Moments from Web Directions Culture 2018
My takeaways from Web Directions Culture 2018 #webdirections
Lessons from Dom Price’s talk — Future of Teamwork:
- The problems we are solving are so complex, we need teams (to do it).
- Does your team feel psychologically safe? Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking
- Without pyschological safety: “no thanks, I’m not going to challenge you; I prefer to get paid”
- Dysfunction is the gap between [what you know] and [what you apply]
- Trust is like oxygen — you take it for granted until it’s gone
- Efficiency vs Effectiveness — better to be [effectively inefficient] than [efficiently ineffective]
- You can’t solve human problems with technology; “a fool with a tool is still a fool”.
Lessons from Ted Tenza’s talk — The Art and Science of Onboarding:
- Align your onboarding goals with company values and mission (e.g. Value #ObsessAboutCustomers ==> have new employees interact with customers when they onboard)
- Get the simple stuff right (Day 1: logins, equipment, security passes, dev environments etc)
- Glossary of acronyms!
- Buddy-up new starters, someone they can go to during their first days
Lessons from Jo Cranford’s talk — Building a Growth Framework
- 9 out of 10 people in HR say that the performance review process does not yield accurate information
- Keep conversations about growth and performance separate
- Snowflake — Medium’s https://snowflake.medium.com
- A growth framework creates clarity on how to progress
Lessons from Michael Honey’s talk — Work less, live more:
- There’s a diminishing return on productivity and happiness the more time you work/the more salary you make
- Humans aren’t very good at “enough”
- Instead of a pay rise, we rewarded ourselves with more time
- You can always get more money; you can’t get more time
- It’s much easier to achieve work life balance if your work and your life is… balanced.
- Part-time is seen as deviant; instead, make full time less time
- Days@work is just another business lever you push/pull to affect revenue (there are many other levers)
Lessons from Maria Giudice’s talk — Designing culture:
- “I wanted to create a company where, years later, people would look back and say i did my best work for the best boss and had the best time”
- "Culture is what people do when nobody’s watching"
- Solicit feedback continuously. "Feedback is a gift; feedback should not be a surprise"
- Make stuff together, preferbly by hand. "(It) gets you in a flow state and relieves anxiety"
- Designing culture is a team sport — we’re all in this together
Prospa is a proud sponsor of Web Directions Summit 2018
MC Emma Jones of Prospa — People & Culture
MC Mike Sharp of Prospa — Engineering Team
Natalie, Rachel, Christine and Andrew representing the Design Team at the Speaker’s Lounge
Photo credit: Halans #webdirections #culture18 #wds18