To Debate or Prototype? That is the Question

May 4, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Conversations, Culture change, Dialogue, Teambuilding
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To Debate or Prototype? That is the Question

We’ve all been there – I certainly have – the team meetings that seemingly go on forever, dissecting every tiny detail of a proposed approach. Every potential issue is discussed ad nauseam. Opposing viewpoints are vigorously debated until faces are red and tensions are high. And at the end of it all, a week has gone by without a single line of code written.

These are the perils of analysis paralysis – the tendency to over-analyse a situation and get bogged down in discussions rather than actually making progress. It often stems from a fear of making the wrong choice, but paradoxically, it can lead to inertia that is far worse than any individual misstep.

For teams, a conundrum arises again and again: Is it better to spend a week rigorously debating and analysing the optimal approach for tackling a piece of work? Or is it more useful to rapidly build an exploratory prototype during that same week to validate ideas, hands-on?

The Endless Analysis Trap

There’s no denying the allure of the former approach. By thoroughly discussing every potential issue and considering all perspectives, surely the team can devise a near-perfect strategy, right? Wrong. Too often, this road leads to analysis paralysis – a state of inertia caused by bikeshedding hypothetical scenarios.

The Prototype-Driven Path

In stark contrast is the alternative of rapid prototyping. Instead of prolonged theoretical debate, a barebones working version of the software or a trial of the approach is built from the outset. This exploratory prototype serves as a proof of concept to validate the underlying ideas and assumptions through real implementations.

The virtues of this hands-on approach are numerous:

  • It forces ambiguous debates into concrete ways of working
  • Design and technical flaws are exposed early
  • Stakeholders can review actual working software, not just abstract plans
  • Time is not wasted overthinking issues that may never materialise

Striking the Right Balance

Of course, both extremes have their pitfalls. Some thoughtful upfront planning can sometimes help chart a general direction. But the most elite software teams recognise the limits of bikeshedding and paralysis by analysis. They favour iterative cycles – short bursts of planning, followed by prototyping, reviewing, refining, and repeating. A.k.a. PDCA (the Shewhart Cycle, popularised by Bill Deming)

By building tangible working software from the outset, even if rudimentary, teams avoid getting bogged down in theoretical tar pits. This practical feedback loop between talking and doing ultimately leads to better outcomes.

So for your next piece of work, might you choose to resist the urge to spend weeks analysing in the abstract? Roll up your sleeves, get building, and let the prototype guide your path forward.

What Does Your Team Prefer?

Every team has their own style. Some teams like to talk things through a lot before building anything. Others prefer to start building right away, maybe planning as they go.

Which approach does your team take more often? Do you find yourselves getting stuck in discussions without moving forward? Or does your team start building prototypes from the get-go?

There’s no one right answer for every situation. But it’s important to know your team’s natural habits. If you tend to over-discuss, consider setting time limits and forcing yourselves to start building. If you build prototypes yet find soem of that build time is wasted through e.g. misalignment or lack of clarity, consider spending some time getting aligned, upfront.

Being aware of these tendencies will help a team strike the right balance between discussing ideas and putting them into practice through prototyping. Finding this balance will lead to smoother execution.

Think about what your team typically does. This self-awareness can help you adjust to use the right mix of debating and prototype building.

Dissent: A Catalyst for Innovation

May 2, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Capability development, Quintessence
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Dissent: A Catalyst for Innovation

The Path Least Questioned

Businesses and software teams often find themselves entrenched in established practices and ideologies. Processes become routines, and routines turn into unquestioned norms over time. In such environments, conformity reigns supreme, and innovation is stifled. However, true progress lies in the disruption of these norms – the willingness to challenge the status quo through calm yet forceful dissent.

The Importance of Differing Perspectives

One key ingredient that is frequently overlooked when striving for innovation is the role of dissent – offering alternative viewpoints that diverge from the dominant narrative. When differing perspectives are encouraged and thoughtfully considered, businesses and teams can reap substantial benefits.

The Benefits of Constructive Disagreement

While dissent may initially seem disruptive or uncomfortable, it is essential for driving progress. When differing viewpoints are encouraged and respectfully considered, it can lead to:

  1. Rigorous Evaluation of Ideas: Contrary opinions invite teams to thoroughly examine their assumptions and beliefs, and critically assess the merits and drawbacks of their proposals, resulting in more robust and well-rounded solutions.
  2. Identification of Blind Spots: Individuals or groups often become entrenched in their own biases and perspectives, making it challenging to recognise potential pitfalls or oversights. Dissenting voices can help uncover these blind spots and mitigate risks.
  3. Increased Creativity: By challenging the status quo, dissent can spark new lines of thinking and encourage teams to explore alternative approaches, fostering an environment of creativity and innovation.

Creating a Culture of Open Discourse

Fostering an environment where dissent can thrive requires a concerted effort from everyone. Here are some strategies to consider:

  1. Lead by Example: Teams can choose to demonstrate a willingness to listen to and consider differing viewpoints, even when they contradict their own beliefs. This sets the tone for the entire organisation.
  2. Establish Safe Spaces: Create designated forums or channels where folks can freely express their opinions without fear of repercussions. This could include regular brainstorming sessions, anonymous feedback mechanisms, or open discussions during meetings.
  3. Promote Cognitive Diversity: Actively seek out individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to contribute to projects and decision-making processes. This diversity of thought can be a catalyst for both dissent and innovation.
  4. Provide Constructive Feedback: When dissenting views are expressed, respond with supportive and constructive feedback. Invite folks to address the substance of the dissent, rather than dismissing or belittling the dissenting individual.

Embracing Dissent as a Competitive Advantage

In competitive business situations, the ability to adapt and innovate is a crucial differentiator. By cultivating an environment where dissent is not just tolerated but actively encouraged, businesses and software development teams can tap into a wealth of diverse perspectives and ideas, ultimately driving progress and gaining a competitive edge.

While embracing dissent often feels uncomfortable or disruptive, it’s a necessary catalyst for challenging complacency and fostering a culture of innovation. By fostering open discourse and constructive disagreement, organisations can unlock the full potential of their people and stay ahead of the curve.

The Path to Optimal Solutions Lies in Applying Systems Thinking Conjointly with the Antimatter Principle

May 1, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Organisational effectiveness, Paradigm shifts, Product development, Software development, Systems thinking
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The Path to Optimal Solutions Lies in Applying Systems Thinking Conjointly with the Antimatter Principle

This post outlines two key components required to reach truly optimal solutions in e.g. product development, software development, operational processes, etc.:

  1. Applying Systems Thinking
    This refers to taking a holistic, interconnected view of the entire system or challenge. It means analyzing all the interrelated parts, perspectives, and dependencies rather than looking at any piece in isolation. Systems thinking allows you to understand how different elements influence and are constrained by each other within the larger environment.
  2. Attending to All Relevant Needs
    In conjunction with the systems approach, the title emphasises the critical importance of comprehensively accounting for the needs of all the Folks That Matter™. It’s about diligently mapping, understanding, and addressing the priorities, constraints, and requirements across every impacted group – not just taking a narrow view.

The Fusion of Holistic Thinking and Stakeholder Attention

Here I suggest that optimal solutions cannot be reached solely by systems thinking alone nor by piecemeal consideration of some folks and some needs. Rather, it requires the combined application of:

  1. Holistic systems thinking to understand interdependencies and potential trade-offs
  2. Meticulous attention to the needs of all the Folks That Matter™ and perspectives involved

Only through applying these two principles conjointly and harmonising both the systems view and the full scope of relevant needs can we align on an overarching solution that proves genuinely optimal. It’s not, however , a binary choice. The more we take a holistic view, and the more we atten to folks’ needs, the closer we can approach an optimal solution.

In essence, it captures the balanced mindset of both broad systemic comprehension and depth of stakeholder-centricity required to find answers that are comprehensively optimized.

While simply attempting to attend to every single need does not automatically yield an optimal solution, adjusting partial solutions for each group’s needs in harmony with others is what gets us there. It’s a nuanced process of systems thinking.

The Art of Balancing Needs

How do we balance needs when seeking solutions?

Consider the development of a public park, which involves various stakeholder groups such as families with children, teenagers, seniors, environmental advocates, local government, public safety, and surrounding neighbourhoods. An optimal park plan doesn’t simply cater to each group’s demands in isolation.

It requires intelligently integrating common elements to meet multiple groups’ core needs simultaneously while making thoughtful adjustments to reconcile competing needs. For instance, increasing lighting can create safe evening spaces for families while addressing public safety concerns. Repositioning the park entrance can improve neighbourhood flow without compromising desired landscapes.

