On the afternoon of November 29th, we had Luiz Faias Jr., technology director at Bluesoft, at the front of the stage at Agile Day 2010 Porto Alegre, sharing in his presentation the concepts and ideas he has been reflecting on and applying to create a learning environment!
The presentation started at 2:30 PM with several quick questions, which he soon admitted were just a trick to get people to raise their hands and wake up! A good start to mobilize the audience and begin the dynamics of our learning!
According to him, a team and its lack of motivation can motivate itself, but this problem isn’t just theirs, and if you’re one of the most interested in this, whether you’re a manager or not (as was his case and André Farias’), you have to find a way! Bluesoft’s way was to find the right people, foster good ideas, create a learning moment focused on interactive knowledge sharing among other things that resulted today in more than 100 presentations and a blog that further enriches the community.
According to him, the idea for this environment started with the company’s creation and was inspired by their agile vision, his and André’s, even before they really knew this word. After studying agility in depth, aligning some concepts promoted by Ricardo Semler, Google concepts, and the Toyota way, changing how to treat each team member as adults and professionals, growth prevailed!
The work environment must inspire trust! At this moment, Luiz exemplified the gains in promoting a culture of trust and how it encourages learning. At Toyota, it’s not because no one saw that something shouldn’t be corrected; it’s reported that on an employee’s first day on the assembly line, after making an error that could have generated a certain loss, that employee was congratulated for the initiative to present it on their first day, even considering a possible dismissal on their first day. According to Luiz, one shouldn’t foster a merit culture based on not making mistakes, or always pat your colleagues on the head; you must find balance and create an environment where problems become opportunities for improvement.
A work environment focused on learning must keep everyone motivated and prone to walk in the same direction. Companies seek profit, long-term success, contributing to society, excellence, and quality; just as the people who work there aim for better salaries, professional growth, recognition, a good workplace, and working on something meaningful. Both want to prosper, and if they’re navigating toward a common point, everyone will get there faster! For this, there must be mutual trust; each must believe the other will do everything to help achieve these goals.
But not everyone can get used to this type of thinking, so for him, there are some important qualities that support this behavior. The first is initiative. Any action is achieved through movement, not inertia, so a good partner to achieve mutual goals must have the initiative to present their ideas, to get involved in others’ ideas, to effectively participate in building products and a better environment. Next, Luiz talked about the need to have passion for what you do; a good partner in the search unconditionally for something has fun while doing it.
A good member for this team must also seek excellence every day. At this point, there was a caveat with unanimous agreement: working a lot doesn’t mean practicing a lot in pursuit of excellence; you might be repeating something wrong all the time. Correct practice leads to perfection. Working well isn’t working more, but working better!
I heard from one of my technical leaders, and I completely agree, that WORK MUST BE MOTIVATING, either it motivates you, or you motivate it; if neither happens, look for a new one! Don’t wait for someone to come with a genius idea that will change your work; help build it.
To work on ideas, Luiz presented the concepts of Hansei and Kaizen! Hansei is deep reflection to identify a problem, and Kaizen are initiatives to improve continuously. According to him, these should be practiced in retrospectives regarding new ideas or old problems, and whenever there’s an initiative to point out a solution supported by the team, someone should implement it and constantly facilitate its monitoring, because ideas shouldn’t be wasted!
A good member for this team must be able to adapt easily; these guys must or want to be polyglots. For Luiz, self-labeling as a Java developer can happen, but no one should see themselves as immutable. This member likes to teach and usually doesn’t like just giving answers; they ask questions to others until they discover for themselves! Still water rots; make knowledge circulate…
Bluesoft, doing its part in this synergy, fostered a learning environment. First, creating a quality library with a series of physical and virtual books so everyone has access; then stimulating reading and sharing this knowledge. According to him, there’s always someone studying or reading one of the books to share this knowledge.
It’s important to mention some of the references he provided:
Online Library:
- Safari Books Online: http://safaribookshelf.com/ – $22.99 to access 10 books per month.
- Audible.com: http://www.audible.com/ – $22.95 for two audiobooks per month.
- Peepcode Screencasts: http://peepcode.com/ – $12 to download one screencast or $199 to see all for a year.
- Railscasts: http://railscasts.com/ – Free.
- AkitaOnRails
Other great strategies are reading or study groups, whether each person reads their own or everyone reads the same; pair programming; dojos… The important thing is to debate and learn! No knowledge islands!
The best way to learn is by doing! So always, after you listen to many podcasts, make your own! After you read a blog, make your own! Participating in events is great, but passing on the knowledge about what you saw to others is even better! This process also makes everyone improve their attention because they’ll have to teach!
Participate in communities! We’ve already gained so much daily from communities, and I think we should give something back. We have to move the machine; everyone helps us grow, and what do we do in return? Participate! Go to GUJ and ask some questions instead of giving some answers so good documents are generated; contribute intellectually or financially to Wikipedia; be a committer to some framework.
Planning and retrospectives. For Luiz, growth should involve the whole team and not just work for him, so act like a coach, not an instructor!
Yokoten, everyone must seek a form of development; all seeds are equal in their origin but can become different trees. Everything must be understood and improved, not just copied! You have to understand the principles, not just the practices! The black cat ritual was cited; sometimes we repeat some practices without knowing why, so there’s no point in tying up the cat that didn’t need to be there!
Not everyone adapts; if your team wants to evolve, if everyone wants to improve, then everyone must look for ways to improve; if not, everyone won’t get there!
Finally, Luiz concluded with a statement of concepts I strongly believe in: either you pay now, or you’ll pay later! This incentive format where the company supports the creation and growth of this learning culture is not only ideal but also the most favorable for professional and company growth. Investing money in this increases technical quality and improves bonds of trust and mutual respect.
THANKS, LUIZ AND ANDRÉ… for another company that encourages good practices and the desire to grow in our market.
Series Navigation
- Previous: Part 1 - Klaus Wuestefeld on Quality vs. Speed
- Current: Part 2 - Luiz Faias Jr. on Building a Learning Culture
- Next: Part 3 - Paulo Caroli on Software Production Line
- Complete series: Agile Day 2010 Series