A Blueprint for Team Collaboration

Trust is the foundation of a successful team.

Instead of avoiding conflict, teams should embrace it as an opportunity for healthy disagreement. To move forward, we must establish trust within our teams and explore new working methods. Yet, many of us resist change, which poses a challenge.

There shouldn’t be a rigid ‘formal process.’ Instead, we should strive for a two-way fit. On one side, there are people with the skills to solve problems, and on the other side, there are people with problems.

The shift from positional power to reputation is a significant one. Instead of being confined to a fixed place in the org chart, team members can take on many roles where their influence is direct, not indirect.

Managers may hesitate to try this approach because structure is often a proxy for power. Yet, by getting closer to the job, they can find joy in it again. This hands-on approach can rekindle passion for the job and make it more engaging and rewarding.

Teams should have minimal to no separation.

Too much back-and-forth communication can lead to less team collaboration and cause delays. Teams that create the code should maintain it, as they had the initial need for it.

Understanding technology is essential, but it should come at a reasonable cost to the company.

Pursuing projects that impact the business is the most critical aspect of software development.

Legacy Organizations are obsessed with measurement, often using it as a form of control — to find and punish weak performance. But when we obsess over metrics, we fall victim to Goodhart’s law, which states that a measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.

Allow local methods and tools to flourish instead of imposing uniformity.

Prioritizing workflow coordination and improvement is more valuable than seeking a one-size-fits-all solution. All teams should be free to perform their work and enhance their processes.

Working on small raw output rather than large polished chunks improves productivity. The goal is to optimize workflow to cut waste and maximize value creation.

To deliver valuable software, the company must trust programmers to make decisions and give them autonomy in their work. Clear communication of project goals and objectives is needed. Teams should review the project’s progress, reflect on the decisions made by the programmers, and adjust.

The default assumption is that you can do anything unless a specific policy or agreement prohibits it.

Start from a position of trust.

More freedom leads to more learning, and more understanding leads to better performance.

By focusing on execution, we limit the system’s growth potential.

By making ourselves indispensable, we make our teams and organizations less resilient. Once a decision has been made, it should be shared along with the rationale and perspectives that shaped it so that others can learn, too.

Consensus is impossible at scale and needs to reflect how adaptive systems work. Recognize that freedom and autonomy feed motivation. Create an environment where it is safe to try and fail, and teams will learn and grow in extraordinary ways.

Accept that we operate in a changing world where centralized control is too slow and disconnected from reality.

Push authority to the edge of the organization — where the information is — so teams can adapt and steer. Structural mediocrity has an inertia all its own. The team is self-managed.

Teams are lean — small enough to move. But they are also multidisciplinary, containing all (or most) of the skills they need to achieve their mission.

Once a decision has been made, sharing its reasoning and perspectives is necessary so others can learn from it.

Consensus is difficult to achieve at scale and should reflect how adaptive systems work.

Creating a safe environment where trying and failing are acceptable can help teams learn and grow in extraordinary ways.

To avoid the adverse effects of organizational debt, we must simplify our roles, rules, and processes. Creating a flexible system that can adapt and learn as necessary is vital.

Organizational debt often leads to bureaucracy, which in turn reinforces it. This can become a vicious cycle.

Corporations are focused on revenue and earnings growth, which can lead to a fixation on share prices. We must think and challenge assumptions to break free from this cycle. This approach can stifle motivation and creativity.n

When people are given more autonomy, they tend to be more motivated.

When we treat others as valuable team members, they are likely to step up and perform at their best.

We often want speed and innovation, but we run from risk and inhibit our best people.

We claim to work in teams but don’t trust one another.

We know how we work isn’t working, but we can’t imagine an alternative.

We long for change but need to figure out how to get it.

We are addicted, despite ourselves, to the siren song of bureaucracy.

[¹]: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?