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Rightshifting

Beyond the Software Teams

November 21, 2021
Agile, Article, Culture change, Leadership, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Software development, Teambuilding
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Beyond the Software Teams

One of the biggest constraints on the effectiveness of Agile software teams (the real ones, not the much more numerous pretend, faux-agile ones) is the assumption that the structures, assumptions and beliefs of the host organisation will not change. That it is, in fact,  impossible to get these to change, or to expect them to change.

An assumption which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”

~ Henry Ford

When this assumption goes unexamined and unchallenged, adopting Agile ways of working within the software teams – or in any part of the organisation, in isolation –  is a highway to hell.

– Bob

P.S. You might like to take a look at my latest book – Quintessence – to see how highly effective organisations approach and solve this challenge.

Further Reading

Marshall, R. W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Highly effective Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub)

Blueprint For Effectiveness

November 13, 2021
Article, Buzz, Culture change, Improvement, Innovation, Organisational effectiveness, Quintessence, Rightshifting
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Blueprint For Effectiveness

How would you go about explaining the factors that contribute to a highly effective software development team, group, organisation?

In Quintessence (currently 24% complete), I’ve done it for you! But do you agree with it?

I invite you to take a look (extensive free sample now available).

– Bob

 

Announcement: New book “Quintessence” In The Works

November 3, 2021
Article, Buzz, Culture change, Engineering, Improvement, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Software development
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Announcement: New book “Quintessence” In The Works

I’ve just published the Leanpub placeholder for my next book: “Quintessence”. First iteration (likely, 8% complete) will be published soonest!

I’d be delighted if you’d visit the page and express your interest!

– Bob

Helping Employees Get Their Needs Met

October 19, 2021
Antimatter principle, Article, Fellowship, Leadership, Management, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
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Helping Employees Get Their Needs Met

When employees see their needs being attended to by their employer, they’re much more likely to contribute. Reciprocity is a cornerstone of the human condition (as is fairness).

Dear Team Lead

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a rut, feeling tired and like you’re in the same mundane daily routine? You may even recognise many members of your team feeling the same way, as they lack enthusiasm in their work. What can you do as a leader to help your team get their zest back through self-fulfilment and a purpose-filled life?

Regardless of industry, sector or job type, leaders and employees can all agree on one thing: 2021 has been a year of change and uncertainty. According to national statistics, job vacancies in the UK are at a record high, with employees across the world joining the ‘Great Resignation’ (a term so common that it now carries its own Wikipedia entry).

But amongst all of the charts, statistics and official data, there are much more human reasons for this shift: reasons that are deeply personal to every employee who hands in their notice. Over the past eighteen months, many employees have had a chance to really reflect on their working lives – to figure out exactly what they want from their job, and how they might be able to craft a lifestyle that serves them on a more ‘existential’ level. In short, many employees have decided – mostly subconsciously – to reflect on their needs, and have begun searching for purpose, fulfilment and meaningful work, to name but a few common needs.

But this trend – towards greater meaning, purpose and fulfilment – doesn’t have to conclude with a resignation letter and a career change. It’s possible that employees can see their needs attended-to, even met, within their current role, and leaders can choose to take responsibility for supporting this process. Here’s how:

Show Understanding of the Importance of Needs

When it comes to motivating and inspiring employees, forget official policies and company handbooks for a moment. Start, instead, with your own behaviour. Are you conscious of your own needs? Are they being attended to by the company? Met, even? How does getting your needs attended-to affect your motivation to lead an effective team? How would you define your own needs, and how does that interact with the work you do? Answering these questions for yourself first will give you a firm foundation from which to help others.

Facilitate Opportunities for Surfacing Others’ Needs

Think about the regular opportunities you have to bring your team together. Instead of small-talk or generic ice-breaker exercises, could you introduce a needs-surfacing element to your gathering? This could be as simple as opening up a discussion about your own needs, or even the needs of the company or its Core Group. Or encourage employees to share their experiences about when having their needs attended to, or attending to the needs of others, has had an impact on them. Or, if you wanted to broaden the discussion out, you could share case studies, experiences or testimonials involving your clients, customers and users. This can be a difficult task for employees who aren’t always exposed to the eventual impact of their work (for example, those in non-client or non-consumer facing positions). Sharing the positive impact of every employee’s contribution to their own and others’ needs can be central in strengthening a sense of organisational purpose.

