Team Culture - How The Little Things Enable Great Outcomes

Aidan Cunnion at UXDX Europe. Video: https://youtu.be/MdWl7fNIiz8

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

The relay team, and none of us is as smart as all of us

[00:00:00] Well, good afternoon everyone, and thanks for such a great turnout. I know it's the last session of the day, and hopefully you've had a really good day, so let's get straight to it.

[00:00:10] When I was younger I used to do a lot of athletics, and I used to focus mainly on the sprint events, the 100 and the 200 meters. I suppose I was about average. I was pretty strong in terms of my flat speed, but I was quite slow coming out of the blocks, and when you're doing 100 meters your response time out of the blocks is obviously critical.

[00:00:29] I suppose my favorite event was the 4 by 100 meter relay. I was fortunate that I trained with a number of really good athletes, and we complemented each other in terms of what we brought to the relay race. What I found is that with some of the team members, one of them was a really good starter, and I typically would run the third or fourth leg, because you're already into your stride when you pick up the baton.

[00:00:52] As an individual I was never going to achieve or medal at an All-Ireland, but as part of that team, over the course of a couple of years we were very much in contention, and we were able to win a few medals. It was really exciting and there was a great sort of team ethos to it as well. For me, what struck me was that as an individual, like I said, I was going to achieve so much more by being part of that team.

[00:01:18] I think you see that mirrored on the technology side as well. A couple of years ago I was reading an article in Wired magazine about the passing of an individual called Bob Taylor. To be honest, I hadn't heard about Taylor, but the subject line in the article was "Bob Taylor, the tech pioneer you've never heard of who invented almost everything". As you read through, what you find out about Taylor was that he was involved in the ARPANET project, he was a director in the famous research facility Xerox PARC during the 70s and early 80s, and the teams that he led were responsible for some of the innovations that underpin modern computing today.

[00:01:55] But what he was passionate about was the team dynamic. Even though he'd assembled the best and brightest computer scientists, what he used to look at was, how can we achieve as a team. What he used to talk about was that none of us is as smart as all of us. Even though he had the best and brightest computer scientists, what they could achieve as a team was so much better than what they could achieve as an individual.

[00:02:17] I think that's the thing about team culture. It's one of those intangible things. We recognize a strong team culture when we see it: teams are communicating well, they're collaborating well, and most of all they're supporting each other. Now, I can't promise that what I'm going to cover today is going to transform your teams into the kind of tech legends that maybe came out of Xerox PARC, but hopefully you'll find some of the approaches that we've taken at HMH useful in your day to day.

HMH and moving away from the thud effect

[00:02:39] Just a little bit of background. I think it's important to set the context of the environment that the engineering teams at HMH are operating in. As was mentioned, I work for HMH. We are focused on educational technology. Our primary market is in the US, we're at the K to 12 market, so that's kindergarten up to 12th grade, where we have a user base of over 50 million users, and that's a combination of district admins, students and teachers.

[00:03:07] We're headquartered in Boston, and our largest engineering function is actually based here in Dublin, where we have over 150 engineers working on the design and development of our flagship learning platform, called Ed, as well as overall responsibility for our data practice.

[00:03:26] Over the past couple of years the company has begun a journey of transforming from what is a traditional publishing company into a learning company focused on great outcomes. It was described to me by a colleague as moving away from the thud effect, and I didn't really understand what that was until she explained that when the salesperson used to walk into a school with the books they carried, and they dropped them on the desk, the louder the thud, the more impressive it was.

[00:03:51] Now, that's not necessarily a model that scales well when you look at the digital space. What we're about is still producing that great content, which is obviously vital, but it is how do we blend it from an application standpoint to support the teacher and student in the classroom, to provide better insights and recommendations, and ultimately achieve the better outcomes that the educators are looking for. As you can appreciate, a strategy like that permeates right throughout the organization and very much has an influence on engineering and the approach that we're taking.

