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Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

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Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#11

Post by di4na »

kqr wrote: post #5
xrd wrote: post #2

I love blameless postmortems. And, it isn't really whether the team or the team lead decides to do a blameless postmortem. It's whether the company values looking at things this way. And, those values change over time, and shift when the times are good or bad (financially). I would really love to read about a blameless postmortem that happened in a dying company where everyone was backstabbing each other. Now, that w…

I have been recommended the book "Turning the Ship Around" for an account of how to grow a new good culture in a decisively bad one. It's probably not an exact recipe for being able to hold blameless postmortems, but I suspect it could contain some valuable information. If anyone knows how well it applies to this situation, please do tell me!

TTSA is a great book and may help. But it is a leadership book. I still strongly advise it, at least to know nice things are possible.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#12

Post by namdnay »

xrd wrote: post #2

I love blameless postmortems. And, it isn't really whether the team or the team lead decides to do a blameless postmortem. It's whether the company values looking at things this way. And, those values change over time, and shift when the times are good or bad (financially). I would really love to read about a blameless postmortem that happened in a dying company where everyone was backstabbing each other. Now, that w…

I think you can go too far in that direction. I worked for a big European software company, there was a deep culture of never blaming people, so any postmortem inevitably ended with a new process or training or transversal synergy coordinators, when sometimes the root cause was just bad developers

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#13

Post by GiuseppaAcciaio »

namdnay wrote: post #12
xrd wrote: post #2

I love blameless postmortems. And, it isn't really whether the team or the team lead decides to do a blameless postmortem. It's whether the company values looking at things this way. And, those values change over time, and shift when the times are good or bad (financially). I would really love to read about a blameless postmortem that happened in a dying company where everyone was backstabbing each other. Now, that w…

I think you can go too far in that direction. I worked for a big European software company, there was a deep culture of never blaming people, so any postmortem inevitably ended with a new process or training or transversal synergy coordinators, when sometimes the root cause was just bad developers

Assuming that "bad developers" is indeed the root cause, that still sounds like a systemic issue to me:

a) are the developers bad because they were hired that way? maybe the hiring process is broken

b) are the developers bad because they are not managed/trained properly? maybe managers aren't doing their job, and maybe it's not even their fault because they did not get training in how to manage people in the first place

c) if you implement extra layers (or "synergy coordinators") it probably means that the company hasn't figured out how to communicate properly

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#14

Post by JackMcMack »

di4na wrote: post #9
kqr wrote: post #4

Only tangentially related but I have to get it out of my system anyway: I watched the latest season of the F1 documentary on Netflix, and what stood out beyond anything else to me was that every team pitted their own drivers against each other, had a "you win or you lose" mentality, screamed at people for messing up, and so on. All teams except one. One team iterated how they "win as a team and make mistakes as a tea…

Toyota did the same thkng with NUMMI. More than 4 decades later, none of the other manufacturers come close to Toyota still. Why? Because the change is one in how you understand the world. This is really hard to do, particularly as an organisation. It needs to reinvent yourself from scratch. It means killing your org to live again. The org will fight it. People that were favored will lose power and standing. They wil…

It means killing your org to live again.

This resonates with me.

I've experienced a few "agile transformations". They almost never stuck. The thing that mostly worked was creating teams with a majority of experienced agile devs, people willing to self improve and execute. And when the job is over, it all starts falling apart. Some team members might be believers now, they become disillusioned and leave. Some might have been good followers, but quickly conform to the old ways. You only have a temporary influence on a single team or project. You can't change a company's culture like that, without it hitting rock bottom first. This is very similar to overcoming addiction.

I've long wondered why NUMMI worked where others failed, something I believe is largely ignored in most literature: the factory closed. All the workers were out of a job for several weeks. And in comes Toyota with jobs for many workers, with the hopes of giving every single worker their job back.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#15

Post by AmericanChopper »

MikeAmelung wrote: post #8
kqr wrote: post #4

Only tangentially related but I have to get it out of my system anyway: I watched the latest season of the F1 documentary on Netflix, and what stood out beyond anything else to me was that every team pitted their own drivers against each other, had a "you win or you lose" mentality, screamed at people for messing up, and so on. All teams except one. One team iterated how they "win as a team and make mistakes as a tea…

As the other reply kind of hints at, it's a lot easier to do this if you have the absolutely dominant driver on your team. If I was the technical director and we were losing, I'd certainly be like "Lewis, pal, we lose as a team, right?" And then Lewis would be gone and we would just be losers.

