Letters to my Daughter: On Passion

Whenever I play with you, there is a part of me that is a little bit jealous. Life hasn’t jaded you yet. Your curiosity and innocence overflow, since there is no counter-acting force holding them back. You don’t know cynicism or sarcasm.

And the result of this is that your joy is pure (your anger and frustrations also, for the record). So when a game or activity grabs your attention, you throw yourself completely into it. Yes, your attention span is brief. Very brief. But when it’s there, you absolutely love whatever it is you’re doing. You’re passionate about it.

You should never lose that. Passion in what you’re doing, I mean. Work is going to be a significant part of your life and if you’re not passionate about whatever it is you’re doing… it’s like trying to swim with your hands tied behind your back. 

Some people seem to know at an early age what it is they are passionate about. My feeling is most don’t. Maybe you’ll be one of those that since they were 5 years old knew they wanted to play the piano. But again, probably not. And if not, don’t despair. It’s ok not to know. Actually, I would argue it’s probably even better.

You see, to be able to answer the question, “what are you passionate about?”, there are 2 journeys that need to happen. 

One is internal, and is about finding out who you are as a person. What kind of things do you like? What challenges you? What scares you? Why?

The other one is external, and is about exploring the world. What is going on around you? What are the different types of work to do out there? What are the different problems society needs to work on? What topics do you care about? What is life like in Australia? Vietnam?

And don’t put pressure on yourself to come up with answers quickly. You’ll find out that doing is part of the learning process, and you’ll have to experiment down different tracks. Also, the thing you’re looking for (passion in what you do) is most likely a moving target. What excites you today might become dull tomorrow. That’s not a setback, it’s growth. Cherish it.

You might also find out you’re passionate about more than one thing. In that case time and the human need to sleep might seem like impediments. If that happens try to be creative and find something to do that combines some of these passions. And relax, there will never be enough time for everything. That’s the price of curiosity.

Make your professional life a continuous search for passion. Don’t worry too much about whether each step makes perfect sense. Search for passion and in the end, it will all rhyme.

The Increment Singularity

“Scrum was just another hype”, thought the CIO.
 
The thought saddened him. He knew that people in the organization thought his attitude towards Scrum was at best skepticism, if not outright cynicism, but that was not the case. He really did believe it could help him change his delivery organization. Scrum was answering such an obvious incoherence in the traditional product delivery practice of sequential development. He could clearly see how the problems he had in his organization were rooted in the very things Scrum was changing. Despite what others believed, he did think Scrum was the right direction to go. But he was also a logical person. He prided himself on the fact that he was able to remain detached from his transformation initiatives, always able to judge objectively if something was working. And this was not working.
 
He had changed his delivery organization. Scrum teams proliferated, and with a few remaining exceptions, everybody was doing Scrum. When he walked around the delivery floors, all he saw were post-its, taskboards, burndowns, and stand-ups. He attended some of the Sprint Reviews and saw teams showing working software and business delighted by this new way of working. Some of the Agile coaches working for him had asked for permission to present the company as a case-study in Agile conferences (a request he accepted, proudly). He had people from HR showing employee satisfaction surveys where it was clear – people were happier working this way.
 
Despite all of this, he felt sure about his conclusion. This was all a hype.
 
He was staring at the numbers in front of him. Their time-to-market had increased marginally, their customer satisfaction also. But the improvement was so slight, he was sure it was just the Hawthorne effect. If the amount of management attention and money they had invested in the Agile transformation had instead been invested in implementing something else, he was sure it would have generated the same short-term, marginal improvement. And then there were the things he couldn’t really measure, but he could feel. The transparency and dedicated teams Scrum brought on did not decrease the biggest waste he felt was hurting his organization – politics. Managers were still engaged in political games and maneuvering. Priority discussions were endless and ended in compromised stalemates that essentially ignored the problem.
 
He went to his bookmarks and opened up the article one of his Agile coaches had written on infoQ about the Agile transformation in his company. He read it again. When he finished he thought to himself, “I wish the reality I see matched half of the picture painted in that article.” Some of his competitors had approached him after that article to discuss sharing best practices. He knew what they wanted - the recipe. “How do I do the same for my company?” 

And he always obliged, trying to give them answers. But he felt like a fake whenever he did that. The Emperor with no clothes.
 
And as much as he wanted to avoid admitting it, he felt he couldn’t avoid it any longer. He said it aloud one more time, as if doing so would make it more real and easy to accept – “Scrum was just another hype.”
 
On his way home that evening, he stopped by his regular bar to have a beer with some friends. The Friday ritual. Once there he ordered a whisky.
 
“Rough week?”, asked Rob.
 
“Disappointing one,” he corrected Rob.
 
“Want to talk about it?”
 
He didn’t. They changed subjects as he tried to forget the issue, at least until Monday morning.
 
To his dismay, it was not even 30 minutes later when another one of his friends, Gary, arrived and started talking about how he was excited about a potential promotion. Gary was also a top manager (though at a smaller company), and he had managed to improve things so drastically for the product he was managing that the CEO had taken notice. He was sure a promotion was soon to follow. 

But the thing is, he knew what Gary was doing. He was also doing Scrum at his company. And so he couldn’t help himself, and mid-way through Gary’s story, he interrupted with obvious sarcasm – “come on, you’re telling me that some post-its and stand-up meetings changed everything?!?”
 
Gary smiled at the question, and he immediately regretted the tone he used to ask it. He put down the whisky. Gary continued, “problems at work, Jack?”
 
“Forget it, he doesn’t want to talk about them,” Rob jumped in, “he just wants to drink his whisky and sulk like a teenage girl.”
 
Oh well, so much for parking the problem until Monday morning. Might as well get it out of my chest now, he thought. “Sorry Gary, I wasn’t trying to rain down on your parade. I’m sure you’ve done great things there. What I’m saying… what I’m trying to say is that if you succeeded, it’s not because of Scrum, it’s because of something else you’re doing. I have my entire organization doing Scrum and I’m still waiting for the promised nirvana to arrive. All I see behind the post-its, open spaces and stand-ups is more of the same. I didn’t want to admit it, but I’ve come to realize it’s a hype, it doesn’t actually change any…”
 
“Alright, I’m going to get another drink,” interrupted Rob, “I thought you had serious problems, but it’s just more of this Scrum thing. You guys need to get a life!”, and he walked towards the bar. He stopped after a couple of steps, turned around, and asked, “sorry Scrum-dudes, do I need to write a post-it ‘get drunk’ and put my name on it before I proceed?” He laughed at his own joke, turned around without waiting for a reaction, and continued towards the bar.
 
Gary looked at him and asked, “it didn’t actually change anything?”
 
“What didn’t actually change anything?”, he asked.
 
“Scrum,” replied Gary.
 
“Oh, yeah. Nothing huge. Sure, employee satisfaction is a bit higher, lead time is a bit lower, but… no, nothing earth shattering,” he explained. “I still spend most of my time in stupid political discussions with delivery managers and Product Owners who refuse to agree on the color of grass!”
 
He picked up his whisky again. Took a long sniff of it, letting the alcohol and smoky wood smell overpower his senses, and took a big sip. He let the whisky sit in his mouth for a bit, warming up, before swallowing. He took a deep breathe afterwards, intensifying all the other tastes in the whisky. When he looked up, Gary was smiling at him sympathetically. Like he had been there before. “Alright Gary, I can tell you’re having a hard time containing your excitement. Go on, tell me why I’m wrong and this is not all just hype.”
 
“The increment singularity,” replied Gary cryptically.
 
“Is that the name of your new band?”, he asked.
 
“That is the answer to your problem,” replied Gary. “We’ve talked shop before, and I told you then that until your teams are delivering a product increment every Sprint, you’re just shaving the yak.”
 
“But we do! I’ve been to more Sprint Reviews than I care to remember and in all of them, teams are showing working software,” his voice rising again.
 
“Can they put the ‘working software’ in production after the Sprint Review if the Product Owner likes it?”, pushed Gary.
 
“Come on, you know they can’t. I work in an organization with over 20,000 people. We manage a portfolio of inter-connected front-ends and backends, and nobody can release independently. Teams are showing the work they did for their part of the product, but they still need to integrate their work with the other teams,” he said.
 
“You have a weird definition of ‘working software’”, said Gary.
 
He took a long look at Gary, and then he looked down at his whisky. He finished it off with one swig, put the glass down on the table, and looked at Gary again. Of course he understood what Gary was telling him. And of course, Gary was right. His work wasn’t done. He had put in place all the window dressing, but had failed to change the core. None of this teams could deliver a freaking increment!
 
Rob came back to the table and brought a beer for Gary and another whisky for Jack and said, “alright gentlemen, no talking shop for the next half hour. After that I’m going home, you guys can talk post-its all you want.”
 
