There are more than 700,000 unfilled vacancies in the IT space in the U.S., particularly those with related cybersecurity skills. This suggests the industry needs help. Some of this may appear with the White House’s recent apprenticeship news.
In the meantime, how can firms boost IT team creativity and productivity? To gain an insight, Digital Journal caught up with Xero CTO Mark Rees.
Digital Journal: What’s the best way to boost IT team creativity and what makes this technique so effective?
Mark Rees: We’re spending a lot of time at Xero exploring how we unlock creativity and set people up to do the best work of their lives. In most cases, the approaches are surprisingly simple and intuitive.
One approach we’ve taken which has yielded great results is ‘flow time.’ In short, flow time creates the space to allow teams to think about a problem differently. It was born out of a necessity to find different ways to work together to account for the hyper ‘zoom call’ world we live in. The idea is that we can shift energy away from tactical work, and channel it towards ‘blue sky’ thinking.
In practical terms, flow time works as a set weekly period where meetings do not take place; creating space for our people to prioritize deep, creative and productive work. It’s dedicated time for everyone each week to spend towards progressing some of Xero’s biggest goals.
Xeros enter flow time with a clear goal so they can become fully immersed in what they are doing. There is no expectation that those in flow time would be responsive to slack messages or emails within this period.
Flow time not only creates space for creativity and productivity but also benefits the wellbeing of our teams, allowing an increased sense of control and more autonomy.
Another way we unlock creativity among teams is by placing ourselves directly into the world we look after – that of accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses. We do this by way of regular, direct calls with our customers to discuss their pain points and feedback.
There’s nothing more visceral than talking to someone who lives in the world you look after. It gives you an immediate sense of responsibility and impact. This kind of exposure is something I encourage all my teams to build into their practices on a monthly basis. As technology leaders, there’s nothing that drives creativity, problem solving abilities and an open mind more than talking to someone who solely relies on Xero technology to do their job every day.
DJ: How do IT leaders unintentionally dampen creativity?
Rees: We’re all guilty of getting stuck in the mundane, routine parts of our day-to-day job and forgetting to create space and slow down. This can be a dampener on creativity as our brain power becomes consumed by transactional work.
Working in a psychologically unsafe environment is also a real risk to creativity – especially in technology which is all about taking risks and inevitable failure on the route to success. It’s really important for IT leaders to create the space and the permission for their teams to talk about failure but also to celebrate the wins and consider how you approach a post-mortem after an IT incident. All of this contributes to psychological safety at work and in turn, influences the capacity for creativity.
DJ: Do IT teams need to be creative to be productive?
Rees: Productivity is different to creativity but we strive for both at Xero and in some cases, they go hand-in-hand.
To productively deliver the type of work we do in technology at Xero, we need periods of deep concentration time. Working in uninterrupted blocks of time allows us to focus, innovate and is incredibly good for our wellbeing, sense of meaning and mastery.
An example of this working well was seen during COVID lockdowns when teams organized themselves with a discreet focus on the customer. This saw us deliver high levels of care which in turn enabled us to ship products quickly at a high value around the world.