Readjust and Redefine Roles

Many leaders will be familiar with asking the typical catch-up question: “So, how do you think things are going?”. But this shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. It might be the case that an employee enjoys the role and the culture, but feels a need to focus on a specific aspect of their work, or a specific element of their job. As much as possible, leaders should encourage employees to lean into their needs – this might mean opening up opportunities for employees to deepen their knowledge in a particular area of interest, given that need. Other examples of this “role flexibility” include allowing employees to take trainings or courses related to e.g. their needs for skills development, or refining job descriptions to focus in on an individual employee’s needs. There are numerous opportunities to tailor, readjust or recalibrate roles to fit an employee’s needs. And the payoff? Increased employee loyalty, motivation, engagement, and trust in the company.

Balance Fulfilment

It can be easy to lose sight of the most important element of this question: the personal fulfilment of each employee. Of course, the company’s needs – success, goals and objectives – are important, but ultimately, the company is made up of individual human beings, each with their own needs and hopes. By balancing the needs of the individual employee with those of others – including those of the company – and meeting employees on a personal, human level, we are far more likely to end up with a team of motivated, committed, purposeful people. And, of course, this is what makes an organisation ‘successful’ – not just in terms of external output, revenue or reputation, but in terms of supporting the employees who work for its success.

– Bob

Visual Walkthrough Explaining Rightshifting And The Marshall Model

October 16, 2021
Article, Culture change, Improvement, Learning, Marshall Model, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Rightshifting
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Visual Walkthrough Explaining Rightshifting And The Marshall Model

For those who prefer looking to reading, here’s a visual explanation (with some annotations) briefly explaining Rightshifting and the Marshall Model.

1. Context: Organisational Transformation

Rightshifting illuminates the tremendous scope for improvement in most collaborative knowledge work organisations. And the Marshall Model provides a framework for understanding e.g. Digital Transformations. Don’t be too surprised if folks come to regard you as an alien for adopting these ideas.

2. Imagined Distribution of Effectiveness

How most people imagine effectiveness to be distributed across the world’s organisations (a simple bell curve distribution).

3. Contrasting Effectiveness with Efficiency

Many organisations seek efficiency, to the detriment of effectiveness.

4. If Effectiveness Were Distributed Normally

5. The Distribution of Effectiveness in Reality

The distribution of organisations is severely skewed towards the ineffective.

6. Some Corroborating Data from ISBSG (1)

7. Some Corroborating Data from ISBSG (2 – Productivity)

8. Some Corroborating Data from ISBSG (3 – Velocity)

9. Rightshifting: Recap

10. Plotting Levels of Waste vs Effectiveness

Showing how increasing effectiveness (Rightshifting) drives down waste.

11. Plotting Levels of Productivity vs Effectiveness

Showing how increasing effectiveness (Rightshifting) drives up productivity.

NB This the the canonical “Rightshifting Chart”.

12. From Rightshifting to the Marshall Model

Starting out with the Rightshifting distribution.

13. The Adhoc Mindset

Collective assumptions and beliefs (organisational mindset).

“Ad-hoc organisations are characterised by a belief that there is little practical value in paying attention to the way things get done, and therefore few attempts are made to define how the work works, or to give any attention to improving the way regular tasks are done, over time. The Ad-hoc mindset says that if there’s work to be done, just get on and do it – don’t think about how it’s to be done, or how it may have been done last time.”

