About important “invisible” things - trust, culture and values
I am Head of Product at Miro (ex-RealtimeBoard). I love bold goals and constantly think about where new horizons await us, how to improve results, how to become better tomorrow than we were yesterday. And I also think a lot about how important the team is in this exciting journey. We pay a lot of attention to ensure that everyone in the team understands the goals of the company, the strategy and our progress in achieving them.
"If you want to go fast - go alone, if you want to go far - go together." They say this is an African proverb.
Now it is popular to implement OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPI and other methods of increasing efficiency. Sometimes it turns out that these frameworks do not work or require a lot of micromanagement and become more pain in the ass than a real assistant in achieving the result.
At conferences, they often ask me questions about how to do OKRs correctly, how it works with Miro and ask me to “show a sign” with OKRs. As a rule, this, of course, cannot be solved with a sign.
With the growth of the company, especially if it happens quickly, one way or another you begin to face the fact that different people in the team have a very different context. People, even very talented ones, may not think in one direction, and the problem of “swan, cancer and pike” arises when everyone pulls in different directions. And maybe they don’t pull at all, because they don’t understand where to pull.
In an ideal world, teams synchronize around mission and vision, set goals and develop strategies to achieve them. The same OKRs can help with this.
There are several reasons why this may not work - the wrong goals (or inability to set them), incorrect motivation, lack of control. Another problem often happens that many frameworks and concepts begin to be implemented on the wrong side - without a “foundation” (team building), we screw on the “head” (the desire to get results from a group of people). What helps make a team a team that goes far together, and I would like to talk.
1. What problem to solve in advance: People - Process - Tools
A simple rule that will save a lot of time and understand why tools or processes do not work: People → Process → Tools . It makes no sense to implement OKRs, and even more so to look for a tool to track all of this if there are no right people who work as a team.
Our case: we have been working with OKRs for almost 2.5 years and also thought about immediately implementing the tool, but stopped on time. For tracking, Google Spreadsheet works well if the whole team is involved and understands what to do. And we worked hard and continue to work on building a team of the right people, synchronizing around common goals and values, and regularly sharing knowledge. The general context, as practice shows, is much more important than the tool.
2. Culture as a way of control.
Often we think about the culture of the company as something that inspires everyone in our teams to do their job, as about the “glue” of the company. Of course it is, but culture has another important function that Andy Grove described in his book High output management. This is a control function. When everything changes very quickly, the company grows and we work with uncertainty, by and large, culture is the only thing that allows us to be sure that the right decisions will be made. You could write everything in the instructions, but new people and processes often appear faster than instructions :)
Now many (at least grocery) companies put the team at the center as the main unit that creates value. The same Agile and frameworks based on it are built on the basis of the Team as a key player. But what makes a group of people a team? Common goals, common values, focus, good communication. It may appear on its own, but you can still work on it.
When we first started and there were ± 10 of us, everything seemed simple and obvious - a new startup, a bunch of ideas that very well encouraged cohesion. And perhaps not so obvious - we simply did not attach importance to some things.
Then the team began to grow rapidly, new people came, many new people, and now Miro is already 140+ people in Russia, the USA, Europe and Australia and many different teams. Functional teams work together constantly (Product, Marketing, Development, Scrum-teams), some are assembled for projects.
Somewhere after 30 people, the moment came when we began to seriously think about how to ensure that the team did not lose a single focus and remained effective. And then we first encountered the model of the stages of the team of Bruce Tuckman . The material from the link can be used as a test that will determine the stage of your team.
6 stages of team building (Bruce Tuckman):
Each time we form a new team or a new person comes into it, everything starts all over again - with the formation of a new team (Forming). By the way, the inspiration that arises at the stage of achieving results can be confused with the inspiration that arises at the stage of team building, and I fell into this trap.
This model is perfectly superimposed on another - 5 vices of Patrick Lensioni's teams. At each stage, the team overcomes one of the vices:
Trust is the basis of a close-knit team; work without it is impossible in principle.
Actual for any team and at any stage of the company.
What is trust in professional life? This is not only about the fact that you can rely on other people, believe that they will not deceive, do everything on time, etc. It is also an opportunity to show one’s vulnerability and weaknesses without fear of criticism and condemnation. This is critical for productive work. For example, we all constantly make mistakes when we conduct experiments, do things new for ourselves, and it is important that the team is not afraid of mistakes and not afraid to talk about them.
I think everyone can remember such stories when a person seemed to work-work and bam! I wanted to quit already, or for a couple of years I thought about what was doing something wrong or wrong.
We do not trust each other, because we know each other poorly and poorly understand each other's intentions, even if everyone agreed in words.
