Time Yet for Organisational Psychotherapy?

February 24, 2024
Article, Business, Capability development, Community, Culture change, Learning, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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Time Yet for Organisational Psychotherapy?

The Software Crisis is but a Symptom

The “software crisis” plaguing the tech industry for more that 50 years reflects a broader crisis spanning business, society, and our species. At its core is our inability as a species to fully grasp and manage rapidly change and wicked problems, both. But this crisis manifests in different ways across multiple levels of human endeavours.

The Business Crisis Begets the Software Crisis

In business, intense competition, shifting customer demands, changing social expectations, and disruption make consistent success an elusive goal. In society, we face polarisation, inequality, and loss of social cohesion. As a species, our advanced civilisation has exceeded our innate cognitive capacities. We are overwhelmed by the world we’ve created.

The Societal Crisis Begets the Business Crisis

The software crisis is just a symptom of crises in business, society, and our human systems as a whole. To truly address it, solutions are needed at each level. Organisational psychotherapy can help provide a framework for shared reflection and treatment.

Business operates within a broader social context beset by polarisation, inequality, and eroding social cohesion. Society’s challenges become business’s challenges.

When society tacitly promotes individual gain over collective well-being, so does business. When civil discourse and trust decline, companies struggle to collaborate. When opportunity is not distributed broadly, markets suffer.

Business could help lead society forward. But first, society must create conditions where ethics and human dignity come before efficiency and profits. By reflecting society’s imbalances, business contributes to the social crisis.

Organisational Psychotherapy Offers a Way Forward

Just as individual psychotherapy helps people gain self-understanding to heal, organisational psychotherapy facilitates collective self-reflection to foster change in groups, companies, systems, societies and the species. It surfaces the dysfunctional patterns that maintain the status quo.

Applications

Applied to the software crisis, organisational psychotherapy invites examination of the beliefs, behaviors, and power dynamics across the tech industry that contribute to the many and perrenial chronic failures. It enables new understandings and behaviors to emerge.

Similarly, organisational psychotherapy addresses dysfunctional aspects of business culture and society that exacerbate our challenges and frustrates our needs. It helps groups align around shared purpose, and adapt.

Ultimately, organisational psychotherapy a.k.a. collective psychotherapy is about creating the conditions for species learning. As we confront crises across business, society, and our species, we might benefit from the capacity for honest inquiry, collective problem-solving, and continuous learning. Organisational psychotherapy can guide that evolutionary process. The software crisis and beyond provide an opportunity for our organisations, businesses, societies, and species to increase our enlightenment. But we must be willing to courageously examine ourselves along the way.

Outdated Beliefs Get in the Way

February 23, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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Outdated Beliefs Get in the Way

Many organisations today seem stuck in a pattern of missed opportunities and mediocrity. They work hard, but never achieve their potential for dignity, joy, and shared prosperity.

The key reason is that most organisations cling to outdated assumptions and beliefs about the world of work – assumptions and beliefs that hold them back. Their mental models of how business works are based on premises that were, maybe, relevant decades ago but have long since become obsolete.

For example, a common outdated belief is that decision quality is higher when decisions flow through strict organisational hierarchies, when flatter structures often foster faster innovation and improved decison quality, both.

Another toxic belief is that loyal, long-term employees are an organisation’s greatest asset. But in the modern workplace, it’s the relationships between employees that promotes prosperity and fresh thinking.

The world moves fast today. What made an organisation dominant 10 or even 5 years ago no longer guarantees success. The leaders and companies that dump outdated assumptions and beliefs about how things work are positioned to achieve their aspirations.

By continually questioning their premises and mental models, organisations can recognise where staus quo wisdom no longer applies. They can pivot rapidly rather than being mired in he past. And they can pursue innovative opportunities for atteding to folks’ needs, instead of sticking to familiar but lame and dysfuntional practices.

Shedding outdated beliefs at all levels is the only reliable way for an organisation to keep achieving extraordinary results in a world of accelerating change. The companies that realise this will be poised for progress in the years ahead.

Management Shortchanges Employees At Every Turn

February 21, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Culture change, Management, Quintessence
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Management Shortchanges Employees At Every Turn

In many companies, management imposes policies and practices that end up costing employees in major ways. Despite no clear business benefits, executives and middle management, both, make decisions and pursue approaches that hurt workers’ wallets, productivity and well-being.

Can we ever expect a healty, productive and mutually beneficial community of relationships to emerge from a foundation of naked exploitation?

Example: RTO

One example is Return to Office mandates after COVID, but this is just a symptom of a broader issue – management making decisions without considering employees’ needs and blythe ignorance of the consequences. (Or is it mendacity? For example, Wage Theft – estimates suggest wage theft costs U.S. workers $15-50 billion per year, more than is lost to robbery and theft combined.).

Shall We Count the Ways?

“How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Other common ways managers financially and personally cost staff include:

  • Stagnant wages and lack of raises, even despite rising costs of living
  • Minimal spending on employee training and career development
  • Avoiding the costs of effective health and safety and wellness programmes
  • Mandating outdated tools, working practices, organisational structures, and systems, that hinder productivity vs new approaches
  • All talk, no action on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives – “DEI Theatre”
  • Ever rising C-suite salaries, bonuses and perks while rank and file see ever-shrinking benefits
  • Lack of flexibility for work-life balance, leading to workers’ lives and earnings being disrupted by having to change jobs

Many companies view workers as nothing more than a cost to be minimised. Executives are disconnected from the employee experience. They pursue shareholder value at the expense of the workforce.

But organisations suffer when employees are not valued. Disengagement, burnout and high turnover follow. Customer satisfaction dips as unhappy employees deliver poor service. Innovation and performance decline.

