Prioritize Your Values
What do the engineers on your team value? How about the designers you work with? And the product managers, what target are they aiming at? Can you confidently state the values for each group or do you come up with different answers for each team? If so, you have a recipe for conflict. In fact, you may already be experiencing tension between teams and wondering why.
In our search for the source of friction, we often land on the easy, but the wrong answer — people and personalities. “That person is hard to work with” or “that teams’ leadership is clueless.” Sure, sometimes a rotten apple can spoil the barrel, but far more often, it’s the environment. Culture is the stage where the play of work is performed.
The foundation of culture is shared values. Values act as an invisible hand, coloring how we view any situation and shaping our response, but it’s not as simple as coming together around a few cherished notions. Consider two values most people desire — security and freedom. Do they ever conflict? When they do, which wins? Do we weigh them differently in different circumstances? Of course we do! As threats loom larger, with the barbarians at the gate, most will trade-off a bit of freedom for enhanced security. Values aren’t as fixed as we typically think.
As we can see with the above example, agreeing on what matters isn’t enough. Even if everyone espouses the values, we still need to align on the priority of the values themselves. Let’s see how might this play out on a software team.
Everyone wants to build something that user’s use and love. However, a product manager may view market share as the bullseye, while a designer could aim for elegance, and meanwhile, an engineer is focused on long term architecture. Each of these unspoken targets shape every interaction and decision as we build our product. Are market share, elegance, and a thoughtful architecture important? Yes. In equal parts, at equal times? Of course not.
The way ahead, as usual, is with candid conversation. A team must take the time to agree on what matters, right now. The trade-offs need to be explicit, so every emergent decision can be made in a way consistent with what matters now. In this process, you may realize that for a certain time, or phase of the product lifestyle, how you prioritize what matters shifts. Values may be eternal, but which is on the top of the ladder at a given time is surprisingly dynamic.
If you don’t agree on what you value most, at this time, for this problem, on this team — you’ll find your oars in the water, but out of sync, splashing about. Everyone getting wet, but off a few degrees in your heading and not moving as fast as you could. Don’t just agree on what matters, agree on what matters now, and prioritize your values.
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