Quickie: Who’s Got Your Back?

Who’s got your back when it comes to remaining relevant in a fast-changing skills market? Who can you rely on to point out new skills that will become vogue in one, five, ten years’ time?

Given the time it takes to develop such skills to the point where they become useful to clients and employers, when do you start ramping up new skills in anticipation of emergent demand for them?

Especially when some new skills area suggests a sea-change from your existing skill set and comfort zone?

Or maybe you’re just accepting of increasing irrelevancy and declining rates of pay?

Highlight Problems, Avoid Solutions

It’s wayyy easier to provide solutions than to help folks find their own solutions. What are the consequences of this observation?

• For consultants, trainers, pseudo-coaches and others whose income depends on selling “solutions”?
• For folks seeking long-term, permanent solutions to their problems?
• For folks who choose to hire consultants or other experts to solve their problems for them?
• For folks habituated to delegating the finding of solutions to their problems to others?

Voltaire asks us a rhetorical question:

“Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?”

~ Voltaire

I’ll not be offering any solutions to this conundrum. I am available help you along the path of finding your own.Do get in touch!

#IANAC (I am not a consultant).

– Bob

Further Reading

Rother, M. (2010). Toyota Kata: Managing People For Continuous Improvement And Superior Results. Mcgraw-Hill.
Marshall, R.W. (2021). Memeology: Surfacing And Reflecting On The Organisation’s Collective Assumptions And Beliefs. [online] leanpub.com. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub). Available at: https://leanpub.com/memeology/ [Accessed 16 Jun 2022].

Quickie: Tosh, Tosh And More Tosh

There is helpful and useful content out there. But finding it amongst all the dross is a massive challenge.

I despair of the boatloads of naive advice, misinformation, and just pure tosh that so-called “Agile” people spout on a daily basis. (Not limited to just “Agile” people, of course.)

Caveat lector!

And just in case you’d like a sanity check on anything suspect or dubious, I’m always happy to support your natural scepticism. Just get in touch for non-partisan help.

Quickie: How To Spot An Expert

If all your expert’s knowledge exists somewhere on the Internet, they’re not worth consulting.

What’s An Expert To Do?

If you’re an expert, there’s little satisfaction or joy in trying to change people such that they begin to adopt the things you know they need to do. They won’t understand nor embrace new ways of doing things, nor new ideas. Not because the expert tells them to, anyways.

You may be lucky and stumble across someone or some group that, by happenstance, has become curious about doing things differently. But in most cases, your expertise is for the birds.

So, taking a job or position in organisations as an in-house expert is most often a stupid punt. Almost exclusively, in my experience.

And in the realm of software delivery, there’s pretty much zero likelihood of decision-makers understanding why doing things differently is the only gateway to better performance.

Obduracy

In my post “Obduracy” of several years ago, I wrote:

“The things organisations have to do to make software delivery successful are well known. And equally well known is the fact that organisations will absolutely not do these things.”

And this ain’t gonna change just because an expert or two gets involved. 

What To Do Instead

The above was observably true back in 1996, when we decided to apply our expertise for our own benefit, baled from any more consulting, and started Familiar.

And it remains true today, some 26 years later. Which is why we’re embarked on a similar venture, second time around. 

Instead of endless frustration in trying to help others move the needle in software delivery, we are, again, picking up the gauntlet and getting jiggy with moving the needle ourselves, through The Quintessential Group.

If you’re an expert in software delivery, I invite you to apply your expertise in starting your own delivery business (we’d be delighted to help). Or, you might like to join us at The Quintessential Group and taste the quintessential experience.

– Bob

Further Reading

Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Software Development Organisations. [online] leanpub.com. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub). Available at: https://leanpub.com/quintessence/[Accessed 24 Apr. 2022].