As usual, we voiced our opinions, listened, tried ideas and shared stories, occasionally challenging but also consistently helping each other.

On the closing comments at the end of the workshop, Jimmy tried to identify the main theme that seemed to emerge from the dialogs and suggested “cultural differences”. I can’t agree more. I was particularly touched by some extreme stories of titanic struggle while working with certain teams and customers due to differences in attitude, values, ethnic group and gender.

At first, I was vividly shocked. In the past, particularly while working as a consultant, I have been deeply involved in some seriously complex projects, where hostile customers, uncooperative teams and blaming cultures seemed to preclude any chance of success from day 1. Yet, I’ve somewhat always managed to reverse the “natural” course and helped teams succeed well beyond anyone’s expectations.

But these new stories forced me to dig deeper and question my own abilities once again. I thought over and over about what gave me strength in those situations. Why didn’t I just quit? Where those new stories all that different from mine?

Maybe. But, at the risk of sounding extremely preachy, here is a thought. There are no quick-fix solutions to these problems but there is a definite path. To get all the support you need, you have to lead by example, respecting each other’s skills and talents, fully trusting everyone and expecting them to meet that trust. Show integrity and passion, be determined to do what’s right and help others to get there as well. This has nothing to do with being nice. It takes a lot more than “being nice” to develop the will, knowledge and skills to move people for the greater good. I know now, more than I ever knew, that my strengths come from the inside, from being (or, rather, trying to be) principle centered.

When I mention how profoundly “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” helped me throughout my personal path, I often hear “Oh, yeah, I read that book” (btw: get the cd first, it is much more effective, imho). But I think most people may not reflect on the hundreds of hours I spent listening to the audio tapes, over and over, learning, teaching to others, and fundamentally reprogramming my behavioral scripts.

I am eternally grateful to those who shared their stories at the workshop; I really wish I could help. I hope to see you again next year, at the latest.

A few years ago, I suggested to each member of my team to choose a nick name, an inspiring name that would break away from what has been chosen for them by their parents.
I didn’t have a particular reason; it was just for fun.

A co-worker (who later changed his mind and chose to be called Lone Ranger) initially opposed to the idea and argued that “you can’t wake up one day and decide to call yourself, say, Alexander the Great”.
Why not? – I replied.
I thanked him for the really great suggestion, as he had just found my new name!

Alexander was such a formidable icon.
He was an invincible fury who conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks.

But there is a different reason why I still use that name to this day.
It is a powerful reminder that you should never be afraid to question the rules and revisit your assumptions, particularly when others say “it can’t be done”.

As I will gain more understanding of the forces at work and the wide implications of this simple practice, I will update the pattern with the new findings.

By the way, if you are implementing it (or considering putting it into practice) within your team please share your thoughts!

For my future reference, I want to add a few points that I haven’t covered in my previous post, mainly because a pattern should be based on observations rather than speculations.

So what did I leave out? Many things for sure, but for now I only have this list:

• Environmental factors conducive to this type of activity
• Relations/interactions with other practices, for example daily stand-up meetings
• Higher management perception/acceptance
• Pressure/deadline handling
• Basic financial support and equipment
• Team size/composition/roles and correlation with volunteer availability
• Finding engaging topics on a regular basis (experiences on the job, technology/product/process, dept vs. breath of coverage)
• Format (lecture, open discussion, study group, etc)
• Time management (preparation phase, delay, overtime, rescheduling, recurrence)
• Session/topic follow-ups
• If/why/how-to involve other teams

In all the cases I just mentioned, I either don’t have the problem or I don’t have conclusive data, solutions or suggestions.
At least, not yet .

In the past, I thought several times about doing something similar but I was never quite sure it could work out in a sustainable way; JC’s example, however, inspired me to try it here at InnerWorkings and, after successfully testing it for almost three months, I can certainly announce that not only it works for us, but it’s becoming part of our DNA!

Would you like some details?