Conclusion

The poor treatment of employees by management seems deeply ingrained in corporate structures and business school teachings. But are there solutions, or is management simply an irredeemable concept?

Some argue that these problems can be addressed through better laws and regulations, such as higher minimum wages, stronger health and safety protections, limits on executive compensation, and empowering workers’ rights to organise. Management training programs could also be reformed to prioritise employee wellbeing over short-term profits.

However, others contend that management by its very nature is exploitative. The hierarchical structure gives disproportionate power to executives and shareholders beholden to capitalism’s pursuit of power-holders’ wellbeing, efficiency, and profit maximization. Workers will always be squeezed under the management yoke

Radical solutions propose democratising the workplace through cooperatives, employee representation and ownership, worker representation on boards, and decentralised decision-making. But can these ideas scale successfully?

Perhaps the answer lies in a mixed approach. Pragmatic reforms to improve life for workers within current corporate models, paired with incubating alternative organisational structures that give workers an equal voice, or even the whip hand (Cf. servant leadership).

There are no easy solutions, but can we continue to accept the status quo of management blatantly and egregiously exploiting employees? Can we find a system that upholds dignity, justice and shared prosperity? Workers are assets to invest in, not costs to cut. Might we have faith that through insight, integrity and innovation, business can empower rather than extract from the workforce? The path will not be quick or easy, but progress remains possible through partnership across sectors and persistence despite setbacks.

For a model of how such an oganisation might look like – and feel like from both the workers’, managers’, and customers’ perspectives – you might like to read my latest book “Quintessence“.

Afterword

What practices have you seen, good or bad, that reveal how a company truly views its employees? Share your thoughts on when management’s decisions cost or benefit workers.

The Why of FlowChain: Deliberate Continuous Improvement

February 19, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Deming, Doctrine, Flow, Flow•gnosis, Flowchain, Improvement, Learning, Memeology, Metaflow, Organisational effectiveness, Prod•gnosis, Product development, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Software Delivery, Software development, Systems thinking, Value streams
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The Why of FlowChain: Deliberate Continuous Improvement

In my career, working with hundreds of companies, I’ve almost never seen organisations* take a truly deliberate approach to continuous improvement. It’s nearly always treated as an afterthought or add-on to business-as-usual (BAU). But real transformation requires making continuous improvement an integral and core part of daily work. This is the “why” behind FlowChain – enabling deliberate, in-band continuous improvement.

In other words, applying the same disciplines from product development, delivery, etc. to the business (sic) of delivering continuous improvements  – continuously improving the way the work works.

What Is FlowChain?

So what is FlowChain? At its core, it is a system for managing flow – both the flow of outputs and the flow of improvements to the way the work works, concurrently and by the same means. And by “flow”, I mean the steady progress of work from request to completion through all steps in a process. Flow is optimised when the right work is happening at the right time by the right people. Roadblocks, delays, and waste are minimised or eliminated.

Flow

Optimising flow delivers the following benefits:

  • Increased productivity – less time wasted, more work completed
  • Improved quality – fewer defects, rework minimised
  • Better customer service – faster response times, reliability
  • Higher employee engagement – less frustration, more joy

But achieving flow requires continuous improvement. Problems must be made visible. Waste must be reduced iteratively. Roadblocks must be cleared continuously.

This is why FlowChain incorporates improvement into its regular rhythm. Each cycle follows a deliberate sequence:

  • Plan – Select and sequence the upcoming work.
  • Execute – Complete the work while tackling issues.
  • Review – Analyse completed work and identify improvements.
  • Adjust – Make changes to improve flow.

Unlike most continuous improvement efforts – that are separate from BAU – FlowChain makes improvement an integral in-band activity. The rapid cycles provide frequent opportunities to reflect, gain insights, and act.

Compounding Benefits

Over time, the compounding benefits are immense. Teams develop a “flow habit”, where improving flow becomes second nature. Powerful capabilities like root cause analysis, A3 problem-solving, improvement katas, and change management are honed.

In my experience, this deliberate approach is transformative. Teams gain tremendous agency to systematically improve their own flow. The organisation as a whole cultivates a culture of continuous improvement. And customers experience ever-better service and responsiveness.

The “why” of FlowChain is simple – create focus, visibility, accountability, and agency to drive continuous improvement. The results – ever better flow, reduced waste, and sustainable transformation. Deliberate, in-band continuous improvement stops being an aspiration and becomes a reality.

*Ask me about the exception.

Should We Adopt Agile?

February 18, 2024
Actionable Insights, Agile, Agility at Scale, AI, Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Prompt Engineering, Quintessence
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Should We Adopt Agile?

Following on from my previous post concerning surfacing and reflecting on shared assumptions and beliefs about work, here are ten reflective questions for an executive considering flexible software development approaches:

  1. What are our priorities – speed, adaptability, innovation, quality, predictability? How should our processes align*?
  2. Do our teams thrive with more autonomy, or require structure from leadership?
  3. Are staff skills best leveraged through specialisation or multi-skilling and cross-functional collaboration?
  4. How much do we value rapid delivery versus long-term planning and building of long-term capabilities?
  5. Can our culture accept constant change versus needing firm commitments to e.g. delivery dates, feature sets, etc?
  6. Is our leadership comfortable ceding some control over how work gets done?
  7. Do our metrics reflect outcomes, outputs, value delivered, or needs met? Should we measure differently?
  8. Is transparency into work progress more valuable than formal milestones?
  9. Do we believe in Minimal Viable Products over Big Design Up Front?
  10. Are we open to new ideas or convinced our current ways of working work best? How much research have we done?