He looked at Rob, grabbed the new whisky glass with an appreciative nod and said, “you know Gary is starting a new punk rock band? He’s calling themselves ‘the increment singularity’”
 
Rob laughed, looked at Gary and said, “that might be the stupidest band name I ever heard!”
 
Gary said, “wait until you hear how bad we sound.”
 
They all laughed and the night went on.
 
When he got home he felt tired.
So much work still to do.

Self-Managing & Taylor's Cognitive Dissonance Issues

The manager kept nodding. He got it. Scrum, the roles, the principles. “Yup, got it”. He understood all the rules and responsibilities. His only question was, “when do we start?” He had read all the articles about the benefits of iterative &  incremental development and was ready for the magic to start. He understood the process. It was simple.

How could I make him see it? He wasn’t ready for the transformation.

I had to tread carefully, the cognitive dissonance could be too much for him to handle. It’s one of the basic problems of any Agile transformation. Once you get passed the team/project level and you want to talk about scaling, the biggest impediment is the one organizations refuse to see – you need to move towards empowered, self-organizing, cross-functional teams. This is the logical extension of the Agile mindset when applied to organizations. This is the key scaling challenge. Scaling delivery and product ownership is simple. It might require some tough decisions and a lot of hard work refactoring your mountain of technical debt, but it’s not hard to see what needs to happen. However, the paradox that self-management wipes out the job title of the people typically charged with implementing it (middle managers) is a tough pill to swallow.

If only they realized that it’s only the job title that is wiped out, not their employment. Removing the job title should free them to find the most valuable thing to do with all the knowledge they have of the inner-workings of the organization. But of course it’s scary. I get that.

Still, it’s interesting, no? Nobody blinks an eye when it comes to reducing the number of engineers, testers, designers or analysts. But if you try to reduce the number of managers (again, not firing the people, just the role), get ready for some serious push back. Much like the legislative body of most democratic countries, management layers in organizations are bloated, ineffective and territorial.  It wasn’t the fault of this manager, he was a smart guy. But the system was clearly pushing him to a place where he could never see self-management and servant leadership for what it really is – the next step in the evolution of organizational design and the world or work. These topics are not minor tweaks to the Taylorist model, they are replacing it. Kuhnian-style. And if your career was built on the wrong side of a paradigm shift, it’s not easy to make the leap. You’re rooted.

Still, I had to try. That was my role.

So I asked him what did he see as the real value of the Scrum Master. And I could see his struggle. I hoped putting him through this discomfort was just a necessary part of the process and that some challenging from my side would help us get to the other side.

"The Scrum Master is like a team lead"
Not really, their key responsibilities have nothing to do with delivery or administration

"They must push the team to deliver"
If your Dev Team needs pushing, you got bigger issues to solve first

"Well, but who makes sure that the team is working hard? I mean, we know how these things go!"
Like I said, you've got bigger fish to fry

"Fine, let's see... they need to facilitate the Sprint Retrospective"
Sure, what else?

"They need to facilitate the Sprint Planning!"
Ok sure, if it's really necessary

"They need to facilitate the Daily Scrum"
Now you're pushing it

"They facilitate the success of the Scrum Team"
Facilitate - you keep on using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means

"Ok, then I guess I don't really understand it"
Great, we can begin

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There is a lot of truth in the popular phrase, "Scrum is simple, but it's not easy". I like to tell people that myself, pointing out that you can learn the Scrum Framework in minutes, not hours. The official Scrum Guide is 14 pages long. It's simple. But as many teams and organizations find out, being good at it is anything but easy. Like chess.

And in my experience, one of the most mis-understood roles by organizations trying to adopt Scrum as part of their Agile transformations is the Scrum Master. It’s the role that involves the most clear mindset shift. When you explain the Product Owner role, organizations get it – it’s the person in charge of deciding what gets built. That concept existed in some form. When you explain the cross-functional development team, management gets it – it’s the people who build the product. Ok, they’re now in a cross-functional team and they are self-organizing and they have to do incremental delivery. Yes, all those things might be difficult changes depending on your organization’s exposure to waterfall thinking, but management can grasp the benefit of those changes at the team level and support them. The challenge with these topics for management thinking is scaling, not at the team-level.

Now the Scrum Master... that's a different beast altogether.

Organizations struggle to fully grasp this role because it’s completely new. It didn’t exist before in their traditional setup. In the org chart, the Scrum Master is the embodiment of the paradigm shift. There’s this dude sitting there, with a weird job-title and many of his key responsibilities (when looked at from the old paradigm side of the chasm) are either alien or schizophrenic.

• Facilitation (alien)
• Coaching (alien)
• Change agent (schizophrenic)
• Servant leadership (alien and schizophrenic)

So organizations create the role and make sure somebody is “assigned” to it. Scrum only has 3 roles, so it’s kind of difficult to miss one. And they might even write a good job description for the Scrum Master role, highlighting many of those soft skills mentioned above. But when you take a close look, the ScrumMaster is stuck in the middle in most cases.

She is not management, and cannot remove or really push for the resolution of the important, root-cause type impediments. She is also not part of the product organization or product delivery. Stuck in the middle. Scrum Masters in these caseshave 2 choices:

1. Join the fire department: Get involved in the delivery side of things and become the Scrum Master – Project Manager (Scrum Manager?) hybrid we see in most cases. Also known as fire-fighting ninjas, their main tool is the band-aid.
2. Become a Scrum Mom (nod to A. Medinilla’s Scrum Master Maturity Model): focus on the small improvements the team can do, make sure the team follows the Scrum ceremonies and has all the necessary Scrum artefacts, make everything transparent, and keep screaming either until somebody notices or they lose their voice.

Neither one of these options is going to lead to any significant changes. Instead, management needs to be distributed. Pushed down. More management. Less managers. More servant leaders. And this is tough for organizations because it forces them to review their core assumptions about organizational design. It becomes hard for the organization to see how to effectively use their managers in an Agile environment. What do I do with my experienced, capable and intelligent managers if I’m moving towards self-management?

The curious thing is that the blueprint of how to answer this question is staring them in the face – it’s the Scrum Master role. It’s the switch from manager to servant leader. Facilitator. Remover of fear. Creator of collaboration. Observer of flow. General of vibe. Protector of transparency. Manager of nothing. Dictator of openness. Minister of experimentation.

The real problem in Agile transformations is who is taking ownership of pushing for improvements and changes that are beyond the scope of the team? How are we handling impediment removal and continuous improvement at scale? This is the niche waiting for former managers to fill it. And for that they should lose their title and become servant leaders.

Shhh… just don’t call them Scrum Masters.

Letters to my Daughter: On Honesty and Empathy

So here is another experiment at a new type of post - I’m calling this series “Letters to my Daughter”. I know, I can’t really call these “series” if I only have one post on the topic, but give me some time. I’ll get there. Some context for this one - I have a 19-month old daughter and find myself worrying about how can I make sure she grows up to be a good, happy person. This series should be a time capsule for her, capturing some things I think I’ve learned or observed and would like to pass on to her (so she can ignore them, make the same mistakes and then try to prevent her kids from doing the same, round and round the merry-go-around.)

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There you were, running around barefoot, chasing kids more than twice your age. Throwing a ball you could barely hold, clumsily stumbling around while holding the ball other times. Switching effortlessly between chasing and escaping. Having fun. 

Your smile was genuine, your happiness palpable. 

And it struck me – you didn’t know the rules of the game! The other kids already knew some games. Nothing elaborate. Passing the ball back and forth. Kicking the ball back and forth. Running around playing “tag, you’re it”. Simple rules within which they can improvise. But you knew none of these. You’re still mastering the “running barefoot on the grass” game. Still, together you guys were involved in this entertaining ballet mixing rules of all these games, while at the same time having no rules. And there you were, running around with those kids and having the time of your life. It was improvisational theatre, they reacting to your unpredictability and switching between games on-the-go. How was this happening? Why were you not intimidated by your complete unawareness of social conventions? How could you engage so well with those older kids? How could they improvise so effortlessly?

I realized that one of the reasons this worked, is because the older kids were getting to that collaboration sweet spot where they have the ability to be empathic, curious and energetic, but life and society have not jaded them yet. They have an under-developed sense of cynicism and sarcasm. And out of those abilities, I was again struck by empathy and its power. Empathy means that they were able to understand the situation you were in. They were able to put themselves “in your shoes”. I would imagine they remembered being there not so long ago. They were able to understand that you were still learning how to play these games. That fact, combined with children’s unique ability to be “in the moment” created this crazy juvenile garden tango.

The world you’re growing up in is one where your ability to collaborate and create with others of different backgrounds is going to be a prized skill. Regardless of the areas of expertise you wish to explore (engineering, performance arts, teaching, ...), one of the primary differentiators in your ability to contribute to society will be your ability to work in teams. Another time I’ll explain to you why this was not always the case. It’s an interesting story. But if I could rank the skills I wish you were strong in, empathy would be one of the top ones. It’s one of the key ingredients that make teams click.

