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"We don't do that here" is way to shut down communication. For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called way

by jph 4y ago

"We don't do that here" is way to shut down communication. For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called ways-of-working. Team values are big-idea statements of what teammates hold as important. Example: We value courage, collaboration, respect. Ground rules then make the values explicit, by describing the team's expectations. Example: We reject slurs and pejoratives. Some people who hear about this respond by saying it's too much overhead, or rigidity, or handholding. To me, these people sound much like the people who used to say "using version control is too much overhead, or rigidity, or handholding". It turns out that in my direct professional experience with many teams, teams that create ways-of-working improve because of it, and work significantly better with many more stakeholders. https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working

axblount 4y ago
I think the author clearly addresses this: > When I’m able I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity and inclusion issues and see if I can change how they see the world a bit. But I don’t always have the time and energy to do that. And sometimes, even if I did have the time, the person involved doesn’t want to be educated. I don't think the author is suggesting that every cultural faux pas should be met with "We don't do that here." She's suggesting it for a certain use-case.
mcguire 4y ago
"For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called ways-of-working. Team values are big-idea statements of what teammates hold as important. Example: We value courage, collaboration, respect. Ground rules then make the values explicit, by describing the team's expectations. Example: We reject slurs and pejoratives." One question: Once you have done this, are your ground rules and team values always open for debate (including, say, on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up), or when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"? P.S. As an extra question: Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them?
- jph 4y ago
  > are your ground rules and team values always open for debate Yes including asynchronous e.g. on a chat channel, and synchronous e.g. during a retrospective. > on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up Yes. For example some teams choose a way-of-working for emergencies that uses the abbreviation "ANC" for the priority order of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. If there is an emergency,then the team focuses first on keeping the system running, second on figuring out where to go and how to get there, and third on talking. Afterward, then the team does a causal analysis e.g. postmortem or after-incident report, including fielding any ways-of-working areas that came up in the channels because of the emergency. > when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"? Yes. For example there are sometimes fast-moving high-urgency multi-team meetings that include many new people who don't know about ways-of-working. We open the meeting by saying e.g. "This meeting's moderator is Alice." then Alice quickly explains the ways-of-working: one person talks at a time; debate the issue not the person; focus on the agenda not side tasks; call a timeout if something important is amiss; etc." > Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them? Yes, such as using docs, or wikis, or README files, etc. You can see many of the public ones in the repo at https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working where there are a bunch of them collected across many teams. If there's anything in the repo that you believe can be improved, or clarified, or grown, then I welcome constructive criticism. Likewise if you have opinions of different ways to handle team values, or skip them, I'm interested in knowing what you think.

by jph 4y ago

axblount 4y ago

I think the author clearly addresses this: > When I’m able I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity and inclusion issues and see if I can change how they see the world a bit. But I don’t always have the time and energy to do that. And sometimes, even if I did have the time, the person involved doesn’t want to be educated. I don't think the author is suggesting that every cultural faux pas should be met with "We don't do that here." She's suggesting it for a certain use-case.

mcguire 4y ago

"For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called ways-of-working. Team values are big-idea statements of what teammates hold as important. Example: We value courage, collaboration, respect. Ground rules then make the values explicit, by describing the team's expectations. Example: We reject slurs and pejoratives." One question: Once you have done this, are your ground rules and team values always open for debate (including, say, on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up), or when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"? P.S. As an extra question: Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them?

jph 4y ago
> are your ground rules and team values always open for debate Yes including asynchronous e.g. on a chat channel, and synchronous e.g. during a retrospective. > on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up Yes. For example some teams choose a way-of-working for emergencies that uses the abbreviation "ANC" for the priority order of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. If there is an emergency,then the team focuses first on keeping the system running, second on figuring out where to go and how to get there, and third on talking. Afterward, then the team does a causal analysis e.g. postmortem or after-incident report, including fielding any ways-of-working areas that came up in the channels because of the emergency. > when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"? Yes. For example there are sometimes fast-moving high-urgency multi-team meetings that include many new people who don't know about ways-of-working. We open the meeting by saying e.g. "This meeting's moderator is Alice." then Alice quickly explains the ways-of-working: one person talks at a time; debate the issue not the person; focus on the agenda not side tasks; call a timeout if something important is amiss; etc." > Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them? Yes, such as using docs, or wikis, or README files, etc. You can see many of the public ones in the repo at https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working where there are a bunch of them collected across many teams. If there's anything in the repo that you believe can be improved, or clarified, or grown, then I welcome constructive criticism. Likewise if you have opinions of different ways to handle team values, or skip them, I'm interested in knowing what you think.