What good looks like!!

I think back to my favourite places to work, and wonder what made that place so memorable? What have I been pursuing every since then. Is it great new tech? is it working on interesting problems and solutions? Is it learning off great team member who think differently? 

It is all of the above and more. Over the years I have worked at many places and had some hits and some real misses and realised what I really enjoy is working with people who are nice and make it a pleasure to come to work each day.

This doesn't just somehow magically happen, this culture is specifically created by the leaders who foster it. I hear a lot about servant leader or empowering teams, but what does this mean exactly?

As a leader, if your focus is on the success of the business. The solution comes first, must be the best, we can not compromise on quality, must be done quickly. You may get a good solution built, but you may also burn through people. If people leave, the vision is diluted and the new team members are not as onboard as the previous. Or have a slightly different view on what needs to be done. This means you need to keep talking about the vision, and keep getting people onboard with the solution direction.

If you focus on people, you aim should be to ensure the team gets what they need to do their job as best as they can. In order for this to happen there are some really basic things that need to be achieved.

Purpose, Mastery & Autonomy

How do we create purpose for teams?

By giving the team a clear vision or direction, general enough that they can come up with their own purpose. There is buy in right from the start as the purpose is well understood and the team can commit to it as they created it. If you come to work without purpose, then the days tick by and what have you achieved? 

How do we give space to master the craft?

Trying new things and failing is an integral part of being able to master the craft. Of course we want everyone to succeed and will try to help things along the way to ensure they do. But a failure can be such a good lesson and such a good tool to learn about what works and what doesn't. it can be worth a 1000 words. Setting up the team to allow them to fail and have the tools to learn from it and continue is one of the most important aspects of growth. By cultivating a culture where failure is acceptable, and focusing on the growth opportunity, teams can feel free to experiment and try new things, and learn how to master the craft.

Enough space to do what they need to do? 

Autonomy is so critical in allowing all this to happen. The way the teams are structured the way the Architecture is configured is in place to allow teams to be autonomous. There is a difference between Autonomy and silo. If teams are working by themselves and do not talk to anyone, do not respect any one else's opinion, just do whatever they feel like. They are working in a silo and the system will be fragmented and there will be lots of waste. In a great team, all the teams work with each other but still have the freedom to make choices and build our their slice of the vision. We work together to ensure we build a cohesive ecco system and lean on each other for help and support.

This creates a culture where everyone is fulfilled. This makes people happy to come to work each day. This makes interactions between people nice. And ultimately it a pleasure to come to work each day. We spend so much time at work, life is too short to be stressed and unhappy for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

the problem. Why is it so important?

For the above to work, people need to be able to solve a problem. We hire engineers who spend their life figuring our problems. They are in this industry because they love to solve problems. So when you give an engineer a solution, and ask them to implement it... Monkeys implement solutions. Engineers solve problems and to build a great solution, you need great engineers who are dedicated to make it all work.

the end game

With enough time to build this culture and have it embedded in the teams, a strange thing starts to happen. People start to care about what they are doing. The people that care about what they are doing really want to make it succeed. Now you have a really good solution with some really good committed people who want to be at work. So instead of 1 person with a vision and drive to make it success. The whole team has a vision and drive to succeed.

The main challenge as a leader is not how to make the solution work. But how do we inspire people, so they can make the solution work.

I read an interesting book on leadership called Tribal leadership by Dave Logan. The book is about the 5 stages of tribal culture. it talks about the different stages an organisation is at and how to take it to stage 5. a quote from people at stage 5 is an interesting target to have.

Stage Five’s T-shirt would read “life is great,” and they haven’t been doing illicit substances. Their language revolves around infinite potential and how the group is going to make history—not to beat a competitor, but because doing so will make a global impact. This group’s mood is “innocent wonderment,” with people in competition with what’s possible, not with another tribe.

I believe the job of a leader is to inspire this kind on innocent wonderment, make life at work a pleasure the be apart of, and make the product not just a technical solution, but also the people that focus on evolving the solution to its best it can be.