I spent Monday at the Listening Post. There were about 35 professional psychodynamic consultants sharing what is going on in the world, right now. The same thing happens globally at dozens of countries and the consolidated report is published by OPUS.

We start with 1.5 hours of associative work, “Insight”. I really love this technique. All sitting in a spiral and freely sharing experiences, dreams, encounters, emotions. Next we were searching for emerging themes in smaller groups, one group talking and other groups listening. Finally trying to find a crystallized hypothesis.

It is always a wonderful to experience true dialogue in this size of a group. And to meet so many wise people.

A very common theme throughout years has been how the small individual will survive in the changing world. Very natural. Sometimes I hear a flavor of whining, but this is the right place for it.

Groups are no more

The main insight for me was, what it means for individuals, that there are less and less real groups to belong to.

It seems that people nowadays belong to networks rather than groups. Companies base their organization on virtual teams, virtual networks or multi-dimensional matrices. Professional global networks at work, Facebook at private life. These networks are vast, because of the modern communication, web 2.0. So globalization is personally true for most of us. At the same time organizations as well as these networks have become turbulent.

How do individuals react?

The membership of the network is very different from the membership of a group.

The group instincts are not satisfied in networks.

A group gives a lot of feedback to you. A limited number of people meet face to face and there is the non-verbal communication. You can track not only your relation to others, but other relations in the group. You get a lot of feedback about yourself and your position in the group, thus your social survival. You have a bi-directional relation to “the group”.

But networks are very different. You don’t get feedback from “the network”, or it is indirect and delayed. The network is truly open, you don’t know with whom you are competing for the status in the network. This concerns especially virtual networks, but also happens in real life virtual organizations.

You become uncertain about your survival. Fear and worry appear.

This competition is not only a game in Facebook or other virtual environments. It is real in labor market. Monster compares you with anyone on the globe. Companies dream about the “resource database”.

Competing by your personal identity

When you belong to a group, the group contributes to your identity. You are “a member of the Team”. When you belong to a network, especially a large and open, your position is based on your personal identity. In networks your compete by polishing your identity according to the norms of the network. Identity may include for example number of connections.

The uncertainty and the changed meaning of identity are both promoting a nowadays typical behavior. You are putting a lot of effort in refining your identity, even stretching the limits of realism. At work you are available 14/7. You never know what is enough.

Individual coping by looking for stable ground

During the Listening Post there were comments about downsizing, retreating to solitude or focusing to philanthropy. The connection to nature was brought up. Several referred to meditation or similar approaches to get the connection to one’s true self.

These may be means to get in connection to something that is felt greater than the unstable, faceless and unfair business world. This may be very empowering by reducing anxiety, giving more energy and freedom of choice.

Then what?

Since the very common virtual organizations are unsatisfactory and cause waste of energy, there must be a great potential in skillful use of groups in organizations.

I would like to share an activity we used to study the timeline. Going through every note is passive for most, and often reduces energy. Creating narratives of it is consolidating the mass of notes, and often adding new details. And narratives create meaning.

40 years of Company history.

We had unusually long timeline, starting from 1970. No-one of those who started the company was anymore present, but stories were remembered.

First we created a standard history timeline. People swarmed around it and talked. I overheard people telling fragments of stories, and decided to use that idea.

Next smallish groups brainstormed the question: “What is the story that I would like to hear about this history?” The groups provided themes like “Personnel policy”, “Organizational culture”, “Market development”, “Evolving of the production work” or “Evolving of the IT-system”. If there are too many themes, you can prioritize by for example dot voting. Please improvise as needed.

Next I let people to self-organize around their favorite theme. I prefer to let people use their full body in the selection process. We assigned a place for each theme and people physically walked to their preferred theme. If no-one goes around a title, there will not be a story. It is OK, and potential observation material.

I gave a quite loose assignment to create a few minutes story in about 20 minutes. The groups were free to adjust the title if needed. Each story plus discussion lasted about ten minutes.

The stories were appreciated in the reflection in the end of the retrospective.

In principle there are two ways to do zen-meditation:

Intensive concentration is essential in breath practices and shikantaza (pure sitting). Just come back to the here and now, whenever your attention is lost. Gradually you are able keep your attention in the one thing you choose. Every now and then you enter samadhi, a state of pure concentration. The practice deepens, you learn, the samadhi happens more often. The quality of life improves.