It requires intelligently integrating common elements that achieve several groups’ core needs simultaneously, while making thoughtful adjustments to reconcile competing needs in a balanced way. Perhaps increasing lighting implements both creating safe evening spaces for families while assuaging public safety concerns. Repositioning the park entrance eases neighborhood flow while allowing desired landscapes.

The strongest solutions emerge through this iterative systems approach of understanding how pieces interrelate, continuously harmonising and refining to appropriately serve all key stakeholder needs within realistic constraints. It’s an ongoing process of holistic refinement and balance.

Upholding the Systems Mindset

As we tackle multi-stakeholder challenges, we can choose to embrace this nuanced systems mindset. Simply checking boxes leads to conflicted or discordant solutions. The optimal path forward arises from diligently mapping then interconnecting and harmonising the intricate web of needs and priorities across all impacted groups and individuals.

The more thoroughly we consider and blend various factors into a unified solution, the better it can achieve lasting success amid complex challenges.

The “Good Enough” Sweet Spot

April 30, 2024
Actionable Insights, Alien tech, Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Culture change, Engineering, Organisational effectiveness, Quantification, Quintessence, Requirements, Software development
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The “Good Enough” Sweet Spot

[Tl;Dr: “Good enough” means optimising for best meeting all the needs of the Folks That Matter™]

The Perils of Over-Engineering

In our quest for excellence, it’s tempting to over-engineer solutions, pouring needless resources into perfecting every tiny detail. However, this pursuit of flawlessness often comes at a steep price. Over-engineering can lead to diminishing returns, where the marginal benefits of additional effort become negligible. It can also result in unnecessary complexity, making systems harder to maintain and adapt.

The Pitfalls of Under-Engineering

On the flip side, under-engineering can be equally detrimental. Cutting corners or settling for subpar solutions may seem like a shortcut to efficiency, but it often leads to technical debt, compromised quality, and long-term sustainability issues. Under-engineered products or processes are more prone to failure, necessitating costly reworks or replacements down the line.

Striking the “Good Enough” Balance

Between these two extremes lies the “good enough” sweet spot – a delicate balance that maximises value while minimising waste. Embracing the “good enough” mindset means understanding when to invest resources and when to call it a day. It’s about recognising that perfection is an asymptote that can never be reached, and that diminishing returns inevitably set in.

The “Good Enough” Approach

Adopting a “good enough” approach involves setting realistic goals and prioritising the most critical aspects of a project or product. It means focusing on core functionality and user needs, rather than getting bogged down in superfluous features or tiny optimisations. By identifying the minimum viable product (MVP) and iterating from there, teams can meet folks’ needs faster and adapt more readily to changing requirements.

Quantifying the “Good Enough” Threshold

Of course, to deliver just what’s good enough, we have to know what’s good enough. Choosing to quantify the qualitative aspects of deliverables can help (Cf. Gilb).

Quantifying the Qualitative

Defining “good enough” can be challenging, especially when dealing with qualitative aspects such as user experience, design aesthetics, or customer satisfaction. However, by quantifying these qualitative elements, teams can establish more objective criteria and benchmarks for what constitutes “good enough.”

Leveraging Data and Metrics

One approach is to leverage data and metrics to measure and track qualitative aspects. For example, user testing and feedback can provide numerical scores for usability, intuitiveness, and overall satisfaction. Analytics data can reveal user behavior patterns, highlighting areas of friction or success. Even design aesthetics can be quantified through techniques like preference testing or eye-tracking studies. (See also: Gilb: Competitive Engineering).

Defining Acceptance Criteria

Another powerful tool is setting clear acceptance criteria upfront. By collaborating with stakeholders and subject matter experts, teams can define specific, measurable criteria that must be met for a deliverable to be considered “good enough.” These criteria can encompass functional requirements, performance benchmarks, accessibility standards, and qualitative thresholds based on user feedback or industry best practices.

Prioritising and Iterating

Once acceptance criteria are established, teams can prioritize the most critical aspects and focus their efforts on meeting those thresholds. By adopting an iterative approach, they can continuously refine and enhance the deliverables, incorporating feedback and adapting to evolving needs while maintaining a “good enough” baseline.

Embracing a Quantification-Driven Approach

Quantifying qualitative aspects requires a data-driven mindset within the organisation. Teams must be equipped with the tools, skills, and processes to collect, analyse, and act upon relevant data. Additionally, fostering a culture of continuous learning and experimentation can help, allowing for ongoing refinement and optimisation based on empirical evidence.

By quantifying qualitative aspects and establishing objective criteria, teams can more effectively arrive at the “good enough” sweet spot. This approach ensures that resources are allocated judiciously, core needs are met, and a solid foundation is established for ongoing iteration and improvement.

Embracing Iteration and Continuous Improvement

The beauty of the “good enough” philosophy is that it doesn’t preclude ongoing improvement. In fact, it embraces iteration and continuous refinement. By shipping a “good enough” initial version and gathering real-world feedback, teams can identify areas for enhancement and prioritise future efforts accordingly. This approach allows for more efficient resource allocation and greater responsiveness to the evolving needs of all the Folks That Matter™.

Fostering a “Good Enough” Culture

Cultivating a “good enough” culture requires a shift in mindset – one that values pragmatism, efficiency, and attending to folks’ needs over perfection. It means fostering an environment where team members feel empowered to make trade-offs and prioritise based on business impact. Teams play a crucial role in setting the tone, celebrating progress, and encouraging a bias towards action over analysis paralysis. Good enough applies to not only the product(s) but to the way the work to produce and support them works, too.

In essence, the “good enough” sweet spot is about striking the right balance – investing enough effort to deliver quality solutions that meet core needs, while avoiding the pitfalls of over- or under-engineering. By embracing this mindset, teams can optimise their resources, better address folks’ needs (but no better than good enough!) and foster a culture of (good enough) continuous improvement and adaptation.

Note to self: Mention the Kano Model, the Taguchi Loss function, and e.g. muri, mura and muda.

How Group Minds Change

April 28, 2024
Actionable Insights, Agile, Agility at Scale, Article, Business, Capability development, Collective psyche, Conversations, Culture change, Empathy, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Systems thinking
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How Group Minds Change

While we often think of the mind as belonging to an individual, groups and organisations can develop their own collective mindset – a.k.a. collective psyche – that transcends the viewpoints of any single member. This “group mind” emerges from the shared beliefs, assumptions, and ways of thinking that become entrenched within a organisation over time.

The group mind is an entity distinct from the individual minds that comprise it, yet it is also shaped by the psychological tendencies and biases of those individuals. As people within an organisation interact, reinforce each other’s viewpoints, and establish shared narratives, a collective psyche emerges. This psyche influences how information is interpreted, how decisions are made, and how the organisation responds to change and new ideas.

While the group mind can provide a sense of unity and cohesion, it often also acts as a barrier to growth and adaptation. Outdated assumptions, confirmation biases, and a resistance to changing the status quo can become deeply ingrained, making it difficult for the organisation to evolve. Understanding the forces that shape and maintain the group mindset is crucial for leaders seeking to facilitate meaningful change within their organisations.

Shifting the Group Mindset: How Organisations Can Evolve

When it comes to organisations, whether they are corporations, non-profits, or government agencies, change is often resisted. Entrenched beliefs, established processes, and a fear of the unknown can make it challenging for groups to adapt and evolve their collective mindset. However, understanding the psychological factors at play can help leaders facilitate meaningful change within their organisations.

While leaders can play a role, truly meaningful updates to an organisation’s ingrained “group mind” often arise from the grassroots. Teams have the power to self-organise and proactively evolve the collective psyche. This shared mindset influences how people interpret information, make decisions, and embrace (or resist) change. To become an adaptable, future-ready team, try:

Combating Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek out information confirming existing beliefs presents a major obstacle. Break through by having everone actively encourage diverse perspectives during meetings and decisions. Invite team members to argue the various sides of issues. Bring in outside experts – including organisational psychotherapists – to help challenge assumptions.

Overcoming the Status Quo Bias

Closely related to confirmation bias is the status quo bias, which is the preference for maintaining the current state of affairs, even when change could be beneficial. This bias stems from a combination of fear of uncertainty, perceived effort required for change, and a false sense of security in the familiar. The status quo feels comfortable, which makes change difficult. But fresh thinking is crucial. Clearly communicate the reasons for change and the benefits of evolving. Provide coaching for indiciduals and organisational psychotherapy for groups to help people navigate ambiguity. Celebrate small wins to build momentum. Provide support and resources to ease the transition.

