Two years of Digi team surgeries
Building a learning culture, 7 things I’ve learned
It’s been two years since I joined the Digital and Data team at Social Finance and (almost) two years since I set up and started running Digi team surgeries. I’ve been running these two-weekly sessions but I’ve never really spoken about them – what they are, why I do them and what I’ve learned – so it felt like a good time to share.
What they are
Digi surgeries are a dedicated time, every two weeks, where anyone in the team can come and talk about the things most pressing to them. No subject is off the table.
We use Lean Coffee, an open space technique, which enables people to talk about the issues that are most important to them. We crowdsource discussion topics, vote on them, and then go through them in the order of those that received the most votes.
If people are unsure of things to talk about, previous discussions are left visible so that participants can see them and spark ideas.
The person who raised the discussion topic talks through it briefly, and then we open the floor to discussion. The discussion is timeboxed to around 5 minutes (or longer depending on the number of subjects) and if people want to carry on talking about one we keep going and if not we move on the the next discussion.
It’s so simple, and I’m grateful to the One Team Gov crew and James for modelling and demonstrating this in action so I could learn it. It’s a structure and a skill that is so simple but SO USEFUL.
Why we do them
I think the purpose of these sessions has changed over time, when I first started them I was quite new and I was trying to navigate a new job, partially virtually, and creating spaces like this helped me to feel like I had a better understanding how things operate and my place in the organisation.
But it was never really about me. I felt that I had benefitted from the power of agenda-less meetings and I thought we could use them to start crafting culture; one of peer support, iterative improvement and learning together.
Two years later and I’m not sure how effective I’ve been in that objective. Partly because measuring change over time is difficult, least of all when you’re talking about measuring a concept as slippery as culture. Also because I never started this with the intention of evaluating it.
But I do know that people have told me they find it useful, and when I recently asked people if they wanted to keep these going I had 10 votes for ‘yes’ and none for ‘no’.
I think the purpose has shifted so now it is to provide a space where people troubleshoot their problems together. If every 2 weeks I support 2–4 team members to unblock an issue they are having, think about something slightly differently, or experiment with something new then it’s been totally worth it.
The benefit to me, is that now that I’m part of the SLT it helps me to feel like I’ve got a regular temperature check that I can respond to and flex my leadership approaches with. It’s like a mini internal cultural retro for my brain cells.
Highlights
One digi surgery we talked about what makes a good show and tell, because one of the attendees hadn’t done it before and was about to do their first.
There were lots of suggestions from participants but the most useful one was:
“do not shy away from that problems you encountered and what was hard”
When the team delivered their show and tell it was really well received and other team members said it was useful and informative. It was great to see a direct link between the advice and support in a surgery and a real outcome. This is what I love most about running them.
Most often though, any changes that happen are personal, hidden from my view as people squirrel into their work, so I have to keep faith that people are finding them useful. So there is nothing better than hearing how something is used in practice.
What I’ve learned
1. The loneliness of the facilitator:
The principle of ‘whoever comes are the right people’ can be remarkably difficult for anyone holding this kind of space. There are times when I’ve had more than 10 people attend and other days where I’ve sat alone. Sometimes it’s been me and one other person and we have just spent the time having a lovely chat.
The thing is, it’s important to separate holding the space with people using or needing the space.
2. Some people will never prioritise their time for this:
Holding the space regularly is my way of showing the team that I’m dedicated to helping them learn and improve. I’m always there (unless I’m super pressed or on holiday).
It’s an excercise in tenacity and it’s hard to remain tenacious when you know that some people will never engage. I’m pretty lucky that we usually get different people attending sessions, but there are some people who have never come along.
Occasionally you can change this up by changing the comms around the sessions, but this remains difficult.
3. Surgeries can be a really great way to welcome new starters:
We’ve had a few new people come into the team and running this kind of surgery helps to give them space to meet people and also to learn a little about how things work. We’ve had new starter discussions like:
- what do all these acronyms mean? (Yes, this remains problematic)
- what should I read to get up to speed on what the team are working on?
- what do I need to know about agile project management as I haven’t done it before?
4. Some subjects keep coming around:
There are some subjects that seem to crop up every so often. One such theme for us as a team is about the usefulness of our weekly whole team meetings.
I’ve probably discussed this 4–5 times within the two years.
Sometimes this can feel frustrating, to both me as a facilitator and to participants who feel like progress isn’t being made. But there are some subjects that its just difficult to change, and until concerted time is spent trying, they will keep being an issue.
My role as a facilitator is to help others surface things they care about and what they might do about them, not to solve things for people, so it’s important to remind myself of that.
5. An easy way to practice:
Running these has been a really good way for me to practice facilitation. Things that, at the beginning, required effort now trip off the tongue. My timing skills are on point, and it’s been useful to learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
Every session is different given the participant numbers, dynamics of people in the room (like understanding of the meeting or hierachy) the number of discussion topics or the type of topics or even unforeseen technical issues.
It’s an opportunity every two weeks to practice being flexible and responsive, working in the moment to try and make things useful. I really value the opportunity to stretch my brain like that.
6. Some things change and some things stay the same:
Some things never change, like the frequency of the sessions, the main structure and the fact that nobody in the room is named. But other things change regularly and it really doesn’t matter that they do.
In particular, the tools we have used have changed over time, from Miro boards, Easy Retro, MS Teams chat and Trello – they are interchangeable and I’ve really seen no preference or difference in how participants act.
7. Silliness is underrated (actually this is just a rule for life):
I hope this encourages some people to think about how you can hold spaces in your team to build a learning culture and what it means to be a facilitator who runs these kinds of events. If you’re thinking about doing something like this, and you want to chat please let me know :)
