Welcome to The Overlap, a biweekly newsletter somewhere between product development and organizational development. We’re in our 30th edition! 🎉
I’m facilitating another workshop with Index on facilitation tomorrow, 4-6pm ET. If you missed the one we hosted in June, come to this one. It’ll be funky and fun.
This one’s how changing an organization requires unlearning: letting go of habits, mindsets, and assumptions that don’t serve us.
When people want to improve their organizations, we immediately go to a place of “we need to add this to our capabilities.” Product/agile/lean is missing from the way we work. We just need to add it in.
It’s like trying to get more fit by exercising more but not changing the way you eat. Think about when you tried this!
You exercised more. You went to the gym more. But your body looked the same no matter how hard you worked out.
You added in exercise, assuming it would make you look more fit.
But you didn’t remove a habit of yours that’s antithetical to getting more fit: grabbing fast food on the way home from long drives.
Organizations try to achieve meaningful change by adding when we really should be removing. We try to be more “agile” by introducing more workshops, more guest speakers, more training sessions, more scrum masters / agile coaches, and more books and articles. Our culture is all about more.
But we don’t remove old habits, mindsets, and assumptions that are in the way of our goals. We don’t empty before we begin, as Zen practitioners would say.
To gain, we need to unlearn.
What is unlearning?
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
— Alvin Toffler
Unlearning is the process of removing or undoing a current habit, mindset, or assumption.
Let’s go back to the fast food example. When you get hungry on a long drive, you tend to get fast food.
You want to unlearn this. So you starting packing food for when you get hungry on long drives. The next time you crave fast food drive, you instead eat the food you packed. By eating your pre-made food the moment you crave fast food, you are unlearning your craving for fast food. You eventually learn to crave your own food.
Subtract before you add
If you want to push your organization to be more agile, more lean, or more product-centric, you need to empty it of old habits, mindsets, and assumptions.
Here are some habits, mindsets, and assumptions that your organization might need to let go of:
Overconfidence in being certain that your plans will work exactly the way you intend it to
Prioritizing efficiency over adaptivity
Prioritizing short-term results over long-term results
Setting goals/KPIs/OKRs at the function/department level, rather than the organizational level
Micromanaging when projects go off course
Not documenting and disseminating knowledge
Taking on too much work at once (and not limiting work in progress)
Separating decision-makers from implementers
Showing off successes in meetings and not talking about failures
Using solutions as silver bullets to multiple problems
Great organizations practice emptying, shedding, and letting go. They are constantly aware of their habits, mindsets, and assumptions that hold them back. They have organizational awareness.
Organizational awareness > Organizational perfection
Your goal is simply to develop awareness, to catch yourself when you react, and to stop that reaction.
In the same way that great meditation teachers help us be aware of what isn’t serving us, great organization designers help organizations be aware of what isn’t serving them.
Being aware helps us unlearn the patterns that aren’t serving us, so that we can gain, grow, and evolve.
We have to unpack, let go, and dispose of what we no longer need, isn’t serving us, and is creating drag on our ability to evolve. When we build muscle around *doing* emptiness well, we learn to succumb to rather than resist the repeating loop of loss that is a part of the journey — in service of gaining.
— Kathryn Maloney in All the Best Leaders Practice Emptiness
Engage your organization into a practice of shedding, letting go, emptying. Your organization will evolve, as will you.
What I’m Re-Reading
All the Best Leaders Practice Emptiness. The main inspiration for this edition.
Revisiting my highlights from The Rock Warrior’s Way. This one stood out: “The warrior’s task is to free the conscious mind of this habitual thought, to direct attention more deliberately, and to respond spontaneously and non-habitually to challenging situations.”
Dancing with Systems by Donella Meadows. A great reminder that systems thinking is about being comfortable with uncertainty.
See you in two weeks,
–tim