Software and Product Development Remain in the Dark Ages

These days, technology moves at lightning speed with new tools and platforms constantly emerging. But evolution in the way we organise for software and product development often feels like it’s crawling along at a snail’s pace. The way we build apps and products is lagging way behind what’s possible. A big reason for this is that businesses still use outdated and egregiosly ineffective practices for organising both their teams and the way the work works.

Companies Bogged Down in Bureaucracy

Larger companies are weighed down by bureaucracy that crushes agility and innovation. The  Command and Control management style remains ubiquitous, we continue with inflexible planning processes, and unnecessary documentation requirements. What could take a few weeks or months gets dragged out over years of committees, approvals, shilly-shallying, and shifting goalposts.

Teams work silos that block collaboration across groups that need to work together. Protectiveness and territoriality are rampant. Priorities also constantly change with leadership turnover, favouring reactive firefighting over long-term strategy. Software and product people spend more time navigating corporate politics and protecting themselves than doing actual work.

Skewed Work Incentives

Developer and product manager motivation suffers because incentives are misaligned. Individual rewards are based on checking arbitrary boxes rather than doing great work. Perceived job insecurity inhibits taking risks or sharing knowledge.

There is also misguided prestige around working on proprietary codebases and reinventing from scratch. This holds back reusing proven architectures and open sourcing for community collaboration. Inefficiently re-building wheels becomes the norm as devs find motivation in custom solutions over composable building blocks.

Outdated Approaches

Approaches like Agile, DevOps, and cloud computing have helped to a limited extent. But these are incomplete solutions patching over outdated and ineffective organisational foundations rather than rethinking from a clean slate.

Hierarchies are flattened but still exist. Command and Control still predominates. Planning iterates but still relies on traditional projections rather than real-world feedback loops. Migrating to the cloud layers complexity on creaky legacy systems instead of fully modernising as cloud-native.

Renaissance

Truly revolutionising how we build software and products invites a top-to-bottom overhaul, not just tweaks to our present approaches. Organisations could be reimagined from the ground up with different workflows, team structures, and incentive systems. In fact, with a whole host of outdated and relatively ineffective assumptions and beliefs consigned to the trashcan of history.

This could mean, for example, far flatter teams organised around end-to-end product missions rather than subdivided tasks. Compensation might be overhauled to favor collective outcomes and attending to folks needs over individual heroics and pay-per-hour. Business models favouring self-organisation could enable healthier evolution of the way the work works. For a comprehensive list of what “better” looks like, see my books “Quintessence” and “Memeology“.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but one thing is clear. If we want software and product development to leap into the future, first we have to drag our organisational assumptions and beliefs out of the Dark Ages.

Dissent: A Catalyst for Innovation

The Path Least Questioned

Businesses and software teams often find themselves entrenched in established practices and ideologies. Processes become routines, and routines turn into unquestioned norms over time. In such environments, conformity reigns supreme, and innovation is stifled. However, true progress lies in the disruption of these norms – the willingness to challenge the status quo through calm yet forceful dissent.

The Importance of Differing Perspectives

One key ingredient that is frequently overlooked when striving for innovation is the role of dissent – offering alternative viewpoints that diverge from the dominant narrative. When differing perspectives are encouraged and thoughtfully considered, businesses and teams can reap substantial benefits.

The Benefits of Constructive Disagreement

While dissent may initially seem disruptive or uncomfortable, it is essential for driving progress. When differing viewpoints are encouraged and respectfully considered, it can lead to:

1. Rigorous Evaluation of Ideas: Contrary opinions invite teams to thoroughly examine their assumptions and beliefs, and critically assess the merits and drawbacks of their proposals, resulting in more robust and well-rounded solutions.
2. Identification of Blind Spots: Individuals or groups often become entrenched in their own biases and perspectives, making it challenging to recognise potential pitfalls or oversights. Dissenting voices can help uncover these blind spots and mitigate risks.
3. Increased Creativity: By challenging the status quo, dissent can spark new lines of thinking and encourage teams to explore alternative approaches, fostering an environment of creativity and innovation.

Creating a Culture of Open Discourse

Fostering an environment where dissent can thrive requires a concerted effort from everyone. Here are some strategies to consider:

1. Lead by Example: Teams can choose to demonstrate a willingness to listen to and consider differing viewpoints, even when they contradict their own beliefs. This sets the tone for the entire organisation.
2. Establish Safe Spaces: Create designated forums or channels where folks can freely express their opinions without fear of repercussions. This could include regular brainstorming sessions, anonymous feedback mechanisms, or open discussions during meetings.
3. Promote Cognitive Diversity: Actively seek out individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to contribute to projects and decision-making processes. This diversity of thought can be a catalyst for both dissent and innovation.
4. Provide Constructive Feedback: When dissenting views are expressed, respond with supportive and constructive feedback. Invite folks to address the substance of the dissent, rather than dismissing or belittling the dissenting individual.

Embracing Dissent as a Competitive Advantage

In competitive business situations, the ability to adapt and innovate is a crucial differentiator. By cultivating an environment where dissent is not just tolerated but actively encouraged, businesses and software development teams can tap into a wealth of diverse perspectives and ideas, ultimately driving progress and gaining a competitive edge.

While embracing dissent often feels uncomfortable or disruptive, it’s a necessary catalyst for challenging complacency and fostering a culture of innovation. By fostering open discourse and constructive disagreement, organisations can unlock the full potential of their people and stay ahead of the curve.

The “Good Enough” Sweet Spot

[Tl;Dr: “Good enough” means optimising for best meeting all the needs of the Folks That Matter™]

The Perils of Over-Engineering

In our quest for excellence, it’s tempting to over-engineer solutions, pouring needless resources into perfecting every tiny detail. However, this pursuit of flawlessness often comes at a steep price. Over-engineering can lead to diminishing returns, where the marginal benefits of additional effort become negligible. It can also result in unnecessary complexity, making systems harder to maintain and adapt.

The Pitfalls of Under-Engineering

On the flip side, under-engineering can be equally detrimental. Cutting corners or settling for subpar solutions may seem like a shortcut to efficiency, but it often leads to technical debt, compromised quality, and long-term sustainability issues. Under-engineered products or processes are more prone to failure, necessitating costly reworks or replacements down the line.

Striking the “Good Enough” Balance

Between these two extremes lies the “good enough” sweet spot – a delicate balance that maximises value while minimising waste. Embracing the “good enough” mindset means understanding when to invest resources and when to call it a day. It’s about recognising that perfection is an asymptote that can never be reached, and that diminishing returns inevitably set in.

The “Good Enough” Approach

Adopting a “good enough” approach involves setting realistic goals and prioritising the most critical aspects of a project or product. It means focusing on core functionality and user needs, rather than getting bogged down in superfluous features or tiny optimisations. By identifying the minimum viable product (MVP) and iterating from there, teams can meet folks’ needs faster and adapt more readily to changing requirements.

Quantifying the “Good Enough” Threshold

Of course, to deliver just what’s good enough, we have to know what’s good enough. Choosing to quantify the qualitative aspects of deliverables can help (Cf. Gilb).

Quantifying the Qualitative

Defining “good enough” can be challenging, especially when dealing with qualitative aspects such as user experience, design aesthetics, or customer satisfaction. However, by quantifying these qualitative elements, teams can establish more objective criteria and benchmarks for what constitutes “good enough.”

Leveraging Data and Metrics

One approach is to leverage data and metrics to measure and track qualitative aspects. For example, user testing and feedback can provide numerical scores for usability, intuitiveness, and overall satisfaction. Analytics data can reveal user behavior patterns, highlighting areas of friction or success. Even design aesthetics can be quantified through techniques like preference testing or eye-tracking studies. (See also: Gilb: Competitive Engineering).

Defining Acceptance Criteria

Another powerful tool is setting clear acceptance criteria upfront. By collaborating with stakeholders and subject matter experts, teams can define specific, measurable criteria that must be met for a deliverable to be considered “good enough.” These criteria can encompass functional requirements, performance benchmarks, accessibility standards, and qualitative thresholds based on user feedback or industry best practices.

Prioritising and Iterating

Once acceptance criteria are established, teams can prioritize the most critical aspects and focus their efforts on meeting those thresholds. By adopting an iterative approach, they can continuously refine and enhance the deliverables, incorporating feedback and adapting to evolving needs while maintaining a “good enough” baseline.

Embracing a Quantification-Driven Approach

Quantifying qualitative aspects requires a data-driven mindset within the organisation. Teams must be equipped with the tools, skills, and processes to collect, analyse, and act upon relevant data. Additionally, fostering a culture of continuous learning and experimentation can help, allowing for ongoing refinement and optimisation based on empirical evidence.

By quantifying qualitative aspects and establishing objective criteria, teams can more effectively arrive at the “good enough” sweet spot. This approach ensures that resources are allocated judiciously, core needs are met, and a solid foundation is established for ongoing iteration and improvement.

Embracing Iteration and Continuous Improvement

The beauty of the “good enough” philosophy is that it doesn’t preclude ongoing improvement. In fact, it embraces iteration and continuous refinement. By shipping a “good enough” initial version and gathering real-world feedback, teams can identify areas for enhancement and prioritise future efforts accordingly. This approach allows for more efficient resource allocation and greater responsiveness to the evolving needs of all the Folks That Matter™.

Fostering a “Good Enough” Culture

Cultivating a “good enough” culture requires a shift in mindset – one that values pragmatism, efficiency, and attending to folks’ needs over perfection. It means fostering an environment where team members feel empowered to make trade-offs and prioritise based on business impact. Teams play a crucial role in setting the tone, celebrating progress, and encouraging a bias towards action over analysis paralysis. Good enough applies to not only the product(s) but to the way the work to produce and support them works, too.

In essence, the “good enough” sweet spot is about striking the right balance – investing enough effort to deliver quality solutions that meet core needs, while avoiding the pitfalls of over- or under-engineering. By embracing this mindset, teams can optimise their resources, better address folks’ needs (but no better than good enough!) and foster a culture of (good enough) continuous improvement and adaptation.

Note to self: Mention the Kano Model, the Taguchi Loss function, and e.g. muri, mura and muda.

How Group Minds Change

While we often think of the mind as belonging to an individual, groups and organisations can develop their own collective mindset – a.k.a. collective psyche – that transcends the viewpoints of any single member. This “group mind” emerges from the shared beliefs, assumptions, and ways of thinking that become entrenched within a organisation over time.

