Forem: Jamey Austin

Have tech perks gone too far?

Jamey Austin — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 18:58:41 +0000

It’s become cliché, a topic for an episode of Silicon Valley: what sweet perks does your tech office offer? Not just beer, but several local brews on tap. (The ABV of each scratched on a miniature chalkboard on the handle.) Not just ping-pong, but olympic-quality table tennis systems. Old-school arcade games, like Donkey Kong and Street Fighter. (Swapped out monthly, by a company catering to just such a need.) A variety of snacks both healthy and decadent, from simple-ingredients-on-the-package fare like RXBARS, to copious amounts of Halloween-sized packaged Big Candy candy like M&Ms and Starbursts. You know, for that 3pm sugar habit we honed in sixth grade, at the corner store, with loose change from Mom’s dresser.

There’s a reason for clichés. We offered everything above in Atlassian’s former San Francisco HQ. (Not positive the ping-pong table was “Olympic-quality,” but you get the idea.)

The truth is: these perks are sweet. And so are all the other stereotypical things tech companies have become known for, like open, collaborative office spaces and innovative, bustling workplace cultures. The fact that tech companies repeatedly top lists of best places to work is no joke. Who wouldn’t enjoy these fringe benefits at the office? Everybody’s gotta work somewhere, and if that place has your favorite candy (Junior Mints) regularly stocked, well, who’s gonna fight City Hall over it?

But here’s the thing: while many might think these perks are the reason people want to work and continue to work for these organizations, that’s not really the case.

Because nobody picks one company over another because of beer. Or ping-pong. Or Nutella treats, or eight varieties of potato chip. These kinds of perks are really just that: perks. The icing on the cake.

The real truth is much more meaningful, and that's heartening. What people really care about – the kinds of things that people will actually take into consideration when deciding to join one organization over another, and stay there, aren’t trivialities. Because, let’s face it, beer and candy and games don’t matter. That's not what creates an amazing place to work.

6 traits that make for a stand-out workplace

1. Sense of purpose
People want to know the work they do matters. They want to believe – even in some small way – what they do might be changing the world for the better. This begins with the hiring of people who believe in the company's mission and values. These are the foundational elements upon which your team is built, and can’t be enforced top-down. (At least, not very effectively.) A shared understanding of the mission and values must be lived and breathed by every team member. This way, the company succeeds because people know their contributions influence these core elements, no matter how big or seemingly small.

For this reason, tech companies put a major emphasis on their recruiting practices, starting with immersing candidates in the company's values during the interview process. Everything shapes the experience, from the careers section of your website to the wording used in your job descriptions and your office layout and style. All touch points with a potential new hire should reflect your company’s culture, its values and beliefs.

Help people understand the big picture before they sign on the dotted line and you're more likely to match the company's needs with your new recruit, and vice versa.

For example, many tech companies take the 1% Pledge whereby they donate 1% of profit, equity, product, and employee time to charity. This gives people the opportunity to give back to their community without having to give up much of their free time. Companies who value community service and take the pledge typically have an easier time finding and retaining people who share those values.

2. Risk taking, and failing well
Unlike many industries, the tech industry has a healthy appetite for risk and failure. In fact, there's a general belief in the industry that if you’re not failing every now and again, you’re not pushing yourself far enough. That’s because true innovation doesn’t happen without taking chances.

The key here is to be smart and calculated in your risks, and strive to “fail well.” Shorten the feedback loops that help you identify failure, and learn from your mistakes so you can avoid them in the future. Leaders need to support this by creating an atmosphere in which people don’t feel like they’re going to lose their jobs if they mess up. Openly reward people for taking smart chances, and help people apply lessons from past mistakes to propel the business forward.

3. Rituals that drive innovation, and create a culture of discovery
Innovation doesn’t usually happen while you’re sitting at your desk buried under the monotony of day-to-day tasks. More often, it happens in the moments when you have time to take a step back, and think creatively and broadly. This is why many tech companies institute programs that give people time to work on something they feel passionate about that may be outside the scope of their normal jobs. For example, Google’s “20% time,” gives people 20% of their work time to focus on whatever project they desire.

