Core belief in effective product development culture.
Effective product development cultures are more Theory Y than Theory X.
Back in the 1950s/1960s, Douglas McGregor created the idea of Theory X vs Theory Y for workforce motivation.
Theory X assumes workers are selfish, lazy, dumb, and work only for their paycheck. Therefore, management is all about rewards and punishment, that is, extrinsic motivation.
Theory Y assumes workers enjoy their work, are motivated, intelligent, and trustworthy. Therefore, management is more about coaching and removing obstacles to intrinsic motivation.
Effective product development cultures are more Theory Y than Theory X.
Trusting people is about trusting their intent and their competence.
Trusting people has two parts:
- Do you trust their intentions?
- Do you trust their ability to do what they intend?
Effective product development cultures have the following default assumptions:
- People have good intentions (if the appropriate context is made available);
- People are competent (or at least have the capability of acquiring competence given the right support) (AKA growth mindset).
Transparency and autonomy are natural consequences of trusting people.
If you believe that people have good intentions (if the appropriate context is made available), then you will take the effort to increase transparency to ensure the appropriate context is available.
If you believe that people are competent, then delegating authority and responsibility seems an obvious way to scale up impact.
Transparency and autonomy are natural consequences of trusting people.
Lack of transparency and micromanagement are natural consequences of not trusting people.
If you don’t believe people have good intentions, you will hide information to maintain advantage and ensure your better intentions win. You will avoid allowing for any autonomy to prevent bad outcomes from being pursued.
If you don’t believe people are competent, you will hide information because “they can’t handle it”. You will avoid autonomy because you need to keep a close eye on things to prevent bad outcomes due to incompetence.
Lack of transparency and micromanagement are natural consequences of not trusting people.
Trust is a natural consequence of transparency and regular, repeated delivery.
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey introduced the idea of an emotional bank account. You can deposit trust into this account by doing trustworthy things (e.g., kindness, honesty, keeping commitments, etc.). This would allow you to be forgiven when you act in a way that withdraws trust (e.g., not being kind, not entirely being honest, missing commitments, etc.).
Acts of transparency deposit trust. When leaders are up front and candid about context, good and bad, trust in them is a natural consequence. When team members are transparent about status, good and bad, trust in them is a natural consequence.
Regular, repeated delivery deposits trust. It is very difficult to not trust that people and teams can deliver if they are regularly providing evidence of delivery.
Trust is a natural consequence of transparency and regular, repeated delivery.
A phrase I like that covers both transparency and regular, repeated delivery is “don’t go dark”.
Trusting people means the default explanation for undesired behaviour is not individual motivation or ability.
Crucial Learning (originally Vital Smarts) has a model called Six Sources of Influence:
Trusting people means that your default assumption is that the problem is not individual motivation nor inability to learn but more likely to be lack of context, lack of support, lack of tooling, bad incentives, etc.
References
- Theory X vs Theory Y is from The Human Side of Human Enterprise by Douglas McGregor;
- “Growth mindset” is from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck;
- The “emotional bank account” or “trust account” concept is from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People;
- I learned it from the Extreme Programming community but “don’t go dark” is originally from Dynamics of Software Development by Jim McCarthy;
- “Six Sources of Influence” is from Influencer
