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I also publish on Pre-Pre-Seed substack, where I focus more narrowly on anything related to early-stage product development.
Comments
4 responses to “Why We Fail to Change”
Flavius Stef
It seems to me that you assume a couple of things I disagree with: – Assumption #1: Performance impact grows linearly with change size. That is, small changes have small impacts. But chaordic environments will manifest extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Two teams introducing the same seemingly smal…
Thank you for reading. I appreciate if you sign-up for getting new articles to your email.
I also publish on Pre-Pre-Seed substack, where I focus more narrowly on anything related to early-stage product development.
Comments
4 responses to “Why We Fail to Change”
Flavius Stef
It seems to me that you assume a couple of things I disagree with: – Assumption #1: Performance impact grows linearly with change size. That is, small changes have small impacts. But chaordic environments will manifest extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Two teams introducing the same seemingly small change (eg. switching from requirements documents to user stories) could have different productivity penalties due to eg. their company structures. – Assumption #2: It takes roughly the same time to stabilize performance following a kaikaku change as it does following several kaizen ones. This would be true only when the transaction cost of implementing a change is very small. Change models such as PDCA, ADKAR or Kotter’s 8 steps suggest otherwise.
On the flip side, kaizen changes are more useful as safe to fail probes, so they would be particularly suited in a complex environment. Kaikaku changes tend to assume complicated environments. 1.
@Flavius – Of course the model is oversimplified on many accounts and your points are valid.
From my experience frequently the impact of small changes can be significant, which would change the model to promote small changes more. Also, given than impact of small changes would differ it also means that wise choice of the experiments we run may allow us to harvest low hanging fruits fast.
For the stabilization period, I would point that there’s a whole difference in the mindset of an organization that is used to continuous improvements and the one that rolls out a carefully planned revolution. This alone completely changes the dynamics of stabilization period.
As I mentioned in the post — it is a starting point for a discussion, not the ultimate answer. 1.
Hi Pawel. I just wanted you to know that I have been recommending this article to students of my CSM class for some years now, and continue to this day. It is an excellent introduction to some of the difficulties scrum masters face when they take their “agent of change” role seriously. In response to a previous commenter I’d say the model you introduce people to here is simplified. It is not over-simplified it is just-the-right-amount-simplified. As you rightly respond, “it is a starting point for a discussion, not the ultimate answer.” Oh that more people embraced imperfection+discussion, rather than seeking perfect answers (of which their are none)! 1.
@Tobias Thank you! All these models, Virginia Satir’s change model, Fitness Landscape, Lean, and more, were always sense-making structures. I’d refer back to them to build some understanding of the surrounding people, organizations, and world. That way, I improve the odds of any change being sustainable.
And I say that only because I learned the hard way how ineffective it is to start a change from the ivory tower of the knowing-everything change agent.