Episode 18: Idea Development through Error Correction
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Transcript
[00:00:10] Blue: Welcome to the theory of anything podcast. We’re here again. I’ve got cameo and Bart with me. Hi guys. How’s it going?
[00:00:18] Red: Hi Bruce.
[00:00:19] Blue: I love Bruce doing great. All right, so we’ve been talking about trying to well mostly radical canter but application of Critical rationalism or poppers theories to business. So Bart is this is what he does for a living he is a consultant that goes around helping people understand how to apply These sorts of theories to actual management practice. So today in today’s episode We’re going to have Bart talk about his own theories, which are somewhat different than radical candors and How he goes about trying to apply? Critical rationalism and some other ideas to it’s not just critical rationalism, but various ideas to how do you get to the Best ideas in management and how do you apply that into a business setting? So Bart, why don’t you take it away?
[00:01:13] Red: Okay, cool. Thank you, Bruce. Please interrupt me for questions or challenges. I’d be happy to have some interaction on this, of course But before I start or by starting I would like to introduce a central concept that we use often throughout our philosophy Approach and methodology and that is what we call an organization’s problem -solving capacity and that is a definition For a capacity of an organization to solve problems in a particular way and it’s a particular way in three senses it’s The combination of what I call the width of the portfolio of problems that an organization addresses So you can have Organizations that are capable of only Addressing very narrow portfolio of problems and you can have organizations that can address tackle and try to solve a very broad Portfolio of problems. That’s the first dimension of this problem -solving capacity I call it the width of the portfolio of problems being addressed The second one is the quality of the solutions that the organization comes up comes up with And then the third dimension of this problem -solving capacity is the degree of cooperation with which those solutions are developed And so
[00:02:41] Blue: About that.
[00:02:42] Red: Yes.
[00:02:43] Blue: So on those three points Are you saying like the width of the portfolio? So that makes sense. How many projects can you do simultaneously? That’s clearly a matter of capacity But then it looks like you’re saying maybe that there’s a trade -off with quality So you could do more projects with lower quality or you could do fewer projects with higher quality Is that like what the first two points are getting at?
[00:03:05] Red: Yes. Yes They can they can be there can be a trade -off between both and and you cannot optimize all three of them at the same time with the Same resources indefinitely. That’s that’s certainly so
[00:03:17] Blue: Okay, so this is kind of what people call the project management triangle but applied to problem -solving capacity So you’ve got the bandwidth You’ve got the quality and then the degree of cooperation would be like the resources So it’s like a slightly different take on the project the project management triangle Are you familiar with the project management kind of triangle? Do you know what I’m talking about or no?
[00:03:42] Red: No, not particularly.
[00:03:44] Blue: Okay Cam, you probably know what I’m talking about, right?
[00:03:47] Green: I do but I you know, honestly The further you get away from my core PMI body of knowledge around project management that is a little less of a kind of bond Concept that is regularly talked
[00:04:04] Blue: about so, you know what I’m not even sure I like the concept that much But let me just explain it quickly so you can understand It’s the idea that for project management. You’ve got duration you’ve got cost and you’ve got Quality which different people to find quality different ways and so when you’re doing a project You could like add people to the project and it’s gonna cost more, you know Or you could reduce people from the project and it will take longer, you know Or you could like cut corners have a buggy or release or have fewer Features those are both forms of quality and that will reduce cost and duration So you end up with a sort of trade -off between the three Sides of the project management triangle, but you can’t get all three you usually end up optimizing for two out of three
[00:04:54] Red: Yeah, so that’s that’s similar that’s in maybe in the project management area It’s a little bit more focused on formal projects for me Any any problem can be a project and it doesn’t need to be a formally resourced Project with a with a dedicated team dedicated steering committee I extend the definition of problems to Anything that can be improved anything that needs to be understood in order to improve And it has it doesn’t have to be a formal project with a formal resourcing and an organization and steering committee and all those kinds of formal things but Apart from that little difference. I guess it’s it’s very similar in the sense that you’re looking at the width the quality Degree of cooperation the third one. I don’t know really whether that is similar because for me Cooperation is also it is the extent to which the solution is being Developed by the whole team and and not like you know by the dedicated resources or the dedicated functional Responsibles and with everybody else on the team just listening in or sitting in So cooperation is also very central aspect in the methodology and you can have a very broad Portfolio of problems. They may be relatively High in quality, but they can have a very low degree of cooperation and that is a signal that
[00:06:23] Red: Future -bound there may be problems with the problem -solving capacity in the organization if for example, you know the whole project is always executed and done by only the project manager, but with very few Contributions very few ideas of other people on the team then, you know, you may still Deliver a project with it with a reasonable quality But if the degree of cooperation is not sufficiently high, then you probably are not going to reiterate That a lot in in in the future that makes sense So cooperation and the behavior of cooperation is is that’s why it’s our third third point And it’s equally as important as quality of solution and width of portfolio
[00:07:12] Green: How do you build that amount up that that cooperation within the organization around the solutions? How do you maybe I’m jumping ahead in your in your slides, but that’s really interesting to me I’d love to know how you how you start to get a Organization on on that path.
