Nice and Respectful

Nice and Respectful

There’s an awful lot of really, really nice people in the agile community. Which makes it a pleasant community to be a part of.

But.

Maybe being nice so much is part of the problem.

What problem?

As Liz (@lunivore) puts it: “Our industry [the software development industry] is in an awful state. A really awful state.”

(Ackoff would probably have called this a Wicked Problem).

That the industry is in an awful state has to be apparent to most people. Some folks even have well-formed ideas as to why it is so.

And (sometimes) the Agile community even tries to do something about it. Although there’s not much consensus on WHAT to do. Or even what the real roots of the problems are. (I’ll set aside for another post the issue of all the snake-oil salesmen, and the genuine but misguided folks – both being groups who muddy the waters considerably).

I for one am regularly disappointed with what I perceive to be a reluctance to engage in constructive conflict on the subject. I often see folks opt for niceness (and avoidance) over purposeful debate and dialogue.

Maybe the problem really is unsolvable.

I don’t think so.

At least, I believe we can find ways to act to ameliorate it significantly.

Maybe it seems like we have a huge mountain to climb, and that discourages us. ( I know I feel discouraged by the apparent enormity of the challenge, quite often).

And maybe it’s also partly apathy, or ennui, or learned helplessness, or… ?

But until we can put aside niceness in favour of respect, I don’t see us making much progress.

Respect for someones is not the same as being nice to them. In fact, often, being nice to someone can actually be doing them – and ourselves – a disservice. For example, Argyris calls attention to the process of  ‘easing-in’. And observes it as deleterious to productive, effective dialogue.

There’s rather more niceness and rather less respect going around than I feel is healthy. I think we can do much more on the respect front. As Norm Kerth says:

Let’s … understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

Sounds like a good position to take more generally, not just for intra-team retrospectives?

So how about giving folks (and their ideas) some more respect, and especially by being a little less nice and a little more, erm, honest and direct and challenging?

After all, when climbing a mountain, it’s rarely a cakewalk – it involves some effort and hardship, and yes, maybe some constructive conflict too.

– Bob

Refs

• Patrick Lencioni – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• Chris Argyris – Argyris resources at Benjamin Mitchell’s blog
• Edward De Bono – Six Thinking Hats (especially, in this context, the Black Hat).