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Teambuilding

Retrospectives In Context

The goal of retrospectives (an Agile ceremony) is *improvement*. If no one on the team needs to improve the way their work works, then their retrospectives are BOUND to be totally lame (and a pointless waste of everyone’s time).

I’ve never seen a team with the motivation / need to improve (out of hundreds of teams). Hence, I’ve never seen a retrospective provide any value.

Maybe one day…

 

Why is True Fellowship So Rare, Especially in Tech?

Why is fellowship in organisations, particularly in tech companies, such a rare phenomenon, and yet when it does emerge, it’s immensely powerful? What are the factors that make it so elusive, and conversely, the elements that make it thrive when it does manifest?

In the world of technology, competition and individualism often take centre stage, overshadowing the potential benefits of collaboration and fellowship. Could it be that the pressure to innovate, coupled with the race to stay ahead of the curve, pushes people to focus more on their individual achievements and personal wellbeing rather than the collective good?

There’s also the issue of diverse backgrounds and skill sets. With experts in various fields such as engineering, design, marketing, and more, it’s possible that this diversity might inadvertently create silos. Do these specialised domains lead to a lack of understanding and empathy among team members, preventing the formation of a cohesive, supportive environment?

And yet, when fellowship does take root within tech organisations, its power is undeniable. Why is that? Could it be that the amalgamation of diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences in a collaborative environment leads to breakthroughs and innovations that might otherwise be impossible? When individuals work together, for example with Ensemble Working, sharing their knowledge and challenging one another’s ideas, they pave the way for novel solutions and approaches.

Perhaps another reason for the potency of fellowship in tech companies is the sheer complexity of the problems they tackle. The adage “two heads are better than one” rings true, as the collective intelligence of a group working in harmony often surpasses that of even the brightest individual. In an environment where fellowship thrives, team members can rely on each other’s strengths, ultimately yielding better results.

So, why is fellowship so rare in tech organisations? It appears that the competitive nature of the industry, coupled with the diversity of skills and backgrounds, might pose challenges to fostering a collaborative environment. However, when such an environment does emerge, it unlocks the potential for innovation, breakthroughs, and success that are unparalleled in their impact. Thus organisations maigh choose to recognise and nurture the power of #fellowship to stay ahead in an ever-evolving commercial landscape.

Mastering the Art of Self-Organisation with a Modicum of Expert Support

💡 Imagine a world where your team conquers every challenge, seamlessly navigating the ever-changing landscape of business and software development. It’s possible, you know – but only if we strike the perfect balance between self-organisation and expert support. Let’s dive into how you can help your team unlock its full potential while overcoming the inherent limitations of self-organisation.

➡ Self-organisation – it’s a buzzword we’ve all heard thrown around in the world of business and software development teams. While it’s a fantastic concept, it’s important to recognise that it does have its limits. Let’s have a little chat about what those limitations might be, shall we?

Now, don’t get me wrong – self-organisation can sometimes work wonders. It can boost team morale, encourage innovation, and even improve productivity. But let’s face it, most teams aren’t full of experts in every single area. That’s just not realistic. No matter how talented and skilled team members are, they simply can’t be expected to be proficient in everything.

So, what happens when your team hits a roadblock or encounters a complex issue they’ve never dealt with before? Well, that’s where the limitations of self-organisation come into play. Without the proper knowledge or expertise, the team might struggle to make acceptable decisions, especially for longer-term scenarios.

That’s why it’s crucial to have some support in place to mitigate these limitations. By providing on-call experts from whom the team can “pull” knowledge and expertise as they see fit, they can bridge their knowledge gaps and effectively tackle even the most challenging problems. With the right support, self-organisation doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach – it can be a flexible process that adapts to the team’s needs and capabilities. Assuming the fundamental reflex – knowing WHEN to pull – is in place.

In conclusion, self-organisation has its merits, but it’s important to remember that it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and on-call expert support can make all the difference.

