Book Review: Shop Class as Soulcraft

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Matthew B. Crawford, Penguin Books, 256 pages, ISBN-10: 0143117467, 2010

Overall impression
Ever wonder how engineers can be more educated, yet less experienced? Have you wondered what the value of hands-on experience is? Wonder how, when using the best model of engineering, a system can fail? In reading Matthew’s work, I quickly built up an understanding of why my intuition rebelled against prescriptive engineering models being useful for growing the next generation of experienced engineers. First, we’ll look at a key systemic leadership take away from having read this book, followed by an overall review of the book itself.

Key take away for Systemic Leadership
In analyzing his experiences in knowledge work, after achieving his PhD in Philosophy, he had a starveling observation: “if occasions for the exercise of judgment are diminished, the moral-cognitive virtue of attentiveness will atrophy.” Applied broadly from the systemic perspective, we have a situation in which prescriptive models of how to do work (formal systems engineering or software engineering models) actually counters our desire to develop experienced engineers. Essentially, detailed, solution-agnostic engineering checklists drive our engineers to be less attentiveness and have less detailed knowledge about what lies underneath. In other areas, he observes that knowledge work and education alone is insufficient to have people who have intuition to form a problem solving strategy when information is incomplete or imperfect. Ultimately, he also observes how the best minds and most motivated people will generally not choose to work in environments which are highly controlled by these intellectual models of what is to be done. This leads to “a vicious circle in which degraded work plays a pedagogical role, forming workers into material that is ill suited for anything by the over-determined world of careless labor.”

Book literature review – approachability, readability, etc.
Overall, “Shop craft as Soulcraft” was a easy read, very approachable, generally using personal narrative stories to illuminate broad areas of inquiry. Yes, there are portions that use precise, philosophical language, but those parts are generally the conclusions at the end of each chapter. If you are interested in the philosophical implications of the stories told in a chapter, this is great. If you aren’t, skip the last few chapters and you won’t miss too much.
The reader must understand that Matthew exposes quite a bit of bias against modern knowledge work, assuming that people want to understand the world around them. While this can be argued one way or the other or the general population, my interest in understanding engineers makes that assumption inherently valid (as the job of the engineer is to understand how something works). Ultimately, if you are disillusioned with “Office Space” type work, you’ll find this book provides some well-articulated discussion points for your use. On the other hand, if you understand the value to society and people of aggregating knowledge to decrease the expertise (and cost) needed to deliver products, you may have problems overcoming the personal experience biases that Matthew exposes.

Overall: I enjoyed this book, and the author was both approachable and capable of keeping my mental focus. Read More......

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

(Note: I finished this book just a day before the controversy noted below broke - this review is based on the pre-controversy reading - some notes follow)

This book is listed on the 2011 Chief of Staff of the US Air Force Professional Reading Program

“Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time”, Greg Mortenson, David Relin, Penguin Books, ISBN-10: 0143038252, 2007

One person can make a difference. Greg Mortenson shows us how he made a difference to the children of Northern Pakistan. He doesn’t sugar coat this as an easy effort, numerous disappointments and difficulties are along his winding journal to build schools in the Baltistan region. I’m not qualified to comment on the literary style, but Greg’s story is sufficient compelling to pull me through the book.

The portion of the book that most spoke to me was Greg’s humble style in learning the Balti culture and providing what they need, not what he thought they needed. By becoming family with the chief elder of the village of Korphe, Haji Ali, Greg learned that Haji Ali’s greatest desire for his community was a school. Their goals were not so much to explicitly give a specific capability to people, but to transform the lives of everyone. Transformational action is at the core of systemic leadership; perceive the societal, structural need, and provide a solution that enables the society to grow and improve itself. That is the core of systemic thinking.

Another thing to note is how completely the pursuit of this goal consumed Greg’s life. He doesn’t describe his pursuit of the goal as a “labor” or a “job”, but as his passion. The book starts with Greg’s failed assault on K-2, and him committing to providing schools. Quickly, we see Greg switch from mountain climbing to school building; later in the book he notes how out of shape he feels, since he hadn’t been climbing. We could debate if Greg’s efforts were an obsession or a passion. I think that a reader should note that Greg’s level of commitment was necessary to achieve the goal he chose. While this is an inspiring example, people can and should remember that many levels of service can be valuable and transform the lives of others – but commit a sufficient level of effort to achieve the goal.

Overall, I recommend this book for the positive inspiration and example of systemic leadership portrayed.