The Influence of Social Proof

Humans are heavily influenced by the actions and beliefs of those around them – a phenomenon known as social proof. In organisations, this oten leads to the perpetuation of outdated or ineffective practices simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done”. Breaking this cycle requires leaders to invite everyone to model desired behaviors and create an environment where innovation and new ideas are celebrated.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

At the core of organisational change is the ability to adopt a growth mindset – the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. Leaders can foster a growth mindset by encouraging continuous learning, providing opportunities and resources for skills development, and celebrating failures as learning experiences rather than sources of shame.

Increasing Group Emotional Intelligence

Navigating change within organisations is not just an intellectual exercise; it also requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Folks can choose to empathise with the concerns and fears of their peers and co-workers, communicate effectively, and manage their own emotions during times of stress and uncertainty. Building emotional intelligence within the organisation can help create a more resilient and adaptable culture. By increasing emotional intelligence, people can process these emotions constructively as e.g. a team. Expressly invite an environment of empathy where needs can be heard and concerns can be voiced. Learn to self-manage team emotions and dynamics.

Embracing Change as a Constant

Ultimately, organisations that are able to successfully retune their group psyche will be those that embrace change as a constant. Rather than viewing change as a temporary disruption, these organisations see it as an integral part of their growth and evolution. By fostering an environment that values learning, diversity of thought, and emotional intelligence, organisations that are truly adaptive and future-ready emerge. The most adaptable (Agile!) organisations make evolving shared assumptions and beliefs feel like a source of strength, not pain. Foster this by developing a culture where change is treated as integral to growth and development. Institutionalise mindset updates as a regular team and organisation-wide practice. Lean on communications experts within the organisation to regularly share these updates.

Conclusion

Shifting an organisation’s entrenched “group mind” is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. As the world continues evolving at a rapid pace, the ability to proactively update collective beliefs and assumptions becomes critical for survival.

In her famous essay on leverage points for changing systems, Donella Meadows identified “The Power to Transcend Paradigms” as the highest and most effective point of intervention. A paradigm refers to the shared mental model or set of beliefs that shapes how we understand reality.

For organisations, the “group mind” acts as the overarching constraint that governs how information is perceived, decisions are made, and change is approached. Failing to evolve this ingrained collective psyche essentially renders an organisation unable to see and understand the world with fresh eyes.

Those organisations that can transcend their group mind by continually questioning shared assumptions and beliefs, and entertaining new perspectives, will be the ones poised to thrive amidst volatility. They make evolving their shared beliefs an integral part of operations rather than a periodic disruption.

By developing emotional intelligence, cultivating growth mindsets, and harnessing the creative friction of diverse viewpoints, these innovative entities ensure their collective thinking remains agile and future-focused. Their “group mind” becomes a flexible asset for reinvention rather than a restraint on change.

In our era of constant upheaval across industries, the greatest competitive advantage will belong to those organisations that fully embrace the perpetual journey of transcending their in-the-moment paradigm. They understand that clinging to ingrained collective mindsets inevitably becomes a source of blindness and stagnation. Their identity centers around the reality that questioning “the group mind” itself must remain an eternally iterative process of growth.

The Spectre of Stochastic Parrots

April 19, 2024
AI, Article, Chatbots
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The Spectre of Stochastic Parrots

AI and the Human Condition

As large language models (LLMs) continue their meteoric rise, their eerie ability to mimic human communication grows ever more sophisticated. However, we must keep a level head about the inherent limitations and potential pitfalls of these stochastic parrots trained on the endless babble of the internet.

The Faustian Bargain

LLMs are not innately intelligent. Rather, they are highly complex statistical engines, ingesting and regurgitating patterns from a colossal corpus of human-generated text (and more and more, from AI-generated text too). This digital ouroboros inevitably encapsulates the flaws, biases, and misinformation that tarnish so much of our online discourse.

We open a Pandora’s box when we uncritically accept an LLM’s outputs as gospel. Their responses are at best reflections of human knowledge – and at worst, amplifications of our worst impulses and untruths.

Towards a Nuanced Understanding

Does this mean we must reject the promise of AI? Not at all. But we can choose to adopt a nuanced, skeptical perspective when evaluating its responses. LLMs can be powerful aids, but never a substitute for human reason, wisdom and ethical judgement.

We are in an era of revolutionary yet unpredictable technological change. Maintaining a tight embrace of our core values and rationality is the only way to navigate these roiling waters. Let’s ride the rising tide of AI potential while never forgetting to remain vigilant against the flaws and distortions inherent in the data streams that birthed these technologies.

Why Corporate Software Developments Fail

April 15, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Experts
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Why Corporate Software Developments Fail

The Graveyard of Good Intentions

I’ve seen wayyy more than my fair share of corporate software development efforts, up close and personal, over the years. From bright-eyed startups to lumbering enterprise behemoths, they all had one thing in common – they failed. And shockingly, they all failed for essentially the same reason – the collective assumptions and beliefs held by the management in charge of the efforts.

An Epidemic of Misguided Thinking

Time and again, I’ve witnessed management fall victim to a set of deeply flawed assumptions and beliefs that doom their initiatives from the start. These misguided beliefs act like a virus, infecting decision-making at every level and leading teams inexorably down the road to ruin.

Some of the most pernicious offenders:

  • The assumption that more money and resources will accelerate progress linearly
  • The belief that their bespoke requirements are genuinely unique
  • Insisting that their internal talent is superior to readily available outside expertise
  • Naively trusting that adopted methodologies like Agile or Lean will be a panacea

(You can find a full collection of some 70+ of these collective assumptions and beliefs set out in my books Memeology and Quintessence.)

Cycles of Failure and Denial

The saddest part is watching this cycle of failure and denial play out over and over. At first, there is optimism and confidence that this time will be different. Budgets are generously allocated, grand plans are hatched. But as delays mount and budgets are inevitably exceeded, the blame game kicks into high gear.

It starts with shooting the messenger – dismissing or discrediting any Cassandras who warn of impending disaster. When that doesn’t stem the bleeding, people turn on each other – management backstabbing, scapegoating external suppliers, and eternal damnation for any entreprenurial independent software vendor (ISV) unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire.

An Ounce of Prevention

If I’ve learned anything from these myriad spectacles of self-immolation, it’s that taking proactive preventative measures is far more valuable than trying to fight an uphill battle after problems have already arisen. Before embarking on an ambitious development programme, management might choose to first confront their own biases and assumptions head-on:

  • Accept that their requirements are not special; proven off-the-shelf solutions likely exist
  • Look for and bring in highly skilled outside workers (and listen to them!) rather than sticking only to hiring people you already know.
  • Adopt a mindset of humility, transparency and accountability from the top down

The path to success begins with honestly assessing one’s own limitations and tendencies for self-delusion. Those unwilling to engage in such introspection are doomed to keep repeated the same ruinous mistakes again and again.Mistakes for which we all pay.

The Instincts of the C-Suite are Way Off Base

April 15, 2024
Alien tech, Article, Business, Collaboration, Improvement, Management, Motivation, Needs, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Self-organisation, Software development, Teambuilding
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The Instincts of the C-Suite are Way Off Base

In industries where collaborative knowledge work is key – software development, product design and the like – those at the top often have deeply flawed instincts about what drives productivity and creativity. Their assumptions about what motivates people and maximises value are frequently undermined by research and real-world results.

Conflating Activity with Productivity

A common managerial blind spot is the belief that more hours in the office equates to more productive output. Stemming perhaps from an industrial era mindset, executives often implement policies aimed at maximising “bums on seats.” Open plan officing, strict monitoring of attendance, limiting work-from-home – these are championed as means of fostering focus and accountability.

However, studies consistently show that knowledge workers are not production line operatives. Their optimal productive hours are limited and their cerebral tasks demand periods of distraction, refocusing and recharging. Trying to squeeze every possible minute out of them is counterproductive. Strict activity monitoring simply promotes insincere behaviour – employees pretending to be working while daydreaming or cyberloafing.

The Mythology of Keeping Them on a Tight Leash

Another frequent executive instinct is the desire for control and direct oversight. There is a notion that people must be micro-managed and kept on a tight leash lest they become complacent or distracted. Draconian monitoring of tasks, delivery and deadlines is viewed as essential in driving progress.

