One way to build camaraderie and teamwork is to reinforce it in your IT staff meetings. My belief is that every monthly staff meeting should have an element of fun and team building.
Watch the sample IT Kickoff Meeting to see an example at the end of this post.
One of the things I like to do is to produce a slide show of my employees working with our clients. It’s very easy to do and takes almost no extra time unless you decide to be really creative. You can even do this without spending a dime if you want to.
People like to see themselves on the big screen. Put some high energy music to the background and you have something within a few minutes that will make most IT organizations stand up and take notice.
Why? Because they probably have not seen anything like it come from their IT manager. It can set you apart from other IT managers plus it’s a lot of fun.
Here is what you do:
- Assign one or two people to take photos of people at work for a month or two. I usually assign one of my employees responsibility to do this for an entire year, , , to get ad hoc photos of IT people working with clients, record special events, , , anything they want to take a photo of in your company.
- Collect the photos and create a slide show.
- Use PowerPoint with background music, , , or
- Use a product like ProShow to create a slide show product with music embedded
- Use high energy music like the theme to Rocky
Be sure to include several photos of each employee in the slide show. I also like to take photos of people waving at the camera or doing things that are funny. The point of this is to take a breather and have some fun with your staff so keep it upbeat and positive.
When you are finished, you can easily create a copy of the slide show file to give to everyone, , , or you could even go as far as to create a nice photo album to award to your people.
This last option will cost a few bucks but the technology available today can give you a professional product at a very reasonable cost. See www.mypublisher.com for one example, , , it’s what I have used to develop several photo albums for my family. There are many similar products to choose from.
These memories can be very special as people get older in remembering the “good old days” of their career, , , you might even like them as well.
Take a look at a 20 Minute IT Manager session titled, Jumpstart Your Year with an IT Kickoff Meeting. In this session I include a short example on Slide #23 of a slide show with music to give you an idea.
Go to:
http://www.20minuteitmanager.com/sessions/090102KICKOFF/
ITLever™ 