Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SK il framework.
Duena Blomstrom: Essentially, it's a concept I've arrived at
what is keeping big incumbent institutions in that case, banks
from doing the right thing we all knew a giant is needed, we
would all appear more human centered design, what seemed to
be the problem.
Jason Baum: Hey, everyone, it's Jason Baum, Director of Member
experience at DevOps Institute. And this is the humans of DevOps
podcast. Welcome back. I hope you've had a great week. On
today's episode, we're going to just jump right in, because we
need all the time we can to talk about this, we're going to focus
on psychological safety today. psychological safety to me is
something that I feel is as a human right, I feel like we have
the right to be psychologically safe in the workplace. That
being said, it's a little more complicated to that. It's a
group dynamic in teams. It's a concept defined by academics in
particular Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard and studied
by Google. In their project Aristotle. It's been proven to
be the cornerstone of any team's productivity. Teams that have
high psychological safety are up to 40% more productive. In 2019.
state of DevOps report found that this culture of
psychological safety is predictive of software delivery
performance, organizational performance and productivity.
Here to discuss the topic with me is Dwayne a Blum strim.
Dwayne is the co founder CPO and CEO of people not tech, and the
author of people before tech, a book about the importance of
psychological safety and teamwork in the digital age.
She's also a speaker writer, publishes weekly LinkedIn
newsletters on chasing psychological safety. And the
future is agile a Forbes as well as being a Forbes contributor.
She's the creator of the emotional banking and human debt
concepts, and authored a book titled emotional banking about
fixing culture in the FinTech world, and listening to
customers feelings about money. I have a lot of feelings about
money. So Dana, welcome to the podcast. Are you ready to get
human?
Duena Blomstrom: Yes, yes, very, very excited to be here, a big
fan of the DevOps Institute have always been awesome. This is
this is a treat for me. So thank you for having me.
Jason Baum: It's very exciting to have you I'm really
appreciative of you coming on to talk about this. This is this is
a topic that's pretty deep. I will say,
Duena Blomstrom: the mother lode of all topics,
Jason Baum: it really is, when you talk psychological safety.
You're the creator of the human debt concept. Perhaps our
listeners have heard about psychological safety. I think
it'd be great to start with human debt and talk about that.
So maybe if you could explain it, maybe just kind of define it
and explain what what that means.
Duena Blomstrom: The easiest definition I've got because I
wrote it, so I can kind of change it as I give it back to
you. But as long as we all agree and understand what the core of
it, I'm happy. But essentially, it's a concept I've arrived at,
as I was studying, in short, what is keeping big incumbent
institutions in that case, banks from doing the right thing,
doing the right thing by their consumers is what I didn't quite
understand what the holdup was, we all knew Agile is needed, we
were all clear on on human centered design, we all kind of
knew all the buzzwords, we we even all of us were able to tell
you what the perfect digital experience was. So what seemed
to be the problem. So as I was accepting that it occurred to me
that much as I don't want that to be the answer, it is a
organizational issue. And everyone has essentially too big
of a cultural problem to be accessing the new mindset that
we need for agile and to be accessing the speed we need to
deliver and the kind of the type of collaboration that that needs
out of our people. So when I was figuring out why they couldn't
do by better by their consumers, the answer really was it's
because they can't do better by their own people. And really
what that means to me or or to the definition of human that is
that just the same way that we acquire technical debt and
everyone listening to this knows full well what I'm on about is
the same way that we've we've acquired human that which is the
equivalent for people, practically anytime that we have
started something to fix something in the workplace and
kind of dropped it. Anytime that a problem that we were trying
entreprise became a second hand citizen or forgotten or got
funding called or the management change, or people fought and
there was tension or there was a toxicity or there was no, just
hundreds of examples in which we create human that is, we as
humans, we as organizations, and it's, unfortunately, if you
start looking at it that way, you start seeing it everywhere.
And there's no real organization that doesn't have any human
that, the only thing you can do is start without it. And the big
digital winners have done that they started from no human that.
