My 20 cents to the 101s

One of the many efficient ways to build an experienced team is through feedbacks. The agile principle is about feedbacks; XP works with feedbacks all the time; discovering new features, delivering software or building products is about feedbacks; customer obsession (by amazon) is about feedbacks. Most of the time, we are working with feedbacks.

The time had passed when the companies were doing feedbacks cycles per quarter or half-year with its employees. Many things are changing all the time every day. The low frequency could be a problem because we are waiting too much to do some action, maybe it is too late in some cases.

Keeping the people motivated and helping them achieving your goals is crucial to make the company goals too. Developing software is about people, so we should take care of our people at the end of the day.

I have worked with a high cadence of 101s; usually, the interval is one week, but it depends on the team size.

It’s fascinating when you see the team asking to do 101s because after you start, you don’t want to stop anymore. Someones needs more than others, and the challenges are different.

There are many ways to do 101s; you need to figure out what fits your organization. Some places you need to be more like a mentor, other places you need to be more like a commander, there are teams with low maturity, and there are others with high sophistication.

First of all, it is better if we know where we are going, what are the company goals, what the expectations are. Each person has specific gaps that could be improved. The leader should identify those gaps based on company goals or principles.

Culture

In my case, the company is always investing in its culture, and this is very important for us. In the first part of the 101, the approach is to talk about behaviors, and believe me; this is the most challenging part at all! Each person has some blocks that could limit your actions some times. It could be worse, like preventing them from advancing in their professional career. The leader should work to help to unblock this behavior, and this work takes time, persistence and patience, it is tough to do.

Give improvement feedback to your teammate could be a difficult task for someone. Now the leader has a choice to do, he can allow this behavior in your team, or he can realize that action will bring some consequences like lack of ownership. If you see something that is wrong or not good for the product, and choose to do nothing, you are allowing low standards.

Incentive people to do improvement feedback to another person is the expected behavior to achieve the self-organized team.

There are a lot of behaviors the leader could help like: self-management, taking initiative, critical reflection, decision making, problem-solving, assuming responsibilities, learning from mistakes, etc. The list is very long, and we can discuss it for a long time.

Increase skills

I love people that are always improving your skills, what company doesn’t like that? So, the second part of the 101 is about studying. The leader should encourage the search for learning, and could help to build this path of learning.

The leader could identify the person needs and goals to cross with the company goals. He can suggest technologies, books, POCs, etc. Each one has its own pace and investment in learning, but the most important is having progress.

Day by day

Also, it is essential to talk about the last week. What are the difficulties encountered in solving the tasks? What are your concerns about the project? Are you stuck in some problem? Are you good?

The goal here is to help unblock situations, support the team and understand what is going on. It is not a status report; if there is no problem, there is no action to do.

Summing up

If you want to have the answers to your problems, you will not find it here, the idea is to share experience, and you should find the solutions to your questions. I’m just bringing some concepts and principles that can direct us to a better place.

The goal here is about choices; every single day, we made millions of choices. We are continually changing, and we are turning into something better or something worse by the options we choose. Deeply we know what is the good choice because when we are happy, we are fair to others, and when we are unhappy, we are unfair to others.

So your choice can impact your evolution and also the way you relate to others.

Look at the image and think about where you are going.