Zone of Acceptance
Early in my career, I landed a job where everyone was smarter than me. It was both humbling and exciting. I was a sponge soaking up all the brilliance I could. Then I noticed something that didn't sit right.
We kept talking about the same things over and over. We had the same kinds and amount of bugs that I saw everywhere else. The code wasn't much better than anything I'd ever seen.
The puzzle for me was: How can all these people who know so much and have so much experience produce results no different from the folks who don't?
This phenomenon has held my entire career. No matter the tech, tools, or design, the same pattern keeps emerging. The code looks the same, with the same problems, and the same basic debates and arguments continue.
When I started coaching teams and organizations, I saw the same pattern emerge again. Instead of showing up in code, the pattern showed up in team performance. No matter how well a company hired or invested in its people, or how "agile" it became, everyone was stuck at the same levels of performance and quality.
I've come to call this, "The Zone of Acceptance."
We like to think that if we graphed an individual or team's performance, we'd see a nice trend that goes up and to the right.
But we don't.
Instead, growth continues until it hits this zone of acceptable performance, then plateaus. Growth virtually stops here.
The same thing happens with organizational and team performance, too.
This zone represents several things at once: a level of performance that doesn't draw the wrong attention, the level of skill that is easy to acquire, and the desired set of skills learned.
In other words, this zone is the product of folks reaching the limit of the path in front of them safely. To progress forward would require moving to something unknown and unsafe.
You might be thinking that isn't true because you're constantly learning new things, and that is true; you are. However, you learn these things in roughly the same way to the same approximate limits. You can probably think of any topic you've learned about and recognize there are some parts that you never bothered with or thought were worth learning. That's the zone of acceptance at work.
Rising Above the Zone of Acceptance
There are, of course, folks who exist outside of the zone of acceptance. You can probably think of them. What they do and produce is just better, almost offensively so. These folks and groups are off the map of what is acceptable and live without the safety it provides.
Consider the developer who exists above this zone. Their work is better, but many of their peers find it frustrating and puzzling. People regularly question whether the work is valid because it is so different. This friction amongst the team is accentuated because this individual is likely shown favoritism by leadership as they are more trusted to accomplish goals.
Consider now a software team that is much better than any other. They are sought after for projects because they are so good. Other groups and leaders may feel frustration and resentment as this team's elevation makes them feel worse about their position. Behind closed doors, people talk about how what the team is doing isn't right and that something needs to change. New processes and rules, and shuffling team members, are floated as ideas to stop the disruption.
Now, I can almost guarantee you've seen these behaviors emerge in organizations. Outliers are not accepted, and one of the key aspects of the zone of acceptance is right in the name: it is what is acceptable and safe.
So, if you wanted to become an outlier, what do you do? Most of the time, outliers are aware of the specific things they did that got them to rise above that zone. Most of the time, they're hoping someone will listen this time. Regardless, whatever they say will sound insane and impractical.
Leaving the zone of acceptance means taking a leap onto a path that doesn't feel safe. You'll have to do something that doesn't seem like it can work. You'll have to do something that feels risky.
Those feelings aren't necessarily indicators that things will go wrong or poorly; they're feelings everyone has when they embark on a change. They're most useful in that their presence indicates you're about to do something that would be a significant change.
Should You?
Maybe. Long careers exist in the zone of acceptance. So does relative peace. Don't underestimate their value.
If you choose to leave the zone of acceptance, friction and resistance will surround you. You can manage it, but it will happen. You'll have to develop new skills to survive as an outlier. Your experiences will match less and less with those around you because you will have outgrown their problems.
Some time ago I was involved in a large transformation effort. The zone of acceptance was clear, and not for me. Folks sought me out because I was effective, but those in the zone felt threatened. They sought to have me fired. I worked with a target on my back for months. My movements were tracked and reported in secret texts. I survived, but they didn't.
Much earlier in my career, when I was writing code, and I observed this phenomenon, I thought to try the opposite of what my much smarter peers thought to do. This led me to experiment with pair programming and test-driven development. Everyone thought I was nuts. Yet, in a few months the results were impossible to ignore. We were shipping bug-free code faster than ever. Other teams set up all-night rotations to get their branches merged, but we pushed straight to main and slept well. When the project ended, so did our jobs: everyone but me. The company deemed me too valuable.
Read More
- When Flow State Is Dangerous: -
- How to accurately forecast a software team's performance: An introduction to using probabilistic forecasting to understand when a team will be done. Also included are notes on adding bugs, dependencies, multiple teams, and scope changes.
- Agile Transformation In 4 Acts: Agile transformations at large companies are fascinating. Here's a pattern of how they play all too often.
- Change Is Hard: You have heard, "Change is hard," before. There may even be a personal experience that you have where these words were true. Here are my thoughts on those three words.
- On The Front Lines: When many companies want to bring about change they primarily train and inform people as to the new behaviors and expectations. What is often unattended is where the lines are where the change is the most disruptive and what needs to happen right on that line.