And then with that in mind, they tried not to get any. But for
the rest of us who didn't even know why it was weren't quite
that concerned, we didn't put people first we put people as an
afterthought, we created human data, and we are creating it
every day that we don't do human work. And if you look at the
human work being done in the workplace today, you'll be able
to start hoping that that is because we don't do any, we
don't even let people express the idea that they might have
any kind of feelings at work that they're meant to come in
there, do some code and disappear and not bother us in
any unprofessional way. That cannot continue, obviously. And
we're creating more and more of this human that. So in short
human that is all the wrongs we have been righted by our people,
your DNI or when we don't pay them well, when we don't respect
them, or we don't like them or when they don't have
psychological safety. And because of that human that we
cannot be winning like the guys that don't have it.
Jason Baum: I'm still fascinated by companies that are like, we
give seven PTO days and our work from home policy is, you know,
when the can be done on something that's very wishy
washy or, or parental leave, you get two weeks, something like
that. And they and they float it like this is a good thing. Yeah,
there is a lot of human debt out there. And I guess we're
starting to see companies recognize that. But as someone
who talks to people like yourself, or companies who are
incorporating a lot of these positive things to focus on the
human, why is it forgotten? Pretty much all the time, and
was the norm, right? How we operated prior to, obviously,
it's still going on. But I think this big shift, obviously caused
by the pandemic, probably the, the one of the if not the only
positive to come out of it? Is this recognition because
everyone paused and said, Hey, wait a minute. But why was it
the norm? And why do we still sometimes forget about it? I
think it's worse,
Duena Blomstrom: then we forget about it, I think collectively,
we don't want to admit it exists. When we do it feels too
big to tackle. When we do tackle it, we then end up in print and
the bigger the organization, the less providers you're gonna have
to superheroes that have, or you're gonna have superheroes
and people with their hearts in the right place is what I call
is what I call these people that have already putting themselves
on the line to make do the right thing by other humans in their
organizations. But so I think what's happening really is we
were operating in an incorrect structure that wasn't fit for
purpose, the way the business was, was trying to shoehorn a
completely different way of doing things into an existing
very corseted way of doing things was never going to work.
We all knew in the industry, that kind of by the industry, I
mean, all of us that knew what Agile was, knew that something
big will have to happen. And that there's no way we can
continuously come. We can have it here in this corner, while
command and control are happening. While teams are not
teams, while people don't discuss the dynamics inside
them, why we don't allow humans to be humans at all, we cannot
do that which is not happening. And we knew this all of us, but
we just thought essentially, hopefully, eventually the the
other shoe will drop and dinner will just come along, that would
have happened. But in my view without COVID It would have been
a much longer process. So I think in the wake of COVID Like
you say the biggest win is this we have we can everyone that
claimed it cannot be done has to shut up it can be done. And now
that it is being done, how do we function? What do we do we you
don't have line of sight? You can be sure that this developer
is not on Facebook, what do you do instead? And more so from an
organizational perspective, I'd like to be clear about this. I
hate the term organization and I normally very rarely ever touch
it because to me organizations are it's really Santa Claus,
right? What is an organization if we wait for Have the
organization to fix anything, it's never gonna happen at all
right? So we can't be talking about it, it gets my goat every
time I see these hundreds of, of LinkedIn posts about the
organization should do this. Don't we agree that the
organization is that it's nice and lovely to have a common
enemy. And if we just wanted to do a bit over beer, we should
keep it. But if I want to change anything we just stop talking
about and then I mean, even like the big thinkers and stuff,
everyone. So I Oh,
Jason Baum: you're so right. I love it. I like I'm like preach,
preach, do it. Because you're so right with this organization,
Mitt Romney who like I don't whatever your feel about pod
politics had this line about company or organizations are
people like that that line? And it's like, and that was stuck
with me? Because it's like, yeah, because no kidding, like,
who makes up the organization, one of the newest titles that I
heard that I really love. And I know it's it's probably maybe
now it's a couple of years old as the chief culture officer,
someone whose job is purely to focus on,
Duena Blomstrom: I take great joy in asking why that position
exists in most cases. And as you can imagine, that doesn't land
very well. People are not their favorite. I've liked to be the
kind of human being who is smart enough to be strategic and
diplomatic about this, because the size of the issue requires
people who are strategic and diplomatic and know how to
slowly and calmly seep into the consciousness of these sapient
risk adverse execs and go, I'm serious. Now we've got to do
this human work thing. Now this is now the time maybe there's a
way to do that. No, me I cannot, I just cannot comprehend how we
can reliably just go to sleep and wake up knowing we are not
doing the best we can. And the things we should be doing are
not hard to do. We are simply for whatever reason have entered
or collectively as humans, this denial of things are going to be
the way things are going to be and I can't really affect this
because it's too big. And it's too complicated. It's absolute
bollocks to use an English word. I don't know if it's allowed on
your podcast or not.
