Beyond The Covid19 Crisis – The Future Of Work

 

There are many articles discussing the impact of Covid-19 on the workplace, ranging from how to go back to work, when to go back to work and what is the new normal.

I understand these concerns. And, I think leaders need to shift their focus and look past this crisis to the future. Let me explain.

There are three phases of Covid-19’s impact on the workplace:

• Phase One: Work from Home (WFH)
• Phase Two: Return to Work (RTW)
• Phase Three: Future of Work (FOW)

Phase One

Phase one was about “How to WFH?”. Every organization asked, “How the heck do we all work from home full-time?” Video calls replaced face to face meetings while home and work merged in to one. There was personal stress and employee stress as the world navigated change, market uncertainty, business continuity, job security, child and elder care and reduced revenue. Organizations used tools to work from home as well as innovative ideas to manage the new norm. Basic organizational practices such as onboarding a new employee had to be recreated into a new virtual system. New communication strategies were subject to constant iteration.

Phase Two

The near future is Phase Two as people consider returning to work and questions such as “Which job category must be done in an office and which does not? What office re-design is needed to meet the mandated guidelines? What are the liability issues to consider? Why do we even need to work in the same physical space?”

Most organizations still wrestle with the needed decisions for this phase, including managing employee mental health, driving innovation while socially isolated, and maintaining strong organizational culture and employee engagement.

According to Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor, in “Corona virus will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How”, “the comfort of being in the presence of others might be replaced by a greater comfort with absence, especially with those we don’t know intimately. Instead of asking, ‘Is there a reason to do this online?’ we’ll be asking, ‘Is there any good reason to do this in person?’

Organizational leaders will have an enormous challenge re-acclimatizing their employees, both those who return to the physical building as well as those who continue to work from home. By understanding the employee challenges, organizations will be able to identify the potential problems with their RTW plans. Effective two-way communication between the organizational leaders and the workforce can turn this crisis into an opportunity to bolster the organizational culture, increase engagement levels and improve productivity over a long run.

Finally, in addition to the safety issues in this phase, we need to consider a name change. We constantly see the phrase ‘Return to Work’, yet that assumes we are not working when we work from home, which is incorrect. Many people are now working longer hours at home than before the pandemic struck. So, Phase Two is not returning to work; it is returning to the physical office building. I often say that words matter, so what do we call this phase that describes the benefits of collaborating in the same physical, bricks and mortar space? I suggest ‘Collaborate in Person’.

Regardless of what you name this phrase, be sure to communicate clearly and often in this phase. Double down on your communications so your teams understand what to expect.

Phase Three

Focusing on Phase Three is vital to a leader’s success. Why? Because Phase Three is the strategic reshaping of the future of work. I do not mean office redesign; I mean business redesign. There are three sets of questions to ask now in preparation for this phase.

1. Products and Services

The key phrase to remember here is enduring change. What current changes will endure so a product shift is needed? And what current changes will not endure in the future? Where will the organization be in 4-6 months? What products or services need to sunset because they are no longer relevant or in demand? What new products or services can be created thanks to the Corona disruption?

2. Talent

Once the products and services are determined, think about your staff. If some of your staff were hired for a product you will no longer offer, how will those people be retrained for future work? And if you create a new product or client solution, what are the skills and abilities your staff need to innovate and sell that new product? How will you hire and develop those new staff when hiring is no longer restricted to your geographic region and you can literally hire anyone in the world because of WFH? Finally, once they are hired, what are the new team charters and norms that will create a wildly successful team?

3. Organization and Culture Shift

After determining the staffing needs for the future, it is time to codify those changes with a new organizational structure. That’s the easy part. The harder part will be managing the organizational culture shift that will occur with the new product solutions, teams, and organizational design. In times of crisis, you find out what type of culture you have. What pieces of your culture do you want to leverage and what cultural artifacts may need to shift to meet the future of your work? How can you communicate the organizational purpose in ways that excites and engages your employees?