[00:07:31] Red: Yeah, and that that’s indeed this. That’s a very relevant question. It’s key For us cooperation is basically the enrichment of an idea of an individual by the team And so this is a content definition if you want of cooperation Let me first explain other definitions of cooperation and they all go into More personal aspects and more behavioral aspects, but they don’t look at the solution and how a solution is being developed So classically we talk about cooperation in the sense of, you know, having trust in each other All aligning around a certain solution Believing that the solution will work being being nice and friendly and and and good for each other all those kinds of personal aspects Impactify cooperation has a link with the knowledge or the ideas or the solutions that are being developed so it’s a It’s a process where Anyone can have an idea to start an idea that solves the problem at hand or the That solves the problem that the team is being asked to solve and then cooperation is basically the action or the process where the others on the team Enhance Enrich the idea of the individual who came up with the first idea in the Popperian Epistemology terminology, we would call it error correction, but and it’s essentially that so we allow Anybody on a team to have a single ID?
[00:09:14] Red: That’s that is a start to solving a problem Then that person becomes the ID owner and the ID owner Actively or proactively goes out in the team to seek for error correction on his or her ID Improvements additions to the ID in order to make the ID better Make sure that the ID solves the problem in a more optimum way and that process is cooperation so cooperation is actively Building a solution that is better than if you were only just dividing the work and cutting up the entire Solution everybody does its part and at the end we’re throwing everything together And that is our final solution, but more often than not we we often realize that if we throw everything together that there are inconsistencies or that people have done things twice or Things that that just don’t match with each other and in factify It’s the other way around Anyone can start with an ID on the team so it doesn’t depend on your function title whether you can have an ID About a specific problem or not But once there is an ID from anyone on the team that ID should be actively error corrected for Enhanced enriched by the other people on the team and also in a transparent way So we make the initial ID transparent We make transparent how people Contribute to improving the ID so we also make transparent the evolution of the ID up until its final implementation and realization and To get to that point cooperation is really the strengthening The process of strengthening a single ID of a single individual by Contributions of the rest of the people on the team And so the the knowledge is growing the solution is changing Whereas and that is that is crucial impact if I were as in other more different definitions of corporations We often regard the solution as fixed that’s what we have to live with and then we try to get along with each other and then build confidence and Try to develop trust, but the fundamental difference with pac -tify is that that we believe that trust and and confidence in each other Is is and team spirit is built by shaping the solution by improving a solution by error correcting a solution in a process that Is is taking place in a team around the problem.
[00:11:50] Green: How do you and you talked about increasing transparency? How do you go about doing that?
[00:11:56] Red: Yeah, so we very concretely we have a software to do that a very specific software where Obviously the problem that is being given to a team is made transparent. Everybody is on the single platform on on on the software Any ID owner who can stand up in the team and and say I have an ID I want to work out this ID makes his or her ID also Transparent and then there is again a Transparent and a transparency on the evolution of that ID so people will add to the ID people will suggest Other components of the ID Basically the ID is always you know the the collection of What is going to cause the implementation or cause the problem to be solved and so you’re making plans approaches You’re you’re what while executing you’re going through Stages of progress and all those things are made transparent Including who basically improved the ID or who added to the ID and So it is it is in essence. It’s it’s like like any project management software But there is an additional piece of transparency on Who had the ID in the first place and what the evolution of the ID was and by whom basically?
[00:13:22] Green: So, how do you deal with conflict? You know if you have this this problem to be addressed and you have two people who have Very different ideas of how it should be addressed. How how does that manifest?
[00:13:37] Red: Yeah, so The concept of the ID owner that we that that I introduced is is basically basically also a choice to go for Correcting one ID and improving it and ending up with probably and hopefully a better one So what we typically don’t do is let two IDs fight Because when you let two confronting conflicting IDs fight with each other Probably the camp of the ID that’s going to win is going to have somebody who has the power to decide and I’m not that kind of a believer in letting two IDs fight We introduce the concept of an ID owner to deliberately select one ID whenever Somebody stands up. It’s the first ID the first stab the first guess but then The error correction or the improvement of the ID can be very interactive can be very critical can be you know Very intense and the initial ID always ends up in another place through this criticism and through this interaction but what we kind of Do a little bit structurally to avoid chaos is that we that that we select one ID to work out one ID owner Takes his or her ID and actively seeks out criticism in order to improve the ID But we don’t set set up two camps with two conflicting IDs and let them fight, you know for for whomever Wins wins that fight because we we believe that if that fuck that fight is is fought and won It’s probably not the best ID that has won. It’s it’s probably the ID authority with somebody who has authority or or Or it could be that the the other camp just gave up because they’re bored and tired of fighting
[00:15:30] Red: So we and that’s where we intervene also as consultants But the consultants not in the classical sense But we we have a mandate to organize the process in that way And so we can protect an ID owner in his or her quest for criticism and avoid that Like a conflicting ID enters the debate you can enter your conflicts through the form of criticizing The ID that is being criticized but not, you know, just enter another one and, you know Have a head -on head -on fight of IDs those probably those often don’t lead to the best IDs in the end
[00:16:10] Blue: What if there’s like difference of opinion on how to improve a single idea? Yeah,
[00:16:16] Red: there we if that’s the case we We we have a we have a couple of options, but you always have an escalation level you can always go ask The the hierarchy above to select two IDs.