14. The Analytic Mindset

“Analytic organisations exemplify, to a large extent, the principles of Scientific Management a.k.a. Taylorism – as described by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early twentieth century. Typical characteristics of Analytical organisation include a Theory-X posture toward staff, a mechanistic view of organisational structure, for example, functional silos, local optimisation and a management focus on e.g. costs and ‘efficiencies’. Middle-managers are seen as owners of the way the work works, channelling executive intent, allocating work and reporting on progress, within a command-and-control style regime. The Analytic mindset recognises that the way work is done has some bearing on costs and the quality of the results.”

15. The Synergistic Mindset

“Synergistic organisations exemplify, to some extent, the principles of the Lean movement. Typical characteristics include a Theory-Y orientation (respect for people), an organic, emergent, complex-adaptive-system view of organisational structure, and an organisation-wide focus on learning, flow of value, and effectiveness. Middle-managers are respected for their experience and domain knowledge, coaching the workforce in e.g. building self-organising teams, and systemic improvement efforts.

16. The Chaordic Mindset

“The Chaordic mindset believes that being too organised, structured, ordered and regimented often means being too slow to respond effectively to new opportunities and threats. Like a modern Jet fighter, too unstable aerodynamically to fly without the aid of its on-board computers, or sailing a yacht, where maximum speed is to be found in sailing as close to the wind as possible without collapsing the sails, a chaordic organisation will attempt to operate balanced at the knife-edge of maximum effectiveness, on the optimal cusp between orderly working and chaotic collapse.”

17. Transition Zones

As organisations progress towards increasing effectiveness, they encounter discontinuities which the Marshall Model labels as Transition Zones (orange hurdles). In these transitions, one prevailing mindset must be replace wholesale with another (for example, Analytic to Synergistic, where, amongst a host of shifts in assumptions and beliefs, attitudes towards staff transition from Theory-X to Theory-Y). Cf. Punctuated Equilibria.

18. What Each Transition Teaches

A successful Adhoc -> Analytic transition teaches the value of discipline (extrinsic, and later, replaced with intrinsic).

A successful Analytic -> Synergistic transition teaches the value of a shared common purpose.

A successful Synergistic -> Chaordic transition teaches the value of “Positive Opportunism”.

19. The Return-on-Investment Sawtooth

Incremental (e.g. Kaizen) improvements with any one given mindset show ever-decreasing returns on investment as the organisation exhausts its low-hanging fruit and must pursue ever more expensive improvements.

Each successful transition “resets” the opportunities for progress, offering a new cluster of low-hanging fruit.

20. Conversation

What has this walkthrough shown you? I’d love the opportunity for conversation.

– Bob

Quickie: Ackoff Explains Analytic vs Synergistic Thinking

October 8, 2021
Culture change, Giants, Improvement, Learning, Marshall Model, Organisational effectiveness, Philosophy, Quickies, Rightshifting
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Here’s a video in which the great Russel L. Ackoff explains the difference between knowledge and understanding, and thereby the difference between analytic and synergistic thinking (Cf. Rightshifting and the Marshall Model).

https://deming.org/ackoff-on-systems-thinking-and-management/

 

Gimme A Break, Here

September 26, 2021
Article, Culture change, Marshall Model, Rightshifting, Software development
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Gimme A Break, Here

Here I am, trying to change the world, and most days I feel like I’m being punished for the views I hold and share, and the aspirations I have. Not that it shakes my convictions, nor my resolve.

Decades

For more than two decades I’ve been trying to help everyone in the software industry get past the Software Crisis and discover new, more effective ways of doing things. And there are much more effective ways of doing things that the ways in common usage presently (see e.g. Rightshifting, and the Marshall Model).

I’ve not been having much success, I’ll admit.  But I keep plugging away. I might catch a break sooner or later, surely.

The Message

My message is not “I know this stuff, do it MY way.” I’m not flogging a new method. I’m not selling anything.

My message is “The way we’ve been looking at software development for the past fifty years isn’t working. How about we find other ways to look at it? Here’s a few clues I’ve noticed…”

The Old Frame

The old frame for software development – processes and tools, the very idea of “working software” as the touchstone – holds us back and prevents us from seeing new ways of working and doing.

