The XOR Reaper and How It Affects Leadership

Seems as human beings we love XOR decisions (either A or B, but not both). XOR means clarity, black and white, freely assumed absence of ambivalence or confusion.

The problem with this thinking is, we tend to jump to XOR conditions prematurely, often with insufficient analysis of the problem domain.

When does this happen most often? When we decide what to do based on what we read out of a book. Something sounds good, and it's all wrapped up nice and pretty. We read this book, or article, or maybe just the relevant pages that reinforce a black and white decision result, often fueled by prejudicial thinking. Example:

• I work with PMP's. They get hung up on process, and they hardly ever have much of a real developer background.
• Software development is fundamentally a creative endeavor.
• I read a hip book on Agile.
• Agile is better.

The XOR Reaper strikes again. Take the least amount of effort to learn something, then go apply those snippets of thought.

But application means building experience. And we find that experience might yield all kinds of results not accounted for by book knowledge. On a personal level, experiential, applied knowledge beats book knowledge every time.

That's why I like books that rely heavily on experiential knowledge (good example “Mid Size Power Boats” by David Pascoe), and don't appear to have been written in a vacuum.

So experience is the humbling factor here. As successful technology leaders, we are expected to have that experience. We already have a good idea about what works and what doesn't, because experience provides the opportunity to make mistakes, a concept out of scope for those who stick wholly with XOR decisions not tempered by experience.

My buddy Brad is a fantastic architect. He's an expert on every aspect of the software technology stack. How did he get there?

In his career Brad has made the most of his experience. He makes mistakes and learns from those mistakes. He has the courage to continue making mistakes. His experience helps him gently suggest to his team members that something they're trying to do won't work, many times because he's already tried it, and it led to undesirable results.

Just as importantly, Brad listens to his team, because (thanks again to his experience), he understands he doesn't know everything. This has helped him cultivate a crucial leadership quality: Empathy. Any leader needs to have a strong grasp of this concept, because it opens the door to fresh perspective, and fresh perspective leads to new discovery.

So I humbly submit these Leadership Bullets for the day, based on hard-won experience:

• Generally avoid the XOR Reaper. Know the world is more gray than black XOR white.
• Don't pull something out of a book and start applying it without first discussing it thoroughly with your team because XOR thinking made you lazy.
• EMPATHY – Put yourself in others' shoes. Consider opposing views. Don't shut them down. Encourage questions and comments without fear of judgment.
• Keep the XOR Reaper from taking over arguments. A good project steward knows good arguments are about yielding knowledge and information, not winning. So listen, and repeat/reflect on what you hear from your colleagues and subordinates. Especially when a discussion gets heated, you need to use every tool at your command to understand the situation.
• Understand that success is a product of failure. Failure is a component of experience.
• Here's why you are a leader: Do your best to impart all of these points to your team, and assure them you'll run air cover for them when they make mistakes.

Inspiration for this article came from a really nice piece on The Harm of Dichotomical Thinking, and from many great conversations about the Tao of Technology with my friends Brad Snobar and Mark Dunn.

Until next time,

slàinte mhath!

James Smith has a 25 year career building software and organizations for a multitude of industries. He enjoys working with startups to small corporations, has held several highland games world records, and has pitched to VC using nothing more than napkin drawings and a bowl of M and M's. He claims there's only one truely always-optimizable XOR in the universe, that either 2+2=4 or it doesn't, but not both.