Jason Baum: But it's absolutely allowed for there's no filter
here. Appreciate that.
Duena Blomstrom: And it's kind of it's borderline, I think even
the BBC allows bollocks. But it is absolutely poppycock. Because
we can do these things, there's, there is no to do about the
human that that isn't breakable into an a list on a backlog and
then into tickets that you can move on your to do it. If you're
not doing that, it's just you don't want to and in quite
honestly, we're going back to the organization thing. Now.
There are now topics that are organizational, much of the
organization itself is useless in terms of changing anything,
it does exist as a post facto entity that fucks up everything
for us if you stop to think about it, because most
organizations and we're touching now on the crux of the issue,
have gone through this, like you're asking, why is that? How
did we end up that we ended up there because we made business,
the business world respond to a different kind of to do than we
were doing now. Right? We'd like in the industrial era, that was
fine, the accountancy of the 90s, we could do that we can
have people come into the office, and we'll look at the
screens, that's going to be that's going to work, she's not
going to work if we're trying to write agile pair programming
Dojo things, that's just not going to work for us. So the
reason it was old and needed shaking up wasn't necessarily
evil. But what that brought are structures that are now firmly
in place, and no one will question them at most
enterprises, and you're going to have like these as if they're
coming from Moses scriptures or something we cannot touch the
idea that we have this one department we cannot question
what this person is doing, we cannot discuss and like concrete
things like what is Why do you have a culture officer? And why
do you have someone in charge of engagement? What does engagement
mean to you? For instance, I'll give you an example. You as an
organization, what does it mean? What engagement because if it is
calculating your NPS score, then you should scrap it and stop
doing that did this ridiculous you have an entire department of
people that are buying NPS quarter measuring, and then you
have an entire workforce? It's going off for God's sake again,
why are we doing this? Nobody cares. And if they care, they
punish me for it. So there's no real reason for us to even be
concerning ourselves with the topic of engagement. It's not
that we don't want our employees engaged. It's just that we're
going about everything the wrong way. Because finally coming back
to we were operating on these old structures in the new
structures that we have to go about everything a completely
different way.
Jason Baum: How my gosh, as you're talking to so many things
that are coming into my head, I love what you're saying. I bang
my head sometimes because you said you're right. It needs to
come from the employees right the organization as a whole is
never going There's there's no change that's going to happen if
you rely on the organization. Why is it and there are a few
things I want to ask you. But why is it that there seems to be
those who who recognize this, they recognize those issues and
are like, screaming about it right for for change? Let's do
this. Not only that, there's studies that prove, right? I
mean, look at what I had read the 40%. There are so many
studies that prove that if you improve culture, if you give
more time, if you help four day workweeks, I've been saying this
on the podcast, the the it's amazing, the productivity that
the productivity improvement, so and even work from home. So I
question these, these decisions are not necessarily based on
hey, we're going to make money, because that's actually not
proven. It's proven the opposite. So it's purely these
are decisions based on I just want to, it's better for I don't
know, maybe they want to be in the office, for example, I don't
know why these decisions are being made.