The group mind is an entity distinct from the individual minds that comprise it, yet it is also shaped by the psychological tendencies and biases of those individuals. As people within an organisation interact, reinforce each other’s viewpoints, and establish shared narratives, a collective psyche emerges. This psyche influences how information is interpreted, how decisions are made, and how the organisation responds to change and new ideas.

While the group mind can provide a sense of unity and cohesion, it often also acts as a barrier to growth and adaptation. Outdated assumptions, confirmation biases, and a resistance to changing the status quo can become deeply ingrained, making it difficult for the organisation to evolve. Understanding the forces that shape and maintain the group mindset is crucial for leaders seeking to facilitate meaningful change within their organisations.

Shifting the Group Mindset: How Organisations Can Evolve

When it comes to organisations, whether they are corporations, non-profits, or government agencies, change is often resisted. Entrenched beliefs, established processes, and a fear of the unknown can make it challenging for groups to adapt and evolve their collective mindset. However, understanding the psychological factors at play can help leaders facilitate meaningful change within their organisations.

While leaders can play a role, truly meaningful updates to an organisation’s ingrained “group mind” often arise from the grassroots. Teams have the power to self-organise and proactively evolve the collective psyche. This shared mindset influences how people interpret information, make decisions, and embrace (or resist) change. To become an adaptable, future-ready team, try:

Combating Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek out information confirming existing beliefs presents a major obstacle. Break through by having everone actively encourage diverse perspectives during meetings and decisions. Invite team members to argue the various sides of issues. Bring in outside experts – including organisational psychotherapists – to help challenge assumptions.

Overcoming the Status Quo Bias

Closely related to confirmation bias is the status quo bias, which is the preference for maintaining the current state of affairs, even when change could be beneficial. This bias stems from a combination of fear of uncertainty, perceived effort required for change, and a false sense of security in the familiar. The status quo feels comfortable, which makes change difficult. But fresh thinking is crucial. Clearly communicate the reasons for change and the benefits of evolving. Provide coaching for indiciduals and organisational psychotherapy for groups to help people navigate ambiguity. Celebrate small wins to build momentum. Provide support and resources to ease the transition.

The Influence of Social Proof

Humans are heavily influenced by the actions and beliefs of those around them – a phenomenon known as social proof. In organisations, this oten leads to the perpetuation of outdated or ineffective practices simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done”. Breaking this cycle requires leaders to invite everyone to model desired behaviors and create an environment where innovation and new ideas are celebrated.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

At the core of organisational change is the ability to adopt a growth mindset – the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. Leaders can foster a growth mindset by encouraging continuous learning, providing opportunities and resources for skills development, and celebrating failures as learning experiences rather than sources of shame.

Increasing Group Emotional Intelligence

Navigating change within organisations is not just an intellectual exercise; it also requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Folks can choose to empathise with the concerns and fears of their peers and co-workers, communicate effectively, and manage their own emotions during times of stress and uncertainty. Building emotional intelligence within the organisation can help create a more resilient and adaptable culture. By increasing emotional intelligence, people can process these emotions constructively as e.g. a team. Expressly invite an environment of empathy where needs can be heard and concerns can be voiced. Learn to self-manage team emotions and dynamics.

Embracing Change as a Constant

Ultimately, organisations that are able to successfully retune their group psyche will be those that embrace change as a constant. Rather than viewing change as a temporary disruption, these organisations see it as an integral part of their growth and evolution. By fostering an environment that values learning, diversity of thought, and emotional intelligence, organisations that are truly adaptive and future-ready emerge. The most adaptable (Agile!) organisations make evolving shared assumptions and beliefs feel like a source of strength, not pain. Foster this by developing a culture where change is treated as integral to growth and development. Institutionalise mindset updates as a regular team and organisation-wide practice. Lean on communications experts within the organisation to regularly share these updates.

Conclusion

Shifting an organisation’s entrenched “group mind” is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. As the world continues evolving at a rapid pace, the ability to proactively update collective beliefs and assumptions becomes critical for survival.

In her famous essay on leverage points for changing systems, Donella Meadows identified “The Power to Transcend Paradigms” as the highest and most effective point of intervention. A paradigm refers to the shared mental model or set of beliefs that shapes how we understand reality.

For organisations, the “group mind” acts as the overarching constraint that governs how information is perceived, decisions are made, and change is approached. Failing to evolve this ingrained collective psyche essentially renders an organisation unable to see and understand the world with fresh eyes.

Those organisations that can transcend their group mind by continually questioning shared assumptions and beliefs, and entertaining new perspectives, will be the ones poised to thrive amidst volatility. They make evolving their shared beliefs an integral part of operations rather than a periodic disruption.

By developing emotional intelligence, cultivating growth mindsets, and harnessing the creative friction of diverse viewpoints, these innovative entities ensure their collective thinking remains agile and future-focused. Their “group mind” becomes a flexible asset for reinvention rather than a restraint on change.

In our era of constant upheaval across industries, the greatest competitive advantage will belong to those organisations that fully embrace the perpetual journey of transcending their in-the-moment paradigm. They understand that clinging to ingrained collective mindsets inevitably becomes a source of blindness and stagnation. Their identity centers around the reality that questioning “the group mind” itself must remain an eternally iterative process of growth.

The Instincts of the C-Suite are Way Off Base

In industries where collaborative knowledge work is key – software development, product design and the like – those at the top often have deeply flawed instincts about what drives productivity and creativity. Their assumptions about what motivates people and maximises value are frequently undermined by research and real-world results.

Conflating Activity with Productivity

A common managerial blind spot is the belief that more hours in the office equates to more productive output. Stemming perhaps from an industrial era mindset, executives often implement policies aimed at maximising “bums on seats.” Open plan officing, strict monitoring of attendance, limiting work-from-home – these are championed as means of fostering focus and accountability.

However, studies consistently show that knowledge workers are not production line operatives. Their optimal productive hours are limited and their cerebral tasks demand periods of distraction, refocusing and recharging. Trying to squeeze every possible minute out of them is counterproductive. Strict activity monitoring simply promotes insincere behaviour – employees pretending to be working while daydreaming or cyberloafing.

The Mythology of Keeping Them on a Tight Leash

Another frequent executive instinct is the desire for control and direct oversight. There is a notion that people must be micro-managed and kept on a tight leash lest they become complacent or distracted. Draconian monitoring of tasks, delivery and deadlines is viewed as essential in driving progress.

Yet autonomy has been shown time and again to be a powerful and essential motivator for collaborative knowledge workers. These are people who can be trusted to manage their own workflow within flexible guidelines. Injecting needless stress through oppressive oversight actively hampers productivity and alienates. The most engaged and high-performing teams are those afforded autonomy in executing their responsibilities.

Misunderstanding Intrinsic Motivation

Perhaps the most egregious executive blindspot relates to motivation itself. The traditional management view is that people are primarily motivated by money and status. The pursuit of higher salaries and promotions is seen as the catalyst that drives them.

While fair compensation and opportunities for growth are certainly baseline factors, study after study demonstrates the key drivers of motivation for knowledge workers are:

1. The inherent interest and enjoyment of the work itself
2. The opportunity to learn and develop mastery
3. A sense of purpose in creating something valuable

Environments injecting excessive financial rewards or top-down pressures to produce actively dampen these powerful intrinsic motivators. Meanwhile, cultivating working conditions that promote autonomy, mastery and purpose is proven to amplify productivity. And Cf. Dan Pink’s Drive).

Misunderstanding Collaborative Knowledge Work Itself

At a more fundamental level, many executives fail to grasp the very nature of collaborative knowledge work. They incorrectly view it as a assembly line process with discrete tasks to be delegated and combined into final deliverables. In their minds, software is built by having teams of coders each complete coding assignments that are integrated together. New products arise from different designers, analysts and specialists fulfilling their prescribed roles.

In reality, fields like software development and product design involve dynamic problem-solving where roles are fluid and team situations evolve rapidly. The work is fundamentally exploratory, requiring cycles of trial, testing, and incorporated learnings. Solutions emerge iteratively through interdisciplinary collaboration across all roles.

Trying to impose rigid, segregated workflows is antithetical to this reality. Successful collaborative knowledge work demands organisational models that are adaptive and non-siloed. People must be able to fluidly cross roles and swarm around emerging problems or opportunities as a cohesive team. Excessive process formality and, especially, hierarchy only gums up the works.

In Closing

While difficult to shed, executive instincts around managing collaborative knowledge work are often diametrically opposed to evidence-based best practices. What those at the top intuit rarely enhances outcomes – rigidly controlled activity, draconian oversight, and financial or status-based motivators actively undermine outcomes. True high performance comes from nurturing inherent motivation, respecting folks’ autonomy and needs, affording flexibility around working practices, and enabling an adaptive team-based model of execution.

The Misunderstood World of Quality Assurance

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) is a term that gets tossed around quite frequently in the business world, particularly in the realms of product development and software development. However, despite its widespread usage, QA remains one of the most misunderstood and misused terms out there. Many conflate it with quality control, when in reality, QA is a separate and far more comprehensive approach that we might choose to see permeate every aspect of a business’s operations.

Separating QA from Quality Control

A fundamental misconception is viewing QA and quality control as one and the same. This could not be further from the truth. Quality control refers to the specific processes and techniques used to identify defects or non-conformances in products or services. It is a reactive measure, taken after a product or service has been created.

Quality Assurance, on the other hand, is a proactive and all-encompassing mindset, focused on implementing principles, processes, and activities designed to achieve the goal of “ZeeDee” – Zero Defects. When effective QA practices are in place, the need for extensive quality control measures – a.k.a. inspections, testing – becomes largely unnecessary.

The Holistic QA Approach

In the context of product development, we might choose to see QA integrated into every phase, from conceptualisation to final delivery and beyond. This involves establishing clear quality objectives, defining measurable criteria, implementing robust preventive measures, and continuously monitoring and improving based on feedback and data.

Similarly, in software development, we may choose to regard QA as crucial throughout the entire lifecycle, ensuring functionality, reliability, and an optimal user experience – not through testing, but through activities like risk management, all geared towards the Zero Defects goal.

Prevention over Correction

The true power of Quality Assurance lies in its ability to prevent issues before they arise, rather than correcting them after the fact. By implementing comprehensive QA strategies with e.g. ZeeDee as the guiding star, organisations can significantly reduce or eliminate the need for resource-intensive quality control processes (inspections and the like), resulting in increased efficiency, cost savings, and a superior end product or service.

