Failure is an option… as an ongoing process in design and learning

Testing software can be thought of as a highly organized experimental method.  Those of us who work in software development, are generally interested in maximizing the possibility that a software product or service is fit for purpose and meets the expectations of the customer.

We use a range of testing techniques that are appropriate to the technology and business context: from risk assessment to formal reviews, static and dynamic testing, manual and automated, progression and regression, functional and non-functional, requirements-based as well as exploratory testing techniques.  Testing should provide valuable feedback about whether the design after a particular iteration meets the various stakeholders’ expectations.

But what about the psychology of managing teams when testing reveals a quantity of problems and incidents that were not anticipated? How can you cultivate an atmosphere, which encourages looking for errors, mistakes and defects as a means to learning and improving the whole development process?

The problem is that frequently people do not want to confront errors or feel threatened by them. They may feel affronted or offended.   However this is missing an understanding of the fundamental reason why errors and mistakes are necessary to learn from, not only  in software development, but indeed any process of design and innovation.

I like to get inspiration from a range of sources and different modes of design.  For example, one of the most famous architects in the last 50 years, Frank Gehry says this about mistakes in the design process of large commercial buildings:

“So as you are working in real life and in real time you are constantly having small victories and small mistakes….the important thing is to keep moving ahead and learning from the mistakes and building on it, building positive momentum from that. Because it is a very complex endeavor.”

Large-scale enterprise software project transformations can be of comparable in terms of scale and complexity of commercial building projects so I think there is a parallel.

In the book Fail Fast, Fail Often, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire who developed the financial software tools including analytics and an equity trading platform, is quoted on the process of developing software for his financial software:

“We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing them over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version #5….It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan – for months.”

Bias Towards Action And Agile Iterations

Bloomberg’s quote reveals a keen insight about the bias towards action versus being paralyzed by excessive planning. The agile movement is a response to limitations of traditional project management in part where according to Mike Cohn in his book Agile Estimating and Planning:

“At the start of each new iteration, an agile team incorporates all new knowledge gained in the preceding iteration and adapts accordingly.” (Cohn, 2006, 26)

The process of testing software is one of the main methods in which new knowledge is acquired and unexpected behavior of the design is observed during each iteration. Therefore finding errors is a necessary way to obtain information which assists the development team to adapt to this new knowledge.   As Frank Gehry suggested “the important thing is to keep moving ahead and learning from the mistakes and building on it …”

So to inspire and uplift a team from uncomfortable feelings of perfectionism or threatened by mistakes, errors or omissions or even misjudgments in the software design and development process, a manager can do a number of things to cultivate a positive environment for creativity and productivity:

1. Build an atmosphere of safety, where it is OK to make mistakes, ask crazy questions, find errors and this is, in fact, a necessary part of the evolutionary nature of the development process;
2. Facilitate discussions around shared risks which promote trusting cooperation;
3. Tell a narrative which creates a sense of shared goals, values and purpose and in doing so builds a coherent working environment.

How I discovered how to motivate cross-border virtual teams

“As inner work life rises and falls, so does performance.”

How can we motivate people to do activities at work that they may prefer not to do? For example doing the work of testing software infrastructure when there is little time?   In a manager’ toolkit what can systematically assist members of teams to be productive?  I wanted to test the basic proposition of a book published in 2011,  The Progress Principle, that a manager or team leader can improve a team’s performance by creating an environment to improve their inner work life.   As a team leader, I found that the guidelines to be highly practical heuristics.  People are more likely to act and get work done when they are provided with a supportive environment and a sense of making progress with small wins.

Why?

After I read The Progress Principle several years ago by Terese Amabile and Steven Kramer, I decided to experiment with applying the principles to see whether they are effective in working with virtual cross-border teams.   I needed to find a way to coordinate 20 teams in the Pacific, S. E. Asia, United States and the Middle East in working to tight deadlines, practicing new processes, identifying incidents and handling setbacks on a software transformation project.

The principle of progress?

The Progress Principle describes a method for a manager to create a psychological environment where people are more creative and productive at work.  The authors are husband and wife team, Steven Kramer and Terese Amabile.   Terese Amabile is a professor and director of research at Harvard Business School, with research interests in creativity, productivity, innovation and inner work life. Her team conducted research involving 26 projects teams in 7 companies in three industries. The researchers analyzed 12000 individual diary entries of knowledge workers to gain insight into their inner work life.   This data provided information about the study participants’ perceptions, emotions, and motivations during the day and how the dynamic interplay of these factors influenced performance.

Some conclusions

Some of the conclusions from this research were:

“inner work life influences people’s performance on four dimensions:

creativity, productivity, work commitment, and collegiality”

Also “inner work life matters for companies because, no matter how brilliant a company’s strategy might be, the strategy’s execution depends upon great performance by people inside the organization.”

(Source: The Progress Principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. 2011 Harvard Business Review Press. Teresea Amabile and Steven Kramer p.6)

The results of their extensive research was that positive emotions unequivocally have the effect of improving an employees performance at work.