*I.E. What approach will best ensure our organisation’s processes, systems and structures are optimally configured to support our priorities and goals, around both software development and our wider business?

 

Note: Many more than these ten questions could be relevant to the headline topic. I encourage and invite you to try asking your favourite chatbot for more questions to consider.

Also note: Given the preponderance of proselytisation for the Agile approach currently found on the Internet, I would not recommend asking your chatbot “Should we adopt Agile?” directly. Unbiased and considered advice will NOT be forthcoming.

What Do You Believe?

February 18, 2024
Actionable Insights, AI, Article, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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What Do You Believe?

[Tl;Dr Ten questions for the busy executive to prompt self-examination]

By way of illustrating the intersection between current AI and Organisational Psychotherapy, here are ten AI-suggested* reflective questions for the business executive related to collective assumptions and beliefs about work:

  1. What core assumptions do we hold about what motivates employees? How might those impact our leadership style and company culture?
  2. Do we believe work should primarily be about productivity or fulfillment? How does that shape our policies around work-life balance?
  3. What are our beliefs around hierarchy and top-down leadership? Could a more collaborative model unlock more creativity?
  4. Are we open to re-examining traditional perspectives on things like remote work, flexible hours, or results-focused goals?
  5. Do we view employees as expendable assets or vital stakeholders? How does that perspective influence retention and turnover?
  6. Do we believe work requires oversight and control to be done well, or that autonomy drives better outcomes?
  7. Do we assume all employees are motivated by the same things like money or status? How could we better incorporate individual motivators?
  8. Are we clinging to any outdated models of what a successful workplace looks like? What new data or examples contradict our assumptions?
  9. Do we recognise generational differences in perspectives around things like work ethic, loyalty, and fulfillment?
  10. Are any of our beliefs around hard work or merit holding back disadvantaged groups? What biases might we recognise and rethink?

With help from any of the now numerous AI chatbots*, the busy executive can easily and quickly generate such questions to assist in e.g. collective self-reflection.

*The above list was generated via ClaudeAI

The Urge to Keep People Busy (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

February 16, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Busyness, Culture change, Learning, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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The Urge to Keep People Busy (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

In many workplaces, there is an underlying pressure to keep employees constantly busy. The thinking goes that if people have any downtime at work, that time is wasted and money is being left on the table. This leads managers and leaders to pile more and more work onto employees’ plates in an effort to extract maximum productivity. However, this approach is actually counterproductive.

Software companies tend to be prime examples of this misguided busywork culture. There is often intense pressure to continually release new features and upgrades to products. The development team is expected to churn out a steady stream of product increments to show that they are adding value. However, much of this activity becomes useless busywork after a certain point.

Queueing Theory 101

This phenomenon can be explained by queueing theory – the mathematical study of waiting in lines. As Tom DeMarco wrote in “Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency”, workers and tasks in a company form a queueing system. If all workers are 100% utilised, queues grow infinitely long and lead times stretch without bound. Companies need slack resources to absorb variation. Trying to keep everyone 100% busy all the time is thus self-defeating.

The Human Dimension

Studies have also shown that human cognitive resources are finite. We all have a limited capacity for productive focus and good decision making each day. Piling on more and more tasks leaves less mental energy for each task. Workers become ineffective at judging what activities are truly important versus those just designed to fill time. The quality of output suffers even as teams scramble to check more boxes.

Additionally, constant busyness leads to burnout over the long run. Workers never get the chance to recharge because they jump from one urgent task to the next. The resultant stress and exhaustion eventually sap motivation and creativity.

Alternative: Focus

Instead of keeping people busy for the sake of looking productive, organisations might choose to create focus. When clear priorities are set, teams have the space to deeply engage with tasks that really further core goals and objectives. Quality output that moves the needle earns more than quantity of output or hours logged.

Rather than endlessly generating and implementing new product features, software teams can choose to carefully consider business objectives and what features will have the biggest impact. Saying “no” to nonessential work is often healthier than taking it on just to keep programmers coding around the clock. Less can truly be more when it comes to productive and innovative software teams.

The Benefits of Downtime

In knowledge economy workplaces, ongoing learning uplifts both individual and organisational success. However, prioritising constant busyness leaves little room for employees to actively absorb new information or develop additional skills. Building protected time for learning into work schedules is thus hugely beneficial compared to attempting to eliminate all downtime.

Sufficient breathing room between intensive assignments provides cognitive space for individuals to deeply internalize and contextualise what they have already worked on. Lessons sink in better when folks have moments to pause and reflect on how the dots connect. Such periodic integration of experiences builds flexible knowledge that better transfers to future contexts.

Dedicated downtime also makes room for individuals to proactively seek out cutting edge knowledge in their domain. Workers use the time to read journals, take online courses, attend conferences, engage mentors and collaborate with peers in the field. Through these networks, they rapidly update understanding and hone best practices awareness. Organisations thrive when individuals return to apply these learnings to internal initiatives.

Importantly,downtime allows employees to pursue self-directed skill building aligned to their own person al and career needs, not just immediate organisational requirements. When individuals direct their own learning, intrinsic motivations energise mastery far beyond what imposed trainings can deliver. Carving space for self-improvement helps attract and retain top talent as well.

Of course, workers also benefit from downtime that simply allows their brains to recharge after intense problem solving. Neural networks expend significant energy forming new connections demanded by complex tasks. Regular periods of low external stimuli are crucial for restoring the actual physical infrastructure enabling learning in the first place.

Rather than something to eliminate through added busywork, downtime facilitates ongoing renewal that powers future performance. Knowledge workers’ most precious asset is the human capacity for rapidly acquiring and applying new understanding. Protecting time and space for learning may thus provide the highest organizational return on investment of any activity, busy or not.