There’s so many reasons for Mercedes success, that the parent comment comes of as being a bit silly. As you mentioned, they have Lewis Hamilton, who a lot of people would argue is the greatest driver of all time. They also have a very clear pecking order, team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton had secured the drivers championship. Toto’s leadership is certainly very good (which the parent poster is referencing one particular part of), but you also have to remember, that Mercedes have only been dominant for one particular generation of F1 cars (the turbo-hybrid era). The sample size is absurdly small, and if you ask most commentators who’s going to dominate next, most of the would guess Verstappen (or LeClerc), not another Mercedes driver.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#16

Post by kqr »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #15
MikeAmelung wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the other reply kind of hints at, it's a lot easier to do this if you have the absolutely dominant driver on your team. If I was the technical director and we were losing, I'd certainly be like "Lewis, pal, we lose as a team, right?" And then Lewis would be gone and we would just be losers.

There’s so many reasons for Mercedes success, that the parent comment comes of as being a bit silly. As you mentioned, they have Lewis Hamilton, who a lot of people would argue is the greatest driver of all time. They also have a very clear pecking order, team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton h…

> team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton had secured the drivers championship.

Is this not an extension of "we win as a team, we lose as a team"? Would this be possible with the same consistency in teams where both drivers are in clear competition with each other for the seat next season?

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#17

Post by AmericanChopper »

GiuseppaAcciaio wrote: post #13
namdnay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can go too far in that direction. I worked for a big European software company, there was a deep culture of never blaming people, so any postmortem inevitably ended with a new process or training or transversal synergy coordinators, when sometimes the root cause was just bad developers

Assuming that "bad developers" is indeed the root cause, that still sounds like a systemic issue to me: a) are the developers bad because they were hired that way? maybe the hiring process is broken b) are the developers bad because they are not managed/trained properly? maybe managers aren't doing their job, and maybe it's not even their fault because they did not get training in how to manage people in the first pl…

Management is ultimately responsible for everything. Even if you have the worst developer in the world on your team, management decided to hire them, retain them, assign them responsibility, and failed to improve their performance. That said, plenty of people are just self-serving dickheads. Could they be reformed? Probably. Is that the company’s responsibility? Only up to a point.

I’ve worked with people that I was responsible for training in DevOps, from a starting point of having only ever done GUI-based Ops. Basically starting from complete technical incompetence, and plenty of them succeeded, because they were good people with good attitudes. I’d wager a small team of people like that would always be more productive than a team of any sized comprised of arrogant, combative, CYA assholes.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#19

Post by AmericanChopper »

kqr wrote: post #16
AmericanChopper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s so many reasons for Mercedes success, that the parent comment comes of as being a bit silly. As you mentioned, they have Lewis Hamilton, who a lot of people would argue is the greatest driver of all time. They also have a very clear pecking order, team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton h…

> team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton had secured the drivers championship. Is this not an extension of "we win as a team, we lose as a team"? Would this be possible with the same consistency in teams where both drivers are in clear competition with each other for the seat next season?

Well I think this is a bad example in general, because unlike most businesses, success is actually a zero sum game in top flight sports. If somebody does good enough to earn a seat, it will always mean that somebody else did bad enough to lose theirs. It’s also not a very faithful characterization of Mercedes. They were seriously considering letting Bottas go last year, it was honestly a surprise that they kept him (and let Ocon go instead).

If you want to see what the same management style looks like with competitive drivers, you can just look at the last time Mercedes had two competitive drivers. That would be in 2016, when Nico Rosberg won the drivers championship with Mercedes. The relationship between Hamilton and Rosberg had become so toxic, that Toto Wolf himself admitted he had no idea how he was going to solve it. It culminated with Hamilton trying his best to hold up Rosberg in traffic in the last race of 2016, because Hamilton needed to keep Rosberg of the Podium if he was going to get the title. You can watch the highlights on YouTube with the team telling him to speed up, while he more or less just refused. The only reason any of that was resolved, was because Rosberg retired after that season.

This story is pretty much repeated in F1 history any time you have two people on the same team competing for the title. Last year LeClerc and Vettel fought so much, and so dangerously on track, that it actually led to both Ferrari drivers crashing into each other and retiring in one race (something which mirrors one of the most controversial crashes in F1 history, when one McLaren teammate crashed into the other at Suzuka in 1989). The entire season was also full of their drivers arguing on the radio about team orders. Then you have the other most dominant driver, Verstappen, who Redbull have been unable to find a suitable teammate for.

To specifically answer your questions, at Mercedes “win as a team” clearly always means “help Hamilton win”. It’s not possible to operate a team where drivers are not fighting for their seat, and history has shown it’s not possible to have a good team culture when both drivers are actually competing with each other for the title.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#20

Post by notyourday »

Blameless postmortems should come with the equal pay ( as in equal dollar amount, equal value of equity, and equal value of other perks) for everyone in the tech organization.

If it does not, then it is a propaganda tool embraced by people who extract more value from the people below them.

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