The components of inner work life

The authors describe the inner work life of an individual are a dynamic interplay of:

• Perceptions and thoughts (sense-making of events at work);
• Emotions and feelings (positive and negative emotions about events at work);
• Motivation (the desire to do the work).

My own experience

I have applied this methodology to leading 20 international teams in a multinational corporation as a part of an enterprise-scale software and infrastructure transformation project. I found that people positively respond to work when they know where their work fits into the overall purpose of the organization, when they feel supported and emotionally encouraged in the face of difficulties, and when I regularly emphasize that small daily wins is good progress. Progress can be slow, incremental and at times frustrating. It often can feel as if things are going backwards rather than forwards when the technology or a process is not producing the immediate results you want to see. Many teams were also resistant to changing their working habits with the implementation of new systems.

I developed a habit of frequently, everyday recognising and affirming that we are making progress each time we find a problem or an incident occurs!  This may seem counterintuitive but it works.  People need to know that risks, incidents and faults identified are crucial steps in their remediation in order to make a system robust and fit for purpose.

 An alternative viewpoint

There have traditionally been different views of what the key variables are that affect performance in the workplace. Some observers adopt the stance that short bursts of negative emotion can enhance creativity. According to this view, work performance can be catalyzed by stress, external pressure, discomfort, or any combination of the above. Whereas most of us have experienced stress or a negative event which has disrupted the performance of our work.  Other traditional views have centred on extrinsic rewards such as financial incentives.

An alternative view is that performance improves when positive emotion is elicited in the work environment when a sense of progress is being made.

The authors of The Progress Principle claim to have conducted more comprehensive research than previous studies. Their overall conclusion: positive inner work life promotes good performance.   This is called the inner work life effect.

“People do better work when they are happy, have positive views of the   organization and its people, and are motivated primarily by the work itself.”

Take home message

In my experience of managing cross-border teams on a global transformation program, I found that emphasising the importance of small wins when a problem is found, plays an important part in creating the subjective sense of making progress. Providing the time, resources, assistance, emotional support and encouragement are also critical.   Providing this environment affects someone at a positive, visceral level.   I found that The Progress Principle works. Productivity improves.  A sense of making progress is a key contributor to the inner life of members of a team.   If you want a comprehensive set of heuristics to increase the productivity of your team, then you might find this book practical and surprisingly instructive.

Reference:   The Progress Principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. 2011 Harvard Business Review Press  Authors: Teresea Amabile and Steven Kramer

How does a manager manage a multitude of mental models ?

Mental models are the way that we interpret the world. The simple representation we form of something is a model. For a manager this is important since these representations of reality are usually incomplete, imprecise and fuzzy.

Our Mental models are based upon the inferences we make of our a priori assumptions and beliefs. But these underlying beliefs are more often than not outside our awareness.  My experience has been that it is important to respect not only your own but other’s unique perspectives and mental models.  This might mean that a leader or manager would be well suited to applying eclecticism to leading people and solving problems – not being fixed on a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draw on multiple theories to gain a more  balanced  perspective on an issue or problem.

Prejudicial assumptions

 If we see someone of a vastly different cultural background, what initial inner dialogue runs through our mind? Do we need to consciously step in to ensure that we do not act on an unconscious prejudice?   Imagine an elderly white man walking down an alley who encounters a group of black teenagers wearing hooded sweaters. What are his initial thought impressions? Does the elderly white man’s unconscious assumptions produce inferences about their likely behavior as being threatening? It is often the case that people are not aware of what unconscious assumptions influences their behaviour and thoughts.

Organisational Learning

The concept of mental models was popularized in the organisational learning literature of the 1990s in Peter Senge’s seminal work, The Fifth Discipline: the art and practice of the learning organisation. “What we carry in our heads are images, assumptions and stories” is one of Senge’s descriptions.

“ ‘In the traditional authoritarian organization, the dogma was managing, organizing, and controlling,’ says Hanover’s CEO Bill O’Brien. ‘In the learning organization, the new ‘dogma’ will be vision, values and mental models. The healthy corporations will be one which can systematize ways to bring people together to develop the best possible mental models for facing any situation at hand.’ ”

Source: Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, p.181

Mental model in a successful online retailer

Zappos, an online shoe retailer has been enormously successful, which went from $1.6 million in sales in 2000, to over a billion in 2008. The CEO, Tony Hsieh wrote about the culture of Zappos in his book, Delivering Happiness. One of the mental models that has infused the culture at Zappos is of the importance of connection. Zappos executives conducted research which concluded that a feeling of connection among employees is good for productivity. The greater connection that people feel with their colleagues at work, the happier they are. This feeling of connection leads to greater productivity.   The mental model of the importance of creating happiness as an important key to productivity and morale lead the Zappos executives to also generate a culture of learning. Subsequently free classes taught by other employees were created to contribute to the growth of employees within the company. (Source:  Scrum: A revolutionary approach to building teams, beating deadlines and boosting productivity by Dr Jeff Sutherland)

What can a leader do to facilitate creative mental models?

Create meaning through empowering story telling. The stories should create meaning and in doing so highlight core values and basic rules that are the key to the excellence of running your business.  Creating a positive culture should inform strategy and creative mental models are like a toolkit to achieve the business objectives.