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
"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.
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.
some Reebok commercials featuring Terry Tate the office linebacker
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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"?
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.
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.
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
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.
Start a management tradition...
Pick up a copy of "The One Minute Manager."
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
"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.)
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.
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?!