Divergence and Convergence
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings.
The Warriors moved to the next phase of the Playoffs, and we spent some time taking our senior dog to a park near here. I hope you had a restorative weekend and managed to rest.
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Things I discovered in the past week
- Shining a Light on AI Hallucinations. I'm subscribed to CACM magazine, and I found this article insightful. It helped me better understand what is going on under the hood.
- Do not start by changing the culture to drive the improvements, follow it first. This was a straightforward but great reminder for me, especially with some failed past attempts at changing culture.
I've been thinking about the divergence and convergence of ideas.
These terms come from a psychologist to exemplify creative ideas for problems rather than standardized solutions, like how solving a cultural problem versus creating the Nth iteration of a button might have different solutions.
When we think divergently, we look at multiple angles, think outside the box, etc. Let's say we're looking to implement continuous delivery, and some aspects of implementing the practices are cultural changes; then, we need to develop novel solutions to help people accept the change, make it easier, etc.
Teams have a good grasp of divergent thinking. Ideas for possible solutions are usually generated through activities like brainstorming or conversations.
Never converging
Most of the time, teams might never start a convergent thinking phase.
Creating an ever-growing list of solutions to problems that arise. With such a list, it's hard to pick one and move forward with it, because after a while, it's hard to assess the trade-offs or what will provide more leverage in the future.
We are in an analysis paralysis phase and probably will never be out of it unless someone takes ownership of a particular solution and swims upstream, addressing all concerns. This is a tall order to ask of people without much power to change the system.
Converging too late
Other times, I've observed we take too long to decide.
In large corporations, where everything moves slowly due to the nature of the different functions in a company, the team we depend on may have changed by the time we make a choice, rendering our decision moot. Other times, backlogs may not align, causing that choice to be delayed.
On the flip side, when working in corporations, we're always late. So, converging always feels late because we expected that decision last week! I think it's our job to understand our organization better and have a sense of whether we're late or not.
Converging too early
Hindsight is 20/20, and at work, we're constantly learning. The context is changing, which means that all convergence will feel too early because today, we know something more than we didn't realize two weeks ago.
Similarly, there's too early convergence when decisions come through leadership escalations. For example, your VP of Engineering, CTO, etc., wants to change our experimentation platform for reasons we don't fully understand. That might go through, and we need to jump on that grenade rather than going through a divergence-convergence phase.
Everywhere all at once
One thing to consider is that while we might struggle to deal with converging ideas at the team level, every other team and leadership level is also going through these phases.
Your team might be trying to improve decision-making and execution, but they might have trouble converging on choices at the senior leadership level. The opposite might happen: leadership might have a clear vision, and teams might struggle to convert ideas into execution.
Conclusion
If you're struggling with too many choices and not managing to converge, focus on delivering something to get the team in an execution flow.
If you're struggling with too much execution that lacks alignment with corporate vision, or there's no opportunity to explore other avenues for solving that might provide better leverage, it would be beneficial to focus on strategy, provide clarity for teams, and inspire some innovative problem-solving.
Your turn!
Have you ever considered whether your team is executing too much without considering the long-term and seeing opportunities for improvement? Or is your team always coming up with idealized solutions and never executing on any of them? Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
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