Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes podcast, today I like to continue this Spotify Model Podcast. Last week we discussed about the unique Culture of Spotify. We discuss about the squads how they have the autonomy, the self-organized team. They have a long term mission, and they are very motivated and independent. And I finished the Podcast talking about alignment and autonomy. So this seems to be on opposite sides, right? If we imagine a line in one side, we have alignment and on the other side, we have autonomy. So if you want to have high autonomy, you will have to pay the price of low alignment, because everybody will want to do whatever they want.
Ricardo (51s): On the other side, if you want to have a very strong alignment, you need to be the boss and people need to follow you. You tell them what to do, and they have low autonomy. So how you can combine this? So the Spotify model tweaks this line and propose a two by two matrix. In one site, you have alignment low and high. And on the other side too, you have autonomy, low and high. So if you have a group with low alignment and low autonomy, you are just micromanaging. So you are trying to control absolutely irrelevant things and things are completely misaligned.
Ricardo (1m 32s): On the other side, if you have higher alignment and low autonomy means you come with the problem and you come with the solution, they gave a very nice example on the video talking about, look, we need to cross a river and two do that. We will build a bridge. So you are releasing and informing about the problem, but at the same time, informing about the solution, on the other side. If you have low alignment and strong autonomy, you may risk to have a Frankenstein. Why? Because people will be so autonomous them that they will build a house. You know, on this is I will put concrete, this one, I'll put bricks. This one will be drywall.
Ricardo (2m 13s): And then when you will try to put all together, you have no structure to sustain the house. So you produced something that will be a complete chaotic mess. So what they propose, let's say, look, why we can not do the following the proper team. The client of the customer comes with a problem. We need to cross the river and then lack the squad, decide, what is the best way to cross the river? So did you see and this is why, for example, all the burning processes are completely optional that someone can use kanban.
Ricardo (2m 53s): Someone can use whatever post-it notes, a wall. So people are not required to use, so no methodology and how they create a methodology or how they create a Spotify Model? They use what they call cross pollination. and what is that? It's something like one squad start to do good things. Then other, squad say, how did you manage that risk? So then tools the process and the standards, they are not imposed. They just grow naturally by use. so it's a strong focus on people and their motivations. So people are independent to create and to find ways of solving the problem in these squads, they are combined.
Ricardo (3m 39s): So their organization or structure is quite different. So this squad is combined it into tribes. The tribes work together, taking care of one piece of the product or one piece of the business, but you belong to a squad, and also to what this called a chapter, a chapter, is a way of grouping people with the same technical background. So developers, database experts, data scientists, they are together and these chapters they have a chapter leader that takes care, I would say in the more career-based perspective, talking about development of career and this, and it's basically the chapter, something like more close to the traditional organizational structure.
Ricardo (4m 32s): So you report through a chapter, but two work with a team in an independent squat. And they have another group that only supports collaborations called the guilt. The guilt is a community. So you create different communities where people can join. Anyone can join and anyone can leave. It's an interest-based community. And this is the best way to share practices that will become natural standard. There is no standard or obligation to follow any process. People follow what makes sense for them. And when I say this, mostly for those working in other fields, because maybe what I'm saying is easier to be understood if you work in software development.
Ricardo (5m 20s): But if you work in other areas, it's not very easy, but this Model has one major feature that is not easy at all. They said that if you want to be agile and bring agility at an organizational scale, you need to have trust at the scale. So the peeler for everything to work is exactly your ability to build trust. If you do not build trust, you will be in trouble because without trust. You will have just a bunch of disconnected people working independently, and the chaos will reign.
Ricardo (6m 1s): So what they did, they have a minimum structure just to avoid complete, chaos, but they give a massive freedom, too people to decide the best way to approach. And they work this way. So it's a very fluid way of working where trust is much more important than control. And they said one thing just to finish this, podcast they said one thing that raises it a lot of my attention. They said, look if you don't trust why you hired him or her. So the basic component of hiring if someone is trust, but when you trust someone, you need also to accept that at this speed.
Ricardo (6m 44s): And these, I would say a process for free environment, failure can happen. And in the next and final episode, I will talk about how Spotify in the Spotify Model address, failure in how they work in a lean startup model to release fast, and more. These coupled features that will survive and if they fail, they do not destroy everything, but this is the topic for next week. Podcast see you there.