Duena Blomstrom: It's really important point, you've touched
on something amazing, which is why if we have this much clarity
on the numbers, and we all know, you can wake up any CEO of any
bank atonium. And they'll tell you, I Yes. Active disengagement
cost me 3 billion a year. I know that obviously for like everyone
told me right, McKinsey told me must be true. So we they know,
right? They know it costs money to have people that are in it
stands to reason you've employed an army of people, some of which
you don't even need by nobody's going to question who you do and
do not need. And then you've mistreated them to the point
that they're now half useful. So obviously, it costs you twice
the money, if not more, that you're doing this, but it seems
to be Why are you doing this? Why are you affording the luxury
of having people this engage not at their best of their ability?
Not high performing? What Why? Why is this happening to you as
as an exec? Right? And I think the answer to that is, it's this
complete paralysis at the level that people are at, where
nobody's going to point when the emperor is butt naked. They're
not going to be there's no psychological safety at the top.
There's no teams at the top. So who all is going to say, right,
guys, this is bad. Let's scrap everything and think of
everything. Let's look at the human diet. Let's question why
we have 500. Let's question if we need HR, because maybe these
guys in DevOps have gotten their heads around collaboration, team
dynamics better, let's let them do it for a while. Or let's
question why we have worked with to begin with why don't people
just produce outcomes that we need out of them? Let's have
those conversations, who all is supposed to have that? Who what
exact thing do you know, that is a true team has a terrible Jira,
but I don't care what has a board has a physical board, or
at least a shared email list of backlogs and they work off of it
to make their enterprise better. None. They don't exist. teams
don't exist at the top. We have work groups at the top where
every exec comes in and tells you how great they are. They do
a first of impression management, which is the dark
side of psychological safety. And they tell you how amazing
they are. No one looks incompetent, no one looks like
they made any mistakes. There's no one to blame or anything,
everyone goes home is fine. There's no themes at the top
they are not psychologically safe. No one can point when we
have these fundamental issues. And one of those issues finally
we get to it is, like I was saying earlier, the topic of
people is now falling through a major crack that major crack is
the difference between HR and IT. Unfortunately for HR, they,
for whatever reason, I can't quite comprehend what happened
to them. It's tragedy but probably think about it. They
lost the ability of advocating and helping people in the
enterprise they have now reduced themselves I should say this I
apologize to anyone listening to this who is HR and is woke and
is a superhero and is trying really hard is no you guys it's
everyone else. But the everyone else has kind of shortened
themselves to only do illegal things to only employ and
unemployed people and send them a paper at home. It's an admin
job one we will replace with machines tomorrow. We don't need
you to do that. We need you to sit next to the CEO and tell him
be counselor Troy and go like ah, I read the mind of these
developers what they really need is another Dodger, that and
Africa. That's okay, it can't be that. It you know who is doing
that job these days. We make software that would help them
you think when we made our software we thought silly years
ago, we thought when we produce this and we let it out and we
tell the world and Amy Edmondson has seen it and it measures
psychological safety and he brings all this to the
enterprise. People are gonna love it what all HR breaking out
doors down in all of our clients. asked me how many of
them started from an HR perspective, it's a negligible
amount. The vast majority of our of our of our of our clients are
CTOs and CEOs who went like, Okay, I've ignored this people
problem long enough, if I really want to be producing these KPIs,
I'm gonna have to make these people have psychological safety
have teams have an ability to work from anywhere, not because
I like them a lot more, or I'm an advocate, but because I'm
trying to make this thing happen, and nobody else is
coming to help me. So our clients are people who just need
the human bit to work, which is dramatic, it should be HR only
if anything, we are a nuisance to HR, anytime we show up, they
can immediately tell that the topic we're fixing is so deep,
and it's so big that it was throw up all the other
organizational issues, and they immediately dislike us and they
would like us to go away and come back with an NPS score
measure.
Jason Baum: Yeah, the shutdown.