The Secret Sauce Behind Exceptional Development Teams

💡Unleash your teams’ true potential by discovering the untapped secret to a thriving software and product development environment – it’s not about the tools or methodologies, but the way work works! Get ready to revolutionise your SOPs (standard operating procedures) and create extraordinary results.

➡Hey there! I wanted to have a little chat about a thought that’s been on my mind recently. You see, in the world of software and product development, we often find ourselves in a never-ending quest to improve our practices, methodologies, and technologies. While it’s important to strive for continuous improvement, I’ve come to realise that we might be missing the bigger picture. Here’s what I’m thinking: it’s pointless trying to improve software and product development practices before improving the way the work works more generally. Let me explain.

To put it simply, we can have the most cutting-edge technologies and methodologies, but if the overall work environment and culture aren’t conducive to innovation and growth, we’ll still face challenges and inefficiencies. Think about it: a healthy work culture that encourages collaboration, open communication, and mutual respect can create an environment where people feel empowered to share ideas and contribute to the development process.

Before we even consider adopting new tools and practices, we should focus on understanding and improving the foundation upon which our projects are built. This might involve examining our team dynamics, communication channels, decision-making processes, shared assumptions and beliefs, and the overall alignment of our teams with the organisation’s goals and values.

One way to start making improvements in the way work works is by fostering an atmosphere of trust, transparency, and attention to folks’ needs. This can create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their opinions, admitting mistakes, and asking for help when needed. This, in turn, can lead to more effective problem-solving, innovation, and ultimately, better products.

Another aspect to consider is the work-life balance of team members. Ensuring that employees have enough time to recharge and avoid burnout is crucial for maintaining high levels of creativity, productivity, and engagement. By addressing issues like excessive workload, unrealistic deadlines, or lack of support, we can create a more balanced and healthier work environment.

So, let’s not get too caught up in the pursuit of the latest software and product development practices without first taking a step back and evaluating the broader context in which we operate. By focusing on improving the way work works more generally, we can lay the groundwork for lasting, meaningful improvements that will ultimately benefit not only our products but also the people who create them.

From Exasperation to Excellence: How a Project Manager Transformed His Relationships by Changing Himself

[A real-life scenario]

John had been a project manager for over a decade, and he had seen all kinds of projects come and go. He prided himself on his organisational skills, his ability to coordinate teams, and his attention to detail. But today, as he sat at his desk, surrounded by stacks of paperwork and unanswered emails, he was feeling exasperated.

He had just received an update from his team, and it was not good. They were behind schedule, again. Despite his repeated instructions, they were still making the same mistakes, still failing to meet their targets. He rubbed his temples and quietly yelled “Why won’t they just do what I tell ’em?” into his coffee mug.

John had always been a stickler for following procedures and protocols. He believed that if everyone just did what they were supposed to do, everything would run smoothly. But lately, it seemed like his team was working against him. They were resistant to his suggestions, and even when they did agree to his proposals, they failed to follow through.

John knew that he needed to find a way to motivate his team. He tried to put himself in their shoes, to see things from their perspective. Maybe they were feeling overwhelmed, or maybe they needed more support. He decided to call a team meeting to discuss the situation and see if they could come up with a plan to get back on track.

At the meeting, John listened carefully to his team’s concerns. They were feeling stressed and overworked, and they didn’t feel like they had enough support from management. John realised that he had been so focused on results that he had forgotten to show his team that he valued their input and cared about their well-being.

He apologised for his behavior and invited suggestions for some changes he might make. Everyone agreed to schedule regular check-ins with each team member to discuss their needs and offer support. He also took steps to show his team that he valued their input, by including them in decision-making and taking their suggestions seriously.

Over time, John noticed a significant change in his team’s performance. They were more motivated and more willing to work together to achieve their goals. He realised that by taking the time to listen to his team, involve them and show them that he cared, he was better able to build trust and create a more positive work environment.

