This post documents some thoughts I have about accountability within my organization, and how I plan to speak to the team about accountability.
Accountability is vital in an organization. Within an organization members must be able to work together with trust. Trust often manifests as the belief that individuals will operate within a set of expectations. When behaviors deviate from those expectations, trust within a team is broken. When behavior deviates from expectations, accountability can bring team trust back into balance.
Almost everybody experienced the dreaded “team project” during high school. When the teacher picked the team members and you divvied up work you almost certainly had that one member, “Skip”, who did not pull their weight. Your team assigned them an entire section of writing, but the night before the project was due they didn’t turn anything in. They didn’t pick up their phone. They didn’t respond to email. You may have spent an all-nighter fixing the problem they caused just so your grade wouldn’t suffer.
In the unit I am taking command of, we value an environment of continual improvement, agile delivery, and rapid innovation and risk-taking. These are the philosophies and behaviors that will enable us to win, and that will enable our customers to win in competition and conflict against our adversaries. Each of these philosophies and behaviors requires a diversity of thought.
Diversity of thought breaks through group-think. Diversity of thought raises issues early, and solves them more quickly.
I recently finished The Unicorn Project and found it compelling, as was The Phoenix Project. I wanted to document some of the lessons it teaches, because they’re something I hope to keep in mind while leading a software development unit. These lessons are “the three ways” and “the five ideals”.
The Three Ways
My thoughts here are expansions of some of the excerpts at IT Revolution.
Flow/Systems Thinking
Amplify Feedback Loops
Culture of Continual Experimentation and Learning
Flow/Systems Thinking
Consider the performance of an entire system instead of just a part. One way to look at “the system” is the entire flow of work from product owner, through dev, test, and release into availability for employment. Another way to look at “the system” is as the literal system people are building.
Before a recent off-site the boss set the expectations for the event. This struck me as an extremely useful tool. I particularly liked the ROE - I think stating these early got everyone out of their normal mode of working and into the mode conducive to the event. It seems like developing ROE and purpose like this is good to consciously do for many types of event. It’s not unlike a normal meeting agenda.
You do know what you’re talking about - you are the expert on some things, specifically, the things you’ve experienced. Remember that you know what you’re talking about there. But be careful to not generalize that and override your team because most of the time…
You don’t know what you’re talking about - listen to your experts when they’re describing their situation. They are the experts in their situation, that is why they work with you. Most of the time as a manager their situation is the relevant one. Most of the time they know what they’re talking about.
I’m continuing to read an Elegant Puzzle and chapter 5 discusses organizational culture. I think it provides some good actionable and concrete ways to think about culture, and most discussion I’ve seen about culture suggests that it is some mostly ineffable quality.
Inclusiveness
Will also thinks culture is difficult to reason about, but suggests two major components for fostering an inclusive organization: opportunity and membership. An inclusive organization is one in which individuals have access to professional success and development.
I’m continuing to read an Elegant Puzzle and chapter 3 had some good considerations regarding defining teams and groups during a reorg that I think are good guidelines for building teams more generally:
Consider team sizes and management spread.
Can you write a crisp mission statement for each team?
Can you define clear interfaces for each team?
Can you list the areas of ownership for each team?
Is each responsibility owned by a team?
Would you personally be excited to be a member of each team, as well as to be the manager?
Put teams that work together close. Especially if they work poorly. This minimizes distance for escalation, and reduces info gaps.
Are there compelling candidate pitches for each team?
Are you over-optimizing on individuals, vs establishing a sensible structure?
I’m reading An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, by Will Larson, at the recommendation of a good friend, and wanted to take some notes on it.
First, the book is gorgeous. I’ve got a hardcover copy via inter-library loan (thank you Meridian Library District, near Boise, ID, and thank you San Antonio Public Library), and the cover is bright white rough linen with black text and printing, and a black line drawing of a bush on the front cover reminiscent of an organizational structure, data structure, or actual organic bush. The back has only the printer’s logo and name in black print. The chapters are nicely printed on full pages, which makes them easy to locate in the book. Also easy to locate are the figures, which are on bright yellow/orange pages, while the other pages are bright white and slightly thicker than book pages I’m used to. The references section in the back is broken out by chapter, and instead of the usual bibliographic BS there are URLs with QR codes. I’ve long felt it’s time to move away from standard bibliographic formats, especially ones where URLs are optional, and to something that emphasizes easily accessing the relevant data digitally. (Although, URLs break, so I would include some information with the URL, and for a book I might have a separate website with the full information…) So I’m enjoying just holding this book. It also seems informative.
Reviewing some of my notes from the Leader Development Course I noticed something I’d written regarding communication plans. My take on “approachability” is something I need to explain to my folks early, actually.
Weapon school grads want to be, “humble, approachable, credible”, and this has always been what I’ve sought to be too. I don’t always succeed I’m certain.
Approachability can be quantified by how my team interacts with me. I need to let them know that to me approachability really is important.
I just recently finished the book Turn the Ship Around, and I don’t have anything insightful to say but I did want to recall some points from it. I found the book to be fantastic and insightful - I agree completely with Captain Marquet’s leader-leader style, and hope in future positions I can remain as committed and mindful as he was to creating environments like the one in the book. I think the practices in the book are very similar to those adopted by agile software teams and mission command leadership styles.