The Power of Showing Up

Over the past three years, I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of amazing individuals at Amazon. Across product, science and technical staffs, the company assembles some of the most talented experts in their fields. It may come as a surprise to hear that while most of the people I work with are nothing short of superheroes — when we are assembled together — it oftentimes feels like being on the B-vengers rather than the Avengers.

As a huge fan of basketball, I've recently attributed this to something I'm calling the All-star game affect. For those non-NBA fans, the All-star game is the final event at the NBA's All-star weekend, a 4-day event where all of the best NBA players come together and celebrate the league and the sport. In the All-star game, the best of the best compete...or at least are suppose to. What I've noticed is when they put these NBA stars on the same teams to compete — the product sucks.

My hypothesis is players feel a lack of ownership with a reduced role, so they care less. When they're on their own teams, they know they're the man, the one who needs to will their team to victory; however, on an All-star team, they can't all be the man. When things aren't relying on you to succeed, the incentive to emotionally invest declines. The problem is most (if not all) of the players on the All-star teams probably feel this — leading to a poor game for their viewers.

I think a variation of this manifests in tech. On large teams of 10-20 people, there's an inherent sense of duplicity. Factoring in the reality that everyone is at the top of their field (i.e. the man), it becomes really easy to care less. Now one or two people inevitably step up to organize tasks and responsibilities, but at that point the team is already loss. That sense of ownership drops faster than an anchor when the job turns into “please complete these tasks by X date.” All of a sudden, the project becomes a delegation labyrinth rather than a production pipeline.

So what's the remedy? Companies want the best of the best, but how can they craft their teams to win the “championship” of delivering great products and services? There are three things I've tried and seen work at Amazon.

1. Small senior teams— it's hard to care less when you're considered the man of the team. With small senior teams (3-4 people) there's more work then there are people, so everyone becomes the man. In small teams, it becomes really difficult to hide behind the contributions of others. Small senior teams are great because they force individuals to wear multiple hats. Responsibilities bleed into each other and collaboration is forced. The designer becomes a front end developer. The engineer is writing a business requirement documents. Science is crafting content for the public launch. On small senior teams, there's way more to own then there are people. This acts as a forcing function to get people to care as they become inherently tied to the project's success (and really failure). Ownership means risk. Risk can cause fear. Fear is arguably the best way to drive camaraderie amongst teammates (ever heard of trauma bonding lol).
2. Showing up...and no “recurrings”— Being present for team members is so important. I want to stress that that presence needs to be synchronous, not that next day Slack or Outlook reply BS. In my opinion, great work isn't always constant. It can sometimes come in these amazing bursts of ingenuity and synergy. Don't let your teammates hanging when ideas strike. Being there also shows a level of care. It tells someone that what they need matters. If your teammates like you, they'll probably be motivated to contribute quality results as they won't be in the business of letting you down. On the point of no “recurrings” (recurring meetings), this plays into the idea that the work shouldn't be thought of as tasks that need completion. Rather, it should be seen as a constant stream of innovation across 3-4 individuals working in parallel. When you set up a “weekly check-in” you constrain yourselves to perform in weekly blocks. Maybe greatness strikes one week and the next there's nothing. Don't feel like you need to split outputs and outcomes across the two weeks so it looks like progress is continuous.
3. Punching the throttle — set aggressive deadlines. Whatever time you think you need, divide it by half. Pressure makes diamonds and working under tight timelines can oftentimes drive great outcomes. This also mitigates the slog that can come with operational work. It forces teams to cut the bureaucracy and unnecessary fat to focus on what really matters.

Great leaders never say “That's not my job”