In the end, John learned that being a project manager isn’t just about giving orders and expecting people to follow them. It’s about building relationships, understanding the team’s needs, and creating an environment where everyone can thrive.

 

Navigating the Top Ten Challenges of Fellowship: Building a Strong, Cohesive Team

In light of the definition of fellowship as a community or group of individuals who share similar interests or goals, and come together to support and encourage each other in their pursuits, here’s a top ten of challenges for fellows in the context of a self-organising and self-managing team or group in the workplace:

  1. Building trust and cohesion among team members.
  2. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities.
  3. Managing and resolving conflicts within the team.
  4. Maintaining clear and effective communication among all members.
  5. Setting and achieving common goals.
  6. Managing changes within the team and adjusting to new members.
  7. Maintaining motivation and engagement among team members.
  8. Balancing individual and team goals.
  9. Managing and addressing underperformance within the team.
  10. Continuously improving the team’s processes and practices.

 

Quintessential Applications – Come Join Us!

What do we need to see in applications from potential Quintessential fellows? Well, we definitely don’t want to see a CV or resume. We don’t grok how what you’ve done in the past speaks to your potential in the future. We choose to see our fellows as capable of anything, given the necessary support and environment.

We would like to be surprised by the things you feel represent your best. Maybe a list of the things you’ve read and found insightful, such as blog posts, articles, books and so on. Or the times you’ve most enjoyed getting together with others to deliver great software and great experiences. Or maybe the topics in which you have the most interest, and some contributions you’ve made or intend to make in those areas. Maybe you’d be willing to share your take on Quintessence, on Organisational Psychotherapy, or some intriguing questions or practical experience you may have regarding excellence in software delivery. Opinions are way less interesting to us, compared to evidence.

It might be interesting to hear about the terms and conditions you guess you might be needing, including things like pay, hours, locations, equipment, team mates, etc..

Take a look at the list of skills we consider most useful, and tell us about your own skills and aspirations in those areas, or even in other areas you feel may be relevant. Although some “hard” tech skills such as coding and UX might be interesting, we’d love to enroll fellows with outstanding soft skills – these rank higher in our priorities. For example, the Antimatter Principle is as the heart of everything we do – so we’d love to hear about your experiences with attending to folks’ needs.

We’d also love to hear about times when you’ve taken care of something or someone. And how that felt – bot for you and for them.

Above all, we invite you to share with us why you see yourself as a good fit for our community of fellows, and the ways in which you will contribute to moving our whole community forward – improving the principles and practices of software delivery. And your take on excellence, too.

Go wild! Express yourself. If words and text ain’t your thang, maybe video, or audio, or music, or art, or Zen koans, or haikus, or however you best express yourself.

Our declared purpose is to make a dent in the universe, to make the world a better place through outstanding excellence in software delivery. To bring Alien Tech to the service of human beings. We’d love to hear what these things means to you. And how you see yourself contributing.

We appreciate we’re asking you to dedicate some non-trivial amount of time to representing yourself. And we’ll reciprocate by dedicating our time to paying attention to your application. And we will happily help you evolve your application from e.g. small beginnings, incrementally. No need for a one-shot big- bang application. Doing things together is, of course, a hallmark of The Quintessential Group.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you – whatever the medium, whatever the format. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message.

– Bob

We’re NOT Hiring!

At The Quintessential Group we’re NOT hiring. We have little interest in paying people for their labour or their personal services (fnarr).

We ARE inviting inquiries and applications to join our community of fellows, and participate in our software delivery teams.

Sure, we pay. And we pay top dollar (well British Pounds, mostly). But we pay our people so they can live (and fellows get to choose their own salaries and rates, amongst other things). We subscribe to Phil Crosby’s statement about the purpose of organisations:

The purpose of organizations is to help people have lives.

~ Phil Crosby

Fellowship

We’re breaking the transactional nature of the individual <-> organisation relationship in favour of something much more like fellowship.