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Jason Baum: Yeah, it's, you know, I do have mixed feelings
here. Because I don't want to totally call out HR as a, as a
field. However, I will say like when you're talking about
psychological safety, you know, my wife, and I always joke, it's
like, you have HR and they always tell you, Oh, you have a
problem, go talk to HR, go talk to HR, you're like, I'm talking
to HR there. That's the mouthpiece of the company, their
their best interest, a, like you said is don't sue us, right? I
mean, that's their vested interest is protection of the
company, and not necessarily the individual. And so how do you
feel set, you don't feel safe? That's my site that's not
endorsing psychological safety. So who then do you turn to who
can you trust? How do you build that trust? Where's it coming
from? Is it coming from DevOps? Is it coming from your team,
hopefully, your manager, they're the ones have to push it
through, right? But then you have the people and I, and some
of them, they can be great people, but it's like, for
whatever reason, like you said, they're so turned off to the
idea of potential change. Or it's just like, that's not your
job. And it's no one's job, right? It's it's never anyone's
job. We need to do this. Don't focus on that that stuff.
That's, that's a waste of time.
Duena Blomstrom: Yeah, no, I like I love this question,
because it touches on so many things. And I think your
comment, not a question, but I think it's super important that
we all go at the very minimum, we all go yes. For all our sins.
If these are things that are making up human that we have
some, what do we do about it? And by the way, there's
organizational level human that. And then there's team level
human that and one of the last ones that I always caught to my
mind is when teams go, one of the things that create more that
is when teams go, they blame the organization. So like, they'll
come fix it. This is known as this is them. That alone creates
human that because no a lot of this work is and should be at
your level. And I'm a humongous advocate that if we if we agree,
yes, we have human that, then we have to do something about doing
something about it has to be distributed at the team level.
That's the answer with the answer. It is not your managers,
not your leadership team, not your programs that are led by I
don't even care about the HR, not HR conversation now. And
again, for the record, there are amazing HR people out there,
undoubtedly, obviously, just the vast majority of them have let
themselves be not utilized that the best is what. But again,
this is not about HR or not HR, this isn't too big of a job for
any magically to even if HR retain their ability to really
kill it and do all these things, they would still not be the ones
to have to run a fixing of the human that just because it is
too big at this point. So at this point, the only thing we
can do with all of these things we haven't done is to distribute
them to give them to the team to say to the team, look, I need
your help. I know you we've been telling you you need to write
this code and these are your tickets, but I clean some of
your schedule. That's what indeed servant leadership can do
for them. And that's what a good scrum master will do or a
product owner or whoever they're gonna write follow better. And
everyone completely connects to that. The problem is everyone
has overflowing agendas, is being the principles of agile
that say, you have personal responsibility, you grab this
ticket if you know you can't afford the time frame and so on.
So those agencies don't exist, people don't feel empowered to
say no, I have way too much on my plate. And I want to have a
team action with you guys and and understand about your kids,
I can't take this other coding ticket. People don't do that.
They're not empowered, the nobody makes time for them. So
they're overwhelmed. So they have what I call human work
resistance. They immediately immediately go even people
people get on our on our product. All developers have a
first No, not for me, this is not what they hired me for. I am
not a psychologist, I don't know what they want. I am not put
here to talk about AI, me, you're asking me to talk about
feelings. I am not the guy to be talking about this. So there's a
lot of that plus, developers are not we everyone in the workplace
has spent a good 1020 30 years, being asked to come in and be
professional tenant of being professional is number one thing
is do not have any emotion. Do not bring your personal life
over here. Do not be a human to sit here and write code or
answer the phone, whatever it is that we hired before. So now
we're telling them sorry about that, that was kind of dumb,
looking at these guys that are doing it right? Could you be
doing some of the other stuff where you recognize your
emotions and understand the emotions of others and work with
them better? Could you be doing that? But could you also be
doing some other hours because these hours that I'm paying you
for you still have to finish these tasks. That's what where
we're at today.
Jason Baum: It's I think I've referenced this show on on this
podcast, but there's a show on Apple called severance. And it's
about how they split the human mind, essentially. So that there
is your work self. And then you have no memories of your home of
your personal life when you're at work. And then there's
another self that is your home life with no memories of work.
So you have no idea what's going on your work life exists in work
only your brain you never leave, and then your home, you'll never
leave. So it's so fascinating, because that just the concept
alone of the show is brilliant.
