This week we explored command and control further and its relationship with courage. In the midst of this heavy topic, we also posted this interview with the inimitable Bryan Finster so make sure you give that a watch. There are so many absolutely fascinating individuals with their hearts in the right place it makes us all keep at it. Like I keep saying – there’s plenty of inspiration and plenty of Superheroes – too bad we need them.
For the most part, our other conversations can not be on camera or even using names and that alone is a clear sign that there’s HumanDebt™ and fear. Speaking of, it warms my heart’s frozen corners to see how widely this concept I woke up to with a startle a few years ago has come. In the past few months, more and more people resonated with it and awareness is growing by the day with most of my keynotes centring on it, a university in Asia asking if we can start teaching it, an American enterprise having held an awareness tour culminating with a hackathon to ask everyone what could be done about it and countless people debating it and asking me to resend my definition of it every day. This isn’t great news because I’m an egomaniac, (I’m equally chuffed to see the mentions even in the absence of attribution -in innocent cases!-) but because it’s a solid sign that we’re getting there people, this is good news! We’re getting closer and closer to the realisation that we have much left to do and we have to do the human work to manage any of the technical goals we have.
Yesterday afternoon I had one of those -sadly off the record- frank heart-to-hearts with a CTO who read the books (mine included, cheers for that!), knows the definition and is one of the most direct and passionate people you’ll meet. He has such a clear product vision and he has ensured people are kitted with the tenants of a successful Agile organisation but he is deploring that the delta between his shop and say Netflix in any indicator you would choose, remained obstinately large no matter how he tweaked the above. They’re a few thousand in the tech side of the organisation and he’s invested in making huge changes but he often despairs of the size of the job.
“I see it everywhere and it’s slowing us down to where it has us all but halting at times. What would you do really? How would you eradicate this HumanDebt if you could do only one thing?”
“Make the human work mandatory.”
“No one likes mandatory stuff.”
“That may be and we shouldn’t have ended up here but I feel that’s the only way now. Rethink everything. Tell people you *need* them to do less on ops and delivery and more of the human bits. It’s imperative for the business. Then transform the empty rhetoric into trustworthy change by in-building how you reward them for it – rethink performance management to include it and recognise the hard work consistently till it becomes a habit.”
“Meh it’s not like we even have a channel to our guys, comms are patchy, they don’t listen, don’t much care let’s face it and they sure don’t believe us!”
“You can’t fix the latter with anything else but time and showing them you’re consistently serious about this long term but you can start working on the former by reestablishing a channel that’s super responsive and data-based (such as our Dashboard) and persistently using it.”
“That’s it? Set up a worthwhile feedback loop and then ask them to do the human work? Nothing else to sort?”
“Oh, plenty “else” but empowering the teams to start on the continuous development when it comes to their own EQ, team dynamics and self-care so that they are Psychologically Safe, staying and invested is critical and should come first.”
“That’s on them though, what do we do at org/exec level? Wait for them to do even more of the work themselves?”
“No. First off, this is not work that *they* need to do, but everyone. Yourself included. No leader is exempt. Who’s in your peer group? Are you a team? Are you psychologically safe and open? Audit and fix that first.”
“That’s it? Do the human work at the leadership level?”
“Yes, that’s emergency 1! The second sprint is “Flexible work”. Get that super-sorted. Have all the discussions on what common vs. individual/collaborative vs. solo working is. On how to get flow. On how to reach what outcomes. On how emotions play into value streams irrespective of location or time zones. On how to reaffirm purpose and ignite your people. And involve everyone in the “what do we want to accomplish work-wise here?” conversation. But whatever you do reassure everyone the dialogue will always be open and there will be reevaluation and that above all Flexibility is the inbuilt principle.”
“But what do we do with all the managers who complain that it was easier and better “before” so people should come back really?”
“You retrain them in servant leadership instead, yes. All that it means, constant helpfulness, focus on value and joy, compassion, an obsession with the team’s wellbeing and the highest EQ you can possibly instil in them.”
“All of the armies of career middle managers we have on every level? You’re joking!”
“I am not. And not only them but train the command and control out of your techies-come-managers too.”
“They’re fine, they understand Agile and know we have to be servant leaders, they aren’t the problem.”
“You say that but chances are they have been thrown into the deep end and asked to swim and in the absence of genuine support and training their impostor syndrome is raging and they are erring on the side of learned patterns from the 80s movies with bosses cracking whips with no empathy, blocker-removing-fetish or human connection.”
“So everyone managing teams needs re-educating in terms of leadership?!? That could be massive!”
“You know it sits at the heart of everything and nothing will really, truly change without doing that.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can explain this “distribute the human work to the employees and the empowered teams while we focus on re-jogging everyone’s managerial synapses” to the board.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to try, they said they wanted Agile and to make products fast in this super competitive tech world, didn’t they? That’s what it will take.”
“I don’t even know if we can afford to do it if they wanted to!”
“You may need to become a team at the top and answer this question then: “Can we afford not to do the above?”
“Why me though?!? Why does this monumental change have to depend on me? We have HR people, we have…. Gah never mind, that one was rhetorical!”
So let me be clear dear CTO – it may be unfair but it is on you indeed. You must self-anoint as Chief People Advocate. Start eradicating the HumanDebt before it’s too late: distribute the human work, obsess with people, teams and flexibility and meanwhile work on true servant leadership. You’re the product owner for this change epic. You can -and should!- pad out a project team to grab some of the tickets – bring along all your Superheroes but also your CEO, your COO, your CFO and yes, ultimately HR but everyone has to sing to the tune you hum because they have no musical notes of their own, as they haven’t personally tried to make it work in the absence of the human work – you have. It doesn’t.
Autonomy, Passion, Joy, Dialogue, Flexibility and a complete lack of Fear and loads of Psychological Safety at every level – are the only things you should be after. While thankfully many places touch on some of these they aren’t seen as sine qua non and boy are they just that. Then again I see people augmenting these with qualifiers: “Respectful dialogue” or “Responsible autonomy” – those are fear-based too. Someone needs to reinforce we ought to be grown, professional and invested enough to be all in and not take advantage. Skip the qualifiers, trust your people, help start them on the human work, the continuous improvement work that teams and happy employees need and reward them for taking on the job. Then sit back and admire the speed and innovation that your reduced HumanDebt will bring. Your shiny new (true) transformation that will finally shrink the delta to the Netflixes.
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At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams and gives them a platform to do the human work, come see a DEMO.
To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link