Talent Vs. Toil: Taking Care Of Business
Agur Jõgi, CTO of Pipedrive and expert in scaling technology and organizations. Experienced as an innovator, founder and C-level manager. getty
One of the lenses through which tech leaders view their plans for success should be balancing talent and tedium. That is, the skills, attitudes and capabilities of your team versus the toil they must overcome in their day-to-day activities.
One of the major keywords you've probably already flashed up is "burnout." Most of us can't maintain our best focus and output over either a long or acutely stressful period. The easy analogy is that of an athlete. A 100-meter sprinter trains for their event, and they may well be pretty good in a longer race. However, they haven't prepared for a marathon—mentally or physically.
Tech workers are—either naturally or by career development and practice—primed for certain types of roles and responsibilities. If these are inconsistent, too onerous or often simply too tedious, then attention can slip, and the risk of burnout or disengagement rises.
For teams with complex and mentally taxing tech roles that are facing mercurial economic pressures and rapidly changing tools and products, it helps to have a methodical approach to monitoring and supporting the right working environment. Time And Motion, Toil And Team
In the mid-20th century, time-and-motion studies became a big business efficiency technique for improving work methods. Factories (or anywhere where there was physical motion, such as assembly lines) were increasingly optimized for better business efficiency. This kind of thinking influenced businesses of all kinds as it evolved, and the IT industry may be the most obvious inheritor of this style of process management.
It would be reasonable to say workers didn't tend to get the better end of the drive for efficiency in times past. Speak of "the factory floor" or an "assembly line worker," and many people may have a bias that such working practices make a person a cog rather than an active agent.
It's now well understood that employee experience and productivity are known to be entwined. Only leaders who keep their finger on the pulse of the holistic employee and business experience will keep their project and business performance in the green over the medium to long term.
Leaders must understand the processes of their teams and be on hand to offer the benefit of experience. They must also advocate if the cost of toil and poor experience ever degrades their ability to deliver on business goals. KPIs, OKRs and metrics define the company goals and deliverables, but these must be translated into "human-readable" behaviors and processes to avoid work becoming a rote lever-pulling exercise. Starting Right And Continuing The Same Way
Culture begins in many places, one of them at the point of hiring. Right from the get-go, find people during recruiting who know why they want to work for this company, fit in and strengthen the existing culture. A person with the right "why" will collaborate on the "how." Of course, it's good sense to offer great pay and benefits to go with a great culture as part of the whole employee experience.
Equally importantly, choose people who want to develop and want to do it themselves rather than waiting for someone to develop them. Showing agency and a future orientation is a great way for employees to show they can overcome challenges, show resilience and positively support their teams.
From there, every manager has a major task—to ensure the continuous professional and cultural development of their people and help out those whose desire for development has stopped.
As a guide, my team members know that if they decide to leave, they will generally be trained and experienced enough to get a job offer from the market that's a level higher. Other companies will see a mid-level Pipedrive developer as a new senior as a result of our culture and drive for individual development and excellence. Experience Supporting Excellence
The "greed is good/work 18 hours a day in the boiler room" style of management doesn't build a culture of excellence or long-term success. Collaboration and trust are what's needed to unlock really compounding strength and value.
That's not to say the best teams don't have some high targets, tight deadlines or some healthy stress. That's how all athletes and professionals maintain a winning mindset and overcome challenges. What's needed is a culture of trust and a great working experience that supports teams in delivering their best over sustained periods.
Working experience is very hard to get perfect. It's probably not perfect. People and their varied circumstances are always changing. Leaders at every level must regularly consider the kind of environment they want for their talent and make the right choices to balance experience, resources and expediency to stay on top of the challenge.
Leaders must avoid "setting and forgetting." Culture changes with every act made and impression received. A poor hire, the wrong decision, a disruptive customer demand—anything can change it. Culture is made up of so many parts that it doesn't take much to send it down a different path. The mission/vision set from the top is a great start, but it must be backed by evidence that it's taken seriously and meaningfully across the majority of working activities. Taking Care Of Business
"Taking care of business" in terms of making a great working experience means tending to factors like employee autonomy and empowerment. Merely taking a temperature check as part of an annual review cycle is a great way to uncover problems a long time after they should have been solved. Some areas, like recognition and appreciation, don't require much more than a thoughtful and empathetic approach to management.
Toil must be transformed into meaningful work, and taking care of business doesn't merely refer to delivering on company goals. The company is an organization of people collectively. When they pull together, they grow collectively. When they lose the rhythm, that growth is hampered.
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