6 Things That Destroy Product Teams
Teamwork does make the dream work. But it only happens when team members work together as one. It’s a typical situation when a group of ordinarily competent people can’t seem to get anything done when they work together.
Here are 6 common problems that can derail your team and what team management can do about them:
1. Lack of trust between team members
When people who work together don’t trust each other, they cannot call themselves a team. They are just people who participate in a project. Lack of trust is a very common problem in remote teams. It is especially true when a team is created specifically for a new project, and people don’t know each other well.
When people join a new team, trust is neutral. Management needs to invest time in building trust.
Embrace the transactional nature of trust
Trust is created as a result of interaction between team members. The first few interactions determine whether the trust moves upward or not. It’s vital to create conditions so that the first interactions between team members have a positive impression on everyone.
Practice team activities
Building trust takes time. It’s important to create activities where all team members can spend time together, getting to know each other personally. When it comes to design, brainstorming sessions work perfectly for that. Diversity of thoughts and opinions can positively impact the product design process.
Prevent personality conflicts
Nothing kills a team’s spirit faster than personality conflicts. While personality conflicts are often easy to spot, resolving them can be extremely difficult. You need to understand the nature of the conflict — why it is happening in the first place, and based on that, you can create a strategy to resolve it.
2. Lack of clarity
Just like clarity is an integral property of good design, it is also an integral property of teamwork. Lack of clarity can cause confusion and make team members make assumptions about the project and its goals, which will often be incorrect.
Its vital to set:
Clear project objectives
It is simply terrible when the team is unclear about why they are invited to do the work in the first place.
What are we building? Why are we building it?
Who will use this product? Why will they use it?
What is the project deadline?
Those are fundamental questions that need to be answered before the project starts. It is wrong to start a project without answering those questions and believing you will do it along the way. At best, you spend extra time; at worst, you fail the project. A team that is confused will have a bad outcome.
Connect the dots between what your team is doing and why they’re doing it.
Team management should always build a shared understanding of the goal the team is pursuing. Communicate the nature of the project to your team and ensure team members are able to articulate not only the rationale of the project but also its long-term goals.
Clear roles in project
When you hear things like “I thought you’re responsible for that!” it clearly indicates that team members don’t understand their roles. It should be clear for team members who do what from day one.
Think of a team as a puzzle in which all individual pieces fit perfectly together.
3. Lack of motivation
Lack of motivation can kill creativity faster than anything.
Good leadership is must
Lack of motivation typically happens because of poor leadership. When management doesn’t have much reason to create great products, team members rarely think differently. As a result, team members want a project to be over as quickly as possible.
Set reasonable expectations
Unreasonable expectations don’t motivate people to do their work. Knowing that you will never reach your targets isn’t very motivational.
Share a big picture with team mates
Management needs to create an environment where people have a strong sense of purpose. Team members need to know how the project they’re working on contributes to the company goals. If it is hard to identify this connection, it will be hard to convince team members about the importance of their work.
4. Poor communication between team members
Forgotten work and missed deadlines are just a few outcomes of poor communication between team members. Poor communication can also lead to situations when team members work in isolation.
Set clear communication rules
When team members feel like they’re on their own, it can cause them to become disillusioned with their work. It is wrong to expect that team members will establish their communication rules. Creating effective communication rules is one of the priorities that management should have.
Prevent isolationism
Isolationism is a tendency to work in isolation from the team. Isolationism is very common for remote teams without clear communication protocols because sometimes people meet only twice — the team would only meet once to divide the work, and then we wouldn’t meet again until the project was due. But even when a team has a clear protocol for communication, some team members might ignore this protocol. In this case, team management needs to learn what makes the person behave this way.
Connect with people who prefer to work alone individually and listen to how they feel about the work.
If the root cause is personal ego, then it is better to prevent such behavior right from the early days. When the personal ego is more important than the team’s progress, the individual interests will dominate over the group’s interests, creating a “me vs. them” atmosphere that isn’t good for anyone.
5. Micromanagement
When team members have to get approval for everything they do, it slows down the workflow considerably.
Control leads to compliance, but high compliance can lead to rejection and low engagement.
It is vital to find the right balance between “Too much management” and “too little management.” Just like team members should trust each other, management needs to trust their employees. Team members should have the autonomy to make day-to-day decisions about their work.
6. Too much criticism
Too much criticism without praise for the accomplishments can kill any project. When team members know that all their management does is critique their work and rarely praise their accomplishments, they give up.
Acknowledge people
Make sure people feel valued in their roles. A small appreciation like a shoutout in Slack (i.e., “Check what John did, it’s amazing!”) can be a significant inspiration to work better.
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