Compassion is the Foundation

“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

To encourage our colleagues to view each other as collaborators rather than competitors; allies rather than enemies is to create an environment where innovation and productivity can thrive. Every team I’ve been on has at one point or another had the mentality that business was the enemy, and that they just don’t understand. This has done more harm than good in every case. The only way to truly gain understanding between people is to engage in discourse. Including ‘business’ in the conversations and the processes of product development creates that discourse. The Agile Manifesto, whether intentionally or not, looks to dismantle the silos that cause distance, and promotes the unification of business and tech to ensure that what the teams are building truly brings value. When business and tech work together, as a unified front, they become a more full body that is capable of even more than they could imagine. They are like the Power Rangers turning into a Megazord. Not only are we able to move quickly and care for each other better, but we can also utilize our different perspectives and skill sets to experiment effectively and deliver greater value to our customers. 

Working together promotes clarity:

The first and most apparent benefit people see from this principle is that by working together daily, we can be more transparent about what is expected and what is being done. This is a huge benefit as we waste less time doing what wasn’t asked and are less frustrated by not getting what we want. When business stakeholders are highly reachable, and provide feedback daily, either directly or through a Product Owner type person, the development team can move quickly and with greater certainty because there is less guessing and more conversation. 

Working together promotes compassion* 

We can and should share goals, challenges, and successes. By working together daily, we learn to see each other as a part of the whole, rather than as pieces of a disjointed body. When we can have compassion, we realize that our mission is bigger than ourselves, meaning that I must care for your success as much as my own. In his book, Give and Take, Adam Grant states that those who are “Givers” are the most successful long-term. We need to be able to bridge gaps and give more than 50% of the deal and instead be willing to give 100% of ourselves so that others may be better off and be able to give of themselves as well.

But being compassionate is not just something we should do to benefit the business. We are all living our own lives, with our challenges, both inside and outside the work environment. My teams start every day with a simple Red, Yellow, and Green check-in. Admittedly this is a strategy inspired by what the folks at Reboot do. We start the day by checking in with ourselves, offering a moment of introspection, providing a window into ourselves to the rest of the team, and building trust so that we can feel safe showing up fully at work. When someone is red, I automatically know that the right response, if they are defensive or underproductive that day, is to show them grace and reach out to see how they are doing. It allows us to see the human first and the work second. To quote Jerry Colonna of Reboot, “All beings want love, safety, and belonging.” Our work is not divorced from that. It isn’t our sole source of it either. Ultimately, work is work, and to make more of it than it should be can cause much bigger problems. But we’re all in this together. When we know each other as people and not as obstacles, we can lower our guard and listen to each other more deeply. It’s been said that love is inefficient, and that may not make for the best burndown charts, but it does make for teams that jell together, and colleagues that can reintegrate with their families after work in a more resourced way. 

When we peer deeper into the Agile Manifesto we can see that it’s much more profound than it appears on the surface. The values and principles, on their face, provide great value that you can use as a foundation for successful agility. But peel back the layers, just like with your colleagues, and our Zord friends, and you’ll see that each one has more to offer than what is presented. 

* an earlier version of this article used the term empathy. A helpful reader pointed out that compassion is a much better term and a much better posture to hold. Compassion allows space for those to feel their emotions, without others having to take their emotions on themselves. Compassion better places us in a position to be helpful and to take action rather than to be in the same emotional state as a form of coping. More on that here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rasmushougaard/2020/07/08/four-reasons-why-compassion-is-better-for-humanity-than-empathy/?sh=105a409dd6f9