Category Archives: Assumptions

Sound Bites

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If you take only one thing away from reading this post – it is a caution to be very careful with taking only one thing away from any interaction.

We are evolved to filter information so that we only need to focus on things that are important to us – that’s why painters can put a few brush-strokes on a canvas and we can interpret it as a person walking on the beach in the distance.

Person on BeachWe filter without realising it – if we did not filter, we would be overloaded with information and find it very difficult to proceed.

When we have a conversation with someone, we imagine that they understand everything that we say in the way that we intended for it to be meant. The only thing that we can be certain of, in fact, is that the person will have interpreted what we said in the way that made sense to them. Of course what makes sense to the other person might or might not be aligned with what we actually intended.

One time, I came away from a conversation wondering why the person had started to debate the pros and cons of scrum when I had been meeting with them about something else. On reflection, I realised that my job title at the time contained the word ‘Agile’ so that person thought that I was only speaking about scrum teams and the delivery process. It was likely that the other person had a very different definition of agile – mine is a very broad one and includes Lean, Cynefin, Design Thinking and many other useful ideas and approaches. Others might define agile as ‘scrum’ and not much more for all sorts of reasons. This means that the other person was filtering my part of the conversation through a ‘Kim is here to talk about scrum’ lens which led to a complete misinterpretation of what I was asking about.

How does this relate to the title of the post ‘Sound Bites’?

We in the Lean and Agile communities have discussed and investigated many concepts and are in the habit of using short descriptions for very complex ideas. Within the community, I can say something like ‘I like to use the Cynefin Framework to help me determine which approaches are compatible with the system that I am working with’ and lots of people would understand what I meant to say. But I have spent a lot of time reading about these ideas, attending conferences, speaking with experts and trying them out so the following terms are loaded with deep meaning;

  • Cynefin Framework
  • Approaches
  • System

These terms are at risk of becoming ‘sound bites’ – the main thing that an audience hears and therefore believes is the main message. They could then try and apply one of the concepts, or an extrapolation of these ideas and end up with a completely unexpected result.

This is not the first time ‘sound bites’ have happened in our human history. For example, Bob Emeliani wrote a great post recently about Frederick Winslow Taylor and how people partially applied his Principles of Scientific Management and ended up with a sub-optimal result.

What can we do about the problem with ‘sound bites’?

We need tailor our conversations to our audience. In a group of deep experts, it is fine for us to use our shorthand terms and jargon – but in a mixed group or with non-experts, it is as if we are teachers providing all the answers to students and not teaching them how to learn – so our words are ripe for misinterpretation.

Now that you have read this post and therefore interpreted it in your own ways, I would be very interested to hear about your experiences with sound bites, or what the term ‘sound bites’ means to you.

Please leave a comment or find me on Twitter: @kb2bkb

Misconceptions and Insights about Collaboration

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A Few Thoughts about Collaboration

The definition of collaboration in any given context is variable. It can be as simple as two people working on a task or as complicated as international diplomatic relations and anything in between.

Some people might think that collaboration means agreement, but some of the best outcomes have happened when people with very different views work together.

One of the problems with trying to solve problems is our inherent biases. We have only lived our own lives and therefore make decisions and contributions based on our experiences. It is easy to make assumptions without realising it, so when we are collaborating, it is important to check our assumptions with each other and make sure that what we are working on is an agreed view of the work.

Collaboration is not a static point but a dynamic interaction between the task at hand and the participants including their experiences and the interpretations they bring to the “table”.

A Couple of Misconceptions

1: Everyone is created equal

Almost everyone doesn’t like to hear this one but we are not created equally, if we were, it would be so boring, and we would all be the same carbon copies of each other, same job, same life and same house. Some of us find doing certain things easier than others, this does not mean they are better than someone else but have a predisposition towards that particular thing. This is actually the strength of any collaboration, we are not a monoculture or genetically engineered workers but individuals with different perspectives and abilities. This is the core of collaboration and teamwork.

2: Everyone must carry their own weight and do their share.

Collaboration/ Teamwork is rarely a balanced interaction (50/50 etc.) but most realistically an imbalanced one. The beginnings are like a “seed”, an idea of a purpose and/or direction, however the “seed” does not contain all the materials and experience to develop into the eventual “plant”. The contribution of the seed if measured by biological bulk is minute and of little significance; yet without the direction and/or purpose there is no “plant”.