Phase Three demands meaty questions that need to be discussed now. I know organizations are in crisis mode and it’s hard to find the white space to hold these conversations. Yet the organizations that think strategically now will jump ahead of the crisis. So set your future vision, communicate it, and commit to it now. There is no time to waste.

We would love to hear from you. How is your organization managing Phase One (Work from Home)? How do you plan to cope with challenging in by Phase Two (Return to Work)? What plans do you have for the Future of Work (Phase Three) in your organization? Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send us an email, or find us on Twitter.

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How to Prepare for Jobs that Don’t Yet Exist in a Multi-Stage Life

85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet, estimates a Dell Technologies report, written by the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and a panel of 20 tech, business and academic experts from around the world.

So how do you prepare someone for a job that doesn’t exist yet? How can we prepare the young people who will be entering the workforce in the next five years? How can we prepare ourselves?

Wave Goodbye to Your Three-Stage Life

Before we talk about preparation, here’s a contributing factor to consider: The three-stage life we’ve been accustomed to is coming to an end. What are the three stages of life? The first stage is education, which can last up to 25 years. The second stage revolves around work and lasts 40 years until we retire. And retirement is the third stage in life, which lasts between 15 and 20 years on average.

Yet life expectancy is increasing and health care is advancing. Over the last 200 years, life expectancy has increased consistently more than two years every decade. This trend indicates that a child born today has more than a 50% chance of living to 105! And they won’t simply stay alive—but can actually live a healthy life in those years.

A lifespan of 100+ years doesn’t fit well into the three straightforward stages of life we are used to. For example, an education gained in your 20s won’t sustain you for 60 years of working. Saving up for a retirement that lasts from age 65 to 105 (40 years!) is unlikely if retirement age remains the same.

Meet the Multi-Stage Life

Instead, people will adopt multi-stage lives. What will that look like? Based on trends we are seeing now, it would include education on a reoccurring cycle to accommodate career shifts based on technology advancements or personal choice. Remaining relevant for 40 years is hard enough—how about 60? And perhaps the stages will vary in focus—one stage for building financial resources, another for focusing on work/life balance, another for flexibility in order to build a family or care for aging loved ones, etc.

The implications of multi-staged lives are vast. Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott put it wonderfully: “These multi-stage lives require a proficiency in managing transitions and reflexivity – imagining possible selves, thinking about the future, reskilling and building new and diverse networks. At its best, it offers people an opportunity to explore who they are and arrive at a way of living that is nearer to their personal values.”

I agree. A multi-stage life requires flexibility, a drive for continuous learning, and the emotional intelligence to transition into ever-changing and diverse work relationships. And I propose that these are the very skills needed to prepare our employees, our youth, and us for jobs that don’t exist yet.

Preparing For the Unknown Future of Work: Four Essential Skills

Let’s take a closer look.

1.     EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE (EQ)

A person with a high EQ is curious about people they don’t know, aware of their strengths and weaknesses, skilled in active listening, and aware of their own emotional states, enabling them to respond rather than react. This is a skill that can provide balance, insight, and flexibility when facing responsibility shifts, career changes, and life stages. It doesn’t matter what job you’re in—if you have emotional intelligence, you can navigate interpersonal relationships successfully, leading to productivity, collaboration, and an increased ability to face change.

In order for leaders to prepare for an ever-evolving working world, they must be skilled in constantly creating, organizing and dismantling teams. That requires a high EQ because it’s so relational. Also, they can help prepare workers for the future by implementing EQ training and displaying emotional intelligence themselves.

2.     COMMITMENT TO LIFELONG LEARNING

We’ve all witnessed how quickly technology has changed the fabric of our world. The increasing global pace of growth only adds to that rapid-fire change. In order to keep pace, people must be constantly learning. Whether this happens in the form of MOOCs or peer-to-peer information exchange is irrelevant. What matters is a commitment to learning—how else can someone transition smoothly into a role they’ve never even heard of yet? We must seek this learning out ourselves—yet it’s also imperative leaders make it a priority to offer personal development opportunities for employees. We can all work together to ignite and maintain the cycle of learning.

