What the tech and startup communities taught me about openness

If someone asked you whether your company is ‘open’, would you say yes?

Prior to Human Managed, I associated openness at work with having an open mind, open conversations and open feedback. Now, I am learning that openness from a company level is more than an individual mindset or ways to exchange ideas; it’s a process of continuous improvement.

In this article, I share what I have learned about openness from the tech and startup communities, drawing on their widely adopted practices of open source, open documentation and DevOps. They all foster effective collaboration, mutual understanding and ultimately change.

It is a leader’s job to make it so easy for their employees to be open that they don’t even have to think about it. Openness can be thoughtfully ‘coded in’ where collaboration, continuous development and feedback matters.

Openness Concept #1: Open Source

In technical terms, open source or open source software is the source code of computer programs that is publicly available for anyone to access, modify and distribute. The phenomenon of developing software source code by sharing in public gained mainstream recognition in the early 90’s, when Linus Torvalds led the first major open-source project on the Internet: the Linux operating system kernel. Companies that brought the technologies we love and rely on every day are built on Linux (e.g. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Slack).

Today, there are open source projects on just about anything in the tech industry to solve today’s problems. As the below graph from GitHub’s 2019 State of the Octoverse report shows, the open source community keeps growing globally, with the highest percentage growth of contributors coming from Asia. Some of the fastest growing open source projects include Flutter (used for building fast user experiences for mobile, web and desktop from a single codebase) and TensorFlow (used for machine learning).

If you remove the computer software lens, open source is a social movement that rejects secrecy and centralised control of creative work, in favour of decentralisation, collaboration and transparency. It is increasingly becoming ingrained in our social fabric. Community collaboration, peer reviews, transparent ratings are all examples of open source principles. And as digital consumers we expect it as a basic feature; when was the last time you made a significant purchase from an unknown brand without at least attempting to search for a review?

There is a lot to learn from the open source principles that can be applied to our world (from both individual and company levels):

• Transparency: When we all have access to the information and materials necessary for doing our best work, we can build upon each other’s ideas and discoveries.
• Collaboration: When we are free to participate, modify and initiate projects, we can solve problems that no one can solve alone.
• Inclusive meritocracy: Good ideas can come from anywhere, and the best ideas should win.
• Community: Shared values guide decision making, and community goals supersede individual interests and agendas.

Openness Concept #2: Open Documentation

Company documentation define why and how things are run in the company. Documentation like company processes, strategy decks, onboarding kit all make up the code of the company.

For me, there was never any doubt that documentation is important.

What I didn’t know before is this: who contributes to company documents, and how they are created, distributed and updated matters a lot to a company’s culture and success.

• What: a central repository / knowledge base / company wiki. Doesn’t matter what you call it.
• Who: everyone in the company should have the ability to contribute and edit.
• How: pick on a collaboration tool that works for your company (e.g. Google Docs, Confluence, Notion, GitHub) and build on it together!

Things always change in companies, particularly in startups that need to build and scale fast. It makes a lot of sense that documentation should also change and grow with the company, too.

It’s not a coincidence that open documentation has all the principles of open source; open documentation helps to build a culture of transparency and collaboration, where all employees are empowered to contribute and work asynchronously.

Openness Concept #3: DevOps

The final concept in tech that influenced my thinking around openness is DevOps (a combination of the words Development and Operations). DevOps is a set of practices that integrates the processes between software development and IT operations to build, test and release software faster and more reliably.

There are many tools and processes that enable DevOps, but at the heart of it lies collaborative code management, allowing multiple team members to contribute to, test and improve on the code continuously. Put it simply, it’s a practice of making mistakes, exchanging feedback on the said mistakes, and trying not to make the same mistakes in the future (it’s not about eliminating mistakes — we are human, and mistakes are inevitable when you try new things).

Just like open source, DevOps is not limited to software development but can be applied to anywhere in an organisation, such as documentation. Open documentation management may not require speedy or constant changes as software development. However, it can benefit hugely from the DevOps mindset of shared responsibility and iterative improvements.

An example of Open Documentation + DevOps that fascinated me is the GitLab team handbook. It is a living documentation, open to the world, quite literally functioning like an open source project of the company GitLab. It changes with continuous improvement from the DevOps pipeline (tech stack) and the DevOps mindset (team contributions).

Openness at Human Managed: Share to Reform

Open source, open documentation and DevOps are very different concepts when looked at individually. When looked at together, however, they form an intertwined structure to openness. There is one element that powers all of them: the strength of collaboration between individuals and communities.

What I initially thought as specific to tech industry or startups can be applied to any team, any process or company. Openness is not an end state, it’s a continuous cycle of sharing and collaborating.

At Human Managed, we care about solving problems for our customers and our communities. This begins with our fresh perspectives and our effort to continuously reform them.

We are…

Fresh; we dare to begin.

Open; we share to reform.

Present; we care to solve.

We are Human Managed.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.