So, we’re NOT hiring. But we ARE inviting applications to join our community of fellows. First off for our Quintessential Teams service. And then for our other services, which will be coming on stream soon.

Invitation

We cordially invite you to apply to join our community of fellows. In the first instance, we’re looking for folks with software delivery skills, who will be forming delivery teams rented by our clients (a variety of medium to large UK organisations) to deliver software at their behest. Early on, you’ll be playing and learning directly with myself and / or Ian.

Just drop Ian or myself a message expressing your curiosity or interest, and we’ll get back to you.

You may already have some questions, so please include them if you’re after some clarification or further information. There’s much already available on my Think Different blog. And a brief but growing collection of more focussed introductory and informational posts on the Quintessential Blog, too.

Benefits

What you may not have yet read is some of the other benefits of becoming a fellow of The Quintessential Group:

Having Your Needs Met

Central to our business and community is the idea of attending to folks’ needs. Each of our fellows will have his or her own needs, and The Quintessential Group will do its utmost to see those needs met. 

These may include career development, learning, autonomy to capitalise on your abilities, mastery of skills, sharing in a common purpose, playing with technology, work-life balance, choosing your own package, and so on. We’d love to hear just what your needs are. And we as a business have needs too. This mutuality offers a crucible for productive dialogue.

The Opportunity To Do Great Things

We focus on excellence, and carefully select clients with and for whom our fellows can achieve truly great things. Humdrum things bore us, and we’d not ask any of our fellows to suffer that either.

The Opportunity To Participate in Self-Managing Teams

Our Teams manage themselves, with the active support of the rest of the company. Learn and experience what participating in truly self-managing teams feels like. The true meaning of esprit de corps. The experience of excellence and real fellowship.

Other Key Benefits

Unlimited World-class Personal Mentoring

Bob and Ian each have more than twenty years’ experience in coaching and mentoring developers and delivery teams. We happily share this experience with all Quintessential Fellows, on a one to one basis (mentoring, individual coaching) and one-to-many basis (i.e. teams).

Unlimited Expert Coaching

We define mentoring as providing sage advice when asked. Coaching to us implies a more structure relationship. See e.g. “Coaching for Performance” by Sir Jon Whitmore and his G.R.O.W. model. Mentoring also implies, to us, a shared agenda. Coaching, an agenda entirely driven by the coachees.

Unlimited Awesome Career Development, Including Job Search Help & Career Advice

We try to attend to the needs of all our fellows, on a continual basis. If being a part of the Quintessential community is not meeting your needs, we’re delighted when we can help folks get their needs met, even when that means leaving us for pastures new. We’re delighted to actively support folks in this.

Free Books And Subscriptions

Continuous learning is at the core of the Quintessential Group and its community of fellows. We support these needs in any and all ways possible, including paying for all books and subscriptions of our fellows. If you have other learning needs, we’re happy to support those, too.

Paid Time Off For Conferencing (Plus Entry Fees, Expenses Paid)

We don’t believe our fellows should suffer a financial disincentive to pursue their learning and socialising needs, so we pay for time taken to attend conferences, as well as for the entry fees and associated expenses (travel, hotels, etc.).

Paid Time Off For Learning, Studying

Many folks learn for the joy of it, but we don’t see why learning has to be on the learner’s dime So we invite our fellows to invoice us or otherwise claim financial recompense for time spent learning. Effective learning benefits everyone, not least the company.

Development Hardware, Tools

Many new fellows will already have their own equipment, software tools, etc. But when they need other stuff to be quintessentially effective, we have no issue with providing such things, as the fellow(s) see fit.

Note: A Quintessential fellow is anyone (irrespective of gender) who has complete the one-week orientation and chosen to join the Quintessential community.

Note: When we say “paid for” we mean The Quintessential Group will reimburse fellows in the course of invoicing in respect of client gigs. In other words, and using the one week’s paid-for orientation as an example, we will pay fellows for attending the orientation week, over the course of several weeks’ payments for participating in services to a client.

