Team Building: Staying Positive and the Power of Accountability

TLDR; Ideas to reduce negativity, how to institute a stellar reward system on your team, the most promising AI companies, plus Hot Ones is back!

Dear Reader,

Happy Mini-Friday, guys! We are back with more habits for tech-savvy teams. So far, we’ve discussed:

• What “technology” means
• Writing well and time management
• Leveraging the right tech and self-competition

Let’s dive into the next two! 🏊

They Abhor Negativity

“Negativity is the enemy of creativity.” — David Lynch

Research shows that negativity kills good ideas and can damage your brain.
Somewhere around the world, right now, horrible things are happening. Tech-savvy teams know that focusing on those things will only sap their power.

They realize their evolutionary predisposition to notice threats, and they fight to control and subvert those tendencies.

Negativity can turn any workplace into a nightmare. By focusing on what you can control, and by remaining optimistic, you open your team to solutions.

Ideas to reduce negativity:

→ Set a personal goal to not complain or spread negativity from the news or your personal life for a week.
→ Once you’ve hit that goal, share with the team, or try to go for a month. People will subliminally notice that you aren’t infected by the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that most media spreads. They’ll gravitate towards you, and you’ll create a tech-savvy team.

They Measure, Record, And Reward

“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” — Jesus Christ

Tech-savvy teams set stakes and incentives to reward prophets. By noticing who said what, when, they can incentivize creation. This requires the team to be patient, make predictions, bets, and then own up to who was right and who was wrong.

Tech-savvy teams seek to remember who said what and argued for what point or course of action. They don’t scapegoat those who are continually right, instead, they lift them up and empower them with more resources and trust.

Ideas to institute a stellar reward system on your team:

→ Record who called heads or tails. In anti-technological organizations, people will only point out what’s wrong and not offer solutions. Keep tally of who helped, what worked, and who deserves credit for the solution, not for just pointing fingers at the problem.
→ In the past, it has been hard to manage who said what, but there are new tools available that make tracking this really easy. Use Slack to start building a history of your predictive power. Slack is the cornerstone of organizations that want to create results-based work environments.

The Jist: Positivity, accountability, and rewards matter. Without them, you can’t build an innovative, profitable business machine.

Hot Off The Press 🔥

Fresh from the Pod. Innovations in technologies like cameras, IoT sensors, and AI have enabled the rise of new connected smart cities. But according to Jessica Burton, Global Surveillance Portfolio Marketing Manager at Seagate Technology, the real backbone of that technology infrastructure is data storage.

On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jessica tells us how she is educating system integrators and solution architects about the importance of hard drives and how they can enable smart city innovations.

Mission News 🗞

This section features the best of what the team at Mission HQ is reading, watching, listening to, playing, doing, and meditating on.

Reading 📚

🤖Forbes shared their list of America’s 50 most promising AI companies. Check it out. (Includes some of our personal favs: Ubiquity6, Rev.com, and Kodiak Robotics.)

“Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every industry, allowing vehicles to navigate without drivers, assisting doctors with medical diagnoses, and mimicking the way humans speak. But for all the authentic and exciting ways it’s transforming the tasks computers can perform, there’s a lot of hype, too.”

🦄 Speaking of promising companies, Stripe’s latest funding round has the company valued at $35 billion.

“Venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz were among the investors behind the $250 million investment. The $35 billion valuation, up about 50% from an early 2019 funding round, puts Stripe above Silicon Valley darlings Airbnb Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc.”

🍩 In the world of impressively unhealthy food: KFC’s chicken sandwich featuring two glazed donuts as buns.

Watching 📺

David the Intern’s favorite interview show just launched season 10! With our fav celebs and crazy hot chicken wings, what’s not to like? Give it a whirl, we 100% guarantee you won’t regret it. 🔥👀🐓

Watch: Hot Ones, Season 10 premiere with Shia LaBeouf

In Travel News ✈️

You can now stay at the Downton Abbey Highclere Castle on Airbnb. Remarkably, it’s only $160 a night. Check-in here.

Sign Off 👋

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This was the September 19th edition of the Mission Daily newsletter. If you like what you read, join us on our mission.