{"id":29762,"date":"2019-10-25T10:41:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T09:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=29762"},"modified":"2019-10-25T10:41:29","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T09:41:29","slug":"synthesis-director-on-the-competent-team-player-model-for-business-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/10\/25\/synthesis-director-on-the-competent-team-player-model-for-business-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthesis Director on the Competent Team Player model for business success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Is there a model for success? Are there things that successful people do, that others don\u2019t? Jake Shepherd, Director at Synthesis, explains how the Competent Team Player Model is used extensively throughout his organisation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the years, I have had\nthe good fortune of interacting and working with amazing people. During this\ntime, I have also read extensively on the topic of building people and creating\nan environment that fosters growth. This has enabled me to develop the\nCompetent Team Player Model that looks at the following key areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Competence: What do people need to do their jobs; and<\/li><li>Teamwork: The virtues required to work effectively with others.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Competence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Competence can be broken\ndown into capability (which can be something measured in timespan) and skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, the concept of\ncapability is based on the work of Elliot Jacques, a Canadian psychoanalyst, social\nscientist, and management consultant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With that being said,\ntimespan can be defined as \u2018the length of time a person can effectively work\ninto the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgement to\nachieve a specific goal\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From a Synthesis\nperspective, we look for people who either have a large timespan or have the\npotential to develop their timespan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second element of being\ncompetent is that of skills. A person might well have the capability to perform\na specific role, but if they lack the skills then they will not have the\nopportunity to display this capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Skills can include\ntechnical knowledge and practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, the skill of\ndriving a car requires someone to know the rules of the road. However, a person\nalso needs to practice their driving skills. In Malcolm Gladwell&#8217;s book, <em>Outliers<\/em>, he highlights\nhow a person would require 10,000 hours (10 years of constant practice) to\nmaster any reasonably complex skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In software development,\nthis could be translated into a traditional career approach where a person\nwould progress from being a junior, then intermediate, and ultimately a senior\ndeveloper. This would be followed by becoming a team lead, architect, project\nmanager, and so on as the person progresses up the ladder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ladder approach is\nsomething totally alien to Synthesis. It does not make much sense to constantly\n\u2018promote\u2019 people into a role that they may not enjoy and may well be\nill-equipped to handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, at Synthesis we\nsee a career as an opportunity to constantly pick up new skills and then apply\nthem in practice where the old skills remain relevant. Consequently, there is a\nsignificant focus on continuous learning and skill development. By having these\nnew skills, a person will be positioned to play more diverse roles, each with\ntheir own challenges and opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Teamwork<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Patrick Lencioni, in his\nbook <em>The Ideal Team\nPlayer<\/em>, outlines three virtues that any person must have in order to\nbe a team player \u2013 be humble, be hungry, and be smart. If any of these virtues\nare missing in even a single team member, teamwork becomes significantly more\ndifficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Problems encountered in the software industry general cannot be easily\nsolved by a single engineer sitting alone in a basement. The bringing together\nof multiple technologies, each with its own experts and expertise, must be\ncombined to co-create solutions for clients. Inevitably, this requires\nteamwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of a teamwork approach\nentails being humble. Humble team members are quick to point out the\ncontributions of others. They share credit, emphasise the team over the\nindividual, and define success collectively rather than individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being humble brings a\ncompetitive edge. Modern businesses need speed in order to compete. However, in\na low trust environment, people tend to spend significant amounts of time on\ncovering themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This trust is built on\nhumility and vulnerability. As soon as a person is trusted, he leaves the other\nperson vulnerable as that trust could be betrayed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But without trust, it is\nimpossible to create an environment where agility, speed, and getting things\ndone are the only focus points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ideal team players are smart. Smart people tend to know what is\nhappening in a group situation and how to deal with others in the most\neffective way. They have good judgment and intuition around the subtleties of\ngroup dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Synthesis, we want\npeople to contribute with their ideas and insights. We also want them to\ndisagree with the ideas of others when appropriate. In addition, one of our\ncore values is accountability. If someone, even if it is a manager, lets the\nteam down, then people must speak up and hold them accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Building people<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So how do we leverage the Competent Team Player model to build people?\nHaving a model allows us to share a common vocabulary and to bring more clarity\nto any discussions we have about our colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second step is to\nidentify the mitigation strategies and programmes needed to address these\nproblems. We can now structure the best way build ourselves and our team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the same way that not all of us are gifted\nmusicians, not everyone has a timespan that stretches over many years. However,\nlike physical fitness, it is possible to increase a person\u2019s timespan through\ntraining, challenges, and practice. It is for this reason that we encourage\nmoving people into new roles and tackling different projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Synthesis is a family. And\njust like a normal family we are not all perfect, we sometimes get on each\nother\u2019s nerves. But we also sometimes take aim and shoot at each other with\nnerf guns. However, like a family, we are here to support and build each other.\nAnd this is where the Competent Team Player model is integral to our success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a model for success? Are there things that successful people do, that others don\u2019t? Jake Shepherd, Director at Synthesis, explains how the Competent Team Player Model is used extensively throughout his organisation. Over the years, I have had the good fortune of interacting and working with amazing people. During this time, I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":29766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,6,10675,13],"tags":[11510,11509,11511,11512,11513,10616,11514],"class_list":["post-29762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-insights","category-thought-leadership","category-top-stories","tag-competent-team-player-model","tag-jake-shepherd","tag-malcolm-gladwell","tag-outliers","tag-patrick-lencioni","tag-synthesis","tag-the-ideal-team-player"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29767,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29762\/revisions\/29767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}