Finally, downtime provides the space to surface and reflect on both personal and shared assumptions and beliefs about the way the work works (i.e. the opportunity for organisational psychotherapy, whether facilitated or self-directed).

Summary

The impulse to minimise any workspace downtime is understandable but misplaced. Workers and companies both thrive when space is made for deliberate thinking, creative ideation, restoration, reflection, and collaboration. The busiest person in the office is rarely the most productive or effective. Organisations migh better choose to create focus for employees rather than frenetic stimulation. Whether explained through queueing theory or basic human psychology, purposeful work will always trump mindless busyness.

Improving Human-to-Human Communication Through AI and Chatbots

February 13, 2024
Actionable Insights, AI, AInklings, Article, Automation, Chatbots, Improvement, Innovation, Interactive books, Quality, Writing
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Improving Human-to-Human Communication Through AI and Chatbots

For God’s sake, there is truly no longer any excuse for typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors in your posts, articles, and other writings.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots are transforming how we communicate. When integrated thoughtfully, this technology can optimise and enhance written communication between people. In this post, I’ll discuss some ways AI and chatbots can improve messaging, email, documentation, and other word-based interaction between humans.

Automated Proofreading and Editing

AI-powered writing tools already help by providing grammar and spelling checks. But newer capabilities can now also flag unclear phrasing, verbose language, overused words, and overly complex sentences. This aids writers in simplifying and refining their messaging before sending to a recipient. Readability statistics further help authors match their tone for the intended audience.

Summarisation and Translation Features

For long-form writing like reports or manuals, AI can generate a concise summary highlighting key facts, main takeaways, or action items. This allows collaborators or stakeholders to quickly grasp the essence before diving into the details. Meanwhile, instant translation functionality enables clear communication across language barriers.

Interactive Books

AI is also enhancing books through interactive elements powered by chatbots. Platforms like Ainklings.com allow authors to insert quizzes, discussion questions, exercises and other engaging features directly into the book text (or via sidecars). Readers can further highlight passages and interact with supplementary content related to the main narrative, enriching the reading experience.

Content Recommendations and Insights

Smart suggestions can enable more meaningful interactions through personalised recommendations. By analysing past correspondence as context, AI can prompt authors to include certain missing information, helpful examples, or reminders based on what the recipient would find useful. Language pattern analysis can also reveal insights for improving future discussions.

Automated Meeting Summaries and Notes

While AI currently struggles to match the creativity of human writing, it excels at capturing the salient points from meetings and presentations. Automated summaries of video sessions or collaborative spaces can save meeting participants time while ensuring everyone understands the key decisions or action items.

With thoughtful application, AI and chatbot tools can enhance understanding and engagement between people through better writing assistance, translation, summarisation, and recommendations. As these capabilities continue advancing, keeping the human audience at the center will be key to success.

Teams for the Flow Era

February 11, 2024
Article, Fellowship, Flow, Flow•gnosis, Flowchain, Quintessence, Teambuilding
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Teams for the Flow Era

Teams that are capable of smoothly and swiftly reconfiguring themselves is becoming the norm in the software industry today. Rather than old-fashioned rigid structures and siloed employees, progressive organisations opt for a more fluid approach that allows for responsiveness to shifting conditions.

Team members work across multiple projects in these flexible arrangements, contributing versatile skills as needed and rearranging team composition to suit the task in hand. Situational leadership – a.k.a. Fellowship – emerges based on expertise instead of formal titles. With boundaries that allow copious and timely information sharing between interlocking teams, rapid coordination becomes commonplace.

Self-direction and mutual trust enable these dynamic teams. A strong, shared strategic purpose coupled with developmental training and organisational support gives members the confidence to take initiative without constant top-down control. Teammates understand how their piece connects, empowering local decision-making even as larger configurations reshape around evolving challenges.

This fluid team format creates adaptable organisations capable of smooth reprioritisation as demands change, unencumbered by bureaucratic processes. People, ideas and resources flow to each new focus area in turn, adjusting teaming patterns seamlessly to current priorities. Progress keeps pace with the opportunities and demands of the day.

Some continuity and purposeful guidance balances out the flux. Respected, experienced figures may anchor successive teaming waves, providing continuity of culture and knowledge transfer. As thought leaderBob Marshall describes in his acclaimed book ‘The Team Fruit Bowl’, fluid teams’ steadiness enables ongoing realignment around the organisation’s North Star.

Self-aligning, versatile teams represent the leading edge of organisational design today. Staying responsive without getting swept away, they ride currents of change toward transformative performance.

The Great British Worker Shortage: Flogging a Dead Horse

February 10, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Quintessence
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The Great British Worker Shortage: Flogging a Dead Horse

Recent headlines bemoan a British workforce apparently lacking motivation as employee shortages plague UK companies. But rather than dusting off the same stale carrot-and-stick strategies aimed at driving disengaged worker horses, a radical shift may be in order. What if leading organisations reinvented their entire mindset and systems to inspire authentic engagement?

Outmoded Assumptions

This seismic reinvention starts with rethinking assumptions:

  • Are tired coercion tactics truly the only solution, or are there unmet needs amongst our people?
  • Could under-tapped passions and purpose be awakened to fuel commitment?
  • What kind of workplace reimagining could kindle individual and collective potential?

Rather than tread the same dead paths, today’s visionary organisations are poised to pioneer reinvention rooted in understanding these human truths. Work can inspire meaning, camaraderie and self-actualisation towering far above merely showing up for a wage. But aspiting to these heights requires a fundamentally fresh lens.