All our focus on technical skills, coding, design, architecture, testing, CI/CD, technical practices, canned and packaged methods, generic solutions, and etc. has had us barking up the wrong tree for more than half a century.

And the almost ubiquitous centuries-old management factory hasn’t helped us make the transition.

The New Frame

I’ve written before about the new frame, but to recap:

The new frame that my long career has led me to favour is a frame placing people, not practices, centre-stage. A frame focused on people – and their emergent individual and collective needs. A frame more aligned to increased predictability, lower costs, less frustration, and more joy in work for all concerned.

A frame comprising:

Software development, as a form of collaborative knowledge work, is a predominantly social phenomenon. And as a predominantly social phenomenon we will have more success in software development when we focus on the people involved, our relationships with each other, our collective assumptions and beliefs, and everyone’s fundamental needs.

I call this the organisation’s “social dynamic”. Improve the social dynamic in a team or workplace and all the good things we’d like come for free. Like Crosby’s take on quality, we might say “success is free”.

I Invite Your Participation and Support, or At Least, Empathy

Changing the world is not for the faint hearted or indifferent. But if you give a damn, I could really use your support. And a break.

– Bob

Further Reading

Rico, D. (n.d.). Short History of Software Methods.. [online] Available at: http://davidfrico.com/rico04e.pdf [Accessed 26 Sep. 2021].

Simon Sinek (2011) If You Don’t Understand People, You Don’t Understand Business. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8grVwcPZnuw [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].

We’re Still Working in the Dark Ages

September 20, 2021
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Management, Needs, Nonviolent Communication, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
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We’re Still Working in the Dark Ages

Medievalism

Medievalism is a system of beliefs and practices inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period. Closely related to and encompassing Feudalism, and the Manorial system.

Foundations

Medievalism’s foundations include Faith, Seigneuriage, and land lordship.

Consequences

Despite many legal and social changes since the Middle Ages, from the perspective of folks working in organisations there’s not much difference between serfdom then and employment today. Employees are hired and remain employed at the whim of the Lords of the organisation, and dismissed with as little thought – or maybe even less thought – than serfs.

The relationship between employer and employees remains predominantly one of power-over. And although a relationship, it’s hardly ever a humane relationship. And thus hardly ever a positive contributor to organisational effectiveness.

Solutions

Whilst any kind of universal solution remains a long way off, and dependent on widespread social change, individual organisations can address the issue and consequences through deploying ideas like nonviolence, the Antimatter Principle, and redefining the collection of The Folks That Matter. Above all, though, progress depends on us recognising the medievalism implicit in the way our work works, and our relationships with that, and each other. Are you bovvered?

– Bob

Further Reading

Kahane, A. (2010). Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

 

Quickie: Memeology now 96% complete

September 1, 2021
Culture change, Dialogue, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quickies, Rightshifting
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My latest book, “Memeology” is now 96% complete. All the memes are now completed. Some minor sections remain outstanding. Is it now time to buy? The Special Offer remains available to purchasers.

Why read this book? Memeology provides organisations with a raft of questions through which to surface and reflect on its collective assumptions and beliefs. Remember,

E = 𝑓(Mindset)

Organisational effectiveness is a function of the collective mindset of the organisation.

Who is responsible for the effectiveness of your organisation? And what tools do they have to work on that?

Lucky Thirteen

August 28, 2021
Article, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
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Lucky Thirteen

It’s been thirteen years now since I first published my work on Rightshifting. In that time, some select few folks have embraced the idea, and incorporated it into their practice.

The industry in general however remains blithely unaware of the idea, and continues to fail to deliver software effectively, on a regular basis. C’est la vie.

In case a recap might assist some folks in better understanding the relevance of the idea, here’s Rightshifting in a nutshell.

At Its Core

Rightshifting explains the factors which contribute to effective software development. If effective software development is not as issue for you, you can safely ignore the idea.

For those for whom effectiveness is of interest, Rightshifting introduces a variant of Lewin’s Equation for the software industry – and collaborative knowledge work in general:

E = 𝑓(Mindset)

Effectiveness is a function of the collective mindset of the organisation developing the software.

