(Warning – super long. Please don’t start reading it if you have no time and then get annoyed I am too verbose and therefore hit Unsubscribe 🙂
We only ever talk about one thing: psychological safety as an enabler for high performance in teams.
Sure that means we have to touch on various other things and that we talk about teams and even individuals and of course organisations and leadership (and in this week’s other newsletter the lack of teams and rampant fear at the top) how could we possibly get away from it? The topic in itself, in the absence of the people work execution we advocate so vehemently for, is absolutely sterile and talking about the theory in a world that needs urgent help and practice is not only futile but arguably irresponsible.
We know it’s urgent because, while most people are able to abstract the topic of HumanDebt and its many horrid manifestations away by simply blocking the thoughts out and focusing on their day-to-day, this IS our day-to-day so we feel it in every meeting and every time a new organisation lays on our theoretical PeopleNotTech couch whether intentionally or not.
We hear from many new organisations every sprint. Their stories are shockingly similar. They may think they are unique but when you boil down what’s happening to fundamentals, the struggles they face are absolutely and nearly identically shared.
The things they complain about (hint: mostly leadership) and the things they have issues with even if they don’t know it (unfulfilled and fearful teams delivering below their potential and employees too disengaged and too unsafe to bring their whole self to the team, so overall decreased performance on account of not doing the human work) are so blatant to us and so de facto hidden to them, that it certainly frustrates us at times.
The same anti-patterns that created the HumanDebt are largely at play and bigger and new ones from insisting on the office-return to retain the line-of-sight command and control, to not noticing burnout, are forming.
The biggest and most glaring commonality which we keep denouncing and we don’t see many other voices insist on is the monstrous disconnect and lack of ownership when it comes to the real people function. Not to be confused with what passes as the human function today – the admin and legal to-do’s that the people department ties themselves into while ignoring -perhaps not willingly and maliciously but as a consequence of placing focus elsewhere) the things that really matter – changing the focus towards the humans and what they feel and how they interact with each other.
Whose job is it today that people are ok? That they have true support and encouragement to do self-care? That they have the tools, limited WIP and practice to do team self-care or team improvement? That they measure in a way that means something? That they learn together? That they feel together?
No one’s.
Don’t get me wrong change and transformation people, product owners, agile coaches, tech leaders and DevOps gurus everywhere do it every day. The human work. They have to.
How else would any products get made? How would agility be a real thing anywhere where this work wasn’t done every day? How would any technology be delivered if someone somewhere wouldn’t be eternally mindful of the emotional state of the team and work hard to improve it be it by opening dialogue routes, shielding them from the ills of the organisation, or by empowering them with the knowledge and tools to do some of the cognitive and behavioural changes they need to so they can be productive? That’s right, none of it would be possible if we had no unsung heroes that work hard on their own EQ and try and pull the team’s along too.
Sometimes, as we said before, these PeopleSuperHeroes don’t even realise how much of the people work they are doing and how heavy of lifting it is, in particular since no one ever formally mandated them with this job.
Let’s be honest, the fact that the human element is built into scrum or that agile can not happen in the absence of psychological safety is why these “fluffy” human topics are being talked of and included in day-to-day agile practices, the result of years of trying to do without them only to find it isn’t possible, it isn’t because it has been delegated. It’s a behavioural norm resulting from a stringent need that agility can not exist with no human work not a discussed strategy of any sort.
No HR department once had an honest word with these people and said “Look, we’re overwhelmed with tasks we have foolishly accepted as our own from admin forms to legal disputes and we simply can not handle this people-work part, can you take over? In fact maybe you should anyhow since we’re not sure what this agile thing is and how much faster and sharper people have to be for it. We don’t know how they need to interact in teams to make it happen. We have no idea about the dynamic in the team or how to listen to them. We have traditionally presided over semi-scoffs when it comes to happiness, flow and joy and you seem to think they are real things that matter to the people’s performance.
We have organised pieces of training and started on programs to encourage learning in theory but had no clue how fast-paced and intense it is in non-waterfall universes, we still don’t comprehend the speed. We let the term “engagement” corrupt to where it means practically nothing, but you need it to mean that people are emotionally connected and invested in each other. We allowed big topics to remain hanging and unresolved but you need real D&I to have the kind of deep collaboration you require. We hear you say you need to break silos and get empowered and autonomous teams and we have no clue how to get to that. Or how to arrive at servant leadership. Or help people co-create, be flexible, or be passionate and striving for impact.
We can not help. Can you?
Can you please take this part of our job on and experiment with things, get the tools you need and switch them around if they don’t work, talk about the things you need to talk about, hold the spaces you need to, deal with people in the ways you need to in this new paradigm for us, please? Here’s the money, the resources, the power to make it happen but you will have to do it. Maybe one day we’ll take this part of the job back, but for now, we simply don’t have the bandwidth to really do the people part of the people job. Kthxbye”
No one said this, it simply followed. And while strange and largely unfair, that may be fine. It may be alright that the people part to accompany agility has to come from the people actually comprehending agility and living it day-to-day.
So the most efficient “HR business partners” are now these tech leaders and that may be fine and sustainable, but if that’s so, then “the people formerly known as people” people have to get out of the way. They can not electively butt in from time to time to dictate processes, admonish people, or limit what tools and changes are put in place to accomplish the above. That’s the worst part of it. The ambiguity about the role and how the purse strings and veto powers still reside with the wrong side of the fence that isn’t actually doing any of the hard work.
And this is before we even tackle the fact that while all these tech leaders are becoming more and more skilled at their HR to-do’s they should also stop shouldering all of it and should instead distribute it to the team to work on together. Not to mention how, even when they manage that, no one thanks anyone for it. Not in theory and not in practice with remunerating their efforts for putting in the people work.
This is the chasm. The divide. The big wrong. This is what holds incumbents back. What separates winners from losers. This is what courageous top leaders should see and attempt to fix urgently because it’s absurd and it is hurting their organisation. This is what my book points to. And this is maybe the biggest reason why agile transformations “fail”, why we are so much slower than we can be, why people are checked out and unhappy.
If you’re reading this and you’re anywhere near the top of an organisation you care about create a leadership team and tackle this divide first. Figure out who has the people-job and then empower and thank them. Whoever they are, whatever job title they may be sporting because at the end of the day, the job is for all of us but it isn’t until we close this chasm that it can start in earnest.
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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