At Kraken Tech, two crucial factors determine our happiness and success at work:

  • our working relationships, and
  • Continuous Integration (CI) being green.

For those who don’t know, Continuous Integration is basically a bunch of robots that check every change we make to our code to make sure it works and meets our standards. If it does, then the robots green-light a deployment; if it doesn’t, then the robots block deployment until we fix it.

While Continuous Integration might seem like a tech-specific concern, the way we care for our software systems can actually teach us valuable lessons about the way we care for our professional relationships. This might seem like a silly point to make – as messy and complex as software is, human relationships are far more so! – but by drawing this analogy I hope to make it easier for people who care about code quality to see how similar approaches can help improve relationship quality too.

A Taut CI Metaphor for Relationships

Just as we invest time and resources in maintaining a robust CI system, we should invest in our work relationships. In both CI and relationships, we look for:

  • Safety
  • Reliability
  • Validation
  • Clarity
  • Integrity
  • Vitality
  • Consistency
  • Early problem detection
  • Repairability

(Safety + Vitality + Repairability are ingredients for a “Best Possible Relationship”, discussed below.)

By focusing on these aspects, we can reduce trust issues, flakiness, and other “bugs” that can hinder our professional growth and satisfaction.

At Kraken Tech we take good care of our CI. There are hundreds of checks carried out on every new feature, from functional tests, to security, code conventions, formatting, spell-checking, and so on. Since we update millions of lines of code, hundreds of times a day, that cost racks up! But we absolutely believe it’s worth it.

We regularly talk about what the best possible CI means for us:

  • What are our values and conventions? What does quality mean to us?
  • What is going well, and how can we do more of that?
  • What tends to go wrong and how can we do less of that?
  • When things go wrong, how can we fix things more easily?

No CI works forever without maintenance. When something isn’t right and deployments are blocked, our engineers gather on a dedicated Slack Channel to sort it out. The lovely thing about that channel is that it’s a place where individuals come to take care of the collective:

  • Hierarchy and responsibility doesn’t matter, we all want to fix things
  • How do we notice problems?
  • How do we clear blocks while keeping things strong?
  • How do we return to safe operations?

Hopefully by now you’re noticing that these questions don’t just apply to robots checking code.

The Keystone Conversation

The phrase “Best Possible Relationship” (BPR) comes from Michael Bungay Stanier’s book “How to Work with (Almost) Anyone”, in which he outlines a framework for building strong relationships at work.

In his book, Bungay Stanier introduces the concept of a “Keystone Conversation” - a roughly 20-minute discussion that helps establish a solid foundation for a “best possible relationship”. This conversation revolves around five “key” questions:

  1. The Amplify Question: What’s your best? Discuss your strengths and what fulfills you professionally.
  2. The Steady Question: What are your practices and preferences? Share insights about your work style and what drives you.
  3. The Good Date Question: What can you learn from successful past relationships?
  4. The Bad Date Question: What can you learn from frustrating past relationships?
  5. The Repair Question: How will you fix it when things go wrong?

These questions are designed help create shared responsibility for the relationship, open communication, and deeper understanding and empathy between colleagues. In particular, the Repair question builds in the self-healing aspect to the relationship, and in some ways is the most important.

Remember, this is only one way to establish a good relationship. There are of course many others, including “hoping for the best”. You don’t have to stick to these questions, or use them at all. There’s also no expectation of going deep, or becoming best buddies. The most valuable thing is to find and follow your geniune curiosity, and to show genuine appreciation for each other.

Asking someone for a Keystone Conversation

Here are some ways we might ask someone for a Keystone Conversation:

  • Any introductory meeting! Share this post, or the book as a warmup.

  • “Just for a moment, can we pause the work and talk about how we can best work together? Would you be interested to swap answers to these questions?”

  • “I want to talk about how we bring out the best in both of us and how to keep our relationship at its best, even when the work is hard.”

  • “I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I like what I know of you and would love to figure out how we can work better.”

Breathe through the awkwardness! Everyone wants to be understood better and to feel more themselves at work, and by asking for the conversation you’re helping you both do that.

Following your curiosity

Here’s some possible questions to go further into a thread you’re interested in:

  • What made you think that?
  • Where did you learn that?
  • I’m curious to hear your answer to this.
  • What’s stopping you?
  • What was most useful for you?

Affirming and appreciating

As you go, remember to reward the other person’s contributions. This can be as simple as using (and meaning) affirming phrases:

  • That was brilliant!
  • You obviously care a lot about …
  • Wow that’s really tough. You did so well!
  • I really enjoyed that.
  • Yep. Nice. Awesome. Wow!

Takeaways

Continuously invest in your relationships, just as engineers do in a CI system!

  1. Look for opportunities, or ask for keystone conversations with your colleagues. Breathe through the awkwardness of asking!
  2. Choose a format and set of questions that feels comfortable for you, but build in repair mechanisms.
  3. Let your curiosity guide you. Be gentle and authentic.
  4. Enjoy the fruits of your best possible relationships!
  5. Address issues early through repair.
  6. Rinse and repeat!