Good Teaming with Bob Gower

Thank you for joining me as we explore meeting/organization design, creativity, current events, and my favorite verb: teaming.

From my decades-long career, I know that alignment = performance. An unaligned group, even of highly skilled individuals is just a group, not really a team – yet. 

To become a team, a group needs practical things like direction, information, resources, tools, and practices. But they also need to feel aligned interpersonally. And it’s often these relational and cultural issues that will make or break teamwork.

I intend to use this newsletter as a resource to help you align your team on all levels – operationally and culturally — so that you, your team, and your organization can perform at its best.

Along with helpful tips and tricks within the realms of teaming and org design, I look forward to sharing takes on DEI, relevant current events, enlivening daily creative practices, ethical leadership, and so much more.

Subtext

Bad jobs are bad for your health, as reported by The Wall Street Journal (and yours truly).  

According to the Surgeon General, new guidance to employers details how wages, hours, and workers having a say in their workplace can affect their mental well-being – for better or worse.

The recommendations include:

😴 Giving employees schedules that allow enough rest

👤 More autonomy over their work and workplace

💰 Increasing wages

🛣️ Providing paths to grow in the organization

What #1 commonplace toxicity from “the before times” was worst for your health – in and out of the office?

(Reply to this email to let me know!)

Creative Type

Want to work among creatives and innovators?

Expect, and perhaps even encourage, inefficiency.

Allow for one too many drafts, the creative bliss of boredom, and flexible work hours so night owls can be night owls and early birds can be themselves.

(Early bird here. )

What does your creative practice look like these days? Here’s mine.

Burning Daylight

This holiday season, I’ve been thinking about Priya Parker’s great book The Art of Gathering, which points out that etiquette (both around the office and the holiday table) inherently shuts out people from diverse backgrounds.

Etiquette depends on a shared past and experience, making folks from traditionally excluded backgrounds unable to participate effectively. The antidote she suggests is what she calls “rules-based” gatherings, where we use explicit rules (like an opening round or fixed agenda) to level the playing field.

Too often, I see people who look like me (older, successful, male, white, tall, middle-aged, etc.) approach DEI by trying to teach people etiquette: “Here’s how we do things around here, let me help you fit in better.” While often well-intentioned (and often not), this perpetuates the status quo.

What’s needed instead is for us (again, folks of privilege) to work with people from marginalized communities to invent more inclusive rules of organizing. Not only is this kinder – it’s actually more effective and gives us more options about how to organize and collaborate.

As we turn down the final chapter of the year, I invite you to consider this recommendation ahead of your next meeting: “Specificity is a crucial ingredient. The more focused and particular a gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses.”

What are you reading these days to encourage, inspire, and enlighten as we crest upon a new year?

— bob

P.S. If you register for my February cohort of Building Good Teams by the end of the month, I'd like to gift you a $200 discount with the code "2022" at checkout. Join me?