I was recently working on a classical company values exercise. And realized that I am repeating very similar things as in the previous companies (which is a good thing, I guess). Thus decided to write it down for the future use.
I like to work at a remote-first organization. That doesn’t mean being fully remote, on the contrary. The key goal of a remote-first organization is to deliberately develop communication channels. Mainly to allow seamless collaboration among people being remote and being in the office.
The following text was written as addressing the company/team. Please, excuse
a bit deliberate use of the pronoun you :)
Transparency and Openness
Working and helping others is a priority, even if you don’t see a direct relationship to the goals that you are trying to achieve. Anyone can chime in on any subject. The fact that somebody is part of a particular team doesn’t mean that they cannot provide view, help, or suggestions. Those who are responsible for the work decides how to do it. They should always take each suggestion seriously and try to respond and explain why it may or may not have been implemented.
Transparency
We default to transparency, meaning that we should make everything accessible by default and only solve for limited access rights in special cases. Place files in shared drives (Team Google Drive for example). There is no doubt that one would share an access to document when asked. That’s too late though (for example, such a document would not be discoverable via search). Capture the progress in appropriate tickets.
Such a level of openness / sharing can be counter-intuitive for new team members. Invest an extra time into explaining why we are trying to exercise extreme transparency. Engage in open dialogue. Walk the extra mile to allow sharing.
A great example is making private issues, postmortems or Slack channels public. So, we all can learn from them.
Openness
Being open and honest with each other is a very critical component of our success. Nobody knows everything. Be open for other ideas and views.
Our favorite mantra is – “strong opinions, loosely held”. We have opinions, but we are ready and willing to change them. Especially, when a better solution is proposed or view is proposed by somebody else. We are not about ego, but about the common goal.
Most learning and progress is hidden in our failures – foster them and make sure, that all postmortems are blameless . We have to make sure, that we maintain a safe harbor for everybody, and otherwise we may be missing an important voice.
WHY? WHY? WHY? and maybe WHAT? and HOW?
Always try asking yourself why multiple times . The number loved by many is 3, but do not hesitate to ask 5 times or just twice. Anything what is appropriate.
When writing a request (ticket, Slack message, email…) try to provide complete context – why, what and then (maybe) how. Either skip the “how” completely or make it just a suggestion to allow the responsible person to come up with the best solution.
Fairness and Honesty
Be always fair to each other. Expect that others are not trying to cause harm. Always make your best to evaluate people accurately. That doesn’t mean being dishonest, or unnecessarily politically correct.
Say thanks
Don’t forget to give credit where credit is due. But just “thank you” in a company/team-wide channel will do a lot.
Say sorry
If you’ve made a mistake, apologize. Apologizing is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength. The people who are active inevitably make mistakes. When we share our mistakes and bring attention to them, others can learn from us. The same mistake is less likely to be repeated by someone else.
This concept extends to postmortems, as we have mentioned above. Always have a ticket(s) tracking issue(s) and their resolution, as well as write down postmortem. Especially for high-profile emergencies (such as downtime of production systems).
Assume positive intent
Always keep in mind, that we frequently fall victim to the fundamental attribution error . In a nutshell – we blame circumstances for our own mistakes, but others for theirs. To fight this urge, we should always assume positive intent in interactions with others. Especially when this interaction happens over electronic channels (email, chat).
Providing feedback
Providing feedback is not an easy thing. Receiving feedback is even more challenging.
When providing feedback, always focus on the work itself, emphasis business or technical impact, never the person. Make sure that you provide at least one recent and clear example. Try to factor in external factors (maybe parson is going through some family crisis, for example).
Every feedback we give needs to be constructive. Feedback can be delivered and received in a positive or negative way. Make an extra effort to deliver feedback kindly. And receive feedback with the open mind.
Nobody has 100% delivery, consider if the particular issue is even worth providing feedback. Especially, if one is in a position of power (e.g. a manager). Negative events are typically taken way more (6x) seriously than positive ones.
