We had a public channel for our team and invited people to join it to watch our work. And then we got a private channel as well... and all our work and conversations moved to the private channel. Now the public channel is crickets and the other teams don't know what we're doing. I can actually feel a sort of tension now, like the outside teams don't feel as connected to us. They don't have the opportunity to ask questions about what we're working on, see what our other tasks are, or start discussions on related subjects. It sucks. I don't want privacy or secrecy, I want us to all feel we can talk about anything together.
Effective teams don’t keep secrets
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#12This kind of totally open, real-time flow of information is great until it's not. It can easily turn into an unstructured free-for-all on whichever channel everyone is on as a substitute for more effective communication, decision-making and documentation. It can also easily become a vehicle for one or more lurking manager types who simply have to know everything all the time, whether or not that brings any actual benefit to the team. Both of these scenarios tend to be toxic to productivity and eventually team morale. Unfortunately with the recent emphasis on remote working that a lot of organisations weren't used to and everyone adopting Teams/Slack/whatever both of these scenarios also seem to happen quite often.
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#13No post body was provided.
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#14This is a simplistic take. Of course trust is a pre-requisite to a healthy team, and people should feel comfortable speaking out, there's no debate about that. However, transparency is not a silver bullet. I've seen plenty of teams that trust each other but don't get very much done. And if what you are doing is large and involves more than a two-pizza team or challenging tradeoffs then effective communication becomes…
> However, transparency is not a silver bullet
That isn't a claim. The claim is that a team with full transparency is more effective (in terms of work done) than one with a limited transparency.
What's interesting is there's talk about one-on-ones like they are an acknowledged best practice, but nothing about established payscales (or open salaries).
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#15Sometimes letting someone know about a piece of information too early can cause problems. I have some very anxious team members who will get on edge when the development team starts to use key words like "refactor" and "iterate". Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire and the PTSD of that has stuck around with many of us. In order to make everyone's…
> Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire […]
I think your urge to hide things until ready is clearly a symptom of other (root) problems within the organization. I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not. It sounds like the organization fears failure and refuses to learn from mistakes or believes it’s impossible. This is a cultural issue that needs to be fixed by senior leadership but, if I had to guess, is probably caused by senior leadership being unwilling to trust.
I’d encourage you to look to solving roots and not symptoms or go somewhere else where you’re allowed to. Good luck.
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#16This is a simplistic take. Of course trust is a pre-requisite to a healthy team, and people should feel comfortable speaking out, there's no debate about that. However, transparency is not a silver bullet. I've seen plenty of teams that trust each other but don't get very much done. And if what you are doing is large and involves more than a two-pizza team or challenging tradeoffs then effective communication becomes…
This makes sense, and it helps a lot when conversation is focused and concise (while also allowing for a small amount of redundancy: people may acknowledge and display their receipt of previous messages by repeating them in their own words).
When you mentioned communication becoming harder: were you referring to audio/video discussions (in-person or otherwise) and/or also text-based messaging?
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#17Sometimes letting someone know about a piece of information too early can cause problems. I have some very anxious team members who will get on edge when the development team starts to use key words like "refactor" and "iterate". Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire and the PTSD of that has stuck around with many of us. In order to make everyone's…
> Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire […] I think your urge to hide things until ready is clearly a symptom of other (root) problems within the organization. I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not. It sounds like the organization fears failure and refuses to learn from mistakes or…
> I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not.
You've never screwed something up and had to try it a different way?
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#18This kind of totally open, real-time flow of information is great until it's not. It can easily turn into an unstructured free-for-all on whichever channel everyone is on as a substitute for more effective communication, decision-making and documentation. It can also easily become a vehicle for one or more lurking manager types who simply have to know everything all the time, whether or not that brings any actual ben…
> It can also easily become a vehicle for one or more lurking manager types who simply have to know everything all the time, whether or not that brings any actual benefit to the team.
Given that type of character within the working environment, I'd personally prefer that their communications were largely on-display to all the teams around them.
Them knowing everything that is going on doesn't necessarily seem a problem in itself, but if they're using that to cause disruption or selectively push different parts of the organization in different directions, then -- unless there is some broader plan that they could share -- it seems like the teams could more easily encourage the person onto a healthier path by having visibility into those patterns.
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#19This is basically psychological safety, worded in a different way - https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-performing-teams-need-psycholog...
The best write up on psychological safety is from Google Rework - https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effe...
Re: Effective teams don’t keep secrets
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire […] I think your urge to hide things until ready is clearly a symptom of other (root) problems within the organization. I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not. It sounds like the organization fears failure and refuses to learn from mistakes or…
> I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not. You've never screwed something up and had to try it a different way?
I honestly do not know how that was your take away from what I wrote. Can you please elaborate on how what you quoted at all implies:
1.) I’ve never screwed up.
2.) (and never) Had to do something different.
I’m saying the lack of transparency you’ve been forced into to accomplish things is the result of people who are incapable accepting mistakes or doing things differently. You must work in secret because people don’t believe the technical team can or will learn from their mistakes. In a healthy organization you would not have this burden.