In this podcast Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Matt Sakaguchi about his talk at QCon San Francisco 2016 and the research Google has done on what makes effective teams.
Key Takeaways
- Psychological safety – people feel comfortable taking a risk or asking a question and know they will be supported by their team mates, they feel safe to share personal and “crazy” ideas
- Dependability – the knowledge that team mates will deliver quality outputs and meet their commitments
- Structure & clarity – the team has well defined roles and responsibilities, everyone knows what they are supposed to do and they do it
- Meaning – the work has personal meaning to the individual team members
- Impact – the team members can see the value they bring to the greater good through their work
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0m:57s Introductions
1m:27s Key outcomes from the research by Julia Rozovsky into what separated effective teams from not so effective teams at Google
1m:50s Five attributes that separated effective teams from the rest:
1m:55s Psychological safety – people feel comfortable taking a risk or asking a question and know they will be supported by their team mates, they feel safe to share personal and “crazy” ideas
2m:45s Dependability – the knowledge that team mates will deliver quality outputs and meet their commitments
3m:05s Structure & clarity – the team has well defined roles and responsibilities, everyone knows what they are supposed to do and they do it
3m:25s Meaning – the work has personal meaning to the individual team members
4m:11s Impact – the team members can see the value they bring to the greater good through their work
4m:58s Highly dependable teams don’t need a lot of structure. If a team is already dependable then adding structure can be detrimental, however if they are not yet a highly dependable team then structure improves effectiveness
5m:50s The difference between psychologically safe and unsafe teams – safe teams beat targets by 17%, unsafe teams missed their targets by 19%
6m:20s The link to psych safety is definitely causal – psych safety caused teams to be more effective
6m:54s Individual accountability matters and team outcomes are supported by high performing individuals
7m:54s Balancing individual goals with team goals – find the project which helps achieve both, and follow through on commitments when asking individuals to make tradeoffs
9m:13s The team will take care of you as long as you are giving your best effort to the team
9m:24s You must follow through on promises in order to have credibility
9m:47s How Google used to hire which resulted in “all-star” teams that are less effective than “championship teams” who understand the roles and support one another
11m:15s The San Francisco Giants as an example of a team who do well by being a cohesive unit rather than a group of all-stars
11m:44s What Google does to build psych safety on a team and overcome the “must look good” factor that supresses innovation and ongoing learning
12m:32s Creating a learning environment where you can ask each other lots of questions and collaborate to solve problems together
13m:05s Treat problems as learning problems not execution problems results in collaboration and learning increasing in a team
13m:17s Learning environments are exciting and people stay, in performance environments people burn out and leave
13m:38s Diversity does make a difference – diversity in many aspects, not just gender and ethnicity but also diversity of thought, creating an environment where everyone feels they can bring their whole self into work
14m:10s Example of how respect for different points of view changed the way some social activities were organized
14m:55s Being intentional about supporting diverse viewpoints and being inclusive is incumbent on leadership
14m:15s If people feel included and respected they will do better work
15m:35s Applying these ideas beyond Google. See the Five Dysfunctions of a Team as an example of publicly available content. The Google research confirmed a lot of the results from different studies done elsewhere.
16m:20s Contrasting Matt’s experiences in the police department in a Patrol Team vs a SWAT team. (See his talk here)
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About QCon
QCon is a practitioner-driven conference designed for technical team leads, architects, and project managers who influence software innovation in their teams. QCon takes place 8 times per year in London, New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo, Beijing, Guangzhou & Shanghai. QCon New York is at its 8th Edition and will take place Jun 24-26, 2019. 140+ expert practitioner speakers, 1000+ attendees and 18 tracks will cover topics driving the evolution of software development today. Visit qconnewyork.com to get more details.
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