June is Debugging Teams month on poseyblog. Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman’s great book on the importance of communication and collaboration is a great read not just for engineers but for anyone who makes things with other people.
Fitz and Ben are big believers in mission statements, but for very pragmatic reasons. “For an effective, efficient team, writing a mission statement is a way to concisely define the direction and limit the scope of your product.”
Mission statements conversations are strategy conversations. When you and your team take the time to hash out a distilled mission statement you are doing several things at once. You’re defining priorities. You’re surfacing diverging preconceptions. You’re addressing fundamental disagreements. Most powerfully, a mission statement discussion is the best way to get each team member to look each other in the eye and actually commit to what you’ve all agreed to build. There is no time for dithering in the technology industry. If your team isn’t working as an utterly aligned highly efficient unit, the team that is will beat you to market with a better product.
Fitz and Ben wrote a mission statement for Debugging Teams: “The goal of this book is to help people spend more time creating and less time fighting – by improving their ability to collaborate with other people.”
I had to laugh when I read that mission statement, because I started my Silicon Valley life in 1995 at Sun Microsystems. There was a LOT of fighting at Sun Microsystems. But people abided by Scott McNealy’s famous maxim: “Agree and commit. Disagree and commit. Or move on.” When the fighting was done, people would commit and get the job done. As a team.
Communication is the essential last mile in finding and motivating the right teams, acquiring strong allies, powerfully bonding with customers, and capturing mindshare with compelling stories. Nothing will serve you and your vision better than developing exceptional communication skills. If you’d enjoy finding pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month, please click here to receive poseycorp’s newsletter.
