How do you create a strong, positive culture within a team/organization? I considered this problem several times throughout my career. In fact, I think about it all the time.

At some point in my life, my habitual focus on self-improvement gained a whole new dimension as I realized that I could achieve something really amazing only with the synergistic cooperation of others.
I mostly owe this framework of thinking to Stephen Covey: his seminal book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, played a major role in my quest for personal growth.

As developers, we are used to consider software development in pure technical terms: we focus on various technologies, we master the tools and we improve the processes.
While all these elements are very important, there is one fundamental omission; we often forget about the people we work with.

No, I’m not referring to the resources we allocate in a project plan; I’m rather thinking about individuals like you and me, with their cultural differences, their talents and the ideas that they bring, the ones with their struggle to keep up with endlessly evolving technologies, but also with their pride for a job well done.

I recently had a conversation with a developer who told me that people have to earn his respect and trust. He was pretty surprised to hear that I assume people are totally trustworthy unless proven differently over time.

I can understand his point of view. It is the result of a self-preserving mechanism that is unfortunately very common in too many corporate environments; in fact I, for one, have been poisoned by years of the worst corporate (anti) cultures, witnessing people fighting against each other on a daily basis; it’s within enterprises after all that I learned terms such as deception, hidden agenda, blame game, scapegoat, etc.

It does not have to be like that, however.
It takes incredible courage, passion, openness, integrity, determination, respect. These are the same core values that Covey taught me, values I firmly believe in.
Incidentally, I can also argue that these are the same values at the core of all agile methodologies, with their emphasis on individuals and interactions.

As a team leader, over the years I tried several times to become a catalyst of change by helping others to give their best and genuinely succeed in their careers.
I’ve been told more than once that my culture of openness is risky, that it will bite me back hard some day; I’ll keep taking my chances despite the cynical remarks and the unavoidable failures, thank you.

Today, I’m happy to observe that the InnerWorkings’ ecosystem shows more than a few traces of this culture almost everywhere; our thriving daily standup-meetings, internal forums, pair programming efforts, weekly muffin mornings, etc. are a testament of a social culture that is expanding well beyond my wildest dreams.

So, how do you create culture? I’m afraid I don’t have the complete recipe. In fact, I can’t even take full credit for what’s happening in my organization.
But I have one certainty: you too have the power to make a fundamental difference in your organization, your career, your life.
All it takes is courage.

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I’ve just read a new study on the Best Jobs in America presented by Salary.com and Money Magazine. Most of these job satisfaction surveys tend to focus on the obvious quantitative data like salary range and experience, so I rarely give them a second glance. But I’d recommend that you take a look at this research because it includes some qualitative factors to determine the best jobs in the U.S. today. Here’s the top 10 list of desirable jobs in order of preference:

1. Software Engineer
2. College professor
3. Financial adviser
4. Human Resources Manager
5. Physician assistant
6. Market research analyst
7. Computer IT analyst
8. Real Estate Appraiser
9. Pharmacist
10. Psychologist

Is anyone else surprised that software engineers are top of the class (ahead of college professors, if you don’t mind)? My wife is a market research analyst and she vouches for the pros (variety) and cons (deadlines) of her profession, which gets a respectable sixth place in the list. So maybe the authors of this research are onto something here. The study is cleverly configured to assess each job based on the following criteria, which help to explain why software engineers should be happy campers in their profession:

• Creativity (A)
• Flexibility (B)
• Stress (B)
• Ease of entry (C)

The opportunity to apply creative problem solving is a very satisfying aspect of the software developer’s world, so I certainly wouldn’t quibble with that category. Another plus is the widespread availability of telecommuting for software developers; not every hard-working soul enjoys that kind of flexibility. The ability to focus your grey matter on cutting edge projects (think Google Calendar or Atlas PageFlakes) is an obvious draw for prospective computer science graduates too. With all the press devoted to outsourcing, you may be surprised to hear that software development is the fastest growing job category in the U.S. with an average of 44,800 annual job openings. Not too shabby in terms of future job prospects and potential for career advancement. The average salary for a software developer doesn’t hold a candle to the generous legal or medical professions, but it’s still pretty decent at $80,500 with a 46% growth rate over 10 years.

On the downside, ease of entry is somewhat limited due to the need for advanced mathematic skills in order to be competent in the field. So it’s not all wine and roses - you need to pay attention to those long math lessons on linear graph algorithms and differential equations, boys and girls. I think the authors may be a little over-generous by giving software development a B grade in the stress category - most developers I know would not paint such a rosy picture of their work-related stress levels! But in a comparable study, who could deny that a dentist or mental health counselor has a more difficult station in life? I’m not ready to draw any firm conclusions from this study, but it does succeed by putting each profession’s joys and woes in perspective.

Speaking of terrible jobs, you should take a look at the less desirable end of the career spectrum. Mike Rowe produces a great TV program called Dirty Jobs every Tuesday night on the Discovery Channel. The very best episode has to be where he steps into the shoes of an “Avian Vomitologist” who collects owl vomit for a living! What a wonderful example of title inflation too! If that episode doesn’t catch your imagination, how about applying for the position of “Roadkill Collector” (strong stomach is considered a plus)? I’m not making this stuff up! On that note, I’ll return to my day job with its comfortable office chair, air conditioning, dozens of unread emails, and a steaming cup of coffee…

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Pleasanton, CA- April 13, 2006 - InnerWorkings is pleased to announce that we have been awarded Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status for the third year running. To join this prestigious partner program, partners must complete a rigorous software testing and certification process which is administered by VeriTest.

In this year’s application, InnerWorkings decided to focus on the ISV/Software Solutions competency. The ISV category requires successful completion of the following platform tests:

• Windows Client
• Managed Code
• Web Services & .NET Framework

In addition, InnerWorkings compiled a series of detailed customer references outlining the business value of our performance capability solutions for large software development organizations. Finally, the company was required to show quantifiable expertise in .NET technologies by employing a substantial staff of active Microsoft Certified Professionals across multiple disciplines.

Our renewed Gold membership is further evidence that we strive to deliver quality solutions for C# and Visual Basic 2005 developers building .NET Framework 2.0 applications. InnerWorkings continues to innovate on the developer’s desktop and bring meaningful improvement to on-the-job performance with Microsoft’s programming framework, languages, and IDE.

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