If we know people better, then it’s easier for us to interpret their intentions as positive, and if we don’t know, we tend to blame them for mistakes (here a fundamental attribution error comes into effect ).
Exercise "A little about yourself." You can take the first step in 30-40 minutes to make people better understand each other - telling personal stories, team members begin to see people in each other, not competitors, and show empathy.
Teambuildings themselves do not work. In rope courses, if people recognize each other, then by chance. Such events can be used as a supplement.
Exercise "Team Effectiveness". Each of the team members must say what contribution each of the colleagues made to the results, and name the growth areas of the participants. Each team member is discussed in turn, usually starting with the leader.
Drawing up a team profile. In order to get to know each other better, you can conduct a Myers-Briggs test.or Insights Discovery (we did it). This will help, firstly, to develop awareness in team members, and secondly, to understand how different people are in the team, how differently they can process information and make decisions.
Ask questions and give feedback. Here I like the most radical candy concept Kim Scott, which says that extreme directness has two aspects - Care personally and Challenge directly.
It is important when the company grows.
When the company began to grow, we realized that it was very important for us to maintain the principles according to which we make decisions. Values are not only what we write on T-shirts, notebooks and the company website, it is also what helps to maintain integrity of decision-making in conditions of high speed of development.
The first approach to the formation of common values we made in 2014 at a strategic session. In 2017, we approached culture as a product and went through the stages of research, prototyping, validation. It became critically important for us that the values were not imposed by the management of the company, but collected from the stories of each team member.
Always relevant, and especially with rapid growth.
When people come to our team, we look at two things - Job fit and Culture fit. There is already a well-known rule - professional skills can be taught, but if a person and a company do not suit each other in culture, then there is practically nothing to do.
What we do to ensure Culture fit:
Things that are invisible at first glance - culture and trust in a team - also require constant attention and focused work. In the same way that we constantly look at metrics and track results in a business and a product, we must observe our teams. The phrase constantly revolves in my head: “If you don’t take up culture, then culture will take care of you.” There seems to be some truth in it.
PS The article was first published on my blog on Medium .
"If you want to go fast - go alone, if you want to go far - go together." They say this is an African proverb.
Now it is popular to implement OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPI and other methods of increasing efficiency. Sometimes it turns out that these frameworks do not work or require a lot of micromanagement and become more pain in the ass than a real assistant in achieving the result.
At conferences, they often ask me questions about how to do OKRs correctly, how it works with Miro and ask me to “show a sign” with OKRs. As a rule, this, of course, cannot be solved with a sign.
With the growth of the company, especially if it happens quickly, one way or another you begin to face the fact that different people in the team have a very different context. People, even very talented ones, may not think in one direction, and the problem of “swan, cancer and pike” arises when everyone pulls in different directions. And maybe they don’t pull at all, because they don’t understand where to pull.
In an ideal world, teams synchronize around mission and vision, set goals and develop strategies to achieve them. The same OKRs can help with this.
There are several reasons why this may not work - the wrong goals (or inability to set them), incorrect motivation, lack of control. Another problem often happens that many frameworks and concepts begin to be implemented on the wrong side - without a “foundation” (team building), we screw on the “head” (the desire to get results from a group of people). What helps make a team a team that goes far together, and I would like to talk.
Two concepts on the importance of people and culture for achieving results
1. What problem to solve in advance: People - Process - Tools
A simple rule that will save a lot of time and understand why tools or processes do not work: People → Process → Tools . It makes no sense to implement OKRs, and even more so to look for a tool to track all of this if there are no right people who work as a team.
Our case: we have been working with OKRs for almost 2.5 years and also thought about immediately implementing the tool, but stopped on time. For tracking, Google Spreadsheet works well if the whole team is involved and understands what to do. And we worked hard and continue to work on building a team of the right people, synchronizing around common goals and values, and regularly sharing knowledge. The general context, as practice shows, is much more important than the tool.
2. Culture as a way of control.
Often we think about the culture of the company as something that inspires everyone in our teams to do their job, as about the “glue” of the company. Of course it is, but culture has another important function that Andy Grove described in his book High output management. This is a control function. When everything changes very quickly, the company grows and we work with uncertainty, by and large, culture is the only thing that allows us to be sure that the right decisions will be made. You could write everything in the instructions, but new people and processes often appear faster than instructions :)
Team Building: Two Practical Models
Now many (at least grocery) companies put the team at the center as the main unit that creates value. The same Agile and frameworks based on it are built on the basis of the Team as a key player. But what makes a group of people a team? Common goals, common values, focus, good communication. It may appear on its own, but you can still work on it.
