7 Questions to Start Building Your Team Operating System
Without an operating system, you barely have a team.
I've made the transition from individual contributor to manager 3 times.
There's been one thing that has created the most friction.
Not having processes and systems for standard work of the team. It causes chaos when everyone does similar work in different ways at different times.
The antidote is to build an operating system that defines how the team should operate when tackling bodies of work.
You can start by asking yourself 7 questions to gauge the health of your team OS, determine where there's friction, and pinpoint which processes you're missing.
1) How does the team process ad hoc requests?
Every team, especially Analytics teams, have to deal with ad hoc requests.
How do stakeholders request something from you? Do they Slack you individually? Is there a group chat? Do they email you? Do they walk up to your desk?
How do they know the status of their request? How do you give them updates?
These questions need answers. If you don't have answers, you're lacking a critical process.
2) How does the team prioritize projects and tasks?
Prioritization is critical to your team's impact and to your sanity.
When do projects get prioritized? How do tasks get on the top of the list? Who gets to make the decision? How do you de-prioritize something that's not important anymore?
Without proper prioritization, you'll never know if you're working on the most important thing.
3) How does the team know the status of a project?
You should be able to answer this question quickly:
"What's the status of this project?"
There will be many projects in flight within a single team. You can't stay on top of all of them manually, so you need a system to track where things stand.
The worst answer to "what's the status?" is, "I don't know".
4) How does the team make requests of other teams?
Just as your team needs an intake process, you also need a "reverse" intake process for making requests of other teams.
Especially for teams you interact with on a regular basis. Analytics teams always interact with data engineering teams. You need a solid agreement of how the two teams operate, otherwise, everyone will be frustrated.
Treat your sister teams the same way you want your team to be treated.
5) How do stakeholders field questions and get updates?
Where will stakeholders interact with you and how?
Slack DMs, Slack channels, Slack threads, email, Jira tickets, Asana tasks...
There are almost infinite ways to communicate. If you use different channels all the time, you waste time.
Have a consistent channel of communication.
6) How does the team keep track of work across team members?
How does John know what Sally's doing? How do they know what their boss is working on? What's in progress? What's still in the backlog? What's is in the review process?
All work needs to be tracked in a singular place that everyone has visibility to.
7) How does the manager and director know what the team is working on?
Similar to number 7.
Everyone up (and down) the chain of command should have the ability to find out what's being worked on and by who. It makes it easier for leadership to drill down into areas of interest.
The more of these questions you can answer, the better your team will perform.
If you can't answer any of these, pick one that creates the most friction.
If you can answer all of them, pick one that creates the most friction.
Then improve that process to strengthen your system.
A strong operating system is a first step to building a high-performing team.
Are you taking that first step?