I once attended a conference in California that talked of Pixar’s rise to success and how this great and diverse company began to shape its destiny. Pixar was a company heavily influenced by Steve Job’s, a company designed to innovate and change the world.
As my career as an entrepreneur develops I notice that I draw more and more inspiration from Job’s but see I have a heavily distinct management practice and have no intention of copying or mimicking his style. What I do want to emulate is the great lessons he learned as he progressed through life, and one of those great lessons I believe was what he implemented at Pixar in terms of how he approached employment, with particular focus on his use of code.
As with all myths I am unsure whether the story is completely true or not, however I was told that within Pixar every staff member whether designer, developer, accountant or secretary had to have a coding background to start at the company, within what was a new fast paced start up this was easy to maintain and new staff knew what would be expected, and perhaps critically a common language formed between participants.
Perhaps the biggest gap today in terms of practice within software development environments is the lack of a common language and I have no doubt that within Omnisoft training even non technical staff in coding will bring with it large benefits in crossing the communication divide.
We see the client has one perspective, the project manager a second, and the technical manager the third. Common words mislead into suggesting there is a common language present but delving deeper shows the huge inconsistencies in what words can mean for those involved.
Example words are “phase,” the word holds so many meanings in terms of levels of granularity, the focus of the project manager on the concept will be different than the clients, which again will be different than the developers and the sales person’s.
Had the word been different in each case we could have avoided the confusion but given it sounds so similar we often struggle to sue terms correctly.
I believe that focusing on the developer facilitating their language within the company and enabling its proliferation is key to success.
The project manager and sales person can alter their terms to “project,” “sprint,” and “program,” to describe what they mean more accurately offering the developer to fully explain their understanding of the construct.
I believe that the cause is just to make a change, but how to change what is entrenched within an institutional culture is something that has perplexed leaders for generations.
The conviction to carry through a desire for positive change, must indeed be tampered with a desire to understand the pace of change that staff and others less visionary will accept and can work with in a constructive manner. Change can neither be too fast or to slow, and the balance is difficult especially when a task of visionary zeal.
Fundamental change always receives resistance given our many attitudes to said change, and our evaluation of the changes legitimacy from our own perspective.
Disappointingly given the human condition often leaders can buy out of change simply when it is not directed by them, however I would encourage leaders within my own and other organisations to rise above this bounded perspective and facilitate true vision and development of the ideas of others, a creative atmosphere is a construct that works only with passion and zeal and we must facilitate, mentor and encourage our staff to be effective agents of positive change, and we should enable those we work with to make a difference in the context of their own experience if we expect to truly engage and inspire.
A focus on our own goals is not enough, and in fact not welcome within a leader, we must make our drivers the drivers of those round us, through consideration and empathy.
Such a process requires a small team to enable managers to lead effectively, I would argue teams no larger than 8 and ideally smaller should be coached by “inspirations.” In the event of a need for growth it requires the organisation to focus on the selection of core leaders to continue good practice, allowing those incapable of empathy, and without compassion or understanding for the need to build common organisational goals is a recipe for disaster.
I believe we should expect, encourage and incentivise the best of our colleagues but plan for the worst, we should continue to hope for those round us to grab empowerment and betterment with both hands and to inspire those they work closely with to grow each and every day.
The common language of code is something which I feel will break down barriers of understanding and facilitate new levels of communication between what are very different stakeholders within organisations, and perhaps with this growth we can enable new types of development, new types of common understanding, and we can unlock what was great about the jobs approach, in piecing the puzzle together in a way that can only come about through unlocking the creative possibilities of a multi stakeholder environment.
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