[00:16:31] Blue: Yeah, if you if the teams really says, you know We have two theories we We can’t decide which one of the two the is the is the right one then we can escalate and we can ask Somebody higher up in the organization to decide.
[00:16:47] Red: It’s not the preferred option because I Try to avoid escalation as long as possible But that is that is one way of One way of resolving it another one is to always give a little bit Priority to the ID owner. I mean in some way Um, he should get a little a little bit of a little more rights in the end if there’s really a conflict You know to pursue the original ID or his or her preference We don’t want to push that because that would be Justificationism of the knowledge of the ID owner but What you see more often than not is that once this process is up and running and the ID owner really takes care of his or her IDs And and the other people on the team really focus on this one theory this one ID and how to improve it That because this focuses on the improvement of one theory You you typically end up with a better theory and and most of the problems of conflicts always arise When you have two or or three or more theories That that people just take a stance behind Defend themselves behind those different theories and and and typically end up in a in a kind of stalemate position or a polar or depolarization and The fact that anybody on the team can be an ID owner also helps to avoid these kinds of conflicts and When there is a minimum of cooperation already the team will often
[00:18:29] Red: Refrain from conflict because we can have you know other IDs through other ID owners that can evolve as well There there’s never a shortage of IDs to be evolved And it’s it’s more often than not That you get into conflicts when you when you assume that knowledge is it’s like zero sum that you can’t grow knowledge And grow yourself out of conflict most conflicts arise because we assume that we cannot solve it Because we can’t create in better IDs or we can’t error correct anymore
[00:19:04] Blue: Um So you actually asked me a question about this on my blog I haven’t had a chance to go comment on it about the difference between having conflicting ideas that are in competition Versus trying to improve a single idea And I can really see why in a management perspective It would make sense to try to avoid the extra conflict and instead try to bake a single idea and see how good we can get this idea and use Error correction to continually improve the idea It is interesting to note though that this this does strike me as different than Poppers epistemology has applied to science where you are usually maybe even talking about um I don’t even want to say usually because I feel like science is not what people usually say it is but We often concentrate on the concept of Conflicting ideas in science where we have competing theories How do we come up with a critical test between these two theories so that we can you know refute one in favor of the other So do you see this as a difference just because of context or is How would you maybe think about that differently from the way we apply Poppers epistemology to science versus the way we’re suggesting to apply it to business
[00:20:31] Red: Yeah, okay, but now I understand your question a little bit better But the point is that it’s not different at all The id owner is basically the one responsible for seeking criticism And organizing criticism so the id in itself evolves if somebody on the team has an improvement or has a or has found an error and through a test through doing something through Putting the other or the competing ideas into into reality and seeing what the result or the progress is from it The team decides for one or the other Outcome and they can do it either by debate and discussion or it can be effectively You know Pursuing one id and then evaluating whether or not it has led to the process or the progress that was intended And so the id under an id owner is is is very much evolving Is very much being error corrected by alternative theories that Survive criticism better Because we’ve tested them because we’ve tried them or because we have just really Better arguments for it. So it’s not it’s not the case that the id owner gets away with his or her initial id at all cost That will be justificationism
[00:21:49] Blue: Yeah, no, I can see that
[00:21:50] Red: Yeah No, no, no, it’s it’s really and that’s a skill That’s a skill that that that is not often practiced But that is key for cooperation is that even if you have an id You have to actively go seek out to improve it and actively Seek out criticism seek out for alternative theories and then decide between Which one of the two is the better one to pursue? Going forward So yeah, maybe I haven’t been that that clear But it’s definitely not the case that an id owner gets away with his id We want to improve and strengthen the skill of an id owner By helping him to actively go out because we believe that if his or her id Is enriched and error corrected Then not only the id will be better in the end and the execution and the implementation and all of those things But it also builds Cooperation because you get the sense that together you have improved the id the id owner is still there with the basic id With the start of it the ignition But collectively and together you have managed to improve the id Through through the process and and so that’s that’s again linked to our definition of cooperation Is that cooperation happens in and through the evolution of IDs by You know Improving them together and error correcting them together So
[00:23:18] Blue: yeah, I can see what you’re saying. So if I can use an example from philosophy in science You go way back in time and there’s this theory of atoms that that is an ancient ancient theory and The original theory of atoms is nothing like the theory of atoms today. The original theory of atoms was this idea of these ind indivisible little parts. That’s the word atom atomic and You can’t you can’t divide them and then like The ones that you know prickle on your tongue. Those are the ones that are sharp They’re little sharp atoms. I mean like the original theory was something that came out of ancient philosophy and you can tell but there’s actually a thread Of improvements on that initial what we would kind of laugh at theory until finally you end up with modern Atoms modern science modern chemistry Which is you know good science and it was really just a matter of centuries of improvements of an original idea Until finally the original idea Is in some ways lost. It’s almost hard to recognize Where we’re at today Compared to where we started even though that was the impetus for the entire Line of thought that took place that got us to modern science Yeah,
[00:24:37] Red: yeah, and that and that’s really good because that’s a sign of knowledge growth Which which is also the intention or the aim in in in pactify Knowledge is not a zero -sum game If we if we consider it zero sum Then we’re going to fight much more and we’re going to be much more in conflict Then if we consider that any idea Can can improve and should be improved and and preferably should be improved together in cooperation Do