Accepting Inquiries and Applications

We are now accepting inquiries and applications for the first “orientation” cohort of Quintessential Teams

Orientation

Simply put, we pay our candidate fellows to join together for a week (five days) of orientation. This week prepares fellows for Quintessential Team client engagements, in particular is afford the opportunity to get to know each other, build relationships, and thrash out a shared way of playing together.

Would you like to know more?

– Bob

Hungry For Improvement

In his book The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni lists three virtues he considered indispensable for “ideal team players”:

  • Humility
  • Hunger
  • People-smarts

To elaborate:

Humility

Humility means focusing on the greater good, instead of focusing on oneself or having an inflated ego. Humble people are willing to own up to their failures or flaws, apologise for their mistakes, accept others’ apologies and can sincerely appreciate others’ strengths/skills.

In Lencioni’s words, humility is probably the most important virtue:

Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek praise for their own. They share credit, emphasise team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually. It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.

Hunger

Being hungry means that you always seek more, e.g. to do more, learn more, or take on more responsibility. Hungry people are self-motivated to work hard, take initiative and go beyond their call of duty. Hungry people are never satisfied, and they always want more. They have a drive and a burning ambition to be more than they are. Some folks call this discretionary effort.

Hunger, writes Lencioni,

“is the least sensitive and nuanced of the three virtues. That’s the good news. The bad news is – it’s the hardest to change.”

Smarts (i.e. people-smarts)

People smarts means having common sense about people, i.e. being aware of and perceptive about other people, asking good questions, listening well and knowing how to respond effectively.

Be aware that “people smarts” doesn’t necessarily mean intellectually “brilliant”; but it does mean emotionally intelligence and a capability for skilful interpersonal interactions.

Of course, you can’t have a team if there’s no team chemistry; and folks who are people smart contribute to this chemistry.

Hungry For Improvement?

Improvement – and especially continuous improvement – doesn’t just happen. In most organisations, it rarely happens at all.

When improvement does happen, it’s because someone needs it to happen. For some reason. Personally, I’m hungry for improvement because I find joy in seeing things improve, and joy in seeing things getting better for the people involved. Simple as.

For me, improvement is not a means to some other end, such as higher profits, increased success, or some other common but similarly specious justification. For me, it’s an end in itself.

I’d go further, and suggest that improvement is rare exactly because few people find an innate joy in it.

How about you? Are you hungry for improvement? Do you need it?

– Bob

Quintessential Ways Of Working

I’m sure folks hearing about Quintessence wonder what it’s all about, and how it differs from other ways of working in the software development domain.

There’s much to absorb in my books on the subject, especially Quintessence itself.

But for those who prefer an “in a nutshell” explanation…

Foundations

Culture

Products, designs, solutions, services – these are all a consequence of our culture. 

So the quintessential organisation focuses on its culture, not on its processes, technical practices, competencies, etc.. And builds cultural awareness and shift into its business-as-usual, into its ways of working.

As Kevin Weiss so kindly says in his foreword to Quintessence:

This is the real challenge to readers of this book – to consider these ideas as a wholly different way of working, rather than an à la carte menu of possibilities. If you can do that, you may have what it takes to be a leader in your company’s transformation. 

And if you do, jump at the chance! It will likely be the most rewarding time of your career. 

~ Kevin Weiss

Interpersonal relationships

Part of the quintessential way of working centres around the relations between people. Between individual teams members. Between teams and the folks they serve. Between folks inside the organisation and those in customer and supplier organisations. Between folks on the front line, and their managers and executive. The way the work works, whomsoever owns it, is oriented towards increased opportunities for dialogue, and fellowship, relationship- and community-building. Not so much towards producing stuff, like designs, solutions, code, etc..

