Slashdot Mirror
Tech Team Traditions?
Antigua Nice asks: "I have recently been promoted to manager of a young IT department and would like to introduce a tradition and/or mascot for the upcoming season. Although we are busy 24/7/365 we are especially busy during the NFL season since we are a sports related company. The goal of this is to add some excitement to the new team, unite the members and keep department moral high. It might also be worth mentioning that I have recently added two more administrators to the team. If you currently have any department traditions or know of any, could you please take a moment to share them with me. They could be anything from going out for beer and wings after the first game to each member bleaching their hair. Any and all input is welcome."
The worst experiences I've had are when someone tries to artificially create a tradition and force it on everyone. The best traditions develop naturally. Try a few things, see if they work/people like them/they catch on.
American Hotrod and try some variations. I like the funnel-down-the-pants one.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I work for a tech support office that handles several sites across the state... We have a "Bonzo the clown" in the tech Van... Whenever all four of us go on a trip (usually just me.. but sometimes we take a trip), one of my coworkers, the responsible one, usually tries to plan things out in the vehicle, to make sure everything'll go smoothly when we get there. My boss, however, is a bit more immature. Whenever my coworker tries to do this, my boss picks Bonzo off the dash, waves it at her, and repeats "BONZO'S NOT LISTENING!!" over and over. Kind of a mascot, and kind of a tradition.
Have hot cheerleader mascots. Keep them under your desk (pref @ groin level). Naturally, cheer leaders must try out... and you are the manager.
;-)
This will not only raise moral but raise nerdy appendages.
You may have to resort to the blow up kind if your department is ultra-nerdy
I guarentee somone will officially name a child after their favorite sports team. I can see it now:
"Hello little girl, what is your name?"
"Steelers 'I hate my father' Smith"
Monstar L
Or, if you set some goal and they complete it, YOU get tackled by the linebacker. That would be positive reinforcement.
This worthless post brought to you by MBCook who didn't think it was worthy of his name.
"Oh, and next Friday...is Hawaiian shirt day...so, you know,
if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."
Seriously... traditions aren't made, they happen. If you want to make one happen, I recommend maybe starting with a bi-weekly happy hour or poker night, or something similarly social along those lines, possibly subsidized by the company.
Ok, that's enough. I'm dropping Ask Slashdot from home page preferences again. Who let the MBAs in the room anyway?
One perinial favorite is "perpetual hazing" of administrators (or sales droids, if your team is fortunate enough to have access to some). Nothing brings a team together like having a common interest in tormenting someone who isn't part of the team.
Be careful when setting bounds though. For example, back in the late 70's (before I knew better) one of my rules was
which seemed clear, simple, and to the point--until you realize that you're dealing with bright, highly competative people who deal with complext rule systems all day, and are trained to look for security holes. The revised version, worked a little bit better, but (perhaps because they'd seen me flinch), the team realized that hazing your manager is even more fun than hazing sales droids. It took almost a month to get their focus back on the sales department where it belonged.-- MarkusQ
P.S. Important note: never haze anyone who makes your travel arrangements.
... but I've always hated garbage like that. I go to work to work. I see these people 8 hours a day. I don't want to see them before work, or after work (well, except a select few who are friends).
The whole 'team' word is over used, and in my mind, reeks of management-itis. OK, there may be companies where teams mean something. The companies I've worked for, it's just that: work. Most people don't want to be there any longer than they have to.
When I worked at Hayes, our boss used to try to put together things, like after work outings, as a reward. You want to reward me? Let me leave early. I have a life (as far as being a geek goes). I have projects at home, cars to tinker on, software to write, dogs to play with, rocks to climb, etc.
We used to have company mandated meetings. It's amazing how many you can not show up to (like, say, 100%), and still not get fired. Apparently, my skills as a programmer are worth more than really pissing me off by writing me up or some other BS for not showing up.
And don't confused this with being a "team player". You can be a team player and still not be a "team".
I finally solved this problem a few years ago. I am an insultant. I work from home 99.44% of the time. I have my dog at my feet, my 'fridge 15 feet away, and no one cares if you wear slippers to work. Oh yea, and I save about $800 a year in gas.
It sounds like people you worked with either weren't worth being friends with or you were too busy being anti-social.
Now that I work from home, I admit I enjoy the lax attitude I can take at home, but I do miss sometimes the comrodary(sp?) of working with people you like.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
...are usually layoff or paycut related. That, or outsourcing, thats a morale booster nowadays.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
It is apparent that you have become a full-blown
PHB and are out of touch. You want team tradition?
Make it beer Thursdays, or better yet, Fridays
free at 4 pm tradition. Even if you choose to do
nothing good for your employees, please refrain
from doing some lame puppet as morale booster.
