You Are The Culture
If you’ve ever said “this is the best team ever” I can guarantee you the reason is because of the people you worked with on the team. You probably also had a great, supportive boss. (Conversely, most people leave companies because of their boss more than any other challenges with the company.) So, what if you had to break this down further, what specifically makes a great team?
A lot of people will reference this elusive thing called “culture” when they recall their favorite jobs and teams. But what is culture? It’s not snacks and ping pong tables and great holiday parties. And the reason you know that is because you can imagine working at a job that had those things but you were still miserable. The work matters. But the way you do the work matters more. And the team might matter even more than that.
My favorite quote about culture comes from working at Chef Software (and might originate from Nathen Harvey or Jez Humble, not sure). They said:
Culture is the sum total of all of the conversations between all of the employees, nothing more.
What I love about this quote is that it essentially means YOU are the culture. Our culture is who we are, what we believe, and (perhaps most importantly) what we say and do. AND… If you want to change the culture of your team or your company, YOU can change it by changing the way you show up and the way you interact with your colleagues.
One of the things we do as Agile Coaches, when working with Scrum Masters, is to impart some of the ways to instill the right culture in teams. But these lessons apply to all team members. Pay attention to your colleagues and notice things more often. Is someone having a bad day? If you didn’t see them sign heavily in that last meeting you might not have asked how they were doing. Did someone do something great without being recognized? Say something. Say yes when anyone asks for help. Share your knowledge and help the whole team be better. Maybe even just practice tiny acts of kindness to be a servant leader. Check in and say hello or grab coffee with someone you work with that you’ve not had a conversation with in a while.
No one says it, but these things, these small moments that matter are some of the things that make the best teams. People remember the meals they had together, the times they went bowling together, the times they laughed over something silly. And we can create those moments more often by showing up differently, being present, and just trying to connect as a team more often. Even if you’re remote — you can have an agendaless meeting just to connect and tell stories about your favorite coffee cups. Pick a stupid ice breaker to get to know each other more. Play a silly video to kick off your stand-ups. Make Friday’s dad-joke Fridays. Be creative. Be vulnerable. Be your authentic selves.
And I’ve seen this happen. It’s contagious. When one team on the floor is laughing and having a great time, it’s noticed. But when that same team is also hosting fun sprint reviews that people talk about and delivering great value frequently to customers, word spreads even faster. They’ll say “How can we be more like that team?”
You’ve probably heard it all before. Being great at agile isn’t so much about how well you follow the mechanics, but more about your mindset, values, and principles. It’s also about the psychological safety and trust the team has with each other and their leaders. And when it’s working well, it’s magical.
If you don’t quite have that yet, what I’m saying is that it can start with YOU. You are the culture. You can gently instigate your team to share more with each other, build trust and safety, and learn to collaborate and deliver better together.
My hope is that you experience that magic.
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Hi, I’m Brian Link, an Enterprise Agile Coach who loves his job helping people. I call myself and my company the “Practical Agilist” because I pride myself on helping others distill down the practices and frameworks of the agile universe into easy to understand and simple common sense. I offer fractional agile coaching services to help teams improve affordably. See more at FractionalAgileCoach.com
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