Systems Thinking aggregator

Dale Emery: A Human Bias Toward Standards of Perfection

dale — 2010-07-29T19:32:33+00:00

In a fascinating TED Talk, Laurie Santos shows that monkeys make the same kinds of economic errors as humans do. Another way to say this: Humans make some of the same kinds of economic errors as monkeys do.

Early in the video, Santos asked a question that caught my attention: “How is a species that’s as smart as we are capable of such bad and consistent errors?”

What I find most interesting about Santos’s question is a presupposition: The question tacitly posits “as smart as we are” as the standard of judgment. Why do I say “tacitly,” when she clearly states the standard in her question? Though the standard is explicit, what’s tacit is taking that standard as a given.

To demonstrate, I’ll ask a different question: “For a species that consistently makes such bad errors, how is it that we are as smart as we are?” My question posits a different baseline for evaluating our behavior: Our consistent errors.

In my tweets on this subject, I called Santos’s question a “foreground/background error.” That was a mistake. Rather, Santos makes a foreground/background choice. Her question and mine differ in the choice of background and foreground. Her question places human smartness in the background and consistent errors in the foreground. My question reverses the foreground and background.

We humans often ask such questions, which make an implicit choice of what to place in the foreground and what in the background.

For example, people ask, “Why do we sleep?” The question (tacitly) takes awakeness as background. I think it’s probably more reasonable and fruitful to ask, “Why are we ever wake?” The vast majority of living things are never awake. We and other animals do sometimes wake. How does that happen? I think it’s miraculous.

Another example, which I hear a lot: “Why do we miscommunicate so much?” Flip the foreground and background: “How is it that we are ever able to communicate at all?” Communication is a freaking miracle, and our oft-uttered question takes it for granted.

Matt Heusser tweeted another example from a forum on communication between managers and doers: “Why is there so much friction between managers and doers?” Matt flipped the question: “With so much conflict inherent in our systems, isn’t it a miracle that we ever get anything done?”

We could state our observations relatively neutrally, with equal emphasis: We’re as smart as we are; we consistently make bad errors. But typically we don’t do that. We place one observation in the background, and apply it as a standard against which to judge the other observation.

What fascinates me is that our questions typically place the more “perfect” standard in the background, even though the evidence suggests that humans don’t live up to the standard. What’s more, we typically ask such questions directly in response to noticing that we don’t live up to the standard. We take as given a standard that we know we don’t meet. We humans seem to have a bias toward judging ourselves against standards of perfection.

This is not an idle topic for me. It’s at the heart of my coaching. My clients often lament that they fall short of some standard they have set for themselves. As we explore the standard, we often find that the standard is very difficult to meet, and sometimes beyond human capability. And yet clients make great effort to continue to hold onto their standards, even after agreeing that the standards are unreasonable.

How come we so often choose as background a standard that we clearly do not meet? What would happen if we more often made a different choice, to take our typical experience as the standard, and ask how we are sometimes able to be better than that?

What if how actually we observe ourselves to be were okay, even as we yearn to be “better”?

Of course, my entire post implicitly posits its own standard of perfection: A standard of not judging ourselves against standards that we demonstrably fail to live up to.

Maybe I can soften my own error this way: When we notice that we are holding ourselves and each other to some standard of perfection, we have an opportunity to make the standard explicit, ask whether and how it serves us, and explore other standards that may serve us better.

Johanna Rothman: On the Top Women in Business Blogger’s List

johanna — 2010-07-25T14:02:46+00:00

I learned this week that I made the Top Women in Business Blogging list. They tell me my readers nominated me. Dear readers, thank you!
Online MBA Rankings

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Johanna Rothman: Develop by Feature, Develop by Component, or Some Combination?

johanna — 2010-07-23T17:24:22+00:00

I’ve been working with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on an agile architecture workshop. I’m working with Rebecca because she has such a depth of experience in architecture, as well as design. She’s working with me because of my project and program management experience. We’re pretty psyched.

We’re working through the issues of large programs and architecture, and, of course, we have encountered the develop by component vs. develop by feature debate. I’m closer to the develop by feature side of the house than Rebecca. She’s a little closer to the develop by component side. We’re not too far apart–we’re not polar–we’re not precisely at the same place. And, we may never be at the same place, because our experiences are different. We each have good reasons.

You get tremendous benefits when you develop by component: high cohesion in the component and low coupling between components. Don’t underestimate the value of these. If you don’t pay attention to cohesion and coupling, eventually you can’t develop anything.

When you develop by feature, you get features. It’s hard to underestimate the value of working product.

But especially in a large system effort, with multiple teams, how do you do this right? Of course, it depends. You might have a combination of teams, in my preference after you have a little experience with some features. Maybe you develop some prototypes. Maybe you do something else.

We’re developing a simulation for the workshop. If you have encountered this problem in your system, please post a comment and let me know if you would like a simulation to explore this. (I am not under the impression this means you would commit to our workshop!) If you’d like to send me private email, that’s great too. We’re trying to develop a simulation that will mimic what happens at work.

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Johanna Rothman: Top Project Management Thinkers

johanna — 2010-07-22T13:10:53+00:00

I’m proud and pleased to be on the list of LiquidPlanner’s Top Project Management Thinkers. I’m thrilled, too!

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