If you’re able to step outside of the situation, discussion or challenge for a second, and see it from another person’s perspective, it opens up all sorts of new doors. If you can understand how the other person might feel on a given moment, you’re able to connect with them at a level beyond the facts of the discussion. And it’s not that the facts don’t matter, they abso-fcuking-lutely do (don’t tell your mother about the curse word). But facts are not enough to connect with people and convince them. Or, more commonly nowadays, problems are so complex that there is never just one solution. Defending your own perspective to the detriment of collaboration might win you the battle. But you’ll lose the war. Being able to share the feelings of somebody else is a superpower. Way more useful than invisibility or flying. Ok, not as cool as Wolverine’s adamantium claws, I readily admit. But still a superpower of incredible value.

How do you develop it? I wish I knew, then I wouldn’t have to write you this post, I could just make sure you developed it. I don’t know. Realizing that the world is not ego-centric is a start. Searching and interacting with people and situations that challenge your current understanding of reality cannot hurt. When people talk, don’t just hear their words - listen to their tone, watch their expressions, pay attention to what is not said. Go walk around the poor neighborhood of your city (there will be one) and look at how people live. Recognize the fears, frustrations and anger that are always simmering (or burning) inside you. Realize that the same battle is happening inside everybody else. Keep an open mind and realize that for the things that really matter in life, there are no right answers, just wrong answers, so don’t get too attached to your answers. Remember what your grandfather likes to say:

“There are always three versions of the truth – mine, yours and the Truth”

— Dad

Word of warning – it’s not easy. Empathy can be like good posture, a healthy diet or not binging on Netflix. Everybody agrees it’s good for you, but the temptation to not do it is strong. Powerful the dark side is.  It’s easier to try to impose your version of the story on others, rather than giving up control of the narrative and building one together. Easier, but less effective. And less fun. Which is why it’s a valuable superpower.

And if you go down to a the atomic level of working within cross-functional teams, it’s about relationships. Having empathy towards your team members is a pre-condition to collaboration, co-creation and respect. But there is another key ingredient in this mix, something else I would hope you are able to do well – honesty. This is one of those words you’re going to hear a lot as you grow up. Sometimes from me or your mom, as we ask you to be honest about whether you did your homework, brushed your teeth or got drunk at your friend’s house that night you stumbled home late saying you didn’t feel well. You will hear the maxim “you should always be honest”.

Honesty sounds easier than it is. It requires you to be open about your feelings, brave enough to share them, but also empathic enough to do it in a positive, non-violent way. It involves the ability to recognize your fears, ignorance or beliefs. Honesty is one of the keys to achieve trust with your friends, colleagues and community members. Honesty requires real strength of character. Because dis-honesty is sometimes the path of least resistance. Ah, the dark side. Avoid the temptation. Dis-honesty can deliver short-term results, but will lead to long-term pain and stress. And when you’re caught in it, and you will be, it will hurt. You will have broken the trust of somebody you love and the path back is arduous. Trust comes from character, and character is saying what you think and doing what you say you will do. Not once, but repeatedly. Time and time again.

I’ve failed at that occasionally. Not because of bad intentions, but because I justified to myself that the little dis-honesty was “not a big deal”. The path of least resistance for an action that doesn’t really hurt anybody. But dis-honesty always hurts. It hurts you because you have to carry the weight of the lie. You will get angry at yourself for taking the short-cut and dis-respecting somebody you care about (friend, colleague, …). You will get stressed trying to keep them from finding out. And you will feel embarrassed when they do. Frustrated at the fact that you let your fears or laziness disrupt the trust of somebody you love.

When that happens, don’t despair. All you can do is try to build it back. But it’s easier to just avoid the problem all together – just be honest. It’s not easy, but it’s rewarding.

Rubber Duck Coaching: How Fast to Change?

This is a trial at a new type of post. I’m temporarily calling this the “Rubber Duck Series”. Based on the idea of rubber duck debugging (where a programmer tries to find the bug by explaining the code to a rubber duck on their desk), it’s essentially me trying to spot mistakes in my thought process by forcing myself to explain it out loud. Questions I ask myself in bold. Let’s see how this goes…

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George Carlin was one of the greatest stand-up comedians ever. For my money, only Richard Pryor rivaled him. This is not something controversial I’m saying - just listen to other comedians talking about Carlin. So much respect cannot be faked, it must be earned. And Carlin earned it. Not only was he prolific, churning out a new comedy special every year, he was also a comedic genius. 

If you don’t know who I’m talking about and are curious, you can watch him deliver his famous “seven dirty words” or reflect on the “save the planet” movement.

I’ve done so many Internet deep dives on Carlin, that I should have some kind of diploma to show for it. Sadly, they don’t give those out. But in one of those deep dives, I ran into the clip of Louis CK delivering a speech at Carlin’s funeral. It was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Louis happens to be my favorite modern day comedian, and there he was, paying his respects to Carlin.

It’s nice when you can find links between people you admire. It’s an interesting way to discover more about yourself, since whatever commonality they share is probably something you value in some way. 

And there was Louis, holding back tears, clearly emotional, and trying to explain why Carlin had meant so much to him. And Louis tells the story of how it took him 15 years to build up a shitty 1-hour comedy routine that he absolutely hated. And the fear of realizing that, maybe, he made a mistake. A big mistake. Maybe he just wasn’t cut out for this career. 

Louis describes how, at that point, he heard Carlin talking about writing. Carlin described how he just threw out his material every year and started from scratch working on new material for the following year. This idea scared the living crap out of Louis. “It took me 15 years to build this shitty hour - if I throw it away I’ve got nothing!”

But he tried it. And he became Louis CK. 

Why did he try it?

You could argue there was a sense of urgency as he stared at a failing career. But it was purpose that pushed him through. Most people would have given up before, found a menial job, and taken a half-hearted attempt at happiness. What pushed Louis through was purpose. You can hear him talk about it. 

“There was nothing else I wanted to do”.

When trying to change an organization, it’s purpose that generates momentum, not pressure or a new organizational design.

Are you saying it’s a bad idea to have leaders define a clear vision, like “one enterprise backlog and just feature teams delivering items from one backlog”?
 
It depends on context. That’s another link with the Louis CK story. Could you have saved him 14 years? Making him hear Carlin talk about throwing away material and starting fresh every year? I doubt it. He probably wasn’t ready to hear the message on year 1. His change process was slower. Artificially trying to speed it up would probably just generate more friction and have other un-intended side effects. I think the same is true for organizations.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of scaling down organizational complexity. How when embarking on a change initiative, subtraction is the right mindset at the beginning, not addition. Don’t add a framework on top of garbage. Rather, start by removing the stuff you don’t need. You know, the famous “waste” everybody loves talking about. Scaling by simplifying.
 
Maybe you shouldn’t start by the solution. The new organizational design and processes. The shiny addition. Don’t even start by creating a sense of urgency. Nobody needs pressure. Start with a sense of purpose, as Kimber Lockhart eloquently suggests. That should be the guiding light. Your North Star. 

Sure, purpose might change over time (Laloux’s evolutionary purpose idea), but if your purpose is clear, all the other big questions people want to rush to answer will be addressed in a just-in-time manner:

• What is the product?
• How do you handle budget in an Agile way?
• What happens to Enterprise Architecture?
• SAFe or LeSS?
• ...

As you simplify your organization and focus on creating cross-functional teams that are empowered to deliver value, you answer those questions only when absolutely necessary. And you revisit them often. Don’t discuss steps you cannot take yet, focus on the next step towards purpose, the one you can see, and wait for the options to emerge once you take that step. This is not rudderless, because you have purpose and It becomes the gatekeeper for all next steps.

Interestingly though, this goes against a lot of conventional wisdom on change. Where you start with a sense of urgency, create the big operational vision, and let that guide people through the process. Many famous consultants and book authors will propose some variant of this:

“Get leadership buy-in to the big vision. If they don’t buy-in, save your energy, go help another client.”

Do you like this attitude?

Not really. I understand it. I can see the argument for the defense - you have limited time, spend it trying to help companies willing to see the big picture. It will be hard enough already, at least pick an environment you have a chance.

But this attitude means you’re working with and changing only the companies that have little fear and a big appetite for change. That’s the minority. And those companies could probably figure out a lot by themselves with some lightweight guidance. Your coaching time could have been more effective (big picture) in another environment, where the speed of change must be slower because fear is predominant. Companies don’t want to get rid of their shitty 1-hour routine they have been building for the last 15 years either. 

