About important “invisible" things - trust, culture and values
I am the Head of Product at RealtimeBoard. I love bold goals and constantly think about where new horizons are waiting for us, how to improve results, how to become better tomorrow, than we were yesterday. And I also think a lot about how important the team is in this exciting journey. We pay a lot of attention to ensuring that everyone in the team understands the company's goals, strategy and our progress in achieving them.
“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.” They say this is an African proverb.
It is now popular to implement OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPI and other methods to increase efficiency. Sometimes it turns out that these frameworks do not work or require a lot of micromanagement and become more pain in the ass than a real helper in achieving the result.
At conferences, I am often asked questions about how to properly do OKRs, how it works with us in RealtimeBoard and ask to “show a sign” with OKRs. As a rule, this is, of course, not solved by a tablet.
With the growth of the company, especially if this happens quickly, one way or another you start to face the fact that different people in a team have a very different context. People, even if very talented, may not think in one direction, and the problem of “swan, cancer and pike” arises when everyone is pulled in different directions. And maybe they don’t pull at all, because they don’t understand where to pull.
In an ideal world, teams synchronize around mission and vision, set goals, and work out strategies for achieving them. The same OKRs can perfectly help with this.
There are several reasons why this may not work - not the goals (or the inability to set them), the wrong motivation, lack of control. Another problem is often the fact that many frameworks and concepts begin to be introduced from the wrong side - without a “foundation” (team building), we fasten the “head” (the desire to get results from a group of people). That helps the team to make a team that goes far together, and I would like to talk.
1. What problem to solve ahead: People - Process - Tools
A simple rule that will save a lot of time and understand why tools or processes do not work: People → Process → Tools . It makes no sense to engage in the implementation of OKRs, and even more so to find a tool for tracking all of this, if there are no right people who work as a team.
Our case: we have been working with OKRs for almost 2.5 years and also thought about introducing the tool right away, but stopped on time. For tracking, Google Spreadsheet works fine, if the whole team is involved and understands what to do. And we have worked a lot and continue to work on building a team of the right people, synchronizing around common goals and values, and regular knowledge sharing. The general context, as practice shows, is much more important than a tool.
2. Culture as a way to control
Often we think of a company culture as something that inspires everyone in our teams to do their job, as if they were the glue of the company. Of course, this is true, but culture has another important function that Andy Grove perfectly described in the book High output management . This is a control function. When everything changes very quickly, the company grows and we work with uncertainty, by and large, culture is the only thing that allows us to be sure that the right decisions will be made. It would be possible to write everything in the instructions, but new people and processes often appear faster than instructions :)
Now many (at least grocery) companies have put the team in the center as the main unit that creates value. The same Agile and frameworks based on it are built on the basis of the Team as a key player. But what makes a group of people a team? Common goals, common values, focus, good communication. This may appear by itself, but you can still work on it.
When we first started and we had ± 10 people, everything seemed to be simple and obvious - a new startup, a lot of ideas that very well stimulated cohesion. And maybe not so obvious - we simply did not attach any importance to some things.
Then the team began to grow rapidly, new people came, many new people, and now RealtimeBoard is already 140+ people in Russia, the USA, Europe and Australia and many different teams. Functional teams work together all the time (Product, Marketing, Development, Scrum-teams), some gather for projects.
Somewhere after 30 people, the moment came when we began to seriously think about how to make the team not lose its single focus and remain effective. And then we first encountered the model of the stages of the Bruce Takman team. The material on the link can be used as a test that will determine the stage of your team.
6 stages of team building (Bruce Tuckman):
Every time when we form a new team or a new person comes to it, everything starts all over again - with the formation of a new team (Forming). By the way, the enthusiasm that arises at the stage of achieving results can be confused with the enthusiasm that occurs at the stage of team formation, and I fell into this trap.
This model is perfectly superimposed on the other - 5 flaws in Patrick Lensioni’s teams. At each stage, the team overcomes one of the vices:
Trust is the basis of a cohesive team, without it, work in principle is impossible.
Actual for any team and at any stage of the company.
What is trust in professional life? This is not only about the fact that you can rely on other people, believe that they will not be deceived, will fulfill everything in time, etc. It is also an opportunity to show one’s vulnerability and weakness without fear of criticism and condemnation. This is critical for productive work. For example, we all constantly make mistakes when we conduct experiments, we do new things for ourselves, and it is important that the team is not afraid of mistakes and not afraid to talk about them.
I think everyone can remember such stories, when a person seemed to be working, working and bang! Already wanted to quit or thought for a couple of years that he was doing something wrong or wrong.
We do not trust each other, because we know each other badly and understand each other’s intentions poorly, even if everything is agreed in words.
