Team Norms
Welcome to the team norms document for <my org>. This document refers to us collectively, sometimes to you the reader, and sometimes to the leadership layer. Depending on your place in the organization, you may have multiple expectations from this document or for you in it. This is not my document. This is our document. You have suggestion rights, and you may use them. Keep in mind that, I will maintain ownership of this doc and may show up in your calendar to talk with you at length so that I can understand your suggestions.
This document is not finished, and is never finished.
The work we do requires that we all act as responsible people, and that we’re able to trust one another. Behave as if that is true in all things, big and small. Escalate politely if it isn’t.Hierarchy
This is a group of peers, mentors, and mentees. It has a hierarchy anyway.
Our hierarchy exists primarily to divide work up to persons with aptitudes and interests aligned to that work. That does not mean that we will pretend it’s all collegiate fun and no one is anyone’s boss. You shouldn’t feel hassled by the fact that you report to someone, but if we pretend that you don’t, all of the power dynamics inherent in that fact become hidden.
Let’s keep those dynamics out on the table where they can be referred to as needed. Power dynamics matter. They influence what we say and do, they influence how we respond to ideas or requests, and they influence the feedback we give and receive. It is always OK to mention them as part of any of those things. Make the subtext into context and it loses much of its unearned power. Do not insist that people who need your approval are always free to say whatever they want. Prove that it’s true, and they will. Fail them once and you'll never get another chance.
Inclusivity
This is the part where I say something about how more diverse teams build better products, and how diversity of backgrounds, identities, and opinions leads to better decisions. That is all true. However, in this organization we value diversity and inclusivity because that is the morally and ethically correct thing to do. That it benefits us, our customers, and the company is nice. We will do it regardless of how true that is. If inclusivity fails to benefit us, our customers, or the company, we will seek to realign that conflict rather than cease being inclusive. If you have a concern with this, feel free to discuss it with your lead, or just bring it straight to me. I’ll be happy to help you understand.
We support each other
If you have a payroll execution problem (that’s “mechanics of being paid,” not “compensation plan”), it’s expected that your lead treats it as a top priority. If you have a time off/emergency problem, it’s expected that your team treats covering it as a top priority. If you need to escalate something to a lead or their lead and need to stomp on a meeting, it’s expected that you will do so and they will make time or work out a time with you. Trust batteries require recharging, and knowing that we all have each other’s backs is how we keep those batteries trickle-charging at all times.
Working Hours
We do not care about your working hours for their own sake. We will not care about your working hours for their own sake.
We do care, immensely, about your ability to communicate with your peers/customers and their ability to communicate with you. We care about you getting your work done, and people who depend on you for getting their own work done. If your working hours don’t conflict with that, then they’re OK. Approach this as if it’s an important, key part of being successful here, because it is, and seek consensus with yourself, your peers, and your lead.
It’s up to all of us to keep “respecting people’s working hours (modulo emergencies)” as a shared norm. What’s that mean? It means unless you’re working on an emergency, or are doing so to flex your time elsewhere, you shouldn’t be working late.
Please do not send non-emergency emails or chats late. It encourages other people to work late to respond, just out of politeness if nothing else. This goes on for a while and suddenly we’re responding to chat at 3AM because that’s what people expect. Gross! Let us not do that. If you have something you’ve got to type out, well, that’s the way the brain works sometimes. Scheduled send is your friend. Send the email or chat message off during the next normal working hours.
The counterpoint is: please do not make a habit of working late and using scheduled send to hide it.
Out of Office
It's not anyone’s business why you’re not working today, modulo that there are boundaries where HR/Legal says it has to be someone else’s business when it’s multiple days. Aside from those boundaries, if you’re taking the day to watch the kids, go to the doctor, buy a car, or sit on the porch and contemplate your infinite being, that’s all fine.
Whatever it is, it’s fine.
Don’t tell us.
Don’t ask people about it (again, outside of HR/Legal boundaries).
Sending a message to <internal comms> and setting your <internal messaging> status to an OoO note is sufficient notification. Block your calendar if you have time, and keep Workday accurate. We understand that many of you will have lots of societal pressure built-up about saying why you’re out and apologizing about it. Please do not. If you want to share something you were/are doing, that’s of course fantastic. What we’re avoiding is the implication that you have to justify your OoO to the team. This norm only works if we all stick to it. Please accept that little bit of discomfort you feel not explaining your absence as your personal contribution to an environment where people don’t feel the need to explain that they have a life and sometimes it interferes with work.
Meetings
There are four types of meetings:
Just hanging out - This would be a wacky thing pre-covid, but it’s OK now to just have a meeting with some people to chit-chat. If someone invites you to a hangout meeting, you are 100% empowered to decline without explanation. Don’t go bugging people to accept them.
Announcements - This is a meeting for big time announcements and possibly immediate Q&A. An invite is expected to be accepted and you’re expected to show up, modulo time off and working hours.
