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Malcolm Gladwell mentions an example in his book “The Tipping Point” that when the number of people who can act in the scene increases then the number of people who will act will decrease considerably. My observation on this has been very similar when working with project teams, I guess that is almost everyone’s observation as the big ball of mud is often noted in the codebase of large teams. Gladwell says that people are lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem. It is no surprise that the retrospective prime directive says

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand

It is so surprising that how an individual would never do something alone will do that when doing it as a group or vice versa. Brain (mind) also keeps growing beyond the physical growth and can reach very high levels of maturity over the course of years. An writeup on Constructive developmental theory by Peter Pruyn predicts that around 58% of the population is stuck at the maturity level “Socialized mind”. At this level of maturity an individual’s alignment would be to conform to the local group leading to the perception of belonging to a clan. The fear of exclusion will drive most of the individual’s action. It is sort of a phobia which will prevent people from moving to higher levels of maturity as mentioned in Constructive developmental theory.

What can we do to remove this fear?

One inspiration I drew was from this ted talk. In this talk, David Kelley mentions about Guided Mastery, a technique derived from the works of Albert Bandura. Using this technique people with a specific fear get away from that fear by slowly building up the confidence; stepping up the challenge in small increments where people get used to the fearful activity but not at the level which is overwhelming. Some more info about that technique is here. In a team setup mostly people find it hard to take up a task of fixing something or letting their peers know that something is wrong and we need to correct. The reason people find it hard is because of the fear of being wrong and getting rejected. By making sure and enforcing the fact in the team that no one will be penalized just because s/he was wrong or blew a whistle; also getting the new comers feel very comfortable with this style of communication in a phased manner.

I enjoyed the transformation I went through as a team member in such a team, it definitely turned out to be a high performing team.

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Retrospectives are very important for every team. It brings every one in the team together into a room and make them think, discuss, reflect and take actions based on their reflections. The usual way of running retrospectives is to run at the same time every week, iteration or phase of work. This predictability also brings an element of boredom if the retrospective format is the same every time.

I observed that by changing the format of the retrospectives as per personalities and the need of the team helped a lot in running it effectively and people taking action on what they have discussed and reflected. I have used the simple Postive-Delta format many times and it has helped me get every one in the room involved for the duration of the retrospective. I have also added a pre activity and post activity to this format.

Team size: 12-16 people

Time required: 1 hour

How to do this?

  • Ice breaker or energizer – Any simple ice breaker to which can be completed within 5 minutes is a good start. It loosens up people and also makes them forget work if they were pre-occupied with some problem.
  • Reflection time – Give the team around 10 minutes of silent time to think about what went well and what needs to change. They can write it down if they think they will forget.
  • Writing space – Have two whiteboards or split the writing space into two. Mark one side as ‘+’ and the other side as ‘Δ’. Have white board markers in two different colours such that you can capture points in alternating colours. It is easy to read the board from every where in a hall.
  • Positive round – Pass a soft toy around and request the person holding the toy to give only one top positive about the retrospective period. If their top point has already been expressed by another member then add a ‘+1’ to that point ask them for their second top point and write it down. Give every one in the room a chance to give at least one point and also make sure the one with the soft toy alone speaks. At the end of the round if anyone still has a point to speak note down that as well. Do not gather any explanation for any point other than the something which can help capture the point on the board.
  • Delta round – Similar to ‘Positive round’ but ask for what has been nagging problem and they wish to change it. Go through the same process of capturing the points from the team as in positive round.
  • Analysis time – This phase can get longer if not facilitated properly. Read each point on both sides and capture ‘Action items’ and ‘Ideas’ from the team. If any point gets into a debate or a solution mode then quickly interrupt and capture the resolution of that problem to be an action item for a focussed group or the team itself based on how severe it looks.
  • Ownership for actions – Request for volunteers to implement the action items and try out new ideas. Capture their names against the line items on a poster to put it up in the team area later.
  • Recognition time – Though teams should not have heroes or heroines, it is natural for individuals to go through phases of ups and downs which makes some individuals contribute more than the others in a given span of time. Give the team the last five minutes to reach out to the individuals whom they think that life was made easy because of their help or contribution; and thank them mentioning what made their life easy. The last time I requested the team to do this I was surprised to see so much of hugging, huddling and laughter all over the room. Every one left the room on a high note.
This format of retrospective helped me to make everyone in the team talk about what matters to them and finish it off within an hour while capturing the action items and their owners. This format works well with a group size of 12-16 and only to retrospect an iteration or a phase of a project. The content in retrospectives website helps me to run effective retrospectives.

Image: winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Ever wondered that some of the live wires at the office or school were not those kind when they just joined the place. It was something like they were waiting for a tipping point and their activities became live. I randomly selected a ted talk, How bacteria talk. Bonnie Bassler a biochemist, has observed that bacteria cannot turn on their behaviour until there is enough of them. But how does all the single cell animals know how many of them are around? The answer was that each type of bacteria releases a certain signature chemical molecule into their environment, based on the amount of that specific molecule a bacterium receives, they can determine the population density. This is called Quorum sensing which is also evident for insects where we think they could be intelligent but may be that they just rely on the density of their peers around to do certain tasks.

How can this apply to human behaviour? I have been lucky to move to different places and teams almost every year, which has made me observe teams get started and get going. In one of the teams I have been, we did not know that we had good number of musicians to form a band until we had some event coming in the office. The event allowed the release of signaling molecules from individuals searching for people with similar interests.

This is also true to interests in technologies and pursuing hobbies. As the workplace gets bigger it is more difficult to network and find the right group to be in unless there is enough quorum sensing. Just by someone in the team holding a regular weekly get together for a random topic can spark interests and get people to come together and switch to top gear. I observed that a group’s knowledge and skill level gets amplified if there is effective sharing, effective sharing happens only when people come together, people come together only if something is happening and something happens only if someone takes an initiative. We must make sure our workplace is conducive for quorum sensing to make the best use of everyone’s strengths and skills.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net