3.     ABILITY TO THRIVE IN DIVERSITY

In the future, what we consider minorities will be the majority of consumers, clients, employees, and leaders. This requires that the leaders of the future understand their diverse employees and consumers, and make sure their employees do too. Whatever the job, the teams will be more diverse than ever. And if you’re unable to learn from and embrace the benefits of a diverse team, you’re not going to succeed in any role.

4.     A NIMBLE APPROACH

We’ve established that change is happening at a rapid pace. If you’re unable to respond quickly, you may lose your place at the table, and severely limit other opportunities. Yet if you can leverage constant change, you will thrive. As Chris Heiler said, “Survival of the fittest? Today–and tomorrow–it’s survival of the nimblest.”

What does being nimble look like? Is it a skill you can develop? Yes, you can practice being nimble, just like you can practice EQ. Here’s what to do: Focus on building self-reliance, facing fear, being decisive yet flexible, and regularly seek out new skills. Also, work on managing your own bias, so that you can walk into new situations with the ability to see possibility rather than blockades.

With our new workforce functioning as more of an ecosystem than a pyramid, leaders of the future need to be nimble as well. Their ability to pivot, pull teams together quickly, and exhibit out-of-the-box thinking will influence their success in a decentralized structure that is constantly evolving.

The Cherry on Top: Purpose

The last thing Gratton and Scott said rings true as well: A multi-stage life will enable people to live closer to their personal values. This is perhaps the most exciting outcome of a longer lifespan, and aligns with one of the goals of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the workforce. AI has the potential to enable workers to focus on work that is more aligned with their values rather than monotonous tasks.

Don’t Forget Our Youth

This movement towards purpose with multi-stage lives and the assistance of AI also applies to our youth. Social Impact Entrepreneur Peter E. Raymond explains, “As automation will continue to reduce the need for human jobs there is an opportunity to prepare our kids for the challenges that will keep them empowered and give them purpose. These challenges will create new markets and economies we have not yet imagined.” And new education platforms preparing youth for this impending reality are already in the works.

In closing I’d like to point out that while fear of change is expected (and neurological!), there is a lot of positives in line for the future. Instead of seeing yourself in a position of impending irrelevance, see yourself as empowered to build key skills that will prepare you to succeed not matter where, or how many times, your career pivots. Start practicing your emotional intelligence today, work on being nimble, dive into the benefits of diverse teams, and regularly ignite your brain with new skills and knowledge. Before you know it, you’ll be in the middle of a drastically different workscape—and you’ll be thriving.

What did we miss? What is another essential skill to prepare for jobs that don’t yet exist? Let’s crowd source the answer:

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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Leaders: Learn the Neuroscience Behind Change Resistance to Master It

In the rapidly advancing world of technology, all business leaders must be agile in order to avoid fading into the background. They must be able to pivot, adjust their vision when presented with innovative strategies, and adapt to the major workforce trends headed their way. All of this requires one basic component: change.

Yet change is not so easy for humans and can breed anxiety and fear. But that’s not just because we are creatures of habit. Neurosciences and cognitive sciences show that change is difficult for humans for three core reasons.

Three Core Reasons for Resistance to Change

1. Habits are powerful and efficient

Your brain creates a mind map that sorts reality into a perceptual order and creates effective, quickly established habits. This means your brain limits what it sees and reality conforms to past perceptions.

Why is this a problem? Because it means all of your lessons in life and business keep you from seeing things in fresh ways. Counter-intuitive isn’t it? The more experience you have, the more limited you can become. We’ve all seen leaders “stuck in their ways,” and know how frustrating, and potentially damaging to the business, this can be.

2. Your brain hates change

When you’re learning something new, your prefrontal cortex has to work very hard. And your brain uses 25% of your total energy! It’s no wonder why we feel worn out and our head hurts from learning.

