I just recalled the meeting we had with the creator and CEO of LCC Centralwings. I'm going to test problem solving technique he described - do you remember it?
As far as I remember there was four steps to talk about some problem/fuck-up with someone who did something wrong. The most important thing is that you have to do this face-to-face instead of on the team forum. If you intimidate the person this would be the worst thing you could do - it will help neither the guy nor the team.
So, if you call the guy to some "isolated" and quiet place you should follow the algorithm ;)
- Describe what the person did (DO NOT JUDGE!); tell the raw facts e.g. You answered your cellphone three times during our meeting
- Explain what IT DOES TO YOU e.g. It disrupts me - I cannot focus on the meeting agenda and on the task we want to accomplish here
- Describe the consequences if this person will persist doing the wrong thing e.g.I will not come to the meeting with you ever again because if I can't focus on the job the meeting is useless to me
- End with something optimistic e.g. Anyway you have to know that I think you're a great engineer and I like you very much or Let's go and have some beer ;)
It's not so easy to talk to somebody this way - I know. But I think it works in many cases - IMHO it is definitely worth trying.
The very important thing with problem solving is to remember to Attack the PROBLEM not the PERSON. It sounds like cliche but it's a principal in my opinion.
What else we should remember when the problem occurs? I think that we should try to solve the problem AS SOON AS WE SEE IT - not after one month or a year (like we were used to in our previous corporation).
One more cliche in this post: COMMUNICATION is the key to the success. When we started communicating with each other after a year from the team startup we became the REAL team. Before that we were just nine individuals doing some stuff together.
PS. Sorry guys for butting in your blog but I still feel very close to all of you (although I now live 2000 kilometers from you) and I want to add my few cents from time to time. I hope you don't mind.
If the problem is simple to diagnose, the f2f is the best tool.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't like me answering the phone during a meeting, you can just ask me to stop.
Sometimes the problem is more obscure, and the root cause is not obvious. Then a group discussion can not only help in diagnosing the problem, but also helps in implementation of a remedy.
Using the example of phone calls during the meeting - maybe I have to answer the phone because my child is sick (but somebody has put me on an urgent tasks anyway)? Or we have a priority client I just cannot reject (but we don't have a call forwarding to a backup person set up)? Or we need everybody to explicitly agree to the phones-off policy before I agree to comply?
As long as personal problems should be solved f2f, and individual "work" problems should be solved f2f with the manager, there is a bunch of team problems that need addressing within the whole team.