Yet autonomy has been shown time and again to be a powerful and essential motivator for collaborative knowledge workers. These are people who can be trusted to manage their own workflow within flexible guidelines. Injecting needless stress through oppressive oversight actively hampers productivity and alienates. The most engaged and high-performing teams are those afforded autonomy in executing their responsibilities.

Misunderstanding Intrinsic Motivation

Perhaps the most egregious executive blindspot relates to motivation itself. The traditional management view is that people are primarily motivated by money and status. The pursuit of higher salaries and promotions is seen as the catalyst that drives them.

While fair compensation and opportunities for growth are certainly baseline factors, study after study demonstrates the key drivers of motivation for knowledge workers are:

  1. The inherent interest and enjoyment of the work itself
  2. The opportunity to learn and develop mastery
  3. A sense of purpose in creating something valuable

Environments injecting excessive financial rewards or top-down pressures to produce actively dampen these powerful intrinsic motivators. Meanwhile, cultivating working conditions that promote autonomy, mastery and purpose is proven to amplify productivity. And Cf. Dan Pink’s Drive).

Misunderstanding Collaborative Knowledge Work Itself

At a more fundamental level, many executives fail to grasp the very nature of collaborative knowledge work. They incorrectly view it as a assembly line process with discrete tasks to be delegated and combined into final deliverables. In their minds, software is built by having teams of coders each complete coding assignments that are integrated together. New products arise from different designers, analysts and specialists fulfilling their prescribed roles.

In reality, fields like software development and product design involve dynamic problem-solving where roles are fluid and team situations evolve rapidly. The work is fundamentally exploratory, requiring cycles of trial, testing, and incorporated learnings. Solutions emerge iteratively through interdisciplinary collaboration across all roles.

Trying to impose rigid, segregated workflows is antithetical to this reality. Successful collaborative knowledge work demands organisational models that are adaptive and non-siloed. People must be able to fluidly cross roles and swarm around emerging problems or opportunities as a cohesive team. Excessive process formality and, especially, hierarchy only gums up the works.

In Closing

While difficult to shed, executive instincts around managing collaborative knowledge work are often diametrically opposed to evidence-based best practices. What those at the top intuit rarely enhances outcomes – rigidly controlled activity, draconian oversight, and financial or status-based motivators actively undermine outcomes. True high performance comes from nurturing inherent motivation, respecting folks’ autonomy and needs, affording flexibility around working practices, and enabling an adaptive team-based model of execution.

The Myth of Redemptive Labour

April 15, 2024
Article, Community
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The Myth of Redemptive Labour

The Working Class Confidence Trick

We’re taught from an early age that work is virtuous and ennobling. A puritan ethic extolling the moral value of working for a living has been deeply woven into our cultural fabric. We internalise the idea that through the sweat of our brows, we redeem ourselves and find meaning and self-worth.

But I’m going to let you in on a secret – this is a con game perpetrated by the capitalist ruling class. The notion of redemptive labour is a confidence trick, a way to get the working masses to willingly participate in their own exploitation.

The Capitalist Bourgeoisie’s Game

Think about it – who really benefits from this ethos of endless toil and self-sacrifice through work? It’s not the workers whose bodies and minds get ground down from incessant labour. No, it’s the patrician class of owners and investors who can sit back and watch the surplus value get extracted from the efforts of the working class.

By convincing everyone that work is intrinsically virtuous, the capitalist bourgeoisie naturalises what is essentially a system of wealth extraction. Workers are taught to equate their self-worth with their productivity in service of those who own the means of production. This psychological subjugation pacifies the masses and staves off working class consciousness.

The Mandated Indentured Servitude

The hard truth is that for most, work under capitalism is not a source of fulfilment or liberation, but rather a mandated form of indentured servitude. We sacrifice our finite time and energy not for our own benefit, but to generate profits that accumulate to a minority at the top. The redemptive labour myth tricks us into embracing this asymmetric relationship as noble and righteous. Sheesh.

Deprogramming Ourselves

So how about we start to deprogram ourselves from this ideological con. Work does not have inherent sanctity – it is a constructed system of exploitation designed to undermine our collective self-interest as workers. Until we can shake off these mental shackles, true emancipation will never be possible. UBI (Universal Basic Income) promises a way forward. And maybe that’s a reson why it’s so opposed by the exploting elites.

The Misunderstood World of Quality Assurance

April 11, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Culture change, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quality, Quantification, Quintessence, Software development
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The Misunderstood World of Quality Assurance

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) is a term that gets tossed around quite frequently in the business world, particularly in the realms of product development and software development. However, despite its widespread usage, QA remains one of the most misunderstood and misused terms out there. Many conflate it with quality control, when in reality, QA is a separate and far more comprehensive approach that we might choose to see permeate every aspect of a business’s operations.

Separating QA from Quality Control

A fundamental misconception is viewing QA and quality control as one and the same. This could not be further from the truth. Quality control refers to the specific processes and techniques used to identify defects or non-conformances in products or services. It is a reactive measure, taken after a product or service has been created.

Quality Assurance, on the other hand, is a proactive and all-encompassing mindset, focused on implementing principles, processes, and activities designed to achieve the goal of “ZeeDee” – Zero Defects. When effective QA practices are in place, the need for extensive quality control measures – a.k.a. inspections, testing – becomes largely unnecessary.

The Holistic QA Approach

In the context of product development, we might choose to see QA integrated into every phase, from conceptualisation to final delivery and beyond. This involves establishing clear quality objectives, defining measurable criteria, implementing robust preventive measures, and continuously monitoring and improving based on feedback and data.

Similarly, in software development, we may choose to regard QA as crucial throughout the entire lifecycle, ensuring functionality, reliability, and an optimal user experience – not through testing, but through activities like risk management, all geared towards the Zero Defects goal.

Prevention over Correction

The true power of Quality Assurance lies in its ability to prevent issues before they arise, rather than correcting them after the fact. By implementing comprehensive QA strategies with e.g. ZeeDee as the guiding star, organisations can significantly reduce or eliminate the need for resource-intensive quality control processes (inspections and the like), resulting in increased efficiency, cost savings, and a superior end product or service.

An Organisational Culture

Ultimately, Quality Assurance is not merely a set of tools and techniques; it is a mindset and a culture that must be embraced by every member of an organisation. From top management to front-line employees, everyone must understand the importance of quality and take ownership of their role in ensuring that products and services consistently meet the needs of all the Folks That Matter™, with Zero Defects as the guiding principle.

Conclusion

In a world where businesses strive for excellence and customer satisfaction is paramount, Quality Assurance as defined here is not a luxury; it is a necessity. By recognising the true scope and significance of QA, its distinction from quality control, and its pursuit of ZeeDee (Zero Defects), organisations can unlock the full potential of their products and services, foster a culture of quality, and ultimately, achieve sustainable success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Embracing Irrelevance

April 9, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Celebration, Empathy, Experts, Fellowship, Joy
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Embracing Irrelevance

The Harsh Reality

There I was again, sitting in yet another meeting, trying to share perspectives honed over decades of leading software teams and driving development efforts. I knew the challenges they were facing, and had wrestled with similar issues countless times before. I metaphorically raised my hand and began outlining a potential path forward, drawing upon hard-won knowledge and experience.

But I could see the glazed looks from the fresh-faced engineers before me. The furtive glances at phones and laptops. I was bombarded by the deafening silence of irrelevance.

It’s a harsh reality that many experienced technology professionals eventually need to confront. The industry moves at a blistering pace, with new languages, frameworks, and methodologies materialising every few years. Management fads come and go in eerily predictable cycles. The young zealots who embrace each new trend inevitably become the cranky stick-in-the-muds insisting, “We’ve always done it this way, and it works just fine.”

A Joyful Choice

It can be incredibly disheartening to find your deep institutional knowledge rapidly becoming irrelevant, proverbially screaming wisdom into an unheeding void. You watch in dismay as the same mistakes you learned from get repeated over and over. You furiously take notes during meetings, composing verbose emails that seemingly disappear into purgatory.

At some point, you’re left with two choices – endlessly rage against the machine of disruption and alienate those around you, or embrace your newfound irrelevance. I’ve joyfully chosen the latter.

The Therapeutic Stance

Trying to force your experiences on those unwilling or unable to receive them is incredibly unfulfilling, not to mention pointless. It simply results in frustration for all involved. Instead, I’ve learned to share my perspectives selectively with those who actively seek my counsel. I’ve let go of the need to be heard. And it’s a major reason for my current “therapeutic” stance – eschewing advice in favour of empathetic listening, non-judgement, and facilitating others’ self-discovery.

