Teamwork in the Lab

Not everyone is enthusiastic about team work. In fact I would say, teamwork zealots are firmly in the minority. But if you have every experienced a really great team, you might be one.

I remember group projects in school, those were the worst. Twenty percent of the team does 80 percent of the work. And that one guy does nothing. Many times those are fake problem projects which does not help.

But on a really good team, you have a bunch of specialists, people who know their subject and are excited about it. Everyone has different skills that complement each other. Everyone is good at a different part of the puzzle. And the problem or the project is real. It can be exciting to discover a co-worker is a genius at some aspect of the project. 

Coveys habit number 6, Synergize, people don’t add up, they multiply with their mad skill sets.

Navy was probably the best team environment I remember, because the Navy is all about teamwork. Everyone has different training, different skill set, different jobs. And maybe we overlap a little, but mostly not. And everyone has a lot of pride in the skills they know. Navy spends a lot of time and money teaching a very specific skill set to each rating. Those guys have mad skills and they are excited about what they are doing.

It can be frustrating to be in a bad team environment. And I really believe the thing that really makes a difference is enthusiasm. We have all experiences meetings or teams that seem like a huge waste of time, as nothing gets done. Some people don’t really know what they are doing. Maybe the goals are poorly defined. Or maybe a moving target. And yet, we keep having those meetings, we maintain that team. It is hard to get excited when it seems like you have no hope of completing the mission.

So, if you are the boss, make sure your guys know what they are doing. If not let’s get them some training or teach them yourself if you have those skills. And when you outline the job, the goal, make sure you have thought it all the way through. Not a half baked plan, but a well defined plan. Think about each step, who best to do it, how long it might take.

And if you are a worker bee, take time to sharpen the saw (Covey habit 7).  Study a little on your own. Get qualified. Get certified to do things. Take some responsibility for your professional development. If your boss does not send you to training, send yourself. Take a vacation day, pay the cost yourself. Money and time well spent, invest in yourself.  And don’t be that guy that you would rather not work with. Approach each job with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. Be supportive of your team mates. Carry your share of the load.

Communication is essential to good team work. Send updates to the boss and co-workers on what you are doing. Make an effort to understand the other pieces of the puzzle. Take notes when your co-workers are talking in the meetings. Create documentation of what you plan to do and everything you build or create. Keep your data files and notes in a way that others can understand.

Trust is important on the team. I remember working midnights at ElectroRent and in the morning I would have 3 spectrum analyzers running, almost finished, and one of those noise analyzer things going on Larry’s bench, an oscilloscope just finishing up, and doing some manual cal in the Industrial lab. Most of the day shift would gladly finish whatever I had started the night before. They get the credit for another piece. Except this one guy. He would tell me to get it off his bench and finish it on my next shift. He was concerned I might have run the procedure incorrectly and did not want to get in trouble for my errors. Not long after that boss called him in to ask him why he had not completed any gear for a month. He said it was my fault because I was doing it all at night and not leaving him anything to work on.  He was fired not long after that. Don’t be like that. Trust your co-workers. Accept help when offered.

Don’t expect teamwork to happen without some effort on your part. Do things that build the team. Look for those opportunities to say something when you catch people doing a great job. Make a big deal about any cooperation you observe between team members to reinforce that good behavior. Any negative counseling needs to happen in private. Don’t let your people always take problems to the boss, insist some things they can work out between themselves. And when you finish a team project, take time to celebrate. Take the team to lunch, order pizza in, go gocart racing, something…

I stopped working on this a year ago. Did not have an ending until just now. So in the news this month, 2 ships in the 7th fleet were involved in ship to ship collisions and 7 died in the first one, and 10 are dead or missing in the second case. The Admiral of the 7th fleet has been fired. The way the Navy thinks about things, we can delegate authority, but not responsibility. It was Admirals job to make sure those skippers knew their job, and it was skippers job, to train their crews. New Admiral will train those guys to death. The only way to get that right is to train and practice and then train some more until we can do it in our sleep. If Admiral needs to go there in person and teach those guys how to calculate other ships course and speed and closest point of approach, then Admiral will probably go and do that.

Nothing is more important than teamwork and training and teaching each other what we know. And they are all really different parts of the same thing.