3. You have to “see and feel” new ways of doing things

To really make a change, you can’t just read about something; experiential learning is critical. Why? Because as you learn, your brain actually changes, reflecting new decisions, mind maps, and reality sorting. So when change presents itself and you haven’t experienced what that change will be like, your brain will hijack the new thought patterns and try to put your mindset back into the old way of thinking.

These three factors paint a surprising picture: the limitations to growth are really self-imposed by the mind maps of former successes. All of our past perceptions hold back what we are able to perceive in the present.

Besides this unconscious self-limiting behavior, the fear that change elicits is also limiting. This is called “fear conditioning.”

What is Fear Conditioning?

The brain stores all the details from a particular fear stimulus, such as time of day, images, sounds, smells, and weather, in your long-term memory. That makes the memory “very durable,” but also fragmented, triggering the full gamut of physical and emotional responses every single time a similar fear stimulus shows up.

As research from the University of Minnesota explains it, “Once the fear pathways are ramped up, the brain short-circuits more rational processing paths and reacts immediately to signals from the amygdala.  When in this overactive state, the brain perceives events as negative and remembers them that way.”

So remember that initiative that totally bombed? Your brain may be using that experience to prevent you from other, more successful initiatives.

What Neuroscience Tells Us about Fear

Neuroscience has more to say on the topic of fear. The main thing to note is that when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off. So when our brains anticipate loss, we tend to hold onto what we have. In simple terms, fear prompts retreat, which is the opposite of progress. And what do leaders need? Progress.

So how can leaders take all of these facts about change and fear in stride and make progress anyway? What do you do if your brain is constantly fighting change, yet you need to make changes in order to push your business to the next level? Here are three pre-emptive steps to take in order to initiate and become accustomed to change.

What Can You Do to Initiate Change?

1. Get out of the office

Stop going to your industry trade shows; see what other industries are doing instead. Don’t focus on current market segments – look at new ones.

2. Go exploring

Transform into an amateur anthropologist and spend a day in the life of your customer or non-customer. This helps you listen to real pain points and quickly come up with new solutions to persistent problems.

3. Build an innovative culture

It’s a big leap from thinking you are innovative to being innovative. Being innovative requires you to build a culture of innovation. How do you do that? By creating a methodology that encourages people to share ideas.

4. Experience the changes yourself that you’re asking your organization to understand

In “Neurosciences and Leadership,” David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz tell us: “When people solve a problem themselves, the brain releases a rush of neurotransmitters like adrenaline.” This rush will inspire you to embrace and champion the change you are requesting of your teams.

Do you have any tips for instigating change in an organization? I’d love for my community to hear them.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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Quick Tips to Drive Employee Engagement, Innovation and Loyalty

By all accounts, low engagement levels and employee turnover rates plague organizations of all sizes and shapes. In fact, recent data from Gallup put employee engagement rates worldwide at about 15 percent and estimate that 51 percent of employees are looking to leave their current jobs. These statistics have significant economic consequences, as unengaged employees tend to be less productive, and organizations are forced to expend significant resources on recruitment and training to replace employees who leave.

Even the most high-performing organizations struggle with the ability to retain and engage high-quality employees. Nevertheless, despite incredible odds, we can also see some “bright spots” – organizations that have higher engagement rates and below-average turnover. Their secret sauce? These organizations promote “intrapreneurship” by encouraging employees to learn and apply entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and mindsets within their current organization. When done well, this approach increases employee engagement and retention by giving creative and growth-seeking employees opportunities to develop new products, services and business ventures – all without having to look elsewhere for these opportunities.

What’s more, there are three basic “leadership actions” taken by leaders who successfully advocate this approach in their organizations: they provide the right types of leadership development opportunities and employee engagement training program, they provide the necessary resources and they enable a culture of innovation. Let’s look at each of these leadership actions in more depth.

