March 6, 2023
Watch Justin and Fiona talk about ‘Team Health Checks — One Size Does Not Fit All’ on the Spotify Engineering Conference in 2022.
Spotify has for a very long time run squad well being checks. Squads step again from their day-to-day actions to get a broader perspective on how they’re working, with the purpose of enhancing their self-awareness, permitting them to extra clearly see enchancment alternatives. The aggregated outcomes from these well being checks additionally present the groups’ management with a option to see patterns and tendencies throughout a number of squads and over time.
‘Organizational improvement work is very much a guessing game…. A systemic approach with clear visualization can reduce some of the guessiness.’
With practically a decade of squad well being checks below our belt, you might say our groups have gotten fairly first rate at operating well being checks. Although it’s not one thing we monitor, we estimate 5,000-plus well being checks have been run at Spotify since that first publish in 2014. Today not less than 60% of our groups are dedicated to operating well being checks at a daily cadence, utilizing their favorite units of questions, usually with an in depth information to assist the people facilitating them. And leaders of those groups routinely use the outcomes as a supply of knowledge to assist, not choose, groups.
Unlike a daily retrospective the place the workforce displays on a current time interval, a squad well being examine has the potential to uncover higher systemic enchancment areas for a workforce over an extended time period.
For essentially the most half, squad well being checks at Spotify look one thing like this:
- Ask predefined questions within the areas of tech well being, workforce well being, and product well being. It’s more and more widespread to see this performed utilizing a survey, which might make creating the next visualisation simpler.
- Run debrief workshops the place members of a squad focus on their outcomes and determine on a set of actions.
- Aggregate outcomes right into a multi-team-level visualisation, in order that patterns and tendencies may be noticed and addressed.
Despite all our expertise operating well being checks, we’ve discovered that there’s all the time a danger that squads can have a ‘meh’ expertise.
- Without care, utilizing the survey could cause the next workforce dialog to be focussed extra on the outcomes, reasonably than on workforce members’ experiences.
- Teams can push in direction of creating actions designed to ‘fix’ an issue, at the price of uncovering longer-term and ‘deeper’ insights.
- As our organisations have gotten larger, it’s usually leaders a lot additional away from the groups than initially envisioned who’re wanting on the outcomes. If that is the one purpose groups do the well being examine, then it’s lacking the purpose.
- Facilitation may be performed in a transactional or dogmatic approach, focussing on going via the agenda factors and stopping the workforce from speaking sufficient about what’s essential for them.
After utilizing the identical checks time and again, we discovered that they will grow to be one other to-do on a workforce’s record of numerous to-dos, which dangers lacking the chance to maximise the worth of the dialog for the workforce itself.
Haven’t run workforce well being checks earlier than?
You’ll undoubtedly profit from what we’re saying right here, however it’s best to begin with our authentic weblog publish to realize a deeper understanding of why they’re helpful and tips on how to run them.You ought to examine whether or not your organisation already has assets or processes you can begin from. Perhaps you merely want so as to add a construction to your routines that can assist you to make use of what’s already there.
To guarantee this doesn’t occur, we give attention to the next three areas after we run well being checks for groups.
- Customise properly.
It’s vital to think about the wants of the workforce when getting ready for the well being examine, and we’ve discovered that there are three basic methods to verify every well being examine fits your workforce:
Choose your well being examine. Sure, the Spotify Health Check mannequin works for us at Spotify, however we’re keen to just accept that it might not work for everybody. Explore completely different sorts of well being checks that may be a greater match on your workforce or organisation. We’ve experimented with a well being examine based mostly on Google’s re:Work, with the intention to drive broad conversations round psychological security, construction and readability, dependability, which means, and affect. Some of our groups have constructed out their very own extra tailor-made checks based mostly on their groups’ personal tech ideas or designed for management.
Tailor the inquiries to your workforce’s wants. Whichever well being examine you select, there’ll all the time be alternatives to include components that could be adjusted to the precise workforce. Team leaders can (and will) think about what’s related to the workforce proper now and design some questions to assist mirror that. For instance, for groups that…
- Recently had high quality points: How properly have the remediations we’ve put in place improved our high quality?
- Had many new joiners: How would you fee your data of the techniques that our workforce owns?
- Are lately working distributed: How properly are our distributed methods of working supporting us as a workforce?
Consider the organisational view. Even although you wish to customise the well being examine for the workforce, you should still have to feed your well being examine scores into the bigger system visualisation for management. These reviews are efficient for recognizing tendencies, and the outcomes could also be used for systemic actions on a bigger scale. So ensure you know what management is on the lookout for and that you just’re capable of enter that information into the aggregation (for instance, by additionally together with these questions).
- Dig deep.
During the debrief workshop, following a facilitation information that may be supplied is useful to steer the dialogue, nevertheless it’s essential to keep in mind that the precedence needs to be to facilitate a deeper dialog inside the workforce.
‘A well-facilitated, deep conversation about any one topic that is important to the team will yield results.’
Fiona and Justin
One of the highly effective facets of the workforce well being examine is the chance to assist the workforce step exterior their day-to-day habits of communication. Teams usually method the well being examine discussions in the identical approach they might different conversations or conferences — if they’ve the behavior of dashing in direction of actions, or of speaking in circles, that very same behaviour will seemingly come into play through the well being examine. By serving to them talk in a different way, you possibly can create an area for people to be comfy with vulnerability and encourage empathy between workforce members. We imagine this may be essentially the most precious consequence from a workforce well being examine — it is going to assist increased ranges of belief that may finally assist the workforce to be more practical and high-performing each day.
Turn up your curiosity.
