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Put your hand up: keeping a small-company mindset as you grow

Establish a culture of volunteering for fair and inclusive teams
September 30, 2020

Why is a culture of ‘we’re all pitching in’ so important to an org as it scales?

In a team meeting, my product owner asked ‘how many partners do we have that only use read-only features?’ Everyone looked away from the camera, hoping that someone else would volunteer. The product owner, reacting to the silence, started to explain why it was so important to have this information. Eventually, I volunteered.

Principle of least discomfort

The silence caused social discomfort among the team. People have higher or lower tolerance for this, and the person with the lowest tolerance will usually end up volunteering.

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