My favorite article of the week is one on change management, which, yes, I know how that sounds. Like you (probably), I hated the phrase “change management”. But in her article How to begin the invisible work of change management Cate Huston defines it as “taking teams that are struggling and helping them focus, align, and start delivering at their potential”, so now I finally understand what it is and I don’t hate the phrase any more.

Anyway, the entire article is excellent. If you’re interested in managing teams at all, you have to read this one. Here she is on diagnosing problems within teams:

Sometimes people look at teams and diagnose problems as an absence of process rather than an absence of values, or cohesion, or delivery.

And on the problem with trying to implement a process without understanding cultural context:

When teams struggle to do retrospectives, often the problem isn’t the lack of retrospective, but the lack of psychological safety that a productive retrospective requires. That might be due to lack of trust or cohesion on the team, or other problems that have not been addressed. You need to address those things first, otherwise the retrospectives will not be productive, and the process will be for naught.