Continuous Reflection

Regular dialogue enables the surfacing of and reflecting upon the organisation’s collective assumptions and beliefs – another key aspect of the way the work works in aspiring quintessential organisations. Such dialogue is literally built into the ways of working of quintessential organisations.

Attending to folks’ needs (the Antimatter Principle) also serves to strengthen and deepen interpersonal relationships.

Excellence

A key principle in the quintessential way of working is excellence. The desire to do and be the best one can. No tolerance of complacency or slacking-off here. 

Working Together

Quintessential organisations feature people working together. I hesitate to say collaboration, because I have some reservations about that notion. But working together is an essential element of the quintessential organisation. Gone are the days when the heroic individual could make some lone breakthrough or discovery. Our world has become more complicated than that.

Systems Thinking

Quintessential organisations recognise themselves as complex adaptive systems, not just a collection of quasi-independent parts. Decisions are made and actions taken with this perspective fully in mind. And systems thinking permeates all aspects and all levels of the way the work works.

Risk

One aspect often overlooked in non-quintessential organisations is the formal management and control of risk. Many of the Folks That Matter within an organisation seek certainty and predictability, but rarely are the risks threatening those needs explicitly managed. See also: (DeMarco and Lister 2003).

Normative Learning

See: Toyota Kata (Rother 2010).

Social Sciences

The quintessential organisation draws on discoveries from many of the social sciences, including:

  • psychology
  • psychotherapy
  • group dynamics
  • cognitive science
  • neuroscience.

And builds the discoveries and practices from these fields into the way the work works.

Summary

The above are just the stand-out aspects of ways of working observable in quintessential organisations.

Take a look at Quintessence (the book) if you’d like to understand more and dive deeper.

– Bob

Further Reading

Rother, M. (2010). Toyota Kata: Managing People For Continuous Improvement And Superior Results. Mcgraw-Hill.

Demarco, T. and Lister, T.R. (2003). Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk On Software Projects. Dorset House Pub.

Seems like NOBODY in management or product consulting has heard the old adage:

Q: How do you build a great product?

A: Build a great team and they’ll build the great product for you.

Fun Times at Familiar

I’m minded to write something positive for a change (!) so I thought I might share how much fun a quintessential development organisation can be to work with. (I say work with, because we had almost no power structures, no managers, no bosses, and everyone was a colleague, a fellow.)

Familiar was a software house and consultancy, based near Reading UK (some forty miles west of London), which I started and led circa 1996-2000.

The years at Familiar was, for many of us, enormous fun. We were doing great things for our clients, bonding as a group, and learning loads about how to become a Quintessential organisation. The social side was just as much fun as the business side. Indistinguishable, really. We placed a lot of emphasis on the social aspects of the organisation:

  • Company-funded weekends away in plush country hotels – for the folks in the company along with their significant others.
  • Regular dIning out as a group, on the company’s expenses. 
  • Collaborative sessions (sprint planning and the like) in each others’ homes.
  • Other group social events (e.g. exhibitions).
  • An office configured for socialising – and learning – as much as for work (lounge, sofas, library, books, kitchen, etc.).

This was all made possible by the success we had commercially – a virtuous circle where fun led to great work for clients led to high margins led to funds for more fun… 

It was the kind of win-win-win (clients, us, suppliers) that quintessential organisations regard as normal.

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

– Bob

Beyond the Software Teams

One of the biggest constraints on the effectiveness of Agile software teams (the real ones, not the much more numerous pretend, faux-agile ones) is the assumption that the structures, assumptions and beliefs of the host organisation will not change. That it is, in fact,  impossible to get these to change, or to expect them to change.

An assumption which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”

~ Henry Ford

When this assumption goes unexamined and unchallenged, adopting Agile ways of working within the software teams – or in any part of the organisation, in isolation –  is a highway to hell.

– Bob

P.S. You might like to take a look at my latest book – Quintessence – to see how highly effective organisations approach and solve this challenge.

