In this post:
I share some concepts from a book and consider my own behaviors against those ideas.
I found these Organizational Principles written by a General W. L. Creech in this massive compendium of essays and articles.
1. Have a set of overarching principles and philosophies…
On my first official day in the office, I told my team a little about myself and that I’d like our team to keep a few things in mind no matter who we’re interacting with: Fun, Focus, Feedback.
You should have a little fun when you are working. We are too likely to spend too much time at work, so if you don’t enjoy it, it’s likely killing you.
Focus when you are working to make sure you’re addressing the right thing and using your limited time well. When you focus, your meetings should only be as long as necessary, and you can probably go home when you’re supposed to, feeling reasonably productive, instead of going home late, feeling dissatisfied with the day.
Feedback helps everyone.
2. Use goals throughout.
I think I’ve been working here long enough to understand enough of what’s going on, so I finally set up goals for the quarter. I did this with the hopes of making BINGO cards (fun?) and to try focusing the team on those objectives throughout the quarter. Ideally, whatever is happening at work should always have something to do with those goals (ignoring administrative stuff, I suppose).
3. Measure productivity/ efficiency at several levels.
I’m not yet doing this, so I need to consider how to best implement this. I imagine that implementing explicit quarterly objectives will help focus my design of any such metrics.
…those objectives might be my only real thing I can track, though.
4. Create leaders at many levels, not just a few.
Another one I’ll need to take time to consider and implement.
I do have a very junior member on my team. I think he will be with me just for one more year.
If I can encourage them to operate close to the level of my other young but seasoned teammates before moving on to their next assignment, I would be pretty satisfied.
What does that look like?
5. Integrate authority and responsibility – not separate them. Know the difference.
Do I hold my subordinates accountable? Are they allowed to make mistakes?
If I don’t, how might I?
6. Set up internal competition and comparison where feasible.
I’m not sure this is feasible on my team, but if it was, what might it look like? Would it be fair? Could it be made fair somehow?
7. Create a climate of pride.
For our line of work, this would require some communication with warfighters to get their feedback. Our work takes a long time and it’s not always obvious that we’ve done our jobs well unless our delivered products are operationally exercised.
I might be able to find other ways to create a climate of pride, though.
8. Create a climate of professionalism.
Our interactions within the office are often casual.
I think our team enjoys that, but professionalism is important. How might we carefully instill that professional sense while maintaining a sufficiently casual climate?
9. Educate, educate, educate.
Education is important in any line of work. The difficulty of the acquisition world lies in the vast differences among every program. What worked in prior experiences is likely specific to that program’s factors and may apply in many ways but not in others.
I do need to identify the simplest aspects and ensure that my teammates are at least decently suited to ask useful questions – that may honestly be the best we can do from an education standpoint.
What can I do to keep curiosity heightened?
10. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Do I talk to my boss enough?
Do I talk to my peers enough?
Do I talk to my team enough?
Do I talk to my customers enough?
Do I talk to external partners enough?
Does everyone have the information they need to operate optimally?
Am I receptive to information I get from others?
Am I getting the inputs I need to operate optimally?
Am I shutting anyone down unintentionally?
Is communication clear?
11. Create organizational discipline and loyalty.
This feels closely aligned with the questions associated with climates of pride and professionalism. Besides having standards and encouraging people to feel good about the place they work, perhaps there’s a space for making the work feel particularly meaningful.
12. Provide everyone a stake in the outcome.
Jokingly, this kind of sounds like holding employee families hostage or something.
More seriously, this may be a matter of keeping the purpose of our work in the narrative of our daily activities or something like that – and making sure every team member feels distinct responsibility for specific work.
13. Make it better.
I think our work is interesting, but the workplace, the processes we use, the work we do – none of it is guaranteed to stay good without some level of pressure. So, I need to identify places to apply appropriate pressure.
14. Make it happen.
Applying that pressure is an active effort, requiring recognition of actions needing energy, actually taking those actions, and reviewing those actions for their effects.
15. Make it last.
Since I’ll eventually leave – as should most of the team, eventually – it’s important to maintain historical information/ context for our successors. It also would likely help to document processes for the sake of making successors’ lives easier.
Lessons learned are only useful if they are available in the future.
Hmm.
Might have to print this out and take it with me to the office…