At Atlassian, “ShipIt” is a quarterly innovation event where ad-hoc teams form to deliver a solution to a problem, or jam on a project they’ve had in mind but haven’t had the time to explore – all within a 24-hour timeframe.

These kinds of programs are all designed to create opportunities for people to flex their creative genius. And (you guessed it) people love them.

These programs have another value: they tend to encourage people to team up with others they don’t often work with. The best ideas often come from groups of people with diverse viewpoints, skill sets, and backgrounds because they challenge opinions and force one another to think about things in ways they may not have considered before.

So in addition to creating these rituals that foster innovation, it helps to create casual opportunities for people from various teams or departments to mingle. This further encourages the development of a culture of discovery, which goes hand in hand with real innovation. That’s part of the reason why so many tech companies invest in supporting team celebrations and other informal social events. You never know which unlikely pair of people might come up with your company’s next great idea.

4. Transparency and autonomy
Many companies default to keeping information private. If you want to find something, you have to know the right person to ask or get special approval to access some database you probably didn’t even know existed. This is the exact opposite of how many companies in the tech industry approach knowledge sharing.

As best-selling author Dan Pink wrote, people strive for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. If you want employees to feel a sense of ownership and pride in what they do you have to give them a sense of independence, and that starts with a culture that values transparency and openness. By allowing all team members to self-service their need for information, they feel a stronger sense of responsibility, and your company runs more efficiently.

5. Flexibility
Gone are the days of a nine-to-five workday. The rise in globally distributed workforces, remote working, and a new wave of collaboration technologies have led to a work culture that is "always on" (thus the obsession with work-life balance among forward-thinking companies and managers), but in which people are no longer tied to their desks.

The tech industry has a leg up in this regard because most companies use (and in some cases make) the latest technologies that help people work from anywhere, and at any time. And, in fact, that's key in attracting millennials. This Forbes article notes an Intelligence Group study that found that 74% of millennials want flexible work schedules and 88% want “work-life integration.”

But it’s not just the younger generations who’ll take notice. Households with two working parents, for example, greatly appreciate the ability to arrange schedules around school drop-offs and pick-ups. (Not to mention karate lessons and hip hop dance classes.)

Whatever the situation, recognizing the full selves of employees and offering more flexibility to reflect unique schedules and needs inspires more loyalty to the company.

Flexibility is also imperative for another challenge facing the industry: diversity. By allowing work schedules to flex around family and other scheduling constraints, you can attract and retain a workforce with a greater variety of ages, cultures, and genders. While diversity is a multi-faceted concern, this is one way to help build a more diverse community within your company. The value of diversity and the perspectives it brings to company culture, products, and ultimately customers goes without saying.

6. Open
The good news for techies and non-techies alike is that these aspects of tech culture are "open source" (if you will), any company in any industry can adopt and benefit from them – right now. This includes, by the way, the idea of “working open,” as we do at Atlassian. That is, an open way of working, thinking, being, and an open business model. The benefits we experience from this stance on working together and supporting teammates as human beings (and not just cogs) are immeasurable.

Most of all, though, choose one thing you can start to change, and start changing it. Today. Sure, it may feel risky, and it may not go exactly as planned, especially at first. But that's ok. In fact, that’s the idea. If tech culture has taught us anything, it's that you can pick yourself up, learn from mistakes, and try something different tomorrow.

And that’s the way to create a unique and noteworthy work culture that will attract and retain amazing, talented people.

You can still have beer, too, if you really want.

How Australia’s top bank went agile after 180 years

Jamey Austin — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 19:00:32 +0000

Imagine piloting a huge freighter through Sydney Harbour. Imagine the sailboats and ferries, the bridge, the islets. You’d be thinking one thing: steady as she goes.

Now imagine turning that ship. Not a little bit, but a lot.

