What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor. -- Charles Duhigg, "What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team", New York Times, 25 February 2016
I am an organizational culture junkie. I love the process of people coming together to do great things. I give fantastic meeting.
This article deepened my breathing and break out in a bit of sweat. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
“We want to know that those people really hear us.” Yes.
I’m going to go and softly weep now, for the beauty of the simple lesson I have spoken for so long being discovered again in a huge, data driven Google project and then trumpeted in The New York Times Magazine.
Yes.
Callan 