Don’t improve things. That’s all it takes.
Poor culture is the default state of any team.
It takes literally 0 effort to build a poor culture.
With that 0 effort your team will do their best to work around the little problems that arise, accumulating drags on their effectiveness.
“I’d like to talk to Team A about the design, I don’t think we have it right here.”
“No, you can’t talk to Team A.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s not what we do here.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll write some very difficult to maintain code to work around the fact that we have this dysfunction.”
It’s usually not so consciously stated.
Or,
“Our PRs sit in review for an average of two weeks. Maybe we could focus on getting them out the door.”
“No, we have sprint goals to hit. There isn’t time.”
“But nothing is shipping. We’re adding PRs faster than they’re being reviewed.”
“We’ll change the definition of done to account for it.”
You see the toll it takes on people. Sometimes it manifests as angry outbursts. For others it’s the hopeless look in their eyes, the resignation that this is as good as it gets.
Don’t do this to your people.
If you want to prevent your people losing their purpose and hope, go try to accomplish work in the system you created. Feel what your people feel. You need the feedback if you’re going to try to avoid this default state.