An Organisational Culture

Ultimately, Quality Assurance is not merely a set of tools and techniques; it is a mindset and a culture that must be embraced by every member of an organisation. From top management to front-line employees, everyone must understand the importance of quality and take ownership of their role in ensuring that products and services consistently meet the needs of all the Folks That Matter™, with Zero Defects as the guiding principle.

Conclusion

In a world where businesses strive for excellence and customer satisfaction is paramount, Quality Assurance as defined here is not a luxury; it is a necessity. By recognising the true scope and significance of QA, its distinction from quality control, and its pursuit of ZeeDee (Zero Defects), organisations can unlock the full potential of their products and services, foster a culture of quality, and ultimately, achieve sustainable success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The Agile Paradox: When Founders Fail Their Own Manifesto

The Incongruous Origins

The Agile Manifesto threw the software world into disarray when introduced in 2001. With its emphasis on individuals over processes, it promoted radical values like customer collaboration, embracing change, and empowering motivated teams.

However, over 20 years on, there is a glaring disconnect between the values espoused and how some of the founders themselves behave, according to the thought-provoking critique by @davenicolette. It’s a harsh charge – that the very people birthing the Agile revolution violate its core tenets through arrogant, domineering attitudes antithetical to the spirit of empathy and humility they advocated.

A Cultural Blind Spot

This paradox may stem from the homogeneity of the Manifesto authors as middle-class white males from individualistic Western cultures. @davenicolette posits that the teamwork and self-organisation urged by Agile were unnatural in such environments, hence the need for a “grand statement of the obvious.”

In more collectivist societies, these human-centric principles were ingrained, making much of the “Agile industry” of training and certifications more or less irrelevant. The coaching, tools and jargon were unnecessary “grabs for attention” in individualistic contexts.

Heroes to Humans

A core Agile principle was rejecting the old “hero-god” mentality of software development, instead fostering self-organising teams of empowered peers. Tragically though, @davenicolette finds some founders exhibiting that very domineering behaviour they aimed to dismantle.

In a striking role reversal, these “hero-gods of Agile” reportedly collaborate poorly, fixating on their own perceived wisdom over cultivating curiosity about others’ perspectives. A far cry from the humble facilitation prescribed by their own teachings.

The Agile Evolution: Organisational Psychotherapy

As Agile principles continue being applied beyond software, the future increasingly points toward an organisation-wide psychotherapeutic approach to workplace development and improvement.

Organisational Psychotherapy (OP) seamlessly blends the human-centric principles at Agile’s core with a holistic focus on group dynamics, emotional intelligence and cultivating synergistic team cultures. It’s a natural progression from the Manifesto’s original emphasis on prioritising individuals and interactions over processes.

In this sense, organisational psychotherapy represents the next evolutionary wave – taking the ideals of empathetic, self-aware collaboration and expanding them into a comprehensive intentional approach for nurturing the human elements that allow organisations to truly flourish.

As @davenicolette expresses, the fundamental “agile thing” boils down to simply allowing and enabling people to work in a manner innate to our species. Organisational psychotherapy provides a framework for manifesting that ideal across all kinds of organisations, while helping address cultural hang-ups and institutional obstacles.

By fusing the original humanist values with a strategic organisational focus, this approach can help transcend the personal contradictions of the founders and realise their full transformative potential across all industries. It’s the embodiment of “individuals and interactions” writ large.

The Multicultural Counter-Example

Contrasting this, @davenicolette shares an uplifting tale of coaching a diverse, multicultural team comprising six nationalities. Despite no native culture in common, they smoothly embodied teamwork and continually improved their approach – all with minimal resistance or guidance required.

This team’s seamless discovery and embracing of the ideas the Manifesto fought so hard to establish perhaps reveals the broader cross-cultural resonance when people transcend societal biases around individualism.

Simple Wisdom Lost

As Agile pervaded the corporate sphere, the original straightforward vision of “working naturally as humans” became increasingly obscured. Corporatisation, commodification of training, and standardisation into rigid processes corrupted and diluted the elegant simplicity at its core.

Organisational Therapy: The Next Level

Organisational Psychotherapy takes the Manifesto’s people-first philosophy to the next level. It blends prioritising individuals with cultivating healthy group dynamics, emotional intelligence, and vibrant team environments. It further evolves the idea of valuing interactions over processes.

The holistic approach helps us grow as individuals while optimising how we work collectively to achieve more together than we could alone. By applying psychological insights through an organisational lens, it charts an expansive path for making the Manifesto’s ideals a reality across organisations.

The Fruitful Future

From this perspective, the future feels absolutely brimming with creative potential. We can combine our skills, remove limits holding us back, and build supportive environments that increase what we’re able to do while appreciating our human nature.

It’s a wide-open opportunity awaiting trailblazers willing to forge an inclusive, self-aware path like Agile’s founders did. We stand poised to discover new ways to collaborate and unleash our collective genius to everyone’s benefit.

The Human Revolution Continues

With OP illuminating the way, we can realise more of our ambitions. This human-honouring revolution can now reshape the very core of how organisations operate – tapping into our need for continual growth and flourishing teams to build a perpetually evolving, thriving future together.

Ultimately, @davenicolette posits, the Manifesto’s powerful ideas may be best appreciated by disassociating them from the personal shortcomings of their originators. While honouring their revolutionary contribution, separating the philosophy from its founders’ “peculiar incongruities” allows its value to shine through – untarnished by human contradictions.

In its essence, Organisational Psychotherapy is a call to harness our truest, most collaborative selves through self-awareness, teamwork, continual introspection, and shunning of dogmas. A clarion call to humanise the workplace that likely resonates most purely when its ideas transcend the limitations of the Manifesto’s origins. How about we use the Manifesto as a stepping stone to better things?

Deliver Value by Addressing the Customers’ Crucial Needs

[Tl;Dr: Optimal value to customers means helping them address their active constraint]

The Paradox of Customer Needs

In the context of organisations which develop software, understanding customer needs is paradoxically both straightforward and complex. On the surface, the goal seems clear – create software that meets the expressed requirements and desires of the customer. However, these articulated wants often fail to accurately capture the customer’s genuine, underlying need.

The Theory of Constraints Insight

Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints offers a powerful lens through which to view and resolve this paradox. According to Goldratt, at any given time, an organisation faces a single constraint – a bottleneck – that limits its progress toward its goal(s). This constraint represents the pivotal need that, if addressed, would unlock new levels of progress and value for the organisation.

Needs Manifest as Constraints

Through this framework, we can redefine the concept of customer needs in software development: the customer’s crucial need is to identify their current organisational constraint and see it addressed. While customers may articulate a multitude of wants, their fundamental need remains anchored in alleviating the bottleneck that is holding them back from achieving their broader goals.

Continuous Adaptation to Evolving Needs

However, just as individual human needs evolve over time, so too do an organisation’s constraints. As one bottleneck is addressed, a new constraint inevitably emerges, creating a cycle of perpetually evolving needs. This necessitates an iterative, adaptive approach to software development, where efforts are continuously re-aligned to tackle the customer’s current constraint as it shifts.

Fostering Deep Organisational Understanding

To effectively identify and address these pivotal customer needs, a deep understanding of the customer’s organisation is essential. This requires going beyond surface-level requirements gathering and actively engaging with all the Folks That Matter™, observing processes, and immersing oneself in the organisational culture (a.k.a. shared assumptions and beliefs). Only through such immersion can one gain the insights necessary to pinpoint the root constraint and develop targeted solutions.

Delivering Continuous Value

By embracing this perspective – that customer needs manifest as organisational constraints – software development becomes an ongoing journey of value delivery. Each cycle of identifying and addressing the current constraint provides tangible value to the customer, propelling their organisation forward. And as new constraints emerge, the cycle repeats, ensuring that solutions remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with the customer’s evolving needs.

Conclusion

True value in delivering solutions to customers lies in addressing customers’ crucial needs, which are inextricably tied to their in-the-now operational constraints. By adopting a constraint-focused, iterative approach and fostering deep understanding of customers’ needs vis their constraint, solutions can continuously meet customers’ fundamental needs, unlocking new levels of service, customer satisfaction, and mutual success.

Von Scharnhorst and Auftragstaktik

Lessons for Collaborative Knowledge Work

Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Origins and History

In the aftermath of Prussia’s crushing defeat by Napoleonic forces in 1806, the military theorist Gerhard von Scharnhorst sought to reform the once-formidable Prussian army. One of his key innovations was the concept of “auftragstaktik” or “mission-type-tactics.”

Rather than dictating precise orders from a central command, auftragstaktik pushed decision-making down to lower levels. Commanders at all levels were given a general objective, the resources needed to accomplish it, and the freedom to determine how best to achieve the mission based on their own initiative and circumstances on the ground.

The philosophy empowered front-line soldiers and unlocked the full creative and adaptive potential of the force. After adopting auftragstaktik, the Prussians achieved remarkable success against Napoleon’s armies at the Battles of Leipzig and Waterloo in 1813-1815. Auftragstaktik also played a major role in the stunning Prussian victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

Applicability to Collaborative Knowledge Work (CKW)

While developed for military operations, the core principles of auftragstaktik hold powerful lessons for collaborative knowledge work (CKW) in the modern economy – whether in software, product development, research, or other complex team-based environments.

Like 19th century combat, these domains are rife with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Central planning and rigid hierarchies falter in the face of rapidly changing circumstances and information asymmetries between layers of management.

Auftragstaktik propounds:

• Clear overarching strategic objectives (the “mission”)
• Dispersed decision rights to those closest to the information
• An emphasis on individual initiative within defined constraints
• Bi-directional communication and coordination between layers

Modern Implementations

Many of today’s most innovative companies have embraced versions of auftragstaktik – if not in name, then in substance:

Spotify: The music streaming giant pioneered an organisational model of small, autonomous “squads” each with a clear mission aligned to company strategy. Squads have end-to-end responsibility for their areas and coordinate through linking elements like “tribes,” “chapters,” and other forums.

U.S.M.C. and SpecOps: Modern special operations embrace a philosophy of “centralised command, decentralised control” a.k.a. “Mission-type tactics”.  While top leaders set the operational vision, small teams on the ground have maximum leeway and support to accomplish their missions as they see fit based on circumstances.

Maximising Human Potential

At its core, auftragstaktik is about maximizing the full human potential of an organisation. By clearly broadcasting strategic intent while devolving execution to those closest to the information, it unlocks the advantages of both alignment and autonomy.

