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old skills remain relevant. Consequently,
there is a significant focus on continuous
learning and skills development. By having
these new skills, a person will be positioned
to play more diverse roles, each with their
own challenges and opportunities.
Teamwork
Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Ideal Team
Player, outlines three virtues that any person
must have in order to be a team player
– be humble, be hungry, and be smart. If
any of these virtues are missing in even a
single team member, teamwork becomes
significantly more difficult.
Problems encountered in the software
industry generally cannot be easily
solved by a single engineer sitting alone
in a basement. The bringing together of
multiple technologies, each with its own
experts and expertise, must be combined
to co-create solutions for clients. Inevitably,
this requires teamwork.
Part of a teamwork approach entails being
humble. Humble team members are quick to
point out the contributions of others. They
share credit, emphasise the team over the
individual, and define success collectively
rather than individually.
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Being humble brings a competitive edge.
Modern businesses need speed in order
to compete. However, in a low trust
environment, people tend to spend significant
amounts of time on covering themselves.
This trust is built on humility and
vulnerability. As soon as a person is trusted,
he leaves the other person vulnerable as that
trust could be betrayed.
But without trust, it is impossible to create an
environment where agility, speed and getting
things done are the only focus points.
Ideal team players are smart. Smart people
tend to know what is happening in a group
situation and how to deal with others in
the most effective way. They have good
judgment and intuition around the subtleties
of group dynamics and the impact of their
words and actions.
At Synthesis, we want people to contribute
with their ideas and insights. We also want
them to disagree with the ideas of others
when appropriate.
In addition, one of our core values is
accountability. If someone, even if it is a
manager, lets the team down, then people
must speak up and hold them accountable.
Building people
So how do we leverage the Competent
Team Player Model to build people? Having
a model allows us to share a common
vocabulary and to bring more clarity to any
discussions we have about our colleagues.
The second step is to identify the mitigation
strategies and programmes needed to
address these problems. We can now
structure the best way build ourselves and
our team.
In the same way that not all of us are gifted
musicians, not everyone has a timespan that
stretches over many years.
However, like physical fitness, it is possible
to increase a person’s timespan through
training, challenges, and practice. It is for this
reason that we encourage moving people
into new roles and tackling different projects.
Synthesis is a family. And just like a normal
family, we are not all perfect, we sometimes
get on each other’s nerves. But we also
sometimes take aim and shoot at each other
with nerf guns. However, like a family, we are
here to support and build each other. And
this is where the Competent Team Player
Model is integral to our success. n
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