Are we ready to reshape the canvas? What possibilities might emerge through a relationship-based reset? Read on to explore dead-end strategies of the past contrasted to pathways to engagement and symbiotic thriving…

Reinventing the Disengaged British Workforce

Here are 12 strategies often used by companies who find themselves riding a dead horse:

  1. Change riders: For example, appoint new managers. But rather than simply swap managers, why not build engagement teams to deeply enquire of unmotivated staff on their true passions and purposes?
  2. Buy a stronger whip: But harsher penalties or coercive measures usually backfire. Could tailored incentives that speak to intrinsic worker values be more sustainably motivating?
  3. Harness several dead horses together: Attempting to harness disengaged teams rarely breeds vitality. Should clarifying individual purpose come first before teaming to ignite motivation?
  4. Emulate the best practices of other dead horse riders: Trendy gimmicks gaining traction elsewhere may entertain briefly, but authentic and lasting motivation lives in practices tailored for your people.
  5. Outsource the ridership: Handing rein over to outsourced managers who lack connection to internal teams can further dissolve rapport and purpose. Regular grassroots engagement from the organisation can rebuild relationships.
  6. Affirm that “this is the way we have always done things”: Preserving status quo processes may provide familiarity but squelches the innovation and empowerment today’s workforce expects. Could reinvention around the human dimension stir engagement?
  7. Change the requirements, declaring “This horse is not dead”: When workplace reality conflicts unsustainably with output expectations, organisations able to accept reality and reinvent accordingly tend to thrive.
  8. Perform cost analysis to see if contractors can ride cheaper: Analysing staff as expenses rather than assets risks missing their fullest potential value. How could we reboot to showcase their upside?
  9. Promote the dead horse to a management position: Rather than reward fancy titles over real contribution, what if meaningful advancement tied directly to the ability for motivating and uplifting others?
  10. Sue the horse manufacturer: Playing the blame game often wastes energy better directed toward understanding real needs and reinventing uninspiring systems. What does that reinvention vision entail?
  11. Claim “the horse was always dead”: Whether motivation issues worsened gradually over time or not, forward-thinking leaders take full responsibility today. Authentic reinvention must start now.
  12. Hire in foreign riders known for their ability to ride dead horses.

The Antimatter Principle reminds us that inspiration sparked by deeply attending to human emotional needs will always outpace coercion. Will UK companies discover how to truly engage the 21st century British worker by fully reinventing the workplace experience? I boubt it. And yet, The potential awaits fresh thinking!

What is Rigour?

February 7, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Capability development, Caring, Culture change, Engineering, Fellowship, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Self-organisation, Software development, Standard work, Teambuilding
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What is Rigour?

Rigour refers to the strict precision and accuracy with which work is executed in fields like software engineering and collaborative knowledge work (CKW). It entails adherence to standards and best practices for needed outcomes.

The Importance of Getting it Right

Attentive rigour matters because carelessness breeds mistakes. Flaws in logic or bugs in code stem from a lack of rigour. This introduces unwanted surprises, and failures down the line. Rigour is an attitude of mind that zeroes in on getting things right the first time Cf. Crosby, ZeeDee.

The Perils of Getting it Wrong

However, the quest for rigour can go awry when imposed hastily or mindlessly. Establishing rigorous frameworks like requirements analysis, peer review etc. does carry overhead. Teams can get so bogged down chasing perfection that creativity, productivity and morale suffer. Or so much time is spent eliminating small defects that bigger picture progress slows. Like most things, balance is warranted.

The Laissez-Faire Extreme

At the other end of the spectrum from rigour lies the laissez-faire attitude. This French phrase meaning “let it be” encapsulates a laid-back approach where participants have broad freedom to work in whatever manner they choose.

In software and knowledge work contexts, laissez-faire environments feature very few enforced policies, protocols, or mechanisms for ensuring quality. Creativity and unhindered workflow takes priority over rigour. Peer reviews, quality assurance, and documentation are optional. Teams self-organise organically without work standards.

This spontaneity can spark innovation but has pitfalls. Lack of rigour tacitly permits cut corners, gaps in logic, unfinished ideas and sloppy execution. With an easy-going approach, easily preventable flaws accumulate and undermine end results.

In applied contexts like commercial software development, laissez-faire practices practically guarantee shoddy work products riddled with defects. User needs demand rigour not as an obstacle, but as an enabler of excellence. Finding the right balance is key.

The absence of rigour embodied in laissez-faire philosophies may promote freedom. But the ensuing chaos leaves the fruits of hard work easily compromised. Some structure and rigour ultimately serves applied collaborative knowledge work better in the long run.

While cutting corners is not an option, forced rigour without context can mean marginal gains at disproportionate cost. Rigour must enable, not encumber, the pursuit of excellence. Teams that foster a culture where rigour flows from all participants, intrinsically and voluntarily, tend to find the sweet spot. Getting there requires clarity of purpose, patience, and care. Do that and rigour lifts the quality of collaborative knowledge work substantially over time.

What does rigour mean to you and your team?

Building Method: Creating Shared Understanding of How We Work

February 7, 2024
Antimatter principle, Article, Needs, Quintessence, Requirements, Software development
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Building Method: Creating Shared Understanding of How We Work

With today’s complex business landscapes and rapidly evolving technologies, having a well-defined “way of working” is crucial for software teams to execute effectively. Most organisations adopt processes, frameworks, and methods that they believe will deliver software projects successfully within their constraints.

But how often do teams step back and ask – how well does our method actually work for us? How much have we actively built and shaped it based on our own learning? How much of what we’ve learned about how to build software do we apply to building our method(s)?

