@mhsutton

heart.head.work.life

Author: Mike

  • Do you feel appreciated, punk?!

    Do you feel appreciated, punk?!

    Computer says ‘appreciate Mike’

    Corporates are a funny bunch. There is a process for everything. Even appreciation.

    A couple of friends of mine in different companies recently celebrated significant milestones of service. An HR system notified someone to initiate an order for some official commemorative items and also sent an email to their respective managers to ‘put it on their radar’.

    The first – for 5 years of being with the same organisation – earned himself a piece of glassware. The kind that is heavy and feels and looks significant. It also looks like the kind of thing that is still sitting on a shelf of the charity shops with no obvious use to anyone.

    My other friend celebrated 15 years at a different company. There was a Friday afternoon presentation by his manager( who incidentally was 11 years old when my friend started at the company!). For such a long tenure, he received – with thanks – a voucher for £100 and a clock.

    Being a confirmed nomad and allergic to the long term effects of corporations – I would never tenure anywhere long enough to warrant anything beyond chewing gum – pre-owned chewing gum at that – so I was curious about their experience of being recipients of corporate appreciation by policy.

    It’s about the choice

    My glassware friend was somewhat at a loss about what to do with this chunk of glass. To make things worse, he Googled the manufacturer of the piece and discovered – much to his disgust – that it cost about $50.

    Now my friend lives somewhere $50 goes a fairly long way and to discover he had no choice about the way in which it was spent –  when it could have made a real difference to him as cash – left him pretty turned off.

    I made the same mistake many people make when we talk about material things – we got through a list of other material things we think could have been a better ‘gift’. Would he have preferred a $50 bottle of whisky, a contribution to a dinner with his partner or a book or who knows what.

    As I pursued a relentless list of other things he might have valued more – he put it simply

    Mike, being offered a choice is all that I wanted. To have been asked what I wanted or offered the cash

    This is when I realised the deep importance of checking in with the person you think you are appreciating – especially when you are demonstrating it with a gift.
    Offering them a choice can avoid so much negative stuff. I wonder how my friend’s non chalance about his glassware would be perceived by those responsible for the process of him getting it in the first place. My hunch tells me it would be received as ingratitude.

    What thrills me might not thrill you

    My other friend  – with his unsolicited time piece – agreed wholeheartedly about the issue of choice.

    He wouldn’t have chosen cash, but he really would have appreciated a call from the CEO. He said he feels he has contributed so much of his life to this organisation and the people he feels he is supporting have never reached out to say a personal “Thank You”. It has been company All Hands, video broadcasts and other ‘efficient’ channels. He pointed out that:

    Even the the Queen of England demonstrates personal gratitude and celebration with centenarians and  people who have been of valuable service.

    As we spoke more,  it turned out that  a simple 2 minute phone call demonstrating genuine interest by the CEO of the company would have entirely made his day! It got me wondering what the job of the CEO was. If it wasn’t about connecting with the people whose toil makes the business valuable, then what is it?

    Appreciation is double loop learning

    One of the new foundations of effective and efficient process work is double loop learning. This is where we formulate a goal,  for example

    We want to demonstrate our appreciation for long tenures of service

    Then we devise a program to reach that goal – for example:

    We will give people who have worked for 5 years a piece of crafted glassware and a funky timepiece to people who have served 15 years

    Double loop learning in this case suggests that once you have done the program,  gather learning about whether the goal should change – not simply the way you are doing it. I heard no evidence that either of these employers had either the interest nor the channels to gather the learning, let alone the intention to apply anything to their original goal.

    If either of these employers even remotely thought about Double Loop Learning, they would simply ask how the recipients of these gifts felt about what was offered, how it was offered and what might have helped them feel better appreciated. I am absolutely sure that even a tiny act of genuine inquiry would have yielded that the goal must change along the lines of:

    We want to help people who have served our organisation for years to feel appreciated for their long tenure

    Can you tell the difference?  I hope you can. If not – ask me.

    What are your experiences of corporate appreciation?

    Did it lift you up and make you feel deeply appreciated or did it leave you feeling meh?
    I’d like to hear about either and everything in between. Tweet me, comment or otherwise make your opinions known.

