How To Enhance Your Life - Dean Amory

Knowledge
A lack of knowledge or the inability to access information are obstacles. A team composed of
junior people who don't have diverse experience and who don't have a good knowledge of the
work they are doing will have trouble working effectively. There may be barriers preventing the
team from learning. Common barriers include over-work leading to a lack of time or mental
energy for learning. With junior people in particular, there is a lot of pressure to be productive and
that can often be at the expense of a solid foundation of learning.
Other times, knowledge-related barriers can be more immediate. If a critical piece of information
is delayed or lost this can have a large impact on an Agile team that is working in short cycles. The
team may be temporarily halted while they wait for information. Building effective information
flow is critical to a team's performance.
Organizational
Bureaucratic procedures, organizational mis-alignment, conflicting goals, and inefficient
organizational structures can all be significant obstacles.
One of the best sources of information about this is the two books by Jim Collins: "Good to Great"
(Review) and "Built to Last" (Review).
Cultural
Sometimes the beliefs we have about how to work can become obstacles to working more
effectively. These beliefs are often in place because they have been part of what we think makes us
successful. Cultural assumptions can come from our families, our communities, our religious
affiliation and our national identity.
In organizational culture, one thing I constantly see is a public espoused value of teamwork, but a
conflicting behaviour of individual performance reviews and ranking. This is cultural. It is also a
barrier to the effective functioning of an Agile team. For corporate environments I highly
recommend the Corporate Culture Survival Guide by Edgar Schein.
Dis-Unity
Dis-unity is one of the most subtle and common forms of obstacle. Competition, legal and cultural
assumption of the goodness of "opposition" and habits of interaction including gossip and
backbiting all combine to make united action and thought very difficult.
This is an extremely deep topic. There are many tools and techniques available to assist with team
building. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading "The Prosperity of
Humankind".
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