I believe this is an apt description of where my last company was. We got good at reaching the low point on the waste through of the desert. But several of us could imagine the forest. However we didn't have the leadership ability to lead the team it of the desert into the forest in a timely enough fashion to avoid the bosses forcing a return to the desert.
And they did so because it was necessary for the business to return to a place of predictability, even if I believed it to be a sub optimal predictability.
In the desert the margin of survival feels tight enough that predictability seems absolutely necessary. In the forest, predictability seems bizarre because you assume there will be enough. Which is part of what ensures that there will be enough.
Interestingly there are plenty of resources, I think what led to the change was the physical growth of the company led to less communication between departments, more surprises to those needing changes to software, and a feeling that needs were not being met.
I think it was a communication problem, not a planning problem. And at least with big design up front the requester is forced to think out what they need so are less surprised than if they throw a poorly specified project at an unsuspecting programmer who disappears for a while and comes back with something that doesn't have much value.
I was reflecting upon that and thought that if you spend too much time in the desert, you might even see mirages; fake visions that might drive you further away from the forest and deeper into the desert.
I agree, and thus I associate it with the idea of a Mirage or an Oasis. Something that has no value for people in the forest, but that might be tempting for those who live in the desert.
The oasis has genuine value. You don't die of thirst. This is something I've come to appreciate as part of The Forest & The Desert--all the creative ways people have found to survive in The Desert. Wow! Good for them. And yet, I can still tell stories about The Forest.
That's a great point. The Oasis has real value, the Mirage doesn't. The first is essential for survival, and the later's just an illusion.
Maybe a better metaphor for a Mirage in that sense could be teams that hold daily meetings as a status report process that doesn't generate benefits for anyone.
Ps: I'm just a fan of metaphors as a way to explain concepts, but maybe I'm pushing this one too far.
Do you see the Forest as “a better local maximum (waste-minimum)”, or as representing a space that actually contains the global maximum for that team and their context? If the former, I think it’s important to watch for practices that “dessicate” or “steepen” the Forest: bringing back familiar or comfortable practices from the Desert that may not be adaptive, or making it harder to search for an even lower local waste-minimum.
"Global" is taking it further than I would. I'd settle for "better local waste minimum". I think we've all seen senior-but-not-staff engineers bring their favorite tricks from Previous Employer & have them backfire in the new context.
If you'll excuse the pun, maybe the metaphor is closer to 'you can't see the trees for the forest'
For me, I took it as being a lot closer to the way forests can become deserts, and forests deserts. And all of that means it's all about the trees: in a desert, trees are at best, stunted, small and twisted things but in a forest they can be majestic triple canopy giants that support whole ecosystems in their own right.
So, my questions then are around, what's the equivalent of irrigation systems, planting schemes etc in desert environments and how do you manage the temptations of deforestation, slash and burn farming etc in forests.
The visuals and ideas that come into my head around these ideas are almost endless and a lot of fun!
Do we want heavily managed country house garden estates or primeval tracts of dense forest? What sort of trees can grow in a desert garden?
Oh, nice one. Indeed, in a forest, usually the trees aren’t the resources by themselves, but rather the preconditions for those: they cast shadows and protect from heat, they hold the humidity, they provide possibilities to build a tree house.
Sometimes, managers decide to burn the trees. Return to the office, report daily on your progress, why didn’t you exactly what you were told, who is responsible for these mistakes. We need to reassemble the teams, more projects, smaller working groups, frequently changing. And so on.
I really love the way you use the drawings to explain your ideas, you're a really good visual thinker, recently I gave a talk about Visual Thinking applied to software development (in my case I'm focused on Erlang and Elixir), and I tried to explain how drawing with your hands is other way to think, I made a public repo to share my content https://github.com/the-elixir-developer/visual-thinking
I''ll be waiting to maybe draw some content of your blog soon, I'd love to collaborate :)
I believe this is an apt description of where my last company was. We got good at reaching the low point on the waste through of the desert. But several of us could imagine the forest. However we didn't have the leadership ability to lead the team it of the desert into the forest in a timely enough fashion to avoid the bosses forcing a return to the desert.