The Great Question, Koan, is the second kind. Along the practice, or already earlier, a burning question arises. What is this, really? Who am I? What is real? What I do, really? You go on questioning, day and night. In meditation more intensively, otherwise as situation allows. Continuous “I don’t know.” Gradually you get insight to the question, even radical.

Facing fear, anxiety and loss – suffering

When you have strengthened the mind during good times, facing difficulties is easier.

The meditation returns the balance of the mind. A trained mind is more stable. Seeing the true nature of things helps to accept whatever happens. You make better choices.

The zen tradition supports in other ways too. The rituals, habits and mental images create safety for the subconscious. Likewise do the community, the meditation room and the presence of other practitioners. Sense making and the teacher’s advice is helpful.

Zen at work

When you return to the principal task, again and again, the concentration builds and the work proceeds. Gradually the skills and routines improve, there will be flow, more often. The work goes well.

By experience there will be wondering and questioning regarding the work, the principal task. What is this? What should we be doing now, really? Why are we working in this way? What the heck is going on? The continuous alertness and questioning state of mind will create enlightenment at work too. They create learning, understanding and innovation. Creativity is a state of mind.

Facing challenges at work

Individuals and organizations spend a huge effort in anxiety management. Anxiety often causes bad decisions. Leadership teams often have anxiety, even at good times.

When you have built a functional organizational culture during good times, facing difficulties is easier.

Good routines and continuous returning to the principal task help – flow over plans. Continuous learning leads to better decisions. It is wise to accept conflict, uncontrollability and uncertainty.

As an individual you can use concentration to the principal task and the questioning state of mind. If you have practiced them at good times, you have the ability during crisis.

A group can learn to concentrate to the common work, to be curious and embrace diversity. You can learn to process fear and anxiety in groups.

As a leader, or otherwise in an influential position, you can learn from zen when building your organization. There are shelf-meters of practical ways, for example in the Lean literature, organizational theory and psychology. You need just to concentrate and question. What is this, really? Action will follow.

Reflection, Kaizen, Continuous learning, Retrospectives, Work Development, whatever.

Our approach:

• Long term
• Intensive co-work of the internal owner and the external consultant
• Own your own change – tailor the approach in a core team
• Work with individual, group and organizational levels
• Empowerment – reflection and freedom of choice. And coahcing support.
• A tailored training program for change agents
• Experiential learning sticks
• Adapt – work in the speed of the organization

Following is the abstract, 9 pages is downloadable at aritikka.com.

This report describes a large successful case of a goal oriented managed change, based on empowerment and reflection. The organizational culture and emergent nature of the change were respected by a continuously adaptive approach.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Kati Vilkki main organizer and coach, Soile Aho consultant, Ari Tikka coach, Antti Heimonen, Seppo Taanila, Aila Laisi, Lauri Närhi, Leea afHeurlin, Kirsi Lagus, Jyrki Innanen, Sami Lilja, Raija Tamminen and dozens of other activists. Please notify me when you wish to have your name here.

Resistance may feel like swamp soccer.

Change resistance is a friend

• Resistance has an important psychological function. It guards against things that cause too much fear or anxiety, that would otherwise undermine the ability to function.
• Resistance prevents stupid things from happening. The more important thing is going to be changed, the more resistance.
• Resistance buys time to learn and adapt.
• As a leader, when I encounter resistance, I am able to work with it. No resistance – no work – no progress.

Change resistance is an everyday phenomenon. It is integral to all new; change, learning and doing my work now. You work with it when you wake up in the morning. Some people tend to resist more some less.

Many find resistance frustrating and would like just to get rid of it. That is like wishing for a physical world without friction. I sometimes hear about breaking the resistance by force. To me it sounds amusing – such an attempt would only make the resistance change shape.

The term resistance is easily taken as judgmental or offending. In reality it is a neutral defensive reaction, not targeted against anyone. When it happens in the organizational conversation, it effects different players’ interests and becomes subjectively good or bad.

In organizations you find change resistance especially when you touch personal and important things:

• The power structures are threatened
• People’s personal needs are threatened. Good guesses for the specific needs are autonomy, recognition, safety, rest, or connection.
• There is more work coming. Learning, by the way, is really hard work, which is too often forgotten.

Conscious resistance is easy to work with – it is fair challenging. Be happy when you encounter it! Unconscious resistance is delusive, undermining resolution, draining energy, dizzying, distracting, causing emotions, manifesting in strange actions.

