The science behind the bean, The science behind the team
Like most of the other technical folk out there, I too am a coffee addict. Ever since I started programming, this delicious dark drink has been my true companion through restless days and nights. I take my coffee seriously. I really put any effort into making the best cup of coffee I can, for myself, and for my colleagues (well, at least before the quarantine separated us!). Although I’m not a professional, I have always tried to learn more about creating high-quality coffee. And my friends too know how much I care about it!
A couple of years ago, one of my friends gave me a book on making coffee, as a birthday gift. The book was titled “How to make coffee: The science behind the bean”. And well, upon receiving it, I was a little bit bummed. Why on earth should I care about the science behind the coffee beans? I want to make coffee, not to be a coffee scientist! But after I started to read the book (and all the boring details in it!) I got dragged into it. Finally, I knew why I should do certain things while brewing coffee. Now, I could do more than just follow the steps I read on the internet or saw in a YouTube video. Not just how now I know what and why makes a better coffee!
But what does it have to do with the teams?
Recently, I finished reading “Group Dynamics” (by Donelson R. Forsyth). As the title (obviously) suggests, the book is focusing on the dynamics of the groups: What are they, how are they formed, what is their life cycle, how do they function, what problems do they face, and many more important topics. Unlike many popular books on team management and leadership, this is not a book on personal experiences or filled with shiny and glorious stories on how to manage your team. This, in fact, is a book on the science behind the groups!
(While groups and teams are a little bit different, each team is a form of group. And anything you learn about groups can be used in teams too. So by reading this book, you will learn about the teams and their dynamics as well.)
But is it useful to know about the science behind the teams? After all, we want to manage our team, not to be a team scientist! Isn’t it better to read all these more practical, and more attractive books on team leadership?
Well, like making coffee, most of the sources, especially well-marketed ones, answer this question: What to do? For example, these books give us a lot of real-life examples of how to lead a team, how a leader should act, how they should communicate with the team members, how they should follow the goals, etc. Many books on this topic follow the same pattern, by reading them, you will acquire a great set of actions or behaviors, or even values on leadership. But there’s a great problem with these fast leadership recipes. They rarely give you depth on the subject. They only tell you what to do (and throw in a lot of successful examples, often exaggerated and distorted ones, to convince you that these work), but they never tell you why you should do them. They never tell you why these work, or in what circumstances they’re effective, and more.
The main question is this: between What? and Why? Which should we answer first?
In a simple world, where all you want to do is to put the same amount of the same coffee in the same coffee maker, to brew the same cup of coffee, every day, you may not really care about the why. You just want to make the same coffee, and nothing more. Great. But what if you’re going to use a different type of coffee bean, or want to make coffee in a new machine, or you want to brew your very own type of coffee? Now just knowing what to do is not enough. You will need to know why you do each step, so you can modify and re-create each step.
The same goes for the teams. If only we lived in a static world, where nothing about the teams, their problems, goals, communications, members, would change. That would be great! We would open a recipe on leadership, follow its steps, and there, we have a high-quality, well-performing, and perfectly satisfied team. If only. But as we know, it’s not that easy. Each team faces its own unique problems. The goal, the structure, the communications, the context (e.g. the cultural settings), and many more attributes on the teams can change, and easily make our team a unique one. Another team’s perfect solution may lead to our team’s disaster.
We can’t simply adopt a tool, just because it has worked somewhere else. We should know why and how something has worked, so we can modify and adapt it to our unique team.
It’s not just about the teams. The world is changing every day. Twenty years ago, online communication was not as widespread as it is today. Ten years ago, smartphones, and all their applications, were yet to become a global must-have tool. And last year, quarantine was not still a thing. Today, not just every decade, but every year, our world faces some fundamental changes. And all these, seriously affect our teams. We can’t just sit and wait for the “Leadership experts” to tell us what to do.
We should always be ready to come up with unique solutions for our unique teams, and our unique problems. And for that, we need to have deep knowledge of our teams, and what happens in them. And more importantly, we should know why and how they happen. Only then, we’re able to adapt to the ever-changing problems we face, and only then, we can get the best out of our teams.
Next time you’re brewing coffee in your french press, ask yourself, why your brew time is X minutes. And next time you read an article, trying to convince you that bottom-up leadership is an amazing solution for your team, ask yourself, why and how and when this might (or might not) work. Don’t accept the fast recipes, look for the science, be it behind your beans, or your teams!
Hi! I’m Hasan Noori, Co-founder, and CTO of Formaloo. For the past 11 years, I’ve been working with, many teams, like startups (as a co-founder, manager, mentor, …), volunteer teams, student societies, and more. I will share my experiences on group dynamics in these teams in my articles. If you have any questions or feedback on my articles, feel free to send me an email on hasan@formaloo.com or Connect with me in my Linkedin :)