Duena Blomstrom: I can't wait to go check it out. It's a good
comment, depending on how they want to how they took it. But
yeah,
Jason Baum: right. And it's, it's just kind of what you're
talking about. It's like for whatever reason, that the norm,
right? Yeah, you are, you're your professional self. And then
you're, you're everything else your personal and you have to
separate them. And it's like, well, it's not as easy as just
turning off who you are. When you're at work. I've always I
always struggled with it. Now it's great. But it has because
it's more accepted.
Duena Blomstrom: No one should have done, the reality of it is
no one should have presumed we only pay people for physical
output. If we don't, we always did pay them for I mean, you
know, kind of if you take with a grain of salt, the incredible
shambles, that performance appraisals of all kinds are
right. And if you kind of in from that if you ignore the fact
that the reality of it is because we didn't ask them to be
human at work, we don't pay them for any of the human work. So
that's the second part of the resistance when people finally
go like, Oh my God, this could make my life better. But wait a
minute, do I really want to do this as an extracurricular
activity? Because no one is paying me for this stuff, right?
Time is valuable. Until that time, we go back and go like,
right, this was wrong, we're really sorry. He took half your
time on your team stuff, and then half your time on your work
stuff. And here's all your money. And the more time you
spend learning, the more we pay you, the more time you spend
considering the emotions of your teammates, and that translates
into psychological safety and collaboration, the more we pay
you, that's what we need to get to and the gap between not even
admitting we have a problem to changing the way we work
completely. And I don't mean whether it comes to the office
or not. But the structures in which we work is huge. But the
show you're describing is exactly what we have copious
copiously ridiculously expected out of people. So far, it was
never viable. But we'll never stop to it wasn't clear how
unviable it was, in the old world when you didn't have a
choice when you didn't have this extreme need for speed and
collaboration. It is blatantly clear today. And if we want it
solved, we have to help our people start to do this work for
us.
Jason Baum: And we didn't I don't even know if we really do
touched on psychological safety that much. And this covered I
mean, we did we didn't I'm not going to necessarily ask you to
define it, because I think we defined it early on. But what is
the difference between? Or is there a difference between
psychological safety and trust? And then how do you build it
amongst your teams?
Duena Blomstrom: Love that question. Absolutely. And all
that was the most all encompassing of questions are
tried to be successful, not always successful. definition
wise, and you touched on it initially, it's been studied by
other academics, but the person has done most work on it has
been Amy Edmondson, and she has this amazing body of research,
what but that research comes from the medical field and the
aviation field. And it wasn't until like you said, Google,
published project is total that the term psychological safety
kind of entered the vocabulary of the DevOps community and
became a thing to the business world through the IT side of
things. So the definition that she uses, and it's quite clear
is, psychological safety is a state in which you are not
afraid to take interpersonal risks in your team. And it
sounds like so what if you are afraid of risks and so on, is
the humongous difference between a team that is psychologically
safe, and one that isn't, is their ability to truly bring
themselves to work and be their authentic selves, they can raise
points, they always speak up, they're never afraid to say
what's on their mind. And all of that, obviously just translate
into a lot better outcomes. It's quite that simple. We took that
definition and kind of worked on it quite a lot over the last few
years, because this is all we do. If people don't like
psychological safety, this is our day job, right? So we very
early on workout, right? We have loads of human Dad, how are we
going to fix it, we need something that fixes it quick.
And if you look at Google's findings, in project I started
psychological safety is at the top. And then there are four
other topics that they found are crucial if teams want to
succeed, right? And those are dependability. And we thought to
ourselves, when making software, how is our software going to
affect the dependent dependability of any other
software shop? No chance, we don't even know what they're
measuring half of them? No, 90% of them are not measuring
anything anyways. And it just depends on how they're doing it.
So we can't really touch that, then structure and clarity,
which is a huge one is probably the crux of why organizations
are is as they are, which essentially just says, Are these
people crystal clear whether there is or not? And that
question is no, for most teams. So it's also equally not
something we could have affected. So we were like, we
completely get how important it is the only thing the
organization needs to give you other than money and resources.
