Introduction
Let me share a little secret with you (wow, a post about sharing and I’m diving straight in with a share). People almost always get more done when they come together as a team, working towards a common goal. That doesn’t have to, and indeed should not mean continuous meetings. We live in a time where collaboration can be a far simpler task than it once was. Email, instant messaging, video conferencing, collaborative web portals and interactive whiteboards can all facilitate teamwork. Having said that, it all depends on how the team interacts with each other. If you are pulling in different directions, forget it. You’ll do more damage than good. But if you aren’t sharing, you are going to damage productivity. This post looks at how to share more effectively but makes the assumption that team frictions are at a minimum and that you are all aiming for the same goals.
Knowledge
There are three things, the lack of which are guaranteed to make me speak out. Communication, common sense and documentation. If you have knowledge of a customer infrastructure, write it up in an email, wiki article, Word document or whatever works for your organisation. Use standardised templates. Create document sets. Send links to colleagues. Use version control. Knowledge is power – sharing knowledge is the real power. Pass on tips. Give praise when receiving knowledge. Don’t assume people’s skills. Drop useful links on your blog\social sites. In a word, participate.
Skills
Despite having worked with some incredibly talented people in the field of IT, I’ve yet to meet one who couldn’t learn something from another person. Sharing your skills with somebody else has a number of benefits:
- It empowers the person you are teaching to go away and do something they were previously unable to
- It gives you an opportunity to clarify the knowledge in your own head
- It is often helpful to bounce knowledge back and forth. This can lead to a mutual knowledge transfer that benefits all parties
- It frees you up to do other work
- On a more selfish note, it can be very satisfying to teach others
- You remove the single point of knowledge failure syndrome, allowing you to sleep better when you are away on holiday, comfortable that the knowledge isn’t also getting a suntan
Workload
Beyond sharing knowledge and skills, it is important to share workloads. Quite often, one or more people on the team will seem to be busier than others. This can happen for a number of reasons e.g. the person can’t help themselves volunteering for tasks, they are seen as an easy touch for dumping work on or they are renowned as the subject matter expert.
By documenting the things you and your team are responsible for and sharing your skills, you free yourselves up to share workloads, meaning that the people who were busy before won’t get burned out (or at least not so quickly) and the people who were previously not so busy won’t have as much chance to get bored.
Summary
The concept behind this the tenet is sharing knowledge, skills and workloads. When that happens, we all grow as individuals, as teams and as organisations. The whole most certainly is larger than the sum of the parts. Failing to do so stunts growth and we fail to realise our true potential. Don’t let that happen.
Till the next time.