Take the money you'd spend on a puppet and give to
employees (even if it's a cent per head). Show that
you care about real people, otherwise start a
tradition of posting a Dilbert cartoon on your door
every day.
I work at a pretty small advertising company, and while we have no traditions, we love nothing more than to kick back at 5pm once the day is over and all enjoy a couple beers on the roof (we're lucky enough to have a top office in a building in NYC) and talk about business, life, and so on. If the next day is probably going to be slow, maybe head down to the local bars for more drinks, no one has to go if they dont want to. Admitably, its a small group which helps its intimacy, but traditions seem a bit silly unless theyre started naturally, and smack of artificiality. I prefer the 'Hey, we're heading down to the bar for some drinks, wanna come?' to some official company thing arranged in advance.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Can't be any worse than all the kids names 'Espn'
Second rule (for advanced readers): Don't, unless you can find something which absolutely everybody will enjoy.
Buy everyone beer? What about the guy who doesn't drink (either by choice, or for medical reasons)?
Take everyone to the football game? What about the guy who doesn't like football, or the guy who has to stay home to look after his kids?
Throw a really expensive Christmas party? What about the people who don't celebrate Christmas, or who celebrate it a couple weeks later?
Have everybody play Unreal Tournament? What about the guy who gets motion sick?
"Team building" sounds great, but paying for 90% of people to do something together that they really enjoy doesn't help build a team; rather, it makes the other 10% of people feel even more isolated.
Teams build themselves. People form friendships, and find activities on their own. Let this happen naturally; don't try to push it forwards prematurely.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
It always works in the movies.
You can't start traditions, one day you just look around and realize that you've been doing them. But you want to raise moral?
You control only two things that your employees want. Money and Time. Take everyone out to the bar, or to a picnic, or to the rifle range, or get everyone tickets to an NFL game. Thats the money part. The time part? Do it on company time. If your not doing it on company time, invite family, and its not compulsory.
--Cam
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
some Reebok commercials featuring Terry Tate the office linebacker
http://www.fileplanet.com/download.aspx?f=119394
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Go rent both seasons of The Office and watch them. That series says more on this subject than I ever could.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
For added excitement, add Over/Unders on project completion dates.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
What you should do is -- Oh never mind. It was a stupid idea anyway.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
1. Reward your best team members with pay raises 2. Get rid of any that can't cut it
Holy moses, a suit is coming to ask the geeks for advice on how to interact with geeks. This is apparently one of the signs of the return of Christ. Wit aside, buy some decent coffee for them. Like other suggestions, traditions can't be enforced. Now, not being anything IT related, my thought would be to just let your IT department do their job. The job seems to require much sitting around doing nothing interspersed with flurries of hair-wringing activity; your staff is idle most of the time, but must be there when (not if, but when) something happens that's bad. And having said that, maybe have a department meeting. Ask them what they want to see in a department, no holds barred, see what they think. If it agrees with company policy and comes off as harmless, yeah, go for it.
This sig no verb.
Buy 'em lunch at a decent-ish restaurant, or at least one of their choosing. Preferably someplace that will allow them to leave the office and sit down to eat. Set aside an hour or so.
... Try not to get in their way. A manager's job is more about coordinating the efforts of his people with the people above and to either side of them, and especially about keeping the heat off them from above (they're your people). Being loyal to your managees and avoiding micromanagement will go farther than any management technique found in any book or seminar. Deal with them as straight as you can, and treat them like adults.
Other than that
Canthros
They had yearly bonuses of something like $500, but one person got the "big bonus" of $5000 and one person got "the shaft" of nothing.
1. Teams fucking suck. 2. The whole idea of tradition is that it arrises through time, not instantly from some kind of cultural forced feeding. 3. See 1.
stuff
Ugh. I just got an email today that my call center is having a "Spirit Week" complete with, you guessed it, Hawaiian Shirt Day. I wanted to vomit. I really didn't think that movie could possibly be anywhere near reality.. now I'm in hell. "Stupid Hat Day" was runner up for worst idea ever.
||:|::
First, cheapest method, lan party, if you have alot of non gamers see if they would like to play some classic cames, renember emulators have multiplayer support.
Next, sponser a game, maybe golf (surprisingly fun on my first time), or wus out and do miniture golf (if your really that young), bowling, roller skating (sorry to mention that, but I dont know what language you guys work in.), batting cages, PAINTBALL! hmmm, Thats all I can think of.
Do a vote with these options and the biggest one wins, include the option ("whatever, anything sounds ok,") if there is a high number of those responses consider just doing a dinner and movie or offering cash to those who dont want to go.
i am very surprised your post got by the lameness filter. I'm also wondering how long it took you to make that? (I know there are programs out there for ascii art)
I saw the Sign, and it opened up my eyes
Pay raises!
