The Creaking Noises

We tend to ignore the noisiest person in our team or organization. What if not listening to them versus ignoring them is higher detrimental opportunity cost.

Don’t dismiss or ignore the people who make the most noise on your teams. The most effective signals of trouble or issues will come from these creaking noises.

The challenge is that we are trained to either dismiss or ignore the most noisy elements in our teams. Why? Because deriving signals from that noise is difficult; additionally, often times they point to meta issues that can’t be solved easily.

Recall:

• A time you had an engineer who dismissed every solution as “this is dumb and not going to work”.

• A time when that one manager whose default setting is reacting to every change as “why are we doing this process… we need less process”.

• A time when a leader dismissed every proposed framework because it didn’t address EVERY problem they want to address.

• A time when someone is constantly dismissive in every all hands “this won’t change anything”.

• A time when certain rank and file keep blaming leadership for every failure, whether true or not.

In all of these moments, my hypothesis is that there are three things happening:

• A team member who is burned out by the constant change that isn’t going anywhere.

• That team member is struggling to find the words to voice their opinion or point properly.

• So, they are leveraging the thing that they can do which in their mind is the right thing to do - make noise.

As Technical Program Managers, we constantly have a finger on the pulse of a number cross-functional teams. So, we either see or face this noise on a regular basis. So, how do you suss out the signal from the noise?

• A 1:1 conversation over public discussion.

• Give them a chance to let their thoughts flow freely.

• Listen more than talking. Be curious.

• Listen and cut through their emotions and find the little nuggets of facts and tangible problems.

• Ask them for their solutions and ideas to the tangible problems.

• Always follow-up and keep in touch.

You will be surprised how often I have seen this noise be treated as a hindrance to progress, an annoyance, not a team player. More often than not, it’s a signal struggling to transmit itself correctly.

💡A noise that is not given space or heard or addressed will eventually become what we fear, noise. However, some noise is truly just someone being the disruptive asshole*. Those voices need to be actively managed and stamped out.

When you put extraordinary people together as a team to solve a challenge, pressure building is expected. Egos, personalities, opinions, agendas, politics, these are expected. When you bring this many opinions together, there is bound to be dissent. Dissent towards decisions, solutions, choices, product, process. Give dissent a safe space; a pressure relief.

Don’t dismiss or ignore the people who make the most noise on your teams. Give these voices the spaces they deserve and figure out if there is a signal there. The most effective signals of trouble or issues will come from these creaking noises.

Until next time 👋🏽!