Who are TM=GR*

We, TM=GR* (*teaming is growing), are a team of executives with more than 20 years of experience in the IT and new technologies industry.

We met at Sun Microsystems, leading the Services business unit. A team of more than 200 people. On 2005 we were asking ourselves: What are we doing differently that makes the subsidiary one of the most successful units worldwide?

All this might sound as marketing chaw-chaw, but there is data supporting it. The difference was uniform in all areas and quite large in some of them. While technology sales unit was coherent with Iberia market potential, the Service Business unit achieved the highest quota inside Sun, representing 60% out of the total business for Iberia. Customer satisfaction indexes where one of the best worldwide, and it was surprising that employee satisfaction was also among the highest. Sales of some new and strategic products where the best worldwide.

That situation was recognized by Sun top management. So we were chartered to analyze our success and try to make it extensive to other regions and other lines of business.

We identified 5 reasons to explain our success, but it was not evident how to implement them:

• The first, is related to our special way to team-work, taking the best out of individual skills over roles and organizational positions. Each person has its role, but he could leverage from others skills independently of his position inside the organization. Everybody has strengths but there is always somebody else better in something. The objective is to be able to use the best of each individual. That can only happen when we are able to team work without useless egos, where everybody skills are recognized and required for a common objective.
• The second, is the self-demanding spirit, which resulted in a better focus on both individual and team results. We are convinced that people feel better and are more effective under a self-demanding climate, where work environment promotes sharing for improvement, instead of managing by control.
• The third one is the pioneer spirit. We were the first to implement new line of services at Sun. We created new services making our market bigger. This also resulted in more energy, speed and team motivation.
• The fourth one, is the authenticity and confidence, a wise decision to never punish mistakes but lies. How can a team be innovative if there is fear and no trust?
• The fifth one, the customer was always above structure and quotas. If we think about it carefully, independently of the organization proposed by corporate, our goal was to cooperate to ensure our customer were happy to pay for our services.

We achieved great results, but the best was the joy to work. We enjoyed every achievement. That was not just by chance, since one of our main proccesses was development, both for management (leadership by capabilities) and with coaching performed by the forth member of this team.

After this analysis we took a decision; we will always work with this philosophy as a team, and if eventually we couldn’t , we will find where to do it.

From this idea TM=GR* was formed, as a result of our development process as a team.