,
7 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
Organizations with a lack of psychological safety are incentivized for big batches (a.k.a. waterfall).
Let me unwrap that.
Any incremental effort is exposing temporal lack of consistency because it optimizes for the improvement through learning not the upfront perfection.
1/7
Let me unwrap that.
Any incremental effort is exposing temporal lack of consistency because it optimizes for the improvement through learning not the upfront perfection.
1/7
If you want to go incremental, you have to accept that you'll be imperfect and not consistent, at least temporarily. In order to be able to be imperfect you have to expose yourself through your work for feedback to colleagues, bosses, users etc.
2/7
2/7
This requires enough trust in the environment that you can feel free to be vulnerable. In case you don't feel you're allowed and accepted to be vulnerable, you won't allow yourself to be imperfect because that would expose you (through critics and feedback).
3/7
3/7
Thus, trying to avoid imperfection by foreseeing every feedback and critic upfront and embedding it in the solution is incentivizing you to go big batch with lots of upfront thinking.
4/7
4/7
On a psychological level, it's way harder to endure the minor but constant pain (frequent incremental releases; think Chinese water torture) than endure major pain but in a short period of time (big batch release).
5/7
5/7
Power flow between feedback giver and feedback receiver is that the receiver is always on the downward side of the power dynamics. Feedback receiver is always exposed because it's _their_ work that's being evaluated.
6/7
6/7
Building individual capacity for feedback resilience takes time. Same thing happens with the organizations.
7/7
7/7
