Category: Technology

When you think about collaboration what comes to mind? Have you ever given much thought to the importance of collaboration for your cybersecurity team, or how collaboration creates high performance teams? If you haven’t given much thought to the topic of collaboration that’s OK you are going to explore the importance of collaboration today.

Collaboration is the fourth pillar in the EPICC model for high performance teams and is incredibly important for your security team. If you have tuned in to the entire series on EPICC High Performance Teams you are on pillar four. If you are just joining us now you can catch up on the series and read about Engagement, Productivity, and Integrity; the first three pillars for a high performance team.

Since no single person on a security team can stay current on all the technologies, know all the current vulnerabilities, be versed on all the most recent hacks, or know all the possible solutions; collaboration is key to your security teams ultimate success. Collaboration is where engagement, productivity, and integrity come together and your security team spends time working together to come up with innovative new ideas.

Ideas build upon ideas when a group gets together to collaborate. New ideas, solutions, and innovation that no single person can come up with alone are born during collaboration

One of the biggest and often missing pieces of collaboration is discussing progress, what’s working and what’s not working? When a team knows where the project is they can collaborate on ideas to move it forward or maybe even change direction. This is how you remove the number of fires that need to be put out at the last minute and you reduce stress and cost. When something is not working, it quickly becomes the topic of conversation, but what about discussing what is working? That is often a missed, but critical conversation.

When things are running smoothly most people don’t stop to discuss why, but it is essential to recognize why things are working so you can do more of it. Plus, what is working for one person may not be obvious to their peers, so this is an opportunity to teach each other and refine their skills.

Of course I’m not saying you ignore the conversation on what’s not working, that is critical to course correction and you can’t always prevent or find all roadblocks ahead of time. But as soon as something starts to go south the conversation must include what’s not working. But remember, it can’t be about laying blame or pointing fingers, it’s about discussion, collaboration, and then cooperation and integrity to change things around.

The more your team collaborates the more they can identify the possible roadblocks ahead of time. This means you don’t have a group of firefighters running around always trying to put out the fire, you have a group of park rangers who are able to stop the fire before it ever ignites because only you can prevent forest fires.

The great part is collaboration can happen with or without you, the leader, as long as you set the tone, the expectations, and the example. If someone comes to you with a problem you can ask, “Did you work with the team to find a solution yet?” That could be the first step before involving you unless it is critical and needs escalation.

Remember you never know where the best idea will come from. You want to make sure that everyone on the team has a voice and that they know they can share ideas regardless of how crazy it may sound. That is because you built the team community around integrity, everyone should know that there are no bad ideas and that no one is ever ridiculed or judged.

For your next team meeting start a new conversation on the topic of collaboration, why it’s important, what it should look like, and how to accomplish it. Empower your team to work together, communicate openly, and share ideas. Build on the ideas of community and watch your team thrive.

If you have questions or comments about this article or the series you can reach out to me at sharon@c-suiteresults.com to discuss this topic, security teams, or security strategy. If you enjoy podcasts you can listen to C-Suite Success Radio to tap into the wisdom of other successful business people who know the path you’re traveling.

So far we have discussed Engagement and Productivity, the first two pillars of an EPICC high performance team. Let’s continue exploring how to create an EPICC high performance security team, and look at the third pillar, Integrity. Integrity is the glue that holds an engaged and productive team together.

My two favorites definitions of integrity are doing the right thing even when no one is looking and doing what you say you will do long after the feeling you said it with has passed. That last one is what happens when, for example, you ask your friend to help you move and they say, “Sure anything to help…” but then the day comes to help you the last thing they want to do is move boxes and furniture. The person with integrity does it anyway because they said they would.

When members of a team have a what’s in it for me attitude, i.e. a lack of integrity, the team does not get very far. When it comes specifically to a security team, that is downright dangerous. In the world of cyber security, the team has to work well together if you want to stay ahead of the adversary. And if you don’t think you have any adversaries, remember that mistakes and errors internally can cause just as much damage to your organization. Your security team is on the front lines to prevent this and catch the errors or mistakes before they become costly or irreversible.

Your role in ensuring a team with integrity is to create an environment that establishes and supports integrity, and you do this by building a strong community. We have all seen what is possible when communities come together, whether after a natural disaster like a tornado, hurricane, or fire; or after a terrorist attack or violent incident. We have seen what is possible when neighbors help neighbors and the sense of community is strong. We have also seen the flip side with riots and looting that occur when a community is not strong and has a weak sense of integrity among its neighbors.

