Tim Osborn’s Blog

Teamwork is essential to our ability to delight our clients. We have a lot of talented people with a breadth of experience that come together to create solutions. Yet while we aggressively evaluate and use technology to help our teams collaborate, our first priority is to understand the principles that guide our choices and actions. It’s not the latest and greatest tools that generate synergy amongst us. No, we work well together and collaborate effectively because we believe in the value of teamwork. Borrowing heavily from John Maxwell’s Talent is Never Enough:

• Teamwork divides the effort and multiplies the effect
• Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships
• Great teams create community
• Adding value to others adds value to you

We are passionate about technology, and our Devs do use the latest and greatest software, tools and devices. But we are even more passionate about teams of talented people using that technology to work together and do amazing things.

BEEEEEEP! Well before dawn my alarm wakes me on most Tuesdays. I hit the snooze button (best 8 minutes ever!) and tell myself perhaps the clock has malfunctioned, or I try to convince myself it is still Monday, or I just lay there and whine silently to myself so as to not wake my wife  (yes, I can simultaneously be thoughtful and have a pity party). Then I remember that six other guys are doing the same thing, but will choose to get out of bed, shower, scrape ice off their car windshields (this time of year), and make their way to some central location that has strong, hot coffee. And I while I don’t want to go, I don’t want to miss even more.

What draws us to add an extra 60 minutes to our already long work days? None of us work together,  and we span multiple industries – it’s all voluntary. In our group there are company presidents, a regional director, managers and even a back-to-college student (after being laid off). We meet because we believe we can gain from each other’s experiences, insights, and even questions. We’re united by a desire to be better. Better leaders, bosses, employees, husbands and fathers.

Leaders are often prone to isolation, frequently bearing responsibilities and stress and unsure who can be trusted. They can feel pressured to always have the right answer in hand, as if their credibility might suddenly evaporate with a display of uncertainty, or (gasp) admitted shortcomings. Eventually the inner circle shrinks and shrinks, until there are just two that remain: a leader and his shadow.

Are you trying to be the best leader/employee/etc. you can be on your own? That’s a lot of burden. Find a peer group that you trust. Reach out, start small, and find one or two others. Don’t wait for an invitation, send one. Be committed – to showing up, to being honest, to holding confidence, and to giving your best to others. The ROI is in your favor…even when the "I" means waking to beep, beep, beep at an hour typically seen only by baristas.

The 2008 USA Olympic men’s 4×100 relay team was the first to have all six runners on the team (counting both alternates) to have run the open 100 meters in sub-10 second time. Canada had none. Team USA was the clear favorite for gold. But with a dropped baton they never made it out of the semifinals, while Canada moved on. Watching the athletes perform at this level of competition you realize that it is not enough to have four fast runners on your relay team – every team has that. The winning team is the one who runs fast and also efficiently executes their handoffs. A drop is a disaster. But even a bobble, or a member having to slow down, or turn around, forget it – the race is lost. But with a clean handoff, no effort or time is wasted. The one receiving the baton does so at peak speed and takes it from there. And it’s beautiful to watch.

At Southworks we view our emails like handoffs. We practice and strive to make them cleanly. We’ve all had the experience of emails bouncing back and forth between people adding only a single point when three is required, or answering just one question of the four posed. In our company culture, those emails represent botched handoffs.

To help with this, we follow some simple A-B-C-D-E principles:

• Action. Put items requiring action at the top.
• Brief. Don’t assume the user will page down - keep it to the point and concise as possible.
• Context. Include the required context the reader requires to answer or act on your email. (Yes, some tension exists between supplying the necessary context and keeping it concise.)
• Default. When possible, specify the default action you will take if you do not hear from the receiver within a particular time.

And our number one guide:

• Easy. Make it easy to read and easy to act on.

After all, you just never know when a botched handoff might take your team from being the favorite to simply a spectator.

The way to get a front row seat at TechEd isn’t to line up early, but rather to parachute into the conference.

Five weeks before the event, I met with Zach Owens and Anthony Carrabino to discuss if Southworks could help them put together an application to show off several cool features and technologies in SQL Server 2008. Anthony’s only request was that it be something amazing. And while Zach also wanted something cool, he really wanted whatever we created to be credible; as in, it had to be fully implemented. Nice pair, those two. So together we decided to create a Web application that:

1. Submitted images and text to the cloud (i.e. SQL Server Data Services)
2. Used Microsoft Sync Services to synchronize from the cloud to the local SQL database
3. Used a WPF app with to perform SQL Server spatial queries and and Virtual Earth to display the results.
4. Not quite sexy enough, Moe Khosravy thought he’d chip in and create a mobile app that would allow him to take a photo during the keynote which would be synced to the cloud and down to the local DB, and appear in the WPF app for the audience to see just before  Dave Campbell (SQL Technical Fellow) finished the demo. Okaaaaaaay.

(You can see a video of the TechEd demo here, and for a descriptions of the finished application, see excellent posts by Zach, Anthony, and Maxi)

But Lito, Johnny and I only ended up in Orlando because of the Southworks’ principle that we pack each other’s parachutes. Consider the person who leaps out of a flying airplane wearing a chute prepared by someone else, and what they must assume. For us, this principle means two key things:

1. We all trust one another. We can take risks (5 weeks to sink or swim on a highly visible TechEd demo), knowing our colleagues will do their job with full commitment and give it their best effort.
2. Just like the parachute packer, we recognize that those taking care of responsibilities out of view are just as essential as those with the name on the front of the plane and sitting in the cockpit. In the case of the TechEd demo, there were many people that stepped in to help, not only through code or suggestions, but also by taking care of other responsibilities to allow the team freedom to focus.

When it came time to celebrate the successful demo (while we were in Orlando, the rest of the company was watching it streamed live in Buenos Aires), we wanted to recognize everyone. Those of us in Orlando had a Trey Research T-shirt (created by Anthony for all of us to wear there) signed by Dave Campbell, Nigel Ellis (SSDS Architect), S. Somasegar (Senior VP), Brian Harry (Technical Fellow), Anthony, Moe, and Zach. We had it framed to and presented to the company to recognize everyone’s efforts, pilots and parachute packers alike.

It’s a good feeling to be able to arrive a work and figuratively let go of the plane’s struts, knowing that you can trust those who took care of your ‘chute, and realize that when you pack another’s, it means something.