I am going to show you how upfront communication about how you, as a individual contributor, and your team, as a part of a company, can get ahead of many sources of friction, making your contribution more valuable (to get paid more?) whilst helping your company deliver better products and make more money itself.

Outside of Ray Dalio[^1], I have never actually heard of applying baseball-like personality cards to team re-organisation, but it works!

The cost of unknown-unknowns

Frequently I have worked in places where communication is sub-optimal, or friction is high, sometimes between team-members, but more often between teams or departments.

Often the cause is down to a mindset of "I need to do A or X happens", and that take precedence over developing a shared understanding.

Let me expound:

Interpersonal friction

For example take persons Alex A and Blake B.
Alex A is creative, loves working with others, & likes tasks broken down into bites.
Blake B is rigorous, works best in solitude, and excels when left alone to deliver Big Complex Task.

Because Alex A does not understand that Blake B prefers to work alone, A will expect B to work with them in A's mode, and will likely not even think that there's another possible way to work. And likewise for B, who will likely underperform working with A.

From both sides we likely develop frustration and resentment because each party is not having their basic needs met. Such fiction inside companies that need these two to get on will cost money and increase risk.

So, how can we solve this tricky problem? How can we minimise risk and ensure projects finish on time, turning some sort of profit? Read on.

Inter-team/department friction

Another key example is inter-team and inter-department friction. Like Alex and Blake above, two teams may struggle to get on because, ostensibly, on the face of it, they are very different teams with different needs and goals - but, surely, if they work at the same company, don't they have the same higher-level goal?

To illustrate, take team tA and team tB.
Team tA have knowledge kZ and they have requirement rM.
Team tB have knowledge kY and they have requirement rJ.

Both teams are ignorant of the other's knowledge and requirements. So they are working focused on their own goals, with their own knowledge, with their own requirements and trying to do so in a vacuum. Both teams may be highly-stressed, each working to deliver against their own specific internal or external customers. One may be working to deliver a high-budget film, the other to support the infrastructure for 31 other films, for global clients, of which at least 3 have "critical" importance.

Neither team should know the details of the other, but when each exists in a super-low pressure vacuum, an echo chamber of need, how can they work with each other, instead of against each other. The pressures of such a situation can cause any of these high-risk projects to collapse, or to haemorrhage money, just because tA is not aware of the requirements and limitations on tB, simply because, inside of their silos, there are many "unknown unknowns" [^2] and this means they work at cross purposes.

My personality card

Every place I've worked in the past 7 or so years, I have written a company-facing blurb about who I am, how I work best, what né euro-traits I have, what my schedule is, and how to contact me.

An authentic guide on how to work well with me

The most important aspect of this is not "How will people see me? How can I make myself look cool or professional? How can I present myself to get that promotion?", instead it is a true statement of how to best work with me, how to get the best quality work out of me, and how I communicate best.

Writing my card to be read by others, empathetically

The second most important aspect of this is that I try to write my personality card so that different types of people will understand it.

80% in one line

I know that execs and time-limited people like myself will initially just want the take-home, the 80% value in as short a time as possible. So, I start with a terse one-line take-home that covers all bases.

Establishing frames of reference

I utilise established and popular frames of reference for personality, so that those educated in such things can "get there" quicker.

For example, although I have a healthy amount of scepticism on such things, I try my best to define my personality types via MBTI, DiSC, FiveFactor, DnD, 6Sigma or whatever. Doing so let's other see exactly how I relate to them from their preferred frame-of-reference, which means we work better together, quicker.

I also mention OKRs [^3] or my personal goals; one of which I always try to make about learning, normally about company tech.

My routine

I am heavily routine orientated, so I make sure that people know what that is, so they can find me, and so that they can be empathetic towards me about when we talk, to get the best out of me.

So, I broadcast my guideline routine. For example Monday AM and Friday PM I am AFK, planning+reviewing; Tuesday is Australia+Asia-time, Thursday is West-coast time; 7am-9am my local time, I am in focus-mode; 10:00-14:00 are meeting and one2one blocks.

Mental health

I always add a section on mental health. Depending on the company and the context, I share as much as I can about myself, as a way to help others seek the help they need, whether it is from me, or from someone else.

Seeing others talk about their mental health really helps those struggling with it seek out what help they need, especially when it is managers.

