Training & Mentorship

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Being a Data Coach

After taking a vacation to reflect on his career, the author decided to become a freelance coach in the data space. He has since been successful in his role, and has learned that freelancing allows him to choose what he works on and when, and that he must be visible and part of the team he is coaching in order to demonstrate his value. He also advises to just do it and not be overwhelmed by self-doubt.

Why You Should Encourage Criticism

In 2004, the company I worked for wanted to rewrite their UI using Struts, but the existing XSL-based UI wouldn't work with the framework. I was open and honest about the preconditions that needed to be met, and the company was open to hearing my feedback regardless of my position. I learned that it's important to build trust and rapport with colleagues so that they feel comfortable speaking their mind and providing constructive criticism.

Improving the team members relationship in a new team with conflicting environment

When a new team is formed with new joiners to the company, the relationship between them can be poor. After talking to them individually, it was unclear who was creating the conflicting environment. To improve the situation, an off-site event was organised to get to know each other better and agree on an action plan. Follow up sessions were held to assess the team's happiness and spread knowledge. Ultimately, the team improved, but members were switched around to provide more opportunities. The key lessons learned were to start knowing each other well, share the impact of their actions, and have an off-site session for open and transparent conversation.

Building Career Ladders with the Help of a Diverse Team

New Relic needed to create a formal career ladder to align with their pay levels. To do this, they sent out an email to the entire organization asking for names of people to be part of a 20-person working group. This group then held an off-site session to brainstorm and develop criteria and behaviors for each level. The career ladder was then sent out to a wider group for feedback, and finally published. The process was successful, and the lessons learned were that it was important to have a diverse group of people work on the ladder, and to have the group also be responsible for training the managers.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.