When Books Were All We Had
Back in the later 1980’s and the 1990’s I think I invested a ton of money buying new books on all the latest tech topics. Databases, programming languages, methodologies, all the things. I spent a lot of money. I needed a book! And thankfully, I learned a lot. Not from the books tho! It was from the conversations I had with my peers and others about the content of the books. How the book was spot on, how it was so wrong, or how what the author said would never really work in real life. But, even though the value of the book wasn’t much, I kept buying them because of the conversations I had and the learning that occurred.
Where Did Journalism Go?
For the people that do write a book on a tech topic, organizational management topic, or other – it now often propels them into a level of fame and idolization. I say this as I listen to amateur pod-cast folks interview the latest agile guru who wrote a book. The interviewer is, quite frankly, a fan-boy. They geek out on whatever the author is saying and agree whole-heartedly on each statement. Where has the conversation gone? Where are the challenges? Where is the person pointing out the possible BS (BullS&!t)or NIH (Not Invented Here) or the HYADT (Have You Actually Done That?) I’m not hearing that at the water-cooler (or zoom hangouts during our pandemic) – where real progress and learning will happen. Yes – there are the rare MeetUps that are pretty darn cool – most any LeSS MeetUp group (namely MN and NYC) has had some great conversations or some general but smaller agile coaching and product ones. The thing is – you have to go find those and know that as the participation changes the conversation may weaken or strengthen.
Individuals and Interactions Please!
I’ve recently started blogging again – so many folks have been pushing me to do so. It’s fun, and I hope that as people read whatever I put to written words – they bring that back and have an amazing conversation with their peers and shred some of what I’ve written and hopefully appreciate some of it. I hope that they ask a very important question: “how can what this author is saying be possibly true?” We setup DOEs (design of experiments) and all sort of Gherkin language where we test the success or failure of our hypothesis. Let’s do that with all of the process and tools we want to push into our teams and organizations. Let’s value individuals and interactions over those process and tools.
Remembering the Dude
In all of this – I just remember hanging out with David Hussman when I was at DevJam – and so many asked him the question: “Dude, when are you going to write a book?” And most every time he’d respond: “I’m too busy actually doing this stuff to write a book.” I keep thinking about that as I dive into this writing endeavor. I don’t know I can ever get away from doing the things. Growing up on a farm pushes you into the value and pride of doing the work. I guess I fear becoming the one that teaches and writes because I can no longer actually do what I teach or write about. As in all things in life – seeking a balance is the wise thing to do but also the difficult thing to do.