"what Kim did for Ops & DevOps in the Phoenix project, he has continued for product development in this work"
Both of these books use narrative to demonstrate the move to agile ways of working and devops transformations within an auto-parts selling business.
These five ideals are very helpful for looking at ways to enhance a technology practice.
—
Here’s where I’m going to "think out loud" again. As I read these, I realized they’d make a better framing for how I’ve been approaching some challenges my team faces at work. I’ve been communicating with my manager using the perspective of "accountability without authority or responsibility", and while that’s true, the Unicorn Project ideals might be an even better lens by which to view the problems.
Let me work through them to see what we are doing or could do in each area.
Locality and Simplicity
This is the core issue, as I’ve recently been thinking about it. My team relies on data, processes, instructions, and approval for almost everything from another team (and primarily one team). Work comes in from the other team, work goes back to that team. This disincentivizes problem ownership by either team, as things get "tossed over the wall". Further, because of the back and forth, there are steps that don’t necessarily add value.
To solve these, we need to create local ownership and reduce waste & complexity. Instead of there->here->there work, we can improve this in one of the following ways:
here->here->there: meaning that my team sets the direction, rather than receiving it, but the other team still manages the result
there->here->here: meaning that my team still receives the direction, but has more capability to finish the work on their own
there->there->there or here->here->here: meaning that one team has full ownership for direction, results, and problems for an area of work
For us, the most appropriate short term answer is here->here->there, with a potential move eventually to a true locality where one team manages something all the way through the lifecycle. I’ve been advocating for this two-step approach, but now have a different way to talk about it.
Focus, Flow, and Joy
We have a culture of meetings. This is especially true for our New York office (where my boss and my peers are originally from). During covidtide, this has ramped up even further. Added to that, my team is working with a great number of stakeholders (often working with with many leaders and over 250 internal customers, each), has many sources of incoming requests, and encounters many "squirrels" caused by hot topics or VIP perspectives.
Altogether, those equate to very little time for focus or deep work. That results in less satisfaction and joy as people feel like they are constantly juggling instead of achieving momentum through wins.
We’ve got a few irons in the fire on this, too:
"No Meeting Wednesdays": we instituted this recently, and while not perfect (due to stakeholder meetings and increased interruptions from people who know we are "free"), it helps there be the chance for blocks of time for focus
"Ways of Working" agile alignment: I’ve been proposing that we get all our work visible under one mechanism, so that we can better manage priority, work-in-progress, etc. It would also help to have requests come in a common way, reducing interruptions. We’ve got buy-in now to get some agile coaches working with our broader org on a group transformation.
Using collaborative tools: Many interruptions can go away if we have standard means to keep one another up-to-date or make decisions. I’m helping push adoption of these ways. (Kanban boards instead of status meetings and inquiries, asynchronous work out of the same document rather than a meeting for committee-editing, decision-records and next-actions captured in writing, etc.)
Improvement of Daily Work
There isn’t a lot additional to say here, as so much of it is dependent on the above two areas. If my team doesn’t have much ownership of their work, nor the time to focus on changes, it’s very difficult to focus on daily improvements.
Instead, I try to make up for some of this deficit by spending a lot of my time on this, looking for ways to help the team. Creating clarity. Creating or sharing resources that make things easier. Promoting the internal sharing of best practices, wins, and lessons-learned. Cutting waste. Eliminating blockers. Etc.
Psychological Safety
The idea of psychological safety is this: Team members have to feel that it’s ok to speak up, that their concerns won’t be dismissed and they won’t be retaliated against. Team members have to feel that it’s ok to learn, make mistakes, clean up after themselves, and grow; that they won’t be penalized for trying something new.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to say much here (as it could affect psychological safety!), but I will say that I seek to promote psychological safety by being transparent, authentic, and non-defensive. I look to give opportunities for people to stretch themselves in a safe manner. I aim to make sensitive constructive comments in private and heap praise in public.
Customer Focus
We can think about customer focus in two ways.
The first is the most important: the end costumer of the product or service. Do we know what they need, and is our work ultimately serving them? Or are we creating waste and doing pet projects?
The second is the internal customer, or stakeholder. This one is easy to overlook, especially if a team isn’t used to thinking about having customers, which is an all-too-common occurrence in the technology world.
