People as People: Building Culture for High-Performing Teams

High-Performing Teams: operations need them, clients love them, and, at a core level, employees want to be them. So why is it so hard to find them? What can you do to create one in your shop? 

You create the foundation for all your teams in your culture. It's key that your culture support the kinds of individuals and teams you need. This session will explore ways in which businesses can work to develop a company culture that supports growing and sustaining high-performing teams--without resorting to heavy-handed, burnout-inducing tactics. There's no single formula for success here: it's all about understanding who your team is at a human level, and customizing your culture to best support your people. If you can do that, your teams can self-organize, gel, and start kicking ass.

This session is designed for business owners, managers, team leads, and HR-hat wearers; anyone who cares about work culture and its affects is more than welcome to attend and contribute to discussion. Attendees are not required to have any specific knowledge; if you think work culture matters for team or company performance, you're in the right place. Familiarity with Scrum/Agile, general workplace best practices, and general business operations might be useful to expand the frame of discussion.

This session will present several areas for consideration when evaluating, building, or changing your group's culture. Again, this is not the recipe for the secret sauce that will guarantee success: the secret sauce is already there, and it's your people. This session will discuss ways to identify elements of your culture that are already working for you, the areas that are not, and what you can do to begin your transition to healthier, happier, and higher-performing ground. This includes ways of looking at the hiring process, team structures, feedback and evaluations, company values, and a few other slightly-philosophical areas.