The Pete Rule – Eugene Eric Kim

When I first got into this business almost 20 years ago, I quickly adopted a mantra: “No trust falls.” Most people’s experiences with trying to help groups collaborate more effectively — especially in corporate circles — falls under the category of “team-building activities” — rope courses, escape rooms, cooking classes, and yes, even trust falls. More often than not, I find these entirely misplaced.

Having fun together is a wonderful intervention. I personally love these kinds of activities. I think games in particular reveal so much about human nature and about group dynamics, and that they’re a fantastic and fun way to develop collaboration muscles.

The problem is that, with most groups, there are often simpler, more straightforward, higher-leverage interventions that people should be addressing first, things like having real, sometimes challenging conversations about roles and agreements. You can even do these in dynamic, dare-I-say fun ways! However, when you avoid doing this work in favor of team-building activities, the latter can come off as corny, irrelevant, even harmful.

All that said, if you’re doing the necessary work, a good team-building activity can be a wonderful complement. My friend, Pete Kaminski, has a saying for remote teams, which his friends jokingly refer to as The Pete Rule:

Time together in person is too important to spend working.

What he meant was that a lot of work can easily be done remotely, but developing deeper bonds is much easier face-to-face. When spending time together, people should prioritize accordingly.

I’ve been coaching a client on developing good team habits and was recently advising him on an upcoming offsite. Over the course of several sessions, we talked through his goals and walked through a number of possible exercises and scenarios. Finally, I sat back, thought for a long moment, then said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you all should just spend a day doing something fun together!”

So-called “team-building activities” have their place, but only when designed with intention. Always start with the work first.

Peter Kaminski has a great maxim, which those of us who know and love him commonly call The Pete Rule: (K8N)

“Time together in person is too important to spend working.” T (K8O)

I think it’s a great rule, but there’s a corollary, which I’ll call The Pete Paradox: (K8P)

Time together in person is the best time to work. (K8Q)

I actually had a specific experience with Peter last October that led me to think about this paradox. (K8R)

At RecentChangesCamp earlier this month, I faced this paradox first-hand. On the one hand, I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to really get to know some of the excellent folks in the Wiki community who aren’t local to the Bay Area. On the other hand, I had some specific things I wanted to work on — namely SisterSites with Ward Cunningham and other Wiki developers and a YADIS implementation with the good folks at JanRain. Working on these projects meant breaking away from the larger group, popping open the laptop, and focusing on the work at hand. (K8S)

The paradox resolved itself to my satisfaction. I got both projects done. We implemented SisterSites in PurpleWiki and a bunch of other Wikis, and Brian Ellin and I wrote a YADIS library in Ruby. I met several interesting and cool people for the first time, including Brian, and, I got to know folks like Bayle Shanks a lot better. On the second night, after the conference party, I decided to go to the main ballroom to check my email, even though I was exhausted. The ballroom was empty at first, but about half an hour later, Bayle showed up. We had met at WikiSym, but this was the first time we had a chance to sit down and really talk, and we stayed up past 3am. That was excellent. I had already known that Bayle had done some cool stuff, but it was great to dig deeper into his ideas as well as to talk about non-Wiki stuff. (K8T)

I even got to discuss The Pete Paradox with Pete in person. (How’s that for meta?!) And here’s how I finally resolved it in my head. Both The Pete Rule and The Pete Paradox are about maximizing engagement. When you are working closely together, you are engaging in a way that is not only more productive, but more meaningful. Face-to-face time spent working can be a waste, but face-to-face time spent truly working together usually isn’t. (K8U)