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Shape of... a Pear!
Aug. 11th, 2011 02:32 pmA few thoughts on what happens when projects go ugly:
There will be some projects where no one is going to come out okay. It's over time, it's over budget, and every person on it can be validly accused of something unpleasant.
Observation: Everyone can be playing by the rules, and emergent behavior can still screw everyone over, regardless.
New game, n players.
Every person individually gets a choice.
A. They can start blaming everyone around them, complete with email trails with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each message explaining how everyone screwed up except them.
OR
B. They can shoulder part of the blame, start figuring out what systemically went wrong, and do the hard work of going through the entire system in their head, taking it apart, putting it back together, and come up with an answer for what to do next time.
Choice A will not always be frowned upon, and choice B will not always be rewarded, and sometimes reward and punishment might be reversed, because that's just the way the organization might be set up (in which case, run far away if you can).
In the end, though, it is a test of character and trust. It's effectively an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma problem, iterated over an entire career.
Realization: "We got it done, and I never want to work with them again" is only about half a notch up from "We didn't get it done."
There will be some projects where no one is going to come out okay. It's over time, it's over budget, and every person on it can be validly accused of something unpleasant.
Observation: Everyone can be playing by the rules, and emergent behavior can still screw everyone over, regardless.
New game, n players.
Every person individually gets a choice.
A. They can start blaming everyone around them, complete with email trails with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each message explaining how everyone screwed up except them.
OR
B. They can shoulder part of the blame, start figuring out what systemically went wrong, and do the hard work of going through the entire system in their head, taking it apart, putting it back together, and come up with an answer for what to do next time.
Choice A will not always be frowned upon, and choice B will not always be rewarded, and sometimes reward and punishment might be reversed, because that's just the way the organization might be set up (in which case, run far away if you can).
In the end, though, it is a test of character and trust. It's effectively an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma problem, iterated over an entire career.
Realization: "We got it done, and I never want to work with them again" is only about half a notch up from "We didn't get it done."
