What’s for Engagement in Your DevOps Bag of Tricks?

In the list of things we need, the DevOps must-haves, there’s are always those aimed at dealing with the Build, the Configuration, the Code or the Testing. Once the process and technology-enabling tools are enumerated, the lists abruptly stop. Where do we list what we use to inquire and record and reward? Where we hold the conversations, ask the questions, capture the feedback and -ideally- thank our teams for giving us those? Where do we have what we enlist to help us grow and encourage good team behaviours and learn? Where do we keep our people tools? 

Our team’s happiness is more closely connected to how clean the code is, how frequent the releases and how few the bugs than any of the tools on that other list and yet what do we use for that?

All of you reading this know, in your heart of hearts, that success hinges on the people not the technology in itself so it stands to reason there would be loads of tools for that part. 

Now I am not being facetious, I’m not asking where the end-to-end Psychological Safety measuring-and-bettering solutions like ours are, I know there are few -if any, depending on the definition- other ones, but there are other disparate methods out there of doing surveys, there are various tools to dole out rewards be they a silly badge or an ice cream (but never, it seems, a serious performance review countable one) and so on. Irrespective of their efficiency they exist so surely team leaders would have those in their bag of tricks to keep their ships afloat, right? And yet there are no lists of them that I can find. I suspect this is because so many of us would rather outsource the people work to HR despite how we know that’s a dangerous cop-out and one that we’ll pay for in performance drops. That, unfortunately, they may not do anything about it and even if they do, they won’t be able to do it in a meaningful way that does reflect at team bubble. We know and yet we leave them to it happy to apparently pass the monkey. In particular, since the monkey is so nebulous and hard to catch! 

Take “engagement platforms” - Of the few people-tools that do exist out there, they only ever appeared because of the immense body of research that shows that employees who are unengaged leave. Not that they underperform or that they are unhappy, that they can’t be retained. So feeble reasoning behind the origin of their adoption but at least the enterprise has numbers to point towards what it costs to have a disengaged workforce. So they fork out for some of these. 

At a “bubble level” it’s not disputable that we all want our teams to be more involved and more emotionally invested in what they do. Of course, we do. Morale is essential and it powers the work. The platforms in question (and ours to a degree) can only measure its presence or absence, there is precious little they do in themselves other than send an alarm signal regarding its existence. There is no other magical outcome to that data. Awareness doesn’t create engagement in itself. There are no -for now, and ideally “for ever”- machines that we can hook up team members to and they would brainwash them into loving the company, understanding the consumer, believing in the purpose. The Engagement Creator 1.0. A few minutes a day strapped to it would see them come out with their heart in it. They would need less of the build, bug, code control tools. In its absence, all we can do, all we MUST do instead is find out when people’s hearts sink or their vision blurs or they need a boost and fix those “manually” - by talking. By understanding. By caring. Ideally in common as a bubble and about authentically about each other. 

Some of these platforms will augment the feeble and non-responsive reward system that the enterprise offers, by the stars on one’s profile - the badge, the new profile colour, some visual mark that the team member is an MVP. And some people are titillated enough by that to find it motivating. The fact that such a pathetic offering could raise the engagement in a sustainable and meaningful fashion is disputable, and if it were to be the case, it would be solely a result of the “Human Debt” where we have neglected and mistreated our team members for long enough that a silly badge makes a difference. 

Some other tools may even give some physical rewards but they remain obstinately small and irrelevant as they are often sponsored by the team budget and completely divorced from the organisation's remuneration system. A movie ticket, an ice-cream, an e-book. We have a rewards capability in our software as well, so I am not knocking the principle, but I am admitting its effects are minor and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. 

Engagement dissociated from the company’s performance management is ludicrous - we already know that aside from money -which is so stiffly fixated with nearly no place having managed to dynamically and responsively connect it to actual performance as they can’t ever truly, honestly and forensically measure the latter (imagine if your monthly pay would vary, depending on how well the entire team did in the last sprint)- people are motivated by the impact. By their ability to see the results of their work and yet most of us work hard with absolutely no visibility towards the results of our efforts.

It is but a blessed minority of all workers that get to see direct effects of their hard work in white-collar jobs, most of everyone else has to attach some form of affiliation to the odd big company win they hear about, or attempt to align to brand in general. The sprint ends, the feature (if we’re lucky- or piece of the project, or document, or bug fix) is “shipped” and that’s where our knowledge of it ends. Where’s the pride for how it affected the whole? Where’s seeing how the end consumer felt about it so we feel pleased and validated and worthy? Where’s knowing how it was received at all?

Incidentally, seeing impact -which is fundamental to engagement-, is baked into the principles of Agile. Everything done has to be done for the consumer which implies a strong and continuous feedback loop. Aka visibility towards the effects of our work. The very thing that keeps us doing it aside from the money and the enjoyment of the work (for the lucky ones). And yet most places have dropped it with teams working in the name of a mythical end-end-end customer they know nothing about and have no connection to, while some times not really knowing who the real consumer of their work (often internal) even is.

Engagement is in our view, only one component of Psychological Safety but it’s a complex one because we understand it clearly, what it consists of and its dollar sign effects on the enterprise, and it’s the one that’s more clearly connected to our emotions. and yet we have done precious little to fix it when so much would have been possible. What chance do more complex topics such as trust, flexibility and resilience and courage have if engagement hasn’t been resolved yet?

Let’s start deconstructing it. Making it matter. Seeing its value as an integral part of your people work done with the greater goal of Psychological Safety and encouraging happiness and healthy team dynamic at heart, not on the side as an incidental afterthought. Let’s ask no question that won’t matter or result in action. Let’s see the real link between motivation and courage, between learning and trust, the invisible threads that make connection and team magic happen in our bubbles. What powers your team? What truly gets them fired up? When are they truly “in”? How can you show them what the code translated to? 

With this autumn meaning a new routine, hybrid work (remote and some office time) starting to become the norm and some schools returning, it’s a new beginning so maybe we can do something about our bag of tricks getting heavier on the people tools. 

Let’s bring everyone back in spirit, start measuring, start getting creative about our human-to-dos, do the Team Re-Launches; the Courage Hackathons; the “B!tch Fests”, the “Humour Shares” and then watch engagement grow as people feel “heard and seen” and as they come up with ways to see impact. And paradoxically if they do, if they are happier, their Psychological Safety will increase and therefore their performance, and somewhere down a very long line, their title and monetary recognition may do too. Hopefully. For all our sakes. 

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Don't send your teams home with a laptop, a Jira and Slack account and a prayer!

Get in touch for our Team Psychological Safety Dashboard and our Stay-Connected-When-Remote question pack at www.psychologicalsafety.works/covid-19 or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your team become healthy, happy and highly performant.