How Agile Teams Grow Toxic! Ep. 1 Founder Values

One of the most frustrating things over my career has been working at companies where the workplace culture has become unhealthy.
Though many companies hire agile coaches to try and improve the way they deliver, in my experience the leaders are the ones who most need "agile transformation".
This video kicks off a series called "How Agile Teams Grow Toxic". I'll share the dark side of human behavior on projects, and why the situation can seem almost impossible to improve.
In this episode, I discuss how the core value, or motivation for starting the software company that the founders have impacts this greatly.
Most software companies or projects are started for one of the following 3 reasons:
- Money
- Fame
- Impact
It's preferable if you can find a company with founders (or leadership if the founder left) that are motivated by impact.
But this won't guarantee that the project will be successful!
You should also look at where the founders skills originated. Did they come from a business, or engineering background? This will give you some ideas as well about the founder values.
Ultimately, you want to find a software company or product where the leadership are looking to YOU for innovation and help. Not treating you like a pawn who can only crank out code and shouldn't think about the business or its products.
I discuss a simple way to research founders and other members of the management team at a company to get an idea of whether the culture there is healthy.
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[@HealthyDev]

This is the first episode in a new series “How Agile Teams Grow Toxic”. Join me to chat live during the premiere, or let me know in the comments what you think about your founder’s values!

[@jacekjacenty]

Why in the toxic teams, the importance of telling people what they want to hear far outweighs telling the truth? Why people are so willing to sweep under the carpet the facts they are not comfortable with? Don't they realise it hurts them in the long term?

[@HealthyDev]

Good point. It seems like we humans aren’t very good at long term thinking. This includes me. People seem to gobble up anything, including bad advice, if it promises quicker results. Even if the results would be better with a slower initial pace. YMMV

[@rozzerthat]

Any which way, they don't care to care because they don't see any personal incentive agreeing to the truth claim you may be describing. That's why the situation is toxic according to you, but they are fine, they are pest like survivors. Also, they may also genuinely believe their position around the truth doesn't impact their long term so they stay indifferent or plain aloof. The worst kind are people that are actively working against the truth, like the flatearthers that are doing the rounds lately. There is no point deliberating and wasting your precious time on mercenaries.

[@rozzerthat]

​@@HealthyDev, well, short term thinking by definition means a shorter hop to evidence. Doesn't matter if its a good or bad outcome, but we have evidence providing quick feedback (sounds like agile, huh). This is why toxic cultures typically reward firefighting super-saviors. Fire is real evidence happening right now. So short term thinking reaps good short term dividends, long term doesn't because a lot of those events to prove a series of decisions right or wrong are future events. Basically, that's not evidence based, and so we can only entertain opinions about what set of decisions are good for the long term. Sticking to my firefighting analogy, these are akin to folks clearing the perimeter to prevent small camp fires from turning into an inferno, they are effectively doing a thankless job. I believe we can agree that the ones fighting real fire are braver, easier to tell since they are in this-could-turn-fatal-any-moment battle and after a successful containment, they deserve all accolades while the long term perimeter folks are technically doing tree chopping and planting sign boards educating folks on fire safety. Less risk, less reward, less burnout. More risk, more reward, more burnout. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.

[@jacekjacenty]

@@rozzerthat I like your last sentence! Perhaps, when I encounter such people again, I should think of them as mercenaries.

[@jwenting]

it's quite simple: to keep your job. It's an employers' market out there, and it's often better to shut up and keep doing something that's suboptimal than to end up having to go through the whole circus of making nice to recruiters and HR flunkies yet again to hopefully get a foot in the door at yet another company that'll no doubt turn out to be no better than the one you were just fired at for "not having the right team spirit".

