Thoughts from a guest joining our Fridays as Non-Client work days

At yamaneco, we have introduced Friday as a Non-Client work day. This came from a motivation to have a dedicated space to reconnect, share, and help each other as we often spend the rest of the week working with different client and in different locations.

We started on the very early days of yamaneco, a few hours first, then we made it a full day once every two weeks, and eventually made it a weekly commitment.

Recently we decided to invite a few external people to participate to our Friday events. We wanted to bring fresh eyes, new perspectives to our process and our team, but also as we spend a lot of time exchanging ideas and experiences, we thought that it might be very fun to have guest share that time together.

How we invest this day is continually inspected and adapted to our needs, therefore the structure and format of the day explained in the article below may not reflect our latest state.

Original article published by Vinnie Gill on LinkedIn.

Hours in Japan - 海を越えて

Last month I was invited to participate in a Company’s “Friday Non-Client Work Day” for their team members.

This company is a company of consultants that provide agile coaching as a service. I documented the events below as they unfolded from a personal viewpoint.

Penny for your thoughts?

Random thoughts that were floating through my head in no particular order.

1.    This is strange….. Why would they want an outsider in their all-day personal team meeting?

2.    What am I supposed to do?

3.    What was this team going to do on that day?

I had a rough idea that a small amount of time was dedicated to company planning, refinement and retrospective. Do I need to sign an NDA?

4.    I am the “Working with other agile coaches” person, hopefully I can add value and learn from their team too and in turn share this learnings to the next team or conference I speak at. Maybe that is why I was asked…. #GoVinnie

5.    Why have they not asked me to sign an NDA…

Learning from across the oceans

1.    Excited to learn from an agile consulting company, especially from one in a different country.

2.    The person who invited me was my Certified Agile Leadership 2 course mate almost 2 years ago. I was keen to observe someone in a position to be able to influence their colleagues’ and ultimately their organisation’s culture. How much learning has been applied from the course to build a better organisation? Where did this company sit in Laloux’s model? Is there hope for the rest of us?

3.    Wow, chance of a lifetime! What an opportunity, I’m grateful!

Seeking Clarity

I reached out to the person who invited me to clarify what was required of me. I wanted to be a respectful guest. I was not sure how the team would feel having an outsider being a part of their team for the entire day.

All that was required for me to do was:

-        Turn up

-        Contribute

-        Share something that I would like to share with the team for 45 minutes.

-        Give feedback at closing

-        I was given access to the team’s Miro to help familiarise myself of how their Slack day would look not to be confused with slack the app.

Can this be real? Can this be true?

At this point this seems too good to be true. I tell a few people. They seem equally puzzled and intrigued.

I soon find out from Miro the purpose of every Friday’s Non-Client Work Day is to:

-        Spend a day without being client facing

-        Spend time together, connect as a team

-        Learn

-        Reflect

-        Build a better company

The last point made me curious; everyone wants to build a better company but how will this translate to what I observe on the day.

Friday arrives, Kon'nichiwa my team for the day

Here are my key take-aways, observations and learnings:

• The team was very comfortable having me as a guest. The two-way learning between the team and I happened very naturally this is probably due to high psychological safety that existed in the team.
• The company dedicated 1 day to plan, reflect, communicate business updates but most of the time was spent for the team to connect and share any learnings.
• Team members were empowered to speak up openly without judgement.
• One of the sessions was called The Watercooler Conversation and this session was extremely valuable to me. They do work online too. I got to know the team better and in turn I got to even see their homes! It has always been an interest of mine how and where people live in different countries.
• The second part of the day was optional. Optional truly meant optional, without judgement. Employees could decide what talks they wanted to attend or contribute to. Marketplace was used and any topic was welcomed including one that was looking for different ways to keep fit.

Empathy is our business

Whatever this company was doing, how it treated its people, it clearly worked as I saw a lot of empathy between the team.

A max of 2 marketplace sessions was recommended so that people don’t experience burn out. I accidently put my name to attend all 3 talks, but this was noticed and called out by the facilitator.

People took turns to facilitate the Friday sessions.

Gratitude time - this was my favourite as it gave me a deeper sense of the company, the culture and what is important to their people

Final thoughts

I couldn’t tell who the owner(s) of the company was. If I didn’t undertake the CAL 2 class with one of them I wouldn’t have known based on their interactions. Why? Because equal voice was present; no one person dominated the conversation.

I was invited to feedback towards the end of the day and my suggestions were noted on the Miro board.

I wish more companies and teams would be open to inviting people in as we all could do with a little bit of learning and sharing. A fresh eye can do wonders.

This is how change happens.

In this case Yamaneco was indeed the change it wanted to be.

Yamaneco was not only brave but confident for all the reasons above.

Yamaneco has set a great example of what happens when an open culture and a learning culture are fostered within an organisation. The more companies which engage in this way of working, the better, so I hope this post inspires some people out there to think how a similar way of thinking might help their organisation.

If we don’t foster an open culture at an organisation level, we can’t expect to create a learning culture be it in an organisation level amongst departments or at an industry level.

*All thoughts are my own as observed*

Thank you to the team at yamaneco I hope we get to meet again soon virtually or in person someday and Jean-Baptiste Vasseur for providing the images used in this article.

Original article published by Vinnie Gill on LinkedIn.