[00:25:05] Blue: you know I man? I shouldn’t even go on this tangent, but I keep wondering if this could be applied to politics in some way I mean you really don’t see The idea of let’s take an idea on how to solve a problem And let’s have everybody work together to try to improve and now I do think that’s what actually ends up happening over time But it’s always everything’s treated like a political football, right? I mean everything’s treated like We got to defeat defeat this idea or we got to make this is the one right idea and there doesn’t seem to be at least not a lot of emotional attempt to Take an idea from one side and improve it to where More more people like it. Maybe even because it’s solving problems in a way that doesn’t create new problems for other people um Do you I don’t know
[00:25:56] Green: Happening by conflict in which is in it’s almost like the anti um of of what vart’s talking about here where you get ideas being Refined, but but only because they’re being treated back like football or You
[00:26:14] Red: yeah, you you would hope that the party Who is in power internally goes about business this way and and improves their their suggest Suggested policies in this way, but it’s another thing to say that the party in power versus the opposition or the other party Um will ever get to this ideally it would be it would be great But I guess for now this idea evolution Together with cooperation Hopefully it happens In the parties that have the power or among different parties that share the power um And and therefore improve the policies or the the the plant policies or you know The evaluation of the effect of policies and all those things So hopefully it happens within all the entities that have the power But I guess it’s another thing uh to require it from you know, the broader Constellation of all political parties that that basically have to come to good policies also somewhat together. Um That’s that’s maybe One step too far
[00:27:26] Blue: Well, and I think this does go on like when something comes to congress They have to take each law and they have to adapt it based on what the other party thinks also to get the necessary votes But kind of the famous case is like pork, right where to get it passed We we you know to get a law enforcement law passed We we add something about building bridges to that’s going to satisfy some senator’s Constituents or something in which case it seems like we’re definitely not talking about improvements of ideas Maybe ideas are improved in congress way more than we hear like if things are really going well We probably don’t hear about it. It’s probably only the cases where it didn’t it You know went off the rails that it makes it into the news media and that we hear about it Um, so there’s probably a lot more. I mean the system works fairly well So clearly there is a paparian epistemology improvement of ideas that is going on with politics But it just it’s hard to see it as a layman, right?
[00:28:26] Red: So And sometimes you need a facilitator and that that’s that’s our role in in business But the role doesn’t exist in politics But the facilitation of of this is is important because as I I said before It’s very hard to improve an idea without avoiding chaos and conflict with multiple other ideas Um at any level, uh, if if if it’s already clear at the higher level Then then the conflict will come at the lower level of of problem solving But at any of those levels it requires a little bit of Let’s say structure to avoid that, you know Anybody comes with any conflicting theory at any at any time and doesn’t respect this kind of principle of error correction Focus on one or focus on improving one idea Really focusing on the question. Why are we going to do it this way and not that way? So competing Or asking the question why this theory of progress is better than the other one and really adopt that kind of thinking And and be rational about it as opposed to You know having or taking any opportunity to counter To counter any dynamic with a with a you know with any particular conflicting idea And and that is something where in the beginning you have to intervene a lot you have to As a facilitator you don’t bring ideas. You don’t bring the solution but you help the team to Adopt this this kind of reasoning and sometimes you have to protect the idea owner for being attacked with with too many too personal comments or conflicting theories that that are not brought in in in under the form of a criticism to the to the theory or the idea that we were discussing
[00:30:19] Red: And facilitation is key in that because this doesn’t self -organize This way of thinking it eventually it they get better and better in it and they get the concept that whenever there’s a new problem they go into this kind of Yeah, we call it rumination This is the phase where that we’re brainstorming and ids are exchanged up until the moment that one id and one id owner stands up And then we go into this id improvement cycle So there’s there’s a couple of things that that look like a process and that need to be learned and to learn and respect that There is a fast. There is a facilitator in the beginning But his role can can gradually Can gradually fade out but in the beginning to avoid chaos to avoid Polarization too quickly to avoid non -argumentation or bad criticism That you need somebody in between To to get this to get this way of thinking up and running Without intervening without intervening on the content site is so I used to be a classical consultant Giving all the answers now. I’m a facilitator asking all the questions But through those questions you can you can start up this process and people get the hang of it They know they know when they’re an id owner what to do and they know when they are on the team You know how to give constructive criticism Propose alternatives and respect in that way the error correction process
[00:31:53] Green: I I’d love to know a little bit more like how you introduce this to a new team And how you that how you do that facilitation process because this is so much different than What a management consultant might normally do
[00:32:07] Red: Yeah, one of the key aspects is what what we call staying in the question That means basically asking the right questions for the So so in order to trigger the problem solving on the other side On on on the on the side of the people on the team And indeed my classical role for 15 years was giving the answers Um any problem that came or any new problem situation Um, we immediately jumped into our pens and and written or started writing Uh slides with answers answers answers Really, you know rationally and structure Well structured, but now now i’m doing now i’m doing the reverse of that So i’m asking only questions in a team and in the beginning I explain a little bit Some basic concepts of what is an id owner and what should an id owner do and what is good criticism A little bit the things we discussed in in in the other episode on how to make an id better without getting personal Or getting um off topic Or or really annoying annoying somebody who is having an id uh purpose purposefully annoying Him and you can achieve that learning or that that gradual adoption of that Print or of those principles by asking questions.