[@rozzerthat]

Nice points and categorization, Jayme. IMHO based on my observation, the #3 driven-by-mission-and-solves-a-real-market-problem type founders, after several iterations of failures and giving up and rebounds, if they manage to get their idea going and the market responds and they start making money, then the company somehow gets enough critical mass of people and some percentage are the #2 fame types (and less #1 money chaser) types and they start eating the culture from within, they are the cancerous kind. I have this hypothesis (rule of thumb) that any company that grows beyond needing more than one coffee station in their office space is destined to have a toxic culture. The companies that scale well culturally, they tend to have offices in many locations with fewer employees/smaller teams in each. May be us types are not meant for the Acme big corp which invariably becomes a political trash pot rather than a crucible for technology development. In my mind, it's easy to see why Acme big corp are on a buying spree of so may smaller players. It's exactly because of the reasons you have laid out in this video. The barrier for entry for the smaller players are historically low and combine that with a great culture, they can stand tall and play in the big boys market league.

[@rokyericksonroks]

I agree with your assessment, especially regarding size limits that do not surpass a single coffee station. I’ve worked at enough corporate dumpster fires to know that the short term pain is rarely ever worth it. Take your skill set and move the f-k on.

[@coryserratore5951]

@@rokyericksonroks Two-pizza teams and one-coffee-station offices.

[@DarkDonnieMarco]

Fun company for status = vanity project.

[@luga1398]

First step to tackle those issues : have fun with your moog. Seriously, thanks for your work

[@HealthyDev]

Hahah! Thanks! :)

[@_aullik]

premieres more than 30 minutes in the future are a horrible idea. This will be sooooo far down my feed once it goes live that i will definitely miss it

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for the feedback. This is the first time I’ve done a premiere. You know you can set a reminder from the watch page right?

[@_aullik]

​@@HealthyDev I know but i don't like the notification spam. I'd rather have it in the subscription feed. (the one that doesn't skip things) Nearly every KZbinr I know has tried the premiere thing and nearly everyone has gotten horrible feedback on that. I imagine when people click on a video and then read premiere they just feel like they are robbed of the video they just wanted to watch. (I know thats a pretty egoistic view).

[@HealthyDev]

Okay that makes sense. I’ll get some more feedback from others and adjust accordingly. Thanks again for the advice, I appreciate it!

[@gkri8390]

My small hates me giving realistic estimates

[@tehsimo]

This looks interesting... *clicks video* FFS ITS A PREMIERE

[@HealthyDev]

Ha! This is the first time I’ve done this. Being agile - if it’s not helping people I won’t keep doing it. Hope to see you tonight (or another time in the future!). Thanks for your feedback. 👍

[@kebman]

I love Musk. But I heard some really _bad_ things about some of his companies, especially in regards to culture. From a founder or owner perspective, I guess it works, but you're really walking over a lot of people in the process, especially the company's "yes men" culture. You could be fired merely for being _critical_ about things, and you had to accept Musk's word as _gospel._ This is certainly what makes me think that I wouldn't have been a good fit in that company, unless I was 100% sold on whatever the main idea was from the get-go. But then, what if you change your mind during your stay? I can imagine that it fosters some _really_ fake employees in the end, and I don't think that's an environment I'd like to work in. As such, I think I'd feel more at home in a _business based_ company, because at least they would at some point have to admit that they don't know anything about engineering, so I'd have more of a say in the end. And I can tell you, I _love_ being right. In fact it's probably a personal flaw with me....

[@HealthyDev]

I hear you. I was driven a lot by being right early in my career and it really made things harder for me than it needed to be. I still have to swallow my pride at times I don't like to, but I've started getting a lot better at just letting people prove me wrong and moving on.

[@ancientelevator9]

"You could be fired merely for being critical about things, and you had to accept Musk's word as gospel. " If a leader isn't willing to genuinely consider their team member's point of view, then they are no leader.

[@kebman]

@@ancientelevator9 A leader leads. The rest follows. No matter how you define a leader. ;) And clearly Musk has been right most of the time. That one time he was clearly wrong, and the window was burst, he was so cool about it, that I decided that I really want that car, no matter if the window broke! xD

[@ancientelevator9]

@@kebman I like the things I've heard from Elon Musk in interviews, but I've never talked to anyone that has worked directly for him. Musk aside, it's not always about being right or wrong, but also the impact those decisions have.

[@kebman]

@@ancientelevator9 Like sending cars and people into space? ;)