A Simple Matter of Software

When deciding what to contribute to a discussion ...

"If a message can't be used to make predictions or decisions,
it is without value, no matter how accurate or comprehensive it is."
                                                    - Dan and Chip Heath

Your mission should you choose to accept it

How a great communicator defines a big audacious goal:

We will "put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade."
                                                                    - John F. Kennedy

How the typical business executive would define the same goal:

"Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives."

Thanks to Made to Stick for creating this example.

Too many software ventures have mission statements that sound like the latter.  Don't try to define your mission so it covers all the bases and supports every contingency.  Instead focus on defining your mission in terms that are simple, concrete, and emotionally compelling.

What Do Supreme Court Justices And Software Architects Have In Common?

What do Supreme Court Justices and Software Architects have in common?  More than you might think.  Here are some common characteristics:

• Freakish intellectual ability is common among the most successful and is highly admired within the profession
• Self-confidence in your opinions and analytic abilities is a must
• Both deal with very complicated and demanding problems that never have a single obvious answer and almost never have an answer that is "provably" better than all others
• In both professions success in the early stages of your career requires concentrated independent work
• Both frequently have strong philosophies that they believe in passionately (in one case a judicial philosophy in the other a design philosophy)
• Both highly value elegance and consistency

Therefore it is not too surprising that you see some common behavior patterns across the two very different jobs.

Jeffery Rosen had an excellent article in Atlantic Monthly recently where he talked at some length about what behaviors distinguish more effective and less effective justices. 

This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I took the following away from the article.   

Two distinct archetypes seen on the court are:

1) If you are an Argumentative Academic you will

• Independently develop the most elegant and compelling analysis of the problem and define the "answer" to be implemented. 
• Make sure that analysis is consistent with your own previous arguments and writings.
• Make sure the proposed answer is consistent with your own philosophy.
• Bring this already formed result to the discussion with your team mates. 
• In your own mind see this discussion as an argument to be won or lost.  Fight to the death to make sure you win the argument.
• If by chance you lose the argument, don't try to help craft a better final result rather register your dissent and go looking for another  problem to work on.
• See your job as "winning the argument" in favor of your independently formed judgment of the best answer

2) If you are a Result-Oriented Realist you will

• See your job as creating great results (products or judgments as the case may be) and creating an institution (organization, culture, process) that repeatedly produces great results.
• Define "great result" as the best possible result given all the circumstances and constraints.
• Don't abandon your own philosophy and point of view.  Use them as a foundation for pushing the team to produce the best possible results.  But do that in the context of working with your peers to create a unified result.
• Recognize that others on the team can have vital contributions even if they don't have the same level of intellectual horsepower as yourself.
• Recognize the value of consistency and strive to achieve it.  But don't put consistency as a higher priority than results.
• Don't let the need to compromise be an excuse for giving up.  Strive for the highest possible standard of quality and longevity.

Here are a couple relevant passages from the article

... On the Court, the brilliant academics are less successful, over time, than the collegial pragmatists. The self-centered loners are less effective than the convivial team players. The resentful braggarts wear less well than the secure justices who know who they are. The narcissists wield judicial power less sure-handedly than the judges who show personal as well as judicial humility. The loose cannons shoot themselves in the foot, while those who know when to hold their tongues appear more judicious. (A justice often achieves more by saying less.) The ideological purists are marginalized on the Court, while those who understand when not to take each principle to its logical extreme are vindicated by history. Justices who view cases in purely philosophical terms are less sure-footed than those who are aware of a case’s practical effects. And those with the common touch win broader support than those who live entirely in abstractions.

... Jefferson and Holmes were repeatedly outfoxed by the less scholarly John Marshall and John Marshall Harlan—judicial thinkers whose conviviality, practicality, and sense of the possible allowed them to transform the law in their own image.

... Marshall, after all, had a strong philosophy of his own, rooted in vigorous protections for national power and property rights, but he chose not to press his philosophy in cases he knew he couldn’t win. (Remember his axiom: “I am not fond of butting against a wall in sport.”) Although conservative Federalists charged that he was too fond of popularity, Marshall was not noted for his willingness to compromise—but he articulated his principles in ways that his opponents were able to accept. Part of what made Marshall trustworthy, Roberts told me, was that “he was not a deal maker, not a broker. That’s not how he facilitated consensus. He had strongly felt principles, principles for which he had risked his life … But he was willing to explain, to talk it out with people, and he had a prodigious intellect but he didn’t scare people off with it … He was friendly, open—people trusted him—and [he] was able to bring people along.”

