Watching a child grow up is an experience filled with joy. This joy is interspersed with moments of anxiety where the child must often learn things the hard way. Take learning to walk for instance. Those tiny feet must stumble while the knees find their strength. Boo-boos must be banished and tears must be wiped away, just so the child may make another brave attempt soon.
All parents innately understand this journey of growth and learning. They know they must let their child make this journey on its own, while acting as cheerleaders and offering a supporting environment.
It is no different for teams. Teams must grow and mature, while learning together through the failures and pitfalls they regularly encounter. Leaders in turn play a role akin to parents in offering an environment where this is possible.
Learning on the Job
Just like a child trying to take its first steps, teams must often try to undertake bold ventures where failure is highly possible. A child that never tries to hold itself up will never learn to walk. A team that will only seek familiar challenges will never learn to do something new.
The most common opportunities arise from the bread and butter of building. The task of building software, or any product that requires creativity for that matter, always brings with it sufficient ambiguity. Turning a business problem into technical specifications is rife with assumptions. Solutions based on these specs are bound to have gaps that teams will inadvertently fall into. When they dig themselves out, they usually learn a few new skills and internalize new patterns.
Teams that are in a hurry to test their ideas in the market will often rush in with half-considered plans and half-understood solutions. They must be prepared to stumble more often and tumble harder, and then learn quickly from each tumble.
In general, teams are a composite of humans, and as such will suffer from errors that are very human. Some even pretty grave and embarrassing.
Each recovery from a stumble or a tumble is an opportunity to learn from. However, while opportunities are necessary, they aren’t sufficient for learning. There is another essential ingredient for learning to occur.
I Feel Safe
Let’s compare two hypothetical teams who are both equally experienced, equally talented, solving similar business problems.
Team Rivendell seems to be bolder in its experimentation, often trying to adopt new technology and practices as they become relevant to its situation. They seem to be making changes faster and continuously improving how they work. Their product also appears to be evolving quickly. People are engaged and feel challenged by their work.
Team Mordor on the other hand seems to be continuously churning. The wheels are moving but there is little sense of forward motion. Things always seem to take longer than they should and the product inches slowly forward. People seem on edge, overly cautious, and terrified by the thought of trying something different.
Even if they start on an equal footing, two teams can end up this far apart. But how?
When Boo-boo Strikes
To understand this, let’s look closer at how each of these teams deals with failure today.
Team Rivendell → When a failure occurs, they drop everything and get into a huddle to understand what went wrong.
Was it a process issue?
A gap in the understanding of a specific technology being used?
A new insight into a problem that was previously considered solved?
A human error? Perhaps just plain oversight?
Even if one person was involved in the manifestation of the error, the team ensures both the individual and the team learn together.
Team Mordor → When a failure occurs, the first instinct is to cover it up or spend unjustifiably high effort in explaining it away.
Perhaps it is a one-off.
No customer was really impacted.
A junior engineer was given the opportunity to own something and they failed.
Another team owned the code earlier and the problem stemmed from old code.
The only thing the team and individual involved learn from each failure is how to avoid getting into trouble.
What Really is Different?
It comes down to how each team has dealt with failures in the past. Do they look to hold people responsible for learning from the mistakes or hold them responsible for owning the blame?
When something goes wrong, there is usually someone on the front-lines who directly caused or influenced this error. Often they are fully aware of what led to this. If nothing else, this person has the most information to peel apart the layers, so that with suitable guidance, one can get to the bottom of it.
Team Rivendell will hold this person responsible for learning and sharing, encouraging complete introspection, including challenging the practices on the team that are outdated. They will probably invite a Council to gather, learn together and commit to improvements. The end goal is for the whole team to learn from this and make the necessary upgrades to prevent such failures in the future.
As a result, the chances of a repeat failure are drastically reduced. Additionally, the team retains its confidence to recover from errors, and will willingly take up new challenges tomorrow.
Team Mordor on the other hand does not tolerate errors. When failures occur, it is critical to park the blame somewhere. The wrath of Sauron must find a home. Heads must roll. Corrective measures will be applied on the individual, like assigning some training or taking away certain responsibilities. More often than not, any introspecting will end with a handsome, even public, rebuke aimed at the individual.
Alas, cornering individuals does not fix the root of the problem, leaving the team just as vulnerable to a repeat. Moreover, the team has learned that taking a risk is akin to playing with fire, and so new challenges must be eschewed or shouldered upon naive, young individuals.
Now Imagine
Imagine being the person on the watch when things went south. Perhaps you’ve already been there. Where would you feel more comfortable evaluating your actions (or lack thereof)? What would encourage you to ask 5 Whys with your team to get to the bottom of what is behind a failure, debate the right set of changes to prevent this from ever occurring again, and most importantly, still hold your head high?
If you are a fellow member on the team, imagine how you would like to be treated if you were left holding this cup of shame. How would you like your team members to support you?
If you are a leader on the team, you have the greatest influence in nurturing this environment, with each word, with each action, with each reaction to a slip or a misstep. Is culture built by what you write in a document or what you say or do in the thick of the action? When things go wrong, do you seek to cultivate responsibility or to cultivate shame? Or worse, the fear of shame? Imagine what your team could achieve if it was fearless?
When your own child struggles to walk and falls to their knees, do you chide them? Or do you hold them by their hand and encourage them to have another go? Is this the kind of support system your maturing team needs today?
Many thanks to Vivek Kannan for once again recommending an idea that I should write about. I am glad to have shared these experiences with many of my readers, and would love to have you recommend what I should write about next.