1. Lets Get Organized!
How to build the team culture
you need
Chris Dagenais

2. Introduction
Chris Dagenais
Point2 / Yardi Systems Inc.
Director – Point2 Development
12 years in the industry
Twitter: @mdchris
Email: mdchris@gmail.com

3. Self Organizing Teams
• a team granted the autonomy to determine
the best way to solve a problem as well as
implement the solution in the way they feel is
the most effective.

4. Self Organizing Teams
• Team Oriented
• Shared Leadership
• Redundancy
• Constant Learning
• Communication and Collaboration

5. Benefits

6. Better Solutions
• Collective brain power
• 2 heads are better than 1
• People feel more involved

7. Higher Productivity
• When a solution belongs to the people
implementing it, they are invested
• Invested people want to see their idea
succeed

8. Less Micro Management
• Self organizing teams by definition self
manage
• Put the problem in front of the team and
watch them swarm it
• Get them what they need, get things they
don’t need out of their way

9. Happier Employees
• Software developers like solving problems
(who doesn’t?)
• People generally like being able to manage
how they do their work
• Nobody likes being micro-managed

10. Team/Organizational Focus
• In order to solve problems for the organization
the team must think about the big picture
• How will their solutions affect other parts of
the organization
• The team is more important than the
individual

11. Ownership
• People feel like they own an idea when they
came up with it
• When people own an idea, they very badly
want it to succeed
• Applies equally to their development process

12. Team Stages
• Forming
– team created
– don't understand their goal yet
• Storming
– team discovers their mission
– turbulence as team members jockey for position
• Norming
– team is working well together
– everybody knows their place on the team
– all working towards the same goal
• Performing
– team all working hard for same goal
– people can leave/join the team without huge effect
– many responsibilities delegated to the team
• Credit: Bruce Tuckman

13. Self Organizing Team Stages
• Telling
– Tell the team how to organize
– Actively participate/lead
• Selling
– Convince the team how to organize
– Actively participate/lead
• Participating
– Ensure the team is organizing well
– Passively participate
• Delegating
– Delegate full responsibility to the team
– Do not participate
• Cred: Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard

14. Requirements to Self Organize

15. Management Buy-in
• You can’t self organize if management won’t
grant them some decision making ability
• Requires a good deal of trust in both
directions

16. Freedom to Fail
• Creativity requires the ability to try things that
might not work out

17. Presented with Problems and
Opportunities
• What and why
• Not how

18. Cross Functional
• Team must own the problem end to end
• The team will lose the feeling of ownership if
they have to pass the project off to other
teams

19. Clearly Defined Boundaries
• In order to make decisions, the team needs to
know what their boundaries are
• Technology choices?
• Resourcing?
• System accreditation requirements?

20. Accountability and Responsibility
• Decision making ability is great, but comes
with responsibility and accountability
• The team must be held accountable for their
decisions
• The team must take responsibility for the
things they do, whether they work or not

21. The Right Culture
• Teams must have a healthy culture to support
self organization
• It’s all about people

22. What is Culture?
• The predominant personality of your team

23. What is Culture?

24. What is Culture?
• How does your team treat people on and off
of their team?
• How do people outside the team view your
team?
• Is the team more interested in helping
themselves or helping others

25. Why does culture matter?
• Culture has a drastic affect on how people
work together
• One of the primary differentiator between
poor, average, and high performance teams
• Will either attract or repel people from teams

26. So what are our goals?
• Productivity
• Self organizing teams
• Great communication and collaboration
• Better solutions
• Happier team members
• Comfortable work environment

27. What do we want in our culture?
• People should have a strong desire to excel
and outperform the competition
– Hire the right people
– Make sure they understand the big picture and
how their work contributes

28. What do we want in our culture?
• People that are concerned with the overall
performance and success of the business
– Must believe in what the company is doing
– Understand and buy in to the roadmap
– Know what’s at stake

29. What do we want in our culture?
• Focus on the team, not the individual
– Team wins and loses together
– No room for lone rangers

30. What do we want in our culture?
• Freedom to fail
– If you want creativity then people need to know
it’s ok if their idea doesn’t work
– This does not mean no accountability for poor
decisions!

31. What do we want in our culture?
• Passion and intensity
• People who bring their “A game” every day

32. Get the “Drivers” on board
• Get the influential people from the team on
board
• They didn’t choose this role for
themselves, their peers did, use that.

33. Lay out the roadmap
• People need to understand the value of their
work
• Would you ask your spouse to pack for a trip
without telling them where you’re going?

34. Accountability
• Expectations clearly laid out
• Responsibilities understood
• The team knows what they need to do
• The team makes decisions that are in the best
interest of everyone

35. Responsibility
• Responsibility must be taken
– Responsibility given is actually obligation
• You need people to care about and be
invested in their work
• You need them to be driven to do a good job
and deliver value
• How are your people motivated?
• They need to feel that their contributions are
recognized and appreciated

37. Perception
• Managing how you are perceived is a full time
job at your full time job…
• Perception rarely matches
intention, especially if you don’t try to make it.

38. Perception

39. Peer Feedback
• Giving good peer feedback is HARD.
• “Any fool can criticize, condemn and
complain…and most fools do” – Dale Carnegie

40. Receiving Feedback
• Listen to the feedback. No…really.
• Remain open minded
• Don’t interrupt the person, it’s likely already
hard for them
• Ensure that you understand what they are
telling you, it’s ok to ask clarifying questions to
make sure
• Remind yourself the feedback is addressing a
behaviour

41. Giving Feedback
• Feedback should address behavior, not the
person
• It should be specific
• It should be timely
• Own your feedback, don’t wish-wash
• Understand that it is only feedback, the other
person is not obligated to do anything other
than listen.

42. Bad feedback examples
• You talk too much in meetings
• People don’t seem to like you
• Your PRDC session was ok but could use some
work
• People complain about your attendance

43. Good feedback examples
• I thought your SDEC session would have been
better if you made smoother transitions between
sub-topics. It seemed to jump around which
made it harder for me to follow.
• In that meeting we just had there were several
instances where I tried to voice my opinion but
couldn’t because you raised your voice a bit every
time I tried to talk. When that happens it makes
me feel like you don’t care about what I have to
say.

44. Wrap up
• Your team/company culture is your collective
identity
• The power of culture is wildly underestimated
• You’re not going to attract top talent if your
culture is stodgy, sorry suit and tie shops!