Scaling Social Systems in Software Organizations

"When you have a social system that changes significantly, you're going to have to fill up that trust tank or that safety tank again; you have to find new dynamics, De Jong Schouwenburg said. When you are scaling at high speed, you also need to onboard the social systems of teams, which takes time. Scaling humans is about maintaining coherence and psychological safety as the surface area of interaction expands."

"De Jong Schouwenburg suggested designing a communication architecture with intentional redundancy. Repetition is gold, she said. Use different times, different media, and different ways of repeating the core messages, context, and goals. Keep reminding people of the bigger picture: This way, you can fill in the gaps of the people who you would otherwise lose because they just didn't get the message."

"It also allows people with different brain strategies to digest the information in their preferred method, therefore avoiding knowledge gaps or people who are zoned out. Trust grows through familiarity, and familiarity requires contact. To foster cross-functionality and enable those who have to work together at some point to know each other personally, De Jong Schouwenburg suggested building bridges between teams and creating structured opportunities for cross-team connection."

"She mentioned several ways to do this : Multi-team offsites Virtual coffees or shared rituals Cross-site pairing (buddy systems), demos, or learning sessions Rotating facilitators can reduce silos by building bridges between teams. Leaders accelerate this by modeling the vulnerability they want to see."

Fast-scaling teams must rebuild trust and psychological safety as their social systems expand. Scaling at high speed requires onboarding the social systems of teams, which takes time, and maintaining coherence as interaction surface area grows. Trust and safety need new dynamics when the system changes significantly. A communication architecture with intentional redundancy helps keep people aligned by repeating core messages, context, and goals across different times, media, and formats. Repetition supports different brain strategies and reduces knowledge gaps. Trust grows through familiarity, which requires contact. Cross-team bridges can be built through multi-team offsites, virtual coffees, shared rituals, buddy systems, demos, learning sessions, and rotating facilitators to reduce silos. Leaders accelerate progress by modeling vulnerability.

Read at InfoQ