But you know what, we can't help with that? Because that's a very
organizational thing. And then the other two topics are purpose
and impact. Do you feel as a team that you have a purpose?
And do you feel you're making an impact, great things, but we
couldn't really directly affect those. That's why we've really
laser focused on psychological safety, when like, right, there
is one thing is a team dynamic. And we can then separate it into
behaviors and start working on each of those behaviors, then we
have an empowered team that can do this for themselves, we no
longer throw it on the manager, we no longer expect someone to
modal vulnerability, which is, you know, I sound overly
critical of that, because it's nice to have in the vernacular.
But the next step above that has to be No, everyone has to do
things and those things are recognized my feelings,
recognize my behavior, recognize the behavior of the people
around me, and together want to work to change those things for
the better. That is literally your only answer. And it's
doable. If you start splitting it, it's absolutely doable. What
stops us has been a lack of tools, things like the things
we're making are very, very new. To be fair, it didn't exist
whatsoever. So even if you wanted to measure psychological
safety, you'd be like, Oh, I think we have some of it. People
say they kind of do
Jason Baum: that. Yeah, you I mean, you were critical of the
NPS score. What are Are there tools to measure psychological
safety?
Duena Blomstrom: Well, you know, it's really difficult for me to
talk about because I really hate to sounding salesy, because we
make it but when we went to the market to try and make a tool to
measure it, we didn't find anything. There was Amy's
question. Uh, there was a sportive, obviously, the Spotify
questions. And then there were, there was it other than that
there were engagement surveys completely not the thing that we
needed at all. And then there were, you know, kind of
performance surveys and KPI measurements and stuff, none of
which were quite what we wanted. And when we went to the market,
the reason we looked is because I thought let's find what we the
many psychological safety measuring tours and incorporate
them into a platform. To my surprise, there were no many
there were no none. So we had to make it from scratch. But the
changes we hardware. What is it? Right? And it's the question
we're having this right now. What is it really, I mean, we
all get it instinctively. Right? As I was saying, we have a
different definition. As people know, tech, it's that moment
that we all can relate to. When we were in a team, when we were
literally making magic, we were going fast. Everyone knew what
what everyone was at the best of their abilities. No one ever
didn't say something, there were no awkward, there may have been
awkward moments, we were embracing them. People were
saying freely when they something was wrong. We all know
what it's like to be in a magical psychological safety.
But how rare is that? And some people have to think all the way
back to kindergarten to remember one of those. And so if we all
know that, what is it though, we cannot measure my developers,
we're like, okay, but we got we need titles for these, like, for
the you know, we're under the database, we cannot just call it
the magical thing we can kind of feel so to, to, to actually
define our algorithm, we had to undertake a very serious piece
of research to separate the behaviors in psychological
safety. And we ended up with six things that we're mentioning
today, which are is that inflexible? Is the team
resilient? Because they can be flexible, but break over time?
Is the team engaged? And our engagement means is the team
emotionally connected? not engaged in PS code? Like but do
they know each other's kids names? Do they? Are they aware
that this? Do they care about this other guy or not? That's
engagement in the team? And not? Would they recommend the
manager? Nobody cares? And then we measure? are they learning
together? Are they courageous? And are they speaking up and
those things those each of those behaviors, you can work on it
and you should work on it. And so we've created essentially
what is like a CBT for teams, if that makes sense. So now that
you know how you're doing, and you've seen it in this
particular this particular behavior is where you have
issues, let's work on it together, just us at this level,
at this bubble level. And the fact that you see the data and
the fact that you work on your team health together is
transformational. Those same people that were telling us, not
my job, I don't have the time for this, I'm not a
psychologist, those same people you give them some time with
with the tool and the right empowerment and you tell them
they can do it. They are transformed. They ask can I do
more? Can I do more team actions? Can I spend more time
with my colleagues, because they see the designs of that it's
like they're happier, they do better one of the code is
cleaner, they produce things faster. So they know that that
transformation and they take up to it like you wouldn't believe
it. I've seen developers cry a bit. I've seen people go, Oh, my
God, like, we don't need to wait for the organization to come fix
us. We don't need to wait for HR to come fix us, we can and
should do this thing ourselves. And I think that's the key
there. It doesn't have to be only all tool or only
psychological safety. There are other bits that need working on
right, the ability of human beings to have self respect
enough to be self caring, or making sure that they have the
space to think of their well being fine. All those things
need working on. But you can work on them. T Mobile, that is
what I'm saying that we need to distribute it and distributed
fast.