A Tremendous Liberation

In many ways, it’s a tremendous and joyful liberation. Any pressure to have all the answers dissipates. You’re free to sit back, listen, and learn from those with fresh ideas and energy. You can empathise and support when asked without putting your entire self-worth on the line.

Most importantly, you gain the ability to focus on what truly matters – making life more wonderful rather than feeding your own ego. Finding relevance in being helpful to others, not in forcing them to accept your specific brand of help. Semper mirabilis!

Unshackling Yourself

So I embrace irrelevance. I recognise that skills atrophy over time. I accept that the march of technology will inevitably leave us behind in some areas.

Might I suggest using the precious time you have left to unshackle yourself from the burden of universal relevance. Pour your efforts into making an impact where you still can. You may find more fulfilment in your later years than you ever did being the irreplaceable expert.

 

Why Your Brain Lies to Itself: A Mind-Changing Look at “How Minds Change”

April 9, 2024
Article, Book Review, Culture change, Empathy, Motivation, Psychology, Psychotherapy
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Why Your Brain Lies to Itself: A Mind-Changing Look at “How Minds Change”

I started out reading David McRaney’s “How Minds Change” wanting to hate it. Just another pontificating intellectual, I thought. But then as I got into it, my mind changed. And although about individuals, the relevance to Organisational Psychotherapy became clear. Even if the answer to “…how do collective minds change” has not become entirely clear as yet.

The Desire for Consistency Deludes Us

One of the book’s great strengths is how approachably McRaney conveys complex concepts through compelling real-world examples anyone can relate to. He deftly illustrates how our innate desire to seem consistent frequently causes us to rationalise away contradictory information. We meet people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to cling to conspiracy theories, fanciful identities, and quack medical treatments despite overwhelming opposing evidence.

Online Echo Chambers Reinforce Our Delusions

McRaney also delves into the polarising effects of internet echo chambers, highlighting how we gravitate towards online sources that reinforce our views – likely contributing to rising societal divides. He makes a persuasive case that we are beautifully equipped for detecting patterns but ill-suited for changing our minds about them once beliefs have formed.

Tools For the Job

The book also sheds light on the tools we might use to change our minds – and the minds of others (if they’re so willing) – on specific issues. For example, “Deep Canvassing*” with its opening questions:

  • “Where or from whom did you first hear about this issue?”
  • “Do you know of anyone that has been personally affected by this issue?”

Cultivating an Open Mind

While How Minds Change paints a sobering picture of human stubbornness, it provides insights into approaches for becoming more open-minded. Developing humility, seeking differing perspectives, empathising, listening, and questioning our motives can help overcome our resistance to belief revision.

An Elegant Wake-Up Call

This superbly researched and engagingly written book is an illuminating look at how our minds so readily convince us of untrue things. How Minds Change is a must-read for understanding complexities of reasoning, cognition, and our self-deceptions. Crucially, it offers invaluable guidance for learning how to re-evaluate our most steadfast notions with an open mind.

What began as skepticism towards yet another intellectual piling on, quickly transformed into an eye-opening journey into the depths of my own mind’s resistance to change. Engaging stuff.

* Deep Canvassing

Deep canvassing is a method of door-to-door political campaigning that aims to have longer, deeper conversations with voters in order to try to change their minds on particular issues rather than just persuading them how to vote.

The key principles of deep canvassing are:

1. Using active listening and open-ended questions to have an in-depth, two-way conversation rather than just delivering scripted talking points.

2. Focusing on trying to understand the root motivations, experiences, and values that underlie a person’s stance on an issue.

3. Sharing personal narratives and trying to find common ground while also respectfully bringing up counterpoints.

4. The goal is not just to win a voter over in that moment, but to plant seeds that could lead them to re-evaluate and potentially change their stance – and minds – over a longer period of time.

Deep canvassing was pioneered in the United States by the LGBTQ rights organization LBGT Action in the lead up to same-sex marriage ballots. Their deep canvassing approach was found to be remarkably effective at shifting voter attitudes compared to traditional persuasion canvassing.

While more time-intensive, deep canvassing recognises that people’s views on controversial issues are often deeply rooted and simply dismissing or arguing against them directly is ineffective. By facilitating open-ended conversations that chip away at preconceptions over time, it aims for more durable opinion shifts.

Change is a Social Phenomenon

April 8, 2024
Article, Collective psyche, Community, Culture change
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Change is a Social Phenomenon

It is often said that Man is a social animal, meant to live in communities and derive meaning from interactions with others. We are fundamentally shaped by the social structures and relationships around us from birth. Our beliefs, assumptions, values and behaviours are heavily influenced by the culture, norms and people we grow up around. (And don’t overlook pets and other flora and fauna).

Just as our individual psyches are moulded by social forces, so too is change itself a profoundly social phenomenon. True shifts in mindsets, behaviours and beliefs rarely happen in isolation. They tend to arise organically from the interplay of ideas, the cross-pollination of perspectives, and the prevailing Zeitgeist of the times. People’s views evolve through conversations, observations of others, ingoup vs outgroup influences, and the gradual reframing that comes from immersion in new environments.

The Power of the Group

This underscores the potential power of groups and organisations in catalysing change. When people come together around common goals or experiences, there is a meaningful interaction of minds. Assumptions are challenged, new syntheses arise, and space is created for evolution of thought. Just as individuals can undergo therapy to overcome unhealthy patterns, so too can groups undergo a kind of psychotherapeutic process to overhaul outmoded and dysfunctional paradigms.

Organisational Psychotherapy

This is the premise behind the emerging field of organisational psychotherapy. Just as individual therapy provides a container for people to explore their inner landscapes in order to grow, organisational psychotherapy involves creating facilitated spaces for teams, companies or communities to engage. Using insight from psychology, group dynamics and systems thinking, trained practitioners can help organisations gain self-awareness around dysfunctional patterns, beliefs and behaviours that may be holding them back. From this raised vantage point, new narratives and ways of operating can emerge organically.

The Group as Crucible

Organisations and teams are microcosms where the full spectrum of human behaviour and group dynamics are constantly playing out. As such, they become rich territory for exploring how change actually happens. Real transformation happens not through rigid policies or top-down mandates, but through people-led shifts in culture, mindsets and relationships. The group itself acts as a crucible for these new ways of being to gestate and be stress(!) tested. In being witnessed and worked through collectively, outmoded mindsets can be let go of, making space for what needs to emerge.

In this way, organisational psychotherapy is not just about imparting new models or frameworks, but about harnessing the innately social and emergent nature of how humans actually change and evolve. It is a way of working with the group mind itself as the catalyst for transformation.

The Agile Paradox: When Founders Fail Their Own Manifesto

April 8, 2024
Actionable Insights, Agile, Article, Collaboration, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence, Software development, Systems thinking
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The Agile Paradox: When Founders Fail Their Own Manifesto

The Incongruous Origins

The Agile Manifesto threw the software world into disarray when introduced in 2001. With its emphasis on individuals over processes, it promoted radical values like customer collaboration, embracing change, and empowering motivated teams.

However, over 20 years on, there is a glaring disconnect between the values espoused and how some of the founders themselves behave, according to the thought-provoking critique by @davenicolette. It’s a harsh charge – that the very people birthing the Agile revolution violate its core tenets through arrogant, domineering attitudes antithetical to the spirit of empathy and humility they advocated.

A Cultural Blind Spot

This paradox may stem from the homogeneity of the Manifesto authors as middle-class white males from individualistic Western cultures. @davenicolette posits that the teamwork and self-organisation urged by Agile were unnatural in such environments, hence the need for a “grand statement of the obvious.”

In more collectivist societies, these human-centric principles were ingrained, making much of the “Agile industry” of training and certifications more or less irrelevant. The coaching, tools and jargon were unnecessary “grabs for attention” in individualistic contexts.

Heroes to Humans

A core Agile principle was rejecting the old “hero-god” mentality of software development, instead fostering self-organising teams of empowered peers. Tragically though, @davenicolette finds some founders exhibiting that very domineering behaviour they aimed to dismantle.

In a striking role reversal, these “hero-gods of Agile” reportedly collaborate poorly, fixating on their own perceived wisdom over cultivating curiosity about others’ perspectives. A far cry from the humble facilitation prescribed by their own teachings.

The Agile Evolution: Organisational Psychotherapy

As Agile principles continue being applied beyond software, the future increasingly points toward an organisation-wide psychotherapeutic approach to workplace development and improvement.

