Do You Have a Bob?

Anti-Impression Management and Clarity practice: I wrote a book called “People Before Tech: Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” and you can find a discount for it at the bottom of this page., Also, we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- come talk to us. We’re currently running a 4 weeks license-free trial campaign, ask us about a demo at contat@peoplenottech.com

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For those of you reading both my newsletters, you may have seen this week is a bit of doom and gloom on getting some of the human topics over the line before the window of opportunity created by Covid closes and we landed none of the solid organisational permission that will last us in the Chasing Psychological Safety one. I presume that horse is deceased and its repeat-beating can wait in particular since in this newsletter we’ve been talking about the HumanDebt, the need to quickly put in place Psychologically Safe hybrid/anywhere/anytime outcomes-based work or else we’ll haemorrhage talent for a few weeks, so today is a change of tact and we’ll be talking about the sacred principle of Agile customer proximity and how it reflects in the team dynamic.

I’ve always sympathised with teams who are far removed from the customer. I’ve been lucky and always led teams or worked on products where the feedback loop was short and intense and what a blessing that is and how much easier life is when there’s direct motivation like that. By contrast, teams that make products blindly with little to no indication towards how what they made has been received, and at times no good idea as to who it is that is receiving it or how their work ever makes an impact, are finding it harder to find purpose.

So while my position is fortunate, I’ve been pondering the value of impromptu design moments and questioning chats when there’s feedback from the customer. Immediately. As soon as. And observing the connection between the length of that loop and the way the team feels in our teams and those of our clients.