Team Efficiency VS Team Chemistry
Bill Campbell helped to build some of Silicon Valley’s greatest companies — including Google, Apple, and Intuit. He was best known for mentoring several top leaders as Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezzos, between many others. He was someone known to be obsessed with operational excellence, and most of all, for being everyone’s best friend.
Starting with Trip Reports
It is said that during staff meetings, besides the usual agenda, Bill would start by asking what people did for the weekend, or, in case they just came back from a trip, he’d ask for an informal trip report.
This could range from Kiteboarding and other extreme sports activities, to someone’s daughter’s soccer achievements or other’s golf score. Sometimes this would be accompanied with photos and pins on a map.
The objective, was first to let team members know each other as people outside of work, with families and “a life”. And second, to get everyone involved and invested in the meeting in a fun and relaxed way.
Team Chemistry VS Team Efficiency
Bill, while known for being obsessed for operational excellence, believed that fostering good and deep human relationships between each other was as important as improving sales or marketing numbers.
While this may seem as a lost of time for some, Bill understood it as an intangible but very valuable investment into the teams chemistry. Chemistry that, as academic research as shown, results in happier and higher performant teams.
There will always be tension between operational efficiency and creativity, as it should be. There will always need to be a balance, and teams will need to adapt to the current context: during certain periods there will be no time for trip reports, and you need to go straight to the point.
But always obsessing over efficiency, to — for example — eliminate small talk to save 5min of a meeting, may result in a team that’s way bellow their true potential.
There’s more to meetings than meets the eye.
As a Product Manager, team efficiency should be one of our obsessions. But the importance given to a teams well being, relationships and chemistry, should be even bigger.
I’m Daniel, Product manager with 8 years of experience — from working on MVPs to mature businesses -, and in building a great company (Whitesmith) from the start.
Paper Planes is where I reflect on my experiences and lessons on the craft of Product Management.