Organisational Psychotherapy (OP) seamlessly blends the human-centric principles at Agile’s core with a holistic focus on group dynamics, emotional intelligence and cultivating synergistic team cultures. It’s a natural progression from the Manifesto’s original emphasis on prioritising individuals and interactions over processes.

In this sense, organisational psychotherapy represents the next evolutionary wave – taking the ideals of empathetic, self-aware collaboration and expanding them into a comprehensive intentional approach for nurturing the human elements that allow organisations to truly flourish.

As @davenicolette expresses, the fundamental “agile thing” boils down to simply allowing and enabling people to work in a manner innate to our species. Organisational psychotherapy provides a framework for manifesting that ideal across all kinds of organisations, while helping address cultural hang-ups and institutional obstacles.

By fusing the original humanist values with a strategic organisational focus, this approach can help transcend the personal contradictions of the founders and realise their full transformative potential across all industries. It’s the embodiment of “individuals and interactions” writ large.

The Multicultural Counter-Example

Contrasting this, @davenicolette shares an uplifting tale of coaching a diverse, multicultural team comprising six nationalities. Despite no native culture in common, they smoothly embodied teamwork and continually improved their approach – all with minimal resistance or guidance required.

This team’s seamless discovery and embracing of the ideas the Manifesto fought so hard to establish perhaps reveals the broader cross-cultural resonance when people transcend societal biases around individualism.

Simple Wisdom Lost

As Agile pervaded the corporate sphere, the original straightforward vision of “working naturally as humans” became increasingly obscured. Corporatisation, commodification of training, and standardisation into rigid processes corrupted and diluted the elegant simplicity at its core.

Organisational Therapy: The Next Level

Organisational Psychotherapy takes the Manifesto’s people-first philosophy to the next level. It blends prioritising individuals with cultivating healthy group dynamics, emotional intelligence, and vibrant team environments. It further evolves the idea of valuing interactions over processes.

The holistic approach helps us grow as individuals while optimising how we work collectively to achieve more together than we could alone. By applying psychological insights through an organisational lens, it charts an expansive path for making the Manifesto’s ideals a reality across organisations.

The Fruitful Future

From this perspective, the future feels absolutely brimming with creative potential. We can combine our skills, remove limits holding us back, and build supportive environments that increase what we’re able to do while appreciating our human nature.

It’s a wide-open opportunity awaiting trailblazers willing to forge an inclusive, self-aware path like Agile’s founders did. We stand poised to discover new ways to collaborate and unleash our collective genius to everyone’s benefit.

The Human Revolution Continues

With OP illuminating the way, we can realise more of our ambitions. This human-honouring revolution can now reshape the very core of how organisations operate – tapping into our need for continual growth and flourishing teams to build a perpetually evolving, thriving future together.

Ultimately, @davenicolette posits, the Manifesto’s powerful ideas may be best appreciated by disassociating them from the personal shortcomings of their originators. While honouring their revolutionary contribution, separating the philosophy from its founders’ “peculiar incongruities” allows its value to shine through – untarnished by human contradictions.

In its essence, Organisational Psychotherapy is a call to harness our truest, most collaborative selves through self-awareness, teamwork, continual introspection, and shunning of dogmas. A clarion call to humanise the workplace that likely resonates most purely when its ideas transcend the limitations of the Manifesto’s origins. How about we use the Manifesto as a stepping stone to better things?

Deliver Value by Addressing the Customers’ Crucial Needs

April 6, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Attendants, Business, Culture change, Customers, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Software development, Systems thinking, Value
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Deliver Value by Addressing the Customers’ Crucial Needs

[Tl;Dr: Optimal value to customers means helping them address their active constraint]

The Paradox of Customer Needs

In the context of organisations which develop software, understanding customer needs is paradoxically both straightforward and complex. On the surface, the goal seems clear – create software that meets the expressed requirements and desires of the customer. However, these articulated wants often fail to accurately capture the customer’s genuine, underlying need.

The Theory of Constraints Insight

Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints offers a powerful lens through which to view and resolve this paradox. According to Goldratt, at any given time, an organisation faces a single constraint – a bottleneck – that limits its progress toward its goal(s). This constraint represents the pivotal need that, if addressed, would unlock new levels of progress and value for the organisation.

Needs Manifest as Constraints

Through this framework, we can redefine the concept of customer needs in software development: the customer’s crucial need is to identify their current organisational constraint and see it addressed. While customers may articulate a multitude of wants, their fundamental need remains anchored in alleviating the bottleneck that is holding them back from achieving their broader goals.

Continuous Adaptation to Evolving Needs

However, just as individual human needs evolve over time, so too do an organisation’s constraints. As one bottleneck is addressed, a new constraint inevitably emerges, creating a cycle of perpetually evolving needs. This necessitates an iterative, adaptive approach to software development, where efforts are continuously re-aligned to tackle the customer’s current constraint as it shifts.

Fostering Deep Organisational Understanding

To effectively identify and address these pivotal customer needs, a deep understanding of the customer’s organisation is essential. This requires going beyond surface-level requirements gathering and actively engaging with all the Folks That Matter™, observing processes, and immersing oneself in the organisational culture (a.k.a. shared assumptions and beliefs). Only through such immersion can one gain the insights necessary to pinpoint the root constraint and develop targeted solutions.

Delivering Continuous Value

By embracing this perspective – that customer needs manifest as organisational constraints – software development becomes an ongoing journey of value delivery. Each cycle of identifying and addressing the current constraint provides tangible value to the customer, propelling their organisation forward. And as new constraints emerge, the cycle repeats, ensuring that solutions remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with the customer’s evolving needs.

Conclusion

True value in delivering solutions to customers lies in addressing customers’ crucial needs, which are inextricably tied to their in-the-now operational constraints. By adopting a constraint-focused, iterative approach and fostering deep understanding of customers’ needs vis their constraint, solutions can continuously meet customers’ fundamental needs, unlocking new levels of service, customer satisfaction, and mutual success.

Von Scharnhorst and Auftragstaktik

April 5, 2024
Article, Collaboration, Culture change, Management, Product development, Quintessence, Software development
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Von Scharnhorst and Auftragstaktik

Lessons for Collaborative Knowledge Work

Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Origins and History

In the aftermath of Prussia’s crushing defeat by Napoleonic forces in 1806, the military theorist Gerhard von Scharnhorst sought to reform the once-formidable Prussian army. One of his key innovations was the concept of “auftragstaktik” or “mission-type-tactics.”

Rather than dictating precise orders from a central command, auftragstaktik pushed decision-making down to lower levels. Commanders at all levels were given a general objective, the resources needed to accomplish it, and the freedom to determine how best to achieve the mission based on their own initiative and circumstances on the ground.

The philosophy empowered front-line soldiers and unlocked the full creative and adaptive potential of the force. After adopting auftragstaktik, the Prussians achieved remarkable success against Napoleon’s armies at the Battles of Leipzig and Waterloo in 1813-1815. Auftragstaktik also played a major role in the stunning Prussian victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

Applicability to Collaborative Knowledge Work (CKW)

While developed for military operations, the core principles of auftragstaktik hold powerful lessons for collaborative knowledge work (CKW) in the modern economy – whether in software, product development, research, or other complex team-based environments.

Like 19th century combat, these domains are rife with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Central planning and rigid hierarchies falter in the face of rapidly changing circumstances and information asymmetries between layers of management.

Auftragstaktik propounds:

  • Clear overarching strategic objectives (the “mission”)
  • Dispersed decision rights to those closest to the information
  • An emphasis on individual initiative within defined constraints
  • Bi-directional communication and coordination between layers

Modern Implementations

Many of today’s most innovative companies have embraced versions of auftragstaktik – if not in name, then in substance:

Spotify: The music streaming giant pioneered an organisational model of small, autonomous “squads” each with a clear mission aligned to company strategy. Squads have end-to-end responsibility for their areas and coordinate through linking elements like “tribes,” “chapters,” and other forums.

U.S.M.C. and SpecOps: Modern special operations embrace a philosophy of “centralised command, decentralised control” a.k.a. “Mission-type tactics”.  While top leaders set the operational vision, small teams on the ground have maximum leeway and support to accomplish their missions as they see fit based on circumstances.

Maximising Human Potential

At its core, auftragstaktik is about maximizing the full human potential of an organisation. By clearly broadcasting strategic intent while devolving execution to those closest to the information, it unlocks the advantages of both alignment and autonomy.

In our era of accelerating innovation and disruption, optimising for flexibility and adaptability is of paramount importance. The principles of von Scharnhorst’s 19th century military revolution may well be the philosophical lodestar for 21st century organisational success.