Noting say "Tanks for the good job" like cold hard cash!
Okay, this looks like a gentle troll, but I gotta give you props for getting past all of the filters that are supposed to prevent posts that look like that....
No, it's not insightful (you should remove Ask Slashdot stories from your homepage if you don't want to read random questions... this is pretty standard fare for the questions that actually can't be answered using Google).
Try "underrated", the generic mod?
The last thing you want to do is lead in a meaningless area like this. Instead, let the team decide what traditions they want to do and just follow along. Don't make traditions formal - they just happen.
As a team leader, you are really serving in two capacities. The first capacity is as a servant. You are fulfilling a role that they can't do themselves. You have to make sure you fill that role well so that it serves them. There is a time to lay down the law, but you have to think of yourself as a referee in those cases and approach it carefully, if at all. The second capacity is as a representative. You have to represent the group to somebody higher up than you. That means you have to show up to those meetings with their interests in mind, fight the fights that they would fight, and only sign on to agreements that they would make. When you have figured out these two things, then everything else flows naturally.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Promoted from...where? Were you once one of the IT people? If so...would YOU have really wanted what you're suggesting?
would like to introduce a tradition and/or mascot for the upcoming season.Numerous posters have pointed out the foolishness of trying to "impose" a tradition. A mascot I could see, but only if it was genuinely funny and not contrived. Nor intended to be taken seriously.
The goal of this is to add some excitement to the new team, unite the members and keep department moral high.I assume you mean "morale", not "moral" - I think what you're proposing would inspire more IMmorality...
It might also be worth mentioning that I have recently added two more administrators to the team.Do you mean more IT people (Network/System administrators), or more managerial staff? 'cuz I know nothing would make ME happier than having more people overseeing me and telling me what to do... (If you meant that you hired more people to help with the workload, you probably ARE on the right track there.)
Want some advice?
- Try asking the people actually doing the IT work what would improve morale.
- Buy a bunch of Dilbert books and read them. Anything that resembles any program that any of the "Pointy-Haired Boss" characters implement in those books should be recognized as Probably Not A Useful Idea. It sounds like you're dangerously close to crossing over to that category right now...
People who have to do tech-support-type work ARE a pretty cynical and jaded bunch, in my experience (heck, I know that describes ME), and are not likely to respond positively to contrived or ephemeral attempts to manipulate their attitudes.(Note: If this is actually a clever plan to promote "team unity" by uniting the staff in their hatred and/or mockery of you, it just may work..."Can you believe this guy? He actually thinks he can MAKE us start a 'tradition' on purpose! And who in their right mind would think these 'Apshai, the Bug God' dolls would do anything for morale?")
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Hopefully, nobody will take it up.
But, if it becomes a running gag in the company, it might put people in mind to create their own weekly activity or tradition.
Another possibility is a bi-weekly lunch at an unusual local place.
When I worked at a small (7-10 person) software company outside Philadelphia, we'd occasionally go up the road to an indoor flea market / farmer's market, where they had all kinds of food. We'd bring it back to the office to eat, tho. That was usually a good time.
Focus on being a facilitator, not an instigator. People hate being forced into activities with coworkers. It is very difficult to pick an activity that everyone will like, and it is very difficult to get everyone to like each other. As a manager, people may not always tell you they don't want to go out for drinks or go out on bowling night. Instead they might just sit their seething in resentment when they'd rather be home.
What you have to do is plant a seed of an idea, and then see if something grows out of it.
Some examples of facilitation:
* Building a volleyball court for employee use.
* Permitting use of office projectors for movie night.
* Letting people run a gaming server on the company pipe
* Foster an environment where people can leave work together to grab coffee or whatever (as opposed to an environment where everyone always tries to make it look like they are always working)
Some no no's:
* Forcing your sys admins to play volleyball during their lunch hour.
* Asking everyone to spend their friday night watching Planet of the Apes at work.
* Pressuring people into 1st person shooters after work.
* Insisting everyone go out to get coffee every morning as a break.
The all time worst company sponsored activity I have ever heard of was an event a big company picnic. Employees were sent into a corn maze and they raced to escape the maze. A few hours of time off was awarded to everyone with more given to those who finished fastest. The managers sat and watched the whole thing from a platform overlooking the maze. For some reason, the situation reminds me of slaves fighting against each other in a gladatorial pit for the amusement of their masters except in this case the only reward was a few hours of freedom.
- No, I am Sparticus.
the clown was BOZO.
boNzo was a chimp.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0043325/
How is this not funny? Everyone's got an opinion. While I don't agree it was the second funniest thing I seen or heard all day. Cheers to anyone brings a lite moment to my day.
/. is a place to learn and relax.
Ask Slashdot: Why is everyone so f'in uptight and serious
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
Yeah, right.