Possible manifestations of (unconscious) resistance:

• Forgetting the basic task
• Forgetting the targets
• Strong feelings of lameness, stagnation, irrelevance or resistance
• Postponing and delaying
• Intellectual arguing about theory so that reality is blurred or forgotten
• Staying away, busying oneself with other things
• Delegating things away
• Shunning, being late, staying away, forgetting,
• Lack of commitment
• Not keeping contracts
• Not understanding and not asking – not caring
• Neglecting or denying the value of the topic
• Extended talking about irrelevant things

Obviously it is easier to work with the unconscious resistance, when you first recognize it. But how?

Human beings have delicate mechanisms to share mind states with each others (mirror neurons and so on). You can use yourself as an instrument: Whenever you feel strange, wake up and observe carefully!

Leading is working with resistance

Leadership constantly works with resistance, in oneself and others. The forms of resistance change and develop while the work progresses.

The guideline is to return to the principal task. Again and again. Just like meditation… finally leading to flow.

It is best to point out observations how the work is (not) progressing and ask how to continue. You may offer observations like “For the last 10 minutes we have talked about Y, while we agreed to talk about X.” Maybe there is resistance because X is too threatening. May be Y is actually more important. Or that we have not yet spotted the real roadblock Z.

When time is ripe, you may talk about the phenomenon of resistance, and let people themselves find out their own ways to resist. Usually it is wise to use a separate occasion for learning about the resistance phenomenon. Having the word in the organizations vocabulary makes a difference.

Resistance transfers from team to the leader. The leader needs to observe ones own resistance in order to be able to function. Ability to tolerate separation is very necessary for leaders.

Resistance is a very strong and contagious force. It is useful to prepare and have productive antidotes for the situation:

• Understand your own role, interests and goals. Keep available a note about them for yourself.
• Understand the principal task. Prepare with many ways to remind about it.
• Plan the meeting in question.
• Understand the phenomenon of resistance. Understanding group phenomenon and human interaction is beneficial.
• Regularly check Your posture, physical balance and breathing.
• Take a break. During a break talk with an ally or make contact with the most active resister.
• Take a distance from the group. Mentally, or physically by walking away from the group.
• Reflect the experience afterwards.

How do yo pull this donkey's tail?

If a donkey is not willing to drag the cart, you pull it’s tail. It will resist the pulling and start dragging the cart.

The suggestive question “Why retrospectives”, might create pressure to conform, or to give the right answer. I have used the controversial question successfully a few times. Asking the opposite:

• Is actually the important question: “What is blocking you?”
• Everyone is working for the same goal
• Is often fun and creative
• Breaks the expected or established roles and games. Makes people change their position or perspective, even for a moment.

Feel free to use for any topic.

At Scan Agile we got the following list of reasons why not. Some advice between the lines.

• The value of retros is not perceived
• No experience of the benefit
• Actions are not done
• Experience of superficial retros
• Assumption that retros are “feeling stuff”, with no “real” benefit. People are not used to it
• Teams are (feel) unempowered
• Too many meetings even without retros
  

  Where do your findings and actions hit?

• Culture of conflict avoidance
• Fear of blaming
• Misunderstanding retrospectives
• Cost of delay is a good argument for actions
• Scrum does not resource retros explicitly

  Some advice to use 2% to formal retros. 1% (hour/2 weeks) for iterations, 1% (1 day/quarter) to full product.

• lack of facilitation skill, person (with identity), role
• some people just don’t like to talk
• people have not learned to recognize their own feelings
• we don’t have the time
• boring, boring, boring (defense mechanism…)
• feelings are disconnected from the work context and identity

  Technocrats may turn surprisingly talented in emotions. Just give them a thinking tool, a rational systems model, with which they can connect feelings with work. I have had success with Nonviolent Communication. Is frustration or anger a feeling? Significant? Is disappointment significant at work? Or joy of success?

The conclusion is, that we have not tried retrospectives, because we don’t have a positive experience. Kind of logical…

The advice would be to give it a try with good enough sponsoring and facilitation.

I use this opportunity to publish another list with the same theme… very similar findings.