Obviously a lot of the points here could apply to software architects as well.  Here is one short passage from above, translated to apply to the software world:

The ideological purists are marginalized [over time], while those who understand when not to take each principle to its logical extreme are vindicated by [producing great products that end  up widely used]. [Architects] who view [design issues] in purely philosophical terms are less sure-footed than those who are aware of [each decision's] practical effects. And those with the common touch win broader support than those who live entirely in abstractions.

That sounds about right.

In the end the Argumentative Academic values most that "his personal opinion is acknowledged as right", the Result-Oriented Realist values most "getting the team to consistently deliver a great result".

The lesson from the Supreme Court is that over time Result-Oriented Realists are way more effective than Argumentative Academics.  That is a lesson that we could take to heart in the software world. 

Being a realist should not stop you from having audacious goals and and being satisfied with nothing less than delivering a great product.  Being a realist does not mean limited expectations, it does mean developing a more practical results oriented approach for meeting your grand expectations.

Previous post on related topics include: a description of why an evolutionist approach is often better than a big bang approach, discussion of why great is better than perfect, a warning regarding groupthink (the opposite problem to what is described above, in groupthink no one is willing to challenge the group consensus), and a reminder that architects are often more influential than the managers who nominally have more authority.

 

                                                                                 copyright 2007 Kerry Champion

 

Explain why it matters

Telling someone to perform a task may get results.  However, taking the time to "explain why it matters" almost always gets you better results, no matter who you are talking to or what you are asking for. 

For most people the following approach works great:

• Explain why the work they are doing is important.
• Explain why the timeliness of their work is important
• Don't just assert that it is important, but make the effort to show step-by-step what the connections are between their work and the ultimate impacts.
• Certainly talk about the impacts on the company's bottom-line; but then go beyond that and talk about what the impacts are on the customers' experience, what the impacts are on co-workers who are depending on this person's efforts, etc. etc.
• Don't deliver these messages just once, deliver them multiple times through multiple mechanisms: via team meetings, via one-on-one meetings, via hallway conversations, via guest speakers, etc. etc.

This results in :

• a higher level of energy and effort
• more pride and satisfaction in their work
• quicker delivery of higher quality results
• a better vibe around the team

It may seem easier to just tell people specifically what to do day-to-day without wasting time on why, in reality that kind of micromanagement can be very time-consuming and ultimately demoralizing.  It is much better to help people connect the dots between what they do and the impacts on everyone else in the ecosystem.  This leads to greater self-direction, more initiative, and better total throughput.

By the way, "explaining why it matters" is not just the right approach for full time staff members, it is also the right approach when dealing with vendors, independent contractors, temporary staff, etc.  Even if they do not have a direct tangible stake in the company, people will make a greater effort if they understand the rationale behind why their work is important.

All the above is based on real-world observation.   There is some scientific work in this area as well.   Ellen Langer did an experiment that triggered a lot of debate.   Malcolm Gladwell has a good summary:

Langer examined the apparently common-sense idea that if you are trying to persuade someone to do something for you, you are always better off if you provide a reason. She went up to a group of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine and said, "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?" Sixty per cent said yes. Then she repeated the experiment on another group, except that she changed her request to "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I'm in a rush?" Ninety-four per cent said yes. This much sounds like common sense: if you say, "because I'm in a rush"--if you explain your need--people are willing to step aside. But here's where the study gets interesting. Langer then did the experiment a third time, in this case replacing the specific reason with a statement of the obvious: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make some copies?" The percentage who let her do so this time was almost exactly the same as the one in the previous round--ninety-three per cent.

There is wide disagreement on how to interpret these results.  We don't have a definitive explanation yet of what is going on inside peoples brains.

My take is that people have an inherent hard-wired desire for meaning and explanation; and will respond better when given meaning and explanation. 

For small requests (such as, "Can I use the copier first?") any explanation will do, even one that seems content free.

However, for big requests (such as, "Commit your heart and soul to spending the next year building this ground-breaking new service.") you need a meaningful explanation and you need to deliver that explanation repeatedly through multiple channels.

                                                                                 copyright 2007 Kerry Champion