If we know people better, it is easier for us to interpret their intentions as positive, and if we don’t know, we tend to blame them for mistakes (a fundamental attribution error takes effect here).
Exercise "A little about yourself." In 30–40 minutes, you can take the first step towards making people better understand each other - telling personal stories, team members begin to see people in each other, rather than competitors, and show empathy.
Team buildings by themselves do not work. In the rope courses, if people recognize each other, then by chance. Such events can be used as a supplement.
Exercise "The effectiveness of the team." Each of the team members should say what contribution each of the colleagues made to the results and name the participants' growth zones. Each member of the team is discussed in turn, usually starting with the head.
Creating a team profile. In order to get to know each other better, you can conduct a test such as Myers-Briggs or Insights Discovery (we did it). This will help, firstly, to develop awareness in the team members, secondly, to understand how different people in the team are, how differently they can process information and make decisions.
Ask questions and give feedback. Here, I like the concept of radical candor Kim Scott most of all, which says that the extreme straightforwardness has two aspects - Care personally and Challenge directly.
It is important when the company grows.
When the company began to grow, we realized that it is very important for us to preserve the principles according to which we make decisions. Values are not only what we write on t-shirts, notebooks and the company's website, it is also what helps to preserve the integrity of decision making in conditions of high speed of development.
We made the first approach to the formation of common values in 2014 at a strategic session. In 2017, we approached culture as a product and went through the stages of research, prototyping, and validation. Critically important for us was that the values were not imposed by the management of the company, but collected from the stories of each team member.
Always always, and especially with the rapid growth.
When people come to our team, we look at two things - Job fit and Culture fit. There is already a well-known rule - professional skills can be taught, but if a person and a company do not fit each other in culture, then there is practically nothing to do with it.
What we do to make sure the Culture fit:
Things that are invisible at first glance - culture and trust in a team - also require constant attention and purposeful work. Just as we constantly look at metrics and monitor business and product results, we need to monitor our teams. In my head the phrase constantly revolves: "If you do not take up culture, then culture will take care of you." It seems there is some truth in it.
PS The article was first published in my blog on Medium .
“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.” They say this is an African proverb.
It is now popular to implement OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPI and other methods to increase efficiency. Sometimes it turns out that these frameworks do not work or require a lot of micromanagement and become more pain in the ass than a real helper in achieving the result.
At conferences, I am often asked questions about how to properly do OKRs, how it works with us in RealtimeBoard and ask to “show a sign” with OKRs. As a rule, this is, of course, not solved by a tablet.
With the growth of the company, especially if this happens quickly, one way or another you start to face the fact that different people in a team have a very different context. People, even if very talented, may not think in one direction, and the problem of “swan, cancer and pike” arises when everyone is pulled in different directions. And maybe they don’t pull at all, because they don’t understand where to pull.
In an ideal world, teams synchronize around mission and vision, set goals, and work out strategies for achieving them. The same OKRs can perfectly help with this.
There are several reasons why this may not work - not the goals (or the inability to set them), the wrong motivation, lack of control. Another problem is often the fact that many frameworks and concepts begin to be introduced from the wrong side - without a “foundation” (team building), we fasten the “head” (the desire to get results from a group of people). That helps the team to make a team that goes far together, and I would like to talk.
Two concepts about the importance of people and culture for achieving results
1. What problem to solve ahead: People - Process - Tools
A simple rule that will save a lot of time and understand why tools or processes do not work: People → Process → Tools . It makes no sense to engage in the implementation of OKRs, and even more so to find a tool for tracking all of this, if there are no right people who work as a team.
Our case: we have been working with OKRs for almost 2.5 years and also thought about introducing the tool right away, but stopped on time. For tracking, Google Spreadsheet works fine, if the whole team is involved and understands what to do. And we have worked a lot and continue to work on building a team of the right people, synchronizing around common goals and values, and regular knowledge sharing. The general context, as practice shows, is much more important than a tool.
2. Culture as a way to control
Often we think of a company culture as something that inspires everyone in our teams to do their job, as if they were the glue of the company. Of course, this is true, but culture has another important function that Andy Grove perfectly described in the book High output management . This is a control function. When everything changes very quickly, the company grows and we work with uncertainty, by and large, culture is the only thing that allows us to be sure that the right decisions will be made. It would be possible to write everything in the instructions, but new people and processes often appear faster than instructions :)
Team building: two practical models
Now many (at least grocery) companies have put the team in the center as the main unit that creates value. The same Agile and frameworks based on it are built on the basis of the Team as a key player. But what makes a group of people a team? Common goals, common values, focus, good communication. This may appear by itself, but you can still work on it.
