In the action movie Speed — can we call it a cult classic? — Annie (Sandra Bullock) and Jack (Keanu Reeves) end up together after a rather thrilling bus ride. With prophetic words, Jack admonishes Annie:

I have to warn you, I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.

The movie clearly shows they intend to ignore this and make it work.

Fast forward to the — nowhere near “cult classic” sequel — Speed 2: Cruise Control. Jack is no longer in the picture and Alex (Jason Patric), Annie’s new beau confirms:

Relationships based on extreme circumstances never work out.

This little wink to the first movie is probably the only good thing about the second Speed movie, and in my opinion, something that we can take away for our work relationships.

At Woo, we work in a fast-paced environment. We have deadlines to meet, we encounter unexpected challenges, all the challenges that most people will face at some point in life.

Relationships are key at those stressful moments, it allows us to move together in the right direction. But those relationships ideally should’ve been formed — at least partly — outside of that stressful situation. Because even work “relationships based on intense experiences never work.”

I wrote about that in a post on the Happiness Engineer blog:

[W]e’ve realized […] that our pre-existing work relationships are the glue that holds all of the above together. When hearing others in the tech support industry talk about developers, marketers, and so on, the undertone is often one of conflict and irritation. While these occasionally exist at Automattic as well, generally, we work well together. 

It’s important to not wait until things go wrong to talk about our work with colleagues from our product team, the marketing team, and the legal team. At our annual Grand Meetup, we joke together and share meals. With some of the key people in each team, I have a regular Zoom meeting that isn’t prompted by incidents, but that is focused on relationship building. As a result, we can communicate directly and swiftly. We know which people should be involved. 

If the first time you’re chatting to a developer is during an incident, there’s no relationship. There is no shared understanding of company culture and intentions, and it’s going to be challenging to go through a process riddled with stressful communication and urgent decisions. We (try to) nurture a relational culture where whatever I suggest as the WooCommerce Happiness division lead isn’t above critical questions. For example, the way we word our replies and how we approach the triaging will be a lot more efficient if Happiness Engineers feel comfortable critiquing my wording and tweaking my suggestions. 

Don’t wait until things go wrong to build these relationships and culture. And definitely don’t wait to repair relationships with other divisions until everything goes bad. When things do go bad, you’ll need to rely on each other more than ever.

How do you build work relationships that can whither stressful situations?