Crap Bag of Ideas
Where crazy concepts and cutting-edge solutions collide
If you are new to Leadership Letters, this is a periodic publication where I share insights into leadership qualities and challenges that are commonly encountered but not frequently discussed. Drawing from my experiences in the industry, working with leaders at prominent companies such as Apple, Google (#faang), and beyond, I aim to explore effective engineering leadership styles. My goal is to infuse a sense of enjoyment into technology, as it rightfully should be for all.
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In a team setting, we often discuss creating an open space for discussions, where everyone can bring their unique ideas and perspectives. But in reality, how much of that do you actually notice? A few representatives (often senior folks) who feel secure to bring up opinions, and the rest nod in silence. Most of the large teams I have been part of struggled with this issue at some point. The problem is sometimes less discussed and often tagged as 'Imposter Syndrome'. Many of us have experienced this at some point in our lives. Sitting here today, I feel fortunate because I always had to push myself in those situations. But just like we hopped over the underlying problem, in reality, we often move on thinking time is the only solution to this problem.
In this post, we are going to talk about an alternate solution that can bring every member of a team closer, creating an environment that fosters innovation, through simple proactive perseverance from the team lead. Often, this will be the 'Tech Lead', who can make drastic changes in this space, rather than the leader/manager of the team.
At Google, we affectionately call new employees 'Nooglers', and due to the vast array of internal tools and complex systems, it can take a while before an engineer can truly feel productive on their own. This experience holds true at other large organizations I've joined, like Apple. By extension, I am going to casually generalize this to all large tech companies. While feeling part of the bigger ecosystem can seem daunting and time-consuming, people tend to get up to speed relatively quickly with their own team's charter. However, even after all this, most of us don't feel confident enough to share our views.
Being on the receiving end of this, I was always on the lookout for what I could do to lower the barrier. When I got the chance, I implemented a solution, named it 'bag of crappy ideas'. Let's understand what it actually means. The core idea is to lower the entry barrier for opinions so that everyone can feel comfortable. 'Crappy’ ideas doesn't mean the ideas are bad and should be thrown away; it just creates a sense of openness. If Amazon had stuck to selling books, it would not have become one of the largest companies. We need to understand that no idea is perfect at inception; it's the team that accepts a raw thought process and nurtures it to build the next big thing!
But that's just half of the solution I implemented. How do you drive participation? This is where your perseverance comes into play. During your 1:1s, junior members might be more open to sharing their feelings and ideas. This is where you can persistently encourage them to contribute to the 'crappy ideas'. Remember, how you communicate here is the most important aspect. Using the same list as your repository of ideas can be a great signal for others. Reserve your inner engineer’s urge to immediately judge what they have to say. You might feel you are helping this person become a better engineer, but feedback has its own time and place.
At this stage, your goal is to uplift others to participate, not judge their ideas on the fly. For that, you can take a more systematic approach, such as scheduling regular sync to quickly go over ideas at a high level and putting your focus on improving the ideas rather than shooting them down. The benefits of investing your efforts in making everyone feel part of the team are exponential. Let's explore some of them:
Psychological Safety: People who contribute less in open discussions often feel unsafe and disconnected from the team, especially when we are facing an industry-wide reduction in force. As a leader, my urge to you is to step in and go the extra mile to make them feel like an integral part of the team.
Feeling Valued, Longer Retention: Everybody wants to work in an environment where they feel safe and valued. By inviting all ideas, you create a sense of control over what individuals are working on. A happy team naturally results in longer tenure. One of the biggest reasons for teams failing to meet expectations is continuous churn.
Development of the Whole Team: You might be the most knowledgeable, dedicated individual on the team, but you're also on your own growth trajectory. Learning is a core component of growth. By encouraging everyone to share their ideas and opinions, you can save yourself from having blind spots and often learn a whole new angle of looking at a problem.
Today, we discussed an approach to tackle the imposter syndrome problem that is very common in our tech industry. The sooner we can make our team members feel valued and safe, the better the team's performance will be. If you are a TL, try understanding the struggles your newer team members are facing. Sometimes it can range from being non-native speakers (written idea sharing is a good solution here) to feeling insecure or judged (structuring your feedback can be helpful). Once you comprehend the actual reason, you can effectively solve it and create a workplace where everyone can bring their whole selves to work!
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