A presentation at DevReach 2022 in in Boston, MA, USA by Becca Bailey
DevReach 2022 Bouncing back (But not back to normal)
đ Hi, Iâm Becca! đŠđť Engineering Manager @ Formidable â Seattle, WA đŚ beccaliz
fi Throughout most of 2020, I was working on a consulting team that was building a data visualization application for a large non-pro t. Our team was structured in a way where we had a middle man between us and the client - meaning that there was a separate design agency who had contracted with the client to design the application, and was hiring my team of developers to actually build it.
PANDEMIC leadership changes childcare COVID-19 remote work In the beginning of the year, we had a lot of ambitious goals for what we would deliver and on what timeline we would deliver it. Things were going fairly smoothly, or so we thought. But then one thing happened after another. First, we had some turnover in team leadership. ffi ff Then we all got hit by a global pandemic, and everything about work changed. We went from being a team that traveled to di erent o ces and worked together multiple days a week to working remotely, juggling home life and childcare, and spending a lot of our brain space trying not to get COVID. Iâm sure everyone in this room lived some version of this story.
PANDEMIC dif icult people leadership changes health problems remote work stress turnover childcare technical dif iculties grief COVID-19 And while I will not go into each one of them, the misfortunes just kept on coming. Turnover, technical di culties, di cult people, health problems. Throughout all of this, we kept trying to move forward. The people in charge had made a lot of big promises about what we could deliver, and didnât want to walk any of them back. ffi ffi f fi f Over time, the team leadership became obsessed with â nding the winsâ, emphasizing our successes, and carefully controlling the narrative. I think they thought that if we could just buy a little bit more time, we could overcome these challenges and deliver everything we had promised. Nowadays, I like to refer to this as the Elizabeth Holmes school of management.
So what does this story have to do with resilience? Well, we all kept showing up and working overtime and pushing full speed ahead and covering up our failures, and eventually we delivered a successful product and made a lot of money. We just tried really hard to overcome all these di culties, and eventually we succeeded. ffi Yeah, no, just kidding.
PANDEMIC dif icult people leadership changes health problems remote work stress turnover childcare technical dif iculties grief COVID-19 f f Eventually the team disbanded, and to my knowledge the product we spent over a year working on never shipped. No matter how much we tried, we simply werenât able to push through all these challenges and be successful.
I donât think I was the only one who had this experience! Resilience was a hot topic in 2020. If you look at Google trends data for worldwide searches for âResilienceâ, there was a 71% increase in searches for resilience between the weeks of March 8th and March 29th, 2020.
If you look at Google trends data for worldwide searches for âResilienceâ, there was a 71% increase in searches for resilience between the weeks of March 8th and March 29th, 2020. Iâm not a mind reader, but I suspect this search data is due at least in part to company leaders who are looking at massive amounts of burnout and attrition and and wondering how they can help teams to be more resilient. Iâm willing to bet that a lot of the people who have been searching for resilience strategies are looking for some good news. They are asking questions like âhow do we recover from a global pandemic, improve retention, raise morale, deliver everything on the roadmap, and keep all the shareholder reports pointing up and and to the right?â Leaders like this typically arenât looking for systemic solutions.
Resilience in the workplace In fact, I did a bit of Google searching on my own to see what kinds of solutions are being marketed to companies that are struggling with retention and burnout. And do you know what I found?
A lot of wellness apps and training programs to help employees deal with stress. But the more I have come to understand about resilience, the more I have come to recognize that another wellness app isnât the solution.
Why am I talking about this? ff As I said earlier, Iâm an engineering manager. Iâm not a sociologist or a researcher myself, but there are so many things I wish I had known about resilience at work while I was dealing with really hard stu . If you are in this place right now, I hope that some of the research around resilience in individuals and communities can help us build stronger and more supportive teams, and be more forgiving of our failures.
What is resilience? So, diving right in. According to the research, what is resilience?
Good developmental outcomes despite high-risk status Sustained competence under stress Positive adaptation despite adversity Recovery from trauma fi fi The most commonly-used de nition of resilience that has emerged from research over the past several years is âpositive adaptation despite adversityâ. This variety of de nitions highlights what I believe to be a misconception about resilience, especially in the workplace.
