How a communicative team helps managers sleep better

Even today, most companies still waste a lot of precious time trying to figure out if there’s something wrong happening. Think about it. A lot of people keep silent when they are in trouble because they are afraid of being blamed, so nobody takes care of the situation, and the mistake gets bigger and bigger. If managers don’t want that to happen, the only way of avoiding it is to control people — such a waste of time and resources.

For us, the solution to this is easy: we encourage our team to tell us about their problems. That’s it, simple and powerful. We make that culture possible by celebrating when someone communicates a mistake. Have you had a shitty week? Do you feel the relationship with the client is deteriorating? Do you think you made a mistake? Thanks for telling me — now we can solve it together, faster and better. Celebrate mistakes and people will let you know when something’s not going well. Then, you won’t have to “control them” anymore: you can just trust them.

At The Agile Monkeys we are a team, and we work like a gear system. If something’s not going like it’s supposed to, we all work together to find the best way to fix it. This culture has had a huge impact on the way our company works. Managers can sleep easy, knowing that no news actually is good news, and the team owns their work, feeling free, responsible, and empowered. That’s how you make a culture of trust work. And if it doesn’t… you can always let your manager know.