Effective teams don’t keep secrets
theadamthomas.com
theadamthomas.com
People keep secrets on some level because they need privacy. If a person is struggling, they often react by withdrawing and don't always appreciate their struggles being brought to attention. Especially when their livelihood is on the line. Everyone's different, but increased openness is not always going to help. Everyone should have the right to privacy in both personal and professional settings.
Update: Actually, I think the author of the article must understand all of this because they do call out privacy as necessary and try to distinguish it from what they're calling secrecy. And secrecy seems to basically mean willingly withholding information necessary to properly complete a job. They say this could happen if teams have an antagonistic working relationship. I think it's a useful distinction as I've also seen this happen at a company, more recently than the previous counter example that I gave.
Yes of course a set of people constitute a team if and only if it meets the requirement for teamwork. That is, cooperate via info sharing, work load distribution and other support to get jobs done. Obviously merely assigning random workers to contiguous cubicles in no way constructs a team. That remains true even if a manager is loudly chanting holy corporate verse while pronouncing teamhood upon the hapless crew.
This is as it's always been, teamwork is essential for the survival of modern humans. Companies that foster teams, and teamwork among teams, are the ones likely to succeed in the marketplace.
The reactions that people have to their own data being public are partly a result of the current hidden-by-default model.
I'm not a great developer: I'm experienced, but I make the same mistakes that any junior would. I'd prefer to share the kind of feedback that I receive and how those discussions proceed, so that juniors can look ahead, learn, and avoid repeating the same mistakes (hopefully leading to a much more advanced cohort of future developers).
I'm generally in favor of increased salary transparency since it will probably help to level the playing field. My point is that you have to draw the line somewhere.
Even making performance review details optional to disclose (as an official policy) might inadvertently create a culture where people look at you sideways as though you have something to hide if you appear as though you're not being forthcoming.
On the other hand, I don't think there's generally an expectation at most companies that you shouldn't discuss how things are going for you with your colleagues. That is, of course, as long as you don't seem to be doing an excessive amount of griping and finger pointing in the process.
That's an important, accurate observation, thank you for voicing it - understood, I'll take that on board. Emotional support, companionship and other ways to indirectly process the situation (games?) seem like they could be helpful responses in that kind of situation?
> Even making performance review details optional to disclose (as an official policy) might inadvertently create a culture where people look at you sideways as though you have something to hide if you appear as though you're not being forthcoming.
That does sound very tricky to handle in a transparent environment too. I'm not sure whether I have great responses there other than to set a cultural expectation and understanding about the organization up-front (before applicants join).
To be honest, that makes me wonder whether a truly transparent organization should even offer the option for private feedback at all (note that that's a greenfield approach, as opposed to the question of how existing organizations could transition to a more transparent model).
I have some very anxious team members who will get on edge when the development team starts to use key words like "refactor" and "iterate". Our organization has a historical track record of certain technical efforts being a complete dumpster fire and the PTSD of that has stuck around with many of us.
In order to make everyone's lives easier, I will sometimes work in secret on prototypes of more "controversial" ideas to bring before the team. I find starting the conversation with "Here's a new thing you can actually see and play with" eliminates 99% of the annoying bullshit you get out of non-technical folks.
It takes some discipline to do this correctly (i.e. don't ferret away on a secret prototype for more than ~1 week). That said, I can't imagine how you would scale an organization if everyone had to know everything always.
Also, none of this stuff is actually secret. It's more of a need-to-know basis. If someone explicitly asked me about one of these efforts, I would tell them everything they wanted to know and then some.
I think your urge to hide things until ready is clearly a symptom of other (root) problems within the organization. I have never seen what you describe in a healthy organization, and many seemingly “healthy” places are not. It sounds like the organization fears failure and refuses to learn from mistakes or believes it’s impossible. This is a cultural issue that needs to be fixed by senior leadership but, if I had to guess, is probably caused by senior leadership being unwilling to trust.
I’d encourage you to look to solving roots and not symptoms or go somewhere else where you’re allowed to. Good luck.
You've never screwed something up and had to try it a different way?
1.) I’ve never screwed up.
2.) (and never) Had to do something different.
