What are your “Flowerbox Indicators”?
About 15 years ago, I was impressed by a TV commercial. In a Bank of America ad about their investments in crappy neighborhoods (they didn’t phrase it that way), the spokesperson said the bank knew they’d succeeded, “when the flowerboxes begin showing up on front porches.”
Teams have the same sort of indirect indications, too, for good or ill. I’m writing an article about such non-obvious metrics that managers can use to judge whether a team is healthy.
One example is self-organizing get-togethers. It’s one thing for a manager to create team-building exercises. But when the team members arrange for such gatherings themselves — and it includes the whole team, not merely a clique — you know you have an actual team, not a bunch of employees working on the same tasks. (A negative “flower box indicator” of a project cancellation is when the company no longer refills the snack bar; but in this article I want to keep things positive.)
For managers and other leaders: What have you recognized as “flowerbox indicator”? I want to give examples that managers can use to recognize and celebrate success.
(We can have a great conversation here, but I do need to quote people by name, company, title if I use the input in the article.)
I love the "totem" -- and it makes me think of a similar example.
In the late 80s, I worked at Lotus Development for a year, doing QA on a product that never was released. But the team was a close-knit one. And one sign of it is that we had a "team food" -- takeout "suan le chow show" (a unique dish, basically soup dumplings with bean sprouts in a VERY spicy sauce) from Mary Chung's in Cambridge. There must have been a team order at least twice a month. The 1-2-3 for Mac team down the hall had different "team food" -- gourmet popcorn (before it was a thing) and high-end coffee (before it was a thing). So I think there's a team "identity" wrapped up in an external object, where the object doesn't matter as much as the "this is ours" sense.
Groups will coalesce around things like this organically, usually as a result of some common shared interest or experience.
"Oh you like Marvel movies? me too!"
Food is a fairly common and also very powerful one. The ritual of sharing food with teammates, either through ordering take out or going to the same lunch spot regularly is maybe one of the best team experiences.
It can also be used to "fake" team cohesion until something takes it's place. Picture the boss taking everyone out to lunch. Is it forced? yea. Does it still work? To a point. Usually most effective with new teams, as a way to kind of accelerate the building of social bonds. It can be kind of awkward at first though. When it's used a a "fix" for a team that's been together for months or years it's usually like using a band-aid to fix a broken leg. There are bigger picture-things that need to be addressed.
Coincidentally, I still don't understand the concept of gourmet popcorn. Is it just popcorn with weird toppings? Or maybe it's popcorn that has had the semi-popped kernels rejected?
I think this is an extremely important lesson - one that pairs well with your first bullet point - that a lot of people miss. I know it took me a while to get it through my head that when your idea gets shot down, it isn't something personal. I think that's just something that people need to learn over time.
In a healthy workplace, absolutely. It's worth keeping in mind that there are work environments where it is 100% personal, and people will shut down ideas just because Bob said it first and Bob did that thing that I didn't like 3 months ago and now it's my mission to destroy him.
The real frustrating part is when you get "burn victims". Which is how we referred to team members who had carry-over toxic behavior from a previous job. With some personal 1-1 feedback and some trust, that behavior can be corrected (usually), but it's hard.
I definitely felt some of that when I started at my current job. Things were done so differently. It was much less cut throat that it took me a few weeks to understand that I was making assumptions about my new job based on my past employer’s behavior. Luckily, I adapted within a few weeks and got the hang of how things worked in a properly functioning work place.
I have a feeling from talking to others that having a healthy work environment is a rarity here in the US.
"Burn victims" is such a perfect expression for that phenomenon!
These are wonderful signs... but a step away from what I'm looking for. The best way to put it is "something you can point at." You can count flower boxes, or at least recognize that there are more of them than there are. While you can't quantify people's general kindness in any external way.