Being direct means to be transparent with each other. It doesn’t mean being mean. We strive to be a bit like Ben Horowitz, as they call him, being both straightforward and kind .
Get to know each other
We are spread all around the World and also use a lot of text-based communication tools (email, chat, tickets). We don’t have the “luxury” of being able to meet everybody in person, go together to lunch. Thus, it is essential to engage in activities which supplement random and more casual interactions.
Delivery
We care about getting rid of work which can be replaced with automation as well as we try to avoid duplication. [Amazon states it best] (http://www.amazon.jobs/principles)with :
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense.
Measure results, not time
We care about delivery and achievement. Not if one spends 12 hours at the office. You don’t need to defend how you spend your day. Everybody is most productive at different times.
Frequently, we all spend more hours, working at night, or a weekend. But we do it because we are passionate about what we do. On the other side, if you are working constantly for too many hours, talk to your manager to find solutions.
Do it yourself
We love to collaborate – help each other when with questions, seeking for critique, or need help. All to allow everybody to deliver whatever they are working on. There is no need to brainstorm every single thing, or wait for consensus, or do with two what you can do yourself .
Every so often, it is time to call multiple people in to weight different options, and make a strategic level decision. But we want to avoid analysis paralysis . Decisions should be thoughtful, but delivering fast means that we can make mistakes. We should not fear them, but be ready to fix them quickly. That may inform our future design decisions (for example, prefer modularized design instead of monolith).
Ownership
We expect everybody to own what they are doing. Owning the work, means that you are responsible for that particular piece to be moved forward. Be proactive in informing stakeholders when there is something you need help with, you cannot solve on your own. Don’t just sit on tasks.
Keep the bigger picture in mind
When making decisions, always keep the bigger picture in mind. Optimize for the whole company, not only for your team or yourself.
For example, if fulfilling your goal has a negative impact on somebody else (other colleagues; team; company, or customers), you should raise the flag as such goal is probably incorrect.
Help others to achieve their goals. You are blocking somebody (for example, they are waiting for decision, merge request review) your top priority should be to unblock them. Unblocking can also mean that you help them to find a more appropriate person to handle the request (aka delegate).
Respect others’ time
Always try to be on time. People waiting for each other are basically just wasting their time.
Avoid unnecessary meetings. Don’t use meetings to get permission, use it to get opinions, suggestions, fresh ideas. When is meeting necessary always:
- try to make attendance optional for as many people as possible;
- try to have meeting agenda linked from your meeting invite;
- document the outcome (meeting minutes, ticket(s)).
If you want resolution from somebody, think about using written narratives. Actually, every interaction should be treated as a narrative – provide context for the question, make sure, that people understand your point.
Think about multiplication effects, when sending one-to-many communication (like emails). If one needs 10 minutes to read that email, and it has 15 recipients, we might just burned 150 minutes. Try to provide a summary (famous TL;DR ) at the beginning of a longer text.
Responsibility over Rigidity
We believe that it is better to give people freedom and responsibility to make decisions and hold them accountable for that. Instead of imposing complicated rules and rigid approval processes.
Most decisions are easy to reverse. There is a helpful metaphor attributed to Amazon about one-way and two-way door decisions. Make reversible changes without approval. And if they are not reversible (or they are hard to), then we should have more through discussion about them.
Diversity
Diversity is a critical asset. Having people from different countries and cultural backgrounds gives us tremendous advantage in finding alternative solutions and new market opportunities. We don’t select candidates because we’d like to go partying with them. We hire and reward employees based on our shared values, as described on this page. Values fit is the important piece, not a culture fit. We actually want to avoid everybody behaves according to one culture, especially if such cultures are not inclusive. For example, a brogrammer culture .
Unexpected and unconventional things make life more interesting. Talk about hobbies and passions. Share pictures of weekend projects. Send us a postcard from your travels. Coffee breaks and Donut/S’Up calls are an excellent place to share those.