And they did so because it was necessary for the business to return to a place of predictability, even if I believed it to be a sub optimal predictability.
In the desert the margin of survival feels tight enough that predictability seems absolutely necessary. In the forest, predictability seems bizarre because you assume there will be enough. Which is part of what ensures that there will be enough.
Interestingly there are plenty of resources, I think what led to the change was the physical growth of the company led to less communication between departments, more surprises to those needing changes to software, and a feeling that needs were not being met.
I think it was a communication problem, not a planning problem. And at least with big design up front the requester is forced to think out what they need so are less surprised than if they throw a poorly specified project at an unsuspecting programmer who disappears for a while and comes back with something that doesn't have much value.
I was reflecting upon that and thought that if you spend too much time in the desert, you might even see mirages; fake visions that might drive you further away from the forest and deeper into the desert.
You become conditioned to see the desert as the only option. You may even find an oasis & think that's the forest but you'd better not step away.
I can't stop to associate that to stuff like SAFe that may sometimes provide a sense of improvement at the cost of stagnation
SAFe is elaborate desert theater. And works very well as elaborate desert theater. But it's not The Forest.
I agree, and thus I associate it with the idea of a Mirage or an Oasis. Something that has no value for people in the forest, but that might be tempting for those who live in the desert.
The oasis has genuine value. You don't die of thirst. This is something I've come to appreciate as part of The Forest & The Desert--all the creative ways people have found to survive in The Desert. Wow! Good for them. And yet, I can still tell stories about The Forest.
That's a great point. The Oasis has real value, the Mirage doesn't. The first is essential for survival, and the later's just an illusion.
Maybe a better metaphor for a Mirage in that sense could be teams that hold daily meetings as a status report process that doesn't generate benefits for anyone.
Ps: I'm just a fan of metaphors as a way to explain concepts, but maybe I'm pushing this one too far.
Do you see the Forest as “a better local maximum (waste-minimum)”, or as representing a space that actually contains the global maximum for that team and their context? If the former, I think it’s important to watch for practices that “dessicate” or “steepen” the Forest: bringing back familiar or comfortable practices from the Desert that may not be adaptive, or making it harder to search for an even lower local waste-minimum.
"Global" is taking it further than I would. I'd settle for "better local waste minimum". I think we've all seen senior-but-not-staff engineers bring their favorite tricks from Previous Employer & have them backfire in the new context.
If you'll excuse the pun, maybe the metaphor is closer to 'you can't see the trees for the forest'
For me, I took it as being a lot closer to the way forests can become deserts, and forests deserts. And all of that means it's all about the trees: in a desert, trees are at best, stunted, small and twisted things but in a forest they can be majestic triple canopy giants that support whole ecosystems in their own right.
So, my questions then are around, what's the equivalent of irrigation systems, planting schemes etc in desert environments and how do you manage the temptations of deforestation, slash and burn farming etc in forests.
The visuals and ideas that come into my head around these ideas are almost endless and a lot of fun!
Do we want heavily managed country house garden estates or primeval tracts of dense forest? What sort of trees can grow in a desert garden?
Really fun :-)
Oh, nice one. Indeed, in a forest, usually the trees aren’t the resources by themselves, but rather the preconditions for those: they cast shadows and protect from heat, they hold the humidity, they provide possibilities to build a tree house.
Sometimes, managers decide to burn the trees. Return to the office, report daily on your progress, why didn’t you exactly what you were told, who is responsible for these mistakes. We need to reassemble the teams, more projects, smaller working groups, frequently changing. And so on.
Exactly! And those adaptation by managers are reasonable behavior in the desert. So the first thing to do is get a small group to:
Agree they want to be in the forest
Beginning planting & cultivating
Recruit more foresters
I really love the way you use the drawings to explain your ideas, you're a really good visual thinker, recently I gave a talk about Visual Thinking applied to software development (in my case I'm focused on Erlang and Elixir), and I tried to explain how drawing with your hands is other way to think, I made a public repo to share my content https://github.com/the-elixir-developer/visual-thinking
I''ll be waiting to maybe draw some content of your blog soon, I'd love to collaborate :)
If you draw it, I'll post it!
Sounds great, where I can send to you?