[00:33:34] Red: You don’t have to reiterate theory or give models Certainly not give answers, but really give question ask questions Ask questions not only for the id owner to sharpen His or her id but also to try to seek for good criticism in In the team and all of those things come when you ask questions Not when you give answers because when you give your own answers you get opposition you get Either they didn’t understand it or they give they give you hard time or they Or they or they are against what you’re saying But asking a question really opens up id generation knowledge creation At the side of of the person you’re asking the the question to and that that’s really the key
[00:34:23] Blue: When we talk about the degree of cooperation, which is kind of what led to this aside that we’re discussing I I One of the things that bark keeps emphasizing is is ownership, right that by Working on an idea together and improving a single idea That we get people buying into This idea and it becomes their idea and they own it So Cami, I don’t know if you remember this, but you and I had had a conversation about the fact That in my experience a really good project manager can ruin your project And it’s it’s a tough situation Because a competent project manager that really knows their p.m.p They will almost invariably Cause other people to stop thinking and to stop owning the project Yes,
[00:35:10] Green: I remember that conversation
[00:35:11] Blue: And it’s it’s because they do a really good job with it. And so but then that’s exactly what you don’t want Is you don’t want the team Not owning the project and everyone goes to the project manager and the project You know The team says i’m going to be late on this and they know it’s the project manager is going to come with some way to deal With that problem right and they instead of them dealing with the problem um So I I can see a lot of this here Where I think traditional project management Is exactly the same problem that bart is describing Where they come in with answers and people love it people love traditional project managers management loves traditional project managers I maybe don’t have as good a reputation for team members necessarily or maybe for the customer But like the person who’s the one that’s over the project manager. They love the fact that there’s some competent person Who’s making sure that certain things happen and driving the team and they really like that And yet it’s it’s actually an unhealthy thing in lots and lots of different cases It may be a step up compared to complete chaos but um It’s it’s a step down compared to the the ideals of a self -managed team Where the team owns their own problems and their own solutions
[00:36:30] Red: I prefer not to have I I prefer not to have that role on the team Even why would you have to have the role if you have good people with with with good knowledge of various Domains that are all related to the problem. Why would you want to designate one of those as being the project manager? I prefer that anyone on that team can become an id owner On any part of the problem that needs to be solved and the more id owners The the better because the id ownership then is is being distributed um And and everybody helps everybody else on their id’s and on the evolution and then and the improvement of the id’s But I do not necessarily need someone of that team to be the designated formal project manager As a role because then he will suck all of the attention and all of the final communication and the reporting and the justification of of of where things stand Whereas That’s all of those things should be distributed much more
[00:37:35] Green: I love that and I love I like that comparison to uh bruce because that’s Long been something you and I have kind of had this idea around Well, you and I have just had this conversation. I think even more than once and how How do you ultimately sense project management at the even in in the world where agile is um esteemed? There is still generally from The executive level the desire to have somebody like a a traditional project manager Who’s quote -unquote responsible for the outcomes? um, and it’s you know, it’s an interesting question of how do you Short of having mark come over and run training with all of us. Um, how do how do you how do you? transition Into that that new mindset of not having a really good person who’s responsible for the team’s outcomes Yeah, yeah,
[00:38:31] Blue: this has been great asides and and I think these are things that cameo and I have both wanted to ask bark for a while so
[00:38:38] Red: yeah yeah, so At the end i’m writing that this concept of problem solving capacity is a bit of an abstract concept You cannot really measure it. You cannot have any quantitative measure for it At least I would know how to do it if you look at the collectivity of an organization because there are so many people so many problems um, and and to try to measure the problem solving capacity would would would would be Um would be not a very smart thing to aspire to but the concept is important for for for something else it It it it leads you into our approach and into all of those Aspects of id evolution and an id ownership And I conjecture or we conjecture that is that there is finally no better concept to try to get right for the ceo Then this problem solving capacity. I think it’s that is what he or she should lie Awake about because if you get that right if you can address a maximum of problems if you have high quality solutions And on top of that they are developed with cooperation I don’t think you have to aspire anything else. And so my conjecture is that um For sustainable performance as well as engagement of people. Let’s say the two Most fundamental holy grail type of Outcomes that that an organization needs to achieve That it’s the problem solving capacity that that that should be increased And so that’s that’s why I think it’s it’s important and it leads us into our concrete approach for problem solving
