From Player to Pawn? One Engineer’s Perspective (Part 3)

In Part 2 of this series I shared my experience going from highly motivated and engaged to discouraged and unengaged. In doing so I focused only on negative events (which really was not enjoyable). That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been plenty of positive experiences along the way as well, and chances for improvement are never far away.

In this third and final installment, I will discuss my thoughts on how with just a few minor changes I could return to feeling like a “player” rather than a “pawn”. This isn’t meant to be a description of how every team should work, but simply a description of how I’d like a team to work.

There and Back Again

Let’s begin by reviewing the four things that made me feel like a “player”:

1. The feeling that what I’m working on is important and impactful
2. Meeting and talking with the people who my work will help
3. Decisions being made openly based off information gathered from and visible to all involved parties.
4. A sense of freedom and autonomy to solve problems and make decisions within requirements.

And the four things that made me feel like a “pawn”:

1. Feeling like I don’t have the big picture of how everything I’m working on fits together and why it is important.
2. Feeling too far removed from the people I’m helping.
3. Feeling like I have little or no insight into how decisions are made and feeling like not all involved parties are considered in the decision.
4. Feeling unable to take initiative or make autonomous decisions without prior approval.

Next I’ll look at each pair together and discuss how I might transition from “pawn” back to “player”.

Was Blind But Now I See

Feeling like I don’t have the big picture of how everything I’m working on fits together and why it is important -> The feeling that what I’m working on is important and impactful

I think this is actually a fairly simple one to solve. In truth I’ve already started to see progress on my team in this area. My company has recently embraced the concept of OKRs¹ and my team has defined ours for the remainder of the year. Although I didn’t feel as if I had an opportunity to help define what those are, I did have a chance to review them and give feedback and they seem appropriate to me. Simply having those defined will help me understand the bigger picture as I’m looking at the day to day issues.

Moving forward I hope that my team can discuss OKRs together before they are officially determined and go over the reasons why they are important for the business or customers. I also believe creating a list of “someday” goals for the product would help me see the big picture and feel inspired. Even if those things aren’t high priority right now, knowing where we hope to get someday can provide a reference when making decisions for the short term.

The Power of the People

Feeling too far removed from the people I’m helping -> Meeting and talking with the people who my work will help

This one may be fairly straightforward as well. Members of my team have recently suggested we follow a process called “Directed Discovery”. On searching to figure out what that means I found this. From that article:

We use ethnographic techniques, which means we try to understand how people live their lives and interact with our product from their point of view, not ours … Developers are all part of the ethnographic research with product experience manager (PXM) and UX design in daily work — or they should be.

I like the sound of that. I recently had a few opportunities to meet with customers and participate in a “Customer Preference Test”. I found these meetings both insightful and motivational. One of the people I met with was so enthusiastic about our product I left the discussion wanting to go build everything he’d suggested right away just to return the love. If I were to continue to have regular contact with users both inside and outside of my organization, I believe it would not be long before I again start to feel that connection and sense of purpose that I am helping people rather than the feeling I’m just building things to check things off a list.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Feeling like I have little or no insight into how decisions are made and feeling like not all involved parties are considered in the decision -> Decisions being made openly based off information gathered from and visible to all involved parties

This one is not quite as simple. On a large product with a lot of customers it isn’t always feasible (or perhaps even desirable) to include every team member in every discussion. That being said, I don’t see any reason why every team member shouldn’t be informed of the results of discussions they aren’t involved in and given an opportunity to comment.

One way to do this would be an asynchronous communication tool like Slack. In my previous posts I mentioned a “Core Workflow Collaboration” channel where I could go to ask questions and share information with the various people that would be consuming my product. This generally led to open discussions where everyone could come to a consensus on what the right to do was and why. I hope to see more of these channels created for having these types of discussions².

Additionally, I would love to see more communication about impromptu discussions or decisions that are made. It could be as simple as posting a message to the team saying “I talked with so and so and I think we’re going to do X — does anyone have any concerns with that?” or “I recently met with customer X and it turns out we need to move in a different direction on feature Y — let’s discuss.”

I’m a big fan of communication in print for several reasons. In addition to providing information to those not involved in the discussion, it forces you to slow down and solidify your thoughts. Often something seems perfect in my head, but when I start to write it down I suddenly see issues. Recording thoughts and decisions also allows those involved in the discussion to make sure everyone gathered the same meaning from the discussion. I’ve often left a discussion with someone thinking we agreed on something only to later learn they had a completely different understanding. Recording the decision allows people to say “whoa — that’s not at all how I understood our discussion.” Finally, recording results of discussions provides a history so that the same discussions don’t have to happen over and over again. A history also prevents common phrases such as “I don’t remember agreeing to that” or “that’s not what we said we were going to do”.

In short, if more communication was done openly and everyone on my team (myself included) were to better communicate the results of major discussions that don’t happen openly, I believe I would soon feel again as if I was part of a team rather than a cog in a machine, only learning things on a “need to know basis”.

Don’t Tread on Me

Feeling unable to take initiative or make autonomous decisions without prior approval -> A sense of freedom and autonomy to solve problems and make decisions within requirements

At first glance this seems to be a daunting challenge. How does a team strike a balance between making sure everyone feels autonomous while also making sure everyone isn’t moving in different directions and doing whatever they feel like? The answer, I believe, may actually be all the things I’ve already discussed above. If I feel a sense of purpose in the mission of my team, connected to the people who will use the product, and informed and included in discussions and decisions that take place, it should lead to a natural consensus of what the “right thing” to do is.

If I have all the same information as everyone else on the team I believe conversations like “don’t work on that — do this instead” and “why are you doing that thing you’re not supposed to be doing” will almost completely disappear because I will already be aligned with the direction we’re moving. On the occasions where disagreements do come up, I can have an open discussion based off the same information everyone else has and come to a mutual decision. Even if I still don’t agree at that point, I can still disagree and commit without feeling like I’ve given up my freedom and autonomy because I won’t feel as if the decision was already made without my knowledge and I’m just now being informed of it with no real opportunity to question it.

Conclusion

In the previous two articles I discussed how in a relatively short period of time I went from feeling like an excited an engaged “player” to a unmotivated “pawn”. For a time I believed that was just how things were and there was no real hope for change. However, now that I’ve pinpointed the causes of my concerns and looked at potential solutions I’m cautiously optimistic that I may not be as far as originally thought from going back to feeling like a “player” again. With eyes to the future I can only hope that down the road I can add a part 4 to this series entitled “From Pawn to Player — How I Got My Groove Back”.

Footnotes

1 See https://weekdone.com/resources/objectives-key-results

2 Since writing the first draft of this article I’ve already seen this start to happen on my team and I am loving it!