Management

Teamwork Is an Individual Skill

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Over the past year and a half my team has been working on ways to improve how we work.  There are many aspects of this, and I am deliberately being vague with the high level.  One part of this improvement goal is to transform into a high performance team.  Turns out that isn’t just some buzz term.  There really is a definition for it and proven ways to get there.  Going into this process I had no idea!  Kidding aside this renewed focus at improvement has had me fascinated.

One of the trainers who I am generally friendly with recommended to me several books to read to help better my understanding beyond the training classes and coaching I have gotten.  The first one I read was “Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility” by Christopher Avery.  I thought it was a fascinating read.  Much of it was common sense but still I found myself not doing much of what it suggests.  It also made several points that were counter intuitive in todays business world but after reading the book and talking to others that I trust their judgment the concepts really made sense to me.  Ever since finishing the book I have been trying to adopt the concepts for myself and in hopes that my team also adopts them.  One major point of the book is i can’t expect the team to do what I want.  I can only influence them by my own actions.

I read the book on my commute home from work.  It was a good read and as much as it wasn’t as exciting as a novel I was very pleased I read it.  So much so that I want to read more books like it to help in my quest to be a better manager and a better member of a team.

This wasn’t the first book I have read for this initiative but it is the first one I am blogging about. I am hoping to write some more posts about some additional books that i have found were extremely valuable.

Spent the Day at a CIA Listening Post, Well Sort Of

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Today I am in London and I spent my entire day at a CIA listening post. Well that is partly true. It was depicted as a CIA listening post in a James Bond film but in reality it is just a Thomson Reuters Data Center in London. I am not sure of what movie but several people have confirmed it. I can talk about it only because when I pull the area up on a public map the building is labeled.

I was in a workshop all day, but the views from half the building are of the river overlooking the Millennium Dome. I would have loved to take some pictures but I am pretty sure they frown on that. The workshop was very interesting. I have two more days of it but the next two are a bit different than the first one so we shall see how they go. I was just thankful that we got to the office and back without too much drama. The trip was already planned before we found out about the Tube strike. Thankfully we left early enough this morning to get a cab directly to the office. We were able to take the DLR halfway back to the hotel and then got lucky finding a cab. The down side of the morning cab was I went to bed at 11:30 and got up at 5:30 to be out early. Tonight I am aiming to goto bed a bit earlier to get up tomorrow at the same time.  Thankfully the strike is over tomorrow, but I have to deal with it next week if they keep to their plans to strike again

After work I got drinks and dinner with one of the trainers who is staying at my hotel. I was also able to get a pre-pay SIM card so i am a bit more connected for the long trip. WIFI at the hotel is great. Work is more limiting so having additional freedom is nice. Even after all the suggestions from MC, Cathy (thanks Cathy but I am not spending 50 pounds on a Doctor Who tour) and others I still don’t know what to do this weekend while in the city by myself. On that note I am off to bed. I will try to read some travel guides tomorrow night.

Kanban Training

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Over the past two days most of my team in NY and I have been in training related to a project we are doing that involves implementing Kanban. The training was really good. I know the trainer and he is very energetic. He didn’t disappoint. The training was very interactive and got everyone thinking. I think it was really helpful and I hope to use a lot of what we learned and apply it to the real world. Its one thing to try something (I have been trying a Kanban implementation with my team for a few months) and it is another to get really in depth info from experts and be able to use it better. I already learned of several ways i can modify what we are doing to improve on it outside of the project we went to the training for.

Busy Thursday

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My new job (well not so new since it has been almost 3 months) is unlike any I have had before. Previous jobs I have worked with people in remote offices, but at my current job virtually everyone including my entire team is remote. That means most of my day is taken up by phone calls, emails, and lots and lots of conference calls. Since most of the job is communicating with others elsewhere I am able to work pretty much anywhere. My boss has been very flexible and I have been working from home a few days a week. I go into my main office once or twice a week and one of our other offices in Manhattan a day a week or so. It is weird working from home so much. In many ways I like it allot, and in other ways I don’t like it. I do miss the socialization that is work in an office. Of course since the main office I goto doesn’t house my team I don’t even really have that when I go in. When I go to the other office in Manhattan I am around allot of people I work with, but who are in other groups I interact with. That makes the days I am there great for face to face meetings.

One day a week all the local members of my team get together in one office to meet. Since I started that has been my office in NYC since the office most of the remainder of the local team (NY & NJ) are in is being renovated so space is limited. On that day there is almost no time free from meetings. If it isn’t regular scheduled meetings it is an entire team meeting, or one on one meetings with each person on the team. The other day in the office usually isn’t as packed with meetings but this week it was. This week, that day happened to be today. Thankfully tomorrow is almost free of meetings so I can try to get administrative work done. Of course we have a big project release tomorrow so who knows what I might need to be involved with that if stuff breaks!

For a point of information, if you read this you might think I am complaining about the hectic schedule. That is far from reality. I actually live off the fast pace (to a point), and would be bored out of my mind if it wasn’t so busy with stuff to do. Honestly some of these conference calls are kind of boring, but most of them are interesting, and you have to stay on your toes or you miss lots of stuff. Here is to tomorrow and hopefully some decent time to finish paperwork!

