to strike right balance between formal reporting relationship and informal personal relations with the team. Considering that most people “leave managers and not companies”, this seems to be a critical issue, but seldom discussed. In my career, I have also seen similar issues when people became a second-line manager or a group manager for the first-time - so, this is not a one-time issue. I have often seen managers who have been promoted from within going all too out to please the team that...
Addressing the issue of “social loafing” in large teams
 Large teams might be inevitable in certain large endeavors, but there are several benefits of small teams. A small team can build and maintain a strong culture and a character that gets better with time. Small teams quickly learn the invaluable skills in teamwork and interdependence that lead to higher efficiencies while ensuring that individual team members don’t end up competing against each other but rather collaborate on the common objectives. Small teams also mean small egos One of the biggest motivations of making smaller teams is to provide higher levels of transparency and task accountability to individual team members. A large team tends to hide inefficiencies, both of its structure and of its people. One particular problem in a large team is the problem of “social loafing” - something that is perhaps best described in this poem by Charles...
How Agile Practices address the Five Dysfunctions of a Team ?
Since times immemorial, ideas, objects and experiences of grand stature and lasting economic, social and emotional value have been created by men and women working together in teams. Granted that some extraordinary work in the fields of arts, philosophy and sciences was done by truly exceptional individuals, apparently working alone, I suspect that they too were ably supported by other selfless and unsung individuals (in the backoffice, perhaps) who all worked together as a team. Right from the great wars, social upheavals, political resistance, empire building, freedom struggles and forming of nations and protecting its borders to the creation of majestic wonders such as Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Sydney Harbor Bridge or the London Eye and many more, each one of them owes its creation and existence to teamwork. Of course, the scope of teamwork...
What kind of “Managers stick with poor performers rather than hire new faces” ?
I am sure you have heard it in all versions, subversions and perversions, but one simple universal workplace truth seems to be don’t tolerate poor performance, and if not outrightly eliminate poor performers, do ease them out over a reasonable but fast period of time. The yawning gap between a bottom performer and the top performer is perhaps nowhere more so prominent as in a human-skill based knowledge industry like software. Over the years, various productivity studies still continue to point a gap of anywhere between 1:10 to 1:20 or even more between the top programmer and the bottom one. The exact number doesn’t really matter. What is important is to understand that success of a software endeavor howsomuch is dependent on very smart people, it finally needs a great team to deliver goods - no task is trivial...