I love the title of this 30-day #bloggingchallenge: hardcore edition. I'm all about hardcore honesty and vulnerability, and that's what this challenge is about. Here goes.

tl;dr My values are honesty, transparency, collaboration, and respect.

Values in the workplace

A source of frustration at my first software job was management creating unrealistic deadlines for the dev teams. We the developers would explain that the dates weren't possible, but nothing would change, and were told to "do our best". And so we did what most dev teams would do: cut corners on quality to get things "done".

So every week we would report our status was green—on target. But then when we finally got around to testing (this was before I led the switch to agile development, for those familiar), a ton of bugs were found, and so ultimately the deadline was missed.

I began to think that our values were the problem. A company with clear values can encourage employees to make decisions which are aligned with the company. Facebook's motto of "Move fast and break things" expresses a value of productivity above quality (which perhaps explains why everyone uses Facebook but no one loves it).

This is the list of values that I would create in my company. Each of the values reinforce and depend on the others. They appear at the top of my CV, and are a frequent topic of discussion in interviews. Feel free to use them in your own life, if they resonate to you.

Honesty

Important in any healthy relationship is honesty, which creates trust. In the story above, the dev team wasn't honest with the project managers. And the managers knew this so they didn't trust what the teams were saying. All the useless data was just a game to satisfy upper management, who were never told the truth about progress.

Honestly is also important in interpersonal relationships at work. Even though it's challenging to confront a colleague you have an issue with, it can transform a relationship from difficult to fulfilling.

Unfortunately, what often happens is that upset people complain to the manager and expect them to resolve it. This has happened to me: my manager called me into his office and said that someone had an issue with me. No details could be provided, and he wouldn't say what the exact issue was because that would divulge who filed the complaint. In any case, I needed to shape up otherwise there would be consequences.

Without context, it was difficult for me to understand what was the problematic behavior. I began to distrust my colleagues, who would rather complain about me to my boss in order to force a change, rather than have a dialogue to improve connection.

Outside of work, honesty is often connected with vulnerability, and is even more beautiful. I'll try to write something about vulnerability at a later time.

Transparency

For the last couple years at IBM, I worked in the project management office. I learned that the deadlines given to the dev team were fantasy deadlines to encourage the team members to work harder. Since developers always miss the dates by a couple months, this was taken into account for the planning. The actual deadlines were different and weren't shared with the team.

The result was suspicion, resentment, and lack of motivation.

Of course one of the reasons the team never made the deadlines was because the deadlines were never reasonable. If management had been transparent about the real deadlines, and tradeoffs were jointly made, then a feeling of "we're in this together" would have been possible, motivating everyone involved to put forth the effort to create a high quality product.

Collaboration

This value comes from my belief that we are stronger because of our differences. I want to work with people who are different from me because they see things that I don't. Together we can solve problems that I might find too difficult by myself.

I love working with others. Although I appreciate the flexibility which comes from freelance digital nomad work, I love the solidarity which can come from working on a team, bouncing ideas off of each other and helping each other out when stuck.

And collaboration becomes a joy when the fourth value is present.

Respect

Mutual respect ties everything together. It doesn't mean I agree or even like everyone (with diversity often comes conflict). However, if I see each person as contributing something valuable to the company, then I can respect them.

Sometimes this takes work. If there's someone that I don't get along with, can I get to a place where I can at least respect them? With respect as a basis, I am more likely to be honest and talk through the disagreements which arise, rather than pushing it on my manager.

Final thoughts

I've had these values for awhile, and if I created them again, I might change some things. Collaboration for me is now so obvious that I might change it to diversity. And if I considered these values outside of a work context, I would probably choose values like connection and empathy (in fact those are the needs I choose as most important in a nonviolent communication workshop I just finished).

What do you think about these values? Have you noticed these values (or their lack) appear in your office? What are the values in your workplace?

♥️ shawn.