Understanding why NOT retrospectives at the International Retrospective Facilitator Gathering UK 2007

Post-it’s by Ari (host), Eshter, Sandra, Sal, Gabby, Linda

• Poor facilitation
  • Bad facilitator
  • Only the strong get their thoughts come through
  • Time zones / distributed team
  • Chaotic retrospective
  • We blame or action people not in the room
  • No or poor facilitator
  • Facilitator has favorites
• Honesty
  • Everything is going well !
  • Threatens illusions that reduce anxiety
  • “they” are not doing their part (mgmnt team)
  • no honesty
  • too positive. Hard to be honest and burst bubble
  • no-one tells what really happened
  • everyone lies
  • problmes are too big
  • if we admit there’s a problem, we may have to d osomething about it
  • not seeing your own part in the problem
• Empowerment
  • Im minority, so my contribution isn’t worth anything
  • Team does not take it seriously
  • (Fear of) losing control
  • We just bring up the same old things
  • Actions agreed upon does not come through
  • Ae can’t do anything about it
  • Uncover managemtn’s powerlessness
  • Our action plans will be over-ruled by management anyway
• Cultures
  • Culturally inappropriate (taiwan vs china)
  • Too touchy feely
  • It”s whacky stuff
  • bringing personal issues to the job isn’t proefssional
  • short term ebefit culture – ony this project matters
  • you can’t express the benefit in hard numbers
  • gap between management and team; no real knowledge nor/or understanding of significance
  • power is elsewhere command & control
  • no meeting rooms available
  • developers can’t possibly understand what we (mgmnt) have to face
  • it has not worked earlier
  • sipmplistic retros that don’t uncover anything significant
  • cultural differences (no common language?)
  • I am leaving so I don’t care
• Pointless
  • people feel powerless
  • I’m not creative
  • I have nothing to contribute
• (Blank)
  • I am ADD
  • I have asberger syndrome
  • I already have another forum (“Honest talk time at japan)
  • Managers mistake system problems with individual problems
  • retrospectives may discover unconventional solutions, which can’t be supported by management without their safety net. “What others did”
  • 80% of problems are management problems… and they don’t want to deal with them…
• Time
  • We’ll do it later
  • Doing my real work is more important thatn going to meetings
  • something more urgent came up
  • we don’t have time!
  • Takes too much time
  • takes time away from real work
• Fear
  • Don’t want to look bad in front of..
  • It disempowers me as a manager
  • retrospectives may uncover bad (management) decisions
  • fear of being blamed
  • “what is my role” if they do decisions on their own.
  • fear of criticism
  • fear of conflict
  • fear of admitting problems
  • Im not comfortable expressing my feelings in a group
  • we have to change. That’s scary.

People are, however, people. Especially when many. They have other questions at the same time, related to e.g. human needs, group dynamics or the organizational integrity. These other questions:

• Take attention, time and energy
• Do matter, have potentially significant consequences
• Have second order consequences – build the culture, learning and so on
• Block working with the principal task for shorter or longer time

In order to optimally promote the principal task, you need to recognize the right question and work with it. Forcing a solution to the wrong question does not really help. Have you ever heard: “Does not concern us, because we are rational adults.” Or “We can skip those, because we don’t have time.”

Conscious questions are the obvious normal stuff, technical and social things that people have learned to handle.

Pre-conscious questions are recognizable, especially when you try. You can observe and talk about them, and they become somewhat conscious. Examples:

• Suppressed topics, taboos, cultural issues
• Human needs: e.g. autonomy, safety, recognition, being heard…
• Questions of trust, power, status
• Question of leadership and dependency
• Group dynamics
• Should I invest the effort
• Envy and competition – a sensitive topic
• Games people play
• Constantly ongoing inclusion and exclusion
• Resistance, individual and group defense mechanisms e.g. groupthink

And some special cases

• Scapegoat syndrome, tends to repeat
• Pathological narcissism, difficult and dangerous

Oops. The list grows so easily! I will come back to these!

Unconscious is not observable. It can be considered the creative source where the other stuff emerges. You can not predict how the unconscious will respond to your actions.

Most of the times, things go naturally with no major roadblocks, just some very frustrating or insensible moments. People work with the preconscious questions unconsciously, and solutions emerges. This baseline is not the full potential – working consciously with the questions probably leads to a better solution. The group/team development is a good example.

It saves time and energy, if someone experienced can recognize the present questions and help to handle them consciously. Often just making the correct guess, giving a name to the question, makes it dissolve quickly, and the work can continue. Sometimes the interpretation is too much, and the group does not accept it. The proper timing, dose and form matters.