If you currently have any department traditions or know of any, could you please take a moment to share them with me.
We post Ask Slashdot questions asking about traditions.
[signature]
It gives the closet sissies a reason to dye their hair that is socially acceptable.
From all of the "team building" "exercises" I've ever participated in, shows were the best. You'll be letting them talk shop, but in an environment with plenty of new stimuli. The loners can wander off freely and the groups can... well... group. A nice simple way to justify the cost to the powers that be as well.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
You can't force teams and traditions to evolve but you can do plenty to make sure they don't.
Spend an hour or so thinking about all the things you could do to kill a good team environment (favouritism, demand for homogenous desk space, etc etc). Once you've got a list of these just stop doing them! Stay out of the way and, if you've got a decent bunch of people, they'll sort themselves out.
Any opinion expressed is also that of my employer - another benefit of being self-employed.
In my experience The more obscure the topic, often the easier it is to use it as a source of bonding. If you've got people from different area's, they'll have different tastes and interests. If noone is really rabit about Y, then they can't say "I much prefer X over Y, so count me out of whatever's related to Y".
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
Did no one notice that this was written in the Slashdot font? Nice touch. :)
Now if I only could find a team with such a tradition....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Can someone please tell me why a lot of people write 24/7/365, and not just 24/7
Surely 24/7/365 means 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 weeks a year
24/7 on it's own is enough to indicate that you mean all year around.
Or maybe it has some other meaning that I'm just not getting here.
T.
I'd say go out and buy YOURSELF a copy of "peopleware" and read it. There are a couple of VERY important points made there
1)You can NOT build teams - They can form, and the BEST you can do is not to interfere. Don't TRY and force teams. Now you can setup an environment that will foster team growth, but that is about it
2)YOU, as a manager, will NEVER really be part of the team - period. You MIGHT like the team, the team might like YOU, and occasionally invite you along, but you are never REALLY part of the team. Even a team lead who does not have full management power is even slightly on the edge of a team. He/she CAN be a member, and in fact, can be the core, but that is in the same way that the hole in a doughnut is the core of the doughnut - he's not the same
Part 2 is why MOST managers HATE teams - they don't fully control them, and aren't really part of them, so they are afraid of them, so they break them up
One Hint from the book - if you are lucky enough for a team to form, feel lucky, and do your best to keep them happy
I've had the joy (and I'm NOT using that sarcasticlly) of being a member of a gelled team twice in 20 years. Each time the teams lasted, oh, around 2 years before management did something stupid, and broke up the team. We almost NEVER went out after work, MOST of the gang didn't see each other outside of work, and we had very diverse interests - BUT we all KNEW what the other folks (guys and gals) on the team liked/disliked
Another thing that I'll point out (not in the book) that I've noticed about every gelled team I've seen (not only worked on) - They were mixed gender and/or orientation AND mixed age. Best team I was ever on had folks from about 22 years old, up to about 50! (and that was for an 8 person team)
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Monthly paintball.
Works wonders. And your employees will get to shoot at you without killing you. Great stress reliever.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
A good morale booster where I work is when the company picks up the tab for [favorite meal].
e.g. bring in a big tray of seafood/pastries/whatever and let everyone sit around and talk while it gets eaten.
But like every one else is saying, don't force stupid activities on us and don't make us spend extra time away from our real lives.
The only tradition people care about:
Seriously, why don't you make "We will pay the employees when we're supposed to" a tradition. I've worked at too many companies that became "we will pay you whenever we think we can spare it, now get back to that unpaid overtime"
That may be so.. but neither rode on the dash of my tech van.
Keep it simple and relevant. And keep it on the clock. Good morale stuff should a) intermesh with work, b) be during work time, and c) be opt-in.
1) Pass out chinese food menus while your folks are working during the first game, everyone at work picks their order and gets free lunch. Basically, cheap catering during the big events your company is involved in.
2) Get free swag from the teams, make available, i.e. "hey, we just got a box of free Bronco jerseys as a gift, anyone wants them, we'll have a box after the weekly staff meeting, first-come first-serve on sizes". If there aren't enough shirts for all, draw numbers from a hat for those who want one. Note that you're not 'wasting' company dollars on this, so folks won't grumble about 'why that money didn't go to raises instead'.
Seriously, work your connections to get free swag for the staff, and use a slush fund to make things more pleasant during crunch time.
Above all, don't give managers first access at the swag! Show you value the staff first.
A.
Nothing is better than some hot food and cold beer for getting a team of people to talk to each other.
Do it on company money - team building exercise.