Further Reading

Marshall, R. W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Highly effective Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub)

The Organisational Psychotherapy Standup

Daily stand-ups rapidly become tedious to the point of irrelevance. They rarely address core issues, participants generally preferring to gloss over issues so they can get back to “the real work”, e.g. coding, as soon as possible each morning.

Here’s how the Scrum Institute describes the Daily Scrum (Standup):

The Daily Scrum Meeting is a maximum of 15 minutes. These meetings take place every working day at the same time in the same place.

It’s best to conduct Daily Scrum Meetings with direct access to the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Burndown Chart. So the Scrum Team can direct the Daily Scrum Meeting based on the facts and progress which are visible to everyone in the team.

Daily Scrum Meeting aims to support the self-organization of the Scrum Team and identify impediments systematically.

All members of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Product Owner need to join Daily Scrums. Other stakeholders can also join these meetings, but only as a view-only audience.

Daily Scrum Meetings are structured in the following way. Every member of the Scrum Team answers three questions.

Question #1: What activities have I performed since the last Daily Scrum Meeting?

Question #2: What activities am I planning to perform until the next Daily Scrum Meeting? What is my action plan?

Question #3: Did I encounter or am I expecting any impediment which may slow down or block the progress of my work?

Impediments

Q: What are the biggest impediments to a team’s progress?

A: The collective assumptions and beliefs of the organisation as a whole (and, marginally, of the team itself).

How often are these impediments discussed or even surfaced at the Daily Scrum/standup? Almost never. Or never.

How much do they impact the progress of the team? Lots. Really, lots.

So, for Question #3 (above), who’s going to raise the organisation’s – and team’s – collective assumptions and beliefs impeding or blocking the team’s progress? And who’s going to address these impediments/blockers on behalf of the team?

– Bob

Further Reading

Marshall, R. W. (2018). Hearts over Diamonds: Serving Business and Society Through Organisational Psychotherapy. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub)

Marshall, R. W. (2021). Memeology: Surfacing and Reflecting On The Organisation’s Collective Assumptions And Beliefs. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub)

Marshall, R. W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Highly Effective Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub)

Unbelievable

“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.”

~ Plato

Adapting Plato’s wisdom to the Antimatter Principle frame:

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their community’s collective assumptions and beliefs will never be understood let alone believed by their fellows.

– Bob

I speak to a lot of CTOs, VPs Engineering, Heads of Development, Delivery Directors, Delivery Managers, etc..

Almost all of them seem hell-bent on delivering (e.g. software) products and product increments a.k.a. features. Almost none of them seem to have heard of the old saw:

“How do you build a great product? Build a great team and let them build that great product for you.”

C’est la via. And it’s their ball.

Psychological Safety – Oh! The Irony

The march of time seems to have judged “psychological safety” as a passing fad. Not that it’s an irrelevant idea – far from it. 

I suspect psychological safety gained some acclaim because everybody wanted it for themselves. “Yes, please. I feel anxious, exposed and at risk when I speak out, so I’d really appreciate some psychological safety, thank you.”

We’ll skip over the unlikely prospect of any managers being interested in providing an environment of psychological safety (why would they need to do that?) and get straight to the irony.

The Irony

I’ve spoken with some number of colleagues who all attest to feelings of anxiety, being exposed and being at risk of judgement by peers in the software community when they speak out about certain, possibly contentious or unpopular issues. 

Aside : I suspect it’s more often fear of the consequences of speaking out that’s at the root of these anxieties, rather that fear of being judged per se. 

The irony being, of course, that whereas individuals are fine with accepting psychology safety provided by others, they’re far less interested in extending psychological safety in turn.

What are you doing on a daily basis to extend psychological safety to others?

– Bob

Further Reading

http://www.psychologytoday.com. (1 June 2015). Tired of Being Judged? Try This. | Psychology Today. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/201506/tired-being-judged-try [Accessed 13 Sep. 2021].

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