In Sweden there’s a radio show on each summer, everyday. It has the creative name “Summer”. It has been playing every summer since the 50-ies and is a Swedish institution. The concept is each: invite Swedes that have done interesting stuff last year or so and let them talk about their life during 1,5 hours, mixed with music of their choice.
This year I've only caught a few of them, and the one I'll tell you
about now I only heard 5 minutes of. The program was hosted by the
former manager and coach of the Swedish National team in soccer -
Lars Lagerbäck. He has had a great career as a coach
but always been very shy and in the background, so you don't know much
about his leadership style. Obviously he did something good since the
team has done well during the last years.
It was really just a single quote that stuck in my mind and got me
thinking about our industry. On his leadership style he said:
> "I've always strived to have a few rules as possible and instead have
> guiding stars for how to do and behave. With rules comes consequences
> and I think that's really painful to handle."
In this post I'll examine that a bit closer and see if that mentality
has room in our industry.
Mr Lagerbäck has a great point here in my
opinion. If you lead with rules and regulations you must have some sort
of consequence of not following those rules, otherwise the rules have no
meaning. Mr Lagerbäck mentioned that in his radio program recalling an
episode from a 2006 training camp:
| |
|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
| 
|
| From <http://www.aftonbladet.se> |
> One of the few rules that the Swedish National team have is that you
> should be on the hotel 2300 the day before a game. A reasonable rule,
> I think. However in 2006 three of the biggest stars of the team
> (Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Olof Mellberg and Christian Wilhelmsson) went out
> later than that.
> A rule was broken and now the consequences had to be met. There was
> not much to talk about really since the rule was clear: the three
> players were sent home. One of the hardest decisions in Lars
> Lagerbäck's career.
What if this had not been a rule, but rather a guiding star like: "in
order to be in best possible shape for the games we play we strive to be
in bed at a reasonable hour the day before the game." The player would
still have gone out and that would have been bad, but the discussions
that followed would have been much more easier to hold, interesting and
most important consequences was not on the table.
- "Do you think coming home 0130 the day before a game is reasonable?"
- "Why is this bad?"
- "What can we do differently to make sure that we understand this
guiding star better?"
- "How do you feel that you supported the team in this situation?"
There could still be consequences of course but that would then come out
of a discussion with the players, maybe even as suggestions from them.
### Software development
I've never in my life written this much, or even thought this much,
about soccer before. Let's get back to software development. What are
the rules in our business? How can we apply this thinking in the
software development process?
| |
|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
| 
|
| From http://nrglogicblog.com |
The first thing I came to think about is estimates and predictions and
how we hold people accountable for these.
> "Do you COMMIT to these estimates?"
I've even heard about teams doing a quick estimate ("with what we know
now and the 3 hours we put in estimating this, we think it'll take us
3-6 months") having their estimate (3 months of course) put into the
company wide plan and even changed on a slide that they were
presenting!
Dan North says it
best:
> "We would rather be wrong than uncertain"
So what if that poor team had to COMMIT to that plan? Here I use the
word commit in the worst possible, but still most widely used, sense;
> "commit to these estimate by writing your names here on the dotted
> line."
That kind of commit has an implied consequence connected to it. You
could almost here the "or else" in that last sentence, right? There's
has to be an or else when you require people to COMMIT to their
estimates. People will be yelled at, someone might get demoted, we need
to tell them to get their act together if they fail and in worst case,
in repeated offenses someone can get fired.
Just for reference, there's another kind of commit as well (see, not ALL
CAPS). This is the type of commitment you get from a team that is
involved and engaged in the product. The sad (?) news is that this
cannot be pushed on someone. You cannot scare a team into being
committed - no matter what you say after your "or else". It's something
that grows out of happiness, responsibility and autonomy.
Now
where have I heard that before. Commitment comes with motivation.
Now think that we took another approach. Something a little more like a
guiding star, for example:
> "these are our goals and we will work to the best of our ability to
> reach them during the next 6 months. After that period of time we will
> evaluate and see where we are."
Sure, we don't know where we would end up, but are we really more
certain of that when we require COMMIT's? The approach with the guiding
star is also showing a lot of trust in the people that will do the
thing. And acknowledge the fact that we really don't know what is the
best approach.
Also; we know exactly how much it will cost to run this team of 4 people
under 6 months (4 ppl *6 months* monthly salary). Now - how do we
want to spend that money? What is the best way of investing in this team
so that we get closer to our goal?
These are much nicer questions to ask than to have to handle the
consequences of failing our deadlines and plans.
### Summary
| |
|:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
| 
|
| From <http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yoda> |
Estimates are still a big thing in many organizations that I visit.
There are people working with organizing the people that are doing the
estimation in some cases. We then require one part of the organization
to COMMIT to the estimates ... or else!
These are rules that we impose on each other. With rules comes
consequences. With consequences comes suffering.
Since we are imposing the rules we can also stop using them and start
relying on each other and work from goals and guiding stars instead.
Finally; have any customer ever phoned you up and thanked you for those
detailed plans? No, because they don't care about plans. They care about
features in your software, or great service, or fast handling of their
case or ... Never plans and estimates.
Thank you Andreas for you input on this article.