Schedule it long enough so those coming off roster can join in as well. You as boss should be completely pissed and butt of many jokes (great for team morale - sorry but true) by time everyone has cycled through.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
To add to all the insightful comments about NEVER doing mandated things, let me add my experience:
In my previous job (a bank), the upper management would "reward" an entire appartment with a weekend seminar in a hotel 3 hours away from our city. When it was our turn, we were ordered to show up at the workplace at saturday 8:00AM, where a minibus would pick us up, take us to the hotel, spend the night there, and the minivan would drop us back *at workplace* (not at our homes) sunday 8:00PM. Only workers, no couples, no family. We were told we could NOT refuse. I kid you not.
This "seminar" turned out to be one of those crappy "Let's build teamwork!" courses... all the while we were complaining about how they had KILLED our weekend for what was, essentially, work. The married ones couldn't see their families, the single ones didn't have our free time.
To make things worse, the rooms we were assigned to had FOUR beds, which meant we all had to share the room (AND restroom) with three other guys. The two women in my department got it much easier, as they were assigned a two-bed rom (they were relieved, as they were afraid they'd actually have to share a room with two other guys).
In the hotel's defense, the lunches they gave us was very good.
The kicker? Right before we left, our boss took a picture of the entire department, posing in the hotel entrance. Two weeks later, the internal monthly newsletter had it page 3, along with a store telling that "The XXXX Department had a blast at the YYYY Hotel! [...] The bank has a long standing tradition of rewarding good work and [...]".
The people at the Human Resources department weren't really jerks - they were out of touch with reality and actually believed employees viewed these "weekend seminars" as an actual prize.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Allocate a budget (needn't be large) and just let the team decide. Encourage team members to come up with fun things to do with it.
...' I'd cringe.
if need be, you can always speed things up by proposing something yourself. If no one wants to stick his/her neck out, find the leader within the team (no not you, one of the employees who tends to represent the others in collective stuff) and ask him/her directly to organize something.
IMHO, the worst thing you can do is say something like 'Listen up guys, I asked slashdot for some fun team-building things to do. Next wednesday we'll all go
HERE'S a GREAT one:
Treat your IT employees as professionals, with respect and humanity, rather than like retarded step children. Who need to be 'shown the way'.
Bonehead.
Skip "Breathe in, breathe out...the rest is easy"
Antiqua Nice,
Your job sucks.
You are now a mid-manager. Your job and your success depend on your employees providing value to the company. You are between a rock and a hard place.
Management needs to make money and cut costs to say competitive. If they don't, the company fails. Management is going to bring down directives on your department that are inane, tedious, disconnected, burdensome, and time consuming, to try and achieve their goals.
Your job is to recognize why these directives are there and to abide by them within reason for the health of the company.
Your job means pushing back on commands that have no visible productivity. It means protecting your staff, to the best of your ability, from any directives that will diminish them as employees. It means listening to your workers and pushing their productive suggestions up the pipe.
As a manager, you need to demonstrate a clear understanding of what your staff needs to accomplish. Disseminate, not just the instructions from on high, but also explain the reasoning behind these rules. You must carve out enough authority to reward the employees who deliver on these directives. You must have the skills to train and motivate your staff and you must have the insight and spine to recognize, and if required, remove the employees who hold back your department.
Your job sucks. You take this sucky job so you can get to a higher position where directives don't come down from on high, they come down from you. That job doesn't suck and is highly rewarding, but requires much grovelling and compromise for a long time to achieve.
Good luck.
machinator omnis sine licentia
I don't know if US law or social etiquette prohibits this (I'm from the UK), but if you're a sports-related company, why not run a book on various sporting events? I've done this for football (soccer) here, as well as David Beckham's next haircut, and political events (next leader of the Tory party, etc).
It's fun, and it has geek value too, for the bookmaker, as you try to juggle the various odds so you won't be too out of pocket whatever the result.
Free money, sport, and spreadsheets. What's not to like?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Look I have a wife and two kids. At this point whenever one of these mandatory team/tradition deals happens I just leave and go home. I have NEVER suffered any consequences from adopting this attitude, my job is programing after-all not coffee and cookie time. Maybe if I was at all interested in climbing the ladder or whatever I would pay more attention to bull like this, but personally there is nothing more gratifying than getting home early, finding that the kids are still napping, being alone with my wife for a little bit to unwind, and then being there to play with the kids right when they wake-up. I don't care how fun the tradition is, if you think I am going to go out for bowling with the team instead of this, forget it I am going home. I would not get any work done anyway.
I had it all before. The Hawaiian shirt day, the company picnic, the baseball games, the ping-pong, the cookie time, the beer hour, pizza night, hazing of new employees, bowling, arcades. In the beginning I put-up with it all thinking it would somehow look bad if I did not take part, but it really did not matter. I even was a vegetarian and ate raw beef as part of prospective employee hazing! Then I wisend-up.
