Let’s pretend you’re a director at a large company. Two of your teams are delivering projects at around the same time. Your first team starts a mailing list and puts you on it. The list is pretty active and you can’t read all the mail, but from what you see the team spends a lot of time discussing and disagreeing before they come to a conclusion. Once they’ve made up their mind they often change it and go in a different direction. They’re making progress some good progress, but it’s a bumpy road.
Team two gives you nothing. No status, no email, no anything. You’ve worked with the manager of team two for a long time. You trust him, but when you ask for status and he just tells you, “we’re looking good.”
Team one’s manager is new. You haven’t worked with her for very long, but you heard good things about her. You see her dealing with her team. She finds and addresses problems and keeps you in the loop.
Your deadline approaches and team one is starting to come together. They still fight, but they’re making good progress. It will be close, but it looks like they might make it.
Team two is dark. You haven’t heard anything more than “we’re fine” for months. The deadline is looming and you haven’t seen anything. The question is, which team are you the most confident in?
Going dark
For almost everyone the answer is team one. Sure they show you problems, but you see the solutions too. You see the bumps in the road and you see their progress.
Team two has no problems. Well… none you can see. When you don’t hear anything you fill in the blanks. You spend time wondering if something is wrong.
I used to run my teams in the dark. I didn’t want anyone to see my problems so I just put my head down and gave my boss superficial status reports at best. My philosophy was leave me alone I know what I’m doing. If a manager wanted more status I was offended. Didn’t they trust me? But mostly I was just afraid that showing problems would get me in trouble.
Giving no status led to what I feared most. With the deadline getting closer my boss would step in to make sure everything went well. I’d lose control of my team, my team would lose their rhythm, and we’d miss the deadline.
Warts and all
Then I started learning about open source projects. They told everyone everything. The whole world could read every email they sent. I saw them insult each other, argue, and generally behave in amazingly counterproductive ways. I also saw them succeed.
Over and over again these teams would navigate a bumpy road and reach their destination on time and mostly unscathed. I wanted to try it myself, but fear held me back.
Fear of losing control. I didn’t want my boss to take the team away from me.
Fear of looking stupid. What if someone saw my comments and thought I was no good at my job?
Fear of losing power. I was the team leader. It was my job to make sure everyone was doing their job and not making waves.
Fear of complaints. If someone on my team had a problem I was supposed to deal with it. If they complained publicly it looked bad.
These fears kept me stuck inside dark teams for many years. And then I got over it. I’m not really sure what happened. One day it just clicked and I gave it a try. I was still afraid, but I just did it.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant
I made my teams work in bright light and it worked. The mailing list worked. My boss was happy and we delivered on time, but something else happened. The team worked better together.
When we worked in the dark people formed little cliques. Everyone wanted their friends around them to keep them out of trouble. Everyone on my team behaved like I did. When I asked for status they said “I’m fine.” I worried about each person. Were they working? Would they deliver? What about the quality of their work?
When we let the sunshine in everything changed. The first big difference was our feedback cycles got really short. We used to work for weeks, get feedback, and start over. Now we did it in hours. Everything got better because the team started to help each other.
The team also got smarter. Everyone learned by watching their teammates. They started becoming T-shaped specialists. They made me smarter too.
My boss became my supporter instead of my nemesis. He helped me find solutions to the team problems and gave me more freedom. Sunshine made him confident we were working well so he loosened the reigns.
Do you work in the open? Are you afraid to start? What tools do you use to let the sunshine into your team?
