Setting Your Team Up For Failure

Johnny Ray Austin

Engineering Director, Navigation - Mapbox

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CTO Summit Dec 18th, 2018

Failure

The state one finds oneself in, after not achieving one's goals or objectives

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Let's Level Set

• Do not sabotage your teams
  • Setting them up, doesn't necessarily mean letting them fail (use your best judgement)
• Do not go out of business

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How Does This Work?

An Analogy...

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Muscle Hypertrophy

A term referring to the growth and increased size of muscle cells

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Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

The pain and stiffness felt in muscles several hours to days after unaccustomed or strenuous exercise...It is thought to be caused by...small-scale damage to the muscle fibers.

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Recovery

Sufficient rest & nourishment = repaired muscle fibers which are stronger than before

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Putting it Together

• Hypertrophy is the event to invoke stress
• DOMS is the feeling that muscles have been "torn"
• Recovery is the rest & nourishment required for getting stronger

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How?

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Team Hypertrophy

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Stretch Assignments

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

- Norman Vincent Peale

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Stretch Assignments Continued

• If it doesn't make you nervous, it's not challenging enough
• Remember, small-scale damage!

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Inflate Success Criteria

• Examples
  • Shorter timelines
  • More scale than necessary
  • Artificial constraints
• Yes, you're lying
• Safety net
• Use it, or lose it
  • Finishing on time is finishing early
  • Makes the team look like rock stars
  • The team looks good = you look good

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Keep Things Ambiguous

• Appropriate level of ambiguity for IC
• No checklists (from you)
  • No one is ever proud of completing these
• Context + goals + constraints
• Strategic interference
• Ownership and autonomy are key

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Team DOMS

What does it look like?

"Mr. Stark...I don't feel so good"

- Spiderman

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Confusion

• How exactly do I address this problem?
• Is this even going to work?
• Who do I talk to about this?
• Is there any prior art?
• Does my boss hate me?

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Team Recovery

The most important part

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Retros

• No particular structure
• What did the team learn, what did ICs learn?
  • Collective intelligence + growth as well as individual
• Spring cleaning
  • What should we stop doing right now?
  • What should we start doing right now?

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Acknowledgment​

• Doesn't have to be monetary
  • Although this is cool!
• ICs should know, that you know, that they worked their butts off
• Let as many people as possible know
  • Company all-hands
  • Blog post
  • Gives ICs street cred

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Feedback

For you!

In Conclusion...

Maximizing team growth through failure

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Induce Hypertrophy

Small-scale damage

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Embrace DOMS

Discomfort means something good's happening

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Always Recover

Practically the point

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Thank You!

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