Provide the Right Types of Employee Leadership Development Opportunities

Not all leadership development is created equal, and as Deborah Rowland, change management researcher and author, notes, the most effective leadership development is experiential, influences participants’ intrapersonal emotional intelligence along with their external actions, is linked to participants’ specific contexts, and enrolls facilitators who act as guides rather than subject matter experts.

Not all leadership development is created equal. The most empowering intrapreneurship-focused leadership development experiences also specifically target the following proficiencies:

• Being proactive and taking initiative
• Embracing design thinking (solution-focused and oriented toward a desired future)
• Enhancing emotional intelligence, especially coalition-building skills
• Implementing project management
• Taking risks and learning from failure

In other words, while general leadership development, when done well, adds value for all participants, leaders and managers who want to cultivate intrapreneurs in their organization also need to ensure that they are providing training that addresses these specific competencies.

Provide the Necessary Resources for Self-identified, Employee-Driven Projects

More than talking a good game about innovation and creativity, leaders and managers who inspire an intrapreneurial mindset put their money where their mouth is by providing the time, space and financial resources necessary to support employee-driven initiatives.

For example, at Centiva Software Solutions, a Utah-based technical services organization, developers are given two days per month to work on a project of their choice. After learning about the problems faced by a local homeless shelter, developer Blake Kohler and his team were inspired to create a software solution that helped the shelter prioritize beds for clients. After developing and presenting an initial mockup to senior management, their team was given three months to further develop the product – the offshoot of which was a new product for the organization’s commercial line.

Similarly, with Kickbox, an innovation process designed by Adobe, employees or teams with an idea are given $1,000 and instructions and tools to measure progress, along with a Starbucks gift card and candy bar (purportedly to provide the necessary caffeine and sugar boost that innovators need). To date, Adobe has distributed more than 1,000 Kickboxes to employees around the world and made the program instructions available to others under a creative commons, share-alike, attribution license.

Design, Build and Encourage a Culture of Innovation

According to Clinton Longenecker, director of the Center for Leadership and Organizational Excellence at the University of Toledo, and Dale Eesley, director of the Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Franchising at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, organizational culture is the “key gateway” to intrapreneurship within a company.

In our experience, there are four defining features of this type of culture:

1. Employees are given a high degree of freedom and flexibility, which promotes autonomy and, thus, motivation.

Suzanne Smith, social entrepreneur and blogger, recalls how she started her career as a social intrapreneur within the American Heart Association: “The leadership, including now-CEO Nancy Brown, let me invent, lead teams, and grow in multiple roles within the organization.” Smith believes that by following the same methodology, other organizations can better tap into their existing talent pool and especially the Millennial base (those people born between 1981-1996).

2. Employees are encouraged to test out the competition and compare their company’s product or service to products and services from a different industry.

Justin Reilly, head of customer experience innovation at Verizon Fios, describes how he made the case for improving the company’s MyFios app: “On my phone, the Uber app is right beside the MyFios app. If I open Uber and hail a ride in two or three intuitive clicks, and then open the MyFios app and the experience isn’t as easy or fast, I’m going to judge Verizon Fios service on that experience. That means we’re competing against every customer’s last best experience. So that’s what we use as our guidepost to innovation and improvement.”

3. Employees are encouraged to ask questions and challenge processes.

Tim Houlne, a Fortune 500 intrapreneur-turned-startup entrepreneur, recalls that he received a lot of pushback for asking questions early in his career. Now, as CEO of Humach, an organization that provides customer contact solutions, he aims to create an culture where employees are encouraged to poke holes and rethink solutions: “As a tech startup, we must constantly look for better, cheaper and faster ways to operate; we have a culture where everyone feels comfortable presenting their ideas and innovative solutions are recognized.” So create an culture where employees are encouraged to poke holes and rethink solutions.

4. Employees have permission to fail (or understand which types of failures are acceptable and unacceptable).

Most researchers agree that risk-taking is a defining feature of entrepreneurs (cf, Antoncic 2003); however, one of the defining features of intrapreneurs is that they are actually more risk-averse than their entrepreneur peers. With this in mind, organizations that want to enable and empower intrapreneurs should regularly communicate that failure is a natural part of the innovation process and even celebrate failures. In situations where failure is not an option, leaders and managers need to make that clear.

