Trouble with DevOps? Try TrekOps.
As an unabashed TNG fan, a friend of mine recently sent me a post describing a trait of every episode in the series that was extremely subtle, and yet right in our faces the entire time:
[S]tar Trek: The Next Generation… not only stocked its world with multiple geniuses, it also did something rather unusual with them: It had them, from the start, respect each other’s abilities.
This may not seem particularly novel or notable, but the article explains further (emphases mine):
Something that is really great about Star Trek, is that when a character notices something is amiss, and they are the only one to see it, the rest of the crew doesn’t just dismiss their concerns offhand. You aren’t saddled with an episode of the character trying to convince everyone else that what they saw/heard/felt was real. Everyone else believed them right away. They’ve probably already started running scans, and started trying to help their friend, instead of treating them like a child.
And it never matters what character it is. Their concerns are ALWAYS valid.
When you start to think back on various episodes, some pretty unbelievable stuff does happen to the Enterprise-D crew. And yet, I cannot remember an episode where Captain Picard starts by ignoring a crewmember’s concerns, or Data telling one of his fallible, non-android colleagues they are insane.
As I was thinking through episodes, my mind wandered to organizational cultures that are high functioning, ones you might say “The DevOps is strong with,” and it occurred to me: they have the same trait.
In these teams, people can raise concerns with established procedures, issues with workflows, or even oddities with the infrastructure: and their concerns are treated as valid, as the initial condition.
It’s such a simple thing. And yet, as someone who’s observed this lack of respect and automatic starting-state of doubt, it’s huge. It’s easy to miss the toll it takes when certain “crewmember’s” concerns are considered more “worthy” than others (or other teams’). Or when when the only valid way to “gain credibility” is biting your tongue after half the ship blew up, despite having raised the same concern repeatedly.
The piece concludes:
As a show, Star Trek TNG started by assuming the competency of its characters. The default mode of both the show’s universe and the characters that populate it is to trust in each other’s judgement. Of course, they didn’t always agree with each other, but the presumption is always that the team is full of skilled and capable people whose ideas need to be taken seriously.
If your company or team struggles with this as its starting state, perhaps it’s time to put some entries on the team calendar to all get together and watch a little NextGen.