Authentically communicate, be powerfully understood

When you communicate like this, you get a lot of "Ah!" moments. I have seen team-members who butted heads read each other's self-selected[^4] MBTI profile and say things like:

• "oh, you're not being annoying, you're just extroverted, that's really cool, I wish I was like that, but would you mind if we had some quiet time in the morning so I can focus on X?"
• "I understand now, you need all the facts when we start talking about new tasks, instead of, like me, wanting to work it out as we go! Right, shall we try to find a way we can solve Z together before we start? What do you think?"

Those are just examples but I have seen many instances like that. It works best if the people doing it are curious and not stuck in their ways, but even then, a little shared-understanding goes a long way.

Fixing the inter-departmental conflict

Fixing inter-team dynamics is exactly the same as above, but because it is both at the Macro and the inter-personal scale, it's hard to think about. From here on I will refer to Departments and Teams as just teams.

This is hard to think about because companies consist of hierarchies of teams, and teams consist of people. Each layer in that hierarchy has it's own goals, requirements and needs, leading to split-brain thinking and greater complexity - much like OKRs which are fine-grained at the individual level, working up to higher-level, broad-stroke goals and targets of the teams and, eventually, the company.

So, given the complexity, how can we think about this? Well a team can have a "Card" too, much like a Top Trump[^5] card for one football team might say "Finance driven, can afford expensive talent and buys top", vs "Invests in the community, find new cheap talent and trains them to be top". Both are valid ways of existing, and being successful, but you know that you would approach the first if you had a world-class player, and the second if you had some raw-talent that needed teaching. From this perspective, we don't care about the individuals, just what the team can do, and how they do it. In broad strokes.

This means that a fictional team TeamO can share that "3 people work on product ImportantToThreeTeams and our backlog is <here>. Our current priorities for ImportantToThreeTeams are to support TeamK who are in crunch until <date>. Our key stake holders are <stakeholders>", this is just a statement of fact. From this statement, TeamP who urgently need some new feature, can then negotiate with TeamO and their stake-holders about shift priorities, or adding resources, or collaborating in some way. From that small about of critical information about what drives TeamO, the whole company can see their constraints and orientate themselves around that, and if needed increase the 3 people limit to appropriate people.

But this is just the start. Such communication strategies just mean that requirements are clear, limitations are known, bottlenecks explained. This then leads to a better, and more company-wide cohesive strategy about how to solve critical problems without mud-slinging.

Personnel Card Example

All data here is *self-reported*, tell others how you work best, and what your preferences are.

Perfered Name: <name>
Pronouns: <>

## Personality
MBTI: <>       FiveFactor: <>       DiSC: <>     D&D Class: <>
Neuro-type: <ADHD>/<Typical>/<Autistic>/<RatherNotSay> 

## Working
Reports to: <link to boss' Personnel card>
Prefered Working Environment: <quiet>,<load>,<hot>,<cold>
Prefered Tools: <vim>,<Nuke>,<Excel>,<PowerBI>
Knowledge domains: <quiet>,<load>,<hot>,<cold>
Prefered communication channel: <Slack>,<Email>,<Phonecall>

## Schedule
Working hours: <07:00-16:00> <08:00-17:00> <09:00-18:00>
Lunch: <11:00> <12:00> <13:00> <14:00> <15:00>
Timezome: <>
Typical Schedule:
<calendar object>

## Direct Reports
<links to other Personnel cards>

## Personal
Likes: <>
Dislikes: <>

Team Card Example

Name: <name>

## Goals
Prime goal/mission:
Secondary goal/mission:

## Work manaagement:
We manage work in <Jira>,<Bugzilla>,<Steve's spreadsheet>
We add work via: <Link>,<Email>,<Chat>,<HelpDesk>
We prioritise work via: <Steve's wishes>,<Value propisition>,<Number of requests>
You can track our progress by: <Asking Steve>,<Jira>,<Email-subscription>

## People
Point of contact: <Personnel link>
Owner: <Personnel link>
Memmbers: <Personnel link>

[^1]: Principles: Life & Work

[^2]: See Dick Cheyney's mental model on what you know, what you know you don't know, and what you do not know that you don't know!

[^3]: Objective and Key Results

[^4]: The "self-selection" is the most important aspect; how do you feel you act/behave? How do you want others to see you? How do you want to be treated? How do you like to treat others?

[^5]: Do Top Trump games still exist?