A Damme good Agency Social Contract
We have social contracts in our families, in our workplaces and across society. Often unspoken rules and expectations that guide our behaviour. These agreements differ between groups, regions and cultures. Tooting your car horn in Bali is considered polite as you are letting the other driver/rider know that you are there. In Australia, people toot a horn to reprimand another driver. Same action, different context.
In a work context, we may be guided by the companies policies, but we also have a range of agreements with our colleagues and we don’t always live up to them. The work fridge battleground is a good place to start, but the most common is how people leave meeting or lunch rooms, usually due to haste rather than indifference. That said, we have a lot of rules that govern our lives and some actions of quiet rebellion can be a relief.
When people feel safe, they can focus on the problem rather than focusing on surviving the meeting or the entire project. If people feel safe, they can take risks with raising ideas or concerns.
How do you have a culture that is supportive and accepting? How do you have a culture where people can be themselves and at the same time not adversely impact others? There are many factors in developing a supportive company culture. We have long believed that putting people first is the key to a successful culture. Our approach has always been to have the team decide on what they want from each other.
At our October Team Meeting (2019), we gave everyone time to write down what they wanted from each other. We collected this on post-it notes and an online tool called Miro. We collated all the statements/requests and it came to 6.5 pages. Reducing the duplicates and similar statements, the end result was 3.5 pages, that were then sent to the team for their review. The challenge was obvious — while it was all inclusive, it was too long.
The enormous list of statements included:
- Act professionally
- Take the emotion out (where possible)
- Keep cursing to a minimum
- Inside space = Inside voice (respect that others may be trying to work when you’re having a chat)
- Keep music to a reasonable volume
- No gossip, if you have an issue bring it up (respectfully) with that person
- Attempt to see something from another’s perspective, even when you disagree
- Welcome and support new colleagues
- Don’t leave a person upset — check in or have someone check else check in
- Leave meeting rooms in a neat and tidy state
- Do what you said you would, when you said you’d do it — or communicate early if you can’t
- Clean up after yourself, specifically your dishes
- Don’t put your crumby knife in the butter
The last one is my favourite. We wanted to develop a social contract that reflected our culture and created a reference point for how to approach situations, rather than a set of rules to live by. If we included all the statements that people wanted, we would have had a list over 150 rules!
In the final version, we created broad statements that encapsulated the sentiment of each request. Instead of “Act Professionally” and “Keep the Cursing to a Minimum”, we provided a statement that would apply across these requests and more:
Talk in the office as though your Mum is listening
Instead of a list of rules around how to schedule, conduct and attend meetings, we created a context of attending meetings as though someone really important was attending. With this context, the small stuff gets worked out and people are present.
Attend meetings as though Jean-Claude Van Damme was on the other end of the video
However, this needed to be supported by a statement that ensures meetings were effective.
Treat meeting start and end times as though you run the Japanese bullet trains
Applying a statement in our tone of voice, and in some cases humorous, allowed for a much broader view of a situation than an unambiguous rule. The statements capture who we are as a team and guide how we interact with each other. Most importantly they provide a frame of reference that people can usually understand and allow others to easily reference it without telling people off.
Each member of the team signed this contract:
Luminary’s social contract
The social contract we came up with reflects the fundamental values we hold:
- We crave autonomy and we value each other
- We focus on the problem, not the person
- Team members feel safe to take risks and be genuine with each other.
Our social contract provides the freedom to be yourself and guides you on how to relate to people and produce great work together.
We agree to have these statements guide our actions and behavior:
- Talk in the office as though your Mum is listening
- Treat people as though they are important to you
- Treat the office, meeting rooms and equipment as though you paid for them
- Approach problems like you don’t know the answer
- Complete your time logs with integrity, as though the agency’s future depends on it
- Treat people’s time as though it is precious
- Listen to people and maybe they will listen to you
- Attend meetings as though Jean-Claude Van Damme was on the other end of the video
- Seek to use the most effective communication channels
- Approach time zones as though you were the one who had to get up early or stay late
- Imagine you were the one who had to learn a language to work here
- Have people around you win
- Remember, we are all mentors and we are all students
- Treat meeting start and end times as though you run the Japanese bullet trains
- Acknowledge the wins and the losses
- If you make a mistake, own it, remedy it and move on
- Leave your office spaces better than you found them
- Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
- Dance like nobody is watching (it’s safe to be you)
- Be excellent to each other
If a new team member joins us, we are open to their ideas and welcome their contribution. If there is a need for a major change to it, we will seek to enter into a new agreement.
