Divvying it Up
splitting up team strengths
The hardest lesson to learn while working with teams is how to appropriately split up the tasks at hand.
If you have one person from each discipline, this is fairly easy.
But, when you wind up with a series of multidisciplinary designers — things get tough.
I’ll be honest.
I don’t know the answer.
I’m learning with each new team, but I still screw up.
Our team at IBM Maelstrom is currently in full production flow.
Wireframes, rapid prototyping, experience roadmaps,
and presentation structuring.
Normally, you might split this work up by having ux designers and front devs work on wireframes and prototypes. Research/product people handling experience roadmaps and presentation structuring. And visual designers skinning the wireframes and presentations. Everyone would have their own piece that they’re responsible for.
But what happens with multidisciplinary teams?
Picture this:
The visual designer is also UX
The front dev is also UX.
The UX designers are also research.
Clearly, you work as one symbiotic organism.
Just kidding, in reality —
someone gets left out.
So, there are two things that have to be addressed:
Being aware of others
Taking initiative
Two sides of the same coin
people often have trouble in one of these areas, not both.
Obsessive Self Starter
This person loves taking initiative and will often never be without work. If they are not given work, then they carve out something to do.
However, the problem with self-starters is that they can get very wrapped up in what they’re doing. They lose track of others, and become unaware. Unaware of the fact that someone else has nothing to do, and they need to be encouraged to take initiative as well — just as the self-starter has done.
Observant Collaborators
These people recognize the work that the self-starter is doing, and want to be a part of it. But, they feel that they have been pushed out of the loop. And they aren’t sure what to do about it.
They don’t want to just jump in and take control, because they’re so far outside of the self-starters enveloped universe, that they wouldn’t know where to start.
These people are observant. They are hard-working. But they are stuck.
Working Together
both sides have learning to do
The self-starter has to learn to be more aware. To share their work. And to engage others. Instead of hoarding it all to themselves and their cohorts.
The observant collaborator has to learn to do a better job of taking initiative. Be unafraid of slapping the self-starter awake to the reality around them, so that they can engage as a team.
As I stated before, this is by no means a perfect formula. In fact, it’s not even a formula at all. It’s just conjecture.
Conjecture that a good teammate will have a healthy balance of:
being aware
and… taking initiative
So, evaluate yourself. Who do you think you are? And what do you think you need to practice?
I know that I need to learn to be more aware of others.
That is my weakness.
What’s yours?
