Stop comparing teams. Build a team/shared playbook.
After my promotion, I fell into a trap. I kept telling one team to “be more like” another. It backfired. The team didn’t know what to do with that feedback. They felt lost. Morale dropped.
Turns out, comparison is not a strategy. People want clarity, not vague praise for some other team. They want direction, not pressure.
So I changed my approach. I gave my team a concrete resource: “Read ‘Inspired’ by Marty Cagan. This is how product-focused engineers think.”
Suddenly, we spoke the same language. We debated tradeoffs. We stopped talking about “what Team B would do.” We focused on what made sense for our users.
I learned that teams need a shared mindset, not a scoreboard.