That’s essentially what CEO Shayne Elliot did after he arrived at the helm of ANZ Bank, one of the oldest and biggest in Australia. For the better part of 180 years, the venerable financial institution grew its reputation by staying the course.

Which, historically, is just what you’d want from a bank: reliable movement with little change. But the days of “traditional” banking are gone. Today, it’s about speed and flexibility. Today, what works for a time can suddenly change, like the tides.

And the tides have definitely shifted in the financial services industry.

Shayne saw signs of competition everywhere, mostly from smaller companies with new technology and new ways of operating. To stay competitive, he knew ANZ would have to embrace iterative processes and constant feedback – that is, move faster – or be left in the wakes of these fleeter vessels.

To stay competitive, he had to turn a really big ship.

The decision must come from the top

What ANZ would ultimately discover is that real change requires bottom-up decision making to complement the top-down. That is, just how essential the so-called rank and file are to achieving a new vision. How, in the end, it takes the entire crew moving together as a team to turn a ship safely.

But the initial decision to change course, with its proper authority, the one that sets the direction and puts people in action, had to come from the top. “This change absolutely started with Shayne,” says Darren Pratt, Technology Lead Customer Engagement. “I want to be clear on that. It did come from the top. Shayne was upfront and clear. This was his vision. We had very clear leadership.”

In a nutshell, this change was about one thing: moving from bank-process driven to customer-needs driven. All levels of the business had to be closer to the customer to deliver faster, more useful products. The basic idea: you must deliver something. And fast. No more “polishing” products until they’re so shiny and so perfect and so late that nobody wants them anymore. “The pace of change today is so high, there are no more three- or five-year plans,” says Darren. “You need to be able to respond to change. Fintech, regulators… what will it be, where will it come from? Well, it’s not gonna be in our ivory tower deciding for the customer.”

Shayne was asking for a major cultural shift, and he needed it to happen now.

“I think you’re going to see banks look less and less alike than what we’ve been used to in the past 20 to 30 years,” says Shayne. “The people that survive in that disruptive world are those that can adapt, and those that can adapt and scale at speed.”

Although this made logical sense, it was very different from how ANZ was accustomed to operating. The real work was just beginning.

But let’s not call it scaled agile, necessarily

In a world that’s always on the lookout for a magic pill, it’s easy for many to think: Right, ok. We’ll buy some new tools, start a few new processes, done. As if shifting to agile is like flicking a switch. Shayne was aware of agile and its possibilities, but he also understood it wasn’t about adopting a set framework.

This made things harder. The shift Shayne wanted required change from the entire ANZ team. Every employee would be entering a new world of working. An agile world, which doesn’t mean simply following a new rulebook. It’s about applying agile thinking and practices to how you work, and deciding as a team what works best.

“This is about culture change,” says Darren. “It’s about breaking up hierarchical ways of doing things. And, we back you. You have our support for how to go about that.”

That second part was pivotal, the support from above. Mirella Robinson, Tribe Lead Digital Customer Self Service, explains: “Pockets of attempts [using agile] had been done in the past. But this was very different. This was a decision to start working this way, for everybody. It was agile at scale, but not ‘scaled agile’ in the sense of imposing a framework. Shayne said to us, ‘This is our aspiration.’ He wanted us to enable communities, to enable our people to thrive. We understood the common purpose, and we also felt the full support.”

This sense of full support permeated the entire leadership team. It empowered them to make decisions, and to make sure they had the right info to make decisions. Both Darren and Mirella said they were able to transfer that brand of leadership to their teams, to begin the learning process toward team self-organization.

But they quickly discovered: this was just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath – as the entire organization would soon find out – there was a mountain of other considerations. Despite the clear decision from the top, and a basic idea of the type of system (a more open way of working) to get them there, now they had to go do it.

And it was hard.

Just like you couldn’t pass out atlases and compasses, put everybody in a boat, and say: sail across the bay! You couldn’t just announce: Now go work agile! and expect all these employees, with all their various habits and skills, to know how to respond.

