Our engineering team recently had a training with Sandi Metz. It was incredible. The team was engaged, the course was able to teach everyone something, and everyone walked away from it feeling really energized.

However, out of all the things Sandi mentored us on, one topic in particular stood out to me. I’m paraphrasing here, but it boiled down to this – If you try and go implement all of these things you learned in your code base starting next week, you will fail and give up. Pretty bleak. However that wasn’t all of the message. Again paraphrasing – Find ways to practice in a low stakes environment where you can throw away the code, and as you get better slowly incorporate the techniques into your day to day work.

So simple, yet so profound.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on that sentiment. Right now the team is energized. They had a great experience and are ready to dive into work next Monday. However, I believe there is truth in Sandi’s warning. If we try and change the whole world starting next week, I’m afraid we may become burnt out and, in time, revert back to the “old-ways” of doing things. So, how do we capture the energy and passion that our team is exhibiting right now and turn that into something lasting?

For starters, I believe we have to approach this with the aim of achieving systemic change. We want this to be a shift in how our system operates, not a special cause variation that burns really bright and then fades to black. I’m not sure that I have the answer but I think, at least partly, it lies in idea of “practices makes perfect”.

In Wiring the Winning Organization Gene Kim and Dr. Steven Spear dive into what makes great organizations great, and what makes everyone else just kind of meh. They present three concepts of Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification as ways to both assess and improve upon organizational performance. I’ve been thinking a lot about these concepts and how we might leverage these ideas to improve the effectiveness of our organizations.

Part of what Slowification presents is the idea of controlling the environment in which problem-solving occurs to make problem-solving easier. I have to admit, I was having a hard time understanding how to practically leverage this concept, but when Sandi Metz started talking about the importance of practice before doing in regards to the concepts that she had presented our team with, something clicked.

I think what both Sandi, Gene, and Steven are telling us is the same thing. We, have to create space for our teams to “play” with very low stakes. If we’re always working on something and it has to ship, we’re not creating an environment where the stakes are low, therefore they are high and problem-solving is not easier because risks have many more consequences.

So what do we do? The answer will be different for every organization and team, but there must be both time allotted for and emphasis placed on experimentation so learning can occur. If our teams are constantly moving from ticket to ticket, sprint to sprint, quarter over quarter, we end up with a lot of doing and not a lot of improving.

I’m not exactly sure how this will shake out for us, but I believe the first things we’re going to try are to leverage some time slots where the teams are already coming together to talk tech and focus in on the particulars of what we learned this week to try and improve our system of work. That’s our aim at least. Time will tell if we achieve it, but regardless we’re going to learn something.

Every system of work has an output that it can achieve at any point in time. Think of that as how much of something that can be produced, consumed, or otherwise created. That output is not static but variable. For a system that is stable the output is predictable between an upper and lower limit.

When a system is stable, the way to improve its output is to transform the way that it produces its output. Said another way, we must improve the means by which we do work in order to improve our results.

An Example

Imagine for a moment that we have a team that is expected to set a goal to achieve for the quarter. This team is told that they need to select an ambitious goal. The team is also held accountable for achieving that goal. Their compensation, reputation, and good standing with their boss depend on their success. The team decides on a goal that they believe is ambitious yet achievable.

Notice that the goal lies in the expected output of the system. It is true that it is on the upper end of that output, but the team doesn’t recognize this. They see what the output of the system was last quarter and settle on a goal that they feel they can reach. They feel confident that they can achieve this goal because they feel that it is within their reach. Which, as it turns out, it is.

The rub here is that in order to reach this goal, the team doesn’t have to necessarily do anything new or creative. The current system of work has the ability to produce this output, so the team can potentially perform the same activities and engage in the same behaviors that they have been engaging in and accomplish this goal.

This is a scenario that is all too common. The team thinks they are making progress, and the business itself may believe so as well. However, no significant transformation will occur until the means by which we produce our output are iterated and improved upon.

Another Example

Now, let’s imagine another team. This team is given the same directive. They must choose an ambitious goal to set for this quarter. The difference between our first team and this new team is that our new team is not judged based on the successful completion of the goal. Instead of their compensation, reputation, and good standing with their boss hanging in the balance, they are judged on what they learn, how they apply those learnings to their system of work, and they are held accountable to the continuous improvement of the system.

Notice here that the team’s goal is well outside of the predictable limits of the system. They realize that they will most likely not hit the goal this quarter, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. They understand that trial and error are the keys to building organizational knowledge and that striving for goals that are well out of our reach forces us to collaborate more and think more creatively about how to solve problems.

The team can feel confident in setting this goal because they know that failure is not only an option but necessary in the pursuit of improvement. They have the psychological safety of knowing that aiming high and coming short will not result in a demerit but praise for the knowledge they gain along the way.

Ultimately, our second team is the one that will, in time, transform the business. They will prioritize improving the system of work so they can move their current output closer to the target condition that they have set. They will collaborate more, arrive at more creative solutions, and move faster. The team will have a higher level of engagement, and they will feel more satisfied with their work.

The Big Takeaway

If we seek to transform our system of work, we must set our sights higher than what we are capable of producing today. We can only do this when the emphasis is on learning and improvement. Fear of failure, retribution, or stability of employment will only serve to suppress the rate at which your system can be transformed.

We must abolish fear, we must unlock our people’s ability to problem solve, and we must help everyone find joy in the work that they are doing. Through all of this, results will come, quality will improve, and we will be able to achieve more than we’ve ever done before.