Good developmental outcomes despite high-risk status Sustained competence under stress Positive adaptation despite adversity Recovery from trauma Often when we talk about resilience at work, we are talking about this one.
Good developmental outcomes despite high-risk status Grit Positive adaptation despite adversity Recovery from trauma This is the trait I would also call grit.
Good developmental outcomes despite high-risk status Grit Positive adaptation despite adversity Recovery from trauma I believe that grit is a part of resilience, but not the whole picture.
Lessons from community resilience There are some important lessons we can learn from studies of community resilience.
Community resilience is a measure of the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations. Studies on community resilience often focus on groups who have been through large-scale trauma, like indigenous tribes or persecuted ethnic minorities. While I a little nervous about drawing direct parallels between tech teams and groups who have been through trauma, there are some learnings here that apply across the board.
âResilience is a process, not a traitâ MICHAEL RUTTER M.D., 1990 One of the biggest discoveries to come out of my research on community resilience is the concept of resilience as a process, not an individual character trait. Dr. Michael Rutter made that point in his 1990 special report on psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. Communities can be resilient because of the structure around them, and not just because of the individuals in them.
Risk factors Two groups of people can encounter the same risk factors, and respond di erently. The same person can encounter the same risk factors in two di erent contexts and respond di erently. Why? @beccaliz DevReach 2022 ff ff ff In this report, the observations were made that two people can encounter the same risk factors, and respond di erently. Likewise, the same person can encounter the same risk factors and respond di erently. Why is this?
Protective Factors ffi ff fl While there are skills that individuals can use to be more resilient, groups can employ protective factors in order to reduce harmful e ects of di cult circumstances. A protective factor is work done in advance to reduce harm in case something bad happens. For example, the airplane was on the other day provided a safety plan, oxygen masks, and oatation devices in case of emergency. These are all examples of protective factors that can insulate people from harm.
Building a positive self-image among group members Breaking a bad cycle to explore new opportunities Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations fi Looking more closely at the rst pointâŚ
Building a positive Feedback and self-image among recognition group members In a workplace context, companies can work to provide feedback and recognition for members of the team. People also feel good about the work they are doing if they are doing things that are meaningful, and where they are able to measure their progress over time. It doesnât feel good to be spinning your wheels and not accomplishing anything.
Feedback and recognition Building a positive Meaningfulamong work self-image group members In a workplace context, companies can work to provide feedback and recognition for members of the team. People also feel good about the work they are doing if they are doing things that are meaningful, and where they are able to measure their progress over time. It doesnât feel good to be spinning your wheels and not accomplishing anything.
Feedback and recognition Building a positive self-image among group members Meaningful work In a workplace context, companies can work to provide feedback and recognition for members of the team. People also feel good about the work they are doing if they are doing things that are meaningful, and where they are able to measure their progress over time. It doesnât feel good to be spinning your wheels and not accomplishing anything.
Building a positive self-image among group members Breaking a bad cycle to explore new opportunities Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations This one is fairly broad, but there is an interesting study I would like to talk about here.
ff It turns out that we can learn a lot about resilient workplaces from ants. Deborah Gordon is a biology professor who has spent most of her career studying ant behavior, and she has noticed that ant colonies are able to quickly adapt to changes in circumstance. Ants have many di erent jobs, and at any given time there are ants who are builder ants, forager ants, or ant soldiers protecting the nest.
fi fi If you look inside an ant hill (and know what you are looking for), you will also nd a lot of ants sitting around and doing nothing. This âsurplus workforceâ can spring into action when they need to without sacri cing other work. I donât know what the work/life balance is like for an ant, but given this strategy I would presume they have a lot of downtime.
Building a positive self-image among group members Breaking a bad cycle to explore new opportunities Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations ff ff fl ff Anyway, getting back to humans. While I am not advocating for companies literally hiring people to do nothing, there are things we can learn from this. For example, - A company can o er exible time-o , and also make sure there are enough people on the team to cover for people who take time o . - A team lead can push for realistic deadlines so the team has enough time to deal with unexpected problems that come up.
