If you make a big mistake you've got to bake a cake, says Sky's tech head Natasha Sayce-Zelem

Natasha Sayce-Zelem, Head of Technology, Digital Service at Sky, revealed to the Women in Tech Festival one of her secrets to help banish the blame culture from IT

IT staff at satellite television broadcaster Sky have to bake - not buy - a ‘sorry cake' when they make major mistakes, says Natasha Sayce-Zelem, Head of Technology, Digital Service at Sky. The idea, she says, is intended to defuse the blame culture and finger pointing that can often pervade IT departments when something goes wrong.

It is, she adds, part of her efforts to ‘allow' vulnerability in tech in a way in which staff are encouraged to do their jobs without fear and to provide what she describes as "psychological safety" for all staff.

Sayce-Zelem was speaking at the recent Women in Tech Festival, jointly held by Computing and Computer Reseller News (CRN).

"There has to be an element of being able to fail without consequences, we need to remove this blame culture… It [mistakes] happen because we're in high-pressure situations. But you have to create an environment where it is psychologically safe [to fail] because that's what makes teams great," said Sayce-Zelem.

"One cool technique that I use is the ‘sorry cake'. We don't have a blame culture at Sky. If somebody has done something major, the wrong thing is to berate these colleagues as they undoubtedly feel bad already.

"If they've genuinely made a mistake, that's cool. So I say to my teams, ‘don't beat these people up about it, they've learnt the hard way' - but they have to go and bake a cake for us. It injects a bit of positivity into a tense situation and the team come together off the back of it and have funny stories to share about some of the ‘cakes' we've tried."

The idea, she said, is partly based on Google's Project Aristotle work that defined the traits that make teams successful, which also highlighted the importance of psychological safety in making team members feel safe to take risks, and be vulnerable in front of each other.

Not all the cakes, she adds, have necessarily been worthy of Channel 4's ‘The Great British Bake-Off '…

"I'm not encouraging people to make mistakes. People feel vulnerable when they've made a mistake and I want them to learn from it," added Sayce-Zelem. "I want to create a psychologically safe environment."