Camille Fournier Former CTO, Rent the Runway, at Fastly Altitude 2016
Building and scaling great teams isn’t just something that managers do alone, with spreadsheets and workflows and process documents. Great teams come from the participation of the group to push the team there. In this talk we will investigate how you can think about your role in scaling a high-performance team, whatever your job title. From interviewing future coworkers, to communicating with your colleagues, to dealing with failure and growing as a individual and group, we will go through some of the challenges that come with scaling a culture, and how everyone on the team plays a part in its success.
33. No boring
Meetings
“A meeting consists of a group of people who
have little to say - until after the meeting.”
-- PK Shaw
34. summary
• Move fast, reduce feedback loops, to let people get
quick wins. Engineers like to ship.
• Structure is neutral. It lets you scale. Be transparent
about structure and seek out learning from
failure.
• Practice relating to your colleagues as humans.
Trust their good intentions. Apologize when you
screw up.
• Don’t settle for an environment where you can’t
ask questions and have active discussion.
37. Thanks! @skamille
• 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni
• classicprogrammerpaintings.com
• http://dresscode.renttherunway.com/
blog/ladder
• https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/fi
ve-keys-to-a-successful-google-
team/
Hinweis der Redaktion
"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate you away from those who are still undecided." Casey Stengel
“You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.” Dwight D Eisenhower
Next slide: culture of fear
hero of your own story
This is first because it is most straightforward but also most essential
story
“At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?”
don’t create unnecessary us vs them by constraining the resource of delivery frequency
Impatient on behalf of your team
learning and transparency
When we asked people in the startup community how they thought about structure, the words they used weren’t exactly positive: “slow,” “unnecessary,” “innovation-crushing,” and “bureaucratic” were the most common ones.
inevitable, required for scaling “Complex systems can only be built from simple systems”
Good structure is not a burden
lowering the required activation energy, focus
Structure is a flexible, iterative tool to guide how work gets managed.
changes in structure are the outcome of a culture that is learning and growing
structure encodes prior learning
structure comes out of learning from failure
leadership is willing to make hard decisions and take ownership for failure
they didn’t just throw their hands up and say structure is bad let’s canoe across the water
skyscrapers
Career ladder intro transparency and learning
lack of understanding of structure is scary
ambiguity is a bias vector
transparency and learning
lack of understanding of structure is scary
ambiguity is a bias vector
transparency and learning
lack of understanding of structure is scary
ambiguity is a bias vector
transparency and learning
lack of understanding of structure is scary
ambiguity is a bias vector
postmortem learning, look for structures
code reviews
"what" to do not "how" to do it
story
sacrificing relatedness in the name of efficiency
Does someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
“Pair Programming”
fear of conflict
we need conflict to draw out as much data into the open as possible
fear of conflict
we need conflict to draw out as much data into the open as possible
At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Take advantage of the relatedness you’ve built up and the trust you’re building by using it to extract opinions
High-bandwidth communication opportunity, coordination is expensive so use it well
move fast, learn, care about your colleagues, and don’t waste your time in a place where you can’t ask questions
As a team we contribute more than we can individually, can’t do that if we don’t communicate
If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them.
What’s the point in scaling if you end up in a company full of people you hate?