Putting supports in place to reduce the Team capacity effects of bad situations Anyway, getting back to humans. While I am not advocating for companies literally hiring people to do nothing, there are things we can learn from this. For example,
Team capacity Putting supports in placeRealistic to reduce the effects of bad deadlines situations ff ff fl ff A company can o er exible time-o , and also make sure there are enough people on the team to cover for people who take time o .
Team capacity Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations Realistic NO deadlines
Team capacity Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations Realistic deadlines No I donât know how many of you were at Billy Hollisâs keynote this morning, but I loved the part at the end where he gave an example of how to respond to unrealistic deadlines. If I remember correctly, he talked about a program manager asking what it takes to deliver something by a certain date, and he said it would take more testing machines, better software, and a time machine. As an engineer, you are a valuable part of the team, and you should not let your desire to be a team player and make other people happy get in the way of your ability to advocate for realistic deadlines. There are legitimate reasons why this is hard, which I will get more into later.
Building a positive self-image Breaking a bad cycle to explore new opportunities Putting supports in place to reduce the effects of bad situations Thirdly, we can respond to changes in circumstance by exploring new opportunities.
Breaking a bad cycle to explore new opportunities Think about a time when something just didnât go the way you expected it to. Where did you end up? Think about a time when something didnât go the way you expected it to. Where did you end up? Did you end up in the place you originally wanted to?
fi Maybe you did end up in the place you wanted to go. Perhaps you twisted your ankle but still nished the marathon.
ff ffi fi But maybe you changed course and ended up somewhere completely unexpected. Resilient teams donât just stubbornly push through every di culty, but they know when to pivot and change course. Like I said in the beginning of the talk, I am not a psychologist or a research professor or a business executive. I am a software engineer with a degree in Music Education. I spent ve years trying to be a music teacher in Chicago before giving up and trying something completely di erent. If there is one thing I know about from experience, it about not ending up in the place you thought you were going.
It isnât admirable to never give up or compromise. There have been so many times in my career when I wished I had the courage (or the authority) to say this. More often than not, pushing through endless adversity and making a bunch of compromises in order to deliver some feature on time ends with a team burning out, a product that doesnât work, and a few jaded engineers or designers who saw the train wreck coming from a mile away. So why do we keep doing this? Well, I have a few theories.
đ° Capitalism fi The rst one is capitalism. Obviously money is important, and it is a factor in our decisions. I donât know about you, but I like paying my mortgage. But I donât know if you have realized that sometimes capitalism is a little nonsensical. We have been told that our self-worth comes from working, and we donât always know when to stop working, even if weâre not getting anywhere.
Like this cat on a treadmill, we are motivated by a reward, but we donât always realize we arenât going anywhere.
âWe have become a civilization based on workânot even âproductive workâ but work as an end and meaning in itself.â DAVID GRAEBER, BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY I love the part of the book Bullshit Jobs where David Graeber says âwe have become a civilization based on workânot even âproductive workâ but work as an end and meaning in itself.â Too often, weâre afraid that if we stop and re-evaluate what we are doing, it will look bad. Sometimes I need to remind myself that real productivity, and âlooking productiveâ are not the same thing.
đ¨đź Power Dynamics
Design Business Engineering On a balanced team, everyone has a seat at the table. All the major players can advocate for what they need, and keep the others in check. But when this doesnât happen, it can create power dynamics that make it hard to get work done.
Business Design Engineering ffi For example, when companies put the needs of the business above everything else, this might feel like a safe bet in times with a lot of economic uncertainty, but it usually creates an environment where it is di cult to identify problems, and usually ends up sabotaging the health of the product long-term.
Business Design Engineering ffi And on the team I worked on in 2020, the chain of command looked something like this. I can tell you with absolute certainty that power dynamics contributed to the problem. When we as engineers were handed a completed design and a deadline, it became really di cult for us to advocate for our own needs.
Design Business Engineering When a team is functioning properly, every major player can keep the others in check, and equality and respect help create an environment with psychological safety.
Optimism This one might seem unlikely, but another thing that tends to get in the way is optimism. Optimism is the willingness to look on the bright side and imagine a positive outcome. Most of us have been raised in a culture that told us optimism is always a good thing.