At the end of the day, there are many factors that drive high levels of employee disengagement and turnover. As leaders and managers, we often assume that these factors are entirely outside of our control, which is a mistake. Promoting and enabling intrapreneurship is one strategy that can benefit both employees and organizations. While successfully implementing all three leadership actions is a significant undertaking, it’s also one that organizations would do well to consider, especially if they are struggling to engage and retain high performers.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, find me on Twitter.

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Building and Leading Cross Functional Teams – A Navy Boot Camp Instructor’s Perspective – Part 2

In our previous post, we introduced what we find to be an extremely effective team building model – Tuckman’s Model. It involves four phases, forming, storming, norming, and performing. Each of these phases is necessary for the team to grow, overcome challenges, and deliver results. To read this in detail, check out part-one of our series on Building and Leading Cross Functional Teams.

Today we are going to discuss Adair’s Model to illustrate leadership processes, and a Cross Functional Team Integration concept.

Action Centered Leadership, Adair’s Model

At Recruit Training Command (RTC), everything is biased toward action.  John Adair’s Action-Centered Leadership™ illustrate how tasks are achieved and how the teams and individuals are managed.  According to Adair, the task, team, and individuals have six core functions:

1.    Planning

2.    Initiating

3.    Controlling

4.    Supporting

5.    Informing

6.    Evaluating,

All of these are vital to achieve the common goal.  How did we use Adair’s model for RTC team leaders?

The Task Circle

John Adair identifies the responsibilities for “task” as the vision, mission, and purpose for the group. At RTC, training is the purpose, graduation is mission or the common goal, and excellence is the vision. Achieving the task, or series of tasks, is different for each team and individual, and is necessary to complete the task circle. The three teams, Recruit, RDC, and support, each have their own tasks with purpose, resources, and processes to follow. A recruit’s task is to learn, including learning to rely on each other, and complete every requirement to graduate. RDC’s task is to ensure strict discipline and present a pristine example of leadership, while facilitating completion of all requirements. The support team’s task is to help execute the schedule, fill in gaps as needed, and demonstrate exemplary standards. As the training timeline progresses, the task circle is completed.

The Individual Circle

It is important for each leader to understand the team members as individuals. The responsibilities for the individuals are to visualize the goal, maintain perspective, be supportive, perform in key roles, earn rewards, complete training, and develop as individuals and as team members.  For the Recruits, it is imperative they remain aware of why they volunteered for RTC.  The RDCs find creative ways to motivate, train, and develop recruits.  Support staff focus on recruits, RDCs, and themselves.

The Team Circle

Dynamics at RTC are similar for each team, with differing perspectives.  The recruit team, RDC team, and support teams are defined by their culture, roles, communication, performance, cooperation, and capabilities.  By design, recruits experience challenges such as swim qualification, physical fitness tests, weapons familiarization, academic tests, firefighting and shipboard casualty training events which culminate in a 12-hour overnight capstone event called Battle Stations.  RDCs face unique and often repetitive situations in their teams, such as recruit health and family issues, scheduling changes due to weather, and division performance.  The support team evolves slowly as team members are added and removed over time, and whose culture is primarily established through the training command’s directives and influence.  Through adversity and resolution, each team assumes an identity, standards, and style which forms the team circle. 

As noted by Adair and observed to be true at RTC, achieving the Task, Developing the Team, and Developing Individuals are mutually dependent, as well as essential to the overall leadership role. So how did the three teams work as cross functioning teams?

Cross Functioning Team Integration

Cross functioning teams are defined as a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. RDCs, recruits, and support staff teams are comprised of a leader and key people in contributing roles. The cross functional model below displays how we worked as cross functional teams.