Further Reading

Marshall, R.W. (2013). Product Aikido [PDF] – Auftragstaktik For Software Development. Falling Blossoms. /wp-content/uploads/2013/04/productaikido041016.pdf

Random Walks Toward A Formula For Business Success

April 5, 2024
Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Deming
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Random Walks Toward A Formula For Business Success

The Elusive Formula

Contrary to popular belief, there IS in fact a universal recipe for organisational success – a one-size-fits-all formula that can unlock sustainable growth, profitability, and a thriving company culture. This recipe doesn’t come from the latest management fad or self-help book, but from the timeless wisdom of respected thought leaders like W. Edwards Deming, Eliyahu Goldratt, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, and Russell Ackoff.

The Proven Philosophies

For all the money companies pour into consultants, training programmes, offsites, and radical restructurings, the path to genuine enlightenment has been staring them in the face all along. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge lays out a comprehensive framework for optimising business operations, fostering a nurturing environment, and driving continuous improvement. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints provides a laser-focused approach to identifying and eliminating bottlenecks choking organisational performance. And Ackoff’s writings on systems thinking challenge conventional wisdom with powerful new paradigms for managing complexity.

The Meandering Quest

Instead of embracing and building upon these proven and time-tested ideas, companies continue to chase after the latest silver bullets and quick fixes peddled by consultants and pseudo-gurus. They cling stubbornly to antiquated command-and-control management models wholly unsuited to today’s volatile business environment. They pin their hopes on radical restructurings and top-down revolutions that merely treat symptoms rather than root causes.

In their frantic pursuit of enlightenment, organisations are engaging in a meandering quest – wandering aimlessly down one overhyped path after another while the real recipe for success remains gathering dust on the bookshelf. It’s the corporate equivalent of floundering through an endless maze, always feeling like the treasure is just around the next corner.

The Missed Opportunity

These philosophies contain profound truths about how to build resilient, adaptive organisations primed for success. And yet, the ultimate irony is that despite their brilliance, the teachings of Deming, Goldratt, von Scharnhorst, and Ackoff remain tragically underappreciated and underutilised in the business world.

The Hard Work of Wisdom

Make no mistake: Embracing such time-honoured ideas is hard work and requires diligence and much courage. That’s probably why we see it happen so infrequently. It’s far easier to be seduced by the newest fad or quick-fix solution that doesn’t require fundamentally challenging one’s mental models or way of operating. Genuinely internalising the teachings of Deming, Goldratt, von Scharnhorst, Ackoff and others demands humility, an insatiable curiosity, and a willingness to continually question shared assumptions and beliefs.

The Path Forward

The truth is, there is no complex maze to navigate. The path to organisational enlightenment is right there for those willing to open their eyes and embrace the teachings that have stood the test of time. Deming showed us how to nurture a thriving system centred on e.g. continuous learning and a deep theory of knowledge. Goldratt revealed the power of focused improvement efforts harnessing the latent potential within our companies. And Ackoff taught us to step back and see the bigger picture – to transcend reductionist thinking and operate with a holistic perspective.

The Roadmap to Success

Genuine organisational success doesn’t require the drunkard’s random walk of eternal struggle and second-guessing. It stems from having the courage to stop meandering up and down dead-end paths and instead follow the roadmap to enlightenment found within these profound bodies of work. Study them, internalise their lessons, and apply them diligently within the unique context of your organisation.

Rediscovering Wisdom

There is indeed a one-size-fits-all recipe for corporate greatness and human potential realised. We’ve had it all along. We just have to take a step back from the noise and rediscover the wisdom of the masters surrounding us. The path to enlightenment was never lost – we simply stopped paying attention.

Upton Sinclair’s Dictum

April 5, 2024
Article, Business, Collaboration, Culture change, Ethics, Honesty, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Software development, Teambuilding, Value
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Upton Sinclair’s Dictum

The Maxim and Its Intellectual Pedigree

For those unfamiliar with the novelist and polemicist Upton Sinclair, he is perhaps best known for his 1906 novel “The Jungle” which exposed horrific conditions in the meat-packing industry and inspired reforms like the creation of the FDA. But one of Sinclair’s most oft-quoted maxims has lived on as sage advice in fields well beyond its original context of Yellow Journalism and muckraking:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

This pithy statement, now known as Upton Sinclair’s Dictum, echoes the perspective of the English mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford, who famously declared

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

thereby making belief an issue of morality, or ethics.

Both Upton Sinclair and William Clifford saw intellectual honesty and a commitment to following evidence over expedience as paramount moral and ethical imperatives.

The Perils of Motivated Reasoning

Sinclair’s dictum cuts to the heart of the conflict of interest that can arise when people are incentivised to ignore uncomfortable truths or turn a blind eye to unethical practices. Over a century later, it remains as relevant as ever – particularly for business leaders and managers charged with enabling collaborative knowledge work.

The Crucible of Knowledge Work

In fields like software development, product design, team coaching, and other collaborative brain (grey muscle) work, the challenges teams face are often wicked problems – complex issues with no clear right answer, where even reasonable people can disagree with each other. Successfully navigating these choppy waters requires the fearless questioning of assumptions and beliefs, a relentless commitment to empiricism over ego, and a culture where all ideas can be rigorously stress-tested rather than self-censored.

Incentives Gone Awry

And yet, how often do we see teams afflicted by an insidious form of willful blindness, where dissenting perspectives are downplayed or dismissed outright in service of binding to already-held beliefs? Perhaps it’s driven by managers’ career incentives being too tightly coupled to delivering on a specific roadmap or revenue target. Maybe it stems from product leaders’ identities being too inextricably bound up with their “billion dollar baby” and thus being emotionally invested in rationalising sunk costs. Or it could simply be the natural tendency toward the comfortable inertia of groupthink.

Embracing Intellectual Honesty

Whatever the root causes, the antidote is the same – cultivating a culture of intellectual honesty, where all the Folks That Matter™ have both the autonomy and the enthusiasm to vocalise doubts and scrutinise lchains of reasoning, assumptions and beliefs. Where no stone goes unturned in interrogating the fundamental assumptions underlying key decisions. Where Value at Risk* queries are not only tolerated but actively encouraged as a check against blind spots and biases.

Fostering this boundary-less ethos of truth-seeking is a significant challenge facing modern knowledge-work leaders. But by striving to live up to the spirit of Sinclair’s admonition, we give ourselves the best chance of circumventing the self-deceptions and rationalisations that can otherwise send initiatives careening toward ruinous failures.

Heeding History’s Warnings

Time and again, history’s cautionary tales have proved the adage that “in a battle of conviction against conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom has largely prevailed.” That’s why embracing Sinclair’s Dictum is so vital. For only by creating an environment where people can transcend their vested interests and follow the truth wherever it leads can we hope to part the veils of entrenched assumptions and beliefs.

 

*”Value at risk queries” refers to the practice of actively questioning and scrutinising decisions, plans, or initiatives to assess the potential downsides, risks, and costs if things go wrong.

The term is taken from the financial concept of “value at risk” (VaR), which is a risk measurement and management method used to estimate the potential losses an investment or portfolio could face over a given time period.

Here, “value at risk queries” means rigorously examining the value potentially put at risk by a course of action – whether that value is financial, reputational, opportunity costs, or other key metrics important to the organisation.

Some examples of value at risk queries include:

  • What is the worst-case scenario if this product fails to gain market traction?
  • Have we fully stress-tested the assumptions around customer adoption rates?
  • To what regulatory or compliance risks are we potentially exposing ourselves?
  • How much technical debt and future constraints are we incurring with this architecture?
  • Are we missing any significant blind spots in our competitive analysis?

Instead of shutting down or dismissing these tough “what if?” questions, organisations might choose to actively encourage and support value at risk queries. This helps surface potential blind spots and provides a check against overly optimistic planning or narrow frames of reference.

In essence, value at risk queries apply rigorous risk management thinking as an antidote to groupthink and comfortable consensus-building. They stress-test initiatives before making irreversible commitments.

Silos

April 3, 2024
Article, Business, Collaboration, Community, Culture change, Deming, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Quintessence, Systems thinking
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Silos

For anyone who has worked in organisations, whether large or small, the phenomenon of workplace “silos” is all too familiar. Silos refer to the tendency for different departments or teams to operate in isolation, with little communication or collaboration between them.

While most folks working in the tech industries are familiar with the pitfalls of organisational silos such as separate marketing, sales, and operations teams, few recognise the similarly damaging effects of silos between disciplines.

