
Creating a Great Team Culture, and Why It Matters - yarapavan
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3323993
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analyst74
Initially I thought this is just a fluff piece with some idealistic goals.

Turns out it has actual, detailed examples of how a leader can cultivate
culture. This is super valuable because a lot times it's not intuitive how a
leader's action leads to people behaving certain ways.

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bsder
I'm still waiting for one of these "cultural thought leaders" to put their
money on the table and build a group that blows everybody's doors off.

I view them like those peddling "investment secrets"\--if they were actually
that valuable, they sure wouldn't be sharing.

~~~
Dowwie
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/falcon-heavy-
laun...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/falcon-heavy-launch-
spacex.html)

What kind of culture do you think could pull off such a complex, high-stakes
mission that lasted not even fifteen minutes? The entire mission was
Livestreamed. It was amazing. History was made. The doors were literally blown
off.

The points that the author made in the article are represented in a body of
academic study and were validated at companies such as Google some time ago.
These aren't her own novel findings, but she does a good job summarizing into
a single article.

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krupan
Can someone help me understand current use of the word, vulnerable? At least
in the context of leadership/self-help writings like this I'm seeing the word
used a lot, and it's not being used the way that I would expect.

For example, in these writings "be vulnerable" is a suggestion for a way to
help yourself, to improve yourself. In my understanding of the word, being
vulnerable is never a good thing. It's always been used as a negative thing to
avoid. "Your code is vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks unless..." Right?
Also, I'm not used to it being used in a general sense like, "be vulnerable,"
it's usually, "watch out, you are vulnerable to X, Y, or Z."

From context I think I'm starting to understand what it means, but it's a
struggle for me every time I read this kind of stuff. Is there a better (at
least for me?) word I can substitute in my head?

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deeg
My understanding of vulnerability is two-fold:

1) Always be willing to admit you don't know something. Ask others for their
feedback. Listen to constructive criticism.

2) Whenever there's a problem start with the assumption that it's your fault.
For example, if your call to an API fails, assume you're calling it wrong; if
there's a misunderstanding between you and someone else, assume that you're
not paying attention.

A good team will eventually hone in on the real problem and solve it together.

~~~
luckylion
That's good advice, but vulnerability doesn't really fit imho. "Be open", "be
humble" or something like that, but "vulnerable"?

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mattrp
A lot of people are guarded in corporate settings. They speak in corporate
talk and don’t really appear human. If you’re “vulnerable” then this shield of
corporate invincibility is put down and people can be people. That’s in my
view what is meant - whether this is the proper use of the term, I will leave
to you. For me, vunerability, empathy, and gratitude have all become corporate
lingo that at this point I would be surprised if anyone truly knew what they
were talking about but I guess it feels better to say them.

~~~
luckylion
Thanks, that sounds reasonable as an explanation. The corporate setting makes
sense as an extension of the "we're a family"-leadership style.

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austincheney
The article doesn’t mention directness or confrontation. When your people do
great things you need to openly celebrate that and advertise it outside the
team. When your people do bad things you need to be confrontational, mentor
your people with a path to success, and put all that on paper. It is much
easier to separate that bad apple when you have paper.

The article does mention leading by example, which is important. Taken to
another level let it be known that you will never ask your people to do
something that you are not willing to do yourself. You cannot lead by example
if you don’t set boundaries and goals for the team and heavily enforce such.
When everything is nebulous and the standards are not defined your people will
do what they can get away with like children running the day care.

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KingFelix
Just finished trillion dollar coach, great book. Quick read, lots of great
topics about team building etc. Great stuff, and great to hear Bill's story.
Wild how he was connected and cared for so many influential people, his Co
workers etc. If anyone has a personal story I'd love to hear it.

