Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 454

I’m back for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast.

This week’s episode, number 454, begins with Tom talking about iteration planning. Jeremy Berriault comes next with a segment on QA team leads and I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?”.

Tom and I discuss the concept of legacy systems: what they are, whether they’re trash or treasure (sometimes both), and how they impact an organization.

You can find all the SPaMCast episodes I’m in under the SPaMCast Appearances category on this blog. Enjoy!

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Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?

The topic of legacy systems is something of a contentious one. In most cases, a legacy is understood to be a good thing. What makes a system “legacy”? Is it a technical or business decision?

A little over a year ago, Greger Wikstrand took a stab at clarifying the term with his post “Legacy systems, a definition”. In the post, he looked at different definitions of what constituted a legacy system, ranging from “any code that is in use” to “outdated technology” to “high technical debt”. The definition he went with, in my opinion, is the most useful:

It should be clear that legacy systems are not about technical considerations. It is about how well the existing system meets and is able to adapt to business needs.

A pair of tweets from Joanna Young that I saw yesterday brought this to mind:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/872880714542219266 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/872881197428477957

Whether or not a system has crossed the line into legacy territory is not a technical decision but a business one. As Greger and Joanna both noted, it’s about fitness for purpose. Technical considerations absolutely have immense bearing on whether the system is able to meet needs. However, they are not the sole determinant.

The standard narrative is for a system to start out “clean” and then rot via neglect and/or ad hoc enhancement. This is certainly a common scenario, but it overlooks the obvious. While failure to maintain a system and its platform will certainly degrade it, keeping the technology components up to date does not ensure that the system will continue to match the needs of those who depend on it. For that matter, it’s easy enough to build a brand new system using the latest and greatest technology that is a legacy right out the gate due to its failure to meet the needs of its stakeholders.

Age of the platform is not a problem; an inability to get support or find people knowledgeable about the platform is a problem. Technical debt in and of itself is not a problem; being impeded or prevented from maintaining/enhancing the system due to technical debt is a problem. This works for any given technical issue – substitute the tangible, stakeholder-oriented result of that technical issue and the point becomes clearer to those with the ability to address them.

The key is not to focus solely on functional aspects nor quality of service and/or technical aspects, but the system as a whole. This requires the participation of the entire set of social systems involved in the creation, maintenance, and usage of the software system. Communication and collaboration across all elements of those social systems is critical to effectively maintaining the software system and the social systems that it enables.

A critically important part of promoting that communication and collaboration is maintaining the cohesion of the social systems involved in creating and maintaining the software system. Where those social systems are ad hoc and episodic, the potential for forming the relationships necessary for effective situational awareness is minimal. IT won’t know about functional gaps until too late and the stakeholders won’t know what their options are for addressing them nor will they have advance notice of impending technical issues.

Social systems create, maintain, and use software systems. Systems that are designed to work together have a better chance of doing so than those that are just thrown together and wished well.

Managing Fast and Slow

People have a complicated relationship with the concept of cause and effect. In spite of the old saying about the insanity of doing the same old thing looking for a different result, we hope against hope that this time it will work. Sometimes we inject unnecessary complexity into what should be very simple tasks, other times we over-simplify looking for shortcuts to success. Greger Wikstrand recently spoke to one aspect of this in his post “Cargo cult innovation, play buzzword bingo to spot it” (part of our ongoing conversion on innovation):

I am not saying that there is no basis of truth in what they say. The problem is that innovation is much more complex than they would have you believe. If you fall for the siren song of cargo cult innovationism, you will have all the effort and all the trouble of real innovation work but you will have none of the benefits.

I ran across an interesting example of this kind of simplistic thought not long ago on Forbes, titled “The Death of Strategy”, by Bill Fischer:

Strategy is dead!

Or, is it tactics?

In a world of never-ending change, it’s either one or the other; we can no longer count on having both. As innovation accelerates its assault on what we formerly referred to as “our planning process,” and as S-curves accordingly collapse, each one on top another, time is compressed. In the rubble of what is left of our strategy structure, we find that what we’ve lost is the orderly and measured progression of time. Tim Brown, of IDEO, recently put it this way at the Global Peter Drucker Forum 2016, in Vienna: “So many things that used to have a beginning, a middle and an end, no longer have a middle or an end.” Which is gone: strategy or tactics? And, does it matter?

