Team building and Team maintenance – Part 1: Mistakes

Here at Well Placed Cactus we are fortunate to have personalities that don’t clash too explosively. We all have our moments but for the most part we get along and work well together as a team. During our time together we have learnt lessons and ways of looking at how we work and I’m going to share some of that with you today. Let’s get human.

Everybody makes mistakes, you are not immune. Most people already understand this but I think the more important element is that anger or argument will not fix a mistake. There needs to be some discussion and not in the “Who’s responsible, let’s make them feel bad.” kind of way.

We screw up all the time here and what results is usually hearing “You had one job!” (Its part of an ongoing in house joke) and then someone quickly fixing the problem. On some occasions though when something larger happens, causing someone to have a bad time while attempting to fix it, things work a little differently. These usually begin with a few more calls of “You had one job” and additional “You’re fired!” claims, but a few minutes later we are trying to figure out what went wrong, how we can fix it and how we can make sure something similar doesn’t happen again. Was there something wrong with our work flow? Did something not get fully explained at some point? Is something just super weird and haunted by tech ghosts? What was the problem and how can we improve.

Relevant XKCD – http://www.xkcd.com/1316/

In situations where something needs explaining, the most important thing is not being a jerk about it. You know something someone else doesn’t and they need the information to resolve an issue. The person you are talking to knows things that you don’t as well and in the reverse situation how would you want that handled? Being excessively aggressive or condescending is going to lead to team friction or people not liking you and that leads to a bad time. Instead of adding value to the team you may effectively be reducing its efficiency and negatively impacting the work environment.

Not an ideal working environment (Full Metal Jacket, 1987)

No one is out to intentionally screw up and make more work for you, mistakes are just things that happen, take that information, learn from it and keep improving. If you work with that in mind you are going to have a better time, everyone will learn more and the team will be happier.

Obviously each team handles these issues a little differently. We find that humour works best for us (and an occasional rant followed by an apology). How does your team handle it’s issues? We’d love to hear any tips and methods you’ve come up with.

I’ll be back next time with some more lessons from the WPC vault. Have a good one.

Nic