Oh boy. This was the story of the first 15-ish months of the last two years for me. It takes work. It might take an entire turnover of leadership. But it CAN be done. https://twitter.com/jbeallurks/status/1380619695234105345

I used every single damn bit of soft power I knew how to exercise working on this, because I wasn’t management for most of the process. (During a crisis interlude I was, however.)

Identify causes. They’re probably not on the team itself. The organization has dysfunctions manifesting themselves locally on the team. (Toxic humans do exist, however.) Can’t fix technical problems if structural ones mean you’ll be back in the hole.

The team didn’t decide to learn helplessness; something taught them helplessness. Experience taught them despair.

They’re smart people and they want to do well. What’s in the way?

Talk to every single human in the org, starting with the team itself. Ask open-ended questions and listen. Get them talking about what the problems are. You’ll hear themes.

Repeat: They’re smart people. They want to do well. Their insights will help.

Identify the optimism-sapping problems that kill momentum. Tackle those first. Start finding wins. Find ways to feel good.

tl;dr fix the human problems first. That gives people space, autonomy, breathing room, time, safety to work on the technical problems.

Let successes turn into a virtuous cycle.