What we will cover:
- Topic 1: Your Team & Your 'Wave'
- Topic 2: Diving Deeper with Waves
- Topic 3: Recruiting Your Team
This lesson is brought to by the Microsoft Garage. The Garage is a program that drives a culture of innovation at Microsoft. The Microsoft Garage delivers programs and experiences to Microsoft employees, customers, and partners that drive collaboration, creativity, and experimentation. The motto “doers, not talkers” continues to be the core of what the Garage is. The Garage attracts people who are passionate about making a difference in the world. They are relentlessly curious and lifelong, hands-on learners. By actively participating in the creative process, regardless of success or failure, each person gets the opportunity to gain valuable insights, increase their knowledge, and learn diverse perspectives.
More information about the Garage is available below, or by visiting https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/.
When building a team, one of the most important things to consider is the idea that the team is coming together to build. After the idea is defined, it makes it easier to identify the right teammates and the right skillsets to seek out. The Garage team relates a team's idea with the concept of a "wave." Learn more about "waves" below.
Every big idea starts with a wave—a trend that presents an opportunity. How do you know when a wave has the potential to carry your ideas forward?
Now, imagine you are a surfer. Watch the video below and apply a surfer's mindset to creating your next big idea.
📹 Click the image above watch a video about "Starting with a Wave"
As you just saw in the video, a big idea starts with recognizing a wave.
Identify waves—events or trends at a unique point in time.
Determine whether each wave is something rare.
After you identify the wave(s) that excite you, find people with diverse skills to ride the wave with you.
We now understand that a wave is a metaphor for an industry trend on the horizon. We also know that before building a team, we need to identify our 'wave.' But what steps should we take to identify our wave? Also, what are some examples of waves? Learn all about it below.
Watch this video to see The Garage team member Ed Essey describe a wave and learn from examples of market-changing waves.
📹 Click the image above watch a video about "Diving Deeper With Waves"
As you saw in the video, regardless of what causes a wave—a change in consumer behavior, a new government regulation, a market disruption, or a popular new technology—it inspires a need for ideas and innovation.
Develop your feel for spotting waves by looking at recent examples:
Consumer interest in saving the environment led to green tech; electric and hybrid cars, solar panel technology, and battery storage platforms. Europe's General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) led to creating accountability tools at enterprises that hold people's data. The rise in social media platforms created a need for aggregators and schedulers. The Coronavirus Pandemic triggered several waves such as the need for contact tracing, public-readable data charts, new mask technology, telemedicine, and remote working environments.
Now that you understand what waves are and how to identify them, you can move forward with recruiting your team.
As you research waves and socialize your passion for your project, you will meet people with similar passions. Think broadly as you consider who your project needs. Diverse teams have better outcomes.
Watch this video to see Ed share questions you can ask yourself to find the right people for the work.
📹 Click the image above watch a video about "Recruiting a Team"
As you saw in the video, you will meet others with similar passions and goals in hopes of adding them to your team. During your project, you will encounter steps you are unfamiliar with, so having the right people collaborating on a project will result in better outcomes.
Are the people passionate? Is the team diverse? Are the people open? Is the team able to achieve the work?
The first step is recruiting people—with a diverse skill set—who have the confidence, desire, and ability to do the work. When the people "fit" the project, team building happens over time. Build them into a team by introducing types of activities to enhance relations and define roles.
💡 Pro-Tip: Build the people you have recruited into a team by encouraging open-mindedness, describing member roles, establishing how decisions are made, and creating avenues for collaboration.
As part of this lesson, you’ve learned the following:
- A wave is an event or trends at a unique point in time. A big idea starts with recognizing a wave - look for waves in your community.
- Find people with diverse skills to ride the wave with you. The first step is recruiting people—with a diverse skill set—who have the confidence, desire, and ability to do the work.
- When the people "fit" the project, team building happens over time. Build them into a team by introducing types of activities to enhance relations and define roles.
- Build the people you have recruited into a team by encouraging open mindedness, describing member roles, establishing how decisions are made, and creating avenues for collaboration.
In the early days of The Garage, the focus was on employees and mobilizing Microsoft’s cultural ambitions. The Garage helped employees integrate these cultural priorities—Growth Mindset, Customer Obsession, Diversity & Inclusion, One Microsoft, and Making a difference—into everyday work. As The Garage grew and the culture shift actions gained critical mass, entire teams and organizations began driving their business forward using these actions. An additional focus of The Garage was helping teams and organizations integrate growth mindset activities into team workflows. More recently, The Garage has continued to evolve by bringing in Microsoft customers to team up with employees for high-speed growth mindset activities.
The content in this lesson comes from The Garage Growth Framework. The Garage Growth Framework (GGF) is a set of online courses that shares methods applied in The Garage for hackers everywhere to build skills to take back to their day job before, during, and after a hackathon event, like the Microsoft Global Hackathon. The GGF methods are rooted in what we have learned working with teams at Microsoft, what we have discovered working with innovation leaders at other organizations, and what we have translated from the best practices of others.
The Garage also hires interns! Learn more about one Garage intern’s experience by reading about it on the Garage blog.