Thread by @tleam

First talk on the leadership track is @BethAdeleLong talking about “Having the Bubble: How Experts Build, Maintain, and Spread Deep System Knowledge”

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We are going to focus on the Experts that are using and maintaining our systems.

Why is this important? Experts are the least understood aspects of our systems!

Work by @ddwoods2 and @ri_cook is significant influence in all we’ll be talking about today.

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What does “Having the Bubble” mean?

It’s from aviation and submarine navigation. It means you’re able to understand the context of your overall situation based on data you have access to... often through tooling

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Expertise is possessed by all those who practice “ordinary work”... which is what everyone does.

This is the work that keeps things running and incident free despite significant challenge of doing so in our modern world.

Expertise enables success in this world.

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Expertise is embodied in individuals. Individuals, while resilient, can be overwhelmed. Understanding these factors is important to ensure capacity

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For those interested in deep academically backed subject matter, @BethAdeleLong’s talk is the leadership & psychological equivalent of a deep dive into consensus algorithms.

This is not a shallow talk but is *highly* valuable for anyone who... works with humans.

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Each human is a node in the cognitive network of your organization. A loss of an individual isn’t just the loss of that person - it means a loss of connection to nodes and routes through your human system.

This backs up the importance of maintaining durable teams.

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On to “Yak Shaving” - the little things that we often have to go through to get to what is often considered “real work” Typically read the manual work

“Documentation tends to act as a pointer I’m not going to read it but I’ll definitely reach out to the author!”

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Humans are the best equipped part of your holistic system to adapt to changes - @BethAdeleLong

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This is one of the few sessions I’ve been in that left time for Q&A which is great.

Q: What happens if a node leaves? How does the human system adapt?

The people system will make new connections over time. It will be slow to start by referencing tangential teams.

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@BethAdeleLong has a good bibliography here but if you’re interested in getting an intro to human resilience I highly recommend @lhochstein’s “Resilience Engineering: Where do I start?”

github.com/lorin/resilien…

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One of the questions:

“Are there any tools I can use to get started and help in this domain?”

“This isn’t the tool you’re looking for... but I’d suggest starting with having lunch with people”

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