Leadership, and the peer-to-peer learning groups

[00:04:26] What I would like to cover: a few months ago I presented at a UX league[?] event, and I presented this, which is a visual around the HMH engineering culture. I appreciate there's a lot going on in this, and we're going to spotlight a couple of particular areas, but what I liked about it was that it was done by the engineering teams. It was a reflection on how they see us operating day to day in terms of the approaches that we take, but also just how we're striving to operate day to day, because as you can fully appreciate, this is very much a journey.

[00:05:00] As we look at the different elements of that, if you look for example at the leadership side, the onus is very much on myself and my leadership team to put in place the conditions where a strong team culture can thrive. Really what you're looking for is that engagement from your employees. You want to set up a team in the right way, you want to support them, you want to encourage them so they can perform at their best.

[00:05:21] That engagement is really crucial, because so much of what HMH is striving to do, technology and in turn engineering are very much the enablers of that future value and innovation. We need that engagement from our teams and our employees so that they become more or less psychological owners of what we're doing, and help drive performance both at the team level and indeed at a company level as well.

[00:05:43] What was recognized by my colleagues back in early 2018 was that it wasn't just about the leadership skills at the managerial level, it was also about how do we equip people in the day to day with leadership skills that will help them in what is a fast-changing environment. What was put in place was a series of peer-to-peer leadership learning groups, and this is very much focused on modern-day leadership in software development.

[00:06:13] Just to talk a little bit about the logistics of it, what this is, is that you would have a cross-functional group, again at all levels, where they would meet every couple of weeks in a facilitated session, and they would work through a curriculum which is based on the framework of three levels of leadership: the me, the we and the us. I'm going to talk a little bit more about each of those as we go through this.

[00:06:39] They'll meet every couple of weeks, and ahead of that they'll be given a little bit of homework, for example to read a book, to watch a video, to read some articles, and then come in prepared to discuss that within the session. What's key about this is it's not just about reading it and talking about the theory, it's how do we relate that back to the day to day, how do we actually take what's being shown or being talked about in the particular material so that we can bring it back in and start using it on a practical level in our day to day, both as an individual and within our teams as well.

The "me" level

[00:07:12] Just to delve into that a little bit more. When you look at "me", here's an example of some of the materials that we would cover. With "me", we're looking at how do people see me, how do I communicate, and the focus, as you can see here, is on things like Leadership and Self-Deception, a well-known book where it talks about whether a person is in the box or out of the box, and the whole thing around the self-deception of whether you're actually carrying out an act which is contrary to what you believe you should be doing.

[00:07:44] What happened with the group that I'm involved in is that we got this book a couple of months ago, and we were working through it. We came into the workshop then, and it's an hour session, like I said it's facilitated, and we started to go through what people thought about the book, the feedback from us. What was interesting was that one of the engineers on the team, who had been working with a supporting group, talked about the frustrations that he was having with a particular partner organization that he was working with. He said that by reading this particular book it really resonated with him just how he was actually in the box, and that he was looking at it from a point of view which was causing a lot of frustration from his side, but also not necessarily being the most productive in terms of the engagement with that partner team.

[00:08:22] He said he was able to step back from that, gain some perspective on what was being done, and then in the follow-on meetings he was less stressed about it and he also found them to be more productive. I think for me that speaks to the essence of what we're trying to do with these leadership learning groups: taking something like this, being able to apply it on a practical level day to day. The key message for me is it's not trying to be perfect, it's just trying to be better, and identifying how we do that.

[00:08:52] As an example of some of the other material that we cover within "me" at that level is Nonviolent Communication. Again, we've had scenarios where, as part of the group sessions, things have come up. One situation was brought up where a particular person was always late to the standup, five minutes. Every time the daily standup was about to start they would go off and make coffee, and this was getting a little bit frustrating, but they weren't sure about how to approach it, or how to bring this to their attention and get it resolved without it maybe causing some conflict. Using the approach that's outlined by this book gave them some of the tools or techniques that they could then take back to their team and look to address that particular situation.