And getting rid of the fear, building trust and camaraderie, is a gradual process. Not a light switch you flip. And as a coach you need to guide them through this. Balancing the usefulness of doing some pushing, with the need to make them own the change, because that’s the only way it sticks. Which means you need to adapt to the speed the organization can handle change. And for large organizations with cultural and technical legacy, this takes time.

So it’s ok if the leaders don’t “get it” right away?

Trying to sell the promised land during a sand storm is not a winning strategy. At that moment people just want the sand out of their freaking eyes.

The important part is they are willing to experiment and change some things. It will probably go slow in the beginning, which is fine as long as it doesn’t stall. In large organizations, purpose has been buried under so much legacy, they need time to dig it out. Pushing them too far too quick will trigger too much fear on their side, followed by the inevitable return to command & control.

Politics, Emotions, Brexit and Self-Management

What should you do, if you had the power to stop it, when a group decides to do something you are convinced will hurt them? 

What should you do if you were charged with deciding in the name of millions of people who don’t have the time to fully understand the issue you’re deciding on?

As I read the news about Brexit, a possibility that even when I went to bed yesterday seemed unrealistic, these questions kept bothering me. I think this is a bad decision for the future of the UK, but who am I to over-rule the majority? I always tell organizations that they should empower Scrum teams to take decisions on a product, the Brexit news made me feel like a manager who says “what if I think they are taking the wrong decision?”

On the other hand, it depresses me to see the level of dialogue regarding such an important topic. Lies and exaggerations by everybody, since there seems to be a consensus in politics now that voters should be convinced by emotions, not facts. If the people don’t have actual information and context, can they take such a decision? I intimidate my ideals with these rhetorical questions as I keep reading the news.

Clearly, organizations and nations are not the same thing. So drawing parallels between the two is risky, at best. At the same time, I think it is interesting to consider the key differences between the two, in order to better understand why these questions are easier to deal with in an organization.

In my previous post I mentioned how organizations are societies. And management thinking is pointing these “organizational societies” in a clear direction, which includes:

• Increased autonomy (decisions at local level) over rigid decision structures
• Cross-functional, self-organizing teams over silos and bureaucracy
• Purpose-driven and over extrinsic motivators
• Collaboration over process

And within these constraints, topics such as governance and decision-making are being re-evaluated as teams and organizations experiment with different techniques. For example:

• Zappos (and others) trying out holacracy as their governance model.
• Morning Star’s Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU) requires employees to make explicit expectations and commitments with any colleague they have an important interaction, effectively replacing the need for formal structure by making the informal one transparent

These are all encouraging trends, enabling organizations to be not only productive, but places were people can grow and feel (professionally, at least) fulfilled. 

These advances in management thinking are making organizations better societies.

But they don’t work in countries because the two (organizations and nations) are different beasts entirely. Some key differences:

• Participation is voluntary in an organization, involuntary in a nation
  (I’m a Brazilian citizen, and I can’t easily change my nationality, even after my team loses 7 x 1 in the World Cup)
• Geography is not a big constraint for an organization, the primary one for a nation
  (Lesotho cannot change its location just because they are running out of water)
• An organization can disappear, a nation can’t (normally)
  (Organizations fail and go bankrupt all the time, nations don’t have that luxury)
• An organization has a clear purpose and culture, a nation is usually, at best, a melting pot
  (What values, practices and beliefs do wealthy farmers in the south of Brazil share with public school teachers in the north?)

These factors make governance and structure easier in organizations. It means that transparency can fuel self-governance since people are more engaged. Every day you going to the office is a day you choose to work there. And taking responsibility as an employee is easier than taking responsibility as a citizen because you’re more connected. 

No, I’m not suggesting a solution for nations. Or for Brexit.

The changing political winds and the increased voice of extremist parties in the West is worrying. It’s leading to emotion-based discussion of serious public policy issues. We play power games, gambling with our children’s fortunes, while the Pied Piper leads them away. And you feel powerless. I do.

Some organizations start to mirror nations in how they govern themselves. Bureaucracy, hierarchy, mis-trust, politics and lack of transparency. The bigger they are the stronger the resemblance. They replicate the same power games we see in the public government space. And they do it at the expense of their organization, employees and stakeholders. 

Organizations are unbound by some of the constraints that limit nations, so whenever they fail as a social system, it is all the more unforgivable and depressing. 

Wholeness & the Greater Good

“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom”

— Robert Frost

“Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights”

— John Wooden

There is an inherent conflict at play in any society. People want freedom. They want to be able to do what they want, say what they want, consume what they want… but they also want to live in a sustainable system. I want a pizza and cheeseburger diet, but I also want to be healthy. I want to binge on Netflix, but I don’t want to get divorced. 

Nobody wants to take out the trash, but we want the trash to be taken out.

Living in a society means agreeing to certain rules. It means sacrificing a little at the personal level to gain a lot at the societal level. This is a delicate balance. And yet we manage. By in large people don’t crap inside the metro, or fart inside the elevator, even if the need arises. It’s what we call “society”.

Organizations are societies. You have formal and informal rules setup to ensure a good (hopefully) balance between personal well-being (sustainability) and ability to achieve purpose and results.

This being so, it would make sense that organizations share an objective with public government - the need to create an environment where the society can continue to improve itself, beyond the limited capabilities of rules & regulations. The difficulty here is not in agreeing that should be one of their key objectives, but rather in seeing how to do it. Enter Teal and Laloux, stage left.

In his book “Reinventing Organizations”, Frederic Laloux discusses the levels of human consciousness and how our organizational paradigm du jour matches the level of consciousness of society. And the next paradigm in organizational design is what he calls “Teal”. In the book he goes through inspiring examples of companies that are achieving great results while also showing what the next organizational paradigm could be. And their innovations in organizational design center around three basic innovations:

• Self-management - the idea that management becomes an activity handled by the group. There’s more management, but there are no managers.
• Evolutionary Purpose - in Teal, the group is able to accept their fears, and a deep exploration within the group means purpose becomes emergent, not a pre-printed mission statement created by a consulting company.
• Wholeness - People should not have to wear masks when they come to work, they should be in a place where they feel whole. They should be able to come as “all of themselves”.

This book quickly became a hit within the Agile community and for good reason. Now, while reading the three innovations of Teal (above) you would be forgiven for thinking “wow… are there also flying green ponies farting rainbows in this utopia you’re dreaming about?” But the book doesn’t let you go there. By going through examples of companies in the cutting edge of these innovations, you can’t help but be inspired. So I highly recommend the book.

And still, I should confess something. After reading the book, I had lingering questions about the “wholeness” leg of Teal. Not that I didn’t agree with the premise that people should be able to be themselves at work. This makes sense from a societal perspective - a society should have as their primary goal the happiness of their citizens, or employees in this case. And even beyond the moral argument, the pragmatic one is also strong. It’s not hard to make the leap that happier people, committed to a purpose, will achieve more than unhappy people, doing something they don’t believe in. So it’s a win-win.

“The ideal of self-organization would be that each person can find their niche such that their way of thinking and being has the opportunity to express itself and that their capacities can be used to the full with the possibility of further development.”

— Reinventing Organizations Wiki

And this makes perfect sense. My questions, though, were related to the explanations and examples. When delving into the topic, Laloux emphasizes examples that I think miss the larger point. Some of his emphasis is on the idea that people in Teal organizations no longer have to wear “social masks”. As Laloux points out, when a person can bring their “whole” self to the organization, including their emotional, spiritual and intuitive parts, the need for such masks goes away.

Some examples given in this area are interesting:

• Dogs: By creating a workplace where people are whole, different parts of their personality are brought into the building. In companies like “Sounds True”, dogs are common place in the work place. An integral part of that society.
• Mindfulness/Meditation: Though Laloux stops short of mandating mindfulness and/or meditation as a daily organizational practice, examples such as specific moments of the day reserved for silence and where most do some mindfulness practices are highlighted. 

I believe mindfulness practices are very effective. I’m trying them myself. With spotty discipline, but still trying and finding value in it. Indeed, evidence suggests that such practices have a positive impact on well being and effectiveness. But the gap between good and mandatory is a treacherous one. So I thought it was good Laloux balked at suggesting everybody should be doing mindfulness practices. Everybody should be doing a lot of things, but history has shown that any solution based on forcing them to do something is doomed from the start.

My issue was more related to the hint of the tyranny of the individual when reading about wholeness. At the risk of being told that any critique here just means I’m not in the Teal mindset yet, I thought too much emphasis was placed on the individual’s wholeness and not enough on the individual’s growth. The organizational wholeness should take precedence, but it cannot be achieved without the personal growth of its people. 

It’s the basic conflict I hinted at the beginning, people want freedom, but they also want to live in a sustainable system. You might love your dog and feel whole if he’s at work with you, but maybe one of your colleagues is allergic. Does your need to be whole at the individual level trump your need to be whole at the organizational (societal) level? I don’t want to pay taxes, but I do it because I believe it benefits the society. 

