Difficult people and team players

Hey,

Today I bring two podcast episodes I enjoyed this week and a great article about becoming a VP on Engineering (part 2 is already out as well):

• On Becoming a VP of Engineering Part 1: The Path to VP

• adrienne maree brown on Emergent Strategy and being in right relationship with change

• She Plays Games: Hannah Nicklin (author and game studio lead) interview

This week, with the ongoing Spanish election campaign, there’s a lot on my mind. As usual, every four years, a familiar frustration arises. While I won’t write a political piece here, let me tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed The West Wing a few months ago, the political intricacies and the trade-offs made, it got me fired up.

I was writing a somewhat long piece about system thinking in general and specifically in politics (or the lack of), which is something I’ve been wanting to write for a while now, but I’ll keep thinking about it for next newsletters.

As a personal update, a couple of interviews happened this week and there are a few more in the following weeks. Not only is the market not as hot as previous years, as we’ve seen with the many layouts but summer, particularly July and August, is never great for looking for a job. In contrast with almost doing an interview a day, I’ve seen a steep decline in jobs posted online, as people are on holidays. Luckily, a few interesting roles appeared.

Today, instead of writing about systems, I’ll briefly talk about a thread by Andy Budd:

When I read it, it clicked. Maybe because sometimes, even though I’m normally a “fun guy”, I was that “difficult person” and felt the frustration, annoyance, and anger that Andy describes, and the need to be more forceful because people didn’t seem to understand.

From my experience in those moments, there was a deep desire to affect change and do a great work, but, over time, I realized that:

• Change doesn’t happen just because you will it or even because you have the most knowledge, evidence, or experience.

• You cannot change others. The more you force, as if you were trying to destroy a wall, the less it happens.

As Andy writes, the more you force, the more difficult to work with you seem to be, and the more burned out you end up. The conclusion of the thread is that designers should be “politicians”, and use the same psychology and systems principles they use in the products to drive human behaviour in the organization, rather than going against it.

I’m a bit ambivalent about it. On one hand, I think about the power of disruptive protest and how little it’s accomplished with keeping calm and quiet and not burning bridges. On the other hand, changing one company is not your job or your moral right. You can do it, but there are many other companies out there with better conditions for you, and spending your time and energy driving change in just one place forever without the right conditions for change will only drain you.

If I’ve learnt anything about affecting change, it is that you have to be ready to practice being comfortable being uncomfortable, under tension and, as adrienne maree brown puts it, it’s paramount to have a good relationship with change. Before looking to change things, embracing change in life is even more important. The Buddha said it best: nothing is permanent, except change.

The times when I had an impact in an organization, I was the most empathetic, thought holistically, found my people and specially when I was okay with things as they were, without forcing and sometimes without being the agent of change myself. Wanting change could also mean that you want to be the protagonist of change, the one in charge, the architect of it and the change that happens has to be the one you want, with no concession. Letting go of that ambition, allowing others to co-create with you or finding like-minded people and supporting them can be more impactful than if you would’ve been “the one”. Perfection is the enemy of the good.

Change by command and control doesn’t work in the long run. If it works, it only perpetuates more command and control, oppression, because that’s the only way to do it. The typical CEO who goes to their employees and forces them to do something they didn’t want because of power dynamics is a great example.

I remember vividly a C-suite guy that came one day to my team and asked us about how we felt about Jira, the infamous issue tracking system. We used Trello back in the day, it wasn’t perfect, but did the job for what the team wanted. I don’t think any developer really wanted Jira. What do you think happened the next following weeks? The company mandated all teams to migrate to Jira for “cohesion” purposes, so they could track number of tickets done, velocity and other metrics, and compare teams. It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it demonstrated that commanding change was the way there.

Going back to the original tweet, sometimes I’ve felt I was the difficult guy. It also came with the feeling of isolation, as there was no support or ally that could have my back and go with me. Some people might agree and have long and passionate conversations with you about it, but still be a bystander. I also realize that not everyone can have the privilege to change things, we all have our context, our risks.

I’m still practising and learning about change, and how to communicate and find allies or being the ally of others. If there’s one thing that has impacted my perception of change the most is learning about system thinking and system design, looking at the whole instead of just the pieces, and understanding the incentives, feedback loops, levers… of said system. Hopefully, I’ll write about it in the following weeks.