Failing at everything and still winning - Cultivated Management Newsletter
I'm combining this week's insight with the book of the week.
I read the book "How to fail at almost everything and still win big"* by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) a long time ago, but this week I found myself doing a lot of process mapping. Essentially rebuilding business systems to achieve goals - it's what Scott talks about in his book.
It's a good book. A very good book indeed. But one thing that stands out is Scott's assertion that systems beat goals. I totally agree.
I spent a long time setting goals and aligning teams around goals with good results. But it wasn't until I moved to setting goals and then defining the system to support the goals, that true innovation and excellence emerged. Scott basically says that goals are for losers. Here's an article he wrote promoting the idea from the book:
"My system of creating something the public wants and reproducing it in large quantities nearly guaranteed a string of failures. By design, all of my efforts were long shots. Had I been goal-oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems-oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the project that I happened to be working on. And every day during those years I woke up with the same thought, literally, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and slapped the alarm clock off."
The system is the process for doing the work. For delivering. For achieving. For completing something. For getting better at what needs to be done.
A goal is a direction. Something to aim at.
I like to have both. A goal to aim for, but a solid system in place to deliver on it.
The problem most teams encounter when they set goals is they don't spend the time defining and working and improving the system that will support the goal. That's why it is hard to reach the goal.
Let's say you want to reduce your customer ramp time by half. A good goal. A worthy goal. Let's do it. But then you don't identify the system and process that will help you get there. You then spin your wheels trying all sorts of stuff and may or may not reach the goal.
Let's say you set a goal of reducing your customer ramp time by half. But you also identify a team of people to map out the process, remove failure demand from the process, improve the process, run small experiments, set milestones, collaborate and define what good practice looks like - you'll likely succeed.
I am writing another book - that is a goal. But the system is me sitting down every lunchtime and writing it. I am trying to post to the blog three times a week - that is a goal. The system is me sitting down every morning at 6am and writing.
I am driving engagement in the business - that is a goal. The system is me consistently producing communications and initiatives that support it.
When I joined the Dev team at my current company 6 years ago we set a goal to release the software weekly - a highly ambitious goal given we were releasing weekly.
The system was small experiments, small teams, bite sized chunks of work and testing being moved to the centre of everything we did. We moved to agile/continuous delivery methodology - that was the system. And it worked.
I speak at lots of companies and events. One company invited me to speak to their Development team who wanted to go agile. They had spent in excess of £30million + on consultants, coaches and outsources who promised to help them become agile. None of it worked. They weren't changing the system. They were creating initiatives and small teams and a lot of other stuff, but they weren't changing the underlying system. As I pointed out to them - the most likely way such a large business would become agile was to hire people in to the teams and slowly but surely change the systems from within.
Set a goal and then put energy, money and effort in to changing or building the system.
Goals alone are for losers.
Smart systems combined with goals are clearly for winners.
One without the other doesn't seem to make sense.
So if you're trying to make epic change then set some lofty goals - but work hard, very hard, on the system itself.
James Clear wrote a nice piece on the benefits of systems too.
Blogged This Week
This week I posted my Blazingly Simple Guide to Turning Around a Team.
People are not efficient, but they can be effective.
The barrier to learning is really low.
Don't blame objects.
The best way to stay in touch with each post as it comes out is RSS - http://cultivatedmanagement.com/feed/
Until next week - go forth and fail at almost everything but still win big.
Rob
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