A good working place
Francesc Travesa Centrich
This is a blog post that reflects the author's opinion but doesn't necessarily reflects the company's point of view. For more nonsense opinions you can refer to my blog. Thanks CMRAD for allowing me to contribute.
The problem
Recently we had our periodic all engineering meeting and we had a colleague that did a speech in a rather non technical aspect of work, that is both more important and ubiquitous than any other aspect of our day to day operations in a typical IT company.
It's hard to give it the appropriate name to that aspect, for it's abstract nature, but it is commonly understood as "the culture". It's the result of the emotional intelligence -another vague term- of the members of the team. It's behind every interactions, meeting, conversation, email and even chat message.
I don't really like the term "culture" despite being the best fit, because it gives a sense of static: like saying that some people either fit or don't fit together. That's a fallacy when you understand that people can actually change, and get better.
Also, culture is broader in the sense that not only includes the kindness and empathy of interaction of individuals but also a historical sense of "modus operandi" of the organization. (On this sense, I would strongly recommend detach the "modus operandi" from the culture -that would be the inertia of the culture. Instead it should come from a carefully thought and conscious strategy, but I am drifting away from the subject of this post).
Despite that, I will keep using the term "culture".
Why it matters
In this time an age, it might seem like yet another new generations "woke" fight. But minimize that at your own risk. There's already a lot of studies and evidence of what I am saying. Hopefully it won't be anything new for most of you dear readers, but still, let me back up my words with some evidence:
First, the tale of the "superchickens" (one of the all time best TED talks).
There is this other TED talk pretty much backing up the same points.
Or some quotes:
Many of us even have stories of "that one engineer" who got shuffled into a corner because they were too difficult for anybody to deal with. The tech culture of the 1980s and 1990s, exemplified by discussions of Usenet and the like, revealed in the popular image of the difficult, unpleasant software engineer, whose colleagues not only didn't tolerate their behavior but made weird technical decisions just to avoid dealing with them. Today, however, an engineer like this is a liability.
From "The Staff Engineer's Path" by Tanya Reilly.
This one is from "Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as Strategy" by Eben Hewitt, which actually quotes somebody else:
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
- Management professor Peter Drucker
Finally, this has been up for quite a while now, and it's all the same. https://kind.engineering/.
So, it it's not clear now of why this is important, let me tell you the bottom line: Money.
You are wasting money on the salaries of all the employees if they don't come to work wanting to give their best. If they'd rather avoid some people or simply agree with whatever for the sole reason to avoid drama, to avoid being lectured, which in turn leads to emotional dis-attachment with the business, cynicism, and finally they quit. Then you waste money on trying to find new employees.
You are wasting money on that technical project because it comes from weird technical decisions, the outcome of avoiding discussions. Of avoiding that "unpleasant software engineer" Tanya was speaking about.
Improving
I wouldn't write about that if I didn't have some guidelines and principles to help solving this problem.
First of all, one has to understand that this is a fixable problem and conscious steps can be taken to improve culture. Let me quote again "Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as Strategy":
McKinsey publishes a set of its insights every year [...]. The document states, "Culture is the most significant self-reported barrier to digital effectiveness". [...]. Additional research from McKinsey indicates that several companies that have addressed their cultural problems head-on, by cutting down silos, have performed better and more quickly than competitors that have not.
This is what McKinsey research says, the book is just analyzing this text for different purposes, but I want to take its content to show that there's actionable solutions.
In my opinion, the best way to tackle culture is to be part of it. I do not have any advice for "cutting down silos" (actually, I would recommend not to do that, or at least not to use this wording as it only antagonizes some employees). I do not know about group dynamics, and being an introvert myself, I'd always rather be with small groups or preferably with only one person (well, I'm a real introvert; I'd rather be alone). But I do know how to behave. And I do have the advice to make you, my dear reader, more likable.
There are several tools at your disposal. The already mentioned web page https://kind.engineering/ is a good resource, as well as the whole Chapter 7 "You're a role model now (sorry)" of the same book I quoted before, "The Staff Engineer's Path" by Tanya Reilly which describes a good balance between good will to your colleagues and seriousness on work affairs.
All the above rely, though, on the already paved way that one of the classics of the classics paved. There are many research studies backing up what's explained in the book. I am talking, of course, about "How to win friends & Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. The title might sound something like the author wants to convert you to some kind of manipulative sociopath, but that couldn't be further from it.
It's all about empathy and giving up your ego to focus on the other person. Did you know that when making any acquaintance, the less you speak, the more likable you become? And how easy it is to do just that when you are meeting new people - when you don't really need to speak your needs! That extends to other behaviors that when you have empathy as your main guideline, become painfully obvious: do not contradict the other -nobody likes a know-it-all-, try to understand what they are trying to say - when you keep your mouth shut, you can actually learn new things! And keep an open mind - consider the other's point of view, that doesn't mean you agree.
I hope all of this is not coming as surprising, but maybe it comes as difficult to practice. Like everything, the more you practice, the better you get. Eventually, you will find a good balance because, after all, you also want to say your own. How you're doing is very easy to assess: how many of your colleagues would like to start a new project with you? Or do you think they'd try to avoid you as much as possible? You have to be honest with yourself. The only true requirement for improvement is having the knowledge that there's something to improve. How to improve, which I just explained in the paragraphs above.
Bigger responsibility
It is said that people don't quit jobs but bad bosses. I would say that people quit cultures. It just happens that the boss is the biggest influence on the culture—or what the employees perceive as the culture.
Like Tanya says in the chapter, "You're a role model now (sorry)", that is to all the people that have any kind of extra responsibility or other people under her wing. For that reason, you need to be extra careful; not only do you need to walk the talk, but you need to be aware of interactions happening under your watch. Whatever you tolerate will be seen as an accepted behavior. You might as well have done the action. If you don't want some behaviors to continue, you need to fight against them actively.
Luckily, in an environment with mildly non-sociopathic adults, just "walking the talk" should suffice.
Conclusion
For some reason, in the IT world, soft skills are placed as secondary behind hard skills. Despite the resources I shared above, the common knowledge is that soft skills are attributes of somebody's personality. That's not true: "This employee is kind", is not a good assessment. But "This employee is being kind" is. Still, there is some wisdom in the common knowledge, as soft skills are way harder to master.
And you'd better pay more attention to soft skills. Somebody with bad soft skills and unwilling to improve is a liability to the company, no matter how good with the hard skills this person is. That's not the same about somebody with bad hard skills, as hard skills are easily learnable. Somebody with good soft skills will be more inclined to keep learning hard skills and improving them.
I hope that by now you see how important the culture is, and how to improve it, individual by individual, with some general guidelines that I know you didn't need. Because what I am saying is just the basic requirement to have any respectful, civilized enjoyable conversation. Only this way colleagues can properly communicate, only this way they can share ideas, test them, concepts become separated from who's telling them, allowing for a real objective analysis. Only this way, teams - of any kind-, find the best solutions.