If you want to build morale and you cannot provide interesting projects or decent raises how about this for a suggestion. Rather than having everybody get together for for cookie and coffee time, just get a coffee-maker for the office and stock it with free coffee. Once a week put-out cookies near the new coffee-maker. That is a nice perk, if we want coffee or cookies we can go get some whenever we feel like. Remember that the majority of us were the quiet kids in the back of the room in school. We are still like that, we are quiet and don't care much for being forced to be social. We would rather spend that time doing what we enjoy more in our lives.
Something that's really struck a nerve with us is the explosively popular 50cc motorcycles (ex. The Honda CR50 ) that you can rent similar to go-karts and race around a closed short track. They are fast enought to be fun and provide a little competition, but not so fast as to be seriously dangerous or scary. Not only can you physically blow of some steam, but it's always something that produces a ton of laughs and is an instantly casualizing experience. The place where we do it (grrrr, no website) rents the bikes and all the necessary equipment at a nicely discounted corporate rate, and offers a spacious picnic area for non-riders to socialize and everybody to congregate afterwards. Those who don't ride take digital pictures which we can laugh about during the week and give each other funny nicknames and stuff based on what happened. As well as it's gelled our group, it may be worth a try.
One trading company I worked for would order a few cases of beer and other drinks in every Friday afternoon. Nobody had to participate, but even the non-drinkers would usually stop work and hang out with the rest.
It was great. It got people talking in a way that wouldn't have happened during the work day. Not only did it make people feel generally closer to their colleagues, but the cross-polination meant a lot of great ideas came up that never would have happened otherwise.
When I was part of a large (~50) engineering group, we just did a few things during the holidays.
For example, at Halloween we dressed up. We also invited the families in to trick or treat door to door. I'll admit, I was a bit scared to see my kids go to some of the more "embedded" geeks - i.e. the office reminded you of their pungent scent.
Christmas / Hannukkah was our biggest event. We had a buffet lunch, which always sparked good conversation about food. With a diverse group from around the world, it was always interesting. Then there was the Yankee swap - a sleeper hit for us. This little gift giving game turned into a serious event. The Dilbert Calender(s) were always top prize. We also had some uber-geeky tech games, like build a paper structure to hold cafeteria trays. Most trays before collapse wins.
Your mileage may vary.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Whatever you end up organising, one way to definitely make it a success is to do it during work hours.
There's nothing I hate more than having "team building" exercises forced onto me after work - Hell I'm not getting paid overtime for this crap!
And what's even worse is when you have a work Xmas dinner at PF Changs and your $250k VP makes you pay for yourselves and spouses! Yeah you know I mean you Richard S!
If you're forcing some crappy event on your staff, at least do it out of petty cash or your own pocket! As you can tell, this MBA crap is p1ssing me off!
How about "do whatever you want (except go home) Friday 4pm" or something?
Or "I'll get the first two rounds at the pub during the two-hour lunch and pay for taxis Thursday?"
Casual dress Friday with free donuts always works well.
#include <sig.h>
Every February 2nd we would bring in our favorite SPAM (the meat not the mail) recipes and share them with our co-workers. Most of the time we would even eat what was prepared. Then we would take a moment to reflect on what we had just done, and a little part of us would die inside.
You can try scheduling a team lunch on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. Don't make it too formal, calling it a "Brown Bag" lunch may be the ideal approach.
I'm not a team player, I don't like to share and I dread/escape Company "outings." I subscribe to the McDLT theory of work/life balance. My home life is cool and I intend to keep it that way, without intermingling the work side.
Most people love these sorts of things, but the last thing I want to do is get drunk with work people. Sure, you work as a team, but you're all in competition, too. I like to preserve a bit of mystery and not give my opponents ammunition. If you don't think you're competing with the members of your team, then you're most likely losing.
Having kids comes in really handy in these situations. I just keep crapping out and people understand that I am not an outing target. If I went once and then crapped out, I wouldnt be team player. Just be consistent.
Finally, I have enough friends. Work people are associates. (Just to forestall any "you must not have friends" replies).
We need a specific day for that?? Oops!
=)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Once worked at a place where a hyperactive VP liked to hold weekly (oversized) tricycle races through the cube farm. When she trained her beady little eyes on me I told her "You're not paying me to tear around like an idiot. Please don't embarrass yourself by asking me again". Tric races kind of died down a bit after that [grin].
I've always ditched any organized event that's scheduled outside of working hours. I have a family, friends and life outside work, thanks.
Some of the qualities *I* think make a good manager:
- Structure workload and staffing such that we're not working 24/7/365. I don't mind working hard during crunch times but if we're consistently clocking in 60+ hours and on a constant "death march" you're doing a bad job.
- Shield us from idiocy from above.
- Share the credit when things are going right.
