Hiding the uncomfortable

Sometimes I see how teams and even entire organisations hiding uncomfortable findings and actively side stepping real issues to avoid learning and improvement.

I think there can be numerous reasons for this but from an internal perspective it can of course be psychologically easy to try to point to something external, a different team or even better a method, system or tool since they will not argue back.

A classic statement is along the lines of:

<problem> would go away if we could get everybody to do/use <tool or method>.

Disclaimer:

This is not saying that a method or tool is never the solution to a problem, there are tons of great tools and methods and you should be using the best. Just make sure that you are just using something to hide the real problem or not choosing better solutions.

First:

These types of simplistic statements tends not to hold up well in reality, or be doomed to fail due to the impossible part of getting "everybody". If implementing the suggested tool method as stated is impossible then arguably discussing that as a solution is a waste of time. These types of statements are typically based on a narrow understanding of the complexity of the context (eg: assuming the way you work is a way that would/should be applicable to "everybody").

The everybody part can typically be dismantled by looking at a strong link in existing usage. If you already have some teams doing/using X, are they performing better? If you interview them, are they performing better because of this tool/method or could they have done it without it? If there isn't such a connection then it is impossible to claim that you would be in a better situation if you got more teams to do the same.

Is the result we hope for even produced by this solution? A typical example of how this is used is when sales people try to attribute a success story to a tool they are selling (eg: "Company X is using this tool and they are successful, therefore if you use this tool you will also be successful.")

Second:

I think it is important to acknowledge one of the values in the agile manifesto:

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"

While this is most frequently used as an argument for empowering teams (which I do think is great) it also has a fundamentally introvert aspect to addressing problems. Relevant questions are:

What am I doing wrong?

What are we doing wrong as a team?

Which interactions are missing?

We must of course realize that even with the best intentions and armed with much knowledge changing behavior is difficult. Anyone trying new year resolutions or trying to start/stop some habit surely knows. It is also the simplest of thing to do as it frequently requires nothing, no money, no process, we just did it differently.

Summary:

Derailing the discussion to a tool or method that doesn't solve the problem is a terrible waste of time. It does require some courage to admit that I did it wrong, I can do better, we can do better. Acknowledge that and act rather than argue about a tool.