    Happy days.

     

  • I ❤️ Agile Testing Day Netherlands

    I ❤️ Agile Testing Day Netherlands

    I’ve just been to Agile Testing Day in the Netherlands. And I loved it.

    It’s been over two years since I last participated in any agile conference events.
    Back then I had felt underwhelmed by most things on offer. My head was in some ‘post agile’ place that I couldn’t find anything authentic enough to attend. Also, as a serial organiser/facilitator of gatherings and unconferences I also didn’t want to be involved in organising anything.

    Anyway – out of the blue –  Madeleine Griep from D&H events the organisers of the Agile Testing Days conferences contacted me to present a keynote at their Netherlands one-day event. The Agile Testing Day Netherlands is in its second year and – according to Griep  – had doubled its attendance in one year. Pretty good for a young event. The more established Agile Testing Days in Berlin is in its 7th year, runs over 3 days and enjoys attendance of 600+. So  – really good pedigree as  an event.

    I said ‘Yes’ but didn’t really know what I was going to be talking about. For me, these events are about provocative thinking, inspiration and connection. So whatever I wanted to share had to bring people a degree of all of those aspects.

    Whilst there was a significant proportion of the attendees dressed in suits and many were consultants of one form or another, there was also a large contingent of actual testing professionals whose daily lives are spent trying to make their products demonstrably better in the face of immense disrespect and organizational pressures.

    What really delighted me was that in one single day, an attendee could explore the present – tools, techniques and anecdotes of how their peers are doing things – and the future – like in Rachel Davies’ talk about testing at Unruly. Whilst at the same time they can go deep into product testing and zoom out in how they might effect change in their organisation with a keynote by Olaf Lewitz on Integral Quality

    I certainly learnt a lot by attending and was delighted to hear that my keynote was well received. Here,  for your viewing pleasure,  is the slide deck from my keynote. There is no audio but you can get the main thrust of my talk.
    If you get the opportunity please check out the Agile Testing Days conferences – either in Berlin or in the Netherlands.

    http://www.slideshare.net/mike.sutton/agile-testing-day-netherlands-2015-keynote

  • [NSFW, 18+] Dear James Ellroy, fuck you.

    [NSFW, 18+] Dear James Ellroy, fuck you.

    I like to read. I don’t get much time to read as much as I like, but I do like to read. My wife on the other loves to read and she consumes books like a marijuana’d elephant with the munchies. That is probably the only way she is like an elephant.

    It was a week after New Year’s Day. Like all the other saps in the world I made some resolutions. But I’m 40 and I don’t make fucking resolutions – except I do and I pretend like I don’t.

    One of my rare resolutions was to read more. Precisely 12 more. How easy is that – to read 12 books in 12 months? I don’t mean big chunky books, I mean the lightweight – entertain you briefly, possibly educate you a little – kind.

    In 2015,  what could I read? There are a stack of business books I could waste my time on – each telling me how fucked up the world of work is and selling their own trademarked snake oil to deaden the pain. Or I could read something entirely made up – that created alternative universes with their own rules and rituals – purporting to be unique but simply offering glimpse of humanity that we all knew – ‘A’ for invention, ‘F’ for originality.

    Instead I picked James Ellroy. You know, James Ellroy who wrote LA Confidential and the Black Dahlia. Yeah, that James Ellroy. The foul mouthed , angry at the world crime writer. And boy what a choice.

    My chosen goblet of tasty shit was American Tabloid – a seemingly innocuous 590 pages. This would be easy.I would read 30 pages a night, a few more when I’m on the road. When I was done I would toss it on the pile of mildly interesting shit I had done.

    Now, I generally don’t hero worship – so don’t start getting any ideas. But respect is due to James Ellroy. He doesn’t mince words. He grabs you by the balls and invites a fucking menagerie of America’s biggest names to tug along.

    American Tabloid is on par with the Lord of the Rings with its ability to totally suck you in and alter your perception of reality. Except Ellroy does it by bending popular  history in ways that would curl your toes. He lulls you in with an illusion of familiarity. So, many people know of Jimmy Hoffa – dodgy teamsters union leader and Mafia tangoist. But did you know Jimmy Hoffa the dog fucker? Or the inspirational John F Kennedy who  – according to Ellroy – was also a rampant fuck-any-creature-in-a-skirt spoilt , clueless joyrider.