Recent controversy: http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/04/17/three.cups.of.tea.controversy/index.html

From reading the article at CNN, I feel my review still stands, regardless of the outcome of the main claims that the books is more idealized than reality. Used as an example of systemic leadership, the story works. Further, the observations of effort/commitment to achieve a goal of this isze are likely to hold and do not seem to be at the heart of the controversy. Ultimately, objective truth about anyone who is portrayed as a hero is hard to achieve. My recommendation for people to read the book isn't for the factual information on a would-be hero, but instead I recommend the book, as I stated, as an example of systemic leadership - changing people by changing the system, in this case by offering schools. Read More......

Views from inside a true the battle rhythm

As written, our post in 4-Nov-10 about Processes and Battle Rhythms became more poignant in my life now that I'm deployed. Now working in the environment of a command center, the 609th Air & Space Operations Center for Air Forces Central Command, I live, breathe, and task saturate in that rhythm - providing operational assessments from prior periods to senior leadership. Daily, weekly, and monthly, summaries must be created, metrics evaluated against standards, and deviations examined for root causes. Best effort processes are the typical order of the day, since answers arriving after that period's decision point become very difficult for senior leaders to engage.

Why is that? A good reason, at the AOC, the OODA loop for the senior leaders is tightly controlled. We keep these individuals saturated with information and decisions. Arriving out of cycle means that it will take the senior leader (who is honestly very busy) more time to back up into a previous state's information context. Ultimately, the question becomes one of how to queue up our analyzed information (oriented observations, from our previous post) to the senior leader and ensure that future orientations will occur on time for an effective decision that will lead to action.

Unfortunately, acquisition environments tend to believe that information can arrive at any time and should immediately impact all activities. However, in my experience, when senior leaders handle the new information out of cycle, the acquisition office tends to split and fracture. Configuration control is lost ("did this study take that into account?"), plans are changed before courses of direction are decided ("the outcome of this memo is obvious, we should do this to help the boss get ahead!"), and ultimately senior leaders can become so involved with the new bit of information that other, planned decisions are put on hold - and those missed/deferred decisions start a backlog of program delays that can ultimately severely and negatively impact the program.

I have worked with senior leaders who are conscience of their battle rhythm. Although the tempo of the change may not be as desired ("change everything by COB TODAY!"), but instead of loosing the metaphorical bubble on all the other details of the program, their method ensures that the next decisions needing the information will have the new information and be able to make good recommendations for action.

The real question for leaders:

A - Do you want to give immediate, but disoriented direction for action?

OR

B - Do you want your next decision for action to be properly oriented?

I can see where option A gives the appearance of being responsive; although to a systemic thinker, option B is far more responsive, since the systemic leader in option B knows how to influence their battle rhythm (and OODA loop) so that new information impacts critical decisions. Read More......

"But I have a process, why care about Battle Rhythm?"

With the advent of the Capability Maturity Model (CMMI and its relatives) everyone wanted to put their system and software development activities into well defined (level 3!) processes. We were sure to measure those processes (level 4!) and ensure we are quantitatively improving (level 5!). Ultimately, the goal would be to have a well defined process to ensure that given the same inputs, we get the same outputs, in a control fashion that efficiently expends resources. Essentially, most processes focus on maintenance of invariants (baseline, basis of estimate, confidence, risk posture, function across interfaces, etc).

Battle rhythms, on the other hand, sequence a leader’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop. By sequencing the the flow of any type of project information (observations) through analysis to provide perspective (orient) to help a leader’s direction (decisions) lead to coherent activities (action). However, the goal is only coherent action, indeed a battle rhythm receiving different inputs make take radically different, but coherent, action depending on the leader, even if the analysis activities are highly regimented processes to ensure the quality of the analysis.

So based on this, why take a step back from this great improvement in formally defining system and software processes to talk about systems and software leadership's battle rhythm. Honestly, in comparison to the formality of process definition, describing a battle rhythm seems to some to be a less mature concept.

But the power of battle rhythms are their simplicity; sequence the OODA functions. Battle rhythms must exist on human timelines for items that require on going decisions - for the most part that means daily, weekly, (rarely) monthly, and (very rarely) annually. Examples of battle rhythms include: handling of action items from higher management / headquarters (daily), financial reconciliation (weekly), project assessments of progress to goals (typically monthly), personnel appraisal and development (annually), mission operational planning (such as the the 72 hour Air Tasking Order battle rhythm), and mission execution (the individual pilot's life on a daily level). While the engineering review board process may be a defined process, the battle rhythm is the means that a chief engineer is able to ensure all factors are included when reviewing a technical artifact. Indeed, that battle rhythm will look very different for a military weapon software development than for a commercial, cloud-computing entertainment software development.