In our era of accelerating innovation and disruption, optimising for flexibility and adaptability is of paramount importance. The principles of von Scharnhorst’s 19th century military revolution may well be the philosophical lodestar for 21st century organisational success.

Further Reading

Marshall, R.W. (2013). Product Aikido [PDF] – Auftragstaktik For Software Development. Falling Blossoms. https://flowchainsensei.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/productaikido041016.pdf

Upton Sinclair’s Dictum

The Maxim and Its Intellectual Pedigree

For those unfamiliar with the novelist and polemicist Upton Sinclair, he is perhaps best known for his 1906 novel “The Jungle” which exposed horrific conditions in the meat-packing industry and inspired reforms like the creation of the FDA. But one of Sinclair’s most oft-quoted maxims has lived on as sage advice in fields well beyond its original context of Yellow Journalism and muckraking:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

This pithy statement, now known as Upton Sinclair’s Dictum, echoes the perspective of the English mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford, who famously declared

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

thereby making belief an issue of morality, or ethics.

Both Upton Sinclair and William Clifford saw intellectual honesty and a commitment to following evidence over expedience as paramount moral and ethical imperatives.

The Perils of Motivated Reasoning

Sinclair’s dictum cuts to the heart of the conflict of interest that can arise when people are incentivised to ignore uncomfortable truths or turn a blind eye to unethical practices. Over a century later, it remains as relevant as ever – particularly for business leaders and managers charged with enabling collaborative knowledge work.

The Crucible of Knowledge Work

In fields like software development, product design, team coaching, and other collaborative brain (grey muscle) work, the challenges teams face are often wicked problems – complex issues with no clear right answer, where even reasonable people can disagree with each other. Successfully navigating these choppy waters requires the fearless questioning of assumptions and beliefs, a relentless commitment to empiricism over ego, and a culture where all ideas can be rigorously stress-tested rather than self-censored.

Incentives Gone Awry

And yet, how often do we see teams afflicted by an insidious form of willful blindness, where dissenting perspectives are downplayed or dismissed outright in service of binding to already-held beliefs? Perhaps it’s driven by managers’ career incentives being too tightly coupled to delivering on a specific roadmap or revenue target. Maybe it stems from product leaders’ identities being too inextricably bound up with their “billion dollar baby” and thus being emotionally invested in rationalising sunk costs. Or it could simply be the natural tendency toward the comfortable inertia of groupthink.

Embracing Intellectual Honesty

Whatever the root causes, the antidote is the same – cultivating a culture of intellectual honesty, where all the Folks That Matter™ have both the autonomy and the enthusiasm to vocalise doubts and scrutinise lchains of reasoning, assumptions and beliefs. Where no stone goes unturned in interrogating the fundamental assumptions underlying key decisions. Where Value at Risk* queries are not only tolerated but actively encouraged as a check against blind spots and biases.

Fostering this boundary-less ethos of truth-seeking is a significant challenge facing modern knowledge-work leaders. But by striving to live up to the spirit of Sinclair’s admonition, we give ourselves the best chance of circumventing the self-deceptions and rationalisations that can otherwise send initiatives careening toward ruinous failures.

Heeding History’s Warnings

Time and again, history’s cautionary tales have proved the adage that “in a battle of conviction against conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom has largely prevailed.” That’s why embracing Sinclair’s Dictum is so vital. For only by creating an environment where people can transcend their vested interests and follow the truth wherever it leads can we hope to part the veils of entrenched assumptions and beliefs.

 

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*”Value at risk queries” refers to the practice of actively questioning and scrutinising decisions, plans, or initiatives to assess the potential downsides, risks, and costs if things go wrong.

The term is taken from the financial concept of “value at risk” (VaR), which is a risk measurement and management method used to estimate the potential losses an investment or portfolio could face over a given time period.

Here, “value at risk queries” means rigorously examining the value potentially put at risk by a course of action – whether that value is financial, reputational, opportunity costs, or other key metrics important to the organisation.

Some examples of value at risk queries include:

• What is the worst-case scenario if this product fails to gain market traction?
• Have we fully stress-tested the assumptions around customer adoption rates?
• To what regulatory or compliance risks are we potentially exposing ourselves?
• How much technical debt and future constraints are we incurring with this architecture?
• Are we missing any significant blind spots in our competitive analysis?

Instead of shutting down or dismissing these tough “what if?” questions, organisations might choose to actively encourage and support value at risk queries. This helps surface potential blind spots and provides a check against overly optimistic planning or narrow frames of reference.

In essence, value at risk queries apply rigorous risk management thinking as an antidote to groupthink and comfortable consensus-building. They stress-test initiatives before making irreversible commitments.

Silos

For anyone who has worked in organisations, whether large or small, the phenomenon of workplace “silos” is all too familiar. Silos refer to the tendency for different departments or teams to operate in isolation, with little communication or collaboration between them.

While most folks working in the tech industries are familiar with the pitfalls of organisational silos such as separate marketing, sales, and operations teams, few recognise the similarly damaging effects of silos between disciplines.

For example, often, software engineers operate in isolated codebases, data scientists in segregated modeling pipelines, and designers in siloed UI frameworks. This compartmentalisation breeds many of the same pathologies as organisational silos:

• Lack of big-picture perspective
• Shortfalls in creative insights into how the work works, and could work better
• Duplicated efforts
• Limited knowledge sharing and innovation
• Rigid mental models resistant to change

Yet modern tech products and services require integrating numerous disciplines – systems thinking, the theory of knowledge, understanding of variation, and psychology, as well as the more usual specialsms: programming, data, design, DevOps, product management, and more. When disciplines remain cloistered, the resulting solutions are sub-optimal.

The Power of Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration

In contrast, forging multi-disciplinary collaboration unlocks a powerful union of diverse skills, perspectives and domain knowledge. As Deming highlighted in his System of Profound Knowledge, viewing problems through a wide aperture leads to deeper insights.

Some key benefits of this cross-pollination include:

• End-to-end alignment on objectives across the value chain
• Dynamic combination of complementary expertise areas
• Faster issue resolution by aligning priorities holistically
• Continuous learning and growth for all
• Fostering an innovative, psychologically safe culture

Rather than optimising isolated components, multi-disciplinary collaboration enables the co-creation of cohesive products and experiences that delight all the Folks That Matter™.

Cultivating Multi-Disciplinarity

Of course, nurturing this multi-disciplinary ideal requires organisational support and the rethinking of ingrained assumptions and beliefs about work. Incentive structures, processes, and even physical workspaces will need redesigning.

But the potential rewards are immense for forward-looking companies – accelerated innovation cycles, more productive ways of working, and formulating solutions beyond what any individual narrow-discipline specialist could achieve alone.

In our age of relentless disruption, the greatest existential risk is insular thinking – holding too tightly to narrow disciplines as the world shifts underfoot. Multi-discipline dynamism, powered by collective knowledge and continuous learning, is the currency of sustained advantage.

For those willing to transcend boundaries and embrace profound cross-discipline pollination, the possibilities are boundless. Those clinging to compartmentalised organisational and disciplinary silos, however, face morbid irrelevance.

Deming’s SoPK

For decades, W. Edwards Deming advocated his “System of Profound Knowledge” (SoPK) as the key to transforming businesses into continuously improving, customer-focused, multi-disciplinary organisations. At its core are four interdependent principles that combine heretofore disparate disciplines:

1. Appreciation for a System: Understanding that an organisation must be viewed as an interconnected system, not just isolated silos. Each part impacts and is impacted by others.
2. Theory of Knowledge: Recognising that learning and innovation arise from the synthesis of diverse theories, concepts and perspectives across domains.
3. Knowledge about Variation: Grasping that complex systems involve inherent variation that must be managed holistically, not through narrow inspection alone.
4. Psychology: Harnessing intrinsic human motivations and driving participation, rather than extrinsic forces like punitive accountability.

In most organisations, none of these profound knowledge principles are well known, let alone deeply embraced, appreciated and systematically applied. They represent a radical departure from traditional siloed thinking.

When applied holistically, Deming’s SoPK philosophy exposes the many drawbacks of organisational disciplinary silos, including:

• Lack of big-picture, end-to-end perspective
• Redundancies and inefficiencies from duplicated efforts
• Suboptimal solutions from narrow specialisations
• Fragmented vision and strategy misalignment
• Resistance to learning and change across boundaries

Deming’s philosophy highlights the advantages of multi-disciplinary collaboration to optimise systems holistically. Narrow specialisation alone is dysfunctional.

By shining a light on these drawbacks upfront, the importance of breaking down counterproductive disciplinary silos becomes even more stark. The vital need for collaboration, systems-thinking, applied psychology and profound cross-domain knowledge is clear across all disciplines and value chains.

By highlighting these drawbacks upfront, the importance of breaking down counterproductive silos becomes even more stark. The need for collaboration, systems-thinking, applied psychology and profound knowledge cuts across all disciplines.

The System View: Beyond Isolated Parts

Deming’s first principle stresses that an organisation may be viewed as an interconnected system, not just as separate silos or departments working in isolation. Each group’s efforts affect and are affected by other parts of the system.

Silos represent a fragmented, piecemeal view that is anathema to systems thinking. By reinforcing barriers between marketing, sales, engineering, operations and more, silos prevent the shared understanding required for optimising systems as a whole.

Knowledge Through Diverse Perspectives

According to Deming’s Theory of Knowledge, continuous learning and improvement stems from the interplay of diverse theories, concepts and perspectives. Innovation arises through making connections across different mental models and multiple disciplines.

When teams comprise members from various disciplines, their unique backgrounds and experiences foster richer exchanges of knowledge. Silos, in contrast, restrict the cross-pollination of ideas.

Understanding Variation

Deming’s view of variation exposes the fallacy of trying to eliminate every defect or failure through e.g. mass inspection. Complex systems involve inherent variation that must be managed holistically, not narrowly inspected away.

Multi-discipline teams can better grasp the dynamic variations impacting their shared objectives, drawing on complementary viewpoints to guide iterative learning.

Harnessing Psychology for e.g. Motivation

Finally, Deming emphasised the power of harnessing people’s intrinsic motivations, rather than relying on punitive accountability within silos (or communities of practice). When experts from various domains unite on meaningful projects, it cultivates broader purpose and drives discretionary effort.

By removing restrictive boundaries, multi-disciplinary collaboration enables self-actualisation while encouraging collective ownership of outcomes.