    In American Tabloid, every major political and newsworthy figure of the 1950-1970s was part of the story – each playing their part in my mental ball tugging. From Monroe to Sinatra, from Eisenhower to Castro. The White House, The Mafia, the CIA, the FBI – including J Edgar Hoover the Voyeur!

    I won’t  tell you the premise of this caper. This caper of capers where the capers are shit scared of all the other capers. Needless to say I won’t read modern American political history the same again. For a long time to come, the spectre of James Ellroy will sit on my shoulder, commenting in his famed staccato style the relevant details of the moment. The shit no one else dare say.

    So, in the best possible taste – Fuck You James Ellroy for writing books that rewired minds, showed the scabs of humanity without saying a word more than was necessary.

    Photo by pshegubj

  • Read this before 'you eat your own dog food'

    Read this before 'you eat your own dog food'

    It has always amused me when people – usually men – say their company or team ‘eats their own dog food’. It has always struck me as a very ‘macho’ thing to say.

    I’ve searched for the origin of the phrase ‘ eat your own dog food’ – there seems to be a couple of places it could have come from, but its wide spread technology industry usage dates back to 1988 in Microsoft.

    Of course the point of ‘eating your own dog food’ is to demonstrate that you have confidence in your own product and can learn – and improve – from your own internal use of it.

    Before I continue – let me say that I think when done correctly, using your commercial product internally can be a very powerful learning and empathy building experience.

    Here are some things to consider before ‘eating your own dog food’.

    Is making dog food mandatory likely to increase joyful adoption or encourage resentful compliance?

    A couple of places I have seen have made ‘dog food’ mandatory. Usually the order comes from the top by someone concerned that the product has quality or user experience problems.

    In my experience – how people work and the tools they use should not be made mandatory or imposed in any way. If the product solves a problem that the user has, then they’ll use it. If it doesn’t – that itself is some valuable learning. If it has to be forced then the data you get from the dog food experience may not be authentic.

    Understand the risks to your business

    You might argue that if your product brings a business to its knees, you would be better off experiencing that yourself first. Or not.

    As much as you might not realise it – your company knows more about how your product works – or should work – than your customers. This insider information is hard to ignore.
    So invariably, the product as used internally does not often cause the same effects as when used by your customers. Or if they cause the same effects – the knowledge your employees have masks the perception of the effects in a way that your customers’ users don’t.

    For example – I had one customer who made security scanning software – the stuff that sits on your machine and scan files and access. Their CTO encouraged their teams to ‘eat their own dog food’ with some dire results.

    Given the nature of the work they were doing, the software completely crippled any kind of software development on the employee’s machines. The order remained, except the developers – choosing to do work rather than remain frustrated – tampered with the configuration by effectively disabling it.

    Not all dogs are the same – be clear which dog you are.

    Sure you might be selling an email client – and you think everyone uses email the same as you do. Before you unleash dog food on your employees – make sure you know what kind of dog you are purporting to be.

    Are you a small enterprise simply using email for inter company communications or are you a marketing agency for whom email is an art form? Knowing what kind of customer your company is, will help you exercise your product more comprehensively.

    Also knowing what kind of user you are not reminds you not to have false faith in dog food – it is only as good as it is used. If you never exercise some parts of your product internally, you aren’t getting the early warning of how real customers might be using it.

    How will you deal with what you find?

    At a higher level – dog food is about feedback. Specifically getting real world usage feedback on your product from internal users.

    The big question is  – what are you prepared to do about it when you get it and how quickly will you do it?

    This is perhaps the biggest problem I see when folk use their own products internally. More often than not, the internal users have no way of getting the broken things fixed quickly – so they continue to endure it.

    Where I have seen it work well – the feedback from internal users is treated as an express lane item – because it comes earlier than feedback from external users (who typically are not on the latest versions anyway). By ‘express lane’ I mean, the triage and categorization of the feedback – i.e. urgent bug, enhancement etc – happens very quickly. Repair/remediation also happens very quickly – depending on the stack – the same day.