- Share the blame when things are going wrong.
- I realize this isn't always possible but, a clear outline of where we are. Where we need to be in the next couple of months and at least a foggy sense of how we're going to get there is nice.
- I'm not a praise 'ho but every now and then I kind of like a little feedback as to how I'm doing.
- Want to see my face lite up? Give me a buff laptop, and screaming development server and up to date tools and software to work with.
Oh, we have a tradition all right. We all make fun of the new boss that's trying to introduce team-building rah-rah events and "make the workplace fun." That's the tradition here. So maybe there is already a tradition at your company and you don't know about it.
On my project we do this with a globe (because we write international software), but the idea is the same...
Get a 'Team Ball', or some other token.
At your next big team meeting or get together, explain the 'new tradition', and hand it to someone, recognizing them for some job well done, or some other 'above and beyond' action.
That person then has the responsibility of deciding who should get the team ball next time it moves. It might move the next day, or it might not move for a month, but people who see something worthy of the team ball tell the person who has it about the action. That person then decides if it is worthy or not, and passes it on with some nice words. It doesn't move on any set schedule.
Why is this good? Recognition from your peers is nice. This ball isn't some 'management token', it is genuine recognition from your peers... it also feels good to pass it along. Eventually, someone will get it who 'hordes' it, but eventually it will move again as a result of peer pressure.
Morale is free, but it is invaluable.
Part of the problem, IMHO, is that you can't use the same ploys to motivate techies that you would use to motivate sales and marketing types. The sales and maketing types seem to like the team-building crap our company does (or they pretend to, for the sake of kissing the boss' butts), but the techies don't want to be bothered.
The biggest morale problem at my place has to do with there being too much work to get done during a normal day, and then the company adds insult to injury by making us come to "fun" meetings, which aren't fun, and which require us to spend even more of our nights and weekends trying to get our work done. If you're overworking your staff (and I've never worked at a place that wasn't), don't waste their time with anything that makes it harder to get their job done effectively and during normal business hours!
My company has had problems in this area, but they seem to be learning. We just had an all-day department status meeting, with "fun activities" planned for the afternoon. We were all dreading the "fun activites" part. At noon, the big boss announced that the fun activity was that we were excused from work for the rest of the day. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), most of the developers I work with feel under such pressure that they went back to work anyway. However, since they were putting in "extra" hours that afternoon, they felt that they could leave at the normal quitting time (for once), so it was worth it anyway.
"The manager isn't part of the team; he can't be. He has to have a bigger perspective than the team has, he answers to other people, and he has to be able to discipline. The sheep dog may spend a lot of time with the sheep, but he never becomes part of the flock; his real focus is pleasing the shepherd." That's my wife speaking. (She learned this in retail, not in our house, in case you were wondering.)
You insensitive clod.
Science as a way of life.
In short, goodwill make for better team building than faux camaraderie. ...
/. thread : Wow I inherited a team of seasoned professional developers that are working for me because they love technology and magically have no personality conflicts or morale issues.
What build a strong team is a shared vision to do the impossible and be willing to die trying to effect
This belongs in another
You seem to be missing the point.
The entire thread from the OP on down is centered around one man's tale of inheriting an existing development group and wanting to create from that group a 'team' capable of ongoing (or new) excellence. He genuinely wants his group to be happy, work together, and deliver results. If you send four co-workers to Vegas with a $800 a day combined bankroll and they don't get in any trouble, together as a team - you might as well fire all four of them because they don't have a drop of team-worthy blood in any of them. They lack Synergy - and Synergy / Teamwork are personality traits. No amount of technical acumen will make up for a lack of personality or cross the chasm of conflicting personalities between members of a group. You are technically 'elite'. Pretending I was only half as good would still make me technically 'elite'. And you have already decided that you and I wouldn't be able to work together. That's not based on technical ability - that's based on synergy, and personality.
Four bad-ass uberDevelopers in the same workgroup are worthless if they can't work together; if they won't play together on a pre-paid trip to an adult playground, it's a pretty safe bet that they won't work together (in a productive manner worthy of the name 'team') in your office. That's just how team synergy works.
As for GOTOs, I believe that Dijstra was building on the works of Nick Wirth in his crusade to remove the more 'evil' aspects of early development by forcing the developer to structure his code logically long before he starts banging on the keyboard. The GOTO was a crutch that allowed a hack in the code, jumping around to different sections of code like the thought patterns of a schizophrenic. Personally I view more than a few GOTO's in someone's code like a flashing neon warning, like the use of the BLINK tag in HTML - it is a pretty strong indication that whoever wrote the code didn't completely think it through before sitting down to code, or hasn't got even a rudimentary grasp of the language fundamentals and although his code will compile and run it probably needs to be gutted and re-coded. The GOTO's aren't the problem, they are simply symptoms of a larger, more ominous problem.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Not IT, but when I worked at McDonalds, there was a spout on the pop machine for pure carbonation or whatever. Thing is, it looks just like sprite. So some vet. would challenge the new person to a speed-drinking contest, with a full cup of sprite, whoever won got to leave early. The vet would fill the cups, and the newbie obviously got a cup of carbonation. I don't know if anyone has ever drunk the stuff, but it's very, very horrible, like bleach or acid...new guy takes one gulp, spews...good times had by all. The hardest part was everyone keeping a straight face when someone was like "Hey, wanna do a drinking contest?" to the poor sap...