Sometimes, the unrecognized questions really block or deteriorate the work, and external help is beneficial.

A good situational leader, may it be boss, coach or scrum master:

• Knows this preconscious people stuff. Actually it is not complicated, but needs some practise.
• Has courage and social permission to work with all kinds of questions
• Is able to use oneself as an instrument. For example when you feel strange, what is really going on? Are these feelings mine or what?

This is also called emotional intelligence. Surprisingly, it can be learned and practiced. I have coached many technically oriented people, who have turned to be emotionally talented – once they got the permission. The organizational culture and narrow identities sometimes really block people from using their full capability.

I have seen this in many organizations, also in small companies. It hints, that healthy and close human interaction in an organization is a significant competitive advantage. Secondly, change is free, actually profitable – just Go and See and there will be many opportunities.

Three conflicting Interests

Every organization has three stakeholders that each have a significant Interests. There are high stakes, energy and passion. (interest with a capital I refers to the specific Interests)

The investors are playing in the capital market. They wish for a reasonable ROI and fear for losing their investment.

The customers and end users wish for a functional product for a reasonable price, and fear e.g. for bad quality and difficulties in the support.

The value adding workers wish e.g. for satisfactory working condition, a reasonable compensation and a safe future.
All three stakeholders need the organization, wishing it to stay alive and productive. All stakeholders have both long and short term interests.

The cohesive and conflicting Interests are present in big and small units, departments and teams. Even individuals balance between these Interests in everyday decision making. “For the next few minutes, should I rest, write code, make another automated test or learn a new trick?” The real reality accumulates from these moments.

An individual represents different roles at different contexts. A team leader represents the customer and investor for the team, and represents her team at her own peer group.

The stakeholders may have siblings, many customers, many workers and many investors, to make the playground more complicated.

Every organizational culture will find a balance between the Interests. The ways to solve the conflict may differ, it is called politics. Some organizations speak openly, some avoid conflict, some have taboos and so on. There will be political parties, even worker’s unions. The balance may be dynamic, oscillating between attractors.

The leaders, especially the founder, shape the organizational culture. It may happen that:

• When the management is uncertain of it’s own leadership, or uncertain of the integrity of the organization, even a thought of a ground-laying conflict may be too threatening to be discussed. Instead of negotiating the balance, all effort is concentrated to find a unifying vision.
• Besides the blunt denial, a more subtle defense is to look for a perfect process. Artifacts are just delivered, people do what is told, and everything is fine – no need to receive feedback and solve conflict.
• The leaders may personally tend to avoid conflict, or have the habit to solve conflicts in a nonproductive way.

Avoiding conflict regarding the Interests leads to cultural anomalies, suboptimal performance and suffering.

The Interests cause the emergence of the corresponding subcultures

The internal cohesion and difference between the subcultures follows from the daily practical work and challenges. The everyday mental states and bodily experiences gradually define what is important for each individual. You can recognize the different meanings from the “Yes, but …” discussion. It means “Yes, I understood your rational argument, but from my perspective different things are important, did you hear me?”

The representatives of the subcultures defend towards the tension in many ways, typically by reducing and diluting the unpleasant interaction by for example ritualization or value denial. Your own subculture group is considered better than the others (see Sadomasochistic organizational cultures)

For example the people at the customer interface feel personally the pain of the customer waiting for a release or struggling with pricing. It may happen, that the customer interface has more sympathy towards the customer than towards the own R&D. This follows from: a) with whom do I have most personal interaction b) who do I think has the most power over me.

By definition, the upper management is the guardian of the Investors’ Interests.

The workers’ context is the production realities, and they represent themselves. This creates a problematic unsymmetry to the negotiation. The customer interface says “The customer needs this, or they swap and we go bankrupt.” A worker says “I need proper working conditions, I think investing to this training would increase my productivity.”

The status/power differences limit the dialogue efficiently. Information is withheld, expression of feelings is either aggressive or nonexistent. Instead of continuous interaction, the dialogue drifts to sparse and abstract communication in big batches.

There are also different kinds of power. The upper management has the authorization to change the big boundary conditions, to order where money and time is used. On the other hand they have very little power over the zillion small floor level decisions, that sum up to reality.

