After watching this video, you will be able to identify relevant statements for measuring
team culture. At first, it may seem that measuring your
team’s culture would be hard, but it doesn’t have to be.
I want to share with you a set of statements developed by Dr. Nicole Forsgren when she
was the CEO and Chief Scientist at DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA).
These are culture statements for measuring the teams on a scale of 7, strongly agree,
to 1, strongly disagree.
On my team, information is actively sought.
Do you strongly agree or strongly disagree?
By “information” we are referring to people being curious about why things happen.
On my team, failures are learning opportunities and messengers are not punished.
We’ve all heard the term “don’t shoot the messenger.”
People are not going to be open and honest about reporting what’s really going on if
they think they will be punished for uncovering something unpopular.
This goes even further than that.
Instilling in your team the notion that “every failure is a learning opportunity” is critical
for fostering a culture of experimentation where it’s okay if experiments fail.
It’s also getting at the heart of something bigger.
No one comes to work wanting to bring down production, but occasionally it happens.
It is not the person who failed but rather the system that failed the person.
What could have been done to give that person better information or better training or fix
whatever it was in the system that failed them?
What this question is really asking is, “Do you have a blameless culture?”
It is very difficult to foster a blameless culture, which is why it is critical to ask
questions about it.
On my team, responsibilities are shared.
This is measuring the feeling that we are all in this together, right?
There is no such thing as a “hole on your side of the boat.”
When things blow up, everyone pitches in to solve the problem or clean up the mess.
On my team, cross-functional collaboration is encouraged and rewarded.
This goes back to the measurement system.
Are people be measured on being collaborators or are people being rewarded for being lone
contributors?
Remember, you get what you measure.
This question measures whether people feel they are being rewarded and thus encouraged
to collaborate.
On my team, failure causes inquiry.
Again, this is not a “who done it” inquiry but rather a “where did the system fail
the people” inquiry.
What was the root cause, and how can we prevent it from happening again?
This is also about continuous improvement.
How can we learn from failures and get better?
On my team, new ideas are welcomed.
This is critical for ideas to flow openly.
Do people feel their input and ideas are listened to, or are they getting shut
down or paid “lip service?”
You can tell a lot about the health of your team dynamics by understanding if everyone
feels welcome and contribute their ideas.
You may feel that it is difficult to measure your team’s culture, but really, I like
Nicole’s approach and wanted to share it with you.
In this video, you learned: You can rate statements developed by Dr. Nicole
Forsgren to measure your team’s culture including statements about information, failures,
collaboration, and new ideas