Measure And Improve How Your Environment Supports Your Team
A report of the flow, structure, and outcome of a community meetup we hosted for The Liberators Network
Is the environment in your organization supportive of Scrum, or does it cause impediments? A common complaint, and frustration, among people who try to change behavior, is that it seems to be so incredibly hard. But one important insight from social and organizational psychologists is that the behavior of people in organizations is strongly shaped by the environment.
This is often called “the smell of the place”, and it gives you a sense of the culture of an organization. Although most of us are not always aware of this, the environment we work in shapes how we behave and feel. Re-energizing people often has a lot less to do with changing people, and a lot more with changing the context those people work in.
Recently, we organized a meetup for The Liberators Network in which we explored this topic together. It was based on the do-it-yourself workshop “Measure And Improve How Your Environment Supports Your Team”. We designed this workshop with three overlapping goals. The first is to look at how your work environment shapes your behavior as individuals and as teams. The second is to turn this into a (simple) metric that you can track, and see if you’re heading in the right direction. And finally, our goal with this workshop is to involve those people in your environment who have the power to change it (like management).
This blog post describes the flow, structure, and outcome of the meetup. I’ll also share my personal experience and the key takeaways that emerged from the conversations the ±50 participants had. Our hope is that it inspires you to give the workshop a try and you improve the smell of your work environment! Download the workshop with detailed instructions and a step-by-step explanation here.
My Personal Experience With Organizational Smells
Organizational smells come in many flavors and they’re always present and around us. The question is: what are the smells you notice? What is it that you hear, see, and notice around in the organization that shapes the behavior of everyone? In a good, or bad way. In my role as a Scrum Master, I’ve always tried to be very aware and alert to detect smells. It reminds me of the Liberating Structure “Simple Ethnography”, which is all about gathering empirical data through observation. Part of observation is being curious, asking questions, and refraining from judging. This allows you to see what’s really going on. What’s the real challenge a team is facing? What patterns can be noticed in how people interact in this organization? What do we mostly see & hear during the various Scrum events?
Many of the smells that I consider as negative, have to do with the autonomy the teams have. Can they choose their own metrics, technical tools, or software? Do they have the freedom to experiment with other (Agile) frameworks or methodologies? Are they allowed to experiment with practices to improve collaboration or the quality of their work? Do they have the freedom to make radical changes in order to resolve persistent impediments? Do they have a say in the team’s composition? Are they allowed to determine for themselves, how they want to collaborate with their users, customers, and other stakeholders? Does the team have the autonomy to determine to release a new version of their product?
In short, does the team have the autonomy to shape an environment in which they think the chances of success are the highest? And do they have the support from management to create such an environment?
Some organizations simply have this positive vibe. The teams might face many tough impediments, but the atmosphere in the organization is one of the possibilities. You just feel that everyone wants to support each other in making the most out of their collaboration. New voices are welcomed for their fresh perspective, and experiments get the benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, other organizations drain all your energy from the moment you enter the building. It might already start in how you’re welcomed, and only by listening you notice that many conversations are about “this is how we do things around here”, “this is never going to work here”, and “we’re different and special”.
If you are part of an organization with lots of negative smells, you might feel overwhelmed. Where to start? Our recommendation is to just run the workshop and make the smells transparent. It helps you create a common understanding and allows you to learn if others detect similar smells. If so, try to slowly improve the situation, one smell at a time. Or put differently, one 15% Solution at a time!
The Steps, Structure, And Outcome Of The Meetup
In the remainder of this blog post, we describe the steps we’ve used to run the workshop “Measure And Improve How Your Environment Supports Your Team”. Recognized my personal experiences and want to improve the smells in your organization? Keep on reading! Get inspired by the ideas from others, and give the workshop a try yourself!
Step 1 — Get Your Thinking About “Smells”
Organizational “smells” can be an abstract concept, so to help get everyone’s thinking started we asked them for the smells they have noticed in their own organization, from an outside-in perspective. In small groups, they discussed the following questions with each other:
“When you first came to work for this organization, what did you notice about how people work here? What was odd, surprising, or delightful?”
Some participants were positively surprised and ended up in an organization that almost felt like a “family” where your not a number and your name matters. Even the smallest successes are celebrated, and everyone is willing to help each other with challenges, struggles, and questions. Other participants had an opposite experience. When they first came to work for their organization, they immediately noticed a culture of fear, jealousy, and anxiety. There was very little communication and collaboration, and everyone was busy with way too much administration. Someone else observed the lack of plants in their office. This might seem a small detail, but it somehow matched the energy-draining vibe of the organization. So, in short, some participants started to work for an organization and immediately recognized many good smells, others were not so lucky…
Step 2 — Identify The Smells With 10x10 Writing
In the previous step, we helped the participants to get their thinking started about smells in their organization. In this step, we allowed them to develop their own ideas further with 10x10 Writing. In total, we offered 10 sentences one by one, and the participants had 1 minute per sentence to write it down and complete it with as many examples as they could think of. This step was done in silence and private. When everyone was done, we asked them to look back over their answers and to mark patterns that immediately jumped out.
In the original DIY workshop we share 10 sentences. Here are four examples to give you an idea:
Working on my organization makes me feel …
An outsider walking into my work environment would notice …
I feel constrained in my work environment when I ….
