Need for "Cheering up" in a work environment

This is T20 Cricket season and everywhere there is cricket fever. Of course after the semi-final exit of the Indian team, the spirits have been dampened for sure but hopefully the cricket crazy nation will get over the disappointment and get ready for the next spectacle – another season of IPL!! Watching a lot of these games and on field behavior in team sports like cricket, football and so on, I have been thinking about the importance of cheering by team mates and spectators.

So what do I mean? For example during a game of cricket, whenever a team member demonstrates some great effort or shows outstanding commitment in either fielding or bowling, it is so good to see several team members immediately pep up that team member. It is not always only the captain who does this. Almost everybody takes part. The team member who put in that effort will get motivated to continue to show that commitment. In the same way, when a bowler bowls a bad ball, several team members encourage the bowler not to lose heart. This peer to peer pepping up is the hall mark of today’s game. The celebration is a bit more pronounced during a major event like getting a wicket, or crossing a milestone. The team members do not wait till the game is over to show each other appreciation for their effort on the ground. Nobody knows the result till the end of the game. Hence this makes it independent of the final result. The thing the players celebrate by pepping each other up is the small yet powerful contributions to the game at that instant which I call as celebrating small wins.

What about spectators? The loud cheering, clapping for every good shot or a good fielding plays a crucial role in pepping up the team they are supporting. Even at an international level or highly competitive game, professional players need this kind of motivation to lift their game. Even if we look at very local games, for example at school or community level, when junior player makes an eye contact with his coach or even parents watching the game after a good shot or a good ball, the gleam in his eyes and the motivation he gets is tremendous.

The technology that has been deployed today in sports be it in multiple cameras, spider cameras or microphones, one can get a glimpse of a lot that is happening on the field and at close up to actually see these behaviors.

What can we learn from this that can be applied in a typical engineering work environment? The work places have generally well established practices of cheering up and celebration post some events like major SW release, achieving a customer milestone, a product launch, work anniversary and so on. However in a typical day to day work situation, when an engineer does some great piece of work, is there a practice for the team members pepping him up? We are familiar with the rewards and recognition practices, but usually it is managers appreciating the team members. It is not much about peer to peer appreciation and showing camaraderie. How do the team members celebrate small wins? I have heard about many companies having deployed new age social media oriented “appreciation platform”. Such platforms can be used by team members to express appreciation to their peers. In some work places, there are practices like “appreciation counters” which typically happens in all-hands meetings or large team meetings. This is where a team member can openly express an appreciation to his colleagues.  

The question though I am bothered with is that does it come anywhere close to the level of camaraderie we see on sporting field? First of all when the pepping up happens immediately after the fantastic effort, the positive effect on the person is far higher. Secondly, and more importantly, the day to day encouragements focuses on the performance process and not wait for a final outcome like the end of the project or year-end appraisal. This I believe would be very conducive for long-term performance improvement and facilitate greater teamwork. I would be very curious to know if and how we can achieve this in our work place.

Beware of the Context!

Workplace behaviors are very contextual and the key is to know the importance of adapting these behaviors based on the context. How desirable behaviors can quickly become unwelcome simply because of the wrong understanding of the context or the context just changed.

One common desirable behavior is: “Be Solid as a Rock”!

Every business runs with a set of performance metrics be it financial, sales, R&D, production, quality or any other. The assumed context is right way of doing business. No matter what pressure people are under to show performance on any of the metrics, the right way of doing business would be the only way of doing business. We need to be Solid as a Rock and show character when it comes to upholding our core values, adhering to principles and integrity. The rock gets viewed as a sacred idol worthy of worship.

Let us imagine that everybody becomes a rock and the context changed to ‘need for improvement’. The behavior that is driven by the thinking of “this has always been done this way or “this is the only way things get done here” or “this is not invented here and hence cannot be good for us”. Then the same rock like behavior poses an obstacle to ‘Improvements and Change’. The rock will end up getting chiseled and hammered.

Take another behavior: “Follow the Process”

Most organizations have reams of definitions of business processes. A lot of time and money is spent on training people on developing an understanding of the process and to implement the same. The management also reinforces people behaviors in following the process. The assumed context is that the experts have defined process steps when followed can deliver a certain output with a predictable outcome or quality. This also assumes that the experts have used accumulated knowledge from the past. Freedom in implementation only leads to more un-predictability. There is no room for ‘Bad Jugaad’ or uncontrolled tweaks in the implementation. So everybody is expected to follow this process.

Again just imagine the context changed where people implementing the process are less qualified or trained or the inputs changed or operating environment changed as compared to what the experts had assumed. Then plain insistence on following process will be meaningless. People will only end up hiding their inefficiencies behind processes. As the Lean experts say, the beauty of process definition and implementation should be in such a way that everybody can keep thinking of ways for continuous improvement. However the Lean thinking also states that any process change or improvisation needs a good review and controlled roll out. This way we can promote more of the ‘Good Jugaad’ thinking among people and make the message “don’t get bogged down by the process”.

As leaders it is so very important to keep reminding people of the ‘context’ along with desirable behaviors.