The Roots of Copy-Pasting
My yesterday’s article (The Manifesto for Big Picture Pragmatism) probably sounded like a soul cry, and it was indeed written as a manifesto, as a proclamation that stated the root causes for some disturbing trends in organizational management. Today I want to distance myself from finger pointing and take a more reasoned perspective. Bringing a problem into awareness is just the first step, and, in fact, I’m not the only one who speaks about dysfunctional management. There are more and more voices that call: “Hey, Emperor, those are not your new clothes! You just have no clothes on at all!” Well, yes, being a Captain Obvious makes others view you as exactly that, as a certain Captain Obvious. That’s why I like to wear a persona of a Captain Not-So-Obvious, and live by what I write, so, as I usually do, I’ll ask the questions “why” and “what”.
Why has it become mainstream to copy-paste methodologies and practices for organizational management? What is the root cause? With answers to these questions, we will be better equipped to offer practical solutions, as opposed to finger-pointing.
If we take a long hard look at how things are going with the mainstream education — and this is not only about software development — we‘ll see the trouble right there. This is about the multiple choice tests. Most of the time students are supposed to demonstrate their knowledge not by exercising their thinking, but … by picking a ready-made answer from several answers available! And, since ready-made answers are ubiquitous — with so many methodologies, technologies, practices — it’s only human to go by the path of least resistance, and to pick an answer that seems right. Multiple choice tests might have made sense in the pre-Web era, when a person of knowledge could be anyone who knew more answers to factual questions. In fact, this still stands true to some extent. But, these days, with the overabundance of information, another essential skill overrides factual knowledge, and this skill is called critical thinking.
In one of my previous articles I scrutinized the use of the word “tech leader” in organizational contexts and made a pledge to keep dissecting false buzzwords, one after another. The buzzword that I want to dissect today — and it makes me cringe even more than “tech leader” — is … trained. This is about the difference between the words “educated” and “trained”, and when I hear: “he is trained as a leader”, or, “he is trained as a lawyer”, this just produces an exorbitant amount of dissonance to my ear. Well, language reflects reality, and this is not only about the choice of words. We have come to live in a society which believes that leaders can be “trained”! In short, the one who is trained is only able to pick ready-made answers inside a box of a test question. And, the one who is educated knows how and when to apply their critical thinking for their unique practical purposes. And, as I wrote yesterday, since all organizations are unique, do we need more of those who are “trained” or more of those who are “educated”, for our organization?
In many cases, the answer is “yes” to both. But, again, this would be the task of the leaders (or managers) to discern which of those are needed most, the trained or the educated. In software development, naturally, the emphasis has been more on the “trained” when it goes about the tech part. But is being “trained” an answer to the organizational part, the people part? As I wrote earlier, we live by exploring, and it does take a certain amount of living, exploring, observing, and then on again, in cycles, to move on to new and new layers of “being trained” and “being educated”. Many people have started their professional life as interns. The stage of internship is the one where it’s perfectly O.K. to be “trained”. But as we move along in life and in our professional development, we should expect more of ourselves as of our own educators. Unfortunately, the mainstream education has too many flaws, and it’s just the way it is, mainstream, and as such… it hardly helps us to be properly equipped for living our unique lives, both personal and professional.
We have walked our way through to one of the root causes of certain organizational dysfunctions. It gets down to education. What are we supposed to do? There’s only one answer. On a personal level, we have to be on the lifelong path of learning by exploring, observing and finding our own answers to whatever we need to know about work and about life. Those answers would be anything but checks in the multiple choice test questions. The habit of learning by exploring is a valuable personal asset in itself, and if you have “trained” yourself to be an explorer, you are in a position of power. Non-explorers are usually “baby fed” their mainstream answers from all kinds of boxes, and… do you want to be baby fed for all of your life? From an organizational perspective, a Leader will want to create an environment to facilitate the personal paths for learning and exploring. This strategy will pay off in many more ways than seen from the surface.
And, your Captain-Not-So-Obvious will be back shortly with more from-under-the-surface perspectives :)