A leadership vacuum at the critical center

Significant decisions balancing the three Interests happen in the center of the organization, between the subcultures. When the subcultures are strong, they have power that they don’t want to give up. A vacuum is born between the three subcultures, in the middle of the organization, exactly in the place where the important decisions need to be made. The job at the center is challenging:

• The three Interests
• The sibling envy and competition between several customers, between several investors and between several value adding workers/organizations.
• Balancing short and long term
• Legacy – the overt and covert assumptions, agreements, practices and technology inherited from history
• The stakes and pressure is high. Uncertainty, fear – defensive behavior. There may be messianic expectations towards a new manager, organization or consultant in the center.
• Maximal distance to the reality. In a bigger organization, the touch to any stakeholder is only indirect
• Complicated environment. Things need to be simplified and abstracted, so that they could be comprehended. When decisions are made, they do not realize at all, or something very different happens.

So the opportunity to make real decisions is limited. Many managers feel helpless.

Typical organizational roles at the center are product manager, project manager, middle management and the Product Owner. The concrete coordination and decisions that they do has potentially a great impact to what happens. But often the money and time is spent differently – the real decisions did emerge in some other way. Some other symptoms of the vacuum are:

• Nonfunctional or fake resourcing, prioritization or portfolio management
• The product management is actually a secretary, recording what did happen.
• The business risk and leadership responsibility is left to the development/production.
• The customer dictates, what the R&D makes.
• The customers get unrealistic promises.
• Parallel projects compete against each other. Some individual project succeeds, but the whole organization is not productive.
• In a (continuous?) crisis the upper management makes unrealistic product decisions and reorganizations, based on limited knowledge.
• Churn – the problems at the production are solved temporarily, in projects, but learning, standardization and other long term development does not happen in spite of the spent effort.

The dialogue between the subcultures is demanding in many ways. You need to consider unconscious phenomena, group dynamics, need for conflict mediation, leadership, the organizational structure, measuring. Constructive and thorough conflict resolution is very important – it makes the quality of the organization.

I have seen the following attempts to solve the vacuum:

• Establish a new decision making organization, stronger than ever, for example a new product management. Supply it with even naive advice like “Sponsor only profitable products.” (Seen it!) The danger is, that this is only a bigger dose of the culturally appropriate medicine, that did not work earlier. There will possibly be three separate subcultures inside the newly established organization.
• Steering groups will easily be forums of power struggle. In reality the decisions are prepared in the background. There might be several decision making forums, that dilute each others’ decisions. Social and unconscious phenomena may dominate the steering group meetings.
• Outsourcing and the related wish for economical optimizing are very tempting. But how often a great real reason is that the internal conflict and competition can not be handled by the management. Why would it be cheaper to create the service when there is one more administrative player involved. The reality of outsourcing has often been rude.
• Projects will solve the problems one at a time. Please look at Focusing on projects ruins your business.
• Nominate the Product Owner and create the one prioritized backlog. Not enough alone.

The Gaps between the subcultures

This figure is derived from observed gaps and subcultures. It has the same topology as the traditional process model from the production to the customer, supported by the management.

In my previous article, I described the gaps in the horizontal dimension.

The other dimension is between the investors and the floor level. In a similar way, there may be several and deep gaps in this dimension, depending on the size and culture of the organization. I won’t open the Pandora’s box of leadership here. In principle, similar medicines apply.

The medicine

This is my choice and wording. For more food for thought, please study the Lean literature.

Small batches fully done

This is The Way to reduce complexity, to enable measurability, control and agility to the organization. This is a Lean revolution, dramatic change owned, driven and personally needed by the top management.

Noneffective portfolio management can be cured by creating the portfolio-wide heartbeat, and gradually shortening the cycle. I don’t expect this to be easy. In other words cadence is a way to reduce the coordination cost.

Around 1990, still in my previous profession of structural mechanics, I applied a job at Kone Cranes, a leading company designing and manufacturing big cranes. They did a full closing of accounts every month. This was the first thing told to an applicant of a technical job. They have been successful in the business.

For your convenience a quote from the previous blog. Continuous flow of small batches done. Since the emotional reasons are so strong in forming the Gap, I emphasize the emotional side of small batches:

Avoid overspecialization

Please differentiate between competence and roles!

You need to have deep competence in the value creating essence. It does not exclude wide participance to diverse value creating activities. On the contrary, hearing specialists widely is beneficial. Knowledge is created in interaction.