Without a proper middle, or end, for any initiative, the distinction between strategy and tactics blurs: tactics become strategy, especially if they are performed in a coherent and consistent fashion. Strategy, in turn, now takes place in the moment, in the form of an agglomeration of a series (or not) of tactics.

The pace of change certainly feels faster than ever before (I’m curious, though, as to when the world has not been one of “never-ending change”). However, that nugget of truth is wrapped in layers of fallacy and a huge misunderstanding of the definitions of “tactics” and “strategy”. “Tactical and Strategic Interdependence”, a commentary from the Clausewitzian viewpoint, contrasts the terms in this manner:

Both strategy and tactics depend on combat, but, and this is their essential difference, they differ in their specific connection to it. Tactics are considered “the formation and conduct of these single combats in themselves” while strategy is “the combination of them with one another, with a view to the ultimate object of the War.”[8] Through the notion of combat we begin to see the differentiation forming between tactics and strategy. Tactics deals with the discrete employment of a single combat, while strategy handles their multiplicity and interdependence. Still we need a rigorous conception. Clausewitz strictly defines “tactics [as] the theory of the use of military forces in combat,” while “Strategy is the theory of the use of combats for the object of the War.”[9] These definitions highlight the difference between the means and ends of tactics and strategy. Tactics considers the permutations of military forces, strategy the combinations of combats, actual and possible.

In other words, tactics are the day to day methods you use to do things. Strategy is how you achieve your long term goals by doing the things you do. Tactics without strategy is a pile of bricks without an idea of what you’re going to build. Strategy without tactics is an idea of what to build without a clue as to how you’d build it.

Fischer is correct that strategy executed is the “…agglomeration of a series (or not) of tactics”, but his contention that it “…now takes place in the moment…” is suspect, predicated as it is on the idea that things suddenly lack “…a proper middle or end…”. I would argue that any notion of a middle or end that was determined in advance rather than retroactively, is an artificial one. Furthermore, the idea that there are no more endings due to the pace of change is more than a little ludicrous. If anything, the faster the pace, the more likely endings become as those who can’t keep up drop out. Best of all is the line “…tactics become strategy, especially if they are performed in a coherent and consistent fashion”. Tactics performed in “…a coherent and consistent fashion” is pretty much the definition of executing a strategy (negating the premise of the article).

Flailing around without direction will not result in innovation, no matter how fast you flail. While change is inevitable, innovation is not. Innovating, making “significant positive change”, is not a matter of doing a lot of things fast and hoping for the best. Breakthroughs may occasionally be “happy accidents”, but even then are generally ones where intentional effort has been expended towards making them likely.

In today’s business environment, organizations must be moving forward just to maintain the status quo, much less innovate. This requires knowing where you are, where you’re headed, and what obstacles you’re likely to face. This assessment of your operating context is known as situational awareness. It’s not simple, because your context isn’t simple. It’s not a recipe, because your context is ever-changing. It’s not a product you can buy nor a project you can finish and be done with. It’s an ongoing, deliberate process of making sense of your context and reacting accordingly.

Situational awareness exists on multiple levels, tactical through strategic. While the pace of change is high, the relative pace between the tactical and strategic is still one of faster and slower. Adjustments to strategic goals may come more frequently, but daily changes in long-term goals would be a red flag. Not having any long-term goals would be another. Very specific, very static long-range plans are probably wasted effort, but having some idea of what you’ll be doing twelve months down the road is a healthy sign.

Situational Awareness – Where does it begin? Where does it end?

Situational awareness, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “…the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event”. In other words, it’s having a handle on what currently is and what is about to happen. It’s a concept that is invaluable to a wide range of interests, particularly management/leadership, architectural design, and innovation. It’s a concept that crosses levels, from tactical to strategic. Just as socio-technical systems architectures exist in a fractal space (application to solution to enterprise), so too does the concept of situational awareness. As such, it’s a common theme for this site, particularly over the last year or so.

The OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) Loop, developed by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, is a framework for decision-making that explicitly incorporates situational awareness:

Coupling sense-making with decision-making is critical to achieve a balance of both speed and effectiveness. In my opinion, acting without taking the state of the environment into account is a recipe for disaster. Equally important (likewise, in my opinion), is understanding the dynamic nature of situational awareness. As Boyd’s diagram above shows, it’s not a linear process. Additionally, the very nature of a loop should convey the fact that there’s neither beginning nor end. This is a key concept.

