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

None of these are optional!

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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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