So it’s not about masks. Masks are not evil, per se. They are a useful tool for reenforcing informal rules, which are a must for any well functioning society since informal rules are more flexible. The “mask” of the well-behaved plane traveller is a useful one. Maybe it’s not who we really are. Maybe some would prefer to fly without their shirts to be more comfortable, others would prefer to laugh loudly at every joke in the Big Bang Theory episode they’re watching. But they don’t. They wear a mask and act more “orderly” than they would naturally be. And that’s ok. They are making a small, temporary sacrifice of a want that is not urgent, in exchange for others doing the same. The result being an agreeable flight for all. Small sacrifices for a big collective gain.

But if the mask is so big that you no longer feel part of society, well, you become what is known as a “social outcast”. And that is bad. So like most useful tools, masks have to be used with caution.

The suggestion that coming “as all of yourself” means you don’t have to wear masks seems simplistic to me. I understand the beauty of this scenario, but like many other utopias, it serves only as an inspiration, not as a goal. It’s not about masks.

“Wholeness” at the individual level should be about finding a valuable niche for your way of being and thinking. If you still have to wear some masks, whatever, as long as they are not big ones. The objective, for me, is beautifully worded in a Harvard Business Review article, “Does Your Company Make you a Better Person” (based on a book titled “An Everyone Culture”). There the authors essentially suggest organizations should seek to reduce the time their people spend on trying to look good and hide weaknesses. That’s s clear example of a bad mask! What if, instead, your so-called “weaknesses” were viewed as assets - the bigger they are, the bigger the potential upside on organizational effectiveness if they are improved. As they say, “what if employees’ continuous development were assumed to be the critical ingredient for a company’s success?” That’s how I understand “wholeness” at the individual level in an organization.

I am whole when I spend zero energy trying to look good to others and can therefore spend time improving my perceived weaknesses - indeed I realize they are not weaknesses, but rather untapped assets of creativity, happiness and effectiveness.

Spiritual and transcendentalism might be a perspective I use to accomplish this, but wholeness is about being in the moment, accepting who you are, recognizing your weakness and trying to improve the ones that you think are holding you back from purpose and engagement.

So the question for me that is really interesting is what should the organization do to support the development of wholeness (as defined above)?

The idea in “An Everyone Culture” is that organizations should be Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDO). And essentially, a DDO embeds the continuous personal growth of its people as part of the job. The personal growth of the people is the only way to achieve “ever-greater business aspirations”. 

This means that the environment an organization sets up is not focused on whether people can bring their dogs to work (they’ll sort it out if it’s important), but rather on the discussing the deeper issues about fear and belonging. People in DDOs are required to develop the ability to discuss these topics and the organization supports this by creating an environment where fear has no place. In doing this, they have an environment that allows them to become better people, and better team members. And more whole. 

And this is tough. It means interns are giving negative feedback to CEOs when they screw up. It means “tough-minded introspection” as a job requirement. It means transparency and publicly accepting and working on your “weaknesses”. But if the organization creates the right environment, it means those things are welcomed and encouraged. It means finding solidarity and a place where contributing to a purpose you believe in and personal growth are inseparable.

“The ideal of self-organization would be that each person can find their niche such that their way of thinking and being has the opportunity to express itself and that their capacities can be used to the full with the possibility of further development.”

— Reinventing Organization WIki

Laloux is correct. But the Wholeness chapter should include examples like DDOs. They focus on the more important aspect of wholeness. Organizational wholeness takes precedence over individual wholeness. We become more whole by finding a society we fit in (autonomy, purpose, mastery). Yet the organizational wholeness depends on the individual’s ability to improve. So it should create an environment that fosters personal growth. For the benefit of the individual, but more importantly, the group.

No more masks, except those that are useful for a greater good.

Subtraction and the one question that matters

“There’s is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself”

— Akira Kurosawa

He was struggling with the words to get the interviewer to understand. Why was this so difficult? He realized there is no real conversation between paradigms. 

He knew the interviewer meant well, so he wanted to give a good answer. But despite the interviewer’s knowledge of cinema, manga, anime and Japanese culture, the very fact the question was asked suggests lack of perspective. How is Japanese cinema and story telling different from the American one? He smiled and thought to himself that they might as well have asked him “how is a sheep different than a calculator”? 

Yet he still tried to give a good answer. And he chose his words carefully, his response should not only explain, but also be in itself an example. He looked at the interviewer, a pleasant smile across his face, and said:

“American cinema is about addition, Japanese cinema is about subtraction”.

The interviewer smiled, feigned understanding, and apparently satisfied that the answer sounded smart and cryptic enough to make the question look good, moved on.

Pity. The idea of subtraction has been in my head lately. There was Nassim Taleb talking about how omission does not have unintended side-effects and is therefore a robust strategy (as opposed to addition). There was Bas Vodde essentially saying LeSS was more robust than SAFe because they were less bloated. And then this Japanese director poetically laying down the truth while bridging paradigms.

It is hard to tell a story with only a few words. It takes real craftsmanship. But if you can pull it off, it will be more powerful than all the words in the world because it can only be about purpose. There is no added fat, no filler material, no gratuitous anything. Like Aretha, it’s pure soul. 

I couldn’t help but see a parallel to the coaching and Agile transformation work I do. Companies hire consultants to help solve some problem, and consultants (as Taleb likes to point out) typically make money by adding things to the organization, not subtracting. A new project management framework, a new electronic tool to handle your Product Backlog and taskboards, a new ideation process, a new… thingamajig. Unnecessary additions. Just like this last phrase.

But in today’s complex work environment of knowledge workers, addition is likely the wrong strategy. Organizational leaders need to spend their efforts scaling down their organizational complexity instead of trying to scale-up anything. Forget about adding yet-another-quick-fix on top of the rubble of all previous quick fixes. What they need is to start removing everything that is not essential. Leave only the loose boundaries that help self-organizing teams deliver. This process of subtraction, much like Japanese cinema, would help them re-discover something they lost a long time ago - their purpose.

Every time I start coaching at a new company, management wants answers to all sorts of addition-type questions. When in reality, I would rather take them in the opposite direction. What can we simplify or remove? And I’ve come to realize there is one question that reigns supreme when it comes to these transformations. It’s the question great organizations can answer on the spot, without thinking. It’s the question that weak organizations stumble on, often times stuttering a long-winded, meaningless answer full of hype-type words like “innovative”, “disruptive”, “changing”, “new” or “value”. The question?

What is your purpose as an organization? How are you a value-add to your stakeholders?

The answer to this question is going to guide your subtraction exercise as it helps you understand what is essential and non-essential. It’s only by scaling down your organizational complexity, getting rid of the rubble and fat, that you can start with the interesting changes. And if you don’t know the answer to that question, the de-cluttering exercise will help you find it out. 

Because if you can’t answer this question, you don’t know what to simplify. And so you will go back to addition. And back to expensive consultants who can give you new ideas of what to add next. And you will try to adopt Scrum, and you will evaluate which Agile scaling framework is better suited for your organization, and you will use all the appropriate buzzwords, eloquently explaining the difference between a Minimum Viable Product and a Minimum Marketable Product. You will have managers do stand-ups, and engineers give kudo cards. You will do all these things. All these additions. All these changes.

And nothing will change.

Here’s an Idea: Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot

“Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss”

— Douglas Adams

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty”

— David Hume

“Kuwait and oil are not the same ting (sic)”

— Fat Tony (“Anti-Fragile”)

Managers are infatuated with costs. Walk into most organizations and the language you’ll hear around the workplace is indicative of the cost-based culture they operate in. “Budgets”, “timesheets”, “estimates”, “resource/capacity planning”, “estimated time to complete (ETC)”… they’re all hitting on the same note, like a badly tuned piano in a dusty, smokey bar.

Yet the last three decades of management thinking have been repeatedly pointing organizations in the opposite direction - focus on revenue growth and value generation, that’s how companies ensure long-term success. Cost-cutting, beyond the “stop flying around in first class and having lunch in Michelin starred restaurants” type, will at best provide you with short-term gains. At worse, they will sacrifice the future of your organization.

Still the cost-based management culture continues to be widespread. Why? 

For starters, cost-cutting gives immediate effect.

Don’t under-estimate the pressure to deliver short-term results in any organization. It takes real vision and emotional fortitude from leaders to be willing to withstand sacrificing the short-term to ensure long-term success. And no, I’m not suggesting we just ignore all short-term results. What I am suggesting is that they are not the most important thing. Leading an organization is a game of survival as much as anything else. And to survive, a leader must balance a lot of opposing topics.

• Long-term vs. short-term.
• Innovation vs. predictability.
• Value vs. cost.
• Trust vs. control.
• Purpose vs targets.

