Tools and Systems for Belonging

Today's newsletter is sponsored by Workplace from Meta, where culture and technology come together to create a more productive future of work. Check out?www.workplace.com/future?to learn more.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here’s one you may not have thought of - what software tools we use on the daily is not only part of our work culture, but is also shaping the way we think and is can play a part in our sense of belonging. How?

Well, consider your project management software. Whatever it may be -but hopefully your mind went straight to Jira or Trello when I mentioned it-. Good software slides perfectly into how you organise your work life and not only lets you do the things you need to but even guides you along as long as you bother to use it. And if you do so regularly you find that your thinking patterns may adapt to include it at a very basal level. All of us who have worked in Agile for long enough are for example nowadays eternally thinking in terms of backlogs and WIP.

We’ve been working with a few big clients to seize up the piece of work they truly have to face if they are to start eradicating their existing HumanDebt? and it’s never trivial. When the work is done in earnest, it can’t escape having to take on massive challenges when it comes to change. A surgically honest look at all the systems humans use as well as complete sincerity regarding past attempts, programs that may have failed, leaders that may not have went the extra mile, etc.

When it comes to the former, we’ve noticed that organisations must undertake exploration that’s above and beyond the organisational cursory look others perform and we’ve even seen one of these clients do a very grounding exercise of “What do we do here?” - “We make X so that Y, our consumers, are happy using it” and all that comes with it. They went on to audit where their human interaction spaces are, what the norms of engagement between colleagues are so far, and of them, which behaviours are beneficial to the teamwork and should, therefore be advanced, versus the ones that shouldn’t. Workplace from Meta and our Dashboard were both part of the interaction places where people in their company interacted and I was genuinely pleased to see how they used both to cater to the human work. More importantly than their utility, when they checked how people feel about these spaces, they found that they had great emotional attachment to the software and that using it together with their teammates increased the employees’ level of engagement.

That wasn’t an aspect they previously counted on or really even considered: that the software people use can create a sense of belonging but on closer examination it certainly stands to reason. People communicate and interact in these spaces so they are the “highest value ticket” emotionally as compared to other systems they interact with every day that are far more likely to at best remove friction (if not introduce more) but not to create joy.?In Workplace’s case, a lot of it comes with the familiarity of using Facebook for day-to-day social interaction and therefore that product DNA extends to the work version but in our case, using our Dashboard can start as a resistance and objection exercise but it soon turns into a valued space when people get used to the human work.

They found this so interesting they decided to create a piece of research to better clarify to what extent using certain systems and associated software creates a sense of unity in the teams or not. Whether the fact that they are avid users of the same pieces of software adds or detracts in any way from the team’s identity and its performance. They’re months away from results but what an innovative and thrilling line of thinking! With companies such as Microsoft speaking about “inspiration instead of engagement” and others scrambling to tighten connections in the era of the Great Resignation, all signs that people are experiencing a feeling of belonging and emotional connectedness, any new angle being researched could serve us all well should we then listen to the findings and learn.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not suggesting software alone, be it of any kind, can magically keep us on task, make us productive or make us happy, far be it from me, unfortunately none of those are true - not for now- but what it can and does do is to simplify our existence, offer info, data or help when it is contextually needed, to help inform group creative processes, to help expedite the tasks we find most tedious, to help us communicate more efficiently, and so much more. And if, on top of those uses it also happens to be something that makes us want to learn, or think, or even grow and feel then the joy that comes from doing these things becomes part of our culture and the way we approach work.

And who doesn’t deserve less friction and more joy? Who doesn’t deserve to have a common language and common spaces to dissect and discuss common goals? Who doesn’t need to feel they belong be it by the software they use, the people they feel connected to or even, if we’re very lucky, by being part of Psychologically Safe, high performing teams.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link