Build the Ship You Want to Sail On: Culture and Giving Back

TL;DR If your team's good habits live only in you, the team works only while you're in the room. How to build a good team culture: pick a few habits and repeat them every week. Thank people specifically, answer bad news calmly so it keeps arriving early, put people forward for real opportunities, and hand on what you learned beyond your own team.

Do this: This Friday, thank one person specifically, in the way they prefer to be recognised.

Part 4, Manage the Team: Goals, Trust and Delivery, ended with a good quarter and a question Pip couldn't shake: what is she building beyond the work, and what would still be there if she moved on tomorrow? She asks Kit over Friday lunch. Kit, unusually, puts his chopsticks down.

Dev Voyage: Uncharted Waters, in five parts:

1. From Best Engineer to First-Time Lead
2. Hire and Grow Your Crew
3. One-to-Ones That Matter, and Handling Conflict
4. Manage the Team: Goals, Trust and Delivery
5. Build the Ship You Want to Sail On: Culture and Giving Back (you are here)

Culture is what you repeat

Not much. Culture is what happens every week when someone ships, breaks something, or arrives on day one. Every moment that mattered on Pip's voyage was a habit someone kept:

• Kit agreeing her 30-60-90 plan in week one, then checking it every two weeks.
• Pip thanking Brock in the channel for a one-line answer.
• Kit saying "thanks for shouting fast" the Friday she broke checkout.
• Brock adding praise: to his reviews after the clash with Quill.

The second after bad news

When Google studied its teams in Project Aristotle, psychological safety mattered most of the five factors it found. Amy Edmondson defines it as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. re:Work puts it in a teammate's words: "If I make a mistake on our team, it is not held against me."

A lead builds it mostly in the second after someone brings bad news.

Mentor, then sponsor

"Great job, team" is gone by lunch. "Quill, the zero-price test caught a bug that would have refunded every free order" is remembered. Pip had asked each person in their first one-to-one how they like to be recognised, as Lara Hogan suggests. Brock: in writing, never in a meeting. Quill: in standup.

Lara Hogan also separates two roles leads blur:

• A mentor gives advice.
• A sponsor spends their own standing to put someone forward, naming them in rooms they aren't in.

Pip had mentored Quill for months. This quarter, when the Admiral asked who could present the discount service to the client, she sponsored him: "Quill built it. He should present it." He did, nervously, and well.

The map changes hands

Pip gave a talk at a local meetup on the question that gets answered in one line, and turned her 30-60-90 template and interview scorecard into a handbook page for the next lead.

At the end of the year, on deck at sunset, Kit held out a rolled-up chart.

Then Quill, at her elbow: "The new deckhand starts Monday."

"Get the 90-day plan," said Pip. "And biscuits."

Try it

Every Friday, fifteen minutes:

1. Thank one person specifically, in the way they prefer.
2. Name one person for an opportunity they weren't in the room for.
3. Answer one newcomer's question in public, so it stays answered.
4. Once a month, say one of your own mistakes out loud.

On Monday a nervous young crab arrived with a laptop still installing updates and 200 unread messages. Quill met him at the gangway and handed him a one-page plan. If you're at the start of your own voyage, it begins with Your First 90 Days: How to Join a Crew Without Sinking, in Dev Voyage: Calm Sea.

Read this with your AI

Read the post "Build the Ship You Want to Sail On: Culture and Giving Back".
1. I'll list what my team does every week. Tell me which habits build safety and which erode it.
2. Rewrite these three thank-you messages so each is specific: [paste]
3. Suggest one person I could sponsor this month, and the opportunity, given: [team and context]