Decisions - This is a meeting where someone will make a decision. Other people are there to influence or inform that decision. If you’re optional, feel free to not show. If you’re mandatory, please do attend. If you are going into a decision meeting and the deciding person is not there, and has not sent someone to represent them who will make the decision, the default and correct thing to do is reschedule that meeting. Decision meetings do not happen without the ability to make a decision.
Discussion - This is a meeting where we are going to discuss something. Being optional or mandatory on the invite isn’t very informative. Most of the “should I go or not” comes from “are you concerned that the discussion will lead towards decisions you disagree with if you do not attend?” It is always appropriate to wait for a break in the meeting flow, and ask “does anyone expect an opinion from me in this meeting?” and if the answer is “no,” and if you don’t feel the need to be there, leave. It is OK to leave a meeting you don’t think benefits you or benefits from you being there.
Meetings do not self-justify. But also, don’t be the person constantly complaining about meetings. Find a balance. While trying to do so, remember that any decent meeting has someone running it, someone in charge of a decision (if it’s a decision meeting), and if it was complex or large, it had an agenda well before it was scheduled to begin.
“Someone in charge of a decision” does not mean “a manager/lead.” It means someone informed to make the decision. That may well be you.
Virtual Meeting Expectations
Unless you are presenting, we have no expectation that your camera remains on. If you’re presenting internally and don’t want your camera on, I will usually defer to you. We have to work with partner teams that may have different norms, so we cannot set an absolute here, but within our team, cameras are great for empathic or emotional communication, but not a requirement for all communication. For many people, it’s mentally taxing to see your face reflected back at you constantly, and we’d rather you spend those mental cycles and daily willpower getting things done, and having enough left for yourself at the end of the work day.
Focus time
Feel free to book focus time onto your calendar. Please ask people to treat it seriously. Please direct them to your lead if they make a habit of not treating it seriously. We recognize Wednesday as a standard day for this, we encourage you to expand upon that if you need to. Please don’t let more than half your week become blocked-out focus time, and if you’re in a lead or coordinating role, it probably needs to be 1.5 days or less. You are encouraged to discuss coordinating “no meeting days” as focus time inside your teams and working groups, but please get peer and lead input before finalizing a decision.
Development Expenses
The guidelines we have in <Internal Documentation> hold true for our organization, but we want to be explicitly clear that using them to their fullest is good, proper, and correct. We will bias towards “yes” for things in this category, and not “are you sure you really need that?” That bias is subject to review if it feels like it’s being abused.
Organizational Cynicism
We reject organizational cynicism at all times, and use a broad definition of the term to do so. That doesn’t mean “don’t act like nothing is cool.” Organizational cynicism is much worse than that. Organizational cynicism is “We have an approval gate on that but it’s just a 100% rubber stamp because no one has time.” It’s “There’s probably no value in this workflow, but everyone expects us to do it.” Things like that will strangle an organization, ruin its reputation, burn out its people, and exhaust its partners’ goodwill. At all times we seek to be an organization that deals with itself and its neighbors honestly.
That honesty can be very difficult. For example, it's never easy to tell someone that you’d like to help but you’re resource constrained and rather than giving them some (insufficient) attention, you’re focusing on things that are more important. It may well be correct though for the more important thing, for yourself, and even for the less important effort that is disappointed by the decision.
A good way to think about this is that the company collectively decides where to put resources (people, time, money, etc). The company is never completely right, and frequently quite wrong, so we flex and make our own decisions too. The combination of those is how we collectively decide what’s important. It’s good to stand by those decisions. It’s also good, when there’s time, to say “are we sure that’s still the right decision?”
Yes, that’s contradictory. Sorry. (Not sorry.)
What do we do when we don’t follow the norm?
This is a document about our collective cultural norms. We’ll find other ones we want to document, either to fix something that isn’t working, or canonicalize something we like. While these norms will change over time, our default should be to resist change, and course-correct acting outside them.
Your key phrase is: “We don’t do that here.” There’s no judgement made or implied. Point out that that isn’t how we do things here, and move on. If someone insists on it, then talk with them separately or bring it up with their leads. Escalate that if necessary, but it shouldn’t be.
For the most part, we’re asking people to be their honest self. Where we aren’t doing that, we’re asking them to make space for the people they work with to feel free to be their own honest selves. In both cases, politely and calmly reminding someone of our culture’s expectations is helping all of us, and is a good thing to do. The best response to being reminded of the norms is “Thank you” and moving on.
OK, but what if it’s my Lead acting outside the norms?
“We don’t do that here.”
But power structures can make that difficult. It’s OK to not rush to be the person saying it if it’s difficult for you. It’s OK to do that in private, or ask someone else to do it if that’s easier. It’s important that it happens, but that happening can come later if need be. The goal is to remind us of our norms, not to make you individually accountable for enforcing them.