    I’d like to share 3 handy checklists items before you commit your company to eating dog food:

    1. Will this critically affect our ability to run our business?
    2. Which customer usage do we represent?
    3. Are we prepared to respond quickly to what this experience will reveal?

    Good luck.

  • Je suis Souleymane

    Je suis Souleymane

    A recent incident on the Paris Métro has troubled me ever since I heard the story. Let me summarise what I’ve read from the media.

    Three men were in a fairly crowded carriage on the Paris’ Metro. Along came a commuter who tried to board the carriage, he was visibly blocked from entering the carriage and then shoved out entirely. The commuter made another attempt to board the train and was again shoved out.

    It further turns out that the commuter , whose name is Souleymane , is black and the people who shoved him from the train were white – apparently British football fans in town for a Chelsea vs Paris St. – Germaine game. They also sang a racist chant after they forcibly prevented him from boarding.

    The entire incident was captured both on the stations CCTV and by a bystander with a phone – in colour and with sound.

    Restricted Solidarity

    This incident follows only a few weeks after alleged religious extremists killed 7 people in various seemingly coordinated attacks on Paris , including at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo –  prompting a monumental outpouring of solidarity under the banner of  ‘Je suis Charlie’

    I am curious to understand why – at a time of heightened awareness of what Parisian society will tolerate – no one spoke out on the train. Why no one challenged these racists. Why no one stood with Souleymane in defiance of this oppression.

    Why wasn’t there solidarity for Souleymane?

    Parisians are apparently “shocked” by this incident – the racism, not the lack of intervention. But post-event shock is no longer enough – When will shock turn to action?

    Bystander Apathy

    There is a social phenomenon called ‘Bystander Apathy’ where, in a group of people witnessing some event that requires action – no one seems prepared to act. This has been observed in some pretty vicious crime – physical and sexual assaults and worse, murder. They’ve happened in broad daylight and often in crowded places like trains and stations.

    It is phenomenon that also happens in business and professional settings too. There is often work or actions to be taken and even when they are obviously laid out, no one steps up to take responsibility. It is a curious phenomenon indeed.

    Was this at play during the Metro incident – how can it be avoided?

    What kind of society do you want?

    There is a curious saying that goes –

    You get what you are willing to accept

    I have often pondered what it means and it seems this incidence really touches at the heart of the matter.

    If I am willing for bullies under any guise – race, religion, gender, economics – to trample on my fellow human being then they will and once they start unchallenged, they won’t stop and then- perhaps one day –  they will try and trample on me.

    I think what would I have done on that Metro and without a shadow of a doubt I would have spoken up for Souleymane. If it came to blows, I would have fought for Souleymane. Just as much for Souleymane as for the society I want to see and for my children to grow up in.

    I’ve stopped trying to save the world, but if I can make my street , neighbourhood, city better – even by a tiny bit – I would have the moved the world along.

    If we are break out from this apathy, we must be prepared to stand together against things that we believe are unjust. Everyday.

    What would you have done?

    Photo by JBrazito

  • Why Scrum is designed for misuse.

    Why Scrum is designed for misuse.

    Street Cred

    I’ve been in the software development industry for 21 years,  using agile software development practices and principles for 14 years to actually deliver software. I’ve been working with Scrum for nigh on 11 years now and over the last 7 years I’ve coached over 120 teams and worked with over 1200 people.

    With all this experience one thing has become clear – Scrum is broken.

    How I assess the quality of any agile process

    In theory, it seems all neat and tidy, but in practice it is abused, misused and generally ineffective. And I wonder why?  I have seen many more poor implementations of the Scrum framework than successful ones. Actually – let me be explicit about how I assess the quality of implemented Scrum.

    For me the success of *any* organisation’s way of working – formal or otherwise – can be checked by simple questions that explore 5 fundamental concepts:

    1. Value: Do we know the value we seek to deliver and are we consistently delivering the maximum value?
    2. Flow: Do we understand how we reach that value and are we consistently reducing the time and/or increasing the ease by which we reach it?
    3. Quality: Do we understand how good our product and workmanship needs to be and are we consistently and demonstrably achieving it?
    4. Joy: Do we know what we collectively and individually need to be joyful and are we consistently meeting those needs?
    5. Continuous Improvement: Do we know what we need to improve across VFQJ and are we demonstrably pursuing those improvements?