One of the sites that I follow is Slightly East of New, which is run by an associate of Boyd’s and dedicated to his theories. A recent post on that site, “The magic of the OODA loop”, related a paragraph from a sci-fi novel, The Apocalypse Codex, that referred to OODA:

Observe, orient, decide, act: words to live or die by. Right now, Persephone is disoriented — on the run, cut off. It’s time to go on the offensive, work out where she is and what’s going on, then get the hell out of this trap.

It was an interesting post, but nothing noteworthy, until I got to this comment:

I find the phrase, “…on the run, cut off.” very interesting, within the context of “disoriented”. To me, “on the run” mean a decision has been made and acted on, whereas “disorientation” usually means that one can’t make a decision.
Likewise, “cut off” is the position you find yourself in, after all the decisions have been made and, after thinking about it, it is the posture you observe yourself to be in.
In other words, on the run and cut off is not really a disorientation, but a reality.
So, while you may not survive, you have made a decision to run or you are about to make a decision and join the otherside.
I suppose it just depends on where those words show up in the narrative, as to if you made the decision or your competitor made the decision for you.

I may be over-sensitive to the phrasing, but “…decision has been made and acted on…” and “…after all the decisions have been made…” strike me as being too static and too linear. Every action/inaction follows on decision/indecision. The point “…after all the decisions have been made…” is terminal (for the person who has made all the decisions they will make). In my opinion, it is key to bear in mind that the clock is always running and that the reality being processed is already past. Too much attention to the state of what is (or rather, was) takes away from the more important task of getting to a better “to be” state. Additionally, decisions and contexts should be thought of as not just linear, but fractal (e.g. having multiple levels from tactical through strategic) as well.

Loops that have an end are no longer loops. Likewise, we have to be able to strike a balance between just focusing on what’s relevant (too much context/backstory can cause information overload) and the point where we’ve trimmed away necessary context.

Actively thinking about sense-making and decision-making can seem overly academic. The activities are so foundational to nearly everything that they can feel instinctual rather than learned. I suspect that’s a case of “familiarity breeds contempt”. Depending on the application, contempt for developing the best possible situational awareness could be fatal.

[OODA Loop diagram by Patrick Edwin Moran via Wikimedia Commons]

Strategic Tunnel Vision

 

Change and innovation are topics that have been prominent on this blog over the last year. In fact, Greger Wikstrand and I have traded a total of twenty-six posts (twenty-seven counting this one) on the subject.

Greger’s last post, “Successful digitization requires focus on the entire customer experience – not just a neat app” (it’s in Swedish, but it translates well to English), discussed the critical nature of customer experience to digital innovation. According to Greger, without taking customer experience into account:

One can make the world’s best app without getting more, more satisfied and profitable customers. It’s like trying to make a boring games more exciting by spraying gold paint on the playing pieces.

Change and innovation are not the same thing. Change is inevitable, innovation is not (with a h/t to Tom Cagley for that quote). As Greger pointed out in his latest article, to get improved customer experience, you need depth. Sprinkling digital fairy dust over something is not likely result in innovation. New and different can be really great, but new and different solely for the sake of new and different doesn’t win the prize. Context is critical.

If you’ve read more than a couple of my posts, you’ve probably realized that among my rather varied interests, history is a major one. I lean heavily on military history in particular when discussing innovation. This post won’t break with that tradition.

The blog Defense in Depth, operated by the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, has published two posts this week dealing with the Suez Crisis of 1956, primarily in terms of the Anglo-French forces. One deals with the land operations and the other with naval operations. They struck a chord because they both illustrated how an overreaction to change can have drastic consequences from the strategic level down to the tactical.

Buying into a fad can be extremely expensive.

The advent of the nuclear age at the end of World War II dramatically transformed military and political thought. The atomic bomb was the ultimate game-changer in that respect. In the time-honored tradition, the response was over-reaction. “Atomic” was the “digital” of the late 40s into the 60s. They even developed a recoilless gun that could launch a 50 pound nuclear warhead 1.25-2.5 miles. “Move fast and break things” was serious business back in the day.

This extreme focus on what had changed, however, led to a rather common problem, tunnel vision. Nuclear capability became such an overarching consideration that other capabilities were neglected. Due to this neglect of more conventional capabilities, the UK’s forces were seriously hampered in their ability to perform their mission effectively. Misguided thinking at the strategic level affected operations all the way down to the lowest tactical formations.