Cultivating a Learning Organisation

For many organisations obstructed by siloed thinking, embracing Deming’s Profound Knowledge is no simple task. It requires reimagining structures, processes and even physical spaces to nurture multi-disciplinary engagement.

Yet the potential rewards are immense – from accelerated cycles of innovation and organisational agility, to a workforce invigorated by joy, pride, and deeper fulfilment in their day-to-day. Deming’s wisdom reveals the collaborative imperative for thriving amidst volatility.

The greater risk lies not in disruption itself, but in calcifying into rigid, inward-looking organisational and disciplinary silos incapable of evolving. Organisations have a choice: cling to the illusion of control through silos and narrow specialisms, or embrace the profound knowledge gained by breaking boundaries.

Exploring Shared Assumptions and Beliefs with the Help of an AI Chatbot

Introduction

As businesses strive for innovation and growth, they often find themselves running up against unseen barriers – ingrained ways of thinking and behaving that can severely limit their ambitions and ability to adapt. In many cases, these constraining (shared) beliefs and assumptions live under the surface, making them extremely difficult to identify and uproot.

This sample dialogue (below) aims to illustrate how engaging with an AI chatbot like Claude can provide a fresher, more impartial perspective to help bring those unconscious blockers into the light. By asking probing questions and suggesting reframes, an AI can serve as a cooperative thinking partner to explore the root causes behind an organisation’s collective blind spots.

Let’s take a look at how this conversational process might unfold:
(Note: this is an actual dialogue generated by ClaudeAI)

Overcoming Organisational Blind Spots: A Candid Dialogue

Are Collective Mindsets Holding Us Back?

Business Team: We’re really struggling as a team at work. Our growth and innovation have hit a plateau, and we can’t seem to get over this hump. We feel like there are some underlying assumptions or beliefs that we all unconsciously share that are limiting our thinking, but we can’t quite put our finger on what they are. Any thoughts?

Claude: That’s an insightful observation. Could you elaborate on the areas where your team has faced repeated roadblocks or struggled to adapt? Have you noticed any patterns in how new ideas get instantly dismissed or shut down?

The Perils of Risk-Aversion

Business Team: You know, now that you mention it, we do tend to instinctively shut down ideas that seem too ambitious or radically different from our current model. There’s an assumption that taking big swings is too risky and that we’re better off sticking to incremental innovations.

Claude: I see, so there seems to be an excessive aversion to risk-taking that could be crippling your team’s ability to innovate more boldly. Where might this belief originate from? Perhaps past failures that bred excessive caution within the team?

Overconfidence from Past Successes

Business Team: And you’re right, we may be overly reliant on past glories and successes rather than pushing for true disruption these days.

Claude: Overconfidence and complacency from previous successes is a common pitfall for teams. Have you explored where those constraining beliefs originated within your group? Sometimes they start from overcorrecting after a past failure. Or they take root from excessive short-term focus and risk-aversion in decision making over time.

Business Team: You’ve hit the nail on the head. We can trace the risk-aversion back to a few high-profile product launches that failed a few years ago. And the reverence for our old products stems from the founders still being closely involved, constantly reminiscing about how we initially disrupted the market.

Shattering Ingrained Narratives

Claude: Those do seem like major sources of the limiting beliefs constraining your team’s thinking. But how can you start dismantling and changing those ingrained narratives collectively? Here are some suggestions:

1. Make the limiting beliefs explicit and discuss them openly together as a team. Bringing these unconscious biases into the light is key.
2. Have you analyzed instances where those beliefs caused you to miss opportunities and calculated the cost of leaving innovation on the table as a group?
3. Could you find examples of competitors or companies in other industries who have succeeded by doing the opposite – embracing risks, continuously reinventing themselves? Study how they cultivated a different organizational mindset.
4. Implement structural changes to counteract the limiting beliefs. For instance, explicitly weighing the cost of inaction, having an “innovation ombudsman” role, or celebrating failed experiments more than static successes.
5. Bring in fresh perspectives through new hires, industry experts, or even customers who can challenge the status quo assumptions.

The ultimate ambition might be to make curiosity, experimentation, and an appetite for disruption core cultural values for your team and organisation.

Business Team: This is immensely helpful. We have a much clearer picture now of how to diagnose and deliberately shift our unhelpful collective beliefs as a team. Change starts by bringing those unconscious biases into the light through open discussion. We really appreciate you laying out such a detailed framework – we’re energized to start implementing these ideas right away.

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Bringing in an Organisational Psychotherapist

Sometimes, even with the best intentions, it can be extremely difficult for a team to identify and overcome their own deep-seated collective assumptions and beliefs on their own. This is where bringing in an outside organisational psychotherapist can be invaluable…

By prompting deeper reflection, offering new perspectives, and designing tailored interventions, an experienced organisational psychotherapist or AI assistant can catalyse the crucial process of surfacing and reflecting upon an organisation’s dysfunctional beliefs and narratives.

While working with a human expert may ultimately be advisable for any complex organisational transformation, this dialogue demonstrates how an AI like Claude can provide a potential first step. Through probing inquiries and analytical detachment, an AI chatbot can shed light on the obscured mental models that might be unwittingly obstructing an organisation’s path to greater innovation and growth.

The Corporate World’s Superficial Psychology

Businesses Ignore Deming’s Call for Real Behavioural Insight

W. Edwards Deming, the pioneering management thinker, strongly advocated for businesses to develop a deeper understanding of psychology in order to optimise systems, drive improvement, and bring joy and pride in work to the workplace.

“Understanding psychology, the study of human behaviour, is the key to managing people.”

Deming wrote. Yet decades after Deming’s teachings, most businesses remain woefully ignorant about true human psychology and behavioural drivers.

The Superficial ‘Pop Psych’ Fixation

Instead of delving into substantive research from psychology, cognitive science, and behavioural economics, the corporate world tends to favour simplistic “pop psych” maxims and heuristics. Businesses love to tout the latest bestselling books promoting ideas like “positive thinking”, “grit”, “growth mindsets”, or “mindfulness” as the secrets to better employee engagement and productivity. Consultants peddle pseudoscientific personality assessments built on shaky Jungian foundations. Corporate training programmes regurgitate self-evident platitudes about “emotional intelligence.”

Human Behaviour Is Central to Everything

This cavalier dilettantism toward psychology is concerning because human behaviour is central to every aspect of an organisation – its culture, management practices, teamwork, decision-making processes, innovation, marketing, you name it. If companies fail to rigorously study and apply research-based behavioural insights, they are effectively driving blind.

Ignoring the Science of Human Behaviour

Psychology is a legitimate field of science that has produced a wealth of empirical findings on human cognition, motivation, bias, social dynamics, and more. And not just academic theories, but proven applications in areas like user experience design, behaviour change, survey methodology, and marketing. Ignoring this body of knowledge is akin to an engineer neglecting physics or materials science.

The System of Profound Knowledge

Deming admonished that businesses must take a fundamentally different view of work, one focused on understanding systems holistically – including the human dimensions and variation. Yet even today, businesses tend to fixate on simplistic notions like employee incentives, traditional hierarchies, coercion, and other regressive pop psych-led management dogma. They give short shrift to the scientific realities of how people actually think, feel and behave.

A True Commitment to Understanding People

Of course, as Deming taught, psychology alone does not automatically confer excellence in management. It requires a coherent philosophy, sustained practice, and an unwavering commitment to continual learning, all of which many businesses still lack. But grasping human behaviour remains a crucial foundational layer.

For companies to truly embrace people-centric management as Deming advocated, they might choose to move beyond gimmicky pop psych trends and selective, self-serving interpretations of research. They may, instead, choose to dive deep into the expansive knowledge base of rigorous behavioural science – including the inconvenient truths it reveals – and apply those insights in thoughtful, judicious ways. Only then can businesses hope to make substantive and lasting improvements. Of course, improvement of any kind seem decidedly out of favour at the moment.

What Are You Missing Out On?

In any organisation, the beliefs and assumptions that everyone holds in common can have a profound impact on culture, productivity, and overall success. By neglecting shared assumptions and beliefs you may be missing out on harnessing the power of aligning them for optimal performance. But what exactly could this approach unlock for your organisation?

For Executives and Senior Managers

Shaping the Organisational Mindset

As a leader, you set the tone for the entire company’s culture and worldview. However, failing to examine and actively shape the company’s ingrained assumptions can lead to misalignment and hinder performance. Organisational psychotherapy illuminates existing belief systems – a.k.a. the collective mindset – and provides means to cultivate an organisational mindset centered on the things that matter to you, and a unified vision for success.

Transcending Limiting Assumptions

Over time, organisations develop deep-rooted assumptions that act as invisible shackles, limiting innovation, adaptation and achievement of goals. You could be missing out on breaking through these limitations by not exploring the underlying group psyche. Organisational psychotherapy techniques identify and reframe constraining assumptions, allowing you and your peers, and your workforce, to operate from an empowered, possibility-focused perspective.

For Middle Managers

Bridging Misaligned Beliefs

In the pivotal role of middle management, you navigate the shared assumptions of both leadership and frontline teams. Unaddressed, differing beliefs between groups can breed misunderstanding and hinder synergy. Organisational psychotherapy provides a framework for uncovering disconnects and fostering more cohesive, aligned assumptions across all levels.

Fostering Trust and Psychological Safety

Highly effective teams are built on a foundation of trust and the ability to take interpersonal risks. You could be missing out on this key ingredient if psychological barriers rooted in distrustful and deleterious assumptions remain unaddressed. Psychotherapeutic interventions help everyone examine and reshape beliefs around vulnerability, conflict, and collaboration.

For Technical Workers

Unleashing Pioneering Thinking

For technical roles requiring cutting-edge solutions, limiting assumptions around “how things are done” stifle innovation. You may be missing out on radically more effective approaches by not exploring and expanding your team’s collective assumptions about e.g. what is possible. Psychotherapy illuminates blind spots and reframes beliefs to open minds to truely different thinking.

Fostering Knowledge-Sharing

In highly specialised technical domains, knowledge-sharing is critical but often obstructed by entrenched assumptions of competence hierarchies or domain territoriality. Organisational psychotherapy provides means to surface and reflect on these counterproductive beliefs, instead opeing the door to assumptions that celebrate joyful work, collaborative growth and learning.

