Putting theory into practice: how to develop yourself in an agile environment
I heard a stand-up comedian recently doing a skit about how the things she’d learnt in school had served her little purpose as an adult. “Pythagoras doesn’t figure heavily in my daily life” she lamented, “the only triangles I tend to come across now are in Toblerones.”
It made me think about the application of learning in my working life. It’s a fairly common view that I’m sure most of us have heard somewhere that the things we learn in formal educational don’t always translate to our working lives. Have you ever been on a training course and heard something like: “If you take just one thing away from today…” as if the rest of it won’t apply, isn’t relevant or doesn’t need our attention?
The use of theory or models as a learning tool is of particular interest to me. My own role as a Change Manager has enabled me to go through various management training courses, and through these I’ve encountered many theories, models and explanations, some of which resonated with me, and some of which did not.
One model I’ve encountered is itself about learning. In their paper, McCall, Eichinger and Lombardo put forward the idea that a 70:20:10 rule can be applied to developmental learning in the workplace. That is:
- 70% of learning comes from ‘on the job’ experience
- 20% of learning comes from ‘relationships with others who are expert’
- 10% of learning comes from ‘formal course-based, or similar learning’
And yet my anecdotal experience is that most of us consider only the formal course-based learning to be ‘real’ training. Perhaps we’re overlooking the value we get from doing. That’s where, according to the model, we get 70% of our development from, so we should value it appropriately. However, we need direction and guidance when we’re in doing mode. I can spend as much time as I like in the cockpit of an aeroplane, but without a manual, or someone to show me what to do, I’m never going to be able to fly it.
In his book Bounce, Matthew Syed puts forward the idea of purposeful practice. He states that for someone to become world class at something, they need to spend 10,000 hours in purposeful practice; that is doing the thing they want to be world class at, whilst also getting advice, feedback and instruction. The feedback is just as important as the practice itself. Now, Syed was discussing physical endeavour(sport, playing an instrument and so on), but I think the theory holds true for more cerebral activities.
If you want to be a software engineer, you need to write code. If you want to be a scrum master, you need to work with a delivery team. These statements are undeniable, and very few people would argue against the positive power of feedback. Indeed, short feedback loops — the whole ‘inspect and adapt’ paradigm — is a cornerstone of agile delivery, and yet I wonder whether we apply the same rigor on an individual level. Certainly there are some working practices that encourage this. Pairing or mobbing between engineers is a great way to get real-time feedback, to start some purposeful practice. Three Amigos sessions between engineers, product owners and analysts are also (perhaps to a lesser extent than mobbing where all the participants share domain knowledge) a great way to get feedback.
So how do we get from theory to practice, to expert?
Start with the theory
Today we’re lucky enough to have a huge resource of learning material on practically any subject you can conceive, with only a few clicks. There are academic papers, blog posts, TED talks, articles, podcasts and all other manner of media and formats available so take your pick. Personally, I like to read a good old-fashioned book. I like the tangible feel of the pages, being able to skip forward and back, make my own notes in the margin and so on. Frankly it doesn’t matter how you consume it — do what you like — but my advice would be to start with the theory.
Let’s say you’re a manager that wants to motivate their team. A quick Google search will bring up scholarly articles for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s dual-factor theory, McGregor’s X and Y theory, McClelland’s need theory and so on. Pick the format you like, and consume a few of these theories. See what resonates with you. What feels right in your context? What can you see working? No model is perfect, and you’d do well to research the common criticisms of whatever it is you’re looking at, but they do give a functional short-hand to what are often complex ideas.
Form a plan and do something
It doesn’t need to be grand, but from the theory, give yourself a couple of actions to try. Let’s say you like the sound of Herzberg’s dual factor theory. Your action plan may include asking your team what their dislikes are so you can clear out the hygiene factors. Now you need to do it — here’s where the practice comes in. You could just dive straight in — this is, after all, where we get 70% of our development from — or you could ask an expert. Get some advice on how to approach it, what’s worked well for them, and what traps are there to avoid. Bottom line is, you need to do something tangible to see what the outcome is.
Get feedback
For your practice to be purposeful, you need feedback, so ask for it. I’m lucky enough to work with people who are quite willing to give me feedback all the time, so I have a pretty good idea when what I’m doing is working, and when it isn’t! Get into the habit of asking for feedback — and of course, don’t forget to give it too. A feedback culture is massively useful to help everyone’s practice become purposeful. In the case study of Herzberg’s dual factor theory, you could ask your team — once you’ve sorted the hygiene factors — whether or not they feel more motivated, or you could go more meta than that, and ask whether they liked the approach you took to asking them — it doesn’t really matter, you just need some feedback on some element of what you did. Use existing ceremonies such as stand-ups, 1:1 meetings, retros and so on to do this. Whilst it’s important, feedback should just be a part of the natural rhythm of the team, not something special or ‘extra’.
Adapt and refine
It’s obvious, but you need to accommodate the feedback you’ve been given and adjust your approach accordingly. Every refinement you make should be aimed at making you more effective. They don’t need to be radical changes, though they may be if you were trying something really new!
It’s important to remember, that every time we do something it’s an opportunity to get better at it. It won’t happen on its own — or at least not at a significant pace — so we need to make our practice purposeful, and stretching. We need to try new things to see how they fit, especially if those things scare us just a little bit.
The final model I’ll give you is one of my personal favourites. Karl Rohnke’s ‘comfort-stretch-panic’ model of development is diagrammatically shown as three concentric circles. The centre ‘comfort’ zone is where we spend most of our time, doing things we already know how to do and knowing what the outcome will be. The middle ‘stretch’ zone is where we try something new, where we’re not sure what will happen and where we do our most purposeful practice. The outer ‘panic’ zone is where we’re beyond what we can cope with and where development stops, as we cannot deal with what’s in front of us. For example, imagine public speaking. For me, my ‘comfort’ zone would be giving an update at one of my teams’ stand-ups, the ‘stretch’ zone would be doing a presentation in front of my whole department of circa 250 people, and my ‘panic’ zone would be delivering an hour-long speech without notes at a major conference. The idea of the model is that the more time we spend in our ‘stretch’ zone, the bigger our ‘comfort’ zone gets — the things that used to scare us no longer do.
Get to it
So, what are you waiting for? Get on and do some research! Find a model or theory you like, form a plan and do it. Make sure it stretches you, makes you feel just a little bit uncomfortable, and when you’ve done it get some feedback.
Once you’ve done all that, feel free to reward yourself with a Toblerone!
