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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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"
I just thought of a few more that have worked at past and current companies...
Monthly birthday cakes for workers- essentially a monthly friday break for 15 minutes. It was a nice touch that we all appreciated.
Pizza Fridays. Everyone gets together in the conference room or kitchen and eats pizza (on the company) Again, one of those real nice touches whose benefits far outweigh the cost.
Beer/Wine Friday's. Everyone brings in a few beers or a bottle of wine (make sure the managers shell out for good stuff) and everyone tries them out in a blind test and rates them. Of course, do this around 4:30 on a Friday.
Hazing of new guys. Every business has its own language that can be exploited for great fun to everyone else. For example, here at my finance company, junior guys are often told to run upstairs and get a box of "odd lots" when they are starting out (odd lots are merely stock orders that are not divisible by 100). Of course they go to the tipped off guy upstairs and then are sent to some other department, while everyone is trying their hardest to keep a straight face, and then rinse and repeat. Yeah it embarasses the hell out of them, but its one of those locker room things that also says "hey youre one of us now"
Hazing of managers. Much rarer, but at some friend's companies they would at times play tricks on the manager. Most were typical vaseline on the phone type pranks, but one in particular that I found funny was that they locked his office door one morning when they knew he would be late, and put a sign on it to meet with an HR person that agreed to go along with it in the conference room. She met him in there with a scowl and then made a fake call to security and told him to wait in there while she returned. They let him sweat in there for a few minutes until they let him know it was a joke.
Alot of people dismissed the idea of Lan games and happy hours as exclusive to some, but teams are diverse, and no matter what you do, someone is not going to be interested. If they choose not to participate, then so be it.
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!
There are some large companies around here that do this sort of Halloween thing; however, it's not just the kids of the employees who are invited in. They bring in special ed classes to trick-or-treat, and throw them a big party, give them 1-on-1 attention, and even send them off with a few company-store items that they can use in their classroom--all for free. The kids (and teachers and parents) love it, of course.
The employees really enjoy it because they not only get to goof around and (optionally) dress silly on a workday afternoon, but they know that they are doing something special and meaningful for somebody else; it's not just one more odious team-building exercise. The companies are behind it because it's a very healthy way for teams to come together, it's on-site so there is little cash or lost-hours cost involved, and it's pretty good publicity.
This sort of public-service, everybody-wins activity is just really great, and I can't recommend it enough. (Or commend those companies enough.) One company had a Habitat for Humanity party and helped build a home for someone in need. A company I used to work for had a competition at Thanksgiving to see which floor could bring in the most food for the community food pantry (with surprisingly little unauthorized movement of cans from one floor to another).
There are lots and lots of opportunities for these sorts of things in each city, and there is always something for every size of organization. (If you don't know where to start looking, try asking your local principal or your local office of the United Way.) I'd encourage you to find one that fits your community and corporate culture and make it one of your annual events.
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.
No, that's based on the knowledge that I would be fired for refusing to get in trouble - your own words. To be specific: If I worked for you, and you asked me to accompany three coworkers to go to Las Vegas "for fun" (or worse, for "training", hint, hint, nudge, nudge -- in that case I'd turn you in to senior management for fraud and offer my resignation), I would refuse to accompany them. If there was a training session there, and thus a legitimate business reason, I would go, but spend my spare time in my hotel room, catching up on work - 8 hours a day training, and 8 hours a day to make up for lost work time (or to rehash and apply that day's training). By your own standards, you'd have to fire me for not being a "team player".
If I get in trouble, even get a speeding ticket, I can be deported. Fortunately, I have no desire to seek the kind of "thrills" you describe and thus do not consider what you would no doubt find boring an unreasonable restriction.
This has gotten a bit off topic, so I'll offer what I would do with a new, perhaps ungelled team: offer them a budget for the equipment necessary to get their job done, and let them figure out, together, how to spend it. And I'd fight the kind of stupidity that would let me pay for entertainment, but not tools. That said, your other points deserve rebuttal.
You are operating on the mistaken assumption that shared cheap entertainment builds a team where there is none. Such "teams", I've found, are fickle, because they do not naturally exist and have to be "made".
I've encountered them. What happens is that you get a shared "laissez-faire" attitude regarding the really nasty bugs that no one can fix. What you need are people who roll up their shirt sleeves, and don't leave until the problem is discovered. One or two "uber-developers" as you put it are sufficient. What binds people like that is the "chase" of tracking the problem down.
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.
There is no place for conflicting personalities in the work place -- you're there to do a job, not to socialize. One puts aside differences to get the job done. Period. And, yes, I've successfully worked with people who I've hated and who've hated me. When it comes to the job, that is irrelevant. The common bond was "getting the job done".
You're trying to create an artificial shared peril when there is a very real one of getting the job done.
As for elitism, I've rescued enough projects from the hands of idiots, single-handedly (thousands of lines of supposedly multi-threaded Java with nary a "synchronized" keyword in sight is a nasty thing to fix "yesterday", esp. when one is a Java newbie like I was -- this was code that we inherited, and being a C/C++/Assembly shop (what WAS management thinking), we were clueless, and the outsourced "expert" devs were, in reality, just as clueless. The "team", impotent as a vasectomized deer staring into the headlights of a deadline, was paralyzed. Took me, equally ignorant of Java, to step forward, "learn", and fix the crap in a weekend. Rinse, lather, repeat a dozen times in a career.), to be a bit of a prima donna. The proof is in the pudding. Fortunately, I now work with people just as competent.
In my example above, the "team dynamic" resulted in: "we're all equall clueless, let's do nothing, and we can't all get fired." Doing what I did ran counter to that dynamic, but, guess what, let us deliver on time. Such a dynamic is not healthy.
Four bad-ass uberDevelopers
You could've hired me.