To help with this, what I do is to advocate for customer and stakeholder perspectives up front and every step along the way, both in my team and for the teams where we are the internal customer.
Who will use the product or service?
What do they need?
How does that inform our requirements?
Is somebody getting their perspective and feedback?
Do you need to get their buy-in for the solution?
Is there an easy way for them to give you feedback and see that you are doing something about it?
etc.
If your org has a product-owner type role, this helps a great deal!
There’s this tendency in modern conversations of justice to look at everything as zero-sum, winner-or-loser, exploiting-or-exploited.
It’s been exacerbated by celebrity figures who push this line of thinking, as well as by advertising-driven social media algorithms picking “winners” in virality wars.
But we have to do better than that. We have to want a better world for everyone. We have to look at how improvements can make things better overall.
We don’t get there simply by being anti-. We don’t get there by treating others as enemies to be defeated. Rather, we can look to others as potential co-conspirators ready to tackle challenges together.
One way to step out of the enemy-making view is to look at a level level above the individual. What is the mood of the group? What is the spirit of the organization? What is the faith of the locality? What is the tone of the structure?
You can mix and match these words, too. The Christian Bible talks about the “principalities and the powers”. German philosophers talk about “the zeitgeist”. You may have another metaphor.
However we think about it, before we go after people, let’s take a moment to think about the overarching system affecting the problem. What powers are at work, and with that in mind, how can we work with others to make things better?
If I go into an challenging discussion just trying to get my way, I’m not helping the situation. If I go into a challenging discussion acting like I care about the other person’s perspective, I’m still not helping the situation. It’s only when I actually care about their perspective that we can find a wise path forward.
Are there discussions you’ve been avoiding? Do you have the capacity to care about their perspective? Do you have courage to have the talk?
This is a quote I have in my favorites simply so that I get the reminder frequently.
In another of his books (Food Rules) Pollan also says:
The banquet is in the first bite
and
No other bite will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish in satisfaction.
and
...as you go on, you’ll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.
In many attentive eating paradigms (the works of Michael Pollan, mindful eating, intuitive eating, Naturally Slim, etc.), there is a focus on really paying attention to and enjoying what we are eating.
Part of the unhealthy habits many of us have learned around food contribute to food moving from something to savor to something to consume. Like other parts of consumer culture, we look for the latest "advances", the best bang-for-our-buck, the quickest thing, the most popular thing, the best advertised thing, or the super-utilitarian-just-get-the-nutrients-in-me thing.
Whichever of these we drift towards, our relationship with food moves away from thinking of food as something to enjoy in-and-of-itself, shifts away from cultural food traditions (with all their accumulated wisdom), and shifts away from (non-performative) eating with our community.
This reminder, then, is a simple call back to paying attention to what is being eaten.
Take a small bite. How does it smell? How does it feel? How does it taste? Does it change as I chew or as it lingers in my mouth?
Following this paradigm, a few things happen:
I enjoy my food much more
I'm amazed how the tiniest of bites can give as much (or more) satisfaction as a large one
I realize that after more than a few bites of anything, I'm not enjoying anymore, but merely consuming
I realize my fullness much more quickly
I can eat my foods in any order I want, because I won't overdue it with anything on my plate, but know I will move on once I am no longer enjoying that item
Now, there is one big exception to this "intuitive" approach to eating. Some of these programs handle it, others may not.
SUGAR is basically a drug.
Sugar makes us more hungry. Seriously. Because of the way fructose and glucose work in the body, having sugar (and even simple carbs, which are effectively glucose) causes our bodies to store fat and ramp up our appetite. So, "intuition" gets short-circuited by our biological processes.
Pollan has lots of advice to help avoid this trap. Naturally Slim advocates cutting sugar. I'm not sure if Intuitive Eating handles it. (email me if you know?)
Because I used a Pollan quote related to dessert, let me pair it with these other practices from Food Rules, in order to present the more-complete picture. Bold is Pollan's wording, italics are my comments.
4 Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
5 Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.
35 Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature. (e.g. whole fruit with fiber)
37 “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”
39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. (e.g. if you want pie, chips, or ice cream you gotta make it from the raw ingredients!)
In the week ahead, this is a good reminder for me to be mindful. To eat rather than consume. May it be helpful for you, as well.
The recommendation is for several reasons, including: a better fat profile (omega ratio), better micronutrients, and better carb profile (fiber over simple).