Summary

Embracing organisational psychotherapy unlocks an often-overlooked yet powerful source of competitive advantage – the shared assumptions and beliefs that underpin an organisation’s culture, communication, and performance. By neglecting this dimension, you may be missing out on by not giving organisational psychotherapy serious consideration as a powerful tool for your toolbox:

For Executives and Senior Managers:
The ability to purposefully shape an organisational mindset aligned with your shared vision and strategic objectives. As well as the opportunity to transcend limiting assumptions that constrain innovation, adaptation, and achievement.

For Middle Managers:
A framework for bridging misaligned beliefs across levels that breed misunderstanding and hinder synergy. And fostering a bedrock of trust and psychological safety that enables teams to take interpersonal risks and collaborate effectively.

For Technical Workers:
Unleashing pioneering, radically different thinking by reframing beliefs around “how things are done.” And cultivating knowledge-sharing by dispelling assumptions of competence hierarchies and domain territoriality.

At every level of an organisation, insidious assumptions and beliefs can act as unseen forces, obstructing potential and stalling progress. You could be missing out on dismantling these forces and instead harnessing the power of shared vision, alignment of mindsets, and collaborative beliefs.

Organisational psychotherapy provides the insight and means to illuminate, examine, and reflect on the collective beliefs and assumptions influencing your organisation’s culture and performance. Is it yet time you explored how to unleash this underutilised power and stop missing out on achieving new heights of success?

What Don’t You Know?

The Known Unknowns

As software developers, we inevitably encounter knowledge gaps – areas where we are certifiably clueless. Perhaps we’ve never worked with databases, so we recognise terms like “schema” and “queries” as complete unknowns we’d need to study.

These are the “known unknowns” – subjects we can identify as unfamiliar terrain, even if we can’t articulate precisely what lies in that territory. While frustrating, known unknowns at least make the gaps in our understanding visible.

The Invisible Unknowns

Far more insidious is the state we call metacluelessness – being unaware of unknown domains altogether. These are the invisible “unknown unknowns” – entire domains of knowledge and skill whose existence we fail to even comprehend.

For us developers, metacluelessness blinds us to whole realms of critical concepts and practices. We may be experts in shipping web apps, but oblivious to vital DevOps disciplines like infrastructure-as-code, monitoring, or chaos engineering. Or talented backend coders who have never conceived of cutting-edge frontend paradigms like WebAssembly or Jamstack. And then there’s the whole raft of invisibles related to the way the work works – not necessarily an issue for micromanaged developers, but for self-managing teams, crucial.

These aren’t just knowledge gaps – they’re unknowns we don’t know exist. Unfathomable blind spots preventing us from recognising what we’re missing.

The Illusion of Mastery

Metacluelessness is pernicious because it breeds complacency and over-confidence in our ranks. When we’re unaware of the boundaries of our mastery, it’s easy to succumb to arrogance about our depth of experience.

Without recognising our blind spots, we assume comprehensive expertise simply because we’ve never glimpsed the unknown territories. This false mastery mindset leaves us closed-off to growth, unable to even ask the questions that would identify new areas for development.

Shattering the Illusion

The antidote to our metacluelessness is shattering the illusion that our knowledge has no limits. It’s the humble admission that our expertise, however vast, is circumscribed by invisible domains we cannot fathom.

This isn’t easy – it requires us to continually question the limits of our understanding. To surround ourselves with new perspectives and domains. To listen for obscure terminology that hints at whole schools of thought we’ve never apprehended.

Only by identifying the realities of our metacluelessness can we begin addressing it. Grappling with unknown unknowns, if only to clarify what they are, not comprehend them fully. It’s an endless process of mapping the boundaries of our ignorance.

The Never-Ending Terrain

For us developers, pushing past metacluelessness is an infinite game. The leading edges of the intersection of software, work and business are so vast and emergent, there will always be new blind spots blocking our peripheral vision.

As we shed light on one enclave of metacluelessness, it reveals dozens more shadows where blind spots reside. It’s a perpetual cycle of overcoming the limitations of our expertise, only to uncover new frontiers of ignorance.

But embracing this cycle, and the inherent metacluelessness that comes with being human, is the path to true mastery. We cannot eliminate blind spots entirely, but we can develop the self-awareness to recognise their existence – and the curiosity and humility to keep exploring.

A World Where the Greater Good Predominates Over Profits

The Visionary Notion

What if the primary driving force behind commercial and economic endeavors wasn’t the pursuit of profits, but rather benefiting society, the species, Gaia, and the planet? A visionary notion, to be sure, that seems to defy conventional capitalist wisdom. Nevertheless, if we allow our imaginations to roam freely and look back at periods in history where ethical business practices held sway, we can depict a world truly transformed by this paradigm shift.

Profit Motives vs. Ethics and Humanity

Throughout most of human history, the profit motive has reigned supreme in the business realm. However, there have been notable exceptions driven by religious teachings, philosophical movements, and social ideals that prioritised ethical conduct over mere grubby accumulation of more and more wealth. The Quakers, for instance, were renowned for their commitment to honest dealings and consideration of employee welfare, exemplified by the socially-conscious British chocolate makers like Cadbury. The 19th century cooperative movement aimed to create enterprises that equitably shared profits with worker-owners and the local community.

The Beauty of Ethical Business

Would we call businesses truly putting the greater good before profits “beautiful”? At first, such a description may seem like an odd coupling of aesthetics with commerce. But perhaps there is an inherent beauty to enterprises that create sustainable value for society while exhibiting ethical conduct.

Just as we find natural wonders, artistic works, or selfless acts emotionally moving due to their harmony with higher ideals of truth, goodness, and transcendence of ego, so could businesses centered on benefiting all stakeholders embody a different kind of beauty. One not necessarily based on physical appearance, but on being skillfully crafted exemplars of how our economic activities can align with ethical, aesthetic, environmental and humanitarian principles.

This beauty manifests through their products, services, and operations, harmonising with the world rather than undermining it through greed, despoilment, or exploitation. Beautiful businesses are sustainable and circular by design, creating goods to be celebrated and cherished rather than cynically designed for disposability.They invest in creating opportunity and dignity for workers and communities rather than grinding them underfoot for profit margins.

Where today’s shareholder-driven corporations often exemplify grotesque machineries of extraction, ethical enterprises putting people and planet over money could be sublime new exemplars of applied aesthetics – aspiring toward perfection not through profit metrics, but through positively impacting all they engage with. Their beauty would shine through in becoming tightly interwoven threads in an interdependent tapestry, creating joyful, resilient and regenerative systems that elevate our shared potential.

While the traditional business vernacular focuses on the uglyness of lucrative processes, revenue growth, and reputational brand value, a world where ethical enterprises reign would celebrate hallmarks of perfected form: generative models that produce societal good, environmental integrity, attending to folks’ needs, and uplifting the human spirit. Perhaps then, we could appreciate the highest “good companies” not just pragmatically, but aesthetically – as living artworks of conscious, ethical organisation.

A World Oriented Toward the Greater Good

In such a world oriented toward the greater good, companies measure success not just by financial returns, but by positive impacts. Ethical practices like those espoused by certain faith traditions and thinkers are the norm across these industries. Sustainability is prized over short-term gain, with environmental stewardship prioritised over resource exploitation. We’ve seen glimpses of this in recent decades through the rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR), socially conscious investing, and the emergence of benefit corporations legally bound to creating public benefit, not just profits. But such examples have remained the exception rather than the rule in a profit-driven system.

The Global Ethos of the Greater Good

Imagine if this ethos becomes the core operating principle globally. Rather than lobbying for narrow interests, these businesses advocate for the common good. Tax avoidance schemes would be abandoned in a system where contributing one’s fair share is the ethical baseline. Worker rights and equity are vigorously protected, not eroded in pursuit of higher margins. On an individual level, cutthroat workplace could gives way to healthier cooperation, and integration with our personal and community values and family lives. Ethical conduct is rewarded over pure profit-generation at any cost. Kudos is not derived from endless growth metrics, but to positive impacts created for all the Folks That Matter™.

A Sustainable Economic Model

Of course, enterprises still need to generate income to remain viable and reinvest in their social missions. But growth is pursued by creating genuine value for society rather than extracting it. Sustainable, circular economic models replace those premised on endless consumption and planned obsolescence.

A Radical Yet Possible Vision

Such a world may seem naively idealistic to modern sensibilities, conditioned to accept profit as the prime directive. But is it any more far-fetched than an entrenched global system that relentlessly exploits people and finite resources in pursuit of perpetual economic expansion on a finite planet? By orienting business toward the greater good, as past ethical movements have done, we might create an economy that better serves humanity. This may read as a utopian ideal today, but it has been a reality at various points throughout our history. A world where businesses prioritise society over self-interest may not be inevitable, but it is possible if we dare to imagine and build it together.

Do you have even the briefest five minutes to contemplate how things might be different?

Further Reading

Ackoff, R. L. (2011). The aesthetics of work. In Skip Walter’s blog post retrieved from https://skipwalter.net/2011/12/25/russ-ackoff-the-aesthetics-of-work/

The Executive Fuckups Crippling Software Development

Let’s be honest, executives and seniors managers are forever fucking up their organisations’ software development efforts, big time.

Category Error

The Crux of the Problem

Let’s be honest, successfully executing software development initiatives is no easy feat for executives and senior managers. As the Harvard Business Review aptly states,

“The greatest impediment [to effective software development] is not the need for better methodologies, empirical evidence of significant benefits, or proof that agile can work – it’s the behaviour of executives.”

At the root of these struggles lies a fundamental “Category Error” – the failure to recognise collaborative knowledge work (CKW), such as software development, as a distinct category from other types of work.

Applying the Wrong Lens

Whilst leadership plays a crucial role in complex projects, executives often fuck up development big time by attempting to manage software development through the same lens as:

• Factory work
• Manufacturing
• Traditional office work
• Service work (e.g. call centres, help desks)
• Individual knowledge work

However, collaborative knowledge work demands a radically different approach. Imposing management practices from other categories inevitably leads to “management monstrosities” – dysfunctional, ineffective tech organisations.

The Pitfalls of Misclassification

1. Disconnect Between Business and CKW
   Executives struggle to bridge the gap between business objectives and CKW realities when software development is treated as akin to factory work or manufacturing.
2. Unrealistic Expectations
   Viewing software development through the lens of production lines and factory work breeds cultural mismatches, unrealistic timelines and quality compromises.
3. Resistance to Change
   Legacy systems persist due to inertia from treating CKW like the more understood office work.
4. Resource Misallocation
   Without recognising development as collaborative knowledge work, resources for talent, tools and infrastructure are inadequate.
5. Micromanagement
   An authoritarian command-and-control ethos stifles the autonomy and collaboration that development teams need.