And none of these conflicting views has a clear, definitive way to handle them. It depends on context, as always. But if your organizational leadership consistently leans on the right-side of those topics, it might be time to start working on your LinkedIn Profile and polishing up your interview skills. 

And if you’re an investor and the company you’re looking at leans strongly to the right… run. Unless you’re an algorithm, investment should be a long-term game and right leaners will struggle in the long-term. The last thing you want is your hard-earned cash tied up in an investment where you’re betting leadership will finally, this time, realize the error of their ways.

Still, that being said, there is definite pressure for short-term results. And you know the easiest way to deliver short-term results? That’s right, cut costs. All else remaining equal, if you manage to reduce costs by 5%, your profits will go up accordingly. So it’s obvious why so many focus on it. It’s like steroids, cheating on an exam, bribing, or cutting in line. It’s a short-cut to avoid the real work.  

The fact it’s so easy, should be warning. There has never been a free lunch. 

Also, it’s much easier to work with costs because you can easily measure them. 

Just count the money that goes out every month. That’s it. You don’t need to understand the intricacies of the market, the gradual (or violent) fluctuations in your customer’s preferences, or the inner workings of your organizational culture. 

Value, on the other hand, is much harder to measure. You could just count the money coming in every month, but that’s counting the value generated by a previous investment. And you’re rarely sure which one. Cost is immediate, value is not - it trickles in over time and depends on so many variables that all you can do is take some educated guesses about what caused it.

Of course, accounting experts can spin all of this on its head. An accountant will tell you that you can spread out costs over time and collect future value today using mark-to-market accounting. That’s because a great accountant doesn’t tell you what your numbers are, he asks you what you want your numbers to be. But let’s not go down this rabbit hole right now.

The bottom line is simple - costs are immediate and easy to measure. Value comes sometime in the future and is hard to measure. Sometimes, value is not even represented by money coming in (e.g. brand recognition, innovation, reputation, …). And that’s one reason that most managers like focusing on cost - it makes them feel like they can manage something. In the cost world, there is a reaction to each and every action, and their causal relationship is self-evident and reassuring. Or at least it seems that way, until you realize that…

Managing costs also have hidden effects, some of which are hard to predict

What is the cost of outsourcing your development activities? The cash part of the equation, as mentioned above, takes little more than 5th grade math skills to figure it out. Just see what you were paying your on-site developers before, subtract that from what you will be pay your offshore developers and voilá, you have your monthly savings. Factor in the cost of actually firing people (severance packages) and you can easily see when the move has paid for itself. Simple, right?

Not so fast, Jack. Even though outsourcing companies would like you to stop there (and short-term focused managers will happily abide), the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper. You can start with simple things such as the additional time (and money) will you spend on aligning offshore activities with onshore goals. But you can easily go into more complex terrains - what about the loss of motivation from your employees who liked working with their local developers? What about the lost tacit knowledge? What about the fact that the people who now know the most about how your product/service actually works are no longer your employees? What about asking why your outsourcing partner can have such low prices? Maybe you gave up something else along the way…

Cost-cutting is a fragile strategy. It forces additional focus on process, standardization and compliance, which makes you vulnerable to any variability or unforeseen events. Because of the evident impact of cost-cutting on the bottom line, it creates a myopia in managers who over-estimate the financial benefits and under-estimate the unintended consequences. 

Cost-cutting is management’s opium den, providing them escape from their inability to generate value. Over time it slowly kills their connection to the real world and they are caught in the endless loop of the addict, desperately looking for next high and finding any justification to excuse the behaviour.

There is a limit to how much you can reduce costs; there is no limit to how much value you can generate

If leading a company is a game of survival, guess who survives in the long-term? The company cutting every corner possible to reduce costs or the company who manages to find a value-niche and colonize it?

You can improve the profitability of your company in two ways - growing the top line (revenue) or reducing costs. The efficiency fad of the 20th century has wrecked holy war on costs for long enough. The body count is high enough. Every manager should just put down the red marker, take a deep breathe and ask themselves a question that can be equal measures of exhilaration and fear - “what can I do to help the long-term, sustainable, top line growth for this company?”

Exhilarating, because you’re joining the value-side of life, and it’s more fun over here. Scary because you might not find an answer, at least right away. And it will take courage to explore this line of thinking further. But this, my friend, is a rabbit hole worth going down.

The Lada, the Porsche, and the Truth

Being honest is hard work.

You’re trying to survive the grind. You keep your head down, do your job day in, day out, until the day you can move up a peg in the rat race. And then you take that opportunity, enjoy it for a second, and then back to work. The rat race.

One of those pegs is buying a car. When the day comes you can afford one, you look long and hard at your options, eventually settling on a used Renault Clio. You drive it back home with a tingle down your spine. You’re now free to roam the world in a fortified cocoon of self-realization. At least that’s the sales pitch. And you enjoy it. 

Soon, the car becomes part of your social persona, another accessory people use to put you into a social category. Fake Hipster (New Mini Hardtop). Annoying hipster (Original Mini Cooper). Up-and-coming professional (Audi A3). Mid-Life Crisis (Porsche Panamera). Mid life crisis but-wants-to-pretend-it’s-not (Tesla). 

And before you notice it, you’re attached to that thing. It’s seen you at your best and at your worst. There is no lying to your car, it knows who you are, where you go and how often you tell your friends “I’m just looking for parking”, when the reality is you just left home, late as usual.

So when the inevitable happens and the car starts to break down, you’re faced with a choice. You can spend hours (and cash) trying to fix it up. You can wax it, clean out the engine, get new tires, and fix all the little kinks its developed over the last years - those you keep trying to convince yourself are part of the car’s personality. You can do all that… or you can admit it’s time to move on, sell it, and buy a new one. Both choices imply some pain - either the time and money you invest to fix it, or the pain of letting it go and losing the history attached to it. But regardless of the choice you take, there is a first step that is going to be the same - you need to recognize that it’s time to change something. 

You need to realize your once trusty companion is now old, rusty and no longer fit for the job.

You need to be honest.

---

Organizational transformation is a strange game. Honesty is at a premium and resistance is abundant.

The leadership of the organization recognizes they are lagging behind the competition. They can smell the rusting vision, see the rigidity of a process-focused culture, and feel the apathy hanging around the coffee machine. 

And these are smart people. They can see these problems. It’s very unusual to see a CEO who thinks he is driving a Porsche when he’s actually driving a Lada. The real issue for them is that telling shareholders they have invested in a Lada is career suicide in the shareholder-is-king paradigm. So these organizational leaders have to spend their time worrying about short-term results, trying to get the last drop of performance out of their Lada. This means sacrificing the long-term success of the company, and the cognitive dissonance this creates is often times too big of a burden to bear, which is why these organizations are always undergoing some kind of half-assed change initiative. 

“Now we really mean it,” says the organizational leader, with just enough conviction to sound like a used-car salesman that seems to be trying to convince both himself and the potential buyer.

Organizations move from one failed change initiative to another, an endless streak of pimp-my-ride facelifts, desperately trying to make the raggedy, clunky, shitty ol’ Lada look like a Porsche. And when you join this organization, the dissonance between what management is preaching and what the people are saying to each other during coffee breaks is so huge that you can almost see the inertia in the building.

Now, imagine walking into this building, right past Momentum, Purpose, Motivation and Joy, which are all desperately running out as if escaping from a fire, and then sitting down with some of the organizational leaders who look you straight in the face and say “we want you to help us getting our development teams to do Scrum, we heard this will make them more motivated and productive.” Right, because all the Lada needs is a new paint job, some wax, and elbow grease, and voilá… we’re good to go.

So you look around the room, checking the faces of these leaders, gently asking questions as you try to figure out one thing - do these guys know they’re driving a freaking Lada?!? Do they realize they have driven it to the ground? Do they realize that years of neglect means quick fixes just won’t work anymore? 

Do they realize they need to change?

Pigs with Lipstick

(Note: I gave a presentation at the Agile Tour Brussels in 2014 entitled “How NOT to scale Agile”. In it, I touched on some key things that any company serious about doing Agile should NOT be doing. Basically, I decided to use the via negativa approach popularised by Nassim Taleb and apply it to the Agile scaling challenge. I will use this blog post to focus on one of the points I raised in that presentation - projects.)

“We are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time”

— Nassim Taleb, "Antifragile"

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”

— Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

Any organisation serious about Agile should stop doing projects.  There, how’s that for an attention grabber? Shock value aside, I do stand by that sentence. The key to it, of course, is how you define the word “project”.

So let’s start by defining projects for what they are in reality, not what they could be in theory. Then I can explain why I think we should stop with them.

Project: (noun) A temporary, collaborative undertaking that has a singular goal, defined scope and resources, and is carefully planned upfront and expertly managed to deliver on-time, on-budget results.

