Innovation or the lack of: A cultural problem that can be fix

WIP chapter on my new book about flat team structures

An innovative culture should not distinguish between operations and invention.

Taking risks during good and bad times involves discipline.

Developers aim to bring about change, testers strive for risk reduction, and operators seek stability. Combining these functions into a continuous process allows innovation to be achieved.

Trust is an essential ingredient in a successful team.

Trust involves believing your colleagues have good intentions and will not harm you. When there is trust, team members can be open about their mistakes and weaknesses without fear of judgment.

Healthy teams engage in ideological conflict, knowing feedback is not meant to harm but to improve. Rather than avoiding conflict, high-performing teams seek it out. Teams hold each other accountable to high-performance standards.

Publish team goals and standards and review processes; to break silos.

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Legacy Organizations are obsessed with measurement, often using it as a form of control—to find and punish weak performance.

Individuals know their peers will call them out if their poor performance hurts the team. They can't handle the surprises we face every day, and worse, they'll never surprise us with an unexpected breakthrough. This brings us to one of the most important things leaders and teams need to internalize: our way of working is made up.

The focus is on team results rather than individual milestones, and team members call each other out if poor performance harms the team. Over Bloated structures with many layers of management are counterproductive to innovation. Knowledge work is an individual effort that includes collaboration.

Trusting individuals to recognize and pursue opportunities is how to move forward and innovate.

We must establish trust within our teams and explore new working methods to move forward. Many of us resist change, which presents a challenge.

Every team member should feel included, regardless of their location. Trust is essential for any successful team, especially virtual ones.

Bureaucracies are no match for complexity.

Holding someone hostage does not lead to peak performance. The bottom line is that leadership doesn't trust anyone.