EP54 - Team, Communication and Relationships. With Federico Panini, Equity Partner Product & Technology (hlpy)
On other platforms: Web, Apple Podcast, YouTube.
The episode is in Italian, below my takeaway from the chat.
Communication and relationships are super important both inside the team and with external stakeholders as well. That's what we discussed with Federico Panini, Equity Partner Product & Technology at hlpy. Federico highlighted the fact that those aspects are often undervalued in companies and a weak point, so how to communicate at best?
- Be explicit: we should avoid to assume anything, and always set explicit expectations. A concrete example? At the end of a meeting always set the outcomes.
- Emphasis on accountability: we should make team members fully accountable for projects and decisions, since this will make the alignment with stakeholders easier and create a direct line with the owner of the decision.
Let's say, sometimes, uh, involving the person directly concerned or, let's say, the peer closest to whoever will then go on to develop the feature helps avoid losing this kind of information, and also helps create accountability.
There is one thing to keep in mind, though: effective communication should be part of the culture and habit of the team. The reason is that people come and go, but culture won't change and new team members will adapt to it.
Whether large or small, it's a living entity that has its own identity, and lives within a certain ecosystem.
How to establish such culture? make strong communication a habit and give accountability to people to create trust.
What happens when something goes wrong? Should be just "hide" from the failure? Of course not, we should do the opposite! We have to be vocal and address the incident, since it is important to discuss and be clear with stakeholders to find a root cause and a solution together.
How to measure if communication and relationships are effective?
A first step can be regular 1:1s with the people of the team to establish a very clear and transparent relationship, where trust is fundamental. What is important is to make sure that people raise problems that should be addressed.
This cannot scale, so what to do when the company is too big? Regular 1:1s can still be effective, but it will be more "hierarchical": I will hear from my reports, that will hear from their reports, that... Well, I guess you got the idea. And when that is not enough, a good company-wide survey can help fill the gaps.
An advice Federico would give to the young self: try to reason more on decisions instead of rush on them.
That's it, see you at the next episode!