jmacofearth’s posterous

Scott Berkun has some amazing posts about managing Rockstars, leading the "smartest guys" and basically working with awesome teammates without pissing them off.

And sometimes the TEAM comes before the Rockstar.

Here's Scott's Teams and Stars essay on the subject and a short excerpt.
It’s hard to understand good teams until you’ve been on both good and bad ones. You can often find frustrated people on good teams and happy people on bad teams: they don’t have enough perspective to see where they are for what it is. Some stars, people of high talent, are poor judges of teams because they’re tempted by the desire to stand out rather than the desire to succeed. Despite this, a common managerial temptation is to hire big talents, challenging the balance of needs for a successful team.

I once was part of the Best Team in the World. And since then I know that at least two of my previous teammates and I have struggled to regain some perspective on our TEAM work.

Once you have been part of an Agile team it is hard, maybe impossible, to go back to a dysfunctional team. In the Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team the core foundation for TEAMing is TRUST. I assert that this issue is the same in social media, or collaborative communities online, where we must find tools and take risks to establish the trust between ourselves and our potential teammates. When the TRUST is threatened the entire TEAM is threatened.

Here is a graphic of Lencioni's hierarchy.

It's only through TRUST is the team willing to have CONFLICT. And without the ability to disagree the TEAM cannot work through difficult tasks.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/teams-stars

• Scott Berkun's Teams and Stars
• Patrick Lincioni's Table Group

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"More than anything else talented people want to be in environments that both appreciate and cultivate their talents." --Scott Berkun

Collecting two key thoughts about teams and empowered project management. These two folks have changed my entire perspective on teams and management and passionate leadership. Even when we are not "managing" anyone, we are all project managing each other in our work. We manage up to get what we need from the executive leadership. And we cooperate across disciplines and business silos.

“What do you need from me in order to kick ass on this project?” -- Kathy Siearra, Creating Passionate Users

From Scott Berkun: How to Manage Smart People ...managers have many undocumented, unsaid, but incredibly important, functions. They have more to do with enabling the happiness and productivity of the people that work for them than anyone else in the organization. ...he created an environment where good ideas rose to the top, further encouraging smart people to want to contribute. The bossman made working for him feel like a proper relationship: he got something from us, and we got something from him. I think that this kind of management style requires more skill and savvy than a more hierarchical drill sergeant type of manager.

More than anything else talented people want to be in environments that both appreciate and cultivate their talents. Any successful manager of talented people has to come in every day, in every meeting, and directly work towards making this happen. This doesn’t mean coddling people, or denying the team’s goals in favor of making someone feel good. Instead it’s about making actions and decisions that both clarify how people’s talents apply to the team goals, and working to keep the team happy, motivated, and focused in that application.

One practical way to overcome this [lack openness] starts with a meeting. The manager sets up a meeting with the employee and opens a discussion about how they like to be managed. The manager should explain the purpose of the meeting, and asking clarifying questions about what the other person says. Generally, the manager should say little about their own opinions. Zero. Zilch. Zip.

Instead, their job is to listen, help clarify the other persons thoughts and then go away and think about what they said. First acknowledge that you have weaknesses, both in skills and in knowledge. Second, admit that you’re ignorance hurts not only the product or website, but the team itself. Third, get help in hiring experts for roles you are not familiar with, and go out of your way to involve them, and their perspective, in your decision making process.

Deliberately hire first rate strong willed people to represent disciplines that you tend to undervalue. Force yourself to be on the top of your own game, and to make sure it’s not bias and ignorance that drive you, but good judgment refined by divergent perspectives.

references
Kathy Sierra: BrainDeath by Micromanagement
Scott Berkun: How to Manage Smart People

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/team-leadership

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"The evolution of social media depends on the evolution of the browsing experience."

Open Source Collaboration is about Virtual Teams using web tools to manage and communicate asynchronously while still maintaining priorities and quality of communication. The first step on any new project (open or closed) is to define the goal. This post is only part of the challenge, but the goal of FFoFF has morphed into a process I refer to as The Cloud >> The View >> The App. And that process or workflow is the basis for a conversation I am intending to have with other simliar minded seekers.

The goal is not to create the next killer app, or uber browser, the goal is to define what that evolved web experience might look like. And then, using free plugins, apps and browsers (0riginally FFoFF or FriendFeed on FireFox) to get as close to the goal as possible. Through this discussion [preferably not a monologue] the intention is to articulate the needs and challenged of the next generation web experience.

