How to overcome the 'blah, blah, blah' when searching for and developing the right employees for your software development company?
It's quite straightforward - although it isn't:
I assume that there is widespread agreement that we need to bring, or develop a lot more skills as software developers than just creating (individually, ourselves) great software pieces.
When we act as part of a group or a company, it's not just about making software. It's also about making our people great, creating great teams, who see themselves as successful and thrive.
So what is this 'blah, blah, blah'?
You just read something of it: "teams [...] see themselves as successful and thrive".
Other examples are "No alpha leaders, no beta teams", "see success as the result of teamwork", "giving constructive feedback", "lead juniors and intermediates", "creating a safe space for all employees", and furthermore.
Don't get me wrong: I totally agree with this 'blah, blah, blah', because it doesn’t come from nowhere - there are good intentions behind it.
But can we overcome this 'blah, blah, blah' to really practice what we preach - not just talking about it?
From my perspective it is all about focus.
If you want to really change or do something, you have to have it in your focus. This means to have it on your day-to-day agenda. And if you want to do or change something in a group or company, all those people have to bring attention to it.
But how to put it there?
I guess there are two big levers:
1st: Take care of the critical points where the switches are made.
These points can be:
/ What are your true, applied(!) criteria for evaluating your employees' performance?
/ To whom do you delegate responsibility?
/ Who do you promote & who do you hire?
Be honest!
2nd: Bring it regularly to (everyones) attention in everyday life
Beside these critical points, you need to keep the topics in the mind of the people. And for this you have to drive the conversation in the direction of these topics. There are different ways for this.
One might be to create some measurements: you can put up a kind of performance dashboard with a KPI value - like you probably already do with your margin, turnover or other financial parameters, or with a burndown chart or something similar to measure your sprint performance (i.e. story point output or something). You need to find an indicator to represent the fulfilment of your topics.
Another way might be to ask other people regularly about the important topics. In your Dailys, your status updates, or some steering meetings, ask the important questions - e.g. for your team health, not just whether everyone is on time and working.
To condense these few sentences:
It is all about focus - and the focus needs to be set by people who lead (in whatever position)!
It's that easy - isn't it?
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