Jason Baum: It's amazing what happens when you can invest in
the employee, right, and the employee experience and their
personal psychological safety and making sure that they can
produce and be comfortable in the team and like the team.
Gosh, that sounds nice, right? I mean, it's
Duena Blomstrom: fun or anything good happening.
Jason Baum: You know, I gotta say, this is just me just just
like putting myself outside a little bit. I'm new, relatively
new to the tech industry. You know, this is in the second
year. And I have to say how much I love it. Because ironically,
the tech industry I feel is becoming the most progressive
towards the human. And I think that's so at first it's there's
so much irony in that. But it's it's amazing, and it is
refreshing.
Duena Blomstrom: It is there's, you're right, that is the irony
of it. But the reason for that is what should keep execs awake
is does not work any other way. We cannot have HR if we don't do
this paperwork, we cannot make things fast. If we don't do this
paperwork, we cannot do this paperwork just by kind of
sending a program or asking people to look at a TEDTalk
these are a ticket that has to exist in everyone's like,
exactly what we line every week every team should have what in
the hell are they doing about x behavior? Like, if you really
want to know why your code wants some type of way, then you need
to have your your JIRA in a retro on this side. And your
water had happened with the human work on this other side.
So you can kind of start seeing patterns and work on the
behavior and people want to they just haven't been given the
tools to do that and the permission to do that. Yeah,
Yeah,
Jason Baum: I think we could talk about this all day. I love
talking to you doing it. It's it's very refreshing to hear you
speak. And and the authenticity just comes out. I think you you
are very passionate about this topic and and I think I would
love to talk to you and continue the conversation and have you
back because I think we covered maybe one of my questions and we
just ended up just going on our on our own here in this
conversation. But it was it was wonderful and so great to have
you as a guest.
Duena Blomstrom: Thank you so much. It was a meeting. You're
right, we have it always feels this is the size of the human
that it always feels unfinished.
Jason Baum: Because it is right. Okay, so we always finish the
podcast by asking a more personal question. So here's
yours. If you could be remembered for one thing, what
would it be?
Duena Blomstrom: Wow. It's, you said that we could edit if we
wanted to.
Jason Baum: Yeah, there's no right answers just however you
feel.
Duena Blomstrom: But I would have loved to have believed that
I have made some type of difference in terms of people
getting a little less of the dread and a little less of my
life is not worth it, if that makes sense. So I would just
hope that there are some developers somewhere, I don't
want them to ever have seen my face or read my book or heard
about me whatsoever, or that exactly. I just want us to
finally get to a place where we have we are consistently doing
human work at every level of the organization. And it's a natural
normal part of our vernacular, if I could have done anything to
move that needle. That would have been amazing.
Jason Baum: I love it. I think we are 100% on the same page
with all this, obviously, the humans of DevOps, this is what
we're all about. And yeah, like I said, I think I could listen
to you speak all day. So well, happy
Duena Blomstrom: to come back and be up in arms about this
anytime you like, because I feel like we have this lifting work.
We're going to be doing almost the same conversations,
hopefully just as annoyed. Because the day we don't, we're
not annoyed anymore. We don't care enough anymore. So I'm
happy to come back anytime you like.
Jason Baum: Awesome. Thank you so much. Join it, it was
absolute pleasure. And thank you for listening to this episode of
the humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm going to end this episode
the same way I always do, encouraging you to become a
member of DevOps Institute to get access to even more great
resources just like this one. Until next time, stay safe, stay
healthy, and most of all, stay human, live long and prosper.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get
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