âYou must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the endâwhich you can never afford to loseâwith the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.â JIM COLLINS (QUOTING ADMIRAL JIM STOCKDALE), GOOD TO GREAT ffi But sometimes optimism is the thing that causes us to lose touch with reality. In his research for the book Good to Great, Jim Collins studied the factors that allowed a company to change course and become more successful than they were in the past, and to his surprise he found that optimism is negatively correlated with success. Quoting Admiral Jim Stockdale, (a military o cer who was a POW in Vietnam), he says:
Optimism is the thing that keeps us pushing forward and thinking the whole time that things are going to get better while we are heading into a train wreck. Optimism is how you become the star of a TV show about a venture-capital-funded disaster.
Optimism For me, the antidote to optimism is honesty.
Honesty If weâre really being honest, it might turn out that no, we canât improve morale and deliver the product on time. Maybe weâre spending time and money chasing technology thatâs just not technically possible today. Maybe the thing we wanted to build was doable with the team we had in 2019, but since then a lot of technical experts have left and we need to scale back our features. No matter what the situation is, the truth might be that the possibility of getting everything you wanted is already gone, and no amount of wishing and hoping and working just a little bit harder will bring it back.
Itâs okay if you arenât feeling very resilient right now. Speaking of honesty, itâs okay if you arenât feeling very resilient right now. The challenges brought about by the pandemic, the shift to remote work, and 1,000 other compounding factors are real, and itâs okay to not be at 100% right now. As a matter of fact, my entire purpose for giving this talk was to remind you that resilience is largely a byproduct of circumstance, and itâs not fully within our control. I know that not every situation is the same, but itâs my goal as a tech leader to create environments where itâs safe to talk about this, and I hope you are able to share this kind of honesty with your team when it becomes necessary.
TL;DR Resilience has more to do with the team than the individual. In order to build more resilient teams, we need to have: ⢠Recognition and meaningful work ⢠Capacity and realistic deadlines ⢠Psychological safety ⢠Honesty ⢠Willingness to change @beccaliz DevReach 2022 I believe with every ber of my being that there are ways to move forward after a pandemic, a great resignation, and its challenging economic aftermath. fi Itâs not simple, though, and I believe it has more to do with the team than the individual.
Takeaways If you are in a leadership role, I hope this helps you to build more resilient teams without relying on wellness apps or other individualistic solutions. If you are not in charge, and not working on a team that provides adequate support and responds well to change, I wish I could tell you it will magically get better some day, but it might not. I hope that at the very least, you are able to arm yourself some of this knowledge of community resilience and look for these qualities in future teams and companies. Maybe youâre like me and youâre somewhere in the middle. We might be dealing with genuinely hard circumstances, and we might not always succeed at delivering the product and protecting people. But I hope that we have the faith to keep going anyway.
⤠Thank you! đŚ beccaliz đ https://becca.is đ https://noti.st/beccabailey @beccaliz Works Cited 1. Werner, E. E. (1995). Resilience in development. Current directions in psychological science, 4(3), 81-84. 2. Luthar, S. S., Burack, J. A., Cicchetti, D., & Weisz, J. R. (1997). Developmental psychopathology. Cambridge, UK. 3. Rutter, M. (1987). Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. American journal of orthopsychiatry, 57(3), 316-331. 4. Gordon, D. (2003, February). The emergent genius of ant colonies [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/ deborah_gordon_the_emergent_genius_of_ant_colonies 5. Graeber, D. (2018, May 15). Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon & Schuster. 6. Collins, J. (2001, October 16). Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Donât (1st ed.). HarperBusiness. DevReach 2022
Resilience is a big word these days. I did a bit of research to see what kinds of solutions are being marketed to companies who are struggling with employee retention and burnout, and do you know what I found? A lot of wellness apps, surveys and training programs to help employees deal with stress at work.
But resilience is not just telling individuals to meditate more while working in an unsustainable environment. Resilience is not pushing through and refusing to give up. Itâs letting go of the ways of working that are harming us and being open to embrace change.
In this talk, I will share some stories and strategies for building collective resilience on tech teams in a post-pandemic world.
for free. You
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