Are you making the most out of the resources and skills that you have?

Simple changes in how your organization thinks can ensure that every person in your company has the information, tools, and resources needed to do their best job.

June 15, 2021. My youngest son, Jared, was invited to go to a Giants baseball game with his Uncle Eric, his cousin Reed, and his grandfather, whom we affectionately call Pinkapa. The game began on a rough note with the Diamondbacks scoring seven runs by the top of the 2nd inning, and they started to discuss the possibility of leaving early. But Jared said, “Wait a second. You guys just told me you should NEVER leave a game early!” 

So they stuck it out, and the Giants started to claw their way back. With each run scored, three in the second inning, and then another two in the sixth, they started to ask themselves, is this really happening? Then in the bottom of the eighth, Brandon Belt led off with a double. Donovan Solano singled. Curt Casali walked to load the bases, bringing Mike Yastrzemski to the plate. After getting behind with a 1-2 count, he tattooed a grand slam into McCovey Cove. The Giants ended up winning the game 9-8, coming back from a 7-0 deficit. 

Now this may not be my own personal memory – my husband and I were watching the game from home. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the beauty of that event. It was a true team effort by the Giants, where everyone on the team contributed to their success. I can hear the emotion in my son’s voice each time he retells it. That was the day he bought his baseball jersey that he now wears to every game. I can feel the growing anticipation of the comeback as he talks about each run scored; the appreciation and good fortune of sitting in some of the best seats in the house; but most importantly, the feeling of sharing it with his grandfather, uncle, and cousin. 

— Excerpt from Any Given Monday by D. E. Richards

Psychology has taught us that participating in team sports raises our energy levels, elevates our mood, builds our confidence, and gives us a sense of belonging. It creates strong emotional connections. Even as fans watching the games, we experience increased levels of testosterone, adrenaline, cortisol, and oxytocin levels, similar to the players we are rooting for. 

I asked my husband recently if he thought there were any aspects of life, other than in sports, when we get that same feeling or that same collective emotional reward – when we are part of a group of people who are rooting for others to succeed, and the excitement builds as the final moment of the game approaches… to the last out, or serve, or shot, or second – to that moment of victory. When you’re so excited that you high-five perfect strangers who happen to be nearby, and you get goosebumps on your arms each time you relive it in your mind.

Does it happen anywhere else? Politics? Definitely not. Concerts? Live music or theater? Possibly, but it’s not quite the same. 

Do we find it at work, where we spend most of our waking hours, and where many of us find a sense of identity and purpose? 

No. Most of us don’t. 

But it really seems like we should. Not only because we will enjoy our jobs more, but we could have a greater impact on the company’s collective success. 

When you think about it, many people begin their careers without ever having been a part of a true, collaborative team. They may have participated in a sport, club, group, or band, but unless they’ve been fortunate enough to have played on a team that was very well-organized or well-coached, it’s difficult to understand the immense benefit that can come from consideration of the good of the whole – where sacrifice, dedication and teamwork bring great collective performance. 

People are generally hired based on their ability to sell or brand themselves effectively. They are promoted based on the ability to prove that they are needed, through knowledge and learning. They are taught to do their job by the person who did it before them, if they’re lucky. Then over time, they learn how to do their job better. But they are rarely exposed to how others in the company do their jobs. Once they start to develop strong cross-functional domain knowledge, they move to another company or are aged out. Very few companies have someone looking at things holistically to smooth communication efforts, avoid duplication, wasted efforts, or other inefficiencies. Very few companies offer leadership training or provide guidance on working as a team.  

In today’s environment with massive layoffs, the problem has gotten much worse. People are so focused on self preservation that company loyalty and the greater good doesn’t even enter the conversation. We’ve created a massive conflict of interest in the tech world, where people focus on making themselves more employable – by learning to sell themselves effectively and control information to make themselves more needed. What is interesting is that this behavior actually hurts overall performance and makes our jobs less enjoyable. 

It all comes down to how we communicate with each other. When people are purposeful about how information is moved throughout the company, it can dramatically increase both individual and collective performance. We do this by being more aware of how information is used and received. It’s a simple change, but can garner powerful results, and it involves a change in the collective mindset. 

I call it the Team-Driven mindset.

To explain what I mean, let’s consider your job. When you have the information, knowledge and decision-making power for a specific task, you are able to complete that task quickly and effectively. Work just flows.

As soon as you have to go to someone else for information, your progress stops or is delayed. The further you have to go up the chain of command or across organizations, that delay gets longer. The more difficult it is to understand the information or obtain a decision, that delay gets even longer still. 

By taking active steps to ensure that every person in the company has the necessary information and decision-making power that they need to do their best job, the more we will increase both individual performance and collective performance. 

“Wait” you might say. “This is totally obvious.”

You’re right. It is. 

But the strange thing is, we generally don’t embrace this mindset at work. 

Leadership generally maintains decision-making power, especially in the case of micromanagement. By concentrating that power in one place, they are essentially creating a huge bottleneck in their entire team’s performance. 

Middle management often holds the widest breadth of knowledge regarding the overall systems. But that information is rarely captured or made available to people within their organization, much less to people in other teams or functions. We leave it up to each individual to hunt down knowledge rather than make it available in a location and format that is easy to grasp.

The people at the lowest levels of the organization are asked to adjust their time to accommodate leadership. Leadership feels that they are entitled to the power they have earned, when they should be asking themselves how they can best support and accommodate the people who work for them. 

When the lowest levels of an organization don’t have what they need to complete their work in a timely and accurate fashion, the whole organization’s performance suffers. A Team-Driven Mindset takes simple active steps to move the informed decision-making power to the people doing the actual work, and ensures that they have what they need to make the right decisions on a day-to-day basis. By doing so, you can eliminate most of the bottlenecks and waste that currently exists in large corporations. 

When the lowest levels of an organization are more informed and empowered, they grow faster, accomplish more, develop more confidence, and have greater job satisfaction. 

By combining a new Team-Driven mindset with a few simple tools and processes to facilitate more reliable communications, you can drive better communication, which drives increased collective performance, which lays the groundwork for greater innovation. 

Oh, and you all might enjoy your jobs more, too.

By D. E. Richards