The Reality

The reality is most teams inherit an existing software development method or cargo-cult the latest hype they read about. They don’t consciously architect the foundations defining the collective work. Much like constructing a building without an intentional blueprint – the result is disjointed work patterns built piecemeal over time.

This leads to confusion, frustration, and quarterbacking* when team members operate on conflicting assumptions and mental models of how work actually flows. People spin their wheels questioning why things happened when lacked shared reasoning of how decisions get made.

That’s why teams dedicated to continuous improvement migh choose to prioritise Building Method. This means deliberately designing an optimal way of working given your realities – then updating the blueprint as you learn from experience.

Key Steps

Key steps for Building Method include:

  • Surfacing the needs of all the Folks That Matter™ re: the Build Method (old skool: requirements analysis)
  • Facilitating deep conversations about current practices, the good and the bad, what to keep and what to reject
  • Mapping out flows – where value gets created and lost
  • Defining decision rights giving clarity yet freedom
  • Distilling guiding principles for tracking outcomes vs needs
  • Envisioning the ideal configuration of people, process, tools
  • Inspecting then rewiring suboptimal current conditions
  • Embedding rituals allowing reflection and adaptation
  • Surfacing and reflecting on governing shared assumptions and beliefs about how work should work

While external benchmarks provide useful perspective, real transformation occurs when teams consciously architect agreements uniquely tailored for the Needsscape. By investing energy into Building Method you construct a living blueprint that evolves intentionally vs. accidentally over time.

Invitation to Contribute

What does your team’s current method look like – and how intentionally was it built? I welcome perspectives on elevating teams capabilities for effectively Building Method. Please share your experiences in the comments.

Aside

*Quarterbacking is when one person on a team takes on an overly directive role and excessively tells other members what to do, rather than allowing for collaborative decision-making and self-organisation.

The term comes from American football’s quarterback position – the player who calls out plays and commands the offense on each down. Calling someone a “quarterback” on a software team implies they are dominating discussions, assigning tasks, and tightly controlling the work in an ineffective way.

Quarterbacking can emerge when team members lack a shared understanding of role clarity, decision rights, working agreements, and processes. Without clear method or structure, an informal hierarchy forms with the most vocal directing others and disempowering the team.

The alternative is facilitating peer-to-peer collaboration where everyone has agency in creatively solving problems. Avoiding quarterbacking means intentionally designing team interactions that enable decentralised leadership, autonomy, and leverage collective intelligence.

So in summary, quarterbacking refers to overly directive and disempowering behaviour that stems from lack of clarity, structure, and self-organisation on a team. The solution is co-creating method that empowers the broader team.

Collaborating Across Differences: The Human Element in Software

February 7, 2024
Article, Software development, Systems thinking
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Collaborating Across Differences: The Human Element in Software

Different organizations have fundamentally different assumptions, beliefs, and contexts which makes creating a universal software development framework extremely challenging. However, some elements may be broadly applicable across these differences.

The reality is that organisations each have their own unique cultures, strategic priorities, resource constraints, legacy processes, and domain specific challenges. As a result, blindly adopting any standardised framework frequently leads to frustration and failure.

At the same time, relative similarities may exist around people. All knowledge work involves interactions between human beings with common psychological needs and inherent social motivations. Even though roles, jargon, and tasks vary widely, the human elements and fundamental nature of collaboration can provide some common ground.

With that in mind, here is a proposed collection of related idea, centered first on shared human realities, with flexibility for adaptation. We’ll note that for those organisations that reject the notion that people matter, these idea will inevitablyfall on barren ground:

Promoting Well-Being & Motivation

People need autonomy, mastery and purpose. Provide configurations supporting competence, relatedness and self-direction balanced with stability.

Facilitating Quality Interactions

Leverage group facilitation methods promoting psychological safety, caring, inclusion and mutual understanding between all contributors regardless of differences.

Enabling Effective Collaboration

Equip groups to establish cooperative norms, co-create architectures visualizing interdependencies, jointly prioritize outcomes, design policies balancing diverse needs, and evolve more humane systems thinking.

Customizing To Local Realities

Recognize domains, priorities, constraints and maturity levels vary widely. Provide guidance – but empower teams to inspect and adapt processes and tools to optimize for their specific situation.

Upholding Ethical Values

Keep considerations for transparency, accountability, sustainability, privacy, accessibility, and effects on human dignity and justice central throughout. Ensure these conversations occur.

The intent is to focus first on timeless social and ethical considerations relevant despite organizational differences – while creating space for groups to invent practices suiting their practical realities and honoring their complex contexts.

Invitation to Contribute

While organiational complexities make universal solutions elusive, focusing first on shared human realities may provide some common ground to build upon. I welcome perspectives from across contexts and cultures. Where have you seen connections formed despite differences in software development? What practices have you observed or imagined that might translate across domains? Please share stories, ideas or constructive critiques in the comments – as we collectively work to forge understanding and evolve wiser human systems thinking.

The Paradoxes of Life and Business

February 7, 2024
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The Paradoxes of Life and Business

Life and business are full of interesting paradoxes if you stop to think about them. Here are a few that I’ve noticed:

  1. Everyone wants certifications, no one wants to learn.

It’s interesting how many people want to collect professional certifications and add letters after their names, but don’t actually want to put in the work to learn the material. They’re looking for the easy way to career advancement without realizing that real learning matters more than pieces of paper. Knowledge and skills are what make you stand out, not abbreviations.

  1. Everybody talks about using AI to enhance their jobs, no one talks about actually doing the job.

There is so much buzz about how artificial intelligence and automation will change the future of work. Experts talk about how AI will make jobs easier and workers more efficient. But there’s little discussion of actually buckling down, being responsible, and working hard right now even without these futuristic tools. Good old-fashioned work ethic seems to be going out of style while we await an AI-powered workplace utopia.

