Communication Cadence: Lessons from Lopp

What makes a good team? Communication. How best should one communicate with your team? I had the fortune of seeing Michael Lopp present at the recent Atlassian Summit. He is best known for his blog, "Rands in repose" which is a great commentary on the art of team.

Here's what he had to say. Most of this is written from my perspective as a team lead. Lopp says, "lead" is a much nicer word than "manager" since it's just nicer to know you have a leader as opposed to someone who manages you. Just semantics? I think not. I agree with Lopp.

1:1s

Every week, 30 minutes at least, no matter what.

• How can you have 30 minute 1:1s with your team if you lead 90 people? Keep teams small.
• Responsibility of the lead to be responsible for their people.
• Assume that your team has something to teach you.
• Get in with three prepped points, a performance review, or talk about what the latest disaster (or challenge!) is.
• You are having conversations of significance. You need an early warning system - to have flags that come up when you hear concerning comments from your team.

Staff meetings

• Every week, on monday, no matter what, 90 minutes.
• Sacred time to debate the strategy of the crew/company.
• Expected yield: alignment.

Hallway walk.

• Once a week. Practice random acts of communication.
• Expected yield is coming to know the zeitgeist, "the spirit or will of the people".

❄ + ∞ = WTF

• Every person is a precious unique snowflake.
• They also can present you with an infinite number of responses, approaches, thoughts, perception.
• As a lead, this can lead to many WTF moments.
• The sooner you embrace this the better.

Your job is to listen. Get on with it.