In an agile organisation every person you hire is critical to the success of the company. When there’s no organisational compartmentalisation of people, adding someone great can add great value, but on the flipside there is no limitation to the damage that someone who isn’t right can make.
A few years back I went to watch a rehearsal of a talk my partner was delivering with two former colleagues. They’d all worked within an extremely experienced and mature agile team in a well known investment bank spanning 3 ‘generations’ of the team. When looking at success factors of the team the talk turned towards hiring and firing.
I can remember my shock when the most experienced coach on the team spoke of how critical they were when hiring and more importantly how happily they would get rid of members who just didn’t fit. It sounded to me like they didn’t give people a chance…
I was intrigued though, as this team were well known for their successes within a tightly controlled and rigid environment.
A few years on and a lot more experience growing agile teams, I have a little more insight and perspective on what I heard that day, and agreement for that matter. I understand that in a flat hierarchy with no management it can take longer to recognise underperformers which is why it’s so important to get hiring right. I also recognise that there a few key traits that you’d look to hire for and a few behaviours that you should think about moving out of a team.
Now, it’s worth pointing out that there will always be individual team dynamics that will come into force when hiring someone from the team. The team will be looking for complementary traits or someone who can fill a void (outspoken or quiet, introverted or extroverted etc) these are a given for the purpose of this article. The things I’m talking about here are what I view as some of the fundamentals to be a good fit in an agile team in general.
Key Traits-
People who work well with ambiguity, self starters.
No mummies boys and girls, no one who requires spoon feeding. Only self organising, answer seeking, driven individuals need apply. No one will come up with a solution for you, nor will we tell you how to do your job. It’s assumed that you’re the experts, therefore you can make the expert decisions on how the work gets done. You’ll be given a very clear idea of the why and the what…that’s it, the rest is up to you.
Team Players, T-shaped generalists.
You can’t have a team full of mavericks and maradonas (or Balotellis). Even if they can do the job technically, or have ‘moments of genius’.
In an agile team of T-shaped generalists (google it), with no defined roles, a team player will fill the gaps to progress the team towards their goal. A non team player is likely to play the role they feel best benefits them and their career.
You can’t plan for moments of genius, and individuals who outshine the team don’t move the team ahead, you need reliable performance from people who are prepared to share their skills not progress at the cost of others.
A great ted talk from Margaret Heffernan on this particular topic and ‘Super Chickens’ well worth a watch- https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_why_it_s_time_to_forget_the_pecking_order_at_work#t-173183
People who aren’t afraid to fail
It feels fairly obvious but they’ve got to have a mindset of “I’ll give it a go” and not get married to ideas before they’ve been tested with the users.
This falls under having a nature of curiosity and being up to explore. Users will always surprise you, so you have to be prepared to offer something up that you’ve worked on for weeks (possibly months) to user testing and take the feedback as a positive enhancement to your product.
This also applies to evolving how the team works and its processes. The best teams are open minded to change, to trying something and to canning it with no regret if it’s not right.
Growth Mindsets vs Fixed Mindsets
In the book Mindset, Carol Dweck makes the point that people with a ‘growth mindset’ will always outperform those with a ‘fixed mindset’. Those with a fixed mindset believe that their attributes are fixed for life i.e. “I’m no good at maths”, whereas a growth mindset will believe this can be changed with effort, “If I practice and practice I’ll get better at maths”.
People can change to have a growth mindset but it requires a lot of coaching and encouragement that praises the process and not natural skill “ You did a fantastic job on that ” vs “You’re a fantastic developer”. You’ll be giving your team a massive head start to hire those who display a growth mindset outright. These people are more likely to “stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback and take the long term view” in the words of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch.
Self improving- receptive to learning
An agile team needs people with a thirst for knowledge who are never happy with the current amount of knowledge they have. Where a team is continuously improving the people within it should be too.
If the team members are not furthering their knowledge then the ideas the team have will become stale fairly quickly and they will reach a ceiling of improvement. No one will spoon feed you in an agile organisation (see point one, no mummies boys/girls) so members must seek knowledge, ask questions, learn from others, share the knowledge.
So that’s the desirables to hire, if these things are lacking in a member of the team then I’d suggest replacing them with someone that does exhibit these traits. The longer they are in a team the more damage it can do to a team and its morale, and a team morale is a hard one to recover once it’s hit the floor. Along-side these traits are some behaviours that I look out for and either ‘coach out or move out’. I don’t give people a long time to change once they’ve had very clear feedback about these things because they are superficial behaviours that should be easy to change and in a world that iterates and changes so quickly, we can’t wait, it’s as simple as that.
Coach out or move out behaviours:
People who complain…but never suggest any improvements. It’s just negativity, it’s not helpful.
People who are just ‘here to do their job’: and therefore won’t step out of the box and help others.
Those who are precious about their work: and therefore won’t surface it, share it, pair on it, listen to any suggested improvements.
The antagonist: the person who just loves to argue for the sake of it..they’ll waste time and money.
The PR Guru: the person who believes perception is everything and thus spends all their time pruning their ‘brand’ and very little time actually doing work.
The one that won’t talk in meetings but then completely derail plans afterwards with their input.
…There are many more, I know this, I’ll pause there for now.
How to hire to maximise success:
There are some simple things that can help maximise the chances of the hire being a success (other than looking for the desirable traits above).
Not just filling numbers
Hiring just to fill numbers will do more harm than good. The time spent investing and dealing with people without the right skills or traits will waste more time than it will increase productivity. The wrong hire will do more long term damage than waiting for the right hire.
Drip feed the team
Don’t hire lots of people into an established team all at once and expect productivity to be maintained. Introducing people gently will do the least damage and give the newbies the best chance of success. This will also mean the team dynamic doesn’t change too suddenly, the impact of one newbie is rarely enough to change the team completely if you’ve hired well (assuming you have a dynamic you don’t want to mess with).
Keep experience to inexperience ratio 2:1
Carefully consider the experience balance in the team. A nicer way of saying, don’t saturate your team with lots of juniors who are just starting out their career. The wrong ratio will overwhelm even the most advanced and experienced of people.
Let the team decide
Hiring should be carried out by or at least agreed by the team. An cohesive team will know what will work. Listen to them. Don’t hire for your ‘vision’, let the team inform and agree upon the skills gaps to be filled and let them find a personality that they’d like to work with. They are the ones that will have to work closely, or pair with that hire. With a good team bond comes improved productivity; you’re much more likely to achieve that if team members have chosen who they work with.
With an inexperienced team, assist in vetting, but final say should still go to them.
I’m still learning more about what it takes to make a great agile team, I’m pretty sure there will never be one perfect formula, that’s what makes my job so fun. That said, I can’t see the desirable traits I’ve listed losing importance anytime soon.
I’d love to hear what you think…do you know of any more?
Musings of a Change Agent 