  1. We glorify entrepreneurship but look down on risk.

Popular culture praises entrepreneurship as the epitome of career success. But at the same time, we discourage risk-taking and making mistakes at all costs. Society gives mixed messages by idealizing startup founders who take bold risks while also shaming failure and instability in your work life. But the truth is every entrepreneur has failed at some point and taken major risks that could have doomed their business. Risk is inherent and mistakes are unavoidable when trying something new.

  1. Everyone complains about being busy but no one prioritizes effectively.

Ask anyone how they’re doing these days and you’ll likely hear “busy!”. Everybody is so busy and overworked all the time. Or so we like to believe. But being constantly busy nowadays seems more like a badge of honor and less a reality of modern work. If everyone examined their workflows honestly, they’d admit much of each day is spent on less efficient habits. Just because your calendar looks packed doesn’t mean you’re spending time on the right priorities that move the needle. Being truly productive means saying no to busyness and tackling your most important projects first. Stop complaining about a crowded schedule and take control of it instead.

What other paradoxes of work and life have you noticed? Share in the comments if you have examples to add!

The Dizzying Variety of Software Approaches

February 6, 2024
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The Dizzying Variety of Software Approaches

The endless varierty of software development frameworks and acronym-heavy approaches should not inspire confidence despite the software sector’s enthusiasm for each new fad. Rather, the continual emergence of enew approaches signifies an industry burdened by ignorance and arrogance – with little meaningful progress towards reliability or consensus on what really matters..

No Consensus, No Clue

The popularity of competing approaches points to a stunning lack of consensus on the fundamentals of building reliable, quality products. Sound software can be delivered by following core principles of disciplined engineering, yet no one is doing so, nor seems interested in learning how. Most organizations seem more concerned with jumping on the bandwagon of the latest viral framework than understanding how to critically assess the needs of their specific products and teams. Too many teams rig their workflow to fit a fashionable development approach rather than objectively analyzing how to build software properly given constraints. This suggest a worrisome ignorance of what software engineering excellence entails.

Fads Reign

Rather than chasing fads aiming to tame inherent dysfunction, software organisations might choose to focus on nurturing capability. With the right foundation of competent collaboration towards common goals, delivering meaningful software becomes simpler – no convoluted processes required. The scarcity of investment in systematic skills training and institutional knowledge transfer remains suspect. Why don’t more companies promote engineering excellence through rigorous apprenticeship models? One rerason is – who would provide these models? The industry is too juvenile to be able to agree on such a model. The fascination with process over people points to deep arrogance and denial of what causes products to succeed or fail in reality.

Turning the Screw – How To Get More Work Out Of Your People. Getting Them To Work Faster, Harder, Cheaper

February 6, 2024
Article, Humour
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Turning the Screw – How To Get More Work Out Of Your People. Getting Them To Work Faster, Harder, Cheaper

Idea: Beyonce Time: Help Employees Volunteer for Work-Life Integration

Managers, are you frustrated when workers prioritise menial tasks like sleep, family or hobbies over work deliverables that require that extra level of commitment? Of course you are – such divided focus just won’t suffice for excellence.

Well I’m here to share an enlightened paradigm called Beyonce Time where employees feel intrinsically driven to devote non-work time to professional development…by their own volition! It goes like this:

  • Casually question whether they truly “believe” in their career if they don’t wake up motivated to check their email at 4am daily (including weekend and vacations)
  • Frame rush hour commutes as prime opportunities to soak in motivational podcasts or review case studies on how the greats sacrificed personal lives to actualize their potential.
  • Suggest forming offsite Ideation Social Clubs to brainstorm innovation fueled by “workcations” at the office on weekends
  • Invite them to use their lunch breaks to get together to discusss work-related issues.

See, you’ve opened their eyes to integrated purpose, without comapny-led mandates! They freely blur work/life lines to unlock next level greatness themselves in this nurturing culture!

Sure, this mind manipulation to dominate personal time seems unethical…but that nagging voice inside all of us should know true fulfillment comes from professional actualisation with whoever owns our livelihood! Just don’t explicitly state that last part out loud if you actually want to retain top talent long term. People are so gullible!

Getting the Best Out Of Experts

February 5, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Capability development, Collaboration, Experts
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Getting the Best Out Of Experts

While many organisations instinctively “push” niche expertise onto various teams, whether relevant or not, and whether needed or not, a pull model where teams can tap into specialist support when truly needed is more effective. By enabling on-demand access to experts – both from inside and outside the company – organisations can empower teams to pull specialised knowledge to solve pressing problems as they arise. And avoid the all-too-common scenario where teams don’t beging to understand the experts and advice being foisted upon them.

Maximise Visibility of Specialists

Organisations might choose to maintain an intranet portal that profiles in-house and out-of-house experts across domains like user research, UX, supply chain analytics, product architecture, analysis, design, coding, quality, and emerging tech. Enable teams to easily identify and connect with relevant expertise.

Equip Access Channels

Setup dedicated collaboration tools like Slack channels, internal discussion boards, and email lists connecting experts to front line teams. Enable the just-in-time asking of questions, without gatekeepers or bottlenecks, for when specific challenges and needs emerge.

Identify External Partners

Research specialised firms or freelance consultants that can provide on-demand expertise for when in-house skills gaps exist in key areas. Develop preferred provider networks and put in place in advance the necessary contracts, terms, budgets, etc. for making this provision as frictionless as possible.

Incentivise Timely Support

Monitor internal/external experts via responsiveness and accountability metrics. Ensure incentives exist for them to provide timely and effective support.

