People want to be a part of something. It is a survivalist’s motive. And it is natural and important for human fulfillment. Being a part of something does not make us less individual. This is how we found individualism and collectivism are (spoil alert!) equally important!
We are expected to stay after work with colleagues - ok. We are expected to consult our teammates or ask our superior for permission - ok. But in some cases we must act individually, although we are a part of a collective. There are certain tasks all of us must do autonomous, without the consent of our superior. Why is that? (Hint: Not because we are rebels.) It’s because we are rebels. No, sorry… It is because we cannot ask all the questions all the time. Because of people’s time and energy needed to ask a question and answer it, different time zones which would postpone the solution by waiting the Q/A possibility, etc. Some tasks are a matter of company culture, and the others are a professional must.
Maybe we are talking about more basic problems, such as “whether to write documentation in this manner or another”. We should probably ask the first time, and later do it in same manner without asking, as that would provide more breaks and pauses in the creation process. (Exception, as in every rule: Sometimes it is better to spend a minute asking a question you know the most probable answer, if the work depending on it is proportionally large, and you are still unclear about some details. That me prove as a 5 hour save.)
And if we go to the harder questions, let’s say you are a developer who is not sure whether or not to write tests. You know it will take 5% more of your time to write basic tests while writing code, and that tests may later save 50% of manual testing time. (Or is it 99% of that time for some cases.) It is not just the time of QA department that we are talking about. Most often, it may be a great portion of the developer’s time, either to locate errors, or(/AND) to solve them. You SHOULD write them. A hastly fabricated agile/scrum master may tell “don’t spend time on that, we need POC ASAP!”, but he/she cannot be explained that it really is a 5% of time less spent on POC, and that it will save bunch of time later. And not to talk about time it may save even during POC development phase, when some errors may be detected in the early stage.
So, autonomy is important. But how do we become autonomous? I think there are a lot of factors that make us LESS autonomous. There are people who have family - so they are scared to try anything that is outside of project manager’s scope, even though that may benefit the project, and themselves! Those may be the people that are even too scared to ASK. Asking is good. Try asking. If you come to the blockade, you can stop asking. But if you don’t even ask, you will never know if there was a chance for your idea to go through. If the idea was good, it is a company’s failure not to take it into consideration. And we, being a part of the company, also lose in this situation. (Company is nothing without people. It’s ethimology is “people”!)
Also, there are people from other proffesions, that thought it was a better idea to try themselves in IT. They may be scared for the endevours because of their background, finding comfort zone in “hiding”. Not asking, not doing anything autonomously, approving everything the superiour says (only because he/she is superior). It is natural, but it is not good. Not good for community, not good for colleagues, AND NOT GOOD FOR THE PRODUCT! Thus, courage is something worth building. Companies must invest in team’s and individual’s courage. They are often affraid of it, because it may result in individuals becoming brave enough to leave the company. That is the problem. Is the company really that bad that people would leave it only if they had more bravery? Well, that would mean the company is really bad. And that people SHOULD leave it. But, I think (based on personal experience and LISTENING TO OTHER PEOPLE‘S EXPERIENCES), that everyone should go through few phases before leaving the company. Most often, that procedure happens naturally.
1) Saying what you do not agree with. It is a hard choice. Working with someone for some time (few months or several years), in full cooperation mode, and then, all of the sudden, questioning their methods? Yup. Once, we must start. Healthy conversation is a must. Really, most often did I find out I was not right. If I had not asked the hard questions, I would have (let’s say 80% of times) not get the answers to what occupies my mind. And that bad seed would grow inside, until the point when I would burst. Just to find out my burst was not based on reallity, but rather my comprehansion of it, and wrong direction that it had grown into.
2) If superiors, or collegues still don’t agree with us, we may hear the right arguments, and change our mind (as in point 1). The other option is that we still do not agree with “them”. I ask myself: “Am I unhappy?”, “Don’t I see the sense in this work, or with these people?”, “Doesn’t my superior respect me, although I respect him/her and do my job as agreed?”
3) The negative answer from the previous point should imply that it is a time for change (pivot your life). If it is not us that should change, and if other people do not want to change… You must evolve to the next level. Change the company. Oh, yes, you can do it.
I’ve empirically went through this list few times (in my proffesional life), and only after that could I write it down as a formula. I’ve changed companies. Most often, others stayed, and it was easier for them at first. But I’ve gone to better companies, better communities, better bosses. At some point I’ve reached a fair boss, proffessional incubator, and a decent pay. It was defenitely worth all of the struggle. Ex colleagues also evolved and upgraded, but not as much, and with the price of being on the dark side when we struggled for better decent job situation (not just fighting for being payed, but also for clauses of contracts that were totally unjust, or ignored in practice, depending on employers interest… Hard to think about those times :).
When Sebastion and I started the Chaos Taxi, we though “Yo, this must never become a nightmare, but a dream”. We wanted to start a company with a healthy culture, that would upgrade their empoyees. We did not need to go too quick into success, but rather make something that, if it fails, we would not say it was a bad idea (in matter of spent time). We would have said it was a time well spent… Luckily, we will not know for sure what we would have said, as our project, set on the right foundations, with right people, gave us more than we expected!
People are the key. Respect them. They are not resources. They, of course, are that, in a metaphoric, or materialistic sense. But (believe it or not) they are beeings (wow effect). They have emotions and stuff. And, luckily, we live in a periond of history, where we can afford luxury, such as free time, happiness, and peace. No one carried their job home, and no one had skipped lunch because of a bug or something. That’s not a good strategy. It seems as “victory” at first, but having that kind of company culture, makes worse results on the long run. I don’t have to say - there are also people too kind to be leaders. It is not the point of this paragraph, to be naive. The point is to be humane. The point is not to lie your employees that you are an agile guru just because you know the words “sprint” (sadly for workers), “milestone” and “pivot” (sadly for the product). Following Agile because of it’s popularity - not cool. Let’s say it is normal (people analyzing other people’s experiences, and realizing it must be good because everyone uses it), then - people should use it properly. Agile is a discipline. It is a science. A methodology. It may not be treated as less. It cannot be done in fragments. Learn - implement - test - learn… And so on. But learn! And be honest to yourself and people around you! It does miracles!