EXPEDIA GROUP TECHNOLOGY — SOFTWARE
The 7 Mantras for Building High-Performing Teams
Learnings from leading teams through a challenging year
At the end of 2019, I was asked to lead the Stay Experience development organization. It was the first time Vrbo™ (part of Expedia Group™) India was going to own a core experience portfolio. My team and I were motivated to make 2020 the biggest year for our guests’ post-booking experience.
I’ll share what I learned from the year. I hope it’s helpful to both new and seasoned managers alike.
Belief is power
It’s important for a new team to get early wins and there is no substitute for deliveries. The first set of deliveries, for any team, are the sweetest. It not only gives the individuals in the team confidence, but also binds them together. It is akin to a baby taking first steps that gives them the confidence and muscles to run later.
In the first quarter of of 2020 we signed up to increase guest of guest invites substantially. We realised, early on, that the legacy tech stack would make it difficult to hit these goals. We had to make a choice:
- Put the key result on hold and modernise the stack, or
- Make progress by contributing to the legacy .NET stack.
We decided to make changes to the legacy stack and start a parallel work-stream to modernise the stack. By the end of the quarter, the team had achieved a substantial uptick in guest of guest invites. It gave the team self-belief. By the end of 2020, the team had tons of deliveries to their name.
Teams that celebrate together, win together
We’ve all heard the saying — Families that eat together, stay together — when it comes to teams, it’s also true that Teams that celebrate together, win together.
We spend a lot of time chasing goals, perfecting the process, debating and discussing approaches. While all of that is important, it is equally important, if not more, to celebrate small wins together. It creates a happy atmosphere within the team when everyone is on the same side. It creates a place each of us wants to be in — a place where we take pride in each other’s success.
We celebrated small wins in the stand-ups, in team meetings and in chat channels. We celebrated by giving a round of applause when:
- Someone’s first PR got merged
- Someone switched to a new technology and delivered their first feature
- A new A/B test was launched
- Someone solved a long-standing problem
We did not wait for quarterly goals to be accomplished. The idea is to celebrate the journey and not the destination.
Celebrating small individual wins and expressing gratitude publicly is part of our team’s culture now.
Get the team to shoot at a target
A lot of trade-off discussions can be never-ending, energy-sapping conversations. It’s this part that slows down most teams. A leader must establish a goal and communicate it to every member of the team. Those participating in the planning process are aware of the company’s priorities and how the goals align with the company strategy. However, only a small fraction of people participate in such exercises. It is the responsibility of the leaders to make sure every member of the team understands the goals and how those goals align with the overall vision and strategy of the company. It’s this clarity that allows the team to find the right balance between creativity and efficiency.
The Stay team has established a quarterly kick-off tradition. This forum is used by the Stay leads to talk about the goals for each quarter, how they align with the company strategy and how the team is going to achieve them. It’s a super-efficient way to have a conversation with the team about the target.
Replace walls with curtains
Walls serve a great purpose – they declutter, provide privacy and do much more. But walls also hinder creativity because they create silos. To build great products one, not only needs to declutter, but also needs to promote creativity. The answer lies in replacing walls with curtains – they help declutter and also allow for the free exchange of ideas.
In the Stay team, all functions are represented in all ceremonies, team meetings, conversations, celebrations, and so on. The Stay team is not just engineering and product but also design, content, analytics, and product marketing. We are not a hierarchical team where one has to go up the management chain and then go sideways to get things done. Most of the issues don’t even reach the leads because we’ve unlocked the sideways communication. Needless to say, it is also the shortest path.
Create a home within the office
A home is a place we feel safe in. But we spend a lot of time at work. Enough books and articles have been written about the benefits of creating a safe work environment — it brings out the best within individuals. With all the churn the pandemic and other events caused this year, it is important, more than ever before, to create a safe environment.
When failures happen, one should ask, How can we avoid a failure in the future? instead of Why did we fail? On the surface, questions seem similar but the underlying message is very different. The former question transfers the focus to learnings while the latter question focuses on the events leading up to an incident and the individuals involved. The idea is to take corrective action, not incriminate.
It is also important to create a feedback loop wherein employees can speak openly and freely to their leaders. It is the most efficient way to hear the issues and challenges faced by individuals in the team. It is often these issues that degrade the employee experience. One can start by simply asking questions, such as these, in catch-ups:
- What are the challenges or issues you are facing these days?
- How can I help you?
- What’s not working? How can we solve it?
- How can I improve your work experience?
The key though lies in acting on the inputs, however small or big the issues are. It creates trust and faith in the leadership.
I would attribute bringing down the time for a PR to make it to production, from ~2 weeks to ~2–3 days to several developers on the team. They raised their concerns in retrospectives, in one-on-ones and held the Stay team leads accountable.
Our principal engineer conducted a couple of tech talks on Vrbo architecture because one engineer’s answer to How can I help you? was I want to understand Vrbo Traveler experience architecture.
It is okay to fail, but it is not okay to fail again for the same reasons
The great Australian cricket team of the late 1990s-early 2000s made it to four consecutive cricket world cup finals. In ’96 they lost in the final, in ’99 they barely made it to the final but still won the tournament. From there on they did not lose a world cup match until the quarterfinal of the 2011 tournament, winning 2 more world cups, unbeaten, on the way. They are the most successful team in a hundred years of cricket history.
There is one thing common between all great sports teams across sports. They strive to improve even when they are on the top of their game. It is important to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement. It is the fuel that differentiates great from the good.
One thing you’ll hear Stay leads say quite regularly is It is okay to fail, but it is not okay to fail again for same reasons. We adopted the 5 why root cause analysis (RCA) process in July 2020. The RCA owner conducts the RCA, per the process, which is then discussed with the rest of the team to derive and execute action items. Our culture of continuous improvement led us from at least 1 major incident every month for the first 8 months of the year to no incidents in the last 4 months of the year.
Help your team achieve their personal goals
This is the last but the most important mantra of building high performing teams. People are the heart and soul of any team. They bring a lot of skills and strengths to the table. It’s important to bring out the best in each individual and bring out their individual characteristics.
One must spend time getting to know one’s team. Understand what motivates them and fills them with energy. A few helpful conversations to have:
- Start by talking about your own passions in a one-on-one setting followed by getting your team members to talk about their passions.
- Ask them if they are enjoying their time at work or not.
- Spend time talking about what they’d like to do next.
- Ask them what motivates and inspires them.
- Learn about their passions outside of work.
These are simple yet very powerful conversations that help create relationships to help you know your team.
People are the heart and soul of any team.
Once you know what folks aspire for, put in your best effort to give them the right opportunities. Do not restrict yourself to your own team. If there are opportunities in other teams, help them seize those opportunities. One must also try to be creative within one’s own scope to give folks the opportunities.
In 2020, three of our engineers switched roles to gain exposure to new technologies such as iOS, Android and backend, while three others switched between development, architecture, and management roles.
Recap
- Belief is power
- Teams that celebrate together, win together
- Get the team to shoot at a target
- Replace walls with curtains
- Create a home within the office
- It is okay to fail, but it is not okay to fail again for the same reasons
- Help your team achieve their personal goals
Teams go through 5 stages of development. We spent 2020 oscillating between forming, storming, and norming stages. The team showed signs of getting to performing stage during COVID and they finished the year on a high. I truly believe the best of the Stay team is yet to come. 2021 will be the year we reach the peak of the performing stage.
