Introducing Team Sterka

The shift to a product-focus

The 2010s saw a huge shift in how digital products and services are being delivered. Rather than shipping projects across siloed departments, most brands have switched to a product-focus with lots of cross-functional teams working in Agile.

Each cross-functional team has a product manager, a designer, engineers, an Agile Coach and other stakeholders working together. Nowadays, all team members generally understand ways of working in an Agile environment (although knowing is, of course, different from doing!).

Practitioners – designers, engineers, product managers – are still expected to do their craft… but now need to use their people skills to collaboratively problem solve, resolve conflict and inspire others.

Other major trends

There have been a few other major trends in recent years:

• Workplace diversity has become a big thing so working with people from a range of backgrounds with different viewpoints is the new norm
• Brands are increasingly looking for strong emotional intelligence (EQ) and problem-solving skills when recruiting
• More and more, businesses are striving to create working environments that support positive mental health and emotional wellbeing

Given these trends – as well as the shift to working in cross-functional product teams – we believe the need to upskill team members in people skills is stronger than it’s ever been before.

Businesses don’t invest nearly enough in training their people in leadership, emotional intelligence and resilience, and this is having a material impact on team success. We hear time and time again from digital, product and design leaders that cross-functional team members are struggling with their new responsibilities.

After all, 85% of job success comes from well‐developed people skills (really?). Get all this right and you’ll have truly high performing teams. Leave it out, and you get people fighting each other, zoning out of work and ultimately leaving.

People skills can be trained

We’ve created a really innovative People Skills as a Service™ programme, with bite-sized training, leadership coaching and ongoing interaction at its core. All together, this embeds new skills within teams to generate some great outcomes:

• Increased quality and quantity of team output
• Time freed up for senior team as team members require less support
• Improvement in happiness and wellbeing across teams
• Increased staff retention and team stability
• Huge USP when trying to attract new talent
• Improved scores in internal staff satisfaction/culture surveys

There are lots of companies that support businesses with the people, hard skills and processes required to work in Agile. No one seems to be supporting these businesses with developing team members’ people skills when working in a cross-functional product team. Until now.

Ultimately, work just gets better for everyone. You get high-performing product teams who play nicely with each other and with other stakeholders, and you increase your influence and impact in the business.

There’s a better way of you all working together. And it’s within your grasp.