A community for your team means that everyone works together and no one is thinking what’s in it for me. When one member has a problem it is everyone’s problem, and that means the personal stuff gets addressed too. Because when someone is having trouble at home or outside of work it affects him or her at work. When they can come to work and know that it is safe to discuss with you or the team their focus will improve and so will their productivity.

No one wants to come to work and feel alone or worse suffer in silence, but people need to know it’s safe to share the personal stuff and the work stuff without fear of retribution, judgment, or scorn. You have to build this environment, set the rules of engagement, and make sure everyone knows where, when, and how to address the personal stuff and what will and won’t be tolerated, then lead by example.

Think about those communities where neighbors help neighbors and people have integrity. These Communities have greater property values, good schools, safe streets, and community activity. A team with high integrity members can get more accomplished, see problems ahead of time and bring projects in on time and on budget more easily. That brings value to the organization, which equates to your team having a high property value. When you provide continuing education you are offering good schools, the ability to share problems in a safe space is a safe neighborhood, and community activities means doing things outside of work from time to time. All of this helps build community and results in a high integrity and high performance team.

A low value community is rife with violence, low property values, lack of safety, and often are partly driven by fear. When this is the community of your team the violence shows up as in-fighting, backstabbing, and manipulation. When there is a lack of safety, people don’t share ideas, much less personal problems or challenges they are having with their work. All of this results in a team that does not work well together and ends up with a low property value within the organization.

Your security team is one of these two types of communities: they either have a high or low value within the organization, which will greatly depend on the type of community you have created. Start a conversation with your team about community, get to know your people, treat them with respect, and ask that they do the same. When you see something that might lead to a low value community, speak up and have the tough conversation about what needs to change. Lead by example and keep moving the team forward. Your security team is up against a lot of adversity as they protect your organization from faceless attackers, errors, and mistakes. They often only get feedback when something has gone wrong and rarely hear job well done. In order to keep them working together and in the right direction, integrity is going to be the glue that holds it all together.

If you have questions or comments about this article or the series you can reach out to me at sharon@c-suiteresults.com to discuss this topic, security teams, or security strategy. If you enjoy podcasts you can listen to C-Suite Success Radio to tap into the wisdom of other successful business people who know the path you’re traveling.

This is part three of a six-part series for leaders of cybersecurity teams who want to create a high performance team. To start from the beginning read The Importance of a High Performance Cybersecurity Team and Protecting Your Organization through Engagement of Your Cybersecurity Team.

Throughout this series we are talking about the EPICC model for high performance and the 5-Pillars – Engagement, Productivity, Integrity, Collaboration and Communication. Today is all about Productivity.

When it comes to your cybersecurity team productivity is essential. There is typically more to do than most teams have time for and this team is your organization’s frontline defense against cyber attacks and internal threats. In the last article we talked about engagement in and I want to clarify that just because an employee is engaged, does not mean they are productive. Engagement is a great first step, but engaged does not equal productive.

Being productive means getting the tasks done that have an impact to the team meeting their goals and deadlines and an impact to the bigger picture and organizational goals. The way you are going to help empower your cybersecurity team to be more productive is by getting rid of the idea of time management and to start talking about priority management.

Priority management is a clear understanding of what each person on the team should say yes to and what they should no to. And as their leader this applies to you too.

You will need to work with each individual on your team to help them determine what their priorities are. This is important because if you have more than three priorities you have none – a priority is something that is more important than something else – and if everything is deemed a priority then nothing is actually a priority. This is about looking at the entire team, determining what the team’s priorities are and then breaking those down into individual responsibilities and tasks.

You may find a lot of tasks need to be done and that they all support the priorities of the team. That means you need to clearly identifying what is most important and what is least important and which tasks support which priorities. It is allowing members of your team to say no to requests on their time that do not support one of their three priorities.

As tasks get completed, organizational goals change, or new projects are initiated the priorities will change. Until that time, the priorities you set with each person is their focus and their guide for what they should say yes to and what they should say no to. But in order for them to say no to requests they need to know you support that action and the best way to accomplish saying no.

It’s about empowering them to determine if something supports a priority or not and the freedom to come to you and let you know that by saying yes to this new request something else on their priority list is not getting done.

We all have the same number of hours in the day and when they get filled with tasks that do not support the big picture or do not fall into the category of priority, the big projects don’t get done, or don’t get done well, on time or on budget.

Another big time suck is what people like to call multi-tasking. To read about this in its entirety check out The Dirtiest Word in Business.

The intent here is understand that that there is no such thing as multitasking the way we use the term. Our human brain does not allow for it, we are not built for doing two different cognitive activities at the same time. You are not multitasking you are switching between tasks. You might be doing this quickly, but you are missing out on details and losing efficiency every time you do it. Think about any time you have had to ask someone to repeat themselves because you missed what they said while you were “multitasking” and reading or writing an email while you were supposed to be listening to a conference call. We have all done it and we have all had it happen to us. The point is that we miss critical details, prolong meetings, and lose productivity when we are task switching.