When we first started and there were ± 10 of us, everything seemed simple and obvious - a new startup, a bunch of ideas that very well encouraged cohesion. And perhaps not so obvious - we simply did not attach importance to some things.
Then the team began to grow rapidly, new people came, many new people, and now Miro is already 140+ people in Russia, the USA, Europe and Australia and many different teams. Functional teams work together constantly (Product, Marketing, Development, Scrum-teams), some are assembled for projects.
Somewhere after 30 people, the moment came when we began to seriously think about how to ensure that the team did not lose a single focus and remained effective. And then we first encountered the model of the stages of the team of Bruce Tuckman . The material from the link can be used as a test that will determine the stage of your team.
6 stages of team building (Bruce Tuckman):
Each time we form a new team or a new person comes into it, everything starts all over again - with the formation of a new team (Forming). By the way, the inspiration that arises at the stage of achieving results can be confused with the inspiration that arises at the stage of team building, and I fell into this trap.
This model is perfectly superimposed on another - 5 vices of Patrick Lensioni's teams. At each stage, the team overcomes one of the vices:
- Mistrust
- Fear of conflict
- Irresponsibility
- Undemanding
- Indifference to the results.
Trust is the basis of a close-knit team; work without it is impossible in principle.
Trust as the foundation of any team
Actual for any team and at any stage of the company.
What is trust in professional life? This is not only about the fact that you can rely on other people, believe that they will not deceive, do everything on time, etc. It is also an opportunity to show one’s vulnerability and weaknesses without fear of criticism and condemnation. This is critical for productive work. For example, we all constantly make mistakes when we conduct experiments, do things new for ourselves, and it is important that the team is not afraid of mistakes and not afraid to talk about them.
I think everyone can remember such stories when a person seemed to work-work and bam! I wanted to quit already, or for a couple of years I thought about what was doing something wrong or wrong.
We do not trust each other, because we know each other poorly and poorly understand each other's intentions, even if everyone agreed in words.
If we know people better, then it’s easier for us to interpret their intentions as positive, and if we don’t know, we tend to blame them for mistakes (here a fundamental attribution error comes into effect ).
How to get to know each other better and learn to understand and communicate intentions
Exercise "A little about yourself." You can take the first step in 30-40 minutes to make people better understand each other - telling personal stories, team members begin to see people in each other, not competitors, and show empathy.
Teambuildings themselves do not work. In rope courses, if people recognize each other, then by chance. Such events can be used as a supplement.
Exercise "Team Effectiveness". Each of the team members must say what contribution each of the colleagues made to the results, and name the growth areas of the participants. Each team member is discussed in turn, usually starting with the leader.
Drawing up a team profile. In order to get to know each other better, you can conduct a Myers-Briggs test.or Insights Discovery (we did it). This will help, firstly, to develop awareness in team members, and secondly, to understand how different people are in the team, how differently they can process information and make decisions.
Ask questions and give feedback. Here I like the most radical candy concept Kim Scott, which says that extreme directness has two aspects - Care personally and Challenge directly.
Company growth: formulating common values
It is important when the company grows.
When the company began to grow, we realized that it was very important for us to maintain the principles according to which we make decisions. Values are not only what we write on T-shirts, notebooks and the company website, it is also what helps to maintain integrity of decision-making in conditions of high speed of development.
The first approach to the formation of common values we made in 2014 at a strategic session. In 2017, we approached culture as a product and went through the stages of research, prototyping, validation. It became critically important for us that the values were not imposed by the management of the company, but collected from the stories of each team member.
Culture fit hiring staff
Always relevant, and especially with rapid growth.
When people come to our team, we look at two things - Job fit and Culture fit. There is already a well-known rule - professional skills can be taught, but if a person and a company do not suit each other in culture, then there is practically nothing to do.
What we do to ensure Culture fit:
- We constantly talk about our values to all employees and explain them with examples from the history of the company. It helps people who conduct interviews to clearly understand the behaviors that the team appreciates.
- We include information about our values in all the information materials that a potential candidate is faced with.
- All interviews are conducted in several stages - the candidate gets acquainted not only with HR or the immediate supervisor, but also with the team with which he will work.
- We collect interview questions on the Playbook that help identify the cultural characteristics of potential employees. It helps to accumulate knowledge and experience and share them.
Instead of a conclusion
Things that are invisible at first glance - culture and trust in a team - also require constant attention and focused work. In the same way that we constantly look at metrics and track results in a business and a product, we must observe our teams. The phrase constantly revolves in my head: “If you don’t take up culture, then culture will take care of you.” There seems to be some truth in it.
PS The article was first published on my blog on Medium .