I know nothing
You really can't.
On the flip side my company does throw great teambuilding events.
How do they do it?
It's quarterly. A different business unit picks the venue. The company picks up the tab (there is a budget for this)
The last one we had was end of summer beach party. They bought a bunch of sand and we built sand castles. From 2:00 to 4:00 on a Friday afternoon.
We got to take a break from work for a while and have some fun. There were other entertainments too. Beach balls, food, that sort of thing.
A lot of people just sat around and caught up.
Opening game to the local minor league is a big picnic every year. Attendance is optional. Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Beer, Soft Drinks, Tickets, all provided. Other times we've just played frisbee golf for the afternoon. Yes it went on the timesheet as "company meeting"...
The point being it's kept fun and interesting because different people get to choose the activity every time. Our business units are on the order of 10 - 25 heads so everyone gets a chance to put in some feedback when deciding.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
The best mascot I've _ever_ seen was one that was adopted for the annual 'Team Spirit' excercises in Korea.
BOHICA the Beaver. BOHICA was everywhere in an unoffical capacity. T-shirts, hats, stickers. Cute jaunty beaver, with a fey naughty smile on her face.
I will leave the meaning behind the name to your imagination.
Display some adaptability.
Direct and open are easily understood words. Let me explain non-fragmentative. This is a word I came up with to explain what happens where I word. Our core group is divided among different managers. It is still a core and singular group since the source is common. However different managers have different controls over stuff. This means communication that is directed at the group only, most of the time, makes it to a fragment of the group, depending on origin. Now, many of us have to answer questions from outside, that beg complete knowledge of the product. However, since no-one has that, due to the "marvellous" communication model that we have, we often make mistakes.
More than looking bad, this is very frustrating and does NOT help foster a feeling of ownership and pride in the product. That is just a precursor to disaster.
Please don't do that.
http://kantster.blogspot.com
The amusing thing is that the Gold Club is, by SF standards, the tamest strip club in town. As a local reviewer wrote, "You could have your Rotary Club meeting there". Kinda boring, actually.
1. Be generous with your team. When a new employee starts, buy the team lunch. When the team is having a crappy day, buy the team lunch. If there's an emergency and no one is getting lunch/dinner, order pizza in and send people home early the next day. When someone really comes through, send them home early with a bonus check. Food, cash, and time off go a long way.
2. Defend your team. When people are interfering with a team member, nullify them before it becomes a distraction. If a team member isn't working out, do what you can to help them function but move them along if it's impacting other members. Do everything you can to keep your team smart, their tasks clear, and shield them from the inevitable corporate nonsense.
I've been in IT for a while now and there's nothing better for morale than having the chance to play around with leading edge technology.
;-)
:-)
Also, size up your employee. They all have strenght and weaknesses. Assigned them long term project that involve new technology in there field of expertise to keep them busy. There's nothing worse than to be waiting for a call while doing ziltch.
Upgrade there machine. Most geek in IT loves to have the latest and greatest HW. Dual monitor might be a start
Most of all, pick up the blame for anything your team does. If anything goes wrong, you and nobody else is repsonsible for it. That will reinforce you as a leader. Also, make sure there is no competition between your guys.
In this economic climate, you might want to reassure them that their jobs are safe. Make sure they know what is coming up down the road.
You might also want to write a monthly reports that would be sent to the whole compagny, telling everyone what good thing came out from your department. People in IT never get the recognition that they deserve. You only see them when thing goes wrong. Make sure everyone knows that they bring value to the compagny.
I could probably go on for hours, but you get the idea.
Cheers,
Seb
PS: English is a second language, so I appologize in advance to all you grammar freek out there.
I was bored years ago and constructed a long string of metal Mobo standoffs which I named the LART, while building Windows 95 machines. http://www.hyperdictionary.com/computing/lart
_ 23737_1
It was used to exorcise demons of stupidity, ala Dogbert
http://www.screensavers.com/?WP_ID=386_0
I passed it on to the next senior helpdesk sacrificial goat/tech, and each one has passed it on to their successors in a ceremony named appropriately enough, "The Passing of the Lart".
It's good for a laugh.