I would love considering hard to believe that so many managers don't understand why you need to "walk the floor", but after many years, it's now for me common experience to find managers that follows the ceremonies but don't believe in the process.
As engineer, I was often on call. Even junior, barely fresh out of graduation, I was having a pager and had to take a taxi (no buses after midnight) and be on the floor. At first, I was like you: what I'm doing there? But once there, I started listening: people were panicking, stress by the issue, literally saying the money going off when the assembly line was stopped, and the account managers stressing because the orders were going to be late, etc. So, I started doing what I can do. I wasn't able to help directly, I wasn't a technician to understand all the details, but I was able to be a rubber duck, staying calm, taking care of the account managers and the clients, giving them explanation they can understand, and also simple gestures, like offering to get some coffee for everyone. I kept this habits both as engineers, being there for my colleagues, but also as manager and now CTO. When there is an incident, I joined my team, asked to be in the warroom, asked gently what's going on, help them focus and organize things a little. If I see someone too tired, I ask him to go sleep and manage to find someone else. Or if I found out the problem is too difficult, I help the team figure out a quick bandaid (even something like a technical problem warning), so they can go rest to come back afresh. Both most of the time, I'm just there, even remotely, and my EM and directors that reports to me always came back that the team really appreciates I was there. They feel supported, not under surveillance.
And sure, I also inspect the work, both what it's done and what is done. That's central to any empirical approach. And feedback is not a guarded field (contrary to adaptation): anyone can contribute, even passive observers (it's all about how to do it however).
And all those things work together: you can't adapt without inspection, you can't inspect without transparency, and... you can't have transparency without trust. But seeing a team being transparent when things go wrong, taking feedback without being defensive, and learn and adapt actually build trust.
As I told my teams, trust is not something you ask for, it's something you earn. I earn their trust by being fair and honest, recognizing their good play, the efforts they put in their less good play, and having their back when things go wrong. They earn my trust by being transparent, honest, open to feedback, and taking it seriously and working to learn and improve on it.
But what the result of all this? How a team shows they have learned and adapt? Generally, through a new or improved practice. And that practice put on paper becomes a new process. A process the team has learned to trust because is the result of all the errors, inspection and adaptation of people before them. A process born from trust rather than distrust. A result of the ownership and accountability of the team rather than an unaccountability sink. Something the team can rely upon when they aren't sure or under duress because it was built and refined all the time by themselves or their peers.
If people could understand that, could understand where processes came from, to see them as lessons learned rather than shackles for distrusted employees, maybe we would have better process in the end. But as long as we are seeing processes as a product of distrust, I'm afraid we are doomed to reinvent the wheel again and again.
Simple but entirely on target. I think when I work with my teams, I try to get them to confront what processes seem to undermine their responsibility/accountability but also, have they proven themselves true to that accountability?
I would love considering hard to believe that so many managers don't understand why you need to "walk the floor", but after many years, it's now for me common experience to find managers that follows the ceremonies but don't believe in the process.
As engineer, I was often on call. Even junior, barely fresh out of graduation, I was having a pager and had to take a taxi (no buses after midnight) and be on the floor. At first, I was like you: what I'm doing there? But once there, I started listening: people were panicking, stress by the issue, literally saying the money going off when the assembly line was stopped, and the account managers stressing because the orders were going to be late, etc. So, I started doing what I can do. I wasn't able to help directly, I wasn't a technician to understand all the details, but I was able to be a rubber duck, staying calm, taking care of the account managers and the clients, giving them explanation they can understand, and also simple gestures, like offering to get some coffee for everyone. I kept this habits both as engineers, being there for my colleagues, but also as manager and now CTO. When there is an incident, I joined my team, asked to be in the warroom, asked gently what's going on, help them focus and organize things a little. If I see someone too tired, I ask him to go sleep and manage to find someone else. Or if I found out the problem is too difficult, I help the team figure out a quick bandaid (even something like a technical problem warning), so they can go rest to come back afresh. Both most of the time, I'm just there, even remotely, and my EM and directors that reports to me always came back that the team really appreciates I was there. They feel supported, not under surveillance.
And sure, I also inspect the work, both what it's done and what is done. That's central to any empirical approach. And feedback is not a guarded field (contrary to adaptation): anyone can contribute, even passive observers (it's all about how to do it however).
And all those things work together: you can't adapt without inspection, you can't inspect without transparency, and... you can't have transparency without trust. But seeing a team being transparent when things go wrong, taking feedback without being defensive, and learn and adapt actually build trust.
As I told my teams, trust is not something you ask for, it's something you earn. I earn their trust by being fair and honest, recognizing their good play, the efforts they put in their less good play, and having their back when things go wrong. They earn my trust by being transparent, honest, open to feedback, and taking it seriously and working to learn and improve on it.
But what the result of all this? How a team shows they have learned and adapt? Generally, through a new or improved practice. And that practice put on paper becomes a new process. A process the team has learned to trust because is the result of all the errors, inspection and adaptation of people before them. A process born from trust rather than distrust. A result of the ownership and accountability of the team rather than an unaccountability sink. Something the team can rely upon when they aren't sure or under duress because it was built and refined all the time by themselves or their peers.
If people could understand that, could understand where processes came from, to see them as lessons learned rather than shackles for distrusted employees, maybe we would have better process in the end. But as long as we are seeing processes as a product of distrust, I'm afraid we are doomed to reinvent the wheel again and again.
Simple but entirely on target. I think when I work with my teams, I try to get them to confront what processes seem to undermine their responsibility/accountability but also, have they proven themselves true to that accountability?