I, pragmatic
by Alan Cyment
Nonsense. Childish. I keep falling into my own mental traps and putting the idealism cart in front of the reality horse. I did it again. Today, minutes ago.
I’ve recently began reading on zen and taoism. Beautiful. Perfectionism redefined: perfection exists, yet you will never get there. Nevertheless, take a step today towards it. How? Trying. Trying to do what? Seeking balance, acknowledging that equilibrium is ephemeral. Balance among what? Appealing concepts. Romantic images. Sensual notions, such as idealism and pragmatism.
Why can’t I make it? I dare say I lack the necessary patience. I cherish the destination, disregarding the beauty of the hike. The loftier the expectation, the gloomier the disenchantment. Pleasure seems to be all about marrying dreams with people, concepts with tangible things.
We knowledge workers are hired in order to build previously non-existant, malleable products. Malleable systems have a tendency to be complex, organic, life-like entities. Malleable systems require a malleable way of working. Work, teams, people developing malleable systems can only bloom when treated as such. And yet we keep lamenting for the lack of a collaborative spirit there is in the workplace. Trust, the irritable muse we all desire, will forever dance further away the windy path. Recognize it and enjoy the arduous trek of gaining and fostering reliance. Relish the bricolage and believe me, you will most probably become less agile than tomorrow.
Comments
Hi Alan,
Great to see this blog is not dormant as I thought it to be!
I’ve been checking it for a while and enjoyed several of your posts … frankly, very different from what you find out there in most blogs. I’m happy to see you’re writing again here.
It is an interesting picture the one you present. Seems to me like a picture of dancers creating the dance while dancing … the product and the action of creating it so intertwined that the existence of the one without the other is bizarre to say the least.
But it brings me to a situation I witnessed quite recently, while discussing a Scrum like approach in a typical taylorian organization (plan > try to force reality into the plan > allow to use pressure and fear as means to force reality into the plan). Despite these people were courageous enough to use an adaptive / trust intensive approach, their surrogate ecosystem was most likely not. To be more concrete, these people were eager to trust themselves, but found difficult to have the surrounding areas trust them … and of course, they also found difficult to trust those areas.
How do you allow the dance to happen where dancers are eager to dance, but the audience only longs for the final applause? … or in more technical terms, how can we help teams eager to adopt agile approaches when they are eager to trust and learn empirically, but the larger organization to which they belong is entrenched in taylorian, fear-based thinking? (May be the answer is: we can’t)
Keep the good posts.
Walter.
Hi Walter,
Thanks a lot for the warm words. Regarding the collaborative-ghetto syndrome I’d say that oh so many times the quick and sad answer to the question you pose in most oppressive organizations is “we can’t.” Nevertheless I believe that, once you acknowledge you will have to pay a toll for it (keep reporting hours for individuals, work with fixed-time fixed-priced projects, etc), you still have a long way to go until become a better Scrum practitioner.
By steadily fostering the spirit of Scrum behind closed doors the area/department/team can become a happier, more productive micro-world, that will unhurriedly change the expectations of a part of the audience by making them clap a little bit more after each performance. With time some of them might eventually realize that by joining the dance they can spend a more enjoyable evening.
Cheers,
Alan
Alan,
Thank you for your answer. I agree, maybe the solution is to improve from the inside out!
BTW, you mentioned the Spirit of Scrum, and reminded me of the “Spirit of Scrum: Road to Joy” course … I remember I sent some people of my team to your training, but missed it myself … it would be great if you plan to do it this year.
Keep the good posts!
Walter.