There’s a story I’ve heard (and told) a lot. A husband is cooking a roast for his new wife. Before he puts it in the pan, he cuts an inch from both ends. His wife asks him why he does that, and he tells her “that’s what my mom always did”. That seems weird to her, so they call his mom and ask her why she cut the ends off of her roasts before cooking, and she says, “that’s what my mom always did”. Still curious, they call grandma and ask her why she cut the ends off of the roast beef. She said, “I didn’t have a pan big enough for the roast”.
The Trap of Tradition
It’s unfortunately common in tech to do things solely because that’s the way they’ve always been done. There can be good reasons for an action or decision in the time it was made, but too often people and teams fall into the trap of tradition. Some of us old timers had to deal with Y2K issues because two-digit dates were the way things were “always done”. I will argue heavily that many corporations use email the same exact (inefficient) way they’ve used it for thirty years…because (say it with me), that’s the way they’ve always done it. Similarly, many corporations have failed to figure out how to work asynchronously, and rely on (way too many) meetings as their only method of collaboration.
Famously, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen discusses how sticking to traditional success formulas actively prevents innovation. Yet too many organizations are content doing things just as they’ve always done. In this Ted Talk by Melanie O’Neil sums it up perfectly when she says:
“That’s the way we’ve always done it” may possibly be the most expensive phrase within an organization.
The Pain of Neglect
I first read about Broken Window Theory in The Pragmatic Programmer. The theory states that small problems, like broken windows, graffiti, or littering, left unaddressed, signal that no one cares about the area - and that this creates an environment where people feel more inclined to break more windows or litter more.
Hunt and Thomas apply the metaphor to code - but it applies organizationaly as well. Bug backlogs, poorly written code, or bad design decisions, if left unaddressed, lead to more significant problems down the line. Bad process, or decision making routines (e.g. “approval boards”) could be a good solution at some point, but nearly always are a stop gap solution that should not persist.
A story / metaphor I’ve been telling recently involves legos. Imagine that you’re in organization with mountains of tech debt, unnecessary process overhead, and/or a culture that doesn’t hold people accountable. You’re in a house with lego pieces all over the floor, and you’re walking around in bare feet. It hurts to do any of your household chores, but you never pick up the legos. You never figure out where they came from. You just walk around all day hoping your feet don’t bleed.
Tradition vs. Innovation
To be fair, some of the stuff from the past still works today. You can’t throw everything away and start from scratch, but you can take some time to ask, “is there a better way?”
I’ve said many times that other than your 1:1 with your manager (and even that depends on your manager), the team retro is the most important meeting you can have on that calendar. But that statement is only true if you use time in the retro to ask if there are better ways to do things, better ways to work, or better ways to learn.
I can think of dozens of times in retros (even before I knew to call them retros) where I heard someone say something like, “It took me longer to get the menu system done because I had to wait for Team X to review the code”.
My responses / clarifications are usually as simple as, “Why does Team X need to review ahead of time”, where the answer is inevitably, TTWWADI (because of this one time where the code touched Team Xs API). For any org that’s been around for more than a few years, I guarantee that a good retro will find at least a few TTWWADI moments.
Another thing that helped in the old days of fast growth was to challenge our armies of new hires to question everything - not in a confrontational way, but I always encourage new hires to ask why a lot. In my experience, a lot of times when someone asks “why”, a lot of people don’t know.
TTWWADI
Picking up the Legos
Organizations that dig deeply into TTWWADI - if they don’t change, will slowly go out of business and be replaced by organizations with fresh eyes and critical thinking applied to existing practices.
Possibly worse than stepping on legos in bare feet is trying to pick up legos while other people are walking around and stepping on your fingers. The painful truth is that while you and I are probably the type of folks who want to pick up the stupid legos, we probably work with a whole bunch of people who enjoy standing barefoot on a pile of legos while cutting the ends off their roast before cooking.
It doesn’t mean we can’t try.
I’m probably pretty good at picking up legos, but if there are any significant number of legos, I’m never going to be pick them all up. Good To Great (a classic) makes the point that an organization should confront the brutal facts - meaning that it’s important (and fair) to talk about what’s broken rather than sugar coat it. By confronting the brutal facts, companies can identify and eliminate outdated practices that hinder progress, encouraging a culture of transparency and open dialogue about what needs to change.
Put slightly differently, picking up legos (and cooking the whole roast) is a leadership challenge. If we can’t get leaders aligned on looking critically at the past and finding better ways to move forward, we’re doomed to half roasts and bloodied feet.
Solving Corporate Inertia
On a recent AB Teting Podcast, our guest (Kat Obring) reminded me, that the bigger the ship is, the harder it is to turn. The blunt truth is that the organizations with the most resistance to innovation (due to legos and roast beef metaphors) are likely pretty happy and content in their unconscious ignorance. The “legacy” employees likely outnumber those with new ideas by 20 to 1 or more, and new ideas are dismissed as being “too out there”, or things that “won’t work here” (see one for the snowflakes).
It’s not an unsolvable problem by any means - in fact, solving it (creating a culture of improvement and critical thinking) - as difficult as that can be, is probably much easier than just admitting to yourself that the way you know how to do things isn’t actually a good way of doing them.
It’s not a battle for the weary, but it’s a battle worth fighting.
-A 10:5
I agree the retro is the most important ceremony and unfortunately the most overlooked.
Also. I do wish the title of this one was a Swifty song. I may have. To GPT that into a Swifty song…