How to fix the stall in your team's improvements

Happy Friday!

There are plenty of things to dislike about consultants, but there is a massive benefit they have. They are exposed to a lot more situations than a lot of folks. Sadly, I don't think many consultants take advantage of this sampling. I try to.

In particular, I've tried, at every job and every client, to measure the various teams' and organizations' performance. I'm a bit of a nerd about this kind of thing, but there has always been something gnawing away in the back of my mind.

Broadly speaking, our entire industry has been stuck at a pretty consistent level of performance.

Broadly speaking, software development has been stuck at a pretty consistent level of quality.

This newsletter isn't about the data, but about why.

Why and how does everyone everywhere converge to the same level of performance and quality?

You might be feeling a little defensive about these assertions, but it doesn't mean anyone is bad, just mostly the same. As in, if you went to a new company, you'd hear the same conversations, deal with the same levels of outages and bugs, and see the same level of performance.

I'm going to introduce my theory about this now, and I call it the "Zone of Acceptance." Basically, if you imagined a line tracking performance, you'd see it plateau. That area where it plateaus is the zone of acceptance. It's where improvement stops.

No matter what book you read, what training you attend, what tool you introduce, it stays right there. We're seeing this with AI. Even though the tools can produce 10x more output, the only thing changing is the volume. Its not better, its just more.

I wrote a longer article about this you can read, but since you're part of my newsletter, I wanted to give you something unique. I want to tell you how to break out of the zone. At least partially.

Be warned that leaving the zone of acceptance means you will no longer be in what everyone views as normal and acceptable. Historically, humans don't do great with differences.

The fundamental principle for breaking loose from the zone is simple: Do what your gut wants to avoid.

There are plenty of conversations you've had about any number of topics that everyone dismissed as impractical or pointless or time-consuming. Has anyone ever proved it? The gut said don't do it, but I say do it and prove it.

The thing is that our instincts and decision-making are highly calibrated to stay on a path. This means we usually reject things that are different, regardless of their actual merit. Leaving the zone means going toward the things we normally reject to see whether merit actually exists.

Now, even though this advice is essentially me saying, "Do what feels wrong," I'm not suggesting you ignore risks. Far from it. What I want you to do is ignore your gut when it says this won't work, and engage.

Imagine you are about to do something that scares you, like scuba diving, bungee jumping, skydiving, etc. You'll plan and be methodical about how you approach it to ensure you survive. Do that here.

Let me give a concrete example that comes up a lot: Testing. No matter how many outages there are or how many bugs are killing a product, nobody wants to invest in testing. The zone of acceptance keeps us full of excuses and problems.

So, to break a team out of that, I have to get them to test differently. We create a very specific experiment with clear criteria and clear rules. Clear rules help us avoid situations where folks don't follow them and then a big debate starts about whether we can trust the results. The experiment runs long enough for folks to get over the shock and really do something, and it includes managing the risk folks perceive, like it taking longer or management or whatever.

The bottom line is that if you want to put yourself or your organization back on a rapid growth trajectory, you have to experiment with doing things that everyone runs away from.

Have you tried something like that? What happened?

Sincerely,

Ryan

P.S. If you've been thinking about working with me, now is the time. If you want to see a team transform before your eyes, you need to call or reply back.