I didn’t coin this myself, just put together 2 or 3 definitions from online dictionaries and from the Project Management Institute (PMI) website. Still, it encapsulates pretty well what we mean when we say projects. So… why are these “projects” so  harmful to organisations?

The idea of projects seems harmless, just like a pig with lipstick

This is perhaps the most important issue. If you re-read that definition, you could easily conclude that Scrum can handle a project perfectly well. We can have a defined scope (the Product Backlog), a defined team (the Scrum Team) and a person (the Product Owner) who is responsible to “expertly manage” the backlog (prioritisation, velocity and story slicing) to deliver results on-time and on-budget. See? Scrum (Agile) can handle projects! 

The trouble there is that Scrum (Kanban, et al) are about how we build things. So of course you could do deliver a project using an Agile framework. But it misses the bigger picture - Value, with a capital “V”. What we build is just as important as how we build it. And projects have a hard time with the what question because they spend most of their thinking time trying to predict things (budget, scope, and time). Schedule trumps Value in the project world. If you don’t believe me ask a Project Manager (PM) which she would rather have happen to her - 1) delivering a project on-time, on-budget, and on-scope that didn’t bring much value to the organisation or 2) having a project cancelled early because people realised it wouldn’t bring much value. 

Take a shot of vodka every time a PM answers #2. My guess is you’ll be able to legally drive home after interviewing 100 PMs…

Projects begets politics, and in politics size does matter

Since value is not the principal part of the equation when it comes to projects, something else has to fill the void. Something else has to sort the pecking order and determine priority. Enter politics, stage left. Exit common sense and focus, stage right.

Politics is the struggle for power, and power typically (with some exceptions) ends up being determined by size. Yes, it’s that childish. So the realpolitik of the world of project work ends up following this simple rule - the bigger your project, the more important it must be (and by correlation, the more important you must be). And this is in direct conflict with what Agile is trying to accomplish inside an organisation. We want to focus on things such as: 

• the flow of value (value streams)
• validating value hypothesis by having small chunks of work that can be quickly done
• flexibility, which means pivoting as soon as you realize what you’re doing is not valuable
• working on the highest priority, regardless of project or budget code

Also, the bigger a project is, the more complex the web of dependencies and assumptions. Which leads us right into the next issue with projects.

Projects are based on predictive planning and cost-based thinking, concepts as useful and valid as economic forecasts

The old military maxim “planning is essential, plans are useless” (typically attributed to either Eisenhower or Churchill) is a great one. It recognises the importance of some thinking upfront, but also admits to the inherent inability we have to predict. Yet projects continuously ignore this limitation and insist on having planning activities spit out a plan. A prediction. 

And here we go, around and around the merry-go-round of fear, guessing and blame. These predictions become baselines against which PMs measure deviations. Everybody knows this. So when people get asked for an estimate, they add buffer because they know in the project world “estimate” means something else than what is written in the dictionary. Otherwise, we would never hear the oxymoron “accurate estimates”. The PMs, of course, know that people are buffering their estimates, so they always challenge the first number they hear. But people know the PMs will do this, so they add even more buffer to their initial estimate. Pretty quickly you have a plan that is meaningless, driven by fear, and based on over-inflated guesses and under-valued assumptions. Then you spend the rest of your time tracking deviation against this “prediction”. And here we go, around and around the merry-go-round of fear, guessing and blame. 

Everybody knows this is happening and instead of just putting a stop to it, we try to solve the predicting limitation we have by spending brain power trying to come up with better ways to estimate. Double face palm. This ridiculousness gave rise to the #NoEstimate movement. Look it up, there’s plenty of good info online about it.

But why do we keep doing this? Why do smart people not see this big picture? Probably because if you ever saw a Gantt chart and tried to match that to the “resources” (they mean people) available in your company, you quickly realise it’s way more fun than Candy Crush. It’s the ultimate brain rush. Like playing Tetris but with much, much higher stakes. And so we keep going, like a Korean kid on a gaming binge, high on Red Bull and potato chips… until it all comes crashing down. 

Plans make your organisation fragile because they try to predict the unpredictable. Projects make your organisation fragile because they focus on costs, not value. Agile is about exploring positive asymmetric payoffs, which you can only do with value-based thinking.

Projects are based on an outdated understanding of work

Frederick Taylor is the father of scientific management and if we tried to synthesise his theories into one simple concept it would be this - work can be divided into 2 parts, thinking and doing. The former is the work of management, the latter the work of the dumb workers (if you think I’m exaggerating by using the word “dumb”, go read some of Taylor’s actual words; I’m being kind). Project Management is the natural extension of this thought when applied to the complex world of projects. You have few people who are responsible for thinking about the work (planning) and many people who are responsible to execute the plan (workers). The thinkers believe they can predict the future of the project. The workers know they will get blamed when inevitably the thinkers’ forecast turned out to overly optimistic. Ah, the joy of projects! 

In the knowledge economy this model of splitting work between thinking and doing simply doesn’t apply. They are inextricably linked. And mixed. Nobody only thinks and nobody only works. Everybody does both. Thinking doesn’t only precede work. Work doesn’t always proceed thinking. Both thinking and working should be done by cross-functional teams in an environment where plans are meaningless and value is king.

Projects are a finite game, survival in the marketplace is an infinite game 

Projects have a clear defined end. This is what is known as a finite game. There is no such thing as a never-ending project. Finite games are fun because there are clear winners. The only problem is that this is not how the world works. Organisations don’t win, they survive to play another day. We need a way of organising our work that doesn’t rely on the over-simplification of a finite game.

If you run a marathon (a finite game), cross the finish line first, and die immediately afterwards of a heart attack, you still won the marathon. Congratulations! We’ll be sure to engrave that on your tombstone. 

Survival is an infinite game, which is why organisations should focus on having a way of working that prizes value flow and learning over meeting arbitrary deadlines and goals. 

Projects favor silos over value streams

There’s another thing that projects fuel - the creation of silos. In the project world, everybody is worried about causing a delay to the critical path. If I know problems are going to come (because the project has a dense web of dependencies and guesses) and somebody is going to get blamed, it is a better strategy for me to build up walls around my area and focus on my part of the project. As long as I don’t screw that up, I’m safe. I don’t care if the overall project fails, I just want to make sure I don’t get blamed for it. 

Silos are a safer strategy for people living in a project world and playing a finite game. Trouble is, silos are the kryptonite of Agility and value flow.

Projects are a relic of an outdated work paradigm

See, the basic problem we have in the world of work is that we are smack in the middle of a paradigm shift - where two paradigms are battling it out for supremacy. Bruce Lee style. On the dark side of the intellectual octagon you have the Scientific Management Paradigm, still chugging along after almost 140 years. On the light side, you have a management paradigm that is formed by groups such as Agile, Beyond Budgeting, Radical Management and Lean Startup. We still haven’t coalesced around a name, but for the purposes of this post I’ll call it the “Agility Paradigm”.

As part of this struggle, both sides end up fighting over the meaning of words. And words matter. The dark side wants to incorporate the new, fashionable terms such as “Agile”, “responsive” and “pivot” into its vernacular in an attempt to make people believe the Scientific Management paradigm is evolving. Meanwhile, the light side wants to appropriate some of the words from the old vernacular to spare itself the effort of having to re-write the whole management dictionary. (And also because it’s difficult to sell consulting services if your clients don’t understand what you’re talking about)

“Project” is one of the words caught in this tug of war. The Scientific Management paradigm needs it to remain the central building block for value generation in an organisation. Without projects, a lot of what we see in companies nowadays go away. This is good if you’re in business of change management and want organisations to re-think their culture and processes for delivering value. This is not so good if the existence of projects pays your wages (PMs, PMOs, the PMI, …) or keeps the power structures that benefit you in place. Nonetheless, Agilists are hesitant to denounce “projects” for fear of not being invited to the big boy’s table when it comes to discussing the art of management. This is because despite all the fuss about disruptive innovations, flow, and flat organisations, management thinking is still plagued by the century old predictive fallacy - the notion that we can somehow predict the future of endeavours if we only manage to gather enough data and analyse it well enough. The desperate hope that we’re smart enough to make time travel in the opposite direction. Deep down though, we all know it’s bullshit. But you can’t say it around most managers or big companies. Their job (and yours, if you’re a consultant) depends on the acceptance of the fallacy. The emperor’s new clothes.

This is the central paradox of the consulting industry, Agile or not. We all want to change the world, but we don’t actually produce anything. We support those that do. And it’s a high-risk business model to comment on the nakedness of the emperor. It’s much safer to tell the emperor his new clothes look magnificent. For the service industry, snake oil will always be more profitable than the real thing. It takes principle (and courage) to leave money on the table in order to do the right thing. That’s the key moral challenge of the service industry and, worryingly, one of the struggles that will decide the outcome of this paradigm battle we’re experiencing right now.