For example, often, software engineers operate in isolated codebases, data scientists in segregated modeling pipelines, and designers in siloed UI frameworks. This compartmentalisation breeds many of the same pathologies as organisational silos:

  • Lack of big-picture perspective
  • Shortfalls in creative insights into how the work works, and could work better
  • Duplicated efforts
  • Limited knowledge sharing and innovation
  • Rigid mental models resistant to change

Yet modern tech products and services require integrating numerous disciplines – systems thinking, the theory of knowledge, understanding of variation, and psychology, as well as the more usual specialsms: programming, data, design, DevOps, product management, and more. When disciplines remain cloistered, the resulting solutions are sub-optimal.

The Power of Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration

In contrast, forging multi-disciplinary collaboration unlocks a powerful union of diverse skills, perspectives and domain knowledge. As Deming highlighted in his System of Profound Knowledge, viewing problems through a wide aperture leads to deeper insights.

Some key benefits of this cross-pollination include:

  • End-to-end alignment on objectives across the value chain
  • Dynamic combination of complementary expertise areas
  • Faster issue resolution by aligning priorities holistically
  • Continuous learning and growth for all
  • Fostering an innovative, psychologically safe culture

Rather than optimising isolated components, multi-disciplinary collaboration enables the co-creation of cohesive products and experiences that delight all the Folks That Matter™.

Cultivating Multi-Disciplinarity

Of course, nurturing this multi-disciplinary ideal requires organisational support and the rethinking of ingrained assumptions and beliefs about work. Incentive structures, processes, and even physical workspaces will need redesigning.

But the potential rewards are immense for forward-looking companies – accelerated innovation cycles, more productive ways of working, and formulating solutions beyond what any individual narrow-discipline specialist could achieve alone.

In our age of relentless disruption, the greatest existential risk is insular thinking – holding too tightly to narrow disciplines as the world shifts underfoot. Multi-discipline dynamism, powered by collective knowledge and continuous learning, is the currency of sustained advantage.

For those willing to transcend boundaries and embrace profound cross-discipline pollination, the possibilities are boundless. Those clinging to compartmentalised organisational and disciplinary silos, however, face morbid irrelevance.

Deming’s SoPK

For decades, W. Edwards Deming advocated his “System of Profound Knowledge” (SoPK) as the key to transforming businesses into continuously improving, customer-focused, multi-disciplinary organisations. At its core are four interdependent principles that combine heretofore disparate disciplines:

  1. Appreciation for a System: Understanding that an organisation must be viewed as an interconnected system, not just isolated silos. Each part impacts and is impacted by others.
  2. Theory of Knowledge: Recognising that learning and innovation arise from the synthesis of diverse theories, concepts and perspectives across domains.
  3. Knowledge about Variation: Grasping that complex systems involve inherent variation that must be managed holistically, not through narrow inspection alone.
  4. Psychology: Harnessing intrinsic human motivations and driving participation, rather than extrinsic forces like punitive accountability.

In most organisations, none of these profound knowledge principles are well known, let alone deeply embraced, appreciated and systematically applied. They represent a radical departure from traditional siloed thinking.

When applied holistically, Deming’s SoPK philosophy exposes the many drawbacks of organisational disciplinary silos, including:

  • Lack of big-picture, end-to-end perspective
  • Redundancies and inefficiencies from duplicated efforts
  • Suboptimal solutions from narrow specialisations
  • Fragmented vision and strategy misalignment
  • Resistance to learning and change across boundaries

Deming’s philosophy highlights the advantages of multi-disciplinary collaboration to optimise systems holistically. Narrow specialisation alone is dysfunctional.

By shining a light on these drawbacks upfront, the importance of breaking down counterproductive disciplinary silos becomes even more stark. The vital need for collaboration, systems-thinking, applied psychology and profound cross-domain knowledge is clear across all disciplines and value chains.

By highlighting these drawbacks upfront, the importance of breaking down counterproductive silos becomes even more stark. The need for collaboration, systems-thinking, applied psychology and profound knowledge cuts across all disciplines.

The System View: Beyond Isolated Parts

Deming’s first principle stresses that an organisation may be viewed as an interconnected system, not just as separate silos or departments working in isolation. Each group’s efforts affect and are affected by other parts of the system.

Silos represent a fragmented, piecemeal view that is anathema to systems thinking. By reinforcing barriers between marketing, sales, engineering, operations and more, silos prevent the shared understanding required for optimising systems as a whole.

Knowledge Through Diverse Perspectives

According to Deming’s Theory of Knowledge, continuous learning and improvement stems from the interplay of diverse theories, concepts and perspectives. Innovation arises through making connections across different mental models and multiple disciplines.

When teams comprise members from various disciplines, their unique backgrounds and experiences foster richer exchanges of knowledge. Silos, in contrast, restrict the cross-pollination of ideas.

Understanding Variation

Deming’s view of variation exposes the fallacy of trying to eliminate every defect or failure through e.g. mass inspection. Complex systems involve inherent variation that must be managed holistically, not narrowly inspected away.

Multi-discipline teams can better grasp the dynamic variations impacting their shared objectives, drawing on complementary viewpoints to guide iterative learning.

Harnessing Psychology for e.g. Motivation

Finally, Deming emphasised the power of harnessing people’s intrinsic motivations, rather than relying on punitive accountability within silos (or communities of practice). When experts from various domains unite on meaningful projects, it cultivates broader purpose and drives discretionary effort.

By removing restrictive boundaries, multi-disciplinary collaboration enables self-actualisation while encouraging collective ownership of outcomes.

Cultivating a Learning Organisation

For many organisations obstructed by siloed thinking, embracing Deming’s Profound Knowledge is no simple task. It requires reimagining structures, processes and even physical spaces to nurture multi-disciplinary engagement.

Yet the potential rewards are immense – from accelerated cycles of innovation and organisational agility, to a workforce invigorated by joy, pride, and deeper fulfilment in their day-to-day. Deming’s wisdom reveals the collaborative imperative for thriving amidst volatility.

The greater risk lies not in disruption itself, but in calcifying into rigid, inward-looking organisational and disciplinary silos incapable of evolving. Organisations have a choice: cling to the illusion of control through silos and narrow specialisms, or embrace the profound knowledge gained by breaking boundaries.

Generative AI Knows Nowt: Large Language Models Are Cribbing Content, Not Nicking Knowledge

March 30, 2024
AI, Article, Chatbots
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Generative AI Knows Nowt: Large Language Models Are Cribbing Content, Not Nicking Knowledge

The Handwringing Over ‘Knowledge Theft’

There’s been a lot of handwringing of late about large language models like ChatGPT supposedly ‘nicking’ knowledge and putting human expertise out of business. But that framing completely misunderstands what these models are and how they work. The reality is that generative AI doesn’t actually ‘know’ anything in a human sense – it is simply very good at stitching together and regurgitating content that already exists.

Just Really Good at Patterns, Not Comprehension

Large language models like Claude are trained on a massive corpus of digital text data scraped from the internet and books – everything from websites and Wikipedia entries to social media posts and product reviews. Through a complex machine learning process, the model learns patterns and associations in how this training data is written and structured.

When you query a language model, it doesn’t rely on ‘knowledge’ that it understands like a human would. Rather, it takes the input prompt, finds relevant patterns and sequences in its training data that are statistically associated with that prompt, and stitches together an output response drawing upon that data. It is essentially a sophisticated stochastic parrot operating at scale.

Intellectual Property Pilferers

So in reality, these models aren’t pilfering ‘knowledge’ – they are cribbing content. The training data itself represents the accumulation of human knowledge generation and intellectual labour over decades and centuries. But the models themselves have no conceptual understanding of that knowledge. They are simply very good at mimicking and recombining the written output of human-generated content in new ways, through predictive modelling.

This is why large language models can often give impressively fluent and coherent responses that seem knowledgeable on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and the holes in true comprehension become evident through factual errors, contradictions, incoherent reasoning, and inability to apply real context. Generative AI is just a sophisticated regurgitation engine, not an oracle of true knowledge.

Powerful Utilities, Not Human Replacements

Of course, this doesn’t mean large language models are useless or unimportant. As tools for automating content generation, analysis, and certain task workflows, they are incredibly powerful. But we can choose to retain a clear-eyed view of what they are and what their existence represents. Generative AI may be very impressive technologically, but it is not rendering human knowledge obsolete. Rather, it is highlighting the immense value of the intellectual labour that humans have generated and curated over centuries in creating the very training data that gives language models their capabilities in the first place.