Dog Food That's Safe To Eat

Series is a new product that LinkedIn is piloting to help members build community around the topics they care about by writing regularly about those topics. I’m part of a pilot invitation-only group that is helping LinkedIn to launch Series. Which, I must say, I find very cool indeed. I’ll be discussing “Chasing Psychological Safety” a series about The Future of Work, Agile and Ways of Work, Technology, Leadership, AI, Teams and most of all - People" every week, so subscribe to my series to be notified of new articles and join the conversation. This week, I’ll be talking about “Dog Food That’s Safe To Eat”

One of the things we're most proud of at PeopleNotTech is that nothing is "done".

Not the product, not the research, not the method, not the algorithms that power the ML or the marketing. Everything is in flux. Changing so fast that our main concern is keeping everyone on the journey, deeply involved and intensely informed as we grow.

One of the key things we will hold at the very centre of our company culture is the value of being comfortable with the uncomfortable nature of change.

If you look at our team today, the founders and first employees are all more (ahem!) "experienced" shall we say, than the typical tech entrepreneurs. No, we shouldn't say. No euphemism needed, we are much older than the industry average and for the most part, that gives us an immense advantage and we often quip about the near 100 years of technology and people experience between us that have seen us build a complete AI-based software solution in less than a year when others would have taken a decade.

With that said, from the perspective of adapting to the "always changing" character of our intensely Agile way of work it isn't giving us much of an advantage at all, and like any other leader, from any other industry, we have individually had moments of extreme discomfort with the idea of things never being "done-done". Not only have we each individually have been faced with "the moment I got Agile" in our careers over the past few years, but we have then had to understand what it means to us as a new enterprise that is finding its feet while building something transformational and while walking a tight rope of extreme mindfulness towards creating an emotionally intelligent, secure team.

No point in claiming otherwise: it's hard, intentional work, and work we're aware will never be done either.

Incidentally, there's much to be said for how Psychological Safety plays out in other environments than just project and developer teams. How does it exist at management level, how can it be created in new start-ups, etc. All that will need to wait till we move the needle in showing how intensely profitable it is to ensure it exists in the first place.

As we said time and before, showing the dollars that are up for grabs when teams are truly psychologically secure enough to be at their best knowledgeable, courageous, passionate and productive selves is what we're trying to prove with our research and our software solution and in a sense, with our company as well.

At this time, our "Psychological Safety First!" pack has around 150 blissfully un-done questions we are testing and tweaking with a handful of smart organizations who have leaders invested in showing Agile works, making their people feel heard pays off and they can show that productivity hinges on it.

As we debate each question, its tone, when it gets delivered, its utility, the data it will give us whether stated or implicit, its blind testing methods, the role it will play in the behavioural algorithm and the way it will be displayed to the ones that need to see it whether a Product Owner, a Team Leader, a CTO or even a Partner or Client Director, as we turn each question round and find its perfect form, we ask it of our own team too and that very exercise is what keeps us reaching for yet another portion of our own dog food and, more importantly, keeps us willing to rethink our recipe to make it palatable and useful to the whole pack!

Next week: a couple of real-life examples of how having empowered and secure developer teams translated into sales insights for the business so don't miss the instalment!