I’m saying the lack of transparency you’ve been forced into to accomplish things is the result of people who are incapable accepting mistakes or doing things differently. You must work in secret because people don’t believe the technical team can or will learn from their mistakes. In a healthy organization you would not have this burden.
“Your company isn’t healthy. Either get senior leadership to change or leave.”
Internet advice is weird.
Many many ideas I write down and develop. Many I throw away. But I learned never to throw information on the table without analysing the consequences of doing so.
This applies to teams as well.
"Not keeping secrets" effectively ends up meaning that you need "permission" or at least consent for everything you work on. Depending on how tight things are this can be a recipe for misery because it's common in managerial ranks for people to be change-averse to the point of absurdity.
That isn't a claim. The claim is that a team with full transparency is more effective (in terms of work done) than one with a limited transparency.
What's interesting is there's talk about one-on-ones like they are an acknowledged best practice, but nothing about established payscales (or open salaries).
When you mentioned communication becoming harder: were you referring to audio/video discussions (in-person or otherwise) and/or also text-based messaging?
In my experience, there are two reasons for internal secrecy:
1) Security. There are things that only certain people need to know.
It may be trade secrets, or security. In any case, these can make life difficult, but are important and valid secrets.
2) Gatekeepers
These are individuals or organizations that are hoarding influence and information; trying to leverage it for their own gain.
In my opinion, #2 is much more common than #1, but they will often say that they are following the diktats of #1.
Secrecy is an important part of running any organization.
I worked for a company that was seriously tinfoil. I thought, over the top, but they had certain policies, and I abided by them; whether or not I agreed with them.
The best write up on psychological safety is from Google Rework - https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effe...
The biggest challenge for me here is that I don’t believe a team or company can have my best interest at heart, as they often conflict with the best interests of the company.
William J. Bernstein's article Of Earnings, Dividends, and Agency [1] offers an educational and entertaining perspective on this:
> in a taxless world a company’s dividend policy should matter not at all to the shareholder. Inside academia, this is known as the "Modigliani-Miller theorem." In the taxable world, of course, shareholders prefer capital gains to dividends. So why do companies pay them?
> Because, to put it bluntly, corporate officers are often scoundrels and theives. They lie. They cheat. They steal. They invest in projects more on the basis of turf, prestige, and politics than cash flow. They run around in Learjets and eat fois gras on your nickel. Shareholders intuitively know this and insist on spiriting their cash away from these bad actors as fast as they can.
....
> "failure to disgorge cash leads to its diversion or waste, which is detrimental to outside shareholders’ interest."
....
> But what is most remarkable about [the paper by La Porter, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, Vishny][2] is its tone, which is almost Menckenesque in its description of modern corporate ethics. They describe a Hobbesian world in the kind of plain English rarely seen in academic finance; "Firms appear to pay out cash to investors because the opportunity to steal or misinvest it are in part limited by law, and because minority shareholders have enough power to extract it."
[1] http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/700/agency.htm
[2] the link given to the La Porter, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, Vishny paper from Bernstein's article is dead. There's a copy of the working paper at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w6594/w6594...
In theory, "eliminating secrets" means the manager listening to the report's reservations and addressing them effectively. In practice, it means rooting out dissent and silencing opposition. The manager has created an environment where their reports don't feel safe talking to them. Instead of asking hard questions like "how the hell did I, the manager, screw up so badly", the article suggests easy answers like Project Retros or 1:1s.
The article is further undermined by author's inexperience in product management. Brand building as an "expert" with only a few years in industry is a red flag.
> Both backchanneling and micromanaging are easy to identify. When there are different answers to the same question, that’s the result of backchanneling. When you see clones instead of people, it’s a sign of micromanagement. The good news is that once you see these trends emerging in your team, there are some concrete steps you can take to roll them back.
First of all, there are plenty reasons to have a private conversation, and backchanneling is not a priori a bad thing. And the part about micromanagement leading to people "being clones" is gobbledygook—what does that even mean? And then the suggestion that those things are magically fixed just by the most basic entry level management practice of 1:1s and retros.
Frankly, it feels as though the author has tried to generalize some personal experience and completely lost the script. In reality, management is very hard and very contextual. For any given action there is a time and a place. Specifics matter.