Recruit Teams

The recruit teams are a division of up to 88 individuals, ages 17-34, from the United States and overseas, with unique skills, abilities, and motivations.  From the first day, recruits are assigned real and functional leadership positions complementing their skills and abilities; the roles were leader, assistant and specialists; responsible tasks included laundry, mail, medical and more.  These assignments help introduce rank, structure, and instill leadership qualities that last a lifetime.  After eight weeks of training, recruits are tested in the final evolution problem, called Battle Stations.  Those who succeed earn the title of United States Sailor and go on to the next phase in their career.

RDC Teams

There are typically three RDCs per division.  One is established as the lead.  Each has nearly half a career’s worth of fleet experience in addition to their own personal skills, RTC experience, and occupational expertise.  All are trained to be interchangeable and can operate with any division of recruits as necessary.  Some RDCs will perform inspections as practice for other divisions, as well as give advice or training to recruits and RDCs from other divisions.  They rely on each other to meet daily requirements.  Family time, personal life, and extracurricular activities are often sacrificed for team responsibilities and the common goal.  This sacrifice doesn’t come without reward, however.  The recruit training and leadership development experience results in the highest promotion rates, nearly double, of any enlisted occupation in the Navy.

Support Teams

Underneath the overarching command structure at RTC, the layer of support leadership is vital to success.  In short, they are a finely tuned hierarchy of leaders who are specially trained to help in any given situation.  By design these leaders occupy the “hold” positions.  They are experienced RDCs who are strategically positioned with the massive number of employees to ensure smooth daily operations at RTC.  This cadre of leaders are experienced and possess a keen understanding of even the most unique problems.

Cross Functioning Team Interaction

From recruits leading other recruits, to RDCs facilitating daily routines, to leadership support teams providing solutions, the Navy’s Recruit Training Command has been at the forefront of modern leadership practices, refining and redefining the basics of leadership and management for Sailors. Each team is trained and designated to communicate and interact within their teams and across other teams for the good of the Navy. The teams together operate like a machine toward a common goal.

The Team Interaction model shows how independent, cross-functioning, teams connect and influence each other directly and indirectly. Each team’s connection is dynamic, which means multiple points of connection between teams. While their responsibilities may differ, they are part of the same organization and contribute to its mission in ways that correlate to each other. For example, recruit divisions interact with RDC teams and support teams. Support teams interact with RDCs and organization management teams. The curriculum development team may never interact directly with the recruit division but has a certain effect on their mission and performance. Meanwhile, all the teams within an organization move forward at varying paces toward a common vision, mission, and purpose.

Three Tips to Successfully Manage Cross Functioning Teams

Here are a few tips to build and manage successful cross functioning and interactive teams, along with three important ingredients (Communication, Common Goal, and Rewards).

Tip 1:  Communication is essential to all members and teams for the duration of the task.  Make the organization’s vision, mission, and purpose ubiquitous.  Encourage familiarity within the organization to facilitate engagement between team members, and teams.  You can do this by scheduling team activities, sharing the history of the organization, creating events focused on the purpose of the organization, and by structuring teams in a way that promotes reliance on another team for success. 

Tip 2:  Teams must be focused on a never-changing common goal, and even small goals leading up to it.  Scheduling is key to accomplishing this, but even more important is to never “move the goal posts”.  Ensure your goals are solid and cannot be easily moved or changed.  Make smaller goals, which can be adjusted within reason, part of the larger goal.

Tip 3:  Having a rewards system in place from the beginning, to avoid extra work at the end, is a great way to create additional incentive and foster motivation.  Aside from monetary, time, and personal rewards, you may wish to offer a certification, or a title upon completion.  A hand-written letter or note for meaningful and important work is also valuable.  Small rewards for completing small goals are also highly encouraged.  Sometimes a verbal “thank you” is just enough to demonstrate gratitude and appreciation from the team or organization. 

What teams do you have in your organization? Have you assembled the right team? Is the team focused on a common goal? Does your communication system allow you to interact with other teams effectively and efficiently? Is there a reward system in place? Does your organization have a higher purpose?

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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