[00:40:23] Red: So so I I conjecture that if you solve problems and you solve them in cooperation with autonomy Of people in the team Regardless of their functional responsibility Then all that taken together Is is both going or is going to simultaneously drive performance as well as engagement And if there’s anything that you know a ceo should lie awake About at night, then it’s those two things It’s a it is performance in the end productivity Whatever you want to measure it By and engagement of people And I and I conjecture that These two things simultaneously increase when the problem solving capacity As defined above is increasing
[00:41:10] Blue: By the way, I really like that the idea the classical idea of who should do what that that really is How we typically think of managing organizations But that’s an interesting point
[00:41:21] Red: Yeah Yeah, the who should do what is is is in our approach much less Important than you know, how our problem solved and how are people contributing to those solutions As opposed to are we sure that the right person has said the right thing or has Contributed the right thing according to his or her formal authority or responsibility
[00:41:46] Green: Yep
[00:41:47] Red: But it’s true as cameo said it it is a change in the beginning It’s not a beauty contest and that’s also why you need facilitation and especially when the culture has been very different up to the moment you want to start to change the culture And also in the beginning you better do this not Throughout the whole organization on any problem with everybody altogether immediately So you have to pick four interesting problems and and and select Relevant teams to try to do this and to to to jump start this And then later on you can and you can extend to other problems with other teams and you can grow this We call this our approach being sizable and scalable And so this is an evolutionary approach you You can start with four people on one problem tomorrow And in three or six months you can do this with 10 with 10 teams And you better do it this way because you’re going to learn in the beginning a lot of How this works and and and how this can be steered and and whether you’re going too fast or too slow Or whether people really find it still very Terrifying to to to be able to give ideas in some company cultures You spend three months convincing teams that it’s okay to have an idea even if that piece of idea doesn’t Fall under your formal responsibility And and and so that may take three months Even to get to the first idea With the first idea owner, but then you can pick up speed and and you can evolve things gradually but In the beginning it’s it’s it’s like any change and especially cultural Change it’s it’s a bit weird.
[00:43:42] Red: It’s a bit strange and and and you cannot force things you cannot Try to do it in in in a revolutionary sense. I don’t believe in that I believe in an evolutionary sense And so that’s why we typically start small we we start with a couple of teams or maybe even only one team But we get the we get the team going and and eventually they don’t let go of this way of working and that’s I mean that’s that’s Then it’s being replicated in in other teams and and and on other problems. So But for sure the beginning is like any major change Interesting
[00:44:21] Blue: that’s awesome. That makes sense
[00:44:23] Red: Knowledge ideally starts from a good problem to solve. So we try to avoid Getting knowledge to solve problems in companies from authorities Or from reapplying existing knowledge Or from observations that we generalize into knowledge and that we deem applicable for any future problem Knowledge needs to grow It’s not a zero sum game as I said. So there is no For any problem you’re encountering next week on monday There is no there is no knowledge in in any kind of drawer that we just have to open and and just throw at the problem And assume that it will be solved and and why would we do it is even the more relevant question if people If people can can generate ideas and if people can solve problems Why would we revert to old knowledge existing knowledge? The kind of attitude. Yeah, we know that problem. We’ve solved that Six months ago. Here is the manual Please execute those kinds of things. I I’m a little bit Wary off and and we try to avoid it. We always try to start from a good problem Something that doesn’t work something that can be improved It can be something on the customer side. It can be something on, you know, the The production side on the supply side on any combination of those things And you just gather the right People together with the knowledge and you give them The mandate to solve a problem and you describe the problem You can even describe your expectations. So it doesn’t need to be Entirely open or entirely free what the solution Will be but the point is that you give a problem with a minimum of degrees of freedom for the solution so that people can
[00:46:18] Red: Use their autonomy to come up with good solutions and the worst thing is that That you already give the answer because that’s an argument of of knowledge coming from authority And that’s the assumption that the problem is already solved before you start tackling it And that’s something that you know, I’m not Keen on doing and that’s not at all in our approach and methodology. So we mandate problems and We refrain from Uh giving too many answers. Um, and then simply saying please execute the answer That’s something that we don’t Encourage or incorporate at least in our In our methodology. You wanted to say
[00:47:04] Blue: yeah, I was going to say I I do think there is such a thing as an off -the -shelf solution But I suspect that you would have a hard time perceiving those as problems to begin with so The the solution to how do you efficiently type stuff is you get Microsoft word, right? It’s an off -the -shelf piece of software But probably most people don’t even perceive that as a business problem anymore Precisely because there is an off -the -shelf solution. So you don’t perceive it as a problem. You just go my buy Microsoft word I think that in general When the problems that you’re working on as an organization, they must almost by definition be Unique problems that have never the world has never seen before That are that that organization must solve for itself and that there won’t be A pre built solution for it. You even if there is a supposed pre built solution It will have to be adapted in some way, which is the same as problem solving.
