Follow up to Tucson

So, now the question is how to leverage the Enneagram. Next week we have a staff meeting. I would like to get feedback from the team on the group meeting in Arizona. I also want to come up with some practices each team can do — remember that we broke the team down into pairs. And then to try and figure out how people can report back to the team. My biggest fear is that  people will slowly forget what we learned together.

Another question is how to integrate people when they join the team in the future. For example, Andy in Canada, needs to learn the Enneagram and then I have to figure out how he can integrate those learnings into his work. It also looks like a few other people will be joining the team in the coming months.

We have a strong ‘7’ side to us. What does that mean for the team. We need someone to play the devil’s advocate.

It’s ironic that the team is brand new — because we have one new mother, one new father and expecting father. Lots of ‘life’ being generated by the team.

I have one member of the team. I am concerned about. They have not been getting up to speed as quickly as I hoped. I am sensitive to the fact that my 7 type might contrast a bit with their type and style. So the question is how long to I wait until I confront them. Probably not too long. It doesn’t serve anyone to wait to deal with any potential issues. The only reason I thought I might wait is because my 7 behavior might be knocking them off their game.

Tucson

Dr. David Daniels met us in Tucson for our 1 – day training with the team. The goals for the training were to discuss what makes a good leader, discuss the 9 types of the Enneagram and then discuss how the team can leverage the Enneagra. The group has a strong 7 streak in it. There are several 5s and 7s… We are in our heads and inour gut, but not enough in our hearts. We did some interesting excercises. The group broke into thei r working teams. Julie and Jeff. Paul and Manny. Rhonda and Caleb. Scott and Steve and Zach. We then asked questions of each other. We asked what are the potential issues of our type and how people should interact with our type. More needed on this. It was difficult to find a conference room, so we sat in the library to work — which was great because it was a little crowded and it had cozy couches. That brought the team together. Much more than a steril conference room. During the whole time, Charlotte observed us. Dr. Daniels had some classic phrases, such as the key to any relationship (especially marriage) is ‘commitment to process.’ That makes me realize or helps me identify a key characteristic to look for in a woman.

Kicking off the Enneagram

The team has agreed to be part of a Stanford University and Insitute of Transpersonal Psychology study on the Enneagram and its impact in a business environment. David Daniels, who is one of the gurus in leadership, will be a team trainer and will work with us for six months. He and I prepared an outline for the first workshop which will start next week in Tucson. Charlotte O will be the research and will be observing everything we do. She is giving us some surveys and assessment studies to complete before we embark on this new adventure. Most people on the team are not comfortable with the word Enneagram, so we are calling it 9 Leadership Types. Charlotte has us taking the Glenn Parker Team Development Survey, Team Effectiveness Survey, The Perceirved Stress Scale and the Positive States of Mind Scale. Wow.. that’s a lot of forms. I sure hope the team doesn’t mind.

Monarch Notes

In two days, the final two people will join the team. One was on maternity leave and one had to be hired. This will mean that we are located in six states and two countries. We are also kicking of our Enneagram project, but will call it the Team Development project because no one knows what they hell an Enneagram is and few peopel can pronounce it. The team seems to be jelling, but there is still a way to go. We now haove our staff meetings in place. And we are beginning — or the team is beginning to realize that I want to build a learning organization. In almost ever conversation I ask ‘what did you learn.’ When I did this last week, it was interestingt that the more junior folks (the ones located in Tucson and who have experience working the phones) were the only ones to have learnings to share. Tremendous insight that I think people in Mt. View sometimes try and solve problems and proivde solutions before trying to figure out the VOC (Voice of Customer). In the past, unless you were on the phone, learning about a customer was an event driven affair — that would take place in a focus group, usability study, etc. Now it is a whole new ball game. All anyone has to do is go online and participate or ‘lurk’ in a community. I call it the ‘Monarch Notes’ for our employees. So the least our team could do is get online and read…

Some tactics ..

I am using two tactics to get several folks from different offices to work closely together.
I am pairing one person from the Tucson office with one person from the Mt. View office. I am also using the Enneagram – a topography of personality types — to help everyone understand how each team member’s responds to success, stress, anxiety,… and how every person handles situations differently..
The ‘pairing’ strategy and the Enneagram approach are just two different ways to bring teams together.

First entry

Finally finished assembling my new team at Intuit. I am now managing the QuickBooks Online Community team. We live in six states and two countries. The challenge now will be managing people from different disciplines and backgrounds. In setting up the team, I have encountered some interesting challenges. The first cultural difference is what instant messaging software to use. Some of the hosts on the team — old internet diehards who have been hosting/moderating communities for over 6 years, use AOL’s AIM technology. Then there are the tech support folks which tend to be new to community, fairly new to the web and come from the call center. They prefer to use Yahoo Messanger. One member of the team, who is blind, wants to use Vayusphere Instant Messenging because his speech software doesn’t work well with AIM or YIM. I pride myself on knowing about the latest and greatest web technologies, but never heard of Vayusphere. I need to research it futher.

Other tools for the team include setting up a private discussion board and a WIKI for the team to use. We will probably use video conferencing and WebX as well. It will be interesting to see how I can get folks in multiple cities to work well together. One idea I had was to take 1 person from Tucson, Arizona (where we have 5 employees) and pair them with 1 employee from Mt. View, which is the home office. Historically, the satalite offices have not felt appreciated by the corporate office. Hopefully this tactic will make it easier for the two groups to work together.