Although battle rhythms are simple, there is no single battle rhythm; even for a single function, there are a near infinite number of implementations. Fortunately, organizations tend to value successful battle rhythms, so effort tends to be expended to capture the essence of a battle rhythm's template (key attributes that attempt to abstract away individual considerations). These
battle rhythm prototypes tend to be saved and distributed. In the military, highly successful battle rhythms get integrated into doctrine. Outside the military, many behavior based leadership books recommend different battle rhythms for leaders. However, the important item when applying these prototypes is to consider the modifications needed for the battle rhythm to be useful for an individual leader. All of these describe various information items that should be analyzed to support a decision on action.

I can hear the process zealots saying "ah ha - sequencing of information - that's a process!" NO! The key difference is that battle rhythms are used to get to coherent action, but they do not necessarily maintain invariants. Processes specify behavior to ensure that the same inputs lead to the same outputs; and the underlying assumption that the inputs can and will be repeated often enough to validate the control. Battle rhythms, on the other hand, have to operate (decide and act) even if the inputs are missing/low quality and further the battle rhythm does NOT guarantee that the same inputs yield the same output, since the output is a decision from a leader (and different leaders will give different outputs). Battle rhythms do not prescribe decisions, only orchestrate the OODA loop.

So hopefully, this provides some some insight and points of distinction that lead us to consider battle rhythm in the system leadership context. This article is meant not to be critical of process definition in all contexts, but instead focused on aggressively differentiating defined processes from battle rhythms. Indeed, back to our systemic leadership roots, the systemic leader shouldn’t focus solely on decisions within the process, but instead should focus on shaping the battle rhythm to ensure effective action to achieve the leader’s vision. Read More......

The Transformation of the Leader

"The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader" - Derek Sivers
(reference url: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html)

Watch the link above. In the three short minutes, you'll see transformational leadership applied and an entire systemic come into being. Derek entitled the talk "How to Start a Movement" and commenced with the bold claim that a movement would be started and unfold in just three short minutes. He delivers.

Derek successfully articulated something here that I had been trying to understand for ages: the transformation of the leader during transformational leadership. The mental shift of the leader accepting and mentoring the first follower is a key idea. In the video, the follower then goes out an works with the additional followers. Watching closely, you can see that the third and subsequent followers are closer to this first follower-leader than the original leader.

Of course, we imprint the leadership discussion onto what is externally people dancing in a field. But if we assume the original leader's vision was a dancing crowd, then the development of the follower-leader is the critical transformation leadership activity. Indeed, keeping transactional control over all the members of the dance would likely have been very counter-productive to achieving the vision of a dancing crowd.

Individual homework assignment: figure out if your leadership is contributing to developing the essential follower-leaders needed to achieve your vision. Read More......

What happens when the battle rhythm is disrupted?

Of course, a battle rhythm isn't a process and the leader not a process asset. Even though there may be a healthy battle rhythm to cue up decisions to a leader, sometimes events must take the leader out of the office and away from the immediate team. Customers must be briefed, higher headquarters placated, previously unknown opportunities exploited. Even with a well established battle rhythm, meetings will conflict. Of course, this is the time for the transformational leader to shine. For if the leader doesn't want to be a process asset (something required to do the work), or a barrier to decisions being made (by forcing them to wait until the leader's return), then the systemic leader must prepare deputies, subordinates, and team members to be able to chart those short courses until the leader is next available.

How is this done? Many techniques are covered in the literature (setting standards, etc.), but most important is preparing the team to own the work and ensure they understand the vision for the end objective. Hear what I'm not saying: I didn't mention setting thresholds, transactional delegations of authority, or ensuring people know their boundaries. A transformational, systemic leader has prepared the team to execute, and while the leader's personal presence may be appreciated by the team, the team should understand the group vision and have sufficient ownership to march out without explicit instructions. Read More......

Thoughts on the "Engineering Battle Rhythm" of Configuration Management

We discussed battle rhythm being important. Even started some definition of Battle Rhythm on the wiki. But now let's look at one close to my heart, the engineering battle rhythm.

In the newest wiki page, Engineering Battle Rhythm, I'm starting a discussion on the nature and impact of various engineering processes and the inherent rhythm that grows up around them in an acquisition organization. The most infamous SE process is that of Configuration Management (CM), and especially the very painful Request For Change (RFC). Nothing can strike fear and doubt into an innovator's heart faster than a first meeting with the configuration managers and all the associated boards and reviews inherent to an RFC.

Of course, what I'm hoping to examine is how to operate as a Systemic Leader in that very process heavy and entrenched battle rhythm of formalized systems engineering processes (such as CM). I'm starting to apply this at work, so hopefully I'll have some perspective and experiences to share and see if any of my thoughts survive their first encounter with "the enemy" (be that enemy the configuration manager or merely reality). Read More......