By The Readers Issue # 104 - Power of Tribes - How To Build An Internal Network
S01E04 - Tribes are rooted in stories, legends, and knowledge sharing. How do you build your own internal tribe and become more effective project leaders?
Howdy Tribe -
Today's newsletter is going out to 203 (+8) dedicated readers. 🎉😭🙏 A new milestone!!!
Continuing with the series on answering questions from the readers.
(Dec 1) Lessons On Stakeholder Management For Large Cross-Functional Projects
(Dec 8) Psychology of Project Management: Leading Without Authority
(Dec 29) Challenges of Building In BigTech
Welcome to Building Romes Newsletter - By The Readers Issue, Season no. 1 Essay 4 🎉
Essay
What problem are we solving today?
You have met those Project Managers or Product Managers who seem to know everyone. Not just at a social level but when problems arise, they know the right people to pull into the fray and solve the problem. They have answers for everything and if they don’t they find them out. People trust them and get excited when they join the project.
This is the power of a Tribe.
But, they have to be an extrovert? No. You don’t have to be to build a tribe. You have to understand what it means to have a tribe.
Lessons Learned and A Solution
When I started at Apple in Feb 2012, my onboarding was quite unique. There was nothing written down beyond engineering documentation and tools help. I was told it’s because of Steve’s desire for secrecy. That meant that my first 30 days at the job was going around and meeting people from all across the iOS team.
“We are tribal. You won’t find anything written down. Go meet people and ask them questions.”
Tribes are rooted in stories, legends, and knowledge sharing.
During my seminars at Stanford University for Certificate in Advanced Project Management, our Program Lead, John Warren, made a statement that has changed my perspective about project management in technology:
Project Management 1.0 was about the standardization of processes to do work.
Project Management 2.0 is all about relationship management.
As Project Managers, our powers lie in our ability to assemble and lean on people to help us through difficult engineering problems, challenges, or roadblocks.
How do you build a tribe of your own?
Focus on people as much as the work. In a pre-COVID world, when we all were working from our offices, I never sat at my desk. I was always moving, just hanging around the engineering teams. Why? Because, I wanted to be closer to the action and not just be another “What is the new ETA?” email message; my goal ensuring a human connection existed with my engineering teams. Before you know it, engineers start sharing project issues before you even ask for it. So, what do you do in a COVID world where everyone is working from home? Take a more active effort to participate in engineering teams meetings whenever possible, socials, or learnings events like demos etc.
Find the star performers at work and learn from them. At every job, I have always tried to find people who are smarter than me, better than me, and more effective than me. When I find them, I go and hound them to teach me their ways.
Build great documentation. Every tribe or civilization evolved when they began writing things down. You don’t have to employe the Jobs Doctrine on secrecy but great engineering teams have great documentation on how to do great work and what is the team culture. When you start writing things down, people see your name in the authors field and when they get stuck, they will treat you as purveyor of more information on the subject.
Ask questions. Lots of Questions. Asking a tribe elder to tell you a story is less effective than asking specific questions of how things work and why they work this way. Whenever I work with a new engineering team, my focus is always on why is it that we do the way we do things. Motivation behind mechanics of a system reveals things about not just the system but also the tendencies of the people who built them. All artists leave an imprint or signature within their work.
Book Clubs For Everyone. Engineers, Project Managers, Product Managers, QA engineers, Designers all are welcome. This is a new one for me and something I wish I had seen more of. I have come across engineering teams that hold Book Clubs on topics outside of work - new programming languages, design patterns, leadership, strategy, devops, anything that is interesting. Remember, Tribes are built on knowledge sharing.
“Water Cooler” Slack Channels. Create slack channels to allow teams to share articles, blog posts, books, podcasts etc that maybe relevant for teams either because of the work they do or teach people something they didn’t know before. This is an effective approach that I have seen remote teams use.
If you are new to something, spend 1:1 time with engineers to learn. The 1st team I supported at Apple was the Core Darwin team. Kernel development was not my expertise nor strength so, the engineering manager complained to my senior team member that I wasn’t effective at my job. When I found out about this, I was devastated. Instead of feeling down or letting the imposter syndrome set in, I mustered up the courage and asked the manager how can I get better at supporting the Kernel team; he offered to spend time during our 1:1s to dive into one particular topic from the Kernel world and go from their. Tribes recognize those who seek knowledge and bless them with it.
Final Thoughts
You will notice that a lot of what I have mentioned has nothing to with the traditional concept of “networking”. True group strength is built upon a common canon, story arch, knowledge exchange that becomes norms of doing work. There are a lot of things Project Managers can do to create a flow of knowledge sharing. However, this requires us to recognize and go beyond just doing the bare minimum for Project requirements. Go beyond the “What work do we need to” “What is the ETA for this task”. You have to have a curious mind and ask a lot of great questions.
Smart people love to share the knowledge they have worked hard to develop through trial and tribulation. They enjoy questions. They aren’t often great at writing them down. Seek the smart ones, learn from them, and document it. Become the anthropologist. I can imagine no better way to learn something new.
Leverage the power of the Tribe.
Until next time. 👋🏽
-Aadil
P. S. How do you build your own internal tribe?
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