    This simple list of questions invites great questions and other avenues of inquiry. It can function as both binary (yes/no) and range (how well are we doing). Works for me – mostly.

    The non-recipe recipe

    The fundamental reason why Scrum – as it currently exists – is broken is that it is a set of instructions, roles, rituals and artifacts that purports to *not* be a recipe. But almost every one takes it as a recipe and they follow it. But there is not enough there to be a an all encompassing recipe – there can never be.

    The trouble is that, as a product , Scrum needs these illusions of completeness in order that it is taken seriously . By and large this has worked. In a world that is seeking silver bullets, Scrum has succeeded beyond it’s practicality commands. It is by far the leading agile process framework in use today. It is in this illusion of completeness that lies the myriad of problems.

    I remember in 2008 or 2009, there was a statement about there never being ‘Scrum 2.0’ – that Scrum was complete as it is. A perfectly chiseled gem that needed nothing removed nor added. This was clearly bollocks and persisted until politics and greed spilled over in the Scrum Alliance causing a bitter split between one of the co-creators of Scrum and the rest of the Alliance. All of a sudden a Scrum 2.0 in emerged in all but name.

    When people have applied Scrum as a recipe the commentary from the unsympathetic dogmatics has been of the nature of:

    “ScrumBut”

    “Scrum shines a light on where you need to fix in your organisation”

    “Scrum works, you just did it badly”

    “You didn’t have buy in”

    Overwhelmingly any reasonable objection to some of the design flaws – and design flaws can emerge after the fact , exposed because of a change of operating environment etc – is often met with “those people are resistant, they are against change”.

    When Things Work, Its the Process – When They Don’t, It’s The People

    I was first attracted to Scrum because I believed it would revolutionise the ‘world of work’.

    10 years on and I’m deeply disappointed. It did not revolutionise the world of work. Instead it got gobbled up by the Death Star of Work. If it had any early promise – for me it was that it would promote unprecedented collaboration between the people focused on delivering value and the people consuming it.

    It may have had some success in some organisations – but this is far from ‘changing the world of work’. A tiny street maybe, but never a world!

    Of course a process doesn’t do anything – people do. But how a process is designed has a huge impact on how readily the people take to it and how easily they can use it for the intended purpose.

    More often than not I see a growing perception of infallibility of a process and an overwhelming blaming of the teams and individuals who play the Scrum roles. I feel deeply sad and angry at this.

    Multiple single points of failure

    Scrum Master, Product Owner and Team all collaborating beautifully – each with its clear role and responsibility – what’s not to love?

    Except that in *most* companies roles are so entrenched and siloed that this is the worst thing you could do – add more roles that become siloed. I hear you scream – “yes but the problem is the organisation and not Scrum” – and you are both right and wrong.

    You are right because it is the organisation that is siloed and you are wrong because adding more roles when you *know* that most organisations are siloed is a dumb idea. That is like asking the morbidly obese to incorporate 3 more meals – however small – into their already dangerous diet.

    Defined roles and a culture of collaboration are difficult bedfellows in any context. Especially in the context of trying to explore value through . Defined roles present an extra hurdle to overcome as we truly try and work together.

    I have seen product development be disastrous for many reasons and the most common one is the single point of failure problem. Examples abound:

    • Overworked, overextended and ineffective Product Owners;
    • Scrum Masters left to single-handedly be responsible for improvement and impediments and latterly ‘coaching’ the team.
    • Teams that aren’t to effectively own their tools, their craft or their collaboration.

    Rituals become checklists vs  achieved outcomes.

    If I have to walk into another planning meeting that is schedul for 4 hours because Scrum said so – with the hope that somehow the information we don’t have about the work we are expected to commit to will magically appear – I may have to shoot some unicorns.

    Sprint after sprint, people do the meetings, the stand ups, the reviews etc. Scrum Masters – bless ’em – scour the communities for how to make their standups more interesting. Velocity is going up, teams are 7±2 people – things in the product backlog read like ‘As a …, I want…”. The process seems to be working perfectly.