Addressing the Root Causes

Equipped with this explanation, those interested in effectiveness can focus of the root causes of the seemingly perennial Software Crisis.

I guess at least one reason folks ignore this explanation of software development effectiveness is that it’s much easier and more lucrative to sell patent medicines than sell an effective treatment of the root causes. 

– Bob

Further Reading

Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. Harper Perennial.
Rightshifting and the Marshall Model – Class 101. (2013, September 15). Think Different.

First Principles

August 15, 2021
Antimatter principle, Article, Emotioneering, Flowchain, Marshall Model, Prod•gnosis, Product development, Psychology, Rightshifting, Software development
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First Principles

I was reading the other day about how Elon Musk “reasons from first principles“. And I was thinking, “Well, d’oh! Doesn’t everyone do that? I know I do.” And then, upon reflection, I thought, “Hmm, maybe most folks don’t do that.” I certainly have seen little evidence of it, compare to the evidence of folks reasoning by extension, and analogy. And failing to reason at all.

Now, allowing for journalistic hyperbole and the cult of the celebrity, there may just still be something in it.

So, in case you were wondering, and to remind myself, here’s some first principles underpinning the various things in my own portfolio of ideas and experiences:

The Antimatter Principle

The Antimatter Principle emerges from the following basic principles about us as people:

  • All our actions and behaviours are simply consequent on trying to get our needs met.
  • We are social animals and are driven to see other folks’ needs met, often even before our own.
  • We humans have an innate sense of fairness which influences our every decision and action.

Flowchain

Flowchain emerges from the following basic principles concerning work and business:

  • All commercial organisations – excepting, maybe, those busy milking their cash cows – are in the business of continually bringing new products, or at least new product features and upgrades, to market.
  • When Cost of Delay is non-trivial, the speed of bringing new products and feature to market is significant.
  • Flow (of value – not the Mihaly Csikszentmihaly kind of flow, here) offers the most likely means to minimise concept-to-cash time.
  • Autonomy, mastery and shared purpose affords a means for people to find the intrinsic motivation to improve things (like flow).
  • Building improvement into the way the work works increases the likelihood of having sufficient resources available to see improvement happen.

Prod•gnosis

Prod•gnosis emerges from the following basic principles concerning business operations:

  • All commercial organisations – excepting, maybe, those busy milking their cash cows – are in the business of continually bringing new products, or at least new product features and upgrades, to market.
  • Most new products are cobbled together via disjointed efforts crossing multiple organisational (silo) boundaries, and consequently incurring avoidable waste, rework, confusion and delays.
  • The people with domain expertise in a particular product or service area are rarely, if ever, experts in building the operational value streams necessary to develop, sell and support those products and services.  

Emotioneering

Emotioneering emerges from the following basic principles concerning products and product development:

  • People buy things based on how they feel (their emotional responses to the things they’re considering buying). See: Buy•ology by Martin Lindstrøm.
  • Product uptake (revenues, margins, etc.) can be improved by deliberately designing and building products for maximum positive emotional responses.
  • Quantification serves to explicitly identify and clarify the emotional responses we wish to see our products and service evoke (Cf. “Competitive Engineeering” ~ Gilb).

Rightshifting

Rightshifting emerges from the following basic principles concerning work in organisations:

  • The effectiveness of an organisation is a direct function of its collective assumptions and beliefs.
  • Effectiveness is a general attribute, spanning all aspects of an organisation’s operations (i.e. not just applicable to product development).

The Marshall Model

The Marshall Model emerges from the following basic principles concerning work in organisations:

  • Different organisations demonstrable hold widely differing shared assumptions and beliefs about the world of work and how work should work – one organisation from another.
  • Understanding which collection of shared assumptions and beliefs is in play in a given organisation helps interventionists select the most effective form(s) of intervention. (Cf. The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition).