So Agilists use projects to get a foot in the door of companies. The concept serves us well - companies doing projects are experiencing the typical problems associated with waterfall and are desperate for something that works. Of course they are. And we convince ourselves that “project” is one of the words we can re-use, one of the concepts we can improve. We convince ourselves that there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a project. We convince ourselves projects can be done in an Agile way.

It’s funny what you can do with a word. We try to bend it, shape it, stretch it, transform it. Anything to co-opt it. We’ve tried the good ol’ formula of adding “Agile” in front of the word (Agile Project Management). We’ve tried an arranged marriage (PMI & Agile). We’ve even tried breeding cross-species (Lean Project Management). But in the end, we can’t escape the age old truth that regardless how much lipstick you put on a pig, you’re still dealing with a pig (albeit a confused one who is wondering “dude, why the hell do you keep trying to put lipstick on me?!?”).

I think this is a mistake - a handshake with the devil at the crossroads of paradigms. And you know what the devil does to pigs in lipstick? Turns them into Napoleon. Because the real danger is no longer recognising you’re dealing with a pig. As Orwell put it, “the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

We can do better. No compromising with the devil. Full honesty with the naked emperor. No lipstick on pigs. No turd polishing or word play. 

We can do projects in an Agile world only if we completely change what the word “project” means. Why bother? Let’s just be upfront and honest - no more projects. Let's talk about value streams instead.

Why "buy the ticket, take the ride"?

The tag line for my blog (“buy the ticket, take the ride”) is a quote from Hunter S. Thompson’s masterpiece, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. And I thought it was worthwhile to explain why I chose this quote. I don’t want people to think this was a coincidence, or even worse, just a lazy copy and paste from some “memorable quotes” list I stumbled upon on Goodreads. It was a deliberate choice, one which I spent quite some time thinking about. 

So, why did I select “buy the ticket, take the ride”?

First of all, Hunter is one of my all-time favourite writers. Together with Vonnegut, he is responsible for instilling in me a desire to write. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but Hunter made me fall in love with the art of writing. I still remember when I first read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” back in college. I remember being blown away. I couldn’t believe that you were allowed to do that with words. It was like reading a newspaper from another galaxy. 

Before I picked up that book I didn’t know the word “gonzo” existed. When I finished it, I was convinced that “gonzo” was the most powerful innovation in the field of journalism since Gutenberg. The pretence of objectivity in journalism had always been annoying, a hypocrisy we just had to collectively ignore since there was nothing we could do about it. And then along came Hunter, a journalist (among other things…), and his gonzo reporting. He made no pretence of objectivity. Not only was he part of the story, he was clearly embellishing facts and taking reality out for a spin. It was unclear where exactly reality ended and fiction started. But here’s the thing - like a true artist, Hunter used his imageries and wild yarns to make you understand the world in a very real way. He understood the power of a good story. Through little lies he made you understand a bigger Truth.

The best example of that, perhaps, came on another book from Hunter, “Fear and Loathing in the Campaign Trail ’72”, where he chronicled the McGovern vs. Nixon presidential election. McGovern’s campaign manager, Frank Mankiewicz, later described the book as “the least factual, most accurate account” of the elections. Least factual, most accurate - yup, that’s as good a description as any of Hunter.

In my humble attempts to write, I always took Hunter’s gonzo style as an aspiration. A guiding light. What if I could forget about objectivity for a second and allow myself to get caught up in the subject matter? Be part of the story and don’t shy away from some poetic license if it helps communicate a bigger point. And ultimately, that was the tone I wanted for my blog.

So it felt right that I use a quote from Hunter’s masterpiece as a reminder of what I’m trying to achieve with this blog.

And why this particular quote? There is no shortage of Hunter quotes to use, so why “buy the ticket, take the ride”?

To answer that question, you need to first understand where the quote comes from. Context and meaning. Hunter was at the end of a 4 day binge in Las Vegas and was speeding down the highway trying to get out of town before the law caught up to him. He was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion but realised that he couldn’t afford this luxury right now. Too risky. As he put it:

“This is the moment of truth, that fine and fateful line between control and disaster - which is also the difference between staying loose and weird on the streets, or spending the next five years of summer mornings playing basketball in the yard at Carson City”

— HST, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

But in typical Hunter fashion, he reminds the reader that he doesn’t want their pity. Pity is for the weak. He wants the reader to understand he is not only responsible for his actions, but also proud of them. Like battle scars, he wholeheartedly believes that these adventures are what make life worth living. He therefore continues in the very next line:

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride… and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well… maybe chalk it off to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

— HST, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

What Hunter is saying is clear - you don’t want to be a bystander to life. Yes, there are risks involved if you want to participate, but they are worth the price of admission. 

Not only do I think that’s a valid maxim for life (though I’m not necessarily advocating going on a 4-day drug and alcohol binge in Las Vegas), I also think it’s incredibly relevant to the work I do. When you’re trying to change an organisation and make them see a new paradigm of work, there is only so much you can make them see from the sidelines. There are no magic formulas or rulebooks that will show a company what it takes to be Agile. You have to go out and do it. And yes, there will be some necessary “consciousness expansion”, but it’s all part of the journey. And if this blog achieves one thing, I hope it’s that - I hope it encourages teams and organisations to explore new and different ways to work. There is no one clear outcome here. Anybody who says otherwise is selling you snake oil. Like so many other things that matter - the journey is more important than the destination when it comes to Agile.

So, “buy the ticket, take the ride.”

Letter of Intent

Acme Inc.
Av. Frederick W. Taylor 42
Gantt Building
1000 Gotham City
Neverland

Dear IT Manager,

before you hire your next Agile coach to either kickstart or breathe some life into your Agile change initiative, take a step back and think about it. You might be surprised to hear this from me, but maybe that budget could be better spent elsewhere.

I'm not saying this out of some suicidal desire to kill the very market where I earn my living. Quite the opposite. I say this because I desperately want to improve it, and make sure it's both a market that motivates and challenges me, as well as one whose existence is based on actually improving organizations.

So before you hire your (next) Agile coach, think about the journey you are embarking on. Agile is not a quick fix for your delivery problems. These problems are a symptom of a much larger dysfunctionality in your organization. Any (real) Agile coach you hire will only be as effective as the breadth of the change initiative. If this initiative is coming solely from the IT department, and it has no support from your other delivery partners such as product management, sales, customer service, operations, or the project management office, then chances are the initiative will yield poor or limited results (when compared to its real potential).

So if you are going to hire an Agile coach, you should be ready to support them when they inevitably start to reach out to these other departments. This support should be strong yet honest since there will likely be some resistance to the change, especially on the political side of things. Cross-departmental collaboration means ignoring the silo'd hierarchy that got so many people their fancy job titles in the first place.

Also, the very fact that you are considering introducing Agile in your organization is most likely because you have experienced the pains caused by an organization driven by predictive planning approaches. Embarking on an Agile change initiative means going in the opposite direction of predictive planning in almost every sense. Here is where the resistance from the organization will really show its teeth, especially when Agile starts shining a bright light on all the waste clogging the delivery process.

Any Agile change initiative will eventually try to change the culture of the organization. It must. Unless it succeeds in doing this, it will ultimately fail. And changing organizational culture is by far the toughest thing to do in the business world. So if you want to hire an Agile coach, you must be open for change and eager to drive it internally. You also should be ready for some tough discussions.

You'll have to embrace failure (as long as it happens quickly) because it's the best time to learn and a necessary by-product of exploration. Because ultimately, it is about delivering value, by allowing your knowledge workers the freedom to focus on collaboratively identifying, prioritizing and solving your organization's toughest challenges.

Now, if what I described above sounds too ambitious, too frightening or just plain too difficult, then I think you should re-consider your Agile plans. You're not going to find the quick-fixes you're looking for. Quick-fixes are a specialty of the predictive planning guys, so you're better off spending your money on them.

Why am I telling you this?

Because if we're honest from the start about what an Agile change initiative entails, then I won't need to hear about yet another Agile coach stuck trying to help a company that desperately wants to put an Agile face on its waterfall heart. Trying to jam the square peg in the round hole. These cases are later re-counted as "Agile failures", which is a disservice to the coaching market and an insult to the word "failure". Failure would be a valuable learning opportunity. But in order to fail, you first need to actually try to achieve something.

If, on the other hand, you think all this sounds like a liberating experience of discovery and challenging work, if you can see the real and wonderful benefits that result from it, then you're ready to drive this important change ahead. And in this case, indeed yes, please find yourself an experienced Agile coach to support you in... actually, forget about that. Just contact me directly instead. You sound exactly like the kind of person I would love to work with.

Let's get to work?