It’s easy to imagine present-day IT scenarios that fall prey to the same issues. A cloud or digital initiative given top priority without regard to maintaining necessary capabilities could easily wind up failing in a costly manner and impairing the existing capability. It’s important to understand that time, money, and attention are finite resources. Adding capability requires increasing the resources available for it, either through adding new resources or freeing up existing ones by reducing the commitment to less important capabilities. If there is no real appreciation of what capabilities exist and what the relative value of each is, making this decision becomes a shot in the dark.

Situational awareness across all levels is required. To be effective, that awareness must integrate changes to the context while not losing sight of what already was. Otherwise, to use a metaphor from my high school football days, you risk acting like a “blind dog in a meat-packing plant”.

Leadership Patterns and Anti-Patterns – The Growler

Prior to starting my career in IT (twenty years ago this month…seems like yesterday), I spent a little over eleven years in law enforcement as a Deputy Sheriff. Over those eleven years my assignments ranged from working a shift in the jail (interesting stories), to Assistant Director of the Training Academy, then Personnel Officer (even more interesting stories), and finally, supervisory and management positions (as many headaches as stories). To say that it was as much an education as a job is to put it mildly. I learned useful lessons about human nature and particularly about leadership.

One of the things that I learned is that leadership and management (they are related, but separate things) have patterns and anti-patterns associated with them. Just like in the realm of software development, it can be difficult to distinguish between what’s a pattern and what’s an anti-pattern (there’s an interesting discussing to be found on this topic in the classic “Big Ball of Mud”). Hammering a square peg into a round hole “works”, albeit sub-optimally. Pattern or anti-pattern?

One pattern/anti-pattern from my time with the Sheriff’s Office is what I call “The Growler”. A high-ranking member of the department was a master of this technique. When approached for something, particularly when the something in question was a signature on a purchase requisition, the default response was a profanity-laced growl (the person in question had retired from the Navy as a senior NCO) demanding to know why he should grant the request. This was extremely daunting, but I learned that the correct response was to growl back. When he growled, “%$@$ a !#&^ing $@!#*. More $%&^ing computer stuff, why the @#*& do you need this?”, I would answer, “You know when you ask me a question and I respond in five minutes instead of three hours”. This would result in a shake of his head, a “Yeah, yeah”, and most importantly, a signature.

More than just an endearing quirk of his character, it was a triage technique. If the person who wanted something tucked tail and ran, it wasn’t important. If, however, the person stood their ground, then he would put forth the effort to make a decision.

Right up front, I should make it clear that I don’t recommend this technique. First and foremost, Human Resources finds “salty” language even less endearing today than they did twenty-five plus years ago, and they weren’t crazy about it then. There’s also a big problem in terms of false negatives.

Most of my coworkers back in my badge and gun days were not shy, retiring types. Consequently, I never saw it backfire for that person. Later on, though, I did see it fail for an IT manager (and yes, while gruff, he was significantly less “salty” than the one at the Sheriff’s Office). This manager had a subordinate who would retreat no matter how valid the need. Consequently, that subordinate’s unit, one that several of us were dependent on, was always under-staffed and under-equipped. When his people attended training, it was because someone else had growled back for him. It was far from the optimal situation.

While not quite as bad as the “shoot the messenger” anti-pattern I touched on recently, “The Growler” comes close. By operating on a principle of fear, you can introduce a gap in your communications and intelligence network that you rely on (whether you know it or not) to get the information you need in a timely manner.

Fear encourages avoidance and no news now can be very bad news later.

Learning Organizations – Shooting the Messenger All the Way to the Fuhrerbunker

Unless you’re living under a rock, it’s a near certainty that you’ve seen at least one Downfall parody video (although I hadn’t realized just how long these had been around until I started working on this post…time flies!). There’s a reason why they’ve managed to hang on as a meme as long as they have. The “shoot the messenger” style of management, in spite of all the weight of evidence against it, is still alive and well.