At the same time, I feel encouraged to take initiative when I …
Step 3 — Explain The Scrum Culture Index
Until this moment, we didn’t spend much time explaining the concept of “the smell of the place”. The focus was mostly to get everyone’s thinking started about smells they already recognized in their own organization, even without having much background information. Now that everyone is warmed up and loosened up, it is a good moment to dig deeper into where the idea of “the smell of the place” comes from. If you run this workshop, you can use the description below as a source of inspiration. During the meetup, we only took a couple of minutes to explain the concept. The concept isn’t difficult to understand, and people can always do more research for themselves, after the meetup.
The “smell of the place” originates from this talk by Sumantra Ghoshal, professor at the London Business School. He explains that organizations often have different “smells”, and all those smells work together to drive how people behave. This leads to one interesting opportunity for change: don’t change the people, but change the environment. In the video, Ghoshal describes how some organizations smell like a hot, gritty day in the concrete jungle of a big city that is overrun by zombies (we call this “Zombie Town”). They drain your energy and make you lazy and sluggish. But in other organizations, the atmosphere is more like a green forest at the start of Spring that energizes you and boosts your creativity (we call this “Autonomy City”).
You can sort these smells into four dimensions, where the ends represent competing values:
Constraint Versus Stretch
On the left side of the spectrum, organizations constrain their employees with rigid strategies and intricately detailed plans, created by management and without involving employees. On a smaller scale, tasks are highly prescriptive and leave little room for employees to “stretch” their abilities. But on the right side of the spectrum, management is more concerned with setting broad goals and offering a compelling purpose that allows employees to “stretch” beyond their usual selves.
Compliance Versus Discipline
In some organizations, it is important to comply with existing rules, protocols, and procedures — or there are many of them. Good examples of this are planning systems, budget plans, financial systems, and time registration. The opposite happens when management trusts in the self-discipline of employees to make the right calls.
Control Versus Support
In organizations that smell like “Zombie Town”, the primary task for management is to control the output and speed of the teams. Work is highly controlled and overseen by management, with frequent reports and status updates. But on the other end, management entirely focuses on supporting the employees where they need them (and without controlling them).
Contract Versus Trust
In “Zombie Town”, everything is treated as a contract (often with a small print). Your job is a personal contract, your personal development is a contract, the work you need to do with your team is a contract, NDA’s replace trust, your team values are a contract, your team budget is a contract. But on the other end, the focus lies entirely on trusting employees to make the right call.
Step 4— Plot The Smells On The Scrum Culture Index
Now that everyone’s had a good understanding of the “smell of the place” and the related Scrum Culture Index, it was time to plot the examples the participants already generated on the canvas. In small groups, everyone shared the smells they identified and added them to the four axes. Some groups simply put their names on the axes to show how “smelly” their organization is, others shared more tangible examples. Both approaches are completely fine.
Examples of smells the groups identified that made them think they worked in a “Zombie Town” were being constrained by a large joint venture contract and the need for status reports. Others felt controlled because they needed to show proof of how valuable their individual work was, they also had to comply to attending all of the (Scrum) meetings. Instead of encouraging people to join those meetings, it became a strict rule. Another participant felt controlled when an outsider attended their Retrospective. This took away all safety to discuss personal matters and potential improvements. And finally, management helped create a “Zombie Town” by taking all the important decisions for the teams, for example about the team’s composition. As a result, teams often got surprised by a new member, which strongly impacted team dynamics and collaboration.
Luckily, the participants also raised many examples of “Autonomy City”. They’ve experienced organizations where teams are encouraged to take initiative and to stretch themselves. They are trusted to experiment with new practices, frameworks, and methodologies, even if there’s a chance the experiment might fail. In these organizations, management supports the teams with impediment removal and coaches them to find their own solutions. Instead of complying with company-wide metrics, the teams could pick the metrics they think are most insightful and valuable to track.
Step 5 — Identify Potential Improvements
The final step we used during the meetup was to identify potential improvements. First individually, and afterward in small groups, everyone discussed the following questions with each other:
“Looking at the smells we identified in our work environment, what opportunities do you see to improve the environment towards ‘Autonomy City’? What is in our reach to improve the Scrum Culture Index?”
If you’re stuck as a team in “Zombie Town”, it might feel impossible to move towards “Autonomy City”. Our recommendation is always to focus on small improvements. What are the things you can already change, without having any dependencies on others? What is something you can already set in motion yourself, or as a team, that would help you move in a good direction?
Some examples of the participants were to appreciate small wins and to celebrate successes to stay motivated. Others wanted to start with educating the organization by explaining the idea of the “smell of the place”, and run this workshop together. By doing so, they make the pain visible and create transparency on where the company is “losing”. Although the improvements are often small steps, many participants identified steps that truly matter. They don't want to simply change roles, processes, and procedures, but also the mindset & behavior: the culture of the organization.
Step 6 — Make Clear Requests For Help
A step we didn’t include in our public meetup but is recommended if you run this workshop within your own organization is the Liberating Structure “What I Need From You” (WINFY). To resolve most of the smells you identified in your work environment, you need help from others. WINFY is a great structure to help you make this clear. An invitation you could use is:
“In order to make progress on the improvements we identified together, what do you need from others in this room?”
You may find this structure quite harsh and direct, but it is purposefully so. After all, unclear requests for help lead to unclear commitments, and thus nothing changes — a clear smell of “Zombie Land”.
Closing
In this blog post, we’ve shared the outcome of the meetup we organized recently for our user group The Liberators Network: “Measure And Improve How Your Environment Supports Your Team”. We described the flow, and structure of the meetup, and I’ve included my personal experiences. Why don’t you give this do-it-yourself workshop a try in your own team and organization? Just remember: don’t change people, change their environment! Good luck, and let us know your experiences!
