GRIT
If this sounds too good to be true, bear in mind: continuous delivery is not magic. It’s about continuous, daily improvement — the constant discipline of pursuing higher performance by following the heuristic “if it hurts, do it more often, and bring the pain forward.”
~ Jez Humble — continuousdelivery.com
I was reading the book — Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. As the title says, the book talks about why passion and perseverance is the secret sauce for success than talent. The key is the “never give up attitude in failures” and putting the hard work. The book is filled with studies proving the same.
The book Lean Mindset too refers to Purpose and Energized workers as the key to success. Similar results are mentioned in the 2017 State of DevOps Report also. The research was done to see how DevOps practices yield remarkable results for IT teams and organisations.
All these prove that Grit is required both at the individual level and organisational level.
According to the author Angela Duckworth, grit is about four things.
- Interest
- Practice
- Purpose
- Hope
While the above are self-explanatory, the definition of Purpose was fascinating.
Interest is one source of passion. Purpose — the intention to contribute to the well-being of others — is another. The mature passions of gritty people depend on both.
That was the “aha” moment. The purpose is not just any intention or objective. It is the intention to contribute to the well-being of others. And that is the reason why the companies with definite purpose adopt continuous delivery. Because continuous delivery requires deliberate practice and I won’t quit; I can figure this out attitude.
While talent can help becoming grittier, but hard work and growth mindset matter the most. The growth mindset is the attitude that anything can be learned with deliberate practice and failures are the only way to learn.
While thinking about the above, another point became apparent to me, i.e. why super-heroes get stuck after a while. We have seen those super-heroes who solves problem magically with a blink of an eye. They churn things faster. But over a period they become the bottleneck because of not being a good team player.
So the lesson learned — never try to be a super-hero, concentrate on deliberate practice and be part of a larger purpose.
The book — First break all the rules — talks about the differences between, skills, knowledge and talents. The book also refers to how managers or coaches should concentrate on the strengths of the individual than on weaknesses.