Jumping to problem-solving is a human intuition, however digging a bit deeper helps make sure you’re fixing the best drawback. You may help the workforce go deeper through the use of a number of open questions, like:
- Where/when have you ever seen this working?
- This helps the individual or workforce evaluate and distinction to drive extra insights.
- What’s essential to you about this?
- This helps the individual clarify their values or wants, which offers alternative for extra empathy, and for problem-solving that helps the basis of the scenario.
- How will this enable you to?
- This helps somebody clarify what they’re really wanting or fixing for and permits for alternate options.
- Which behaviours do or don’t assist you on this?
- This helps the workforce suppose deliberately about issues they do and the way these issues assist, or don’t.
- What could be wanted so that you can rating this query increased?
- This solution-focussed query helps somebody consider concepts to make one thing even higher.
- Is there one thing else about this? (More on this later…)
- This is a option to encourage the individual/workforce to go additional than their first views earlier than shifting on.
- What is the elephant within the room about this matter?
- This is a option to invite extra views concerning the matter at hand that individuals may be hesitant to boost in any other case.
Take your facilitation to the following stage.
- Leave the area for the workforce to speak. This is their dialog, not yours, and one of the best factor you are able to do for them, after being curious, is to get out of the way in which. Leave areas for others to fill (rely slowly to 10 if it’s essential) reasonably than shifting on with the facilitation or providing solutions your self. If you, because the facilitator, wish to bounce into the dialog, make it clear that you’re taking off your facilitator hat, and be clear while you’re placing it again on.
- Default to asking ‘what’ reasonably than ‘why’. ‘Why’ can unintentionally put individuals on the defensive since it will probably come throughout as demanding or confrontational. ‘What’ and ‘how’, alternatively, sound extra curious and goal. Compare ‘Why are you late?’ with ‘What happened to make you late?’ and ‘Why did you do that?’ with ‘How did you come to do that?’. You’ll get a variety of facilitation mileage eradicating ‘why’ out of your vocabulary.
- Try asking ‘Is there something else?’ reasonably than ‘Is there anything else?’ In this examine, researchers discovered that asking ‘Is there something else?’ elevated the possibilities of the topic elevating one thing else that was on their thoughts, whereas asking ‘Is there anything else?’ was no more practical than not asking in any respect. The phrase ‘anything’ tends to trigger our brains to filter and scrutinise ourselves — ‘Is my thing one of the things that’s really price sharing?’ In our expertise, asking for ‘something’ bypasses the filter and makes individuals extra prone to share, which will get extra information for the workforce’s dialog.
- Keep a watch out for the vitality within the room because the workforce is speaking. When you discover a shift — maybe a sudden quiet, or an increase in rigidity — being interested in that may assist steer a dialog into a spot the workforce would possibly normally hesitate to debate. If a workforce can’t focus on it, they will’t enhance it. Try asking, ‘What did you all notice happening to the energy in the room when we started talking about this topic?’
Plan to finish properly.
We seldom get via every part we expect we would, and that’s OK. In truth, a well-facilitated, deep dialog about anybody matter that’s essential to the workforce could yield higher outcomes than force-fitting subjects, on the subject of serving to the workforce work higher collectively. Don’t fall into the lure of attempting to get via every part in your facilitation plan.
- Don’t reduce conversations brief with the intention to cowl extra subjects or subsequent steps. Instead, set expectations that you’ll prioritise high quality over amount and that not speaking about or attending to every part is OK. Undiscussed issues may be adopted up on later if want be.
- Don’t fear an excessive amount of if the workforce hasn’t bought to ‘actions’. The truth they’ve heard one another’s opinions and ideas will imply the subject is entrance of thoughts for them now. In truth, higher actions usually come after a break from desirous about an issue, so following up just a few days later may be higher.
Give closure to the dialog. This will assist individuals depart the session with a sense of satisfaction. A fast option to shut is to ask everybody to share ‘one insight and one thing they will do differently as a result of today’s dialog’. This helps every individual acknowledge their takeaway and set an intent. If it’s essential, reduce brief a dialog with the intention to make time to shut out collectively. A easy acknowledgement that you’re out of time for now will assist to dissolve any rigidity that somebody might need about not ending.
- Follow via.
This half usually will get neglected as a result of everybody goes again to their common day-to-day routine. Don’t fall into this lure that reinforces ‘meh’ well being checks. It’s not sufficient to seize the actions and depart them with the workforce. The well being examine isn’t performed till you:
Follow up with the workforce’s leads.
Debrief with these closest to the workforce who attended the well being examine (normally the engineering supervisor and product supervisor) on what you realized, and plan your subsequent steps.
- Was one thing not mentioned that wants extra consideration?
- Are there issues to comply with up on in one-to-ones with direct reviews?
- Are there conferences to e book on account of actions?
- Does the workforce have a dependable approach to verify they comply with up on any actions they took?
Perhaps actions needs to be added to the workforce’s backlog. Perhaps the dialog didn’t end in any actions, and it could be good to have a dialogue about this at stand-up in a day or so, after the workforce has had an opportunity to soak up what they realized within the dialog.
Reflect on any broader patterns.
Your division/organisation ought to take a look at the aggregated view of all of the well being examine outcomes to see if there are any patterns and learnings. If this isn’t one thing that you just already do at this time, we advise not less than doing one thing light-weight. For instance, ask all managers to convey their high three workforce well being priorities to a gathering to debate how you might work on these at an organisational stage.
Conclusion
This method to our well being checks has supported our groups and leaders to have higher conversations and outcomes. So the following time you’re planning a spherical of well being checks, keep in mind that one dimension doesn’t match all! Customise your well being examine to finest match the workforce, dig deep to seek out the underlying points, and comply with via afterwards.
Tags: agile, engineering tradition