[00:48:05] Red: Exactly Exactly. Exactly. That’s that’s key because Again an id owner he can perfectly in the first version of his id he can say Let’s take this known methodology. For example lean or agile or or or yeah software a a particular software That can be that can be part of his or her first id But it will always be with a specific adaption to the context of the new problem And so this adaption is already knowledge creation. It’s already something extra And my conjecture also is that I think that every problem in an organization is somewhat new And and always needs somewhat of an adaption and it’s fine to reapply as part of your id some existing knowledge because You know, there is a procedure for something or a process or a tool or a system That helps you in particular parts of solving the problem and you can reapply it you can you can Recycle it but the adaptation to the specific problem is always a piece that Is some extra knowledge that the id owner will have to create and And will probably also always make the difference in the end.
[00:49:22] Blue: Yeah, that makes sense
[00:49:24] Red: Yeah
[00:49:25] Blue: Um, this this like cameo. I’m sure you’ve done numerous Quote off the shelf projects before Can you recall any of them being anything but a giant customized project?
[00:49:37] Green: Yeah, I think I think every as much as we like the concept of Consistency of problems and being able to utilize all of the experience from the past problem To be able to solve the the new problem. They are unique. Um, but I think your other slide Bart also Talked about the the width of knowledge Um And and I think while you can’t Solve a new problem with the old knowledge, you know, like you talk about here It does Kind of stimulate the ability to have more starting points to to kind of jump off from
[00:50:19] Red: Yeah
[00:50:21] Blue: We’re never really we’re never really trying to Reinvent the wheel from scratch We’re always starting with our existing knowledge in the background And then that is a that is a something Karl Popper always talked about And you know, that was one of the reasons why he was so strongly in favor of um evolutionary Politics where we improve things a little at a time rather than trying to go for a utopia Was precisely because there is so much knowledge in the existing background knowledge Sometimes we don’t even realize what it is, right? It’s stuff that has survived because it works and we may not even have an explanation as to why it works Um, you know our institutions and our traditions and things like that. So I I you’re always starting with Existing knowledge. There’s always a giant injection of existing knowledge into all problems that you solve But I think the point that Bart’s really getting at here is there’s really no such thing as A peer off the shelf solution if there was a peer off the shelf solution You would probably not even perceive it as a problem to begin with So if you’re talking about problems for your organization, it is almost by definition Something unique to you that will have to be adapted
[00:51:37] Red: Yeah And then the interesting question is because I fully agree But then the interesting question is adapting existing knowledge or if you prefer our language error correcting Existing knowledge to be suited to the problem That’s obviously then the point and and and there can be different qualities of error correction because some teams They can go on error correcting endlessly and not realize anything and only consume time And not have any sense of progress So It’s it’s error correction is crucial and vital it and it’s also an attribute of cooperation as we discussed But the quality of error correction also needs to improve You basically want an organization that cannot only error correct, but can error correct qualitatively And within a certain amount of resources because also you don’t have endless amounts of time And endless amounts of resources to ever adapt and ever improve an id So there is a balance between you know the amount of error correction that a team can can deliver in a certain amount of time Versus, you know a minimum level of adaption or adaptation of that Initial knowledge that needs to be Incorporated And and so good teams are teams that are very good in error correcting Initial IDs within a given time frame and a given resource spent
[00:53:09] Blue: Um, so in software we actually have a term called analysis paralysis Which is the idea that You can Be error correcting your ideas basically forever, right and never get anything actually done One of the things that came out of the agile software movement That’s now getting adapted into outside of software into agile management and things like that is the idea of Getting some the idea of a sprint the idea of getting something out getting something into production Getting getting it into the real world where you you start to gain value from it rather than Trying to improve it forever Where you get no value for it and if it’s entirely possible that once it meets the real world You’ll find out you’ve been working on the wrong problem the whole time.
