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Colored Thinking
In his short and pithy “Six Thinking Hats” book, Edward De Bono describes his structured, but diverse, problem solving method for groups of people who are wrestling with an issue. The picture below summarizes Edward’s six thinking hat colors and the modes of thinking that they represent.
Armed with an understanding of the six thinking hats method, the idea is that a group led by a blue hat facilitator could collectively switch colors and express aligned thinking to explore all aspects of an issue/problem/decision under discussion. The good thing about Mr. De Bono’s method is that it is down-to-earth; it’s easily and quickly learned. It’s not anchored in the latest management jargon du jour and you don’t have to attend a 40 hour elitist university MBA course to absorb the subject matter.
The figure below models a typical six thinking hats use case. The group gathering is framed by “blue hat” thinking book ends. At the start of the discussion, the blue hat wearer (usually the meeting instigator) frames and bounds the gathering with answers to the “why we are here” and “what we’re trying to do” questions. Next, under the fluid direction of the blue hat wearing dude, the group iterates on the issue by collectively switching modes of thinking when deemed necessary. Finally, the blue hat director ends the gathering with the answer to the “what we accomplished here” question – which may or may not be nothing. Simple and doable, no?
By applying the six hats thinking method, the hope is that the mold will be broken on the same-old, same-old, rudderless, alpha-dominated, black-hat-only, egofestive modus of operandi that takes place everywhere in command and control hierarchies across the land:
So, what do you think? Substance or snake oil? If substance, would you try to promote the six thinking hats method in your org? If you think the method has potential but you won’t step up to champion it………. why not?
Meetings and Decisions
Orgs of people exist for a purpose. In order to continuously fulfill the org’s purpose in a changing external environment, its members need to make decisions regarding what to do and when to do it in order to counter unfavorable changes that are at odds with the org’s purpose. Since people need to know who will do what, when they’ll do it, and how they’ll coordinate with others to collectively counter external threats, decision-making meetings are held at all levels to decide such issues of importance.
The figure below introduces the Decision-To-Meeting-Ratio (DETMER) metric. It also shows the divergence of this metric for two competing orgs who initially had the same DETMER value at an arbitrary time, T=0. Assuming (and it’s a bad assumption) that all decisions made at each meeting are effective, as the DETMER goes to zero nothing changes for the good within the org walls. People do the same thing everyday, even as the environmental conditions outside the walls relentlessly change. Voila, a bureaucracy led by a cadre of Bozeltines emerges. Bummer.
The Meeting Surrogate
How’s this for a new product idea, “The Meeting Surrogate“. It’s a gadget that hooks up to your phone and participates in call-in conference meetings for you – freeing you up to do whatever you’d like. When you power it on and press its “Start BS” button, it intelligently monitors the conversations and strategically voices out words and phrases like “uh huh”, “yes – yes”, “I get it”, “very insightful”, “nice”, “understood”, “got it”, at appropriate times during the yawnfest.
“The Meeting Surrogate” is extendable. You could program in catchy new phrases as you think of them when you’re offline. You pre-configure “The Meeting Surrogate” by speaking into it so that it can process and store a replica of the pitch, tone, and inflections of your voice.
Do ya think it would sell to the Dilbert crowd? How much should it cost?
Meetings are a refuge from the dreariness of labor and the loneliness of thinking – Bernard Barush
The Answer To A Burning Question
Ever since Fred Brooks hatched his legendary “The Mythical Man Month” over 20 years ago, he’s been on my hero/mentor list. His latest insightful work, “The Design Of Design“, is just as good as TMMM. Of course, since my views on software engineering (if it can be called engineering) are heavily influenced by his experiences as shared through his writing, I’m totally biased and unobjective (but….. aren’t we all to some extent?).
I pre-ordered TDOD as soon as I heard about its impending release and I received it from Amazon last week. Unlike most books, which I mildly speed read, I’ve been savoring this one slowly. As expected, I’ve been discovering and extracting a treasure trove of personally valuable fieldstones from TDOD at a feverish pace.
Fred opens up one of his chapters with this brilliant quote:
“A meeting is a refuge from the dreariness of labor and the loneliness of thought.” – Bernard Baruch
I think it’s brilliant because it answers a burning question that I haven’t been able to self-answer for a long time in one short sentence:
Why do managers spend the vast majority of their time in meetings?
Thanks to Fred and Bernie, I now know why 🙂
Orchestrated Reviews
If you think your design is perfect, it means you haven’t shown it to anyone yet – Harry Hillaker
Open, frequent, and well-engineered reviews and demonstrations are great ways to uncover and fix mistakes and errors before they grow into downstream money and time sucking abominations. In spite of this, some project cultures innocently but surely thwart effective reviews.
Out of fear of criticism, designers in dysfunctional cultures take precautions against “looking bad“. Camouflage is generated in the form of too much or too little detail. Subject matter experts are left off the list of reviewers in order to uphold a false image of infallibility.
Another survival tactic is to pre-load the reviewer list with friends and cream puffs who won’t point out errors and ambiguities for fear of losing their status as nice people and good team players. In really fearful cultures, tough reviewers who consistently point out nasty and potential budget-busting errors are tarred and feathered so that they never provide substantive input again. In the worst cases, reviews and demonstrations aren’t even performed at all. Bummer.
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