On assumptions...

This week, I taught a Scrum Master course... for the first time in a long time, that course happened to be in person. It was a phenomenal experience and I am looking forward to conducting more in-person workshops.

Two things happened in the workshop which made me think...

The first thing that happened during some of the exercises was participants using ChatGPT to get answers to questions I had asked them to work on. This was amazing. One of the teams asked ChatGPT to write a story about Agile practices in project management. The story was fascinating.

The other - not so positive - thing was noticing again that several participants who had experience with Scrum had never read the Scrum Guide before.

This is not the first time I observe this and this is not the first client where this is the case. I have met so many teams that have been using Scrum, yet they have never put in the time to read and learn about it.

I have met so many people that are in charge of change, yet they have never read a book about change - they do not even know who John Kotter is.

I have met so many people that are in charge of strategy, yet they have never read a book about strategy and do not know who Roger Martin is.

In general, I am amazed by how little people read once they graduate from university. Of course, there are exceptions. There are many successful people I know who are vivid readers.

I wonder though why do not more people read? Why do they not read the Scrum Guide before implementing Scrum? Why do they not read Playing to Win before crafting a strategy? Why do they not read Leading Change before leading a change initiative? Why do they not read Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke before implementing OKRs?

I understand why people cannot always join a multi-day training e.g. due to budget constraints... even that is a lame excuse when we consider the total cost of a scrum team, strategy development, a change initiative, or OKR implementation. But it still is an excuse.

Reading the Scrum Guide is free and the cost of the books I mentioned is negligible. So why do so many not read in order to learn?

I believe there are various assumptions at play here. And assumptions are dangerous. I have and I still am battling many of my own assumptions - in most cases with the support of my amazing coach Shani Ospina .

Assumption 1: I already know everything I need to know

Many people believe once they graduate from university that they know everything they need to know and everything else can be winged. Let me put it mildly: this is not the case!!!

I have had the privilege to work in many different industries, be part of many projects and products, and also observe various change initiatives. So many of the people working in any of these initiatives had no clue whatsoever about what they were doing.

Incompetence is largely driven by ignorance... by the ignorance that they do not need to learn anything new.

And both incompetence and ignorance are contagious. Once the people at the top of a company act this way, it trickles down throughout the company.

Yet if people at the top change their assumption from "I know" to "I might be wrong" or "I need to learn so much more", they start acting differently. This curiosity - in many cases demonstrated by people reading and talking about books they have read - is equally contagious.

Apparently Aristotle said:

"The more you know, the more you realize you don't know."

Assumption 2: People carry all answers within themselves

This is an assumption that many "coaches" have and somehow it has become part of their own identity as well. They believe that every single one of their coachees carries all relevant answers within them.

Again, I will put this mildly: There are few things in the world that are as wrong as this assumption.

If that assumption were true, we could abandon our education system completely because people are carrying answers to all relevant questions within themselves. We would not need schools, we would not need universities, we would not need books... everything is within the person.

You want to become a medical doctor? No need to study, just listen to the voice within. Or maybe one of these coaches can ask some powerful questions to get you there.

You want to be an engineer? No need to study...

You want to be a manager? No need to study...

I think you get the point: This assumption is ridiculous. There is nothing that would prove the validity of it. NOTHING!

Yet, the vast majority of "coaches" especially in the agile space, prides themselves by not teaching but asking, and many pride themselves by not knowing or not having expertise in the first place.

Imagine going to a doctor who tells you they do not know, and let's figure things out together. Would you go and see that doctor again? I would not!!!

My feeling is that many of these coaches try to cover up their lack of experience and expertise. They do not want to put in the time and effort to really learn about the topic they pretend they can coach others in.

In one of my recent interviews with Marty Cagan he talked about exactly that topic - watch the video below at about minute 36:45.

Now, there are two problems here: The first one is the coach not knowing. That in itself is a problem. Find a coach who knows. Doesn't mean they have to have all the answers, but they need to have been there and done that. They need to be able to give you advice. Great questions are great, but they are not sufficient.

The second problem is even bigger. As the coach does not know what it takes to develop expertise, they do not stress the point enough how the person or team they are coaching needs to put in time and effort to develop expertise.

We cannot ignore the fact that great products and services are built and delivered by great experts. We need to know something - actually much more than just something - about our domain of work.

None of us wants to be under the knife of a surgeon who has not done that specific procedure many times before. We don't want to be on a plane with a pilot who has not been trained for many years. We cannot expect a team of non-engineers to built the most power efficient CPU... it does not work!

I studied medicine for 6 years... I did not do my residency, hence I am not a surgeon. I know that after 6 years of study, it would have taken me at least another 6 years of work and study to become a great surgeon.

I have been in the agile/innovation space now for about 15 years. Over the course of that time, I have worked, studied, and taught. This long period of time with extreme focus has culminated in my expertise and my capabilities as an effective coach.

I still face situations that I have not seen before. This is very similar to a surgeon who cuts open a patient and realizes that their anatomy and their type of cancer is somewhat different from other patients. But the patterns are very similar. And it's the expertise that allows us to see patterns and act based on that.

Anybody who has every built expertise in anything knows that we do not carry the answers within ourselves... we need to learn, thus we need to read.

With that said... I wish you a wonderful weekend and hope you can make some time to read. It does not always have to be about work. Reading allows us to mentally wrestle with someone else which develops our mental capacity and we definitely learn something. #FromNothingComesNothing

PS: I am currently reading The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall. It is a fascinating book and I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to deeper understand the current political challenges.