Let's split decision making into two categories: big decisions and little decisions. For these big, "Capital D" decisions, all stakeholders need to have some form of awareness or input into the decision-making process. Anything that's a big change to what you're working on or how you're working has the potential to be a big decision.
Make sure every team member contributes to is the decision of 'How' you work together.
When it comes to 'how' you work, this typically includes cultural practices, policies, and meetings. There is no one size fits all structure. Every team needs to decide which practices work best for them and they need to include every team member in that conversation.
This means that if your team has changing team members, then you need to revisit the conversation on process and practice regularly. The good news is that this conversation can be quick and easy.
You can facilitate this conversation online in less than an hour with Minimum Viable Ceremonies.
Symptoms of a broken process
If any of the following 3 things apply to your team, you should to have a process conversation to work better together.
Symptoms of a broken process are:
- "Inherited "treasure" - there is no opportunity to change the current process.
- Not-so-benevolent dictatorship - one person has considerably more decision-making sway than others.
- Clear, glass lake mentality - when optics is more important that functionality.
1. Inherited "treasure"
Someone's junk is someone else's treasure.
Inherited treasure refers to the process of inducting a new team member into an existing team and assuming that the team dynamic will stay exactly the same.
Imagine, you've joined a new team at work, and your calendar got pre-populated with a bunch of meetings you know nothing about. You weren't asked how you like to work, what you want your daily schedule will look like, and how you best can contribute to the team. You've inherited the team's practices and their schedule, but also all of their baggage.
The expectations set by the other team members include a lot of assumptions, some of which might not still hold with the new team structure. By not taking 30 minutes to step back and reassess how you want to work together- it can be hard for the new person to feel like they are an equal member. This is one way to create implicit hierarchy which can be damaging over time.
2. Not-so-benevolent dictatorship
90% of the time, implicit hierarchy is bad 100% of the time.
Does someone in your team have implicit power? As mentioned above, Hidden Treasure can lead to implicit hierarchy. Unfortunately, implicit hierarchy usually leads to blame and hurt feelings - and it's more common in non-hierarchical work environments.
Examples of implicit hierarchy might include:
- A strong-headed Scrum Master, or Manager, who pre-defined your team's agile process then presented it to the team after the fact.
- When one person makes a suggestion for a decision and it always seems like their opinion is listened to and actioned, even if others have opposing views.
- A team member that takes on more responsibility than written in their job description, so they can help out, but they aren't compensated or recognized for this extra responsibility.
Where one person has more power, without it being written explicit communication to the team, we call this person a 'Not-so-benevolent Dictator' because they may have positive intent, but there are often negative consequences.
An example of 'how we work' process decisions made by a 'Not-so-benevolent Dictator' could look like:
- Your stand-ups getting scheduled during your most productive time of the day.
- A retrospective being scheduled for when you need to go pick up the kids.
- You're no longer able to make trivia night because you now have a late-night call with your international team.
3. Clear, glass lake mentality
Do you feel pressure to not raise concerns or problems?
When every member of the team refuses to acknowledge any problems with the way they work, we call this 'Clear, glass lake mentality'. There is not a ripple, or wave, in the water, everything is perfectly smooth. The pressure to appear as a high-functioning team is so strong, that expressing a dissenting opinion, or one that suggests improvement, is seen as not being a 'team player'. The pressure to conform results in nobody ultimately getting what they want.
Impact of a broken process
Though impacts can scatter through every activity. There are 4 key areas worth calling out:
- Decreased autonomy,
- General grumpiness,
- Reduced productivity, and
- Wasted time through non-actionable conversation.
1. Decreased autonomy
Decreased autonomy means lower productivity and morale.
A large contributor to employee motivation and productivity is autonomy and choice. Making and improving digital products is creative work and the employees who do that work expect and crave a certain level of flexibility and domain over their craft. Coercing a talented professional into an 8am meeting in which they never speak is a great way to encourage mediocre, unmotivated work. We think that smart people recognise when they are being taken advantage of, or not contributing, and that makes them less likely to give a shit.
2. General grumpiness
Meeting grumpiness is contagious.
How often do you think members of your team walk out of a meeting and think to themselves, or express to a coworker, "Welp, at least I got paid to be there?" It probably happens more often than you think.
Have you ever been in a meeting where someone has fallen asleep or noticed someone watching youtube videos in the reflection of their glasses, or have you seen a whole group lose their safety to speak after someone joins a meeting with an attitude?
In tech, salary alone is not enough to retain talented staff-members. And the cost of this isn't limited to one person; one person's negative influence can spread, almost instantaneously, to an entire team.
For this reason, it's really important to be specific and aggressive about determining who should be at each ceremony and why. Bringing people into meetings who don't want to be there is a surefire way to bring down the enthusiasm of your entire team.
3. Reduced Productivity
The team's most productive hours are spent unproductively.
When someone else is making a decision on how you spend your time without your input, they're quite likely to make some unintentional poor choices. Some employees may work better in the morning or need long stretches of time in order to get focused work done, and if they're not given the chance to voice those preferences, their time will more than likely be spent sub-optimally.
For software developers, meetings tend to be the least productive part of the day. Developers are usually measured on outputs and quality - not how many hours they sat in meetings. For a technical person to meet their career goals and contribute to the work they were hired to do, they need to be able to follow a structure that best allows them to meet their goals.
4. Wasted time
You spend all your time talking about process.
A team that doesn't have a well-defined, agreed-upon process spends a great deal of time talking about their process or participating in unnecessary extra process. When thinking about joining a new team, if you hear things like, 'We're constantly adapting and iterating on changing circumstances, and always improving!' Take a moment to fact check that. That's exactly what you want to hear, but are they actually improving and optimising? Or are they simply consistently making short-sighted decisions that don't work? Process optimisation is incredibly important, but also extremely nuanced.
Next steps
The solution? Talk about your process! Do it regularly! But don't change for change's sake. Make sure the changes you're making are intentional and well-reasoned. One of the most challenging thing about maintaining a high-functioning team is striking the delicate balance between culture, process, and progress.