Look at your team, look at your organisation, look at the environment you work in. Ask yourself this question, “Is it safe?”
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about safety and just how important it is. If we look at the four key principles of modern agile as espoused by Joshua Kerievsky it has four working parts:
- Make people awesome
- Deliver continuous value
- Experiment and learn rapidly
- Make safety a prerequisite
They are all super cool. I even have a laminated disk cutout on my desk. Yep let’s look at how the modern agile wheel looks.
There is something is something worth noting. Right there down the bottom is the thing that underpins them all. Without it, none of the other principles can be attained. It is the foundation of the whole shebang.
Do you see it: Make Safety a Prerequisite
Josh isn’t the only one to point this out. The idea is far from new. Even old Maslow identified it in his hierarchy of needs. Once you don’t have to worry about immediate starvation, safety underpins everything else that you do. Hopefully, you don’t work in a place like the hunger games, but if you do I’m sure safety is pretty high up there on your list too.
The foundation on which we build meaningful things in this life all has to flow from a place of some safety. The safety may be relative, but it still that moment of space to create.
Please note, I am not saying a place of no stress, friction or constraint. I am saying that you should be able to confront and use those things from a place where you are not at risk.
I have seen the negative effects of a lack of safety. Team members can burn out, production drops through the floor as morale crashes with it. People move on and promises get broken. People stop caring and code quality also suffers as the bug rate goes through the roof. It isn’t a pretty place. I’m also guessing, most people have seen the effects at one point or another in their careers. The long and short is people get hurt and nobody is happy.
So what constitutes unsafe?
Well, my thoughts are almost anything that takes away trust and the reciprocity between the team an organisation. If an org fails to pay someone on time, trust is broken. Promises made and not kept definitely constitute unsafe. If arbitrary deadlines are made and enforced to no gain or the work load is 100% capacity with no slack or space for recovery or growth safety is lost. Something as simple as a broken bit of furniture being left around and not disposed of can send the message to team that they don’t matter. The other can never showing the team how they contribute and never letting them know the value they create is much more subtle, but definitely doesn’t let them live up to their part of the reciprocity agreement and I would argue also is unsafe. Ouch. That one is nasty and insidious…
Ok.
That all sounds pretty terrible.
So let’s UP THE GOOD! (Thank you, Woody!)
What happens when we make a place safe is we provide that foundation to make something amazing. People get energized. A place where safety is a given and people work to ensure it continues is awesome.
Again, I’ve seen the difference.
People get creative (in a good way) and run experiments without fear of failure. The team loves coming to work and synergies between members start to happen. People learn and share and grow. What’s more is they buy into the vision and push together. Value is constantly sought because the team members believe so hard and move together. They aren’t out on a limb because the experiments are often, small and frequent and can find out WHAT the customers NEED and WANT.
They can also explore and discover the things that will make their customer’s look awesome at every step. What’s more with every iteration the business can move forward in success. It isn’t always going to work and it isn’t always easy. Markets change and things happen, but on balance the businesses that strive for validated learning and provide that safety are in the best position to survive and thrive.
How do we do it?
The ways aren’t arcane or all that amazing.
Give people a vision to aim for and help them get there. Pay them properly and provide a workspace that is suitable to their needs. This extends to tools. Don’t quibble over a $20 mouse, just make it easy for the team to work.
Invest in validated learning by letting them experiment, make mistakes and learn. If they need to push let them recover and try to build in slack so that they can do the things they need to do. If someone needs training, do whatever you can to help them get it.
Provide structure/tooling where needed and remove it where not. Believe in them and give them reasons to trust you and the business. Reward, not with dollars, but with something meaningful.
I can keep going, but you get the idea.
EVERYTHING flows from safety, so let’s start making our organisations into safe places where great things flow. How safe is your organisation and how can you help make it safer for you and the people about you? Share your ideas here about your success stories.