Ladies and Gentlemen let me introduce you a half-baked (bun…oops…pun intended…ok stop!) pattern that you will never forget:

Muffin Morning

Software developers mature distinct experiences and learn technologies and techniques that can be relevant to others in their team.

How can I share technical information across a team/organization and encourage a healthy self-learning culture?

The most effective developers generally invest a significant amount of their own time researching new technologies, seeking optimal solutions to problems and continuously improving their skills; this is hardly surprising given the rapid transformations that the software industry imposes.

What is needed is a way to encourage team members to share technical information with others.

Volunteer to illustrate and debate a technical topic relevant to the team on a regular basis. Encourage others to do the same by keeping things simple and very informal. Meet for an hour every Friday morning without exceptions, and provide muffins, doughnuts, coffee, etc.

The most important thing to keep in mind with muffin morning is that if presentations become too formal, too long or elaborate, few will be able to contribute as it will require too much preparation; a team deadline could easily break the regularity of the event and muffin morning would become nothing more than a failed experiment.
As a consequence, PowerPoint slides should be absolutely banned and the urge to show live code examples on a projector carefully considered.
I personally find that the most successful presentations are the ones that use a whiteboard only, as they encourage a greater dialog and instigate curiosity to find out more about a particular topic.

One of the biggest attractions of muffin morning is its capability to involve several team members in a communication and self-development exercise.

Independently from their presentation skills, volunteers are almost invariably cheered and supported by the rest of the team since they earn the respect of their peers for their courage and effort.

While volunteers have usually enough interest and understanding of a topic to be able to illustrate it to their peers, it is not expected for them to be experts on the subject. Indeed, often some other team mate may happen to have more experience or knowledge about the subject and consequently play a supporting role for the event.

At some point in my life, my habitual focus on self-improvement gained a whole new dimension as I realized that I could achieve something really amazing only with the synergistic cooperation of others.
I mostly owe this framework of thinking to Stephen Covey: his seminal book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, played a major role in my quest for personal growth.

As developers, we are used to consider software development in pure technical terms: we focus on various technologies, we master the tools and we improve the processes.
While all these elements are very important, there is one fundamental omission; we often forget about the people we work with.

No, I’m not referring to the resources we allocate in a project plan; I’m rather thinking about individuals like you and me, with their cultural differences, their talents and the ideas that they bring, the ones with their struggle to keep up with endlessly evolving technologies, but also with their pride for a job well done.

I recently had a conversation with a developer who told me that people have to earn his respect and trust. He was pretty surprised to hear that I assume people are totally trustworthy unless proven differently over time.

I can understand his point of view. It is the result of a self-preserving mechanism that is unfortunately very common in too many corporate environments; in fact I, for one, have been poisoned by years of the worst corporate (anti) cultures, witnessing people fighting against each other on a daily basis; it’s within enterprises after all that I learned terms such as deception, hidden agenda, blame game, scapegoat, etc.

It does not have to be like that, however.
It takes incredible courage, passion, openness, integrity, determination, respect. These are the same core values that Covey taught me, values I firmly believe in.
Incidentally, I can also argue that these are the same values at the core of all agile methodologies, with their emphasis on individuals and interactions.

As a team leader, over the years I tried several times to become a catalyst of change by helping others to give their best and genuinely succeed in their careers.
I’ve been told more than once that my culture of openness is risky, that it will bite me back hard some day; I’ll keep taking my chances despite the cynical remarks and the unavoidable failures, thank you.

Today, I’m happy to observe that the InnerWorkings’ ecosystem shows more than a few traces of this culture almost everywhere; our thriving daily standup-meetings, internal forums, pair programming efforts, weekly muffin mornings, etc. are a testament of a social culture that is expanding well beyond my wildest dreams.

So, how do you create culture? I’m afraid I don’t have the complete recipe. In fact, I can’t even take full credit for what’s happening in my organization.
But I have one certainty: you too have the power to make a fundamental difference in your organization, your career, your life.
All it takes is courage.