    Yet software is still sitting on the shelf. Customers are not getting anything to feedback on. Developers still don’t talk to customers.

    Velocity becomes a stick to beat teams up

    So velocity is not a defined part of Scrum – but it is a defacto part of Scrum implementations and it is both a arbitrary and crude measure of something.

    Velocity doesn’t mean what you think it means. It is about capacity,not speed It is *always* historic and never comparable to any other team and barely comparable to the same team over time.  Sure it is a number and numbers can be compared – and that in itself is a problem because the human factors that help that number pop out are deeply flawed in most organisations.

    Thankfully, the #NoEstimates movement is bringing some well deserved improvement in thinking in this whole area.

    Of course you need a measure to know how you’re doing. But velocity is a poor one. The emergent product and how well it is meeting the needs it was intended to meet is the ultimate measure – sadly many organisations are unable to get this – so they overdose on the measure that came with the process.

    So narrow as to be quickly redundant

    I was in the market for car seat a few years ago and was faced with buying something that was super specific for my son at his then age – he was 3 years old – or buying something that would support him till he was 8 years old.

    Guess which I bought.

    Scrum purports to be for ‘new product’ development – and I wholeheartedly agree. Except I don’t know *any* teams that only do ‘new product development’.

    Even if  a team that started out with only new product development – after their product reached its first users – their work mix would need to change. The fixes, bugs and so on that are different classes of work and different service responses change the mix. You could use Scrum to do these classes of work – but that would be akin to picking your teeth with a vacuum cleaner.

    And this is just product related work – but what about the work everyone needs to do to continue to improve? The Human Development work? How about using Scrum for that?

    If Scrum was the only thing you did – and many organisations adopt it as such – then it would get misused pretty quickly because getting shit done always trumps following a process. The question is how much of a hatchet job do we have to do to the process to get the shit done.

    Scrum Shows You What Needs Fixing, It Doesn’t Fix Them For You

    If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard this, I would be rather rich.

    Of course Scrum should fix something – everyone I have ever met in a company *know* what is wrong. They don’t need a fancy methodology to tell them what is broken. They need something to help to try and address the problems and Scrum does not not address any of those.

    If the problem that Scrum fixes is exposure of problems then it needs to be pitched as ‘a framework for exposing what is preventing you from doing joyful, fulfilling new product development work’.

    It ain’t all bad.

    I don’t hate Scrum – I’ve just use it long and deep enough to understand which bits I would throw away and which I would keep, what contexts I would use it in and which I would bury it so deep – no one would ever find it.

    If you are using Scrum  – I beg you to question it all. Ask yourself, your team, organisation and customers whether this is really helping you and what you are really trying to achieve. Don’t even mention Scrum during that conversation – simply talk about ‘how are we delivering what we seek to deliver” .

    As with most things, all this can boil down to simple choices.

    Do you choose to blindly follow a process or do you choose to adapt your own way of working that is focused on value and joy?

    Good luck whichever you choose.

     

     

    Photo by mikecogh

  • Today is #BobMarley's birthday, what is the music of your revolution?

    Today is #BobMarley's birthday, what is the music of your revolution?

    Today is Bob Marley‘s 70th birthday. It got me thinking about music and revolution. I have a favour to ask you, but first…

    We are all Children of Revolution

    I grew up in Nigeria in the 70s and 80s. This was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

    There was a struggle going on. A struggle between the political thought, a struggle between the kleptocrats and everyone else.

    Similarly in the UK, another struggle was in flow – between those who wanted to put the national cake in private hands. They largely succeeded and in doing so, they destroyed the social fabric of the working class for generations.

    Through all this socio-political revolution was one constant. Music.

    For me, the music that plays when I think of Nigeria’s revolutions – past, present and future – is Fela. He foresaw the kleptocracy and the hijacking of democracy. He saw the ‘power show’. He saw the cattle trading of the international political elite and he knew how this was playing out.

    When I want to understand the US Civil Rights revolution, I simply listen to Nina Simone. Her music was deep in empathy and communicated so much more of the pain, injustice and hope beyond the words she sang.