The Crux of the Issue

The HBR quote exposes this truth – executives’ mindsets, shaped by misunderstanding the category of work, undermine methodologies and processes.

Unlocking True Potential

Overcoming “management monstrosities” requires understanding software development as collaborative knowledge work. This shift allows:

• Fostering cultures of learning and evolution.
• Embracing self managing, autonomous team models.
• Aligning resources for teams of knowledge workers.
• Building bridges between business and CKW domains.

With the right categorisation and mindset, executives can transform organisations into innovative powerhouses (fat chance of that happening in our lifetimes).

The Path Forward

The key lies in shedding industrial-era management thinking (they do think, don’t they?) and nurturing environments suited to this distinct category of work.

Open communication, adaptability and appreciating the complexities of collaborative development are vital. Escaping the “Category Error” unlocks outstanding delivery of software solutions and delight for all the Folks That Matter™.

How “Constant State of Ship” Drives Transformative Practices

Introduction

In the relentless pursuit of delivering value to customers, with unparalleled speed and reliability, the software development world has yet to widely embrace a revolutionary principle – the “Constant State of Ship”. This state, where software artefacts and products are perpetually poised for release into production environments within just 15 minutes’ notice, has emerged as a driving force behind best practices that enable true continuous deployment. Remarkably, this groundbreaking concept formed the foundation of the pioneering “Javelin” software development approach, a visionary approach conceived by FlowChainSensei (Bob Marshall) at Familiar circa 1996 and onwards, foreshadowing the industry’s even-now-yet-to-be-realised embrace of these practices.

The Power of “Constant State of Ship”

The “Constant State of Ship” serves us as an unyielding forcing function, inviting teams to adopt and adhere to a comprehensive set of best practices that catalyse the seamless flow of software into production. Let us explore how this principle reinforces each of thirteen fundamentals of Continuous Delivery (hat tip to Dave Farley):

The 13 Fundamentals Enabled

1. A Repeatable, Reliable ProcessWith the ever-present possibility of an imminent release, teams may choose to establish a well-defined, automated pipeline for building, testing, and deploying their software. This process needs to be repeatable and reliable, minimising the risk of human error and ensuring consistency across releases.

   The “Constant State of Ship” mindset suggests that teams have a streamlined, automated release pipeline that can be triggered at any moment. Manual steps and ad-hoc and emergency exception procedures become liabilities, as they introduce variability and increase the chances of mistakes during deployment.

   To achieve this repeatability and reliability, teams are supported to invest in build automation tools, automated testing frameworks, and deployment automation pipelines. Every step of the release pipeline can be codified, documented, and thoroughly tested to ensure predictable outcomes each time.

   Moreover, the “Constant State of Ship” principle fosters an environment of continuous learning and improvement. Any failures or issues encountered during a release are promptly analysed, and the release process is refined to prevent future occurrences. This cycle of continuous feedback and optimisation ensures that the release pipeline remains reliable and efficient, even as the codebase and systems evolve over time.

   By operating in a “Constant State of Ship” mode, teams are invited to treat the release pipeline as a critical component of their software development lifecycle, investing the necessary resources and effort to make it repeatable, reliable, and capable of delivering changes to production environments at a moment’s notice.

2. Automate All the ThingsIn a “Constant State of Ship” paradigm, manual interventions become significant bottlenecks and risks, hindering the required velocity and reliability. Automation becomes imperative, spanning every aspect of the delivery pipeline, from code compilation to infrastructure provisioning. The threat of an imminent release leaves no room for error-prone manual processes that could delay or derail a deployment. Teams must automate build processes, test execution, environment provisioning, deployment steps, and release orchestration to ensure consistency and minimise the risk of human error.
3. Maintain a Releasable StateThe core tenet of “Constant State of Ship” requires that the codebase and associated artifacts remain in a perpetually releasable state. This principle invites teams to address issues promptly, maintain a high level of code quality, and vigilantly consider the accumulation of technical debt. Any defects, bugs, or instabilities in the codebase could potentially disrupt an imminent release, leading to costly delays or failures. Teams must adopt practices like continuous integration, automated testing, and ensemble programming to ensure that the codebase remains in a stable, deployable state at all times.
4. Focus on Robust (Real) Quality Assurance

   In the “Constant State of Ship” paradigm, where the possibility of demand for an immediate release is ever-present, quality assurance cannot be treated as an afterthought. “Constant State of Ship” invites the integration of quality practices throughout the entire development lifecycle, ensuring that quality is baked into the software from inception to deployment.

   While testing plays a role, it is merely one facet of a comprehensive quality assurance strategy. Teams may choose to adopt a holistic approach that emphasises quality as a continuous, pervasive practice woven into every aspect of the development approach.

   This begins with cultivating a culture of quality-driven development, where every team member participates in collective ownership and responsibility for the quality of their work. Practices such as clarity of (quantified a la Gilb) requirements, ensemble programming, peer code reviews, adherence to coding standards, and continuous static code analysis can help identify and mitigate potential issues early in the development cycle.

   Furthermore, “Constant State of Ship” invites teams to embrace principles of iterative and incremental development. By breaking down complex features into smaller, manageable, well-bounded increments, teams can more effectively manage quality risks and ensure that each increment and subsystem meets the required quality criteria before progressing to the next.

   Continuous integration and deployment pipelines play a pivotal role in this quality assurance strategy, enabling teams to continuously validate and verify the software’s functionality, performance, and stability with each incremental change. These pipelines automate the execution of various quality checks, including unit tests, integration tests, and performance tests, providing real-time feedback and enabling teams to address issues promptly.

   However, quality assurance extends beyond mere testing alone. Teams have the opportunity to adopt a holistic approach that encompasses design practices, architectural decisions, and operational readiness. By considering quality implications at every stage of the software development lifecycle, teams can proactively identify and mitigate potential risks, ensuring that the software remains in a releasable state at all times.

   “Constant State of Ship” elevates quality assurance to a core discipline that permeates every aspect of the software development effort. By fostering a culture of quality-driven development and adopting continuous quality practices, teams can attend to the needs of all the Folks That Matter™, with confidence, knowing that their software meets the highest standards of reliability, stability, and performance.

5. Implement Robust Deployment PipelinesAchieving a “Constant State of Ship” necessitates the implementation of robust deployment pipelines. These pipelines automate the entire process of building, testing, and deploying software changes, ensuring consistency and minimizing the risk of errors. With the ever-present possibility of an imminent release, teams cannot afford manual, error-prone deployment processes. Automated deployment pipelines provide a standardised, repeatable path to production, reducing the likelihood of failed or inconsistent deployments.
6. Monitor the PipelineRegular smoke testing of the deployment pipeline is crucial in a “Constant State of Ship” mode. This practice helps catch issues early, before they can impact production environments, ensuring the pipeline’s reliability and preventing costly downtime. The possibility of an imminent release amplifies the importance of having a thoroughly validated deployment pipeline. Smoke tests act as a safety net, verifying the integrity of the pipeline and identifying any potential issues that could disrupt a deployment.
7. Integrate ConstantlyThe “Constant State of Ship” mindset encourages teams to integrate their changes frequently, often multiple times per day. This practice surfaces issues early, reduces merge conflicts, and ensures that the codebase remains in a releasable state, ready for deployment at any given moment. Infrequent integration can lead to divergent codebases, making it harder to identify and resolve conflicts, which could potentially disrupt an imminent release. By integrating frequently, teams can maintain a stable, unified codebase that is always primed for deployment.
8. Evolve the ArchitectureMaintaining a “Constant State of Ship” over time invites the continuous evolution of the system’s architecture (see also: Reverse Conway). Are teams prepared to refactor and adapt their architectures to accommodate new requirements, technologies, and scaling needs, without compromising the ability to release rapidly and reliably? As products grow and evolve, architectural decisions made early on may become hindrances to continuous deployment. The “Constant State of Ship” principle invites teams to proactively evaluate and evolve their architectures, ensuring that they remain flexible, scalable, and conducive to rapid releases.
9. Leverage Data EnvironmentsWith the constant possibility of an imminent release, the ability to provision and manage data environments becomes critical. Teams may choose to adopt practices like database versioning, data seeding, and data masking to ensure consistent and reliable testing and deployment across environments, minimising the risk of data-related issues in production. The “Constant State of Ship” mindset invites a robust data management strategy that enables seamless and repeatable deployments, regardless of the data complexities involved.
10. Mirror Production EnvironmentsTo minimise the risk of issues arising from environmental differences, teams operating in a “Constant State of Ship” mode may choose to ensure that their development, testing, and staging environments closely mirror production environments in terms of configuration, data, and infrastructure. This practice helps identify and address potential issues before they impact the live production system. The possibility of an imminent release heightens the importance of having production-like environments, as any discrepancies could lead to unexpected behavior or failures during deployment.
11. Codify InfrastructureManually provisioning and configuring infrastructure for each release becomes a significant bottleneck when operating in a “Constant State of Ship” mode. Adopting Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, where infrastructure is defined and managed through code, enables teams to provision and tear down environments rapidly and consistently, minimising delays and reducing the risk of configuration drift. The “Constant State of Ship” principle invites a high degree of automation and repeatability in infrastructure management, making IaC a beneficial practice for ensuring rapid, reliable deployments.
12. Foster Collaborative OwnershipAchieving a “Constant State of Ship” invites a high degree of collaboration and shared ownership among team members. Siloed responsibilities and knowledge become obstacles to rapid delivery. Teams may choose to adopt practices that promote collective code ownership, cross-functional collaboration, and shared understanding of the codebase and delivery processes. The “Constant State of Ship” mindset invites a culture of collective responsibility, where all team members are empowered to contribute to and understand the entire delivery process, enabling seamless and efficient releases.
13. Continuous ImprovementOperating in a “Constant State of Ship” mode exposes inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the delivery pipeline and processes with uncompromising clarity. Teams may choose to embrace a culture of continuous improvement, regularly reviewing their practices, identifying areas for optimisation, and implementing changes to enhance their ability to deliver value rapidly and reliably. The constant presence of imminent releases acts as a driving force for continuous improvement, encouraging teams to continuously refine their processes, tools, and practices to achieve higher levels of velocity and quality. FlowChain was designed to systematise this very purpose.