3 Month Anniversary

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Today marks my 3 month anniversary at my current company. It is weird. In many ways it feels like I have been there for ages, and in other ways it feels like only yesterday that I left my last job. I want to write more about this milestone but due to my own restrictions on what I write about work on the blog I won't go into further detail.

Today and a large part of yesterday was taken up with meetings, and vendor meetings. I am knee deep in trying to figure out the final design for a data center project I am working on. Today was spent dealing with that, and other fun administrative items. It is funny how days like today fly by.

I meet up with Luke for drinks after work. I only had two before I headed off to home to try and relax before I have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

What I Have Been Up To?

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I was writing regularly for a while and then dropped off the radar. The only excuse I have is that by the time I wanted to sit down and write I was dead tired. The new job is a bit draining. There is allot to do and get up to speed on. The past two weeks have been tons of meetings and planning. Two days last week were almost entirely meetings. Yesterday and today was also like that. And if some of our integrators have anything to say about it, tomorrow will also be a minimum of 5-6 hours of meetings. Don’t get me wrong, we are getting allot done. It is just there is tons of other work that can’t get done if I am tied up. That and even though your body is sitting around all day, you get emotionally drained from all that work and discussions.

2 Weeks Notice

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It has been only 14 months since I started, but today I gave my two weeks notice at my current job. In many ways it was a hard decision, but in many others it was an easy one. You may or may not have noticed I have not talked about work on this blog for some time. Part of that was due to my schedule, and another reason was my employer frowned upon it. But I also didn’t have anything interesting to write about. For that reason and a few others I decided to take a new opportunity that came up. The last company I left 14 months ago I was simply burnt out and frustrated. This move is less emotional.

If I had to boil down the reasons why I decided to look to leave I would say it was because this position never transformed into the job that I signed on for in the first place. For that I am disappointed. I like the majority of the people I work with. I think the direction the department is trying to go in is a good one, but I am simply bored and not doing what I enjoy. When you wake up and don’t want to goto work, it isn’t a good sign. I will probably talk more about this decision in the coming weeks, but I wanted to write something today. I will also try to write about some of my experiences that I went through once I am gone. I also hope to be able to discuss more of what I am going to be doing at this new organization, but I can’t be sure.

I am really excited about my new position. It is a smaller organization but the opportunity is huge for me, so I can’t wait to get into the thick of it!

My Presentation

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We had our annual division town hall meeting last Friday. It is where the entire division gets together to talk about what we did and where we are going. It is kind of boring, but very informative at the same time. On Monday I ended up volunteering to present my departments slides for the presentation. The other manager who did the slides ended up scheduling a day off on the day of the presentation and they needed someone at the last minute, so I volunteered. I know why would I volunteer? I don’t know. I figured the other manager in my department isn’t a native english speaker, and if I didn’t volunteer he would get stuck with it or my boss would have to do it. I figured not a big deal i’ll do it. Sorry dad, I know you always said never volunteer for anything unless there is more money in it for me! I am a disappointment!

As it turns out the preparation for the presentation (an hour plus long meeting) was worse than the actual presentation. I did my slides perfectly or so I think. I only started fumbling on my words when I tried to ad lib my summary. Oh well. It was a long afternoon but at least I got out of work at 4PM and headed over to the House of Brews to celebrate John’s birthday.

The Busiest Day of The Year

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Today was the busiest day of the year for me at work. As it turns out this statement is true on several levels. My current company has a bi-annual event that generates the highest volume of web traffic on one of our sites. We literally began planning for today back in June during our last event. Because of the work shifts we ended up doing, and problems creeping up throughout the day today was also probably the hardest work day I have had since I started working at this job last February.

The odd thing is I kind of liked it regardless of the craziness. There is something about being in the thick of issues with the pressure mounting and you having to make split second decisions that has an odd attraction. I guess I am still sometimes an adrenaline junkie from my days volunteering as an EMT in College. The other alluring aspect of today is you see six months of work put to good use (hopefully), and for me all my skills as an engineer and a manager put to the test. The result is exhausting physical and emotionally, but in the end very rewarding. During our last event in June I commented afterward that if you are in an operations group and you don’t secretly enjoy such days you are in the wrong profession or lying to yourself. I still think that to be true.

The day did have its high and low points. In the end I know now that I have to handle a few personnel issues, and our systems performed better than anticipated. All in all a mixed ending for a roller coaster ride of a day.

Recruiting

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Over the past several weeks i have been interviewing people like crazy for open positions we have on my team. We have been a bit under staffed for a while. We had 2 people leave plus we added new positions so it since a little after i started it seemed like we were under staffed, because we were. Within the past week we have had 2 new people start. I am hoping another person will take an offer and we will be close to full strength. It is good to be able to move multiple projects along when you have the manpower to do it.

Things are starting to shape up at the new place and I am starting to feel more at home. It is a nice feeling. I just don’t want to jinx myself by saying it.