Measuring MY contribution when I’m working for the team (diary of a digital transformation)

I’m sharing my story for four reasons:

i) to help me reflect and learn

ii) to share my lessons to help you

iii) to connect and learn alongside people who want to develop

iv) to be honest and open about my experiences, good and bad (to set an example)

Since I joined my team in February, I’ve loved the fact that we work together as a team towards a shared goal. Both because it’s much more rewarding AND because in this line of work, it’s not realistic for super heroes to somehow save the day through their solo efforts.

This is easy for me as it’s my natural mode to work with and help others and I particularly enjoy being creative and finding novel solutions to problems by bringing together talented people. I also enjoy coaching others and this can come into play sometimes.

Also, we have a few defined roles such as product owner and scrum master but the rest of the team have a variety of talents and no specific role titles. And responsibilities change from sprint to sprint as we progress towards acheiving our purpose. People do become known for a ‘thing’ which does give people responsibilities but that is limited. Also, we don’t want to give people sole responsibility as that would make them the single point of failure and reduce shared ownership.

But this focus on the team does leave me with a few important questions about my contribution.

On a practical level:

how can I bring some of my other skills to the fore (and make others aware)?

how do I know if I need to change my approach to work to improve our efforts?

what is the perceived value of my contributions?

And on a commercial level (I am a contractor):

am I adding sufficient value to the team and how can be of more value?

and, more positively (for me!), am I being paid for the value that I bring?

The initial answer, of course, is to listen and respond to feedback which is available through:

• working with my colleagues and paying attention to our results
• using our ceremonies (e.g. Sprint retrospective) to learn what went wrong in our work and understand how we can build on this

This is all good but I can’t assume my perception is the same of my colleagues.

Also, it does rely on absolute honesty and a level of trust. And it is a natural desire to avoid difficult conversations about perceived poor performance to protect team harmony. Our team has a good foundation of trust (in my opinion!) so I think the foundations are there for some honest, well-intentioned conversations.

Fortunately, this overlaps with my interest in the importance of psychological safety for high performing teams.

Psychological safety is defined as:

being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career

Avoiding difficult conversations does show a lack of psychological safety. This is, however, usually in reference to conversations about the work the team is undertaking.

(if you want to learn more about this, watch Amy Johnson’s Ted talk. The term was introduced in a paper in 1990 by Kahn)

The team are going to assess the level of trust in the team by using some techniques from ‘The 5 Dysfunctions of A Team’. And some of the exercises to build or reinforce trust relate to team-level feedback so we’ll assess whether there is an appetite for that.

(By the way, the reason I decided to start writing these posts was to be open and honest and admit my fallibility which is key for psychological safety. But how can I ask others to do this if I don’t do it myself!)

Do I need to worry about my contribution if the team is being successful?

In my world where all assumptions about ways of working are being re-examined, I should also question the importance of measuring and understanding my contribution. Perhaps the fact that it is at the back of my mind makes it important enough to address. Hmmm…

I’m going to take a really quick diversion on how my thinking and mindset has moved to get me to this place.

As part of continuing to build my skills in Systems Thinking, the excellent Jas Sambhi has pointed me in the direction of two books on W Edwards Deming (Deming’s Dimensions and Deming’s Profound Changes). Deming was an excellent and influential management thinker whose insights are still very powerful and relevant today, 25 years after his death.

Over the course of his study and work (right up to his death, aged 93), Deming developed and refineda set of principles and a ‘system of profund knowledge’ which captured his management philosophy, borne out of his experiences in work and study.

Paraphrasing Deming, he tells us that managers need to understand the system and what is driving variation. In simple terms, what is the team’s purpose, how do they go about achieving their purpose and what is impacting their effectiveness? Deming identified that the system of work was the primary driver of ineffectiveness, not the individual. The quotes vary but he attributed approximately 90% of failings to the system, as opposed to the individuals performing the work.

His philosophy also recognized that development of knowledge in service of improving the product or service alongside individual education and self-improvement was critical.

What is next for me?

I’m going to request some time for feedback from my team members (sort of obvious I suppose!). I’m going to do some research to find out how to make this a productive and painless process. I’m also a big fan of understanding and playing to your strengths which is something I want to incorporate.

And I have a request for help from you, what would you recommend to help me measure and improve my contribution? Or perhaps you have some advice on why I shouldn’t worry about this.