That is, some things are hidden, but not actively so. I don't need to know how hard my peers are working. Or what they are thinking. Or if they think the project will succeed. Or when they work, for that matter.
I trust that if they need or want help, they can ask. I also trust that if I offer help, it is in good faith and it can be turned down. I could be wrong that they need or want any help.
Not all interactions have to be interventions.
This is not that some things don't belong at work. It all depends on the trust in the group. I agree that more trust is generally better. But sometimes that is fostered by not forcing a spot light on everyone.
Everyone trusted each other _individually_ and could easily ask questions that they knew to ask, when they already knew who to ask. But to understand the shape of the company, or even who the internal stakeholders were in projects, or access to basics like repositories and documents, people faced a lack of trust coming from the organization itself.
Given that type of character within the working environment, I'd personally prefer that their communications were largely on-display to all the teams around them.
Them knowing everything that is going on doesn't necessarily seem a problem in itself, but if they're using that to cause disruption or selectively push different parts of the organization in different directions, then -- unless there is some broader plan that they could share -- it seems like the teams could more easily encourage the person onto a healthier path by having visibility into those patterns.
But their communications are often the last things to be shared, except when they are insisting that everyone else share everything. IME this is a bad idea for much the same reasons you don't want managers in code reviews. You don't promote honest feedback and constructive criticism when those giving and receiving the comments feel like management are snooping on everything all the time.
Them knowing everything that is going on doesn't necessarily seem a problem in itself, but if they're using that to cause disruption
Bingo. It's the disruption that causes the problem. But both micromanagement and chilling effects can be extremely disruptive.
Completely agree.
> You don't promote honest feedback and constructive criticism when those giving and receiving the comments feel like management are snooping on everything all the time.
Also true.
But management couldn't do much to coerce people -- including plausibly-deniably intimidating, harassing and spooking staff -- even if they're watching everything they do -- without themselves entering into some risk.
Add to that the fact that any kind of sophisticated employee-trolling would require co-ordination and research, and transparency becomes more and more attractive, as long as it's applied in both directions.
(I'll add that part of the working theory here is that rank-and-file staff (non-management) are on equal footing; not always necessarily true, perhaps, but should be on aggregate for large enough populations)
Your organization does not equally reward teams that do this in a transparent manner because it has a bias towards new and shiny projects. Teams that work on shiny new projects get way more leeway to propose unrealistic goals without actually achieving them.
> They then set up a meeting cadence to check in, and they make clear communication rules in a public channel so the rest of the team can keep up with each other when there are questions. Backchanneling is nonexistent, and there aren’t many questions because micromanagement is at a minimum.
Your organization does not equally reward teams that do this in a transparent manner because there is not enough cracking down on people that behave like assholes in public channels in the name of transparency. Team X's manager can be an asshole in Team Y's public channel, but Team Y's manager behaves quite nicely in Team X's public channel. Ironically, since you didn't fire Team X's manager, the organizational perception becomes that Team Y is the one with problems, since "there's always someone complaining about them".
> The group identifies problems as they come up, brings them to the attention of everyone on the team and discusses them publicly.
Your organization does not equally reward teams that do this in a transparent manner because teams that work on moonshots that fail miserably never have their problems discussed; but teams that do slow and steady work are often micromanaged to death about some 5% productivity drop this week.
See any commonalities here? Even if each team is managed perfectly by itself, organization-wide disparities can lead to these undesirable patterns appearing anyway. Your organizational leaders and management as a team need to work together to make things more equitable, and fight the natural emergence of these patterns.
Lets not even talk about beyond the necessities for a team. Salary? Oh boy was that ever secret. The one guy had an instant where he was oncall, major outage in the middle of the night and he didnt wake up to answer the alarms. Big client billionaire ceo demanded the guy be fired. Boss went around tell everyone that we were going to pretend he was fired, but he wasnt fired.
So naturally when this guy gets a new job, he tells everyone how much $ and benefits he's getting at the new job. He even tells people how much he used to be paid. People were freaking out. Minimu wage was $14 at the time and some senior sysadmins were only getting $22. LOL so many quit within a month or so.