The "we" level: high-performing teams

[00:09:36] Then we move on to the "we" level, and that's very much focused on the team. High-performing teams: critically, how do we set up the team, how do we motivate them, how do we coach them, and the communication between those.

[00:09:54] When you look at the sort of material that we cover, there's a whole series of different material that's applicable here, but if you look at things like SCARF, which is a framework for collaborating and influencing, again trying to bring that back to the relevance of the day to day. Then we would also focus in on well-known books such as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, again trying to get people to understand why is there that confusion or misunderstanding at the team level, and understanding that there are those five dysfunctions, whether it's an absence of trust, or lack of commitment, fear of conflict. It's really trying to get to the heart of that, so that even though you may say, well, I'm in a team, is it really a team, or is there an essence of teamwork there?

[00:10:37] I think this dovetails nicely then into a book that we have used extensively within HMH, which is Collaborative Intelligence by Richard Hackman. He focuses on what he calls a 60-30-10 rule, which is the team forming, the team launch, and then the ongoing coaching of the team. It's very much about the team coming together and understanding the purpose: why are they there, what have they been asked to do, what is the business driver behind it, and really gaining a context about the work that they're being asked to do, and ultimately then coming up with how they're going to approach that.

The team launch: an icebreaker

[00:11:15] What I'd like to do is spend a few minutes and just talk you through how we actually script that out. The first thing that we do is an icebreaker, and if I can ask for some assistance here please. What we typically do in order to break the ice, when you've got an engineering team, and this is what we use, there are different techniques but this is just a beach ball with a whole series of random questions on it. What we do then is we throw it out into the team. Wherever it lands, the question nearest your left hand is the question that we ask the team member to answer.

[00:11:46] These sessions will be attended by everybody, from the engineers to the product designers to our UX folks. Everybody is in the room, again to make sure they gain that perspective. So just as a little bit of a test of the theory, I'm actually going to throw this out. Whoever catches it, I know those people aren't making eye contact right now, but whoever catches it, if you can answer the question and then throw it to the next person, and we'll just see how we go. I'm just going to throw this out.

[00:12:18] Oh, and for people now paying attention: left hand, what's the question that's nearest to you, just on the beach ball? It's written on the beach ball, there's a question. The beach ball, pick one.

[00:12:38] If you're not able to answer, throw it to the next person. But the idea behind this, and I know it's just a little bit of a gimmick, throw it to somebody else, yep. What happens with this in the team environment is that it loosens people up, it gets them talking, and very often with an engineering team it can be a little bit tight, and it's not always that easy to get people vocalizing. So this is really just an icebreaker, and there are a number of different techniques that you can use.

[00:13:01] Aidan: Please feel free to pick a question.

[00:13:08] Audience: What powers would you have as a superhero, and what would it be? Invisibility.

[00:13:12] Aidan: Invisibility, okay. That's what you'd like to have now. But again, these are techniques. We actually had our CEO, Jack Lynch, over a number of months ago. We were taking him through a whole series of our agile practices, and he sat in on a team forming session and he absolutely loved it. He said this is something that we should be doing at all levels in the organization. We had a recent takeover there of a company, and the executive team were joining our team, and he actually decided to use this Hackman team forming and team launch to really get down to the essence of what this team is about. He didn't use the beach ball, I'll be honest, and obviously there was a bit of an icebreaker, but he did follow the script that I'm just going to take you through now. Do you want to throw me back up the beach ball?

Rules of the road and working norms

[00:14:00] What do you then move on to in this session? After you do the icebreaker, and there are different techniques that you can try on that, what typically then happens is that the facilitator, who's typically external to the team, would lay out the rules of the road for the meeting. Just how we want to engage with each other, being respectful, it's a safe space, and all that.