Summary

This pull-based integration allows expertise to target real needs rather than being arbitrarily imposed from the top-down. Support happens in the flow of work not in a vacuum. The organisation facilitates access, teams pull when they really need it. This on-demand model maximises the application of niche expertise effectively, at the exact point and time of need.

Agile Is The New Opiate Of The Masses

February 4, 2024
Actionable Insights, Agile, Agility at Scale, Antimatter principle, Article
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Agile Is The New Opiate Of The Masses

Over 160 years ago, Karl Marx famously declared religion to be the “opiate of the masses.” He believed faith’s promise of future redemption pacified oppressed workers to accept current suffering. Today, it is software methodology, not theology, dulling pain amidst dysfunction. Agile has become the new opiate of the masses.

New Religion

Like a new religion, Agile enchants followers with visions of empowerment, progress, and salvation. Its rituals claim to surface hidden dysfunction while promising to heal broken processes. Yet its addiction may be the deepest dysfunction of all.

New Blinders

Behind the rhetoric of transparency and adaptation lies a new set of blinders. Insisting myopically on timeboxed cycles cements local efficiencies while inhibiting long-term and system-wide change. Making work visible addresses symptoms not root causes. Embracing uncertainty masks risk and reactive thinking.

Velocity Displaces Validity

Like any local optimum, Agile optimisation constraints flexibility – “You can only make changes within the software development silo”.

Guided by output metrics not outcome objectives, velocity displaces validity and busyness disguises futility. By valorising action over purpose, standups and retros distract from the void at Agile’s core: why and to what end?

Dogmatic

The deepest irony is that a method premised on adaptation insists dogmatically upon iteration models, work crystallisation, and prescribed mindsets. In promising liberation, it imposes yet another rigid straighjacket. No prescribed framework fully grasps software’s complexities.

Summary

Might we better choose to dispense with the trappings, and orient to attending to needs, rather than process perfection? Might we choose to see method as a compass, not a map? Iterative delivery and feedback cycles can certainly guide teams. But when blindly systematised and followed slavishly, Agile risks making the “perfect” the enemy of the good enough. Behind grand sounding transformation lies mere pacification and opioid stupour. Before seeking reform through new methods, might we first get clear on folks’ needs?

Individual Mindsets vs. Collective Mindsets

February 2, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Capability development, Culture change, Innovation, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence, Systems thinking
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Individual Mindsets vs. Collective Mindsets

We often talk about the need for individuals to change their mindsets – their assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes – in order to create positive change. But as human beings, we don’t exist in isolation. As the saying goes, we are social animals, shaped by the groups and cultures we are part of. So perhaps we might choose rather to shift more of our focus to addressing collective mindsets rather than just individual ones.

Schein On

Organisational psychologist and author Edgar Schein argues that culture stems from a group’s shared basic assumptions and beliefs. These collective ways of thinking and being manifest in organisational policies, processes and behaviors. If the culture has dysfunctional aspects, it perpetuates dysfunction. Merely helping individials adopt more productive mindsets without addressing the surrounding culture is an uphill battle.

For Example

Take a common example – trying to promote more innovative thinking in a risk-averse bureaucratic workplace. Telling individuals to “be more innovative” often backfires. When people attempt new ways of doing things, they get pushback for not following protocols. and Interesting ideas get shut down quickly by naysayers. There are no systems or incentives to support innovation. So you end up with frustrated employees, not actual innovation.

Organisational Psychotherapy To The Rescue

In contrast, #OrganisationalPsychotherapy seeks to invite folks into uncovering and transforming collective assumptions and beliefs – the mental models that shape systems and culture. By facilitating more awareness of existing culture and defining desired culture, interventions get better traction. Collective mindsets shift to be more supportive of stated goals, like innovation, making it easier for individuals to adopt those productive mindsets as well.

Summary

The key insight is that individual mindsets are downstream of collective mindsets. Without addressing dysfunctional aspects of culture and systems, individual change efforts face resistence from the surrounding ecosystem. This highlights the need to focus on group mindset factors first and foremost. Of course, individuals still have agency in driving any kind of change. But we’d do well to spend more time examining and evolving the shared beliefs and assumptions on which any organisation is built. For cultural transformation, that’s likely the most high-leverage point of intervention.

Postscript – Donalla Meadows’ Twelve Points of Leverage

In her influential article “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” systems thinker Donella Meadows articulated 12 places within complex systems where a small shift can lead to fundamental changes in the system as a whole. Her framework offers guidance on how to approach system-level transformation, whether in organizations, societies, or beyond.

Meadows proposes 12 leverage points ranked in order of effectiveness, with the most high-leverage interventions at the top. The higher the leverage point, the easier it is to make major improvements to the system with minimal effort. Her list starts with more superficial leverage points around details like subsidies and incentives, then moves deeper into the fundamental goals, paradigms, and transcending purpose that underpin why a system exists in the first place.

The most powerful leverage points require a deeper, more courageous transformation. But they allow us to redefine the very reason a given system exists, enabling revolutionary redesign rather than incremental improvements. Meadows urges change agents to have the wisdom and patience to address the deeper paradigms, values, and purpose driving systemic behavior. As she concludes, “People who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”

In examining Meadows’ hierarchy of leverage points, we gain an appreciation for the depth of change required for true systems transformation. It inspires a more radical reimagining of what’s possible. The framework continues to provide guidance to sustainability leaders and organizational change agents seeking to effect large-scale improvements in business, government, technology, education and beyond. In this critical era facing many complex, planetary-scale challenges, Meadows’ words ring truer than ever as we work to create fundamental shifts towards more just, resilient and life-affirming systems.