Tag: managing teams
Most of us know Pixar Animation as the world leader in producing animation movies, but lesser known are the stories of exemplary leadership and team work that brought about the success of the company. In his excellent work “Superteams”, noted author Khoi Tu documents the initial days of Pixar Animation when the company was struggling to stay afloat in spite of having some of the best minds in the animation industry. No story about Pixar is complete without mentioning the core leadership team of Pixar from its initial days – 3 stalwarts of the industry – Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, John Lasseter. These were the 3 leaders who led Pixar in times of hardship and transformed the struggling company into an animation powerhouse.
Thank you for the feedback on the previous post on values, quite a few of you had come back with questions on the impact of values on organizational performance. One of the other popular questions that we hear is “Our organizational core values are not clearly defined. How do we go about doing that?” Let’s try to address that. First things first, core values are not what you want your organization to have, it is what the organization already has – as part of its fundamental structure. Jim Collins talks about a few interesting value defining exercises in his website, Aligning action and values. You can also watch some very interesting video/audio on the same subject here. It is good to have your people practice the core tenets of integrity, collaboration and teamwork, but if those are the organization’s core values, there is a need to drill down deeper to understand how these represent what the company stands for in its most fundamental form.
Continue reading “How Shared Values Can Empower A Team?”
Top 25 Inspirational Videos For Teams
During the workshops that we facilitate, a common question that we get from business and HR leaders is to give recommendations on business books that they can gift to their team members either during a team offsite or post an intervention. Here is a list of ten books that we recommend – needless to add, this is by no means exhaustive – you of course know your team best and hence would be the best judge of what fits well in their context.
Continue reading “10 best books to gift your team during a team offsite”
5 Tips For New Managers
I had an interesting conversation recently with a business leader about employees taking up people management roles for the first time. Individual contributors who do well in their roles, get promoted to people managers as a natural career progression in most companies. His concern was well founded – how do we promote people without measuring their ability to manage people?
Trust is often referred to as the holy grail for teamwork – everyone seems to agree on its importance. And yet only few seem to know how to go about enabling it. Intuitively, it makes a lot of sense. You would possibly get better results in a team environment if you can trust your team members and work together. However, a shift to the virtual work mode has made this even more challenging.
Cross generational team work can allow for an eclectic, but inspired flow of ideas and varying perspectives. However, leaders often struggle with managing such a culturally and often, technologically diverse team. The challenges faced take different forms like clash of authority, inherent biases born out of generalised stereotypes, and so on. And, as a new generation of technological driven Gen Zers enter the workforce, managers will have a tougher time maintaining and empowering inter-generational teams.
Continue reading “How To Effectively Manage A Cross-Generational Team”
Humans are social beings. Right from the beginning of time, we have been drifting towards each other forming social groups and families. Moreover, we crave to interact and communicate with others for support, entertainment, and our overall wellbeing.
Continue reading “How to Enhance Team Bonding Among High-performing Remote Teams”