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.
"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.
... 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 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
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
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.
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"?
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.
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
Start a management tradition...
Pick up a copy of "The One Minute Manager."
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
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.
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.
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.
Great post. Another few suggestions in the same vein:
*If you're going to do an outing, send off an email asking for suggestions. Have people cote and comment on the suggestions. This ensures people want to do it
*Do not pressure employees into lame activities. As I type this, I'm staring at a sign up sheet for a 3 legged race they're pushing down everyone's throat. Luckily, on ly 2 managers have signed up so far
*Do not treat employees like children. If you serve alcohol, do not make us use tickets to redeem the drinks. It doesn't work well and just annoys people.
*Know your audience. Actually think about the likes and dislikes of the people at work. A morning off to see Lord fo the Rings at midnight is great for programmers, but less appreciated by accountants. The accountants may love a rousing game of golf, but a programmer may not like a golf course without a windmill hole.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"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.)