When Tom Cagley and I were recording the Form Follows Function segment for SPaMCast 407, one of Tom’s questions brought to mind the image of Hitler’s delusional ranting in the bunker made famous by these parodies. The subject of the segment was my post “Learning to Deal with the Inevitable”, which deals with the need for a culture of learning to be able to deal effectively with the change that has become a constant in our world. Tom keyed in on one point (taken from a talk I’d attended put on by Professor Edward Hess): ‘candor, facing the “brutal facts” is essential to a learning culture’. Although his leadership failures pale in significance to the atrocities that he was responsible for, the Hitler portrayed in these clips demonstrates that point vividly.

It should be unnecessary to point out that flying into a rage when given bad news does nothing to change the nature of those events. It is particularly destructive when the bearer of the news is attacked even when blameless for what they’re reporting. Far from helping anything, the temper tantrum ensures that negative information is only delivered when it can no longer be hidden, hampering the ability to react in a timely and effective manner. A vicious circle builds up where delay, spin, and outright deception replace candor.

Delusional, drug-addled dictators can be expected to operate in this manner (thank heavens). The rest of us should aim for better.

It can be inconvenient to have to deal with crises; it’s more inconvenient to find out about them when the situation is unsalvageable. Maturity, humility, and perspective can be difficult character traits to develop, but not as difficult as finding yourself under siege from a world of enemies with only the pathetic dregs of your minions for company.

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 407

This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 407, features Tom’s essay on Test Driven Development, Kim Pries on what makes software “good”, Steve Tendon on TameFlow, and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Learning to Deal with the Inevitable”.

Change is inevitable, dealing with it effectively is not. It takes learn, a cohesive whole-enterprise culture of intentional, effective sense-making and decision-making (learning) to make effective moves in a dynamic world.

You can find all my SPaMCast episodes using under the SPAMCast Appearances category on this blog. Enjoy!

Skating to Where the Puck Will Be

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

Wayne Gretzky

 

Business people have a thing for sports metaphors, and this one in particular is a favorite. So much so, that Jason Kirby in “Why businesspeople won’t stop using that Gretzky quote” observed:

Its popularity has much to do with the ego of businesspeople who think they’re the Gretzkys of their industry. But, more than that, it appeals, in a way no other sports cliché does, to the current obsession with that other insidious buzzword, innovation. Get ahead of the competition by figuring out what the market will look like five years from now, says the management consultant to the client, while handing him a substantial bill. It’s that simple.

Of course, it’s not. Gretzky’s uncanny ability to read plays has never been matched. The hockey world has yet to produce another player capable of coming close to matching his record. Which makes the adoption of his quote by businesspeople all the more empty and galling. Warren Buffett can get away with it. Maybe Steve Jobs. But that’s it.

Do you have to be a Gretzky, or a Buffett, or a Jobs in order to get it right?

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.

Niels Bohr

 

Nonetheless, difficult is not the same as impossible. Likewise, the future can be a very big target. Hitting the bits far down the road will be much more difficult than those closer in.

Greger Wikstrand and I have been discussing that “insidious buzzword”, innovation, for more than six months now. This post is the 23^rd in the series.

Given the pace of change, “insidious buzzword” seems a bit dismissive. Someone born in 1903 when the Wright brothers first flew what was essentially a motorized kite might just be retiring in 1969 when the Concorde first flew. Almost an entire Radio Shack ad from 25 years ago is now available in the form of a cell phone (for a lot less money as well). Doubtless, some people misuse the term. The phenomenon, however, is very real.

So let’s return to the question of ability to anticipate change. Do you have to be a Gretzky, or a Buffett, or a Jobs in order to get it right? I think that’s a facile opinion, the Great Man theory applied to technology and business.

Greger’s last post, “Inevitable change”, contains part of the reason why I think it’s intellectually lazy to think that innovation is the province of the superstar:

Most changes in evolution are small. They are not big morphological changes. They are small physiological and immunological changes. The ability to resist new disease and the ability to consume new food is much more important than the (seemingly) bigger changes.

In his post, Greger talks about punctuated equilibrium versus phyletic gradualism, sudden radical change versus constant small incremental changes over time. In my opinion, it’s a combination. Species (and organizations) can reach a point where they are no longer fit for the ecosystem they inhabit. They reach that point, however, by degrees.

Likewise, Gretzky skated to where the puck would be, not in one leap, but step by step. Iterative sense-making and decision-making is, in my opinion, far more likely to lead to long-term consistent success than superhuman leaps of intuition. Rather than requiring just the right move at just the right time, what’s needed is awareness and adaptation. Constant, intentional learning is required to ward off the inertia that can be so deadly in an ever-changing environment.

