I have a very strange relationship with hierarchy.
For one -- freely admitted -- I benefit from it. The deck is stacked very much in my favor in society.
Yet: I hate positional authority. I loath hierarchy. It's not that I want chaos, merely that positional authority destroys what I care most about.
I've had bosses I like. I've had bosses I dislike. Only recently have I learned how to leverage the relationship towards my own goals. It's hard for me.
When this started working, it turns out, is when I started working as a scrum master. And my goals? At a high level: To help the scrum team and it's members succeed through self-organization.
You know: To destroy hierarchy.
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I wish you were local. I could have you join my D&D game and play the adventuring party's scrum master.
ReplyDeleteHierarchy and centralisation are anti-patterns. Humans are actually quite good at operating without them, as the works of James C. Scott show.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the education system in most nations indoctrinate us to accept hierarchy and centralisation as the norm.
Huh. I quite like hierarchies. Then again, I think a good hierarchy involves different responsibilities and duties at each level, with power necessary to fulfill those responsibilities and duties and no more. Most people in hierarchies fail in either responsibilities or duties, or have an inappropriate amount of power.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess I hate hierarchies in practice?
And what is it that you care about most, William?
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson To replace hierarchical systems with a distributed egalitarian scrum of scrums.
ReplyDeleteI remember very explcitely a day at a con when I knew scrum was what I needed.
ReplyDeleteIt was a board game con, so most everyone was playing things like Catan. Distributed power structures, no GM, explicit turns, etc.
I walk into the RPG room, which is mostly pathfinder. And I see the same thing at every table: four people with there hands down looking at a character sheet or a map, and one person standing up Talking.
I walk over from that to the larp group: a bunch of people in a circle, talking about what they want to do today, and making decisions about it together based on who knows what factors.
And I'm like: The RPG room is waterfall, and the larp room is scrum!
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." -Lao Tzu
ReplyDeleteA dear friend of mine trains people in what she calls Facilitative Leadership which is all about enabling people to collaborate effectively without hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteMamading Ceesay That's what scrum is all about. Well, sort of.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Yes, and I have said to her that she should look into Agile Coaching as obviously there's a lot of overlap.
ReplyDeleteRecommended Book: The Elements of Scrum.
ReplyDeleteamazon.com - Amazon.com: The Elements of Scrum (9780982866917): Chris Sims, Hillary Louise Johnson: Books
Josh McGraw I've loved that quote for years. :-)
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols you'd think as a midgrade military leader I'd be all about hierarchy, but honestly it's just the opposite, and my "subordinates" and I have a much better time as a result. I'ma have to check out that book, see what I can implement.
ReplyDeleteJosh, do I remember right that you are a sergeant? Which branch?
ReplyDeleteStaff Sergeant these days, Marines.
ReplyDeleteIntentional mis-memory, not trying to demote you. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm with a contracting company, and our client is the Navy. My primary contact is an LCDR. When he introduced a CPO, I believe I said something about how petty officers work for a living.
So the agile / scrum methodology we're using has folks committing to work rather than being assigned it, doing demos of working software to the client every two weeks, and planning for the next two weeks right after that.
I'm pretty sure they have no idea how this could possibly work, but it keeps working. :-)
Oh none taken; I work joint a lot, so I get "sergeant"ed plenty and take no disrespect. :D
ReplyDeletePeople who commit to work and believe in what they're doing, tend to do a better job. I keep getting promoted and assigned to fun stuff because I bring that methodology to how I deal with my "subordinates." Oh, you're super interested in this one part of what we're doing? Go nuts!
Scrum, I think from watching you post about it, is one of those things where if I ever get up to speed on it, it'll turn out to just be a formalization of what I already do a lot.
Similarly: I refer to the LCDR as Commander a lot.
ReplyDeleteBut, yes: Scrum is a light weight formal methodology that gives clear bright lines for what you are doing when, and who can bring work to the team.
You know... There is a name for the philosophical position of fighting against hierarchy...
ReplyDeleteShane Liebling You mean "egalitarian socialist" ?
ReplyDeleteShane Liebling Player character? ;)
ReplyDeleteNot exactly... ;)
ReplyDeleteTell us more Shane, for I clearly have no idea what you could be referring to. I certainly never saw you called one by a Magician of some repute.
ReplyDeletephotos.google.com - New photo by Shane Liebling
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm not in on the in joke here I'll just ask... are you talking about "anarchist?" Because I was commenting to a friend earlier that scrum just sounds like anarchy (the political ideal, not the "State of chaos" common definition) marketed to be palatable to businesses... but it also felt like I was being snarky to say it.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson See also Holacracy
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Holacracy - Wikipedia
Yep. Don't tell the suits: Scrum is anarchy.
ReplyDeleteBut: It is NOT chaos. In particular, organizations without some sort of structure often head towards chaos, especially if they are reliant on traditional command and control.
Sounds like a contradiction, right? How can there be organizational chaos if you're being told what to do every day?
Here's an example: Alice is a developer, and works on what she's told to. Alice knows she doesn't see the big picture -- that's management's job. She pushes code. Alice's boss is Bob.
Bob responds to the needs of ... literally everyone. He's pulled in a bunch of directions. As new things come up, or as Senior Management thinks up things, he communicates these to Alice.
For Bob, this happens after every meeting. He's in a lot of meetings, so several times a day he stops by and tells Alice about the new priority. She shifts focus.
Alice never gets anything finished. She's got a lot of half-completed items. She tells Bob that she doesn't know what the priorities are.
Bob knows the problem: Alice isn't in the meetings, so she can't see what's happening. He starts having her go to the meetings with him -- so now she's in meetings six hours a day.
See? That's chaos. I've lived through that, as Alice. The developer doesn't know what to work on from day to day, has a lot of half-completed code, and cannot focus.
Matt Johnson Yup... Sorry for the "in joke" stuff. Anarchism when explained by anarchists these days is basically being against any form of hierarchy. An (against) - archy (rulership/rulers). (ie not "against rules")
ReplyDeleteShane Liebling Yes, rules not rulers!
ReplyDeleteChaos and structurelessness is definitely to be avoided,
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - The Tyranny of Structurelessness - Wikipedia
Dee Hock built Visa International on what he calls a Chaordic approach
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Dee Hock - Wikipedia
I am glad you found me, Mamading Ceesay!
ReplyDeleteI understand anarchy. I mean, fuck, I literally said in that post that I wasn't talking about the chaos definition. I was just making sure I got the inference of the injoke.
ReplyDeleteShane and I do have injokes now, which is kinda cool.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is true: We once went to see a magician. Towards the end of the show, the Magician had everyone stand. He looked at Shane and said "Anarchist".
Shane sat down, for the magician had seen his inner self. Mine was "Organizer".