[00:54:00] Red: Yeah Yeah, and and sprints are are a nice example of better error correction But the point that is sometimes missing in sprints is that It’s not because you’re doing stuff with shorter iterations that you’re doing optimum error correction You also need to develop always an explanation for why you’re changing the sprint and why you’re withholding particular Features in the sprint and why you didn’t withhold other ones or you’re changing them. So It’s good in the sense that it’s Frequent feedback and short iterations But you also need an explanation for why you go from the one sprint to the other one and then from the other to the next one And and when and when that explanation improves then you are on to you know One of the better levels of error correction. Yeah, but it’s never it’s never a guarantee They actually have something called sprint themes, which is the idea that you shouldn’t just be Splitting up your work into two -week periods or something that that’s not that useful But instead you’re actually have something you’re trying to deliver or accomplish With that sprint Based on some idea it’s it.
[00:55:16] Blue: I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called an explanation like you just said But if that would make sense Agile didn’t come out of paparian epistemology just happens to match up with it nicely So they have their own vocabulary for things, but that’s really what it is There’s there’s an explanation for what is it we’re doing Why is it we’re doing this sprint? What’s that explanation? That’s really what a sprint theme is.
[00:55:39] Red: Yeah
[00:55:41] Green: although I don’t know how commonly sprint things are used and even you know in in A lot of really common agile kind of groups It’s not something that you hear talked about a whole lot. It would be a good like a Trick interview question and for somebody who claimed to be super agilely to ask them to define What themes are and and how they drive outcomes?
[00:56:09] Red: Yeah,
[00:56:10] Blue: yeah, you’re right, you know what when we talk about agile, of course, it’s always somewhat idealized It’s rare you get I mean the vast majority of implementations of agile are kind of 50 percent agile and 50 percent, you know traditional Software management and I mean like we’ve even got statistics that like 70 percent of agile implementations are hybrids I got that from one of my Books that I had to study for one of my certifications for But uh, I I think that you’re right that that the idea of a sprint theme is something that Gets introduced and then it kind of falls by the wayside and people don’t end up using it And I think what I’m hearing part say is You’re giving up the explanation when you do that, you know, you’re giving up the chance to have a good explanation for why you are doing these changes and Getting people organized around that explanation and I can see that
[00:57:07] Red: Yes, ideally after after sprint or at the beginning of a new one You should always ask the question Why are we putting this feature in the sprint and not this one and the answer to that question? Why this and not the other that’s your growing explanation and And that one needs to improve sprint after sprint and and and that is where the high quality error correction ultimately emerges from Um, but not necessarily only because you’re doing, you know things in short iterations
[00:57:37] Green: And speaking specifically of sprints. Um, one place I can see within agile That that’s in conflict with a lot of what you’re talking about here Is this concept of the product owner being the owner of What goes in and what goes out because generally, you know in agile even if you’re doing Error correction on how the team’s working together in the form of good retrospectives and trying to continually learn From the team’s performance how to make the team’s performance better The team is almost never has any Actual say into the features that should be put in or or pulled out Other than from a technical perspective a developer might be able to say Oh, we need to do x y z to support this Um, and since it’s not feature specific the product owner May not be able to say yes. We’re putting that in or pulling it out But there is this very strong concept of having this one person who’s Responsible for why and what features get put into into future sprints or pulled out of sprints
[00:58:49] Red: Yeah Yeah, and I haven’t tried it before but I would definitely dare to do it To do pac -tify in an agile project and the the only way I would change it is that I would Allow anybody to become the id owner Of the next sprint or being the product owner of the next print And why would I dare that that is because the formal product owner Is still on the team and still has a chance to criticize A certain proposition for a next sprint by a id owner who can come from anyone on the team So I’m I’m I’m relatively confident that it could work and gradually grow this this this idea of Rotating the product ownership and and having each time Someone as an id owner for the next sprint and to compose the next print and to have a good explanation for why The next sprint is composed out of those features and not other ones And have that id basically rotate or have that product ownership This be distributed among the team the product owner is still on the team So he doesn’t in theory lose all of his powers or all of his rights He can criticize any any id for a sprint And if the team really cooperates then the effect of his criticism will be as powerful as if it was In in his classical role or even more powerful
[01:00:18] Green: Yeah, that’s interesting, you know, and we’ve seen a lot of power and Collaboration come from having the scrum master role be treated that way where each each sprint a different person’s responsible for being the scrum master um I really that’s that’s fascinating. I don’t want to get us to to two sideways here, but that’s an interesting idea Yeah
[01:00:43] Red: Yeah, and and the one thing I would want to say is the the other difference with pactifies We do we would ask who has a good id for the next sprint So we wouldn’t force somebody to become Involuntarily the product owner or the scrum master, but we would ask the question Who has a good id for the next sprint composition and why and then the first one with the good well documented id An explanation for how that next sprint should look like Can perfectly become the id owner or the temporary product owner for the next sprint Including some rounds of criticism from everybody on the team, but then finally closed off and agreed upon as the next sprint
[01:01:28] Green: Very very interesting.
[01:01:29] Blue: All right. We’re coming up. We’re past an hour. I think so we probably need to wrap it up for this session and We can continue this next time. All right. Well, thank you guys. Um, and thank you Fascinating.
[01:01:45] Red: Thank you
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