While I know there’s an intersection in subscribers, I somehow always feel like it’s more likely this team over here reads the Chasing Psychological Safety newsletter than it is likely that crowd reads this. So maybe you would have seen my “Things We Loved About 2021” article as well as the one with the announcements yesterday. The latter is crucial because it may be about ways to lower the HumanDebt next year. An honest way to audit, measure and tackle it and how much easier would everyone’s life be with less of it flying around in the world. It also mentions new features in our Dashboard that are out of the first sprints of 2022 and a new podcast and video collab but the most important part to me is still the gratitude of the first article.
One of the last things on that list of thankfulness is the people we met in this extraordinary year we had and how meeting them has impacted us and I feel the need to get soppy once more in here and say it again – we are beyond grateful you were around this year.
Certainly grateful for the new people we met, amazing humans who were out there thinking like us, feeling like us and fighting the good fight as we do, but we had never met before, and even more grateful for people we had already had in your lives when the year previously turned and whom we continued to grow with.
We’re immensely fortunate at PeopleNotTech and we know that. How many people live to apply themselves every day to creating something that they know and can see changes the lives of those who use it in such a profound way?
Immensely lucky.
And that we can do it in the teams we are in -which we do not take for granted and work on by using our own Dashboard BTW- with the closeness, the psychological safety, the openness, the passion and the speed with which we’re doing it. Without turning this into an Oscar acceptance speech, we could do none of that without the Superheroes, the team leaders, the team members, our prospective clients, our users, the people we meet who like us, want to see their teams soar.
Looking back at these articles it seems I have a pattern when years come to a close: yearly retro with a heavy positive and grateful slant; self-reflection; set personal NYE Resolutions; then set the first epics of the year with the team and grab the first ticket. All I love about life is in this routine really and I highly recommend it!
The Happiness Lessons 2020 Taught Us
“Stop this PMA and Resolutions Nonsense”
2020 Was Agile’s Year in an Unexpected Way
And this “2021’s First Big Ticket” one seems to still stand
The world of work needs your help to secure these wins and if we help them over the line, then we may be able to look back in 5-10 years and point towards this moment as the pivotal one where business understood success in technology is all about the people and started tackling their HumanDebt™ and when it became important to make our humans happy in Psychologically Safe and healthy teams that became DevOps elite performers.
May you find the energy for this last superhuman push on the big-ticket of “getting the human wins and the people work firmly in place” as we step into the new year, may your teams feel like family and make magic together, may you have countless moments of flow, may you laugh, may you breathe, may you have strength and courage and may your Psychological Safety ever grow and your HumanDebt™ever drop in 2021!
And may you have that next year too, the epic isn’t done yet, the ticket is the same – Team Re-Launches for all your teams once you’re back and renewed energy to do battle again but meanwhile? Breathe and live: the only WIP ticket says “Relax, bring and receive joy”.
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This Thursday on the Fundamentals of Psychological Safety Series: “The HumanDebt™ – organisational level and team level” so make sure to subscribe so you have it in your inbox.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at contact@peoplenottech.com
To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link