Having worked for my current employer now for almost 12 years it’s safe to say I’ve grown up with the organisation. I started my journey at Vertu Motors as their sole front end developer within the IT department, working on their website and internal systems such as the CRM/deal optimiser system. Overtime I focused more on just the website and there was a restructure whereby my team joined forces with the marketing team, and more recently due to our growth and visions such as total systems integration and end-to-end omnichannel the lines between internal systems and web have blurred and to support this, a whole new division formed under the umbrella of the Digitisation department in March 2020. It was almost like the universe was preparing us for what was to come with the accelerated digital transformation related to the COVID pandemic. We were able to very quickly respond and adapt to support the business with cross functional agile teams offering the most innovative solutions to the problems the business was facing, such as compliance and distance selling.
The reason I go into this in as much depth is that I know first hand how team structures, policies and processes directly impact culture. When I moved out of the IT department, myself and a good friend and colleague John, introduced a hashtag #TeamVertu to remind ourselves that regardless of how the organisation structure is viewed, we are still shooting for that very same goal, to deliver value to the business. When I moved out of the marketing department myself and the now sub teams (marketing/ digitisation) worked together to form working groups with titles such as ‘Operation Collaboration’ to again try to remind ourselves that we are all still one big team contributing, in scrum terms, working together to get that ball up the field and ultimately score the goal.
Inevitably though there have been at times some conflict. On a recent training course (for anyone that is interested it was the Advanced Scrum Master Certification with Scrum Alliance) we worked through an exercise relating to the four team toxins (Defensiveness, Stonewalling, Blaming and Contempt). The way the training session was delivered has really provoked me to take a step back and think about the human side of these professional fall-outs. Trying to understand what caused the toxin to be present led the group to call out fear, lack of trust, stress – no doubt there are many many other reasons and the point of the exercise was to remind us that people are not nasty, generally it is kind of a natural response to a situation that happens that may be one of surprise or out of the persons control.
This led me to think about the very common theme Scrum Masters face and that is the ‘them and us’ type conflict between the Product Owner and the Development team. The updated scrum guide has actually made inroads in trying to dispel this:
The concept of a Development Team within a Scrum Team was removed to reduce the potential for dysfunctions between the Product Owner and the Development Team (“us vs. them”) and focus the entire Scrum Team on the same objective
So thinking about it personally, from the obstacles I sometimes face, I kind of came to the conclusion that there is enough ‘opportunity’ and ‘glory’ for everyone. Everyone has a valuable contribution to make. It doesn’t have to be a battle between departments or PO/ developers because we all contribute to the same goal. It very much ties into having an abundance mentality.
I first became aware of an abundance / scarcity mindset a good few years ago when I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey. Other similar undertones are the general sense of a growth vs fixed mindset and I’ve just recently read a Simon Sinek book, The Infinite Game, where the similar concept was referred to as infinite vs finite thinking.
So how to help to facilitate and foster a culture of abundance? Here’s a few ideas but I’d love to hear other ideas.
- Practice gratitude and encourage praise/appreciation for what everyone contributes regardless of whether the reporting lines say you are in one team or another
- Introduce Visions and Goals that are worked on and agreed upon collaboratively
- I think something like #TeamOrg or #TeamGoal definitely helps even if it is just a gentle reminder to everyone from time to time of the shared goal
- Working Agreements / Team Charters
- Inspect and Adapt: Regular Retros that maybe have a space to examine the said working agreement and cross-team relationships/ processes
- Learn from everything – all problems are opportunities in disguise.