However, the narrow organizational roles and responsibilities is an artificial choice, constraining the organizational conversation; limiting self-organization, empowerment and communication.

Quality of information sharing versus number of roles

The organizational roles here mean individuals and specialized organizations, like separate testing organization, separate architects, separate quality and process. Splitting leadership into roles instead of empowered units effectively adds knowledge waste. Matrix organization is risky.

A big organization easily develops an amazing amount of coordinators, who organize the work of overspecialized passive resources. This leads to complicated organization, eternal simultaneous idling and lack of resources, friction, loss of knowledge and finally an organizational deadlock.

Minimalistic aesthetics works here. Remove roles, until you can not take any away without breaking the whole.

Research by Jim Coplien shows that the number of different roles has inverse correlation to the healthy communication in software projects. More at Jeff Sutherland’s blog and Jim’s presentation.

Some organizations have less separation between roles. My belief is that it follows from the ways to respond to conflict and diversity.

Fearless and constructive conflict resolution

The usual pointer to this theme might be continuous learning. I wanted to emphasize the necessary enabler.

This means hearing, expressing and accepting the diverse and subjective perspective – personal interests, needs and feelings. Please differentiate the freedom of speech from decision to act. Leadership, beware of unconscious compulsion to cure all problems.

Fortunately, communicating interest instead of actions empowers and makes people more understandable and approachable!

In the leadership and organizational culture this is related to learning, openness, continuous improvement, Gemba (go and see for the management), teamwork, emotional intelligence, high integrity and so on.

This is true respecting people, that stands even hard times.

This becomes obvious when starting Scrum. The Gap has always been there. Why? What have been the workarounds earlier? Why is it important to understand the root cause? Actually there are more gaps on the value stream…

The Gap

Drawing the Gap on a flipboard often stops the blame war.

Have you ever heard the following, when taking Scrum into use:

Team: Scrum says Give us the prioritized backlog.
Product manager: Yes, but we don’t know about tech, you do. Here You have the 5-liner. Just start working.
Team: Yes, but we need to know where to start.
PM: Yes, but we can’t prioritize technical items, you have always done it.
Team: But we can not work if we don’t know the priorities for the next sprint.
PM: What’s wrong with you?
And so on…

The Gap means simply that there is too little knowledge power, too few people who would understand both technology and business. I have many many times experienced how drawing this picture on a flipboard will stop the blame war in the room, when people realize that it is the system, not us.

When looking back in the history of the organization, you most probably find at least some symptoms of the Gap:

• Totally unrealistic early effort estimations (seen 10-fold errors)
• Confusion about priorities, progress, responsibilities, commitments, ownership or resources
• No common vocabulary — even more confusion
• Excuses, ping-pong of responsibilities and blaming
• Waiting — no skills, ownership or resources
• add Your own favorite

So the Gap has always been there. Likewise there have always been talented individuals who have filled the Gap.

• Projects have bridged the Gap one at a time. It has been effective, but not necessarily optimal. Using projects, the device for one time solution, easily leads to short term local optimization, and leaves long term development undone. It also tends to undervalue the voice of the designers. If the situation has grown bad, there are messianic expectations towards the project manager.
• Establish a system engineering or architect role/group. This solution is serving the knowledge creation and organizational memory better. It certainly makes one handover more. The architects easily become the bottlenecks, and the capacity of the designers is not fully utilized.
• Superficial Scrum is a good candidate for the next fill, with the product owner as the new hero.

This has been patching, it is better to solve the root cause.

The cause of the Gap

The Tension between R&D and Product management

There are natural conflicting interests and thus Tension. The customer would like to have better products cheaper and faster. The designers work in the production reality with limited capability and need for fairness. And the product management is in the middle, transmitting the customer needs to the R&D and back, trying to make business.

Of course everyone needs the organization to stay alive, the parties have a shared interest too.

The pattern, now called the Gap, emerges in the complex organization, based on local interaction. The intelligent agents, managers and designers, human beings, try to minimize their exposure to the painful Tension. The “natural” solution is to avoid interaction, to keep within one’s own role and subculture, to seek safety from the own kin. This leads to alienation from the other party, avoiding empathy, avoid emotions by rationalization, bluntly deny issues, postpone everything to big batches, dilute issues by abstracting. There are innumerable defenses in action.

So it seems that the Gap is natural. Instead, creating flow, learning and decision making capability requires enlightened leadership. The benefits of Scrum and Lean are obvious.

