Talking about the programme endgame – James C Collins
Keeping the end in mind seems to me to be a pretty good maxim for any tech programme. How will the benefits be sustained when the initial programme objectives have been met? How will day-to-day operations fit within the wider organisation – both business and technology? How will the solution be further improved?
I’m wary of advocating a best practice (Dan North’s views on this particular notion being fresh in my mind), but I confess to being a bit of a fan of DevOps, or at least the idea that the people developing technical solutions should have a say in / hand in / obligation towards their ongoing operation. Eating your own dogfood I believe it’s referred to.
The bigger picture is that good tech programmes contribute to the long term success of the organisation of which they are part. James C. Collins wrote the very famous business book From Good To Great and in it it draws from extensive research into what makes some companies great while others aren’t. It was written in 2001, a lifetime ago in technology terms. Indeed some of the great companies he cites don’t seem terribly great now (Circuit City ended up going bankrupt), but despite that there is much to draw from here.
Collins talks about the hedgehog concept: the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing (the art of defence). This is the idea that great companies have great clarity over what they are good at, where their passion lies and what the sources of income are. They never try to be all things to all people. How does your programme support and contribute to the organisation’s hedgehog focus?
I started this series of articles with a quote from Murakami “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”. I’ll leave you with The Stockdale Paradox. Commander James Stockdale was a pilot in the US navy during the Vietnam war and was captured and held for over seven years in appalling conditions in a PoW camp. He was one of the very few who got out alive (albeit with a broken back & severely dislocated shoulders). Collins interviewed him when he wrote his book. Asked why he survived Collins said: “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life.” When Collins asked who didn’t make it out, Stockdale replied: “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.” Stockdale summed up the paradox thus: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” A valuable lesson for anyone trying to wrestle a struggling tech programme to the ground!