Working with friends

 

Would you work for Donald Trump?


Personally speaking, that’s a no. In fact, it’s so much of a no, it’s a NO!!

This week has seen the sacking of the FBI Director (or should that be ex-FBI Director?) James Comey by President Trump. In fact, as I’m writing this blog, there appears to be more news breaking almost by the minute, so apologies for any discrepancies in information that might appear after I’ve published.

From the outside, this seems to be a bizarre event even by current White House standards. It has been published before that Comey’s announcement that the FBI were investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails during the presidential election campaign had a major influence on how people voted and Donald Trump becoming president. Comey was seen as a Republican and Trump supporter, so some might say that Trump owes a lot to that investigation announcement.

But now he has been sacked.

From what he heard, not even in person. By letter, as he was in a meeting outside of Washington.

President Trump doesn’t sound like the kind of person I am eager to work for.

I can only say what I see, as I’m not part of the White House team, and I’m not in the same country that it effects. But the whole perception, from my perspective, is of a team that doesn’t in any way seem to have any kind of idea of what each part is doing.

Now I would rather not get all embroiled in the politics of it all as I’m sure there are other outlets where that information is available or faked depending on what or who you believe. But I just wanted to focus on the team dynamic, as it doesn’t appear to be working together. This shouldn’t be surprising when you consider that its leader seems to change his mind every five minutes and blame everyone around him.

It reminded me of when I was growing up, I used to like playing football, and I was a half decent goalkeeper in my time. On one particular occasion in a kick about game in the school playground, I made a small error of judgement and let a goal in, which had the consequence of us losing a game. My so-called teammates led by the ‘captain’ turned on me quite viscously, and I was bullied quite significantly from that point on.

Consequently, in later life I've never been comfortable in situations where a person in power thinks they can command the people around them by shouting and if they don’t follow their ideal they are kicked from the group.

Teams work best when the members have a respect for each other and are led by someone who has credibility within the group. This trust is built up over time and has to be earned, it’s not a given regardless of any positional power that person has in the organisation.

One of the project management techniques I train is Agile Project Management. It’s been my pleasure this week to have been working with a group of people who are trying to implement the Agile ways of working into their organisation. They are led by an individual who is willing to listen to his team and the decisions are being made as a group.

If you’ve not heard of Agile before, it’s a way of working, mainly on projects, that is guided by various principles that follow the philosophy of;

“Best business value emerges when projects are aligned to clear business goals, deliver frequently and involve the collaboration of motivated and empowered people” 
Source: Agile Project Management Handbook v2, published by the DSDM Consortium

What I like about this philosophy is that it highlights two key areas of business which, I think, are crucial to any success.

Firstly, the importance of having a vision, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. How can you have any control over your business direction if you haven’t got a clear goal to be aiming at? It is remarkable how many employees of a business do not know what the strategy of their organisation is. They are pretty sure the business has a strategy, but when I ask them what it is, I get blank looks as an answer.

Secondly, a collaboration of motivated and empowered people.

A group of people that have mutual respect for each other, that support each other and consider themselves to be a unit rather than disparate individuals. When I work in teams like this, I find it much more rewarding and enjoyable. It takes me back to the days of winning football matches and contributing to that success, rather than having teammates turn on me and blaming me.

Within organisations, this teamwork is seen as crucial to getting things done and setting up teams is relatively easy as you have a pool of people to call on when forming a group.

With entrepreneurs, this is a somewhat trickier task as we often specialise in particular areas and to gain skills in others, sometimes we see adding employees with that skill as the only option. This can be expensive and indeed not very cost-effective as we may not need that skill for very long.

Alternatively, entrepreneurs could work together, which builds up a level of trust with each other that evolves into mutually promoting each other to gain more business growth with other businesses that share our philosophy. As you can envisage, once this collaboration picks up momentum, it gains more access to more and more business.

When I got introduced to Asentiv it's one of the areas that really appealed to me and I felt passionately about. The Asentiv techniques encourage entrepreneurs to not only have a clearly defined vision, but also to work together collaboratively to achieve higher levels of success for their business. It’s such a satisfying thing for me to see people I have introduced to each other go on and have a successful working relationship that not only makes their lives more enriching but those around them as well.

My vision is to grow a community of like-minded entrepreneurs around my area that are willing to work collaboratively towards having an amazing business and spectacular life. My commitment is to support them and empower them with the techniques to make it happen.

If you would like to join us, then please email me at russellp@asentiv.com

Donald Trump need not apply …