The Medicine for one Gap

The flow of small batches inevitably increases knowledge and manpower at the no-mans-land.

The first medicine is the continuous flow of small batches done. Since the emotional reasons are so strong in forming the Gap, I emphasize the emotional side of small batches.

• Small batches are less complicated, understandable and manageable to the limited human cognition. (the more people the more limited)
• The emotional load transferred and born at the interaction can be handled, is not too much.
• The flow of batches enables the flow of feedback and learning. Learning is proportional to the number of cycles, not size.

Result of knowledge creation and sharing.

The second key medicine is the conscious knowledge creation and sharing. Knowledge is relevant, when it helps you to make good decisions. The designers need to know about the customers and end-users. The Customer interface needs to know about the technology and R&D capabilities. The practical cross-pollination happens by making the practical decisions together.

In military organizations it has long been realized, that the mass of critical decisions are made at the frontier. The empowerment and decision making capability of the periphery is heavily developed by training, simulations and so on.

The greatness of Scrum is that it a) brings the Tension between the Team and PO to the center of attention b) provides robust guidelines to deal with it. This is truly unique ingenuity.

Help for the Product Owner?

However, Scrum does not provide much for the Product Owner to deal with a wider world. Traditionally it may have looked like this.

All the Gaps in a big organization

The Gaps are opening to the discontinuities of the value stream; organizational, geographical, cultural and power related. In big organizations the stakes and the Tension are high. It may happen that there is one point, one Gap, in the chain where all the pain concentrates.

In addition to the previously mentioned medicines for one Gap, this organization needs to minimize the number of gaps by teamwork and different topology, getting R&D to interact with end-users and so on. Lean has good advice for this.

I will come back with some thoughts about the product owner, the Tension, big product and multiple customers.

I try to explain my point with a lifecycle of an imaginary organization. My real life example companies vary from 15 people to thousands.

Startup phase

Once upon a day a group of engineers started to develop a product. In the beginning everyone knew each other and there was fluent informal communication. The techno-cultural foundation was laid. The business started to grow.

Growth and the first coordination crisis

Money comes in and the organization grows. There is more coordination work, so some developers become managers. The organization develops “naturally”, creating specialized roles and competences. There are more customers and releases. Ownership of the product gradually becomes scattered. There are bottleneck resources.

At some point the “professional project management” steps in. It is solving the coordination problem, one project at a time. The project manager has permission (by role) to demand results. She becomes powerful member of the organization, getting credit for creating order and bringing money in. Often the personality of the project managers support this specialization. Portfolio management still works or is less important. Business does well.

This is a critical bifurcation point, a leadership crisis of unrealized significance . There is still an opportunity to start a Lean evolution. My example goes to the mainstream way. From the psychological perspective this is the easiest solution. It requires least personal change from the most of the people.

Gradual Scattering of the organization

Eventually there are several parallel and sequential programs going on at the same time. Each project is re-built and re-learned every time, because they surprisingly are different from the previous one. The projects becomes a separate powerful dimension of the organization.

The projects become a kind of device extracting money out of the complex and uncontrollable organization. The business management alienates from the R&D, because the real value seems to come from the project device – the development can be replaced, off-shored, outsourced. Long term development of the R&D is seen risky and difficult. Frustration and distrust grows at both sides.

You may recognize one or more of the following characteristics:

Short term rules. Quick fix. Avoid conflict. Nonproductive feedback. Gap between business, customer and development. Continuous reorg. Exploit development. Specialization and separation of responsibility. Cling to nonfunctional ERP. Clear social classes within the organization. Big power differences. Command and control. Waiting. Big plans. Wish for predictability. Slow and vague feedback. Learning and improvement don’t work. Projects compete of resources. Cost management. Number management. Measure hours. Maximize resource utilization. Knowledge and power seems always to be elsewhere.

Market saturation and the productivity crisis

Now the product (family) is growing old. And there is competition. The business management is facing a situation where the portfolio management is very difficult because of the complicated product and organization; lack of transparency and flexibility.

Even in this situation, I have seen the management to grab the tool that used to work, trying desperately to improve the project management. This is very painful for the project managers.

My point here is, that in product development you may do excellent “conventional” projects, and fail. Even fail because the projects have been successful.

My vote for the one word root cause would be overspecialization.

Please comment and share experiences, I have not emptied this subject.