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