(2015 - 9/11) Paying Down Cultural Debt

CALIBRATE 2015 (9/11) - http://www.calibratesf.com/

Paying Down Cultural Debt -- Sonya Green

http://engineering.sharethrough.com/blog/2015-11-20-paying-down-cultural-debt/

You can't always break things, and you can't always refactor. Technical debt is something to control as you scale. As a manager you're now making decisions that affect your company's cultural debt as you scale. We'll talk about how to identify culture, examples of cultural debt, how to hire with culture in mind (without creating a homogeneous feedback loop), and how to pay down debt as you go.

Transcript

1. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Paying Down Cultural Debt What’s culture anyway? Like cheese?
2. ⛺ ⚠ SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE
3. Culture SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE
4. Culture SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE culture the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. 1400-50; late Middle English: tilling, place tilled (< Anglo-French) < Latin cultūra. See cult, -ure
5. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE quality over speed speed over quality dogs ping pong craft beer collaborators over rock stars strong opinions, held weakly hacking all night
6. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE dogs ping pong craft beer DJing hacking all night winter party employee leaves when a project fails birthdays milestones
7. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Values, with tradeoffs, written, shared. quality over speed speed over quality collaborators over rock stars strong opinions, held weakly
8. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE “I had it defined in my head, but I didn’t write it down. If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.” - Jon Crawford, “Building a Dysfunctional Team”
9. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE quality over speed speed over quality collaborators over rock stars strong opinions, held weakly
10. Action Continuously Learn & Improve By Doing We value decision and learning over perfection • Iterative, experimentally-focused release process • Validated learnings are units of progress. • Project X: Built it in two weeks as a separate application in case we needed to throw it away, so that we could get it in front of customers and learn how they use it.
11. Our Mindset Work Independently Collaborate Initiate Change Follow Processes Analyze Execute Focus Broadly Specialize
12. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Cultural Debt SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE
13. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Defining cultural debt Cultural Debt SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE cultural debt accruing cultural manifestations that are unwanted or inconsistent with desired values 21st century; second dotcom wave: See cult, kool-aid
14. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Slideshow of cultural debt “Culture by slogan!” Cultural obfuscation Values conflict with the reality don’t be evil; 20% time; move fast, break things; work on what you want to* “The wifi password is, all one word, smokemeakipperandIllseeyouinthemorning.” Work life balance … nap room, three meals provided, laundry on-site
15. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Debt is implicit cultural assessments (beer test) Debt is not considering diversity until later, once you’ve really gotten your feet under you Debt is the first paragraph of a job rec describing a homogeny you don’t actually need A note about hiring
16. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE “Work on what you want to!”
17. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE “Work on what you want to!” “Work on the intersection of what you want, what’s important, and what others need.”
18. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE Calibration! * introspection - I like, I wish * reiterate values explicitly * take it upstream Paying down the debt
19. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE • Jon Crawford’s Failcon talk: “Building a Dysfunctional Team” (2014) — video online • Alon Salant’s blog post: “What Are Your Hiring Criteria?” (2014) — Good Eggs blog • Gail Swanson’s Balanced Team conference talk: “Balanced Partnerships” (2015) — video online Primary sources
20. SONYA GREEN - CALIBRATE The end! @sundaykofax