Monday 10 August 2015

The power of cake...

Now that I have your attention with the mention of cake, I wanted to share my thoughts on how simple gestures that bring the team together out of their day to day work can really strengthen and improve your team. I know there is much literature out there on team building and activities away from the office but these don't have to involve being knee deep in freezing mud whilst being shot at by flying balls of paint.


I would like to share my experience on how stopping once a week for 10 minutes to share some cake can have a vast improvement on the collaboration (but not so much the waistline). 

Originally, when I was working in the UK our office had the rule, as I'm sure many do, that if it's your birthday you bring in some cake. When I moved to NZ and started working in a true agile team, I decided to continue the tradition. Other team members followed suit and, being the competitive bunch we are, it quickly sparked a who could bake the best cake, with increasingly outrageous attempts at baking. More and more people got involved from across different teams. Eventually this turned in to a weekly cake rota and as far as I know to this day the table we all stood around and ate cake is still affectionately called the cake table.

Little did I realise at the time the benefits this was having. Suddenly, communication barriers were being broken down, team members and members across teams were engaging in conversation and discussing what they were up to and problems they were having; both at work and out of it. Trust was built as team members got to know each other and felt able to have in depth and constructive conversations about those tricky design and coding decisions without the fear of upsetting someone. Once a team starts to communicate, people aren't scared to ask for help or grab people together for an informal discussion on the best way to design this piece of code or point out that perhaps a different approach could be better. Blockers are reduced and the team morale and motivation increases as the team is more productive.

In a new role, I tried the same trick on my birthday and although it hasn't quite turned in to the same level of baking competitiveness I believe it has certainly helped in building team communication and morale. Many a retrospective includes mentions of the amount of cake that week.

For those gluten free or not eating sugar it doesn't have to be just about cake, the point is that team building and building stronger team collaboration doesn't need to be a big ordeal.


I'm sure there are many similar stories in your teams. What goes on at your office that brings people together for a bit of fun?

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