18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "Building a collaborative culture: How 18F works"
date: 2020-04-01
authors:
- sarah-eckert
- anne-petersen
- carter-baxter
tags:
- how we work
- culture
- communication tools and practices
excerpt: "We actively work to help our teammates grow. We want everyone to become better at the work we do, and we want to model that for our partners.All of this requires some key skills: communication, agility, and openness."
---

Since 18F began in 2014, we’ve attracted, recruited and hired the very
best people in the industry. Everyone here clearly meets the highest
standards in their areas of expertise.

But just as importantly, everyone here has also been carefully vetted as
*human-centered* contributors. We demonstrably care about the well-being
and success of our teams, our co-workers, and our partners. Everything
we do is delivered as a team, and everyone at 18F understands that.

We believe being diverse and multi-disciplinary — drawing upon different
strengths and experiences — produces more resilient, effective
solutions. We try to create teams composed of people with different and
complementary skills and expect teammates to draw on these diverse
strengths.

While our differences help fill our team gaps, we also have to be
comfortable with the gaps we can’t fill. We are comfortable with our own
incompleteness and consider it a strength to say, “I don’t know.”

And we actively work to help our teammates grow. We’re nurturing. We
want everyone to become better at the work we do, and we want to model
that for our partners. We expect teams to be supportive of each other,
provide encouragement, work to build each other up, and help each other
when we need support.

We also encourage participation in our labs, guilds, critique groups,
and working groups, which provide even more opportunities to learn from
and help each other.

All of this requires some key skills: communication, agility, and
openness.

## Communication

We have to communicate effectively in all we do. Just as we have to
communicate well with our partners to be successful, we also have to
clearly explain ourselves to our teammates as a way for us to grow
together; to learn from everyone’s expertise and experiences.

And we have to communicate not just around what we’re doing, but also
what we’re *not* doing. We have to talk about problems we’re not going
to solve, and why. We have to talk realistically and openly about the
constraints we face, the priorities we set. And we have to recognize
when challenges arise that shift our teammates’ focus from the current
project, with the assumption that everyone involved will communicate
clearly and complete their work.

## Agility

Just as we advise our partners to be agile and adaptable, we expect our
teams to embody that adaptability.

We generally espouse the tenets of the [Agile
Manifesto](https://agile.18f.gov/) and model these behaviors to adapt
to the needs, strengths, weaknesses and dynamics of the full team—both
the 18F side and partner side—and the project itself, in order to
deliver value to our partners.

We have to leave dogma behind and understand there are many ways to do
things, adapt accordingly, and accept that our teammates may not use
exactly the same methods, tools, approaches, or processes as we do. We
can focus on high standards, not standardizing every activity.

Our *outcomes* are more important than the process. Where
standardization does exist, we focus on the intended goals (e.g.
security, accessibility) and not simply compliance.

And when things get in our way, we turn. We anticipate that things can
change, and we plan for it.

## Openness

Without openness, none of this can happen. We have to be open to
cross-pollinating new ideas. We have to be open to receiving feedback.
We have to be thoughtful about giving useful, actionable feedback.

This applies both internally, within our teams, and externally, with our
partners. *This* is what we’re trying to model, and what we want to
nurture and see grow in our partners and propagate throughout
government.

Above all, we’re figuring this out together. 18F, our partners, and our
teams: we’re all figuring it out.

The problems are large, the challenges are numerous and ever-shifting,
and there is no standardized playbook to follow.

We should continuously question the *hows* and *whys* of what we do, and
keep working to leave 18F better than we found it. After all, we’re on
this journey together.