When we first started and we had ± 10 people, everything seemed to be simple and obvious - a new startup, a lot of ideas that very well stimulated cohesion. And maybe not so obvious - we simply did not attach any importance to some things.
Then the team began to grow rapidly, new people came, many new people, and now RealtimeBoard is already 140+ people in Russia, the USA, Europe and Australia and many different teams. Functional teams work together all the time (Product, Marketing, Development, Scrum-teams), some gather for projects.
Somewhere after 30 people, the moment came when we began to seriously think about how to make the team not lose its single focus and remain effective. And then we first encountered the model of the stages of the Bruce Takman team. The material on the link can be used as a test that will determine the stage of your team.
6 stages of team building (Bruce Tuckman):
Every time when we form a new team or a new person comes to it, everything starts all over again - with the formation of a new team (Forming). By the way, the enthusiasm that arises at the stage of achieving results can be confused with the enthusiasm that occurs at the stage of team formation, and I fell into this trap.
This model is perfectly superimposed on the other - 5 flaws in Patrick Lensioni’s teams. At each stage, the team overcomes one of the vices:
- Mistrust
- Fear of conflict
- Irresponsibility
- Undemanding
- Indifference to the results.
Trust is the basis of a cohesive team, without it, work in principle is impossible.
Trust as the basis of any team
Actual for any team and at any stage of the company.
What is trust in professional life? This is not only about the fact that you can rely on other people, believe that they will not be deceived, will fulfill everything in time, etc. It is also an opportunity to show one’s vulnerability and weakness without fear of criticism and condemnation. This is critical for productive work. For example, we all constantly make mistakes when we conduct experiments, we do new things for ourselves, and it is important that the team is not afraid of mistakes and not afraid to talk about them.
I think everyone can remember such stories, when a person seemed to be working, working and bang! Already wanted to quit or thought for a couple of years that he was doing something wrong or wrong.
We do not trust each other, because we know each other badly and understand each other’s intentions poorly, even if everything is agreed in words.
If we know people better, it is easier for us to interpret their intentions as positive, and if we don’t know, we tend to blame them for mistakes (a fundamental attribution error takes effect here).
How to get to know each other and learn how to understand and communicate intentions
Exercise "A little about yourself." In 30–40 minutes, you can take the first step towards making people better understand each other - telling personal stories, team members begin to see people in each other, rather than competitors, and show empathy.
Team buildings by themselves do not work. In the rope courses, if people recognize each other, then by chance. Such events can be used as a supplement.
Exercise "The effectiveness of the team." Each of the team members should say what contribution each of the colleagues made to the results and name the participants' growth zones. Each member of the team is discussed in turn, usually starting with the head.
Creating a team profile. In order to get to know each other better, you can conduct a test such as Myers-Briggs or Insights Discovery (we did it). This will help, firstly, to develop awareness in the team members, secondly, to understand how different people in the team are, how differently they can process information and make decisions.
Ask questions and give feedback. Here, I like the concept of radical candor Kim Scott most of all, which says that the extreme straightforwardness has two aspects - Care personally and Challenge directly.
Company growth: we formulate common values
It is important when the company grows.
When the company began to grow, we realized that it is very important for us to preserve the principles according to which we make decisions. Values are not only what we write on t-shirts, notebooks and the company's website, it is also what helps to preserve the integrity of decision making in conditions of high speed of development.
We made the first approach to the formation of common values in 2014 at a strategic session. In 2017, we approached culture as a product and went through the stages of research, prototyping, and validation. Critically important for us was that the values were not imposed by the management of the company, but collected from the stories of each team member.
Culture fit when hiring employees
Always always, and especially with the rapid growth.
When people come to our team, we look at two things - Job fit and Culture fit. There is already a well-known rule - professional skills can be taught, but if a person and a company do not fit each other in culture, then there is practically nothing to do with it.
What we do to make sure the Culture fit:
- We constantly talk about our values to all employees and explain them with examples from the company's history. This helps people who conduct interviews to clearly understand examples of behavior that the team values.
- We include information about our values in all information materials that a potential candidate faces.
- All interviews are conducted in several stages - the candidate gets acquainted not only with HR or the immediate supervisor, but also with the team with which he is to work.
- We collect interview questions in the Playbook that help identify the cultural characteristics of potential employees. It helps to accumulate knowledge and experience and share them.
Instead of conclusion
Things that are invisible at first glance - culture and trust in a team - also require constant attention and purposeful work. Just as we constantly look at metrics and monitor business and product results, we need to monitor our teams. In my head the phrase constantly revolves: "If you do not take up culture, then culture will take care of you." It seems there is some truth in it.
PS The article was first published in my blog on Medium .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/437500/