Thread by @tdpauw

X: Where do you get your amazing people at Netflix?
A Cockcroft: I get them from you.

It is not about hiring brilliant people.
It is about Netflix building an organisation, a management structure and leadership that enabled people to do their best and create outcomes effectively

The system is important!

If you hire good people into a bad system, you break the people.

> A bad system will beat a good person every time
>-- Deming

@jezhumble #agiletd

People don't create outcomes. Teams create outcomes.
What enables teams is good management and good leadership.
@jezhumble #agiletd

Favourite story about organisational change: Nummi

worst performing plant of GM

joint-venture with Toyota: rehired the same people
=> produced highest quality cars of all GM North America

=> the problem wasn't the people, it was the management

@jezhumble #agiletd

What happened at the GM factory:
QA driven quality process

What happened at the Toyota factory:
build quality in, continuously improve the process, andon cord to stop the production line when it is broken

@jezhumble #agiletd

Building Quality In
and
Giving the people doing the work the tools and the ability to build quality in turns out to be what is important.

"Our people are too stupid"
turns out that is true, but it is not the people you are thinking of.

@jezhumble #agiletd

> What my Nummi experience taught me that was so powerful was that the way to change culture is not to first change how people think, but instead to start by changing how people behave -- what they do ...
> -- John Shook

@jezhumble #agiletd

The term Lean comes from all those people in that Nummi factory who then went write papers and books and gave talks. They invented the term Lean.

@jezhumble #agiletd

People tried to copy the Nummi plant but it did not work, because managers were still rewarded for the number of cars they produced whether they were working or not.

Same problem with Software Methodologies

a software methodology is a bunch of stuff we do in an organisation

then we copy it and do the same stuff and we think it will achieve the same results

this is misguided

taking things that worked in one complex system with a particular set of goals and copying it, does not guarantee you the same results

partly because it is a different system and
also partly because you hopefully have different goals.

you got to work out for yourself

and the failures you will encounter while working out for yourself are important!

That is how you implement Continuous Delivery.
That is how you get better at what you do.

Don't copy what other people did. It is useful inspiration, but it won't create a culture of improvement. You have to do it yourself and management have to focus on helping you do that.

I was in the belief the term Lean came from the book:

The Machine that Changed the World from Womack, Jones and Roos🤔

Or could it be the authors took the term from the Nummi workers?