The way things have always been done

The leadership team didn’t fully comprehend how difficult implementing these changes would be. There was so much tradition, so many ways “things have always been done,” this fresh start sent major shock waves throughout the organization. For many, it was seen as a threat to their ways of working and it was met with heavy resistance.

Although agile offered more autonomy and responsibility, things usually considered positives, people felt uneasy. Says Mirella, “We had whole layers of the organization unable to make decisions. I said to them, ‘You are the best ones to make such decisions.’ In the old way, people came and asked me to choose the answer. It was actually a way not to take responsibility.”

Agile teams work Open. They strategize, plan, and iterate constantly. What they don’t do is simply tick boxes from a task list and call it a day. Instead, they decide together what’s best for the team, and how it contributes to the company’s mission. Working Open is about active collaboration between team members, sharing information, work, and ideas. It requires a level of engagement and involvement that many organizations and work cultures aren’t used to. It’s unfamiliar, and even intimidating.

“We’ve changed how we view success,” says Darren. “We’re telling people why they’re here – the purpose. You’re not valued by your ability to dominate. We’re saying, ‘Come in and be yourself.’”

But as Mirella realized, it takes a lot of energy to draw people out to be themselves. “As a manager,” she says, “I wasn’t prepared for the emotional fitness. All the encouragement, the emotional needs as a leader. It was very draining.”

This change wasn’t a simple new tool roll out, or some additional form to fill out for HR. This was asking fifty thousand people to change how they worked and thought.

The unlearning process

Truth be told, the initial resistance and difficulties caused Shayne and the leaders of ANZ to wonder if they were doing the right thing. Could they pull this off? Could such a big ship turn? Was it just too much for the whole organization to change?

This is when they realized real change had to come from within, from each employee. It had to be as bottom-up as it was top-down. This change couldn’t be a decree from on high that people had “to just figure out,” but a system of belief in how important each individual was to the whole, and how strong the influence was of each to realizing that goal.

“What we did right from the outset,” says Darren, “is emphasize people. It was always about people. Not methodology, biz ops, technology… it was about people. It was people change.”

Darren explained that people slowly discovered that the old way wasn’t necessarily the right way. Over time, they started to learn and gradually got better.

ANZ doubled-down, first by extending more empathy to the resistance to change, which further empowered all employees. Then, they provided more help. They had to be better at showing people the possibilities of working Open, that the payoffs weren’t just speed and efficiency but increased trust and investment in the team.

“We invested in coaching heavily,” says Mirella. “Hands on, in-the-moment coaching. Pushing for that unlearning, and then guiding in that new way. And the safety. We had to convince people they were safe. It was truly that, ‘There are no dumb questions’ thing. We wanted everyone to engage, and to call b.s. when they saw it.”

They started using the Atlassian Team Playbook, and adopted “squads” and “tribes” to assemble their teams in ways that made sense to them and how they work best. This helped dismantle the hierarchy – and the attachments to it – and gave power back to the people in a way that they understood. And believed in.

Focus on what’s important: trust

Now, ANZ’s smaller teams – the squads and tribes – are accountable for quicker delivery. But not just accountable, empowered to be accountable in a new way. A way that’s more Open and more collaborative.

Despite what people thought at first, they finally realized: this is a better way to work. Everyone now says they have more trust in their teammates, more investment in the outcome of projects and the success of the company, and, indeed, are happier in their work.

ANZ went from being a top-down, my-way-or-the-highway business to a more bottom-up way of working. Which is to say, from more dictatorial to democratic, from waterfall to agile, from closed to Open.

You might think Shayne’s proudest moment is that he kept ANZ as a leading bank in Australia, as someone who was able to turn a freighter in a busy harbour. But it’s actually something else: it’s hearing how this initiative increased trust among all ANZ’s employees, and seeing everyone working – and enjoying work – in a whole new way.

This article appeared first on the Atlassian Blog.