The evolution of social media depends on the evolution of the browsing experience. Things like secure transactions anywhere, on-the-fly translated content, consolidated profile management (across all of your networked sites) and public and private personas are all part of the puzzle that will drive the next generation of social media connections and networks.

THE VIEW (an invitation to dialogue and collaborate to build the requirements and demo of the UBER UI for the "social web.")

1. The project
2. The tools
3. The rationale
4. The solutions
5. The view
6. The team
7. The genesis

1. The project

Defining the Evolved Browser or Uber App for Social Media

2. The tools

• FireFox 3 is the development platform and interface.
• The tools are widgets, social media sites, online apps, clouds of data and on and on.
• And FriendFeed is my current choice for uber aggregator of social content.

3. Rationale

• I believe we can iterate an Uber Interface (a VIEW) that will have amazing flexibility and require a ZERO DOLLAR dev budget.
• My Firefox bookmark bar is already a sort of streamlined UI. It is not good enough, and constantly changing and evolving. But it is FREE.

4. The Solution - Usage models for the solution.

• The uber social master VIEW
• BrainTraining and Teaching VIEW
• The newbie VIEW

5. The VIEW

A view is a design and grouping of FFoFF elements. A view is an iteration. A view is a proof and hypothesis.

6. The team

John McElhenney

7. The genesis

• First I posted a Question on LinkedIN. http://tinyurl.com/firefox-plugin-question
• Read a post by Steve Woodruff on his StickyFigure blog. And posted my comment to his One Interface to Rule Them All post. http://tinyurl.com/uber-search
• Next as I was contemplating Steve's question I was inspired to put together a PPT slide of what I imagined the uber app to be.
• Next, I created a room on FriendFeed http://tinyurl.com/globalsocialmedia
• Next, I built a feed of the GSMC room and invited most of my smart friends to join the room.
• Somewhere along the way, I read someone's post containing a reference to FFoFF as a joke. But in my mind it stuck.

Note: I am searching for that initial FFoFF person and will post the link here poste haste. And if it's you, please jump in and put yourself on the TEAM.

Also please see Socialwiki and Wikisocial for an evolution of this process to an open source directory project.

[Initial wiki page created 7-15-08]

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/theview-exploded

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-- This post is a response to Larry Hawes post: The Seven “C”s of Social Interaction --

Humor me for a sec, I'm going to think out loud for a sec...

Conversations - well this is the topic, so I'd cut it,
Continuum - like the word, I'm not clear what you mean.
Container - don't like the word, but okay on this one.
Community I think this is the topic, so I'd scratch this one.
Currency - "one person desires something that another has" [let's come back to this one in a sec]
Credibility - the biggie to me - I use the word TRUST
Connectivity - nice, multiple meanings [physical connection via internet; connection to another person via the conversation]

I'm going to take a shot at simplifying the "framework" if I can. Platform People Trust or at a start up I once labored at we rallied around the forumula to "make it scale": People Process Software In order to evaluate the power/value of a social interaction I think the focus is on the "connection." And when I think of major connection I think of looking in someone's eyes and evaluating what I call the "connect." [Nice how that fit together.]

Online of course, we will be interacting and trying to connect with folks we have never met and may never meet. At the heart of this tension is trust. The software/platform can help, a skype connection could help, but at the end of the day, even my "friend" will have to ask themselves, "what's in this for me?" I think that's our basic instinct. And certainly as things have tightened up financially, the "how does this impact the bottom line?" question is becoming more urgent.

So to summarize a simplified formula I would express it like this. People [multiplied by] Platform [divided by] each Individual's ability to express themselves during the connection [minus] Misses or clash of style that degrades the communication.

So a simplified social media equation might be written like this: P x P / I - M = T [trust ratio of a connection/community]

[Oh, hey, I've got to get out of here, I need to get some t-shirts printed with this new formula on them. I'll send you the link to the order form when I'm done.] So, Larry, thanks starting the dialogue. And if I get any money off these t-shirts I'm working on, I'll give you 9.7% of the profits after tax.

[based on the above formula and this interaction that we've just had]

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/socialmedia-formula

Now available at cost ($10.99) as a t-shirt from Cafe Press.

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