Teams can grow without increasing in count

Grow, baby, grow.
(Just don't necessarily multiply, please.)

Growth is a funny thing.  It can happen in your mind or in the physical world.  Growth can be seen as in increase in a population: it can be seen as an increase or improvement in anything.

I made the point to a colleague yesterday that our team can grow even if we don't add people to it.  It sounded profound to me and he agreed.

What I meant by this was that the thing that matters more than anything that our team (regardless of its size or members) grows and learns and improves.  It would be nice if it grew in terms of count and influence but that is not my current need or expectation.  I am trying to do just the basic things and make sure we have a plan and are tracking.

Team-building is difficult but can be extremely fun and rewarding.  Growing in any way positive is a great goal but we have to remember that we have to control growth as well.

Control is a challenging part of growth.  You don't want to grow too fast because it is painful.  You don't want to grow uncontrollably because it is scary.  You want to grow 'just enough' so that you are meeting your objectives and doing the right things.  You want to fit and be the right size within your environment.  You don't want to get too big and consume too many resources: this is not sustainable.

So next time you consider growing a team, or anything for that matter, consider that you might already have enough and that it is internal reflection, collaboration, and communication between the existing organism that needs to grow.

Business Intelligence As Feeding the Hungry

The business is hungry for information about their operations and customers. The data that is around the business is not currently very delicious or available. People are picking at scraps all the time but they are definitely not satiated. Business analysts, project, product, and program managers (cooks in my scenario) are hired to prepare data-meals for the very data-hungry executives and managers. The managers are picky eaters and have high expectations of what you put on their plate. The job of the cook/analyst is to gather up the various bits (data-ingredients) and whip them into a lovely broth that the business can enjoyably consume.