Team Management
Our Team Management process is all about how our teams work.
We already established that we want to enforce Strategic Management in our business. We also mentioned that we believe in providing Context, Not Control and that our Leadership style enables us to do that.
Our teams are growing at a very fast pace and we sell a niche product to a global audience. In this situation, it can be a challenge to provide everyone with the right context. How can we address this challenge?
The way we manage our teams is by having a balance between Strategic Management and Leadership. Our leaders need to be strategic and manage with goals in mind. They must follow some basic principles for this:
- There is a need for accountability to meet deliverables
- Deliverables must be followed up
- Leaders exist in our structure to help and coach.
At the same time, they must provide context to employees by:
- Identifying employees in need of help or who are underperforming
- Recognizing and encouraging high performers and possible future leaders
- Motivating teams through empowering, not micromanaging.
Another challenge to the management process is the risk of data breaches and information leaks. Therefore, we need to have accountability between teams and individuals, through processes which are not enabling any risks to data.
Teams Structure
Our team structure is made out of Divisions, Departments and Teams.
Department
A Department is composed of a group of frameworks. It is managed by a Tech Lead, who is responsible for maintaining its documentation in the relevant Confluence space and Jira project.
Division
A Division is focused on a large part of the business, such as Software Engineering or HR & Operations. It is managed by a Level 2 manager who ensures optimal performance and helps and coaches employees.
Team
Teams compose a Division. For example, the HR team and Operations team form the HR & Operations Division. Teams are managed by a Level 1 manager (responsible for coordinating the processes) and a Level 2 manager (who handles the team’s growth).
Here is an example of the Teams, Divisions and Departments structure:
growth
To promote accountability and avoid micromanagement we decided that the best way to keep our leaders, departments, teams and divisions informed about everything happening in the company would be through structured touchpoints called ceremonies.
Ceremonies
- Ceremonies:
Our Ceremonies are touchpoints for leaders, divisions, and teams to get aligned and it helps to avoid chaos, to broadcast information to all members, to bring common goals and vision, to share progress, and to reduce dependency and communication issues.
In most traditional companies, the lower levels communicate with their leaders to align tasks and obtain approvals and maybe with their partners when it comes to the operational side of the projects. In Secure Group, on the other hand, every employee communicates with every employee related to their project in order to share information. The outcome of such ceremonies is the handover of a process to some other team, department, or division. The role of the leader, in this case, is to guarantee that both parties reached an agreement that will help Secure Group reaches its strategic goals.
- Strategic Sessions
The objective of strategic sessions is to solve problems and spark ideas and innovation to achieve business goals. The outcome of a strategic session always leads to a strategic improvement. Such sessions are conducted by a manager and consist of:
- Discussion stage 1: Problem Framing
The goal is to walk out with a single (yes: single) problem statement.
- Who - Who has this problem? Have you validated that the problem is real? Can you prove it?
- What - What is the nature of the problem? What research or supporting evidence do you have?
- Why - Why is the problem worth solving? What is the impact on the customer?
- Where - Where does this problem arise? Have you/your team observed this problem occurring?
- Discussion stage 2: Analysis of strategic goals and definition of initiatives to address the problem