May 2004: Developing High-Performance Teams in the IT World:
The Importance of "The Main Thing" Being "The Main Thing"

--submitted by Lisa Brown, LMBrown Web Design

ADAPT members celebrated the end of another great year on Thursday, May 13th at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Natick, MA. On the agenda was an Italian luncheon buffet, 2004-2005 Board of Directors elections, a presentation by David Cirillo, Ph.D., and of course, plenty of time for networking.

Tim Ross, ADAPT President, initiated the presentation by briefing members on our year in review. Each Board member presented his/her area of responsibility and gave an overview of the year's objectives. To summarize, we are at/below budget financially; ITTC is well on its way to becoming another successful conference this year; our programs met our members' objectives based on this year's theme, "Unleashing Potential"; membership is up from last year; the monthly newsletter is now electronic and received well by membership; and the website continues to be an important informational tool for members. Each Board member was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation signed by Tim Ross. The Board awarded Tim Ross with a gift certificate and a Certificate of Appreciation for his two years serving as ADAPT President. Thanks Tim, great job!

Members were recognized by Sandy King, Hospitality Coordinator, for the number of meetings attended during the ADAPT year. Gift certificates for Barnes & Noble were given to those members attending meetings during the year. Monetary value of each gift certificate increased with the number of meetings attended. What an incentive to come to all the meetings! Thanks Sandy!

Bob Varney and Helen Miller led the Nominating Committee over the past few months. Their hard work and dedication paid off as we elected great leaders for the 2004-2005 ADAPT year. Members making up the new Board of Directors are:

Congratulations to all newly-elected Board members! We look forward to a great 2004-2005 ADAPT year!

Our speaker was David Cirillo, Ph.D., a consultant to diverse industries including high tech, retail, financial services and institutions of higher learning. Dave has over twenty years of experience working with clients to help them improve their organizational effectiveness. Specifically, Dave works in the areas of team improvement, organizational alignment, employee and customer satisfaction measurement, project management training and process improvement. Dave's Ph.D. is in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Temple University and his Master's degree is from the University of Detroit.

In his workshop we learned about:

• Why a team is greater than the sum of its parts
• Why some teams succeed and others flounder
• The characteristics of high performing, effective teams
• Project management and productivity-boosting tools may backfire
• Some tested and proven tools to help teams achieve success and become high performing

We worked on a team exercise designed to test our "teamness". This exercise demonstrated how well we worked in a team environment, the quality of our work, and ways to improve individual and team performance. Members were split into teams of 4-5 and were first given 10 sheets of 8.5"x11" paper. We spent the first ten minutes of this exercise planning how to build our paper tower using no paperclips or tape, just the paper. After the planning time was over, the teams were then given 100 sheets of papers to use to build their tower. The team who built the tallest tower won a prize. Each team also had an observer who made notes about the team's performance. It was interesting to listen to each observer on how well the team worked together. Overall, it was a fun and educational exercise.

At the end of the meeting, members were invited to gather in the hotel bar for a celebration drink of their choice, compliments of ADAPT.

Thanks to all our members, new and old. We hope you enjoyed another great year with ADAPT and look forward to seeing you at ITTC on June 21-23 in Newport, RI. It's a conference you don't want to miss!