    When I listen to UB40’s music from the 80s, I get a sense of the disillusionment of the youth of the day – the riots, the joblessness, the conflict with a generation that didn’t understand its children.

    What Music Fuels Your Revolution and Your Struggle?

    But there are always revolutions going on and there is always music.

    Your revolution does not have to be a war or a conflict, but it does have to be a struggle that has significant consequences depending on who triumphs.

    It could be Iran, Egypt, the struggle of the indigenous Bolivians. It could be the Occupy Movement. It could be Israel and Palestine, it could be the Western Sahara. It could be anywhere!

    It could be a struggle against religion or a political or economic system. Or any system for that matter.

    It could be religious music, punk, folk, afrobeat or anything – what did it’s words do for your movement.

    The Favour – Join Me In Celebrating The Music of Revolution.

    I want to see – in my lifetime – a celebration of this music.

    I want to see it spark a reawakening and re-energising of the movements fighting the good fight. I want the struggle – in its new and emerging battle grounds to be renewed  by the timeless messages and power of the words and lives of Bob, Fela, Nina and countless others.

    It won’t happen on its own and I can’t do it on my own – so I need your help.

    In 2016 , I want to see a stage of this music in festivals across the world. From Glastonbury to Paleo, from Coachella to Midi in China and across all genres. This stage will be an unprecedented mashup of music styles and personalities – united by the thread of social and political catalysis.

    Imagine an unprecedented line up of Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Seun Kuti, Femi Futi, UB40, Ziggy, Damien and Stephen Marley, Manu Chao and dozens of others on the same stage – united in the music of protest and telling the story of social change through the power of music.

    My hope is that we can get this in to 12 global festivals across the world.

    Please help me make this happen.  Do you want to be a part of this? Then tweet, email or ping me on Skype and let’s going. The world needs this.

    Photo by monosnaps

  • Do Something Radical – Stop Preserving Your Career

    Do Something Radical – Stop Preserving Your Career

    Beware the language of powerlessness

    How often have you heard any of these phrases or perhaps  used them yourself:

    “Don’t rock the boat”

    “Pick your battles”

    “Keep your head down”

    “That is how stuff works around here”

    “These things take time”

    Within and outside the organisations I work with, I hear over and over again the language of powerlessness – the language of C.Y.A – Cover Your Ass, the language of the status quo.

    You joined to do great work, so go do it.

    You,  like most people I know – some in the biggest and richest companies in the world – joined to do amazing things.

    They joined to pursue the passion of figuring problems out , helping people , being of use or simply for the joy of making.

    Along the way they acquired things – family and responsibilities. All of which make demands on time and money.

    Along the way, they settled for the status quo and adopted the language of powerlessness – allowing unfairness and injustice to be done in the name of career progression.

    You only have this one life – spend it wisely, do the great work now – you might not get another go round the carousel.

    Go take calculated risks.

    Start a business – you might fail or you might succeed, either way it would probably be the best thing you could do.

    Speak out against the things that piss you off  – you might help change them.

    Stand up for others at work  even against the opinion of authority.

    Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. You are human – show it.

    Don’t tolerate your time being wasted – it is the only thing of real value you have and you have less of it every day.

    Be the shoulders for others to reach further  –  that is leadership too.

    Call things as you see them.

    You might actually find you have a more enjoyable, impactful and inspirational career by not trying to have one.

    Photo by Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons

  • Charge Cosby or #STFU.

    Charge Cosby or #STFU.

    Spoiler: This is not about Bill Cosby. It is about the usurpation of law to condemn a person by media without legal proof.

    I watched the Cosby show as a kid. I – like millions of other young teens – wished he was my dad. But I grew out of that by my late teens for 2 simple reasons.

    First – my own dad was actually rather cool. Sure he had his faults but he was my dad and I loved him.

    Second – I hate to break it to you but the Cosby Show is only television. It was only actors playing feel-good roles. Make believe – la bloody la la land.

    After that Bill Cosby became just another human on this Earth trying to not die.

    Over the last few months, allegations – and that is all they are at this time – about sexual assaults and other potential sex crimes now seem rife about  Bill Cosby.

    It seems individuals with all kinds of agenda and reasons are calling for Cosby be boycotted, hounded and illegally persecuted.

