What breaks a smooth start?
Of course, innumerable things - one that I’ve experienced time and again is when no one is asking questions and there is a lack of full team participation. 1 or 2 team members leading the conversation and everyone nodding along.

If not corrected, this is expensive - rework and missed timelines cascading across the entire organization. Beyond the cost monetarily is the incalculable human cost. Projects that start this way often self propel into a loose network of siloed ICs whose day to day feels like a slog, adding yet another bucket of water onto the logs of their once passionate career…burnout.

I am finding myself in a really fun place, looking back on projects I’ve worked on and recalling what it felt like to be working on them. Something that has been coming up while doing this is how important the beginning phase was.

There was a particular sense of alignment amongst engineering, design, product and data that was really quite tangible. It came through as an excitement in the fact that we are all doing something together, this particular sense of being “in” this..together…made all the difference.

Outside of the felt sense, it was concrete and solid. The effects were that we were all closer - emotionally sure, but to the project itself outside of our domain. I and the other engs had a keen sense of where product & design were headed and knew what data needed. This meant that the inevitable shifts in product as the project developed were able to be responded to and in many ways predicted.

We were able to respond to changes in product and because we were intimately involved, the engineering lift was minimal. A 15 degree change in product, felt like a 15 degree change in engineering effort and didn’t create wasted work.

The flip side is when a 15 degree change in product is a 30 degree change in engineering. Throwing away code in this way is painful, not just as the writer but as a team, late nights are needed or deadlines get missed. As an individual this contributes to burnout and a lack of trust in the org. As a business, thrown away work is not only money, but the time that is to be put towards other things.

The issue isn’t that things change, we all know that it’s the only constant.
It’s in the voices that aren’t speaking, it’s in the people who aren’t in the room that should be. It’s in power, safety, trust, agency, care and shared perspective creating genuine, true collaboration all in service of the mission. The “soft” things, the human aspects of how, why and what we build is so important and when we enable minds and bodies to come together in service towards one thing, it’s simply magic and invaluable to business.

Successful companies are often really good at the why and the what. The how often gets overlooked. Not how to accomplish something. But how are we while doing the thing. How are we carrying ourselves as individuals and as a collective.

Some things to reflect on and share if you are open to it.
How are you carrying yourself as you go into your day and how is that affecting the collective that you will find yourself in? What would it mean to be more inclusive?