Innovation is a matter of making changes to remain relevant/fit as the environment around you changes. Sometimes those changes may be sudden, but even gradual change can seem sudden to those standing still.

The straw that broke the camel’s back didn’t weigh any more than those that didn’t. It just happened to be one too many. That means there were lots of opportunities to move right up until there weren’t any more.

[Wayne Gretzky photo by Håkan Dahlström via Wikimedia Commons]

Learning to Deal with the Inevitable

 

My last post, “Barriers to Innovation”, began with a question. Is innovation inevitable? By the end of the post, that question had changed. Is innovation inevitable for your organization? Tom Cagley left a comment suggesting another change:

Think about changing the question again. “Is innovation inevitable?” might be better stated as “Is change inevitable?” The answer to the latter question is yes but no to the former. Change and innovation do not have the same thing.

Tom’s comment was, of course, right on the money. Change is inevitable and while all innovation is change, not all change is innovation. Scott Berkun’s definition of innovation is still my favorite:

If you must use the word, here is the best definition: Innovation is significant positive change. It’s a result. It’s an outcome. It’s something you work towards achieving on a project. If you are successful at solving important problems, peers you respect will call your work innovative and you an innovator. Let them choose the word.

Change, however, is not guaranteed to be either significant or positive. It will, however, be. It may be unwanted, it may be denied, but it not will be avoided. Organizations, like organisms, demonstrate their fitness for purpose via adapting to change. Organizations, like organisms, die when their ecosystems change around them and they fail to follow suit. Research in Motion, who quickly went from leader to laggard in the mobile communication space provides a graphic example of this.

Back in March, I noted that I find myself increasingly drawn to exploring the fractal nature of systems, both software and social, and their ecosystems. Understanding the social systems that make up the ecosystem of a software system is, in my opinion, key to getting and keeping the best possible fitness for purpose. Technology cannot help an organization when its structure and processes are working at cross purposes. Chasing these fractals to their logical end, we move from within the bounds of the organization out into its ecosystem. This is the level that Tom Graves refers to as the whole-enterprise, the “bold endeavour”.

This chasing of the fractals to form a mental model of the environment in which you’re operating is also known as situational awareness. Situational awareness is critical to effective sense-making which is critical to effective decision-making. Just as a body of troops with poor situational awareness risks walking into an ambush, an organization with poor situational awareness risks similarly unpleasant surprises (at least figuratively).

To be effective, the sense-making/decision-making process should be a ongoing process. Likewise, it is a process that should span the levels of concern, tactical through strategic, that make up the whole-enterprise architecture. To be effective, the process should yield action, adapting the organization to the changing context, not just insights into the divergence between the organization and its ecosystem. To be effective, you need to be intentional or lucky (and you can only control one of these).

My views regarding this are based on my own experience and what I’ve synthesized over the years from a variety of sources. I was pleased to get some affirmation recently while attending an event where Professor Edward Hess of the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business discussed his book, Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization. His premise was effective learning, something that humans can be really bad at, is key to organizational effectiveness. This view obviously resonates with me (which carries a hint of irony given that he talks about confirmation bias as something that inhibits effective learning – you’ll have to trust me that that’s not the case here).

Because of time constraints, Professor Hess’ talk did not go into the same depth as his book (which I’ve since read and will be referring to in upcoming posts), but some of the key points relevant here were:

• a learning culture is useful regardless of whether the goal is efficiency or innovation
• a learning culture is created intentionally
• candor, facing the “brutal facts” is essential to a learning culture
• permission to fail and psychological safety does not equate to lack of standards/control, a learning culture takes risk tolerance into account

His most important point is that while it is in our nature to be “suboptimal learners” who let ego and fear get in our way, we can learn to be better learners, both individually and as a group. Diversity, by virtue of bringing multiple mental models to the table, can diminish cognitive blindness (Gooch’s Paradox – “things not only have to be seen to be believed, but also believed to be seen”). By understanding that we are not rational thinkers, we can take measures to avoid the pitfalls of fast thinking.

In a changing world, sitting still can be deadly. Motion, however, provides little benefit if it’s not purposeful and intelligent. A cohesive whole-enterprise with a culture of intentional, effective sense-making and decision-making (learning) is well placed to make better moves in a dynamic world.