    Now – more than ever – we have to strive to be nations governed by democratic laws. Because without them we have chaos of might over right. Without laws, we have the powerful exploiting the week. I lived through that and it ain’t pretty.

    But we have laws so let us use them.

    Charge Bill Cosby or shut the fuck up. Go grind your axe where you cut your tree and leave the man be.

    The allegations against Cosby are serious – too serious to leave to the media circus. If the charges are true – his victims deserve justice.

    If the accusers require anonymity –  the law permits anonymity in many cases – let them seek it.

    No one  deserves to be accused of something and thrown to the media whores of popularity and 15 minutes of sensationalism. If you have evidence  – even strong circumstantial evidence – present it, charge him and let him face his accusers in a court. Otherwise shut the fuck up.

    Also, silence is not a presumption of guilt. If Cosby keeps quiet – how on Earth does that prove he is guilty?

    If Cosby’s accusers are worried about legal bills, let all the people calling for Cosby’s head in the press and social networks put their hands in their pockets and put their money where their venom is. That would make a tidy legal fund. I would contribute to that.

    If there is a statute of limitations in the way – use your media force to have it overturned. It is possible.

    If found guilty Bill Cosby should face the full brunt of the law, he deserves his name to be dragged into the mud and all his wealth redistributed to any confirmed victims as restitution. His age should not spare him, his disgrace should be total and irredeemable.

    If found guilty, he deserves to spend 10 years per proven assault in a maximum security prison with a big horny man named Bubba and no lubricant.

    So – stop this circus, charge Cosby or shut the fuck up.

    Note: Comments are closed on this post. I don’t want to hear allegations. Charge him or shut the fuck up.

     

  • Screw Fast Feedback

    Screw Fast Feedback

    Agile teams love faster feedback

    Or so the mantra goes.
    Legions of agile enthusiasts and countless books, conference talks, webinars and training course harp on about faster feedback as though without it the World would cease.

    In the fantasy world we – agile enthusiasts – inhabit, the faster the feedback the better.

    Entire hordes of agile nerds are finding ways to make technical feedback – compiles, unit tests and functional tests – faster than ever before. We have frameworks now that give you almost instantaneous feedback on the impact of changes you are making to code and the product you are building. We delight in making the mechanisation of feedback itself faster.

    With all the emphasis and near-dogmatic fervor directed in favor of fast/faster feedback, I think it’s time for some perspective – screw fast feedback. I mean really – screw it.

    Why do people who understand the value of fast feedback impose the idea on everyone else? There are clear reasons why you make the investment in discovering – and discovering quickly – what someone or something has to tell you about something you did. Whether this is software, a customer or anyone!

    3 Reasons For Not Seeking Feedback – at any speed.

    We – enlightened folk – prance around thinking the value is self-evident to man and beast. It isn’t.
    Let me put more succinctly:

    1. If you are asking for it but not going to act on it – and yes, considered inaction is ‘acting on it’ – then don’t seek feedback.
    2. If you are asking for it and not going to act on it as quickly as you get it – then don’t  go through all the trauma of seeking it faster.
    3. If the source of the feedback is unwilling to give it to you quickly or even at all – don’t waste your time trying to seek it faster.

    I have seen too many teams pursue the delusion of Continuous Integration but not write tests – the equivalent of asking for feedback – or not write enough tests to tell them anything meaningful. Then even when they get some feedback – “Red Alert: the build is broken” – it remains broken for days.

    Don’t release your product early and often If your customer is not prepared to do anything with it when you release it . Why take the considerable pain of changing how you work to do something that no one needs. That is just dumb.

    Every optimization you make costs you something – so think twice about what you will use that optimization for:

    If it will not enhance the value you deliver, ease the flow of delivering that value, improve the quality of the valuable product or increase the joy of working on this valuable thing – then do not make the investment.

    Why I wrote this

    This piece is about giving the rest of the world a break from the pressure to seek feedback and act on it. I hope we can all get back to what works for each of us.

    Note: On the subject of feedback, I care that you share your opinion about this post. If you tell me what you liked, I’ll do more of it, if you tell me what you didn’t – I promise I’ll consider doing less of it.