If you want more productive employees and a high performance team you want your cybersecurity team to single task. That is one thing at a time. Even if that task is only planned for 10 minutes, during those 10 minutes they are laser focused on the task without distraction. Teach your team to block time for their tasks and projects and during that time they are focused on the task and nothing else. That means they don’t check email, don’t answer text messages, don’t answer the phone, don’t surf the web, and don’t stop to have a conversation about anything else.

This will take practice because in the world we live in we are currently bombarded with a lot of information all at the same time and we have spent a lot of time thinking that we are great multitaskers.

Start the conversation and discuss priorities and multitasking with your team and with some practice and diligence you will start to see more productivity. Couple that with increased engagement that we discussed in the last article and you are really onto something great.

For more information or help getting the conversation started email sharon@c-suiteresults to discuss resources. Visit www.c-suiteresults.com or listen to C-Suite Success Radio for more topics that will elevate your results.

 

 

In the first article of this series I provided an overview of the 5 pillars for creating an EPICC high performance teams. In this article we discuss the first pillar of the EPICC model – engagement.

Gallup continues to report that in the US, employee engagement is  around 30% and worldwide at only 15%. While we know this costs real money and affects the bottom line, it has an even bigger cost when we are talking about cybersecurity. When it comes to your cybersecurity team, 15-30% engagement can actually be dangerous to your organization. This is the team that has to be on their toes 24/7 to keep your network and data secure and you want — no, you need — them engaged.

Engaged employees are motivated and excited to do the work they are assigned to do and don’t have to be convinced to do a good job. They truly want to be at work, and want to do their best to contribute. They are looking for continual ways to improve and innovate and they go above and beyond, take initiative, interact with coworkers and management, produce high quality work products, and take responsibility.

Because that is what you are looking for in your cybersecurity team, let’s get to what it takes to have engaged employees. It takes a leadership team that knows how to create engagement by tapping into the key motivators that people have. As a leader, you can inspire your team to want to do more and be better, but you can only motivate them for the long run if you can tap into their intrinsic motivators. For more information on the following motivators, use the links to take you to a more in-depth article on each one.

Contributing fully through alignment – When you want people to contribute fully they need to align with the work they do in a way that allows them to contribute who they are to a task. When people are not aligned they get bored and find other things to do instead of the work at hand. If you ever feel that people on your team are slackers it could be a sign that they are not aligned with their work and as a result, not fully contributing. That is not a sign of a bad employee; it is a sign that they are doing work that is not aligned with who they are.

The Big Picture – People want to know how they fit into the big picture. How does their work help the organizations goals? Punching a clock or showing up to do a job with no meaning is not going to cut it anymore. Your most loyal, dedicated, and hard working employees will be the ones that understand and believe in the purpose of their role in the organization. As a leader and coach of your team it is your responsibility to ensure your team knows, understands, and is bought into the big picture. It is your job to keep that big picture and shared goals in front of them as part of the on-going conversation.

Continued Growth – As a leader, it is your role to ensure your team is getting continued growth opportunities. They want to learn and grow and they will be more appreciative and harder working when given these opportunities. My experience as an employee in several organizations where there were no growth opportunities lead me to be less motivated and look elsewhere for what I was missing. Plus, when you provide educational opportunities, you are going to have a smarter, more talented workforce, and when has that ever been a bad thing?

Feedback and Recognition – Here is a place where your team needs you more than anywhere else. Do you know that most people go through their days getting no praise, feedback, or recognition, not even at home or from those they love? When people are told they are doing a good job, they will want to do an even better job next time. When they don’t know how they are doing they often make assumptions and think to themselves, “oh well, no need to try harder, no one seems to notice around here.” However, don’t just provide recognition and positive feedback because you are supposed to. Do it from a place of sincerity, like a proud parent would when their child is walking across the stage at graduation or scoring the winning goal of the soccer game. Without proper feedback and recognition you are missing out on one of the greatest motivators of all.

One of your jobs as a leader is to inspire those around you so that they are motivated to contribute fully, which will result in improved engagement and in the case of your cybersecurity team improved protection of your organization’s network and sensitive data. See how you can use these tips to amplify their motivation and help create better results for everyone on your cybersecurity team, and in return, for your organization..

If you have questions or comments email me at sharon@c-suiteresults.com and for more resources visit www.c-suiteresults.com and/or listen to C-Suite Success Radio