Organisational Psychotherapy

Organisation psychotherapy emerges from the following basic principles concerning people and organisations:

  • The effectiveness (performance, productivity, revenues, profitability, success, etc.) of any organisation is a direct function of its collective assumptions and beliefs about the world of work and how work should work.
  • Organisations fall short of the ideal in being (un)able to shift their collective assumptions and beliefs to better align with their objectives (both explicit and implicit).
  • Having support available – either by engaging organisational therapists, or via facilitated self-help – increases the likelihood of an organisation engaging in the surfacing, reflecting upon, and ultimately changing its collective assumptions and beliefs.

– Bob

Culture Shift

June 27, 2021
Culture change, Innovation, Organisational Therapy, Rightshifting
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Culture Shift

The Power of Culture

Giants of industry swear by the power of organisational culture. They could all be mistaken, of course. But the sheer numbers suggest maybe they’re not.

Assuming they’re right, there’s two cases to consider:

Case One: Your organisation has exactly the culture it wants and needs to be totally awesome.

Case Two: Your organisation needs a shift in its culture to become totally awesome.

If case one applies, you’re good. Done and dusted. At least, until the environment (markets, customer demand, technology, society) changes. 

If case two applies, you can continue with that suboptimal culture, or do something about it. If you decide you need to do something, what will that be? How will you shift your culture?

– Bob

That’s a Great Idea But…

June 22, 2021
Culture change, Memeology, Nonviolent Communication, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Psychology, Rightshifting
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That’s a Great Idea But…

We’ve all experienced it. Someone comes up with a great idea for doing something different, and better. Everyone agrees it’s a great idea, and better. And yet nothing happens. Nada. Zip.

How to explain this near-universal phenomenon?

Loss Aversion

I choose to looks at the phenomenon in terms of loss aversion (and its kissing cousin, the status quo bias).

We human beings have an outrageous number of cognitive biases. One of the most powerful of these biases is loss aversion. 

Loss Aversion and the Status Quo

“In a nutshell, loss aversion is an important aspect of everyday life. The idea suggests that people have a tendency to stick with what they have unless there is a good reason to switch. Loss aversion is a reflection of a general bias in human psychology (status quo bias) that make people resistant to change. So when we think about change we focus more on what we might lose rather than on what we might get.”

~ Shahram Heshmat Ph.D., Psychology Today 

The notion that losses loom larger than gains, originally formalised by Kahneman and Tversky (1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1991; cf. Markowitz, 1952, p. 155), has proven to have tremendous explanatory power.

In addition to basic examples, loss aversion can help to explain a wide range of phenomena, including the sunk cost fallacy, the attraction effect, the compromise effect, anticipated and experienced regret, and the status quo bias.

Needs and Relatively Ineffective Strategies

In my work as an Organisational Psychotherapist, I see, daily, folks’ reluctance to give up on their “established” strategies for getting their needs met in favour of new strategies offering more effective means for seeing those needs met. Often, MUCH more effective means.

Where does loss aversion come into it? Loss aversion explains the hold these “established” strategies have over people. The promising new strategy may look attractive, but the fear of not getting their needs met (in case the new strategy doesn’t pan out) hugely outweighs the promise of the uplift in effectiveness from the new strategy, if adopted.

“One implication of loss aversion is that individuals have a strong tendency to remain at the status quo, because the disadvantages of leaving it loom larger than advantages.”

~ Daniel Kahneman (Kahneman 1991)

Conclusions

We fallible humans cling to our established strategies for seeing our needs met for fear of losing out if we choose a different strategy, almost no matter how attractive that new strategy may be.

For me, this goes a long way to explain “resistance to change” – which may more usefully be called “attachment to the status quo”.

Psychology and neuroscience offers some suggestions how to remediate loss aversion and status quo bias. I may explore these suggestions in a future post (given demand).

– Bob

Further Reading

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus And Giroux.

Rick, S. (2011). Losses, Gains, and Brains: Neuroeconomics can help to answer open questions about loss aversion. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21(4), 453–463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2010.04.004

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), 193–206. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193

Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Puddledancer Press.