
Ask HN: How does your company get better? - objectionabool
In my company, many show little interest in improving the way we work. What processes have you seen bolster interest in such activities?
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cooperadymas
You don't say anything about your company or your role in it. Company
"culture" is one of those immeasurable wishy-washy borderline woo-woo things
that either gets fetishized and obsessed about or completely ignored. The best
companies are the ones where the culture is set from the top and manages to
seep downward into every aspect of the organization. So if you're not the
owner / CEO / somewhere in a leadership role, and you think there's a problem,
you're probably not in a place to make it better.

As for specifically improving the way you work, I've been in this exact
problem before. A company I worked for knew that our software was lacking
documentation, that we didn't have good processes in place for bringing new
developers up to speed, and that some of our devops systems were really
lacking. Leadership talked for 3 years about the existence of these problems.
We discussed them in team meetings. Everyone knew they existed, but because
there was always other work taking precedence nothing ever changed and what
was broken remained broken.

If you want to make your company better and improve the way you work, start by
allocating time to make your company better and improve the way you work.
Whether that's an hour a day, a 2 day period every month, or a week every
quarter, dedicate time specifically for internal improvements. Get the whole
company involved. Mandate that other work doesn't get scheduled and take
precedence, and that meetings not related to internal improvements don't
interfere.

Once people see that you value internal improvements, and they see how much
value those improvements can bring they'll likely be more willing to take
ownership of them and invest in them as part of their routine.

~~~
objectionabool
Thanks for taking the time to reply in such detail. I've recently proposed
that we give blocks of time for working on issues raised internally (mostly
improvements to our company documentation etc.) but have seen very little
interest and even push back as there are other priorities, just as your
describe.

With the little time we have for this work we've already achieved a lot but
perhaps mostly on low hanging fruit. Many of the more substantial changes
remain. People acknowledge the improvements it sadly doesn't seem to have
driven any more engagement...

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hiei
Sometimes you can't. Many folks do not actually care what they do for work.
It's a paycheck. To give you a better answer: documentation. The biggest
headache people can have onboarding is not knowing where to access simple
information or how to do their job properly.

~~~
objectionabool
I guess my worry is more that people are very invested in their technical
work, and when prompted are aware of the problems in the company culture - but
just seem less interested in being part of the solution.

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jppope
Measure the things that matter ;) it will inform you of places you can improve

~~~
objectionabool
I think the issue is that I'm not sure how best to choose the things that
matter in such a way that we're all aligned...

