Balanced Team Conference 2012 (We’re all in this together)

Last weekend was the Balanced Team Conference – #balconf – in Chicago, running from Friday night through Sunday afternoon.  This conference is where folks from all manner of disciplines meet to work together and share experiences across UX, Development, Design, Business, QA, etc.

This conference was energizing in the best way possible.  For the past few years I have been working on a number of disparate ideas about teamwork, balance, product design, and how they fit together.

Finally in Chicago it all came together for me.

This (balanced team movement) is about erasing the lines between teams and individuals, removing lines in the org chart, and losing titles and roles in favor of skills and behaviours.

A Balanced Team requires Balanced Individuals.  Certainly balanced in their skills sets, as a group and as people performing meaningful work.  But more – balanced in their own lives, in their personalities, in their level of consciousness.

Less, “this is what I do”, and more, “what can I help you with?”

All our paths were different, but the reasons for attending were similar.  Generalists, User Experience Designers, Developers, Connectors – all moving in a direction of wanting to do more, do it well, and share what they were doing well.  Trying to erase lines of “us” and “them” and learn how others were doing it.  What are others’ struggles that we can shine insight on?

It’s hard to remember ever being in a group of people so wiling to share stories, opinions, and failures with a bunch of strangers.  It was an amazing conference.

I had the luck to spend a lot of time with Jeff Patton at the conference, and he took me through the history of the Balanced Team group.  How it originally started as a workshop that brought together designers and developers.  The beginnings of trying to eliminate “us vs. them” thinking. How it represents something that Ward Cunningham felt “wasn’t ready to be named.”

Jeff wrote 2 ideas for what to call it on the paper tablecloth our first night at Giordano’s.  The idea he planted in my head is continuing to resonate here long after the conference.  (This is what Jeff does so well – Jedi-mind trick you into better ways of thinking.)

This is what he intimated:

Client -> Vendor is the paradigm that we usually work in.  The client puts requirements out there, and the vendor builds it.

And maybe that’s not the best way to work.

The clients are “Co-Makers”, “Co-Creators” of what we build. It is as much THEIR product as ours.  Why shouldn’t we have our users helping us design what we’re making for them?

How do we erase the lines?

Jeff said that where this model would fall down is ‘accountability’.  People want someone to blame when things don’t go right.  But if things so often fall short, what have we gained?  Is it worth the risk trying something new?

Maybe it’s time to push for a new way of working with our “Clients”.  A way where faciliation is a fundamental skill, collaboration a primary method, accountability shared by everyone – merging what delights our users and what brings value to our businesses, all within the ability of our teams to deliver something impactful, quickly and sustainably.

Yes, I would be a fan of that.