Perhaps we should consider this when we think about the share of workload in teams and remember that a small effort that provides a large weight of outcome can be just as good as a large effort.

Sketch18219430When we discuss collaboration and teamwork we often begin to weigh the obvious, visible efforts that people are putting in and lose sight of the reality. Without the idea, thought and then the effort, the experience is a barren one. The ego and self often confuse and stifle the collaboration from becoming. We should check our Ego’s at the door and be open to ideas and possibilities regardless of where they may come from.

In summary – the differences in backgrounds, ideas and effort can undermine any team and result in very poor outcomes, however, it is these very same differences that can make any collaborative effort a great one and open opportunities for innovation, increased effectiveness and workplace enjoyment. How can we turn our thinking towards the positive outcomes from differences and ensure that we leverage these as much as possible?

  • Allow people to come up with their own contributions whenever possible and then share them – this will prevent premature convergence and make differing assumptions easier to detect.
  • When we feel that others are not pulling their weight, check that we are not just observing effort and instead look for contribution towards the outcome.
  • Recognise that different people are good or great at different things and try to avoid creating teams of very similar people or skillsets.
  • Use the different perspectives and backgrounds of other people to help us see things that we are overlooking – another good reason to have people with diverse experiences in teams.

Thank you to Torbjörn Gyllebring and Steve again for the discussions that inspired this post and Steve for contributing some paragraphs and editing. Any faults with this post, however, are my own.

Torbjörn Gyllebring’s post is about Estimates and Theory Building

Linear, Non-Linear, Predictable and Unpredictable

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Firstly, a thank you to Torbjörn and Steve for the conversations and feedback leading to these thoughts. Torbjörn has also written a post on this theme for those who have not yet seen it.

We can have a tendency to use linear and predictable as synonyms, but there are non-linear concepts that are also predictable and one of them is called hysteresis.

The easiest example of hysteresis is a thermostat for a heater. If we use one temperature setting to turn it on and off, then it will click on and off endlessly. If we set the on temperature just a little under the desired one and the off temperature just a little over it, then it works much better. When we walk into the room and measure the temperature only, then we cannot know if the heater is currently on or not without knowing the historical temperature and thus whether the room is currently cooling down or heating up.

So this is an example of a predictable process that is non-linear – we can use mathematical modelling to generate that predictability. I wonder if there are other processes that are non-linear, but still have some predictability in our work places.

One example might be change initiatives. We start at one level of understanding, do some training, coaching, communications and other ways of influencing change. After a period of time we move up to a new level of understanding. Then as other things happen and new people join the group, we lose some of that understanding – but it is likely that we are still above the original level.

I’m still looking for other examples – but hypothetically, a whole bunch of non-linear processes over-lapping and intersecting with each other would likely look like a very complex system.

Of course, mathematically, we would then be able to demonstrate these parts of the system and their predictability – but that is not really the point. We are all observers of our world and how we experience it as individuals is different for each of us. Therefore, the natures of systems that we interact with will differ according to our experiences of them and what seems predictable to one person can appear quite random to another one.

Back to the title of this post – along the gradient of predictability, we move from linear with obvious cause and effect to non-linear, such as hysteresis with less obvious correlation, then towards a lot less certainty where the relationships are dispositional and then to randomness. Most of the time whatever we are observing is likely to have a mixture of these attributes both inherently and from the ways that we experience it. Taking the example of a thermostat, I wonder how many other things also appear quite simple and are really elegantly complicated and on the flip side, how many things appear complex and are likely non-linear, but still predictable?

Meetings and Assumptions

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Have you ever been in a meeting that went a bit like this?

Workshop to MessSomehow the meeting went off-topic, or a conversation suddenly took over the entire session. What went wrong? Perhaps our conversations were assumption-based rather than fact-based.

Assumptions are very valuable things, they help us to move forward. An obvious example is the assumption that the footpath in front of us is solid, if we doubted this all the time, we would have a lot of trouble walking around, let alone running or jogging.

The less helpful types of assumptions are ones that we make about our own or others definitions of words or level of understanding about a topic. I can remember having 30 minutes of strong debate about an issue a long time ago, only to discover that we were actually arguing for the same thing – just using different terminology.

When planning meetings and workshops, list out the topics that might cause debate or miscommunication and then ask what assumptions we might be making about those topics. Whenever possible, spend some time validating or invalidating those assumptions before the meeting so that we turn those assumption-based conversations into fact-based ones and use our time more effectively.