The Visionary “Javelin” Approach

The “Javelin” approach (initally named “Jerid”) pioneered by me and my teams at Familiar from 1996 onward, was truly ahead of its time, recognising the transformative power of the “Constant State of Ship” mindset. By enshrining this principle as a cornerstone from its inception, “Javelin” has paved the way for the modern continuous deployment practices that have since become poised to gain industry standard status. This pioneering approach, along with FlowChain and e.g. Prod•gnosis, Flow•gnosis, Product Aikido, etc. exemplifies the spirit of continuous improvement intrinsic to the “Constant State of Ship” principle, ensuring its enduring relevance and impact.

Deep Cultural Implications

Reshaping the Culture and Mindset

Adopting the “Constant State of Ship” principle suggests a profound transformation that extends way beyond technical practices and processes – it hints at a seismic shift in the culture and mindset of software development teams and their parent organisations. This metamorphosis permeates every aspect of the organisation, reshaping shared assumptions, beliefs, and ways of working. However, navigating such a profound cultural shift can be a daunting challenge, often met with resistance and inertia.

This is where the discipline of organisational psychotherapy plays a pivotal role. By applying principles from psychotherapy, sociology, and group dynamics, organisational psychotherapy facilitates teams’ cultural and mindset shifts required to embrace the “Constant State of Ship” paradigm smoothly and effectively.

A Culture of Ownership and Accountability through Empowerment

The “Constant State of Ship” mindset fosters a culture of collective ownership and accountability. Organisational psychotherapy techniques, such as participative decision-making and fellowship, empower team members to take responsibility for the quality, stability, and deployability of the codebase and overall product. This sense of empowerment cultivates a culture of shared ownership, where individuals proactively address issues, collaborate across boundaries, and collectively strive for continuous improvement.

Embracing Transparency and Trust

Maintaining a “Constant State of Ship” requires a high degree of transparency and trust among team members. Organisational psychotherapy practices, such as surfacing shared assumptions and beliefs, encourage open communication and facilitate the identification of problems and risks early. By fostering an atmosphere where team members feel comfortable expressing concerns, sharing mistakes, and seeking help, a culture of transparency and trust emerges, enabling teams to collectively address challenges and ensure the software remains in a releasable state.

Prioritising Continuous Learning

The “Constant State of Ship” principle instills a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. With each release, teams gain valuable insights into their processes, tools, and practices. Embracing new shared assumptions becomes essential, as teams must continuously refine and adapt their approaches based on feedback and lessons learned. This culture of continuous learning fosters an environment of experimentation, where failures are embraced as opportunities for growth, and success is measured by the ability to deliver value rapidly and reliably.

Aligning Towards a Common Goal

Ultimately, the “Constant State of Ship” principle unifies teams around a common goal: meeting the needs of all the Folks That Matter™ with unparalleled speed and reliability. This shared mission transcends individual roles, responsibilities, and technical disciplines. It creates a sense of collective purpose, where every team member’s contribution, regardless of their specific function, is valued and recognised as essential to achieving this overarching objective.

By leveraging organisational psychotherapy techniques, organisations can accelerate and streamline the cultural and mindset shifts required to embrace the “Constant State of Ship” paradigm. This discipline not only makes the transition quicker and easier but also more cost-effective, as it addresses the root causes of resistance and inertia, facilitating a smoother and more sustainable transformation.

By reshaping the culture and mindset of software development teams, the “Constant State of Ship” principle cultivates an environment conducive to continuous deployment success. It fosters a sense of collective ownership, transparency, continuous learning, and shared purpose – traits that are indispensable in today’s rapidly evolving software landscape.

Embracing the Future

When the ability to swiftly adapt and innovate is paramount, the “Constant State of Ship” principle emerges as a beacon, guiding software development teams towards a future of quiet competence and competitiveness. By embracing this mindset, as exemplified by the visionary “Javelin” approach, teams can unlock the power to attend to folks’ needs with unprecedented speed, reliability, and quality – solidifying their organisation’s position as industry leaders in the software development arena.

Metacluelessness – The Competence Blind Spot Plaguing Organisations

The Danger of Overconfidence

As a manager, having confidence in your abilities is certainly important for leading teams and making critical business decisions. However, there is a fine line between self-assurance and falling victim to a dangerous cognitive bias called metacluelessness – a lack of awareness about the boundaries of your own competence.

Clifford’s Ethics of Belief

Philosopher William Kingdon Clifford highlighted the ethical importance of not allowing ourselves to remain in a state of false beliefs or delusions. In his essay “The Ethics of Belief,” Clifford argues it is wrong, whenever the occasion arises, to believe something on insufficient evidence. To do so is to erect a “scorner’s chair” for truth and to fail to uphold our fundamental duty as human beings to pursue truth diligently.

Metacluelessness as Unethical Delusion

Metacluelessness directly violates this duty that Clifford lays out. It causes managers to grossly overestimate their skills, knowledge, and overall managerial competence based on delusional confidence rather than objective assessment of the evidence of their understanding. Managers suffering from metacluelessness erect their own “scorner’s chairs” for truth in their areas of responsibility.

They think they have a solid handle on principles, best practices, people, psycvhology, emerging trends, and the complexities involved, when in reality there are gaping holes in their grasp that they fail to acknowledge. Suffering from metacluelessness, managers operate under a false sense of mastery over critical management disciplines. They are clueless about the true extent of their cluelessness and knowledge gaps. This creates disastrous blind spots in their judgment and decision-making.

The Root of Managerial Arrogance

As Clifford states, “The source of all the miserable self-idolatries…the despicable vices…is nothing other than a persuasion existing in men’s minds not based on fair reasoning and evidence.” Metacluelessness breeds overconfidence based on delusional beliefs about one’s true competence. It is the root of managerial arrogance, close-mindedness, dismissal of risks, and poor strategic vision.

Catastrophic Consequences

The consequences can be catastrophic – flawed strategies, missed opportunities, sunk costs from failures, poor leadership examples set for teams, and more. Entire companies have met their demise because executive leadership teams suffered from the “miserable self-idolatry” of individual and collective metacluelessness in critical areas.

Cultivating True Competence

Combating metacluelessness requires cultivating true competence – an awareness of what you don’t know and diligence in addressing those shortcomings. It starts with the intellectual humility that Clifford upheld as critical for a responsible pursuit of truth and knowledge. Admit the limits of your expertise without feeling inadequate. As Clifford wrote, “A generous admission of knowledge gaps is the condition of all real progress.”

The Best Never Stop Learning

Recognise that as a manager, you supervise teams filled with specialised knowledge you cannot possibly match in every domain. True competence means knowing when to rely on the wisdom of others with deeper mastery and looking for opportunities to expand your own understanding through fair reasoning and examination of evidence. It’s about embracing a habit of perpetual learning to strengthen beliefs in alignment with evidential proof.

The best managers never stop questioning their grasp of important principles and best practices based on the ethics of belief laid out by Clifford. Don’t let the “despicable vice” of overconfident metacluelessness derail your judgment through beliefs detached from rigorous evidentiary standards. Proactively identify and confront the boundaries of your competence. Only then can you become a more complete, ethically sound, and effective manager capable of leading teams and companies to success built on a foundation of diligently pursued truths.

Effective Regulation

Within business organisations, the discourse around effective regulation often becomes polarised, oscillating between the extremes of rigid compliance and laissez-faire approaches. Compliance, typically understood as strict adherence to rules and procedures, can foster an environment of micromanagement that stifles innovation. On the other hand, a laissez-faire attitude, characterised by minimal oversight, can lead to chaos, unethical practices, and a lack of accountability.

However, true effective regulation does not reside on this spectrum between micromanagement and laissez-faire. Rather, it represents a fundamentally distinct “third way” – a holistic approach that transcends the limitations of these two extremes, fostering a culture of responsibility, continuous improvement, creativity, and autonomy.

Redefining Regulation as Principled Action

The third way redefines regulation not as a checklist of rules to be blindly followed, but as a commitment to upholding core ethical principles and standards aligned with the organisation’s mission. This paradigm shift requires:

1. Clearly articulating the organisation’s shared assumptions and beliefs, including its guiding purpose, principles and values.
2. Engaging employees in embodying these principles through e.g. dialogue.
3. Revising policies to reinforce the principles, not merely enforce rules.
4. Nurturing critical thinking over box-ticking compliance.

By empowering individuals to internalize and live these principles, a sense of ownership and genuine accountability is cultivated.

Organizational Psychotherapy: Fostering Shared Responsibility

Central to the third way is a culture where every member is invested in upholding ethical practices and sustainable growth. Organisational psychotherapy can be a powerful tool in nurturing this culture by:

1. Facilitating open dialogues to surface underlying shared attitudes and beliefs.
2. Identifying systemic issues impacting trust and accountability.
3. Developing tailored interventions to address dysfunctional group dynamics.
4. Providing a safe space for honest feedback and conflict resolution.
5. Make attending to folks’ needs a central plank.

Through this therapeutic process, organisations can heal dysfunctional patterns, rebuild trust, and instill a genuine sense of shared responsibility that transcends the compliance-laissez-faire dichotomy.

Continuous Learning: An Organisational Ethos

The third way recognises that effective regulation is an ever-evolving process, requiring a steadfast commitment to continuous learning and improvement as an organisational ethos:

1. Encouraging the continuous development of improved abilities and intelligence, by reframing failures as learning opportunities.
2. Implementing substantive, regular dialogue on emerging best practices.
3. Facilitating cross-functional knowledge sharing and mentoring.
4. Gathering feedback from all the Folks That Matter™ to identify areas for development.

By making attending to folks’ needs a core value, organisations can remain agile, adaptive, and always improving their approach to regulation and governance.

Ethical Leadership and Collaboration

Effective regulation invites exemplars who embody the principles the organisation aims to instill, proselytising ethical conduct through their actions and decisions. Organisations can champion the third way by:

1. Exemplifying ethical behaviour in all things.
2. Openly acknowledging mistakes and pivoting course when needed.
3. Prioritising ethical decision-making in all communication and conduct.
4. Actively listening and incorporating feedback from across the organisation.
5. Fostering cross-functional collaboration on key initiatives.

This ethical behaviour, amplified by collaboration, inspires others to genuinely embrace the third way of effective regulation.

Summary

The third way represents a distinct approach that transcends the micromanagement-laissez-faire spectrum, offering a holistic, principled path centered on shared responsibility, continuous learning, and collaborative ethical leadership. By leveraging tools like organisational psychotherapy, mindset shifts, and genuine organisational commitment, businesses can cultivate an environment that upholds ethical conduct, innovation, sustainable growth, and the highest standards of accountability and integrity.