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I've felt the "flow state" they allude to near the end on teams I've worked with. Everything just clicks, and there's a sense of cohesion and momentum. Perhaps

by ekanes 6y ago

I've felt the "flow state" they allude to near the end on teams I've worked with. Everything just clicks, and there's a sense of cohesion and momentum. Perhaps because it's about sports, the article focuses more on physical descriptions/dimensions, but the common variable I think in the work world is whether or not the culture is high in trust. High-trust work environments (you trust that those around you have your best interests at heart) produce much better work because everyone can put each other and the work first rather than all the overhead/friction of worrying about drama and politics.

etempleton 6y ago
Nailed it. Trust is everything. Part of trust is competence. Part of it is being a decent human. A big part is getting to know your coworkers and understanding what makes each other tick. One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my career was thinking work was all about the work. It didn’t matter what people thought of me or what I thought of them. It matters a great deal. You don’t have to be friends with coworkers, and have drinks with all of them on Fridays, but you should generally respect the people you work with and they should respect you and that can take some effort and time, but it will pay off in the long run and you will like your job more.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Copy pasting from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21753347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21753347 --- Similarly, Google trying to find out what successful teams did differently is a great read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11174399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11174399 Some excerpts: > ... Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs. > ... Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways. > Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized.
ramary 6y ago
> (you trust that those around you have your best interests at heart) So true - this tracks my experience exactly. What I find interesting is that sometimes high trust is necessary but not sufficient, and other times it's both necessary and sufficient, for great teams. I've never found a situation where a great team stays great (or arguably ever was in the first place) without high trust, though.
collyw 6y ago
I think the common variable for achieving flow state is not being interrupted.
gregfjohnson 6y ago
Echoing other responses, I've found that trust is a hugely important dimension of effective teams. In a technical setting, there is a key benefit to trust. Do you trust your mates enough to share an idea that you feel is probably stupid/lame, but might have some seed of value in there somewhere? New ideas that initially seem "off the wall" may lead to important breakthroughs with some nurturing and reformulation. I've also experienced a sort of team-level flow, in which an idea triggers a variant idea from someone else, and then another and another, and collectively you end up with an idea that feels like an emergent property: you end up with something really good that no one could have gotten to on their own, that represents something greater than the sum of the parts.

by ekanes 6y ago

etempleton 6y ago

Nailed it. Trust is everything. Part of trust is competence. Part of it is being a decent human. A big part is getting to know your coworkers and understanding what makes each other tick. One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my career was thinking work was all about the work. It didn’t matter what people thought of me or what I thought of them. It matters a great deal. You don’t have to be friends with coworkers, and have drinks with all of them on Fridays, but you should generally respect the people you work with and they should respect you and that can take some effort and time, but it will pay off in the long run and you will like your job more.

ignoramous 6y ago
Copy pasting from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21753347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21753347 --- Similarly, Google trying to find out what successful teams did differently is a great read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11174399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11174399 Some excerpts: > ... Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs. > ... Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways. > Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized.

ramary 6y ago

> (you trust that those around you have your best interests at heart) So true - this tracks my experience exactly. What I find interesting is that sometimes high trust is necessary but not sufficient, and other times it's both necessary and sufficient, for great teams. I've never found a situation where a great team stays great (or arguably ever was in the first place) without high trust, though.

collyw 6y ago

I think the common variable for achieving flow state is not being interrupted.

gregfjohnson 6y ago

Echoing other responses, I've found that trust is a hugely important dimension of effective teams. In a technical setting, there is a key benefit to trust. Do you trust your mates enough to share an idea that you feel is probably stupid/lame, but might have some seed of value in there somewhere? New ideas that initially seem "off the wall" may lead to important breakthroughs with some nurturing and reformulation. I've also experienced a sort of team-level flow, in which an idea triggers a variant idea from someone else, and then another and another, and collectively you end up with an idea that feels like an emergent property: you end up with something really good that no one could have gotten to on their own, that represents something greater than the sum of the parts.