[00:14:22] But then what we get into is, again, what I touched on, which is very much the heart of the team: what are we here to do, what is the business driver of what we're doing, where do we fit into the bigger picture. I've seen it over the years where a team is formed, they're given some work, but they really don't have the context of what's driving that work, maybe where it fits into the overall strategy within the company. This is a critically important first step, because it allows the team to really get a handle on what they're being asked to do.

[00:14:51] Ultimately then, the next stage of what we do within the session is talk about the ways of working, establishing the working norms. So everything from what time are we going to do our standups, when will we do a retro, when do we do our planning sessions. Even though there'll be guidance set at the management level, what we really want is that ownership by the teams, because by establishing that set of behaviors that everybody can sign up to, this is what you want to see the team take and continue to improve upon.

[00:15:20] There was a series of podcasts a number of months ago run on Newstalk with Stuart Lancaster, who's the former England rugby coach and he now works as part of the Leinster coaching team. He's passionate about leadership. They were interviewing him about his own experiences, but he also brought in a number of people that he'd worked with over the years, and one was a sports psychologist. What I took away from that particular podcast was that they talked about how an individual's behavior, 70% of their behavior, is influenced by the environment that they're in at that time.

[00:15:52] I think that really speaks to how important it is that we get the team launch right, we get the team forming right, to make sure that those established working norms are there. So as the team moves forward it's accepted by everybody, everybody has an opportunity to provide input, and it ultimately then establishes a very clear set of rules and guidelines that the team is going to operate by.

The "us" level: the systemic conditions

[00:16:15] Then as we move on to the next level, what we're looking at is the us. What we're finding as the groups work their way through this program is that they move from the me to the we and then into the us, and the us allows them to broaden out, where they start to look at the environment, the systemic conditions within the organization.

[00:16:33] Where we've seen real benefit with this is within our teams, or these particular groups, going off and looking at things like value chain mapping. We've looked at lead and cycle time on the work that we're doing, and how we provide better transparency into our backlog of work. Having this long backlog of work, the question is, actually, are we going to be able to work our way through it, how does the flow of work go through the system, and providing that transparency into providing a better understanding of it all.

[00:17:03] Then we focus on what we call those little things about the environment that the teams are in. Are they sitting together? Do they have whiteboards? Do they have paper[?] they can put up their post-its on? Do they have a visual board as well as maybe what they have within Jira? Again, it's about setting those right conditions so that the team can prosper and really perform at their best.

[00:17:24] It's also led on to, this is a picture from an event that we did, a site-wide day, where we've obviously got multiple functions on the site here in Dublin but we wanted to bring everybody together, where everybody gets an opportunity, like a show and tell, over all the work that's been done, to celebrate the successes across the different teams, and then we have some team-building events happening at the end of that.

Being an effective partner, and checking in

[00:17:49] When you bring it all back together, everything that we're doing, all of these little things that we're trying to pull together, it's very much about, for me, the engineering team being seen as an effective partner for the business. Can we deliver against the expectations that are there, and work closely with our product counterparts? But also from the business standpoint, obviously there are commercial pressures that are out there, and how do we ensure that we're all in lockstep about what we're planning for the next year. Everything that we're trying to do is built on that foundation of trust.

[00:18:23] So whether we do it day to day or week on week, we're very much focused on where we can make those small improvements, and really trying to hone in on the areas where we can have the most impact. What we also do from a team level is this quarterly check-in, sort of a health check, a pulse check into the teams about their engineering practices and how they feel about different areas of what they're doing. You'll find it varies quarter on quarter[?], but it gives you a gauge that you can work from and start to identify maybe specific actions that you can take, both as a manager and so on, to make sure that as things move forward you can help the team to perform even better.

[00:19:00] Like I said, day on day, week on week, month on month, really the focus is about being able to deliver against what the business needs are and continue to improve upon the team. And like I said at the start, it's not about being perfect, it's about trying to be better. Thank you for listening.