If you have received a WhatsApp message from a colleague on Saturday evening then you can sympathise Leon. Leon is not only a DevOps but also a married man. He had planned an evening to the movies with his wife until he received the message “Cyclic restarts in the registry-microservice. Help!” Leon was not standby, nobody was standby, but if he didn’t get involved the other colleague would be alone with the trouble (trouble is polite enough). So he got in to extinguish the fire.

On Monday morning peace has returned in the microservices system but not in the face of Leon. In the morning coffee, Leon says: “The registry-microservice couldn’t hold the last of this release but nobody has asked me before doing it. Afterwards, I’m responsible to bring it back to life. I feel like I have an old-timer sportscar which I love and I take care of. One morning I come to the garage and I see that it has a luggage rack on the roof and camping equipment for seven people loaded, no need to mention that it has only 2 seats. Then my mother-in-law says “hurry up we go to the coast for the weekend”. The rest you can imagine. I fancy no more maintaining the service. I don’t feel like doing it. If nobody is interested in my opinion I’ll stay in the background and I’ll execute their orders”. Silence had laid down in the coffee corner. We all knew what Leon meant. We identified the problem and then went back to work further like this.

For goodness sake, stop the hierarchy madness. Put the decision and the responsibility for the product together where they belong! To the people doing the work. Give your employees full ownership of what they produce and trust them. Trust though doesn’t come out of the blue. It needs a plan on how to meet the business-expectations. What are those expectations? Usually, it’s to deliver on time what the customer wants in good quality so that the customer will be satisfied and pay. In more measurable terms, to delay the delivery at a maximum of 30% of the original estimate, to deliver the most critical features and have only bugs which let a workaround. Ah, and one more thing, “Remember the budget!”. Budget, customers, product and time keep traditionally busy the senior management. They feel totally insecure to follow a new approach and give full ownership to the people doing the work. Let us present them a plan on how it could work.

A holistic approach to the product has a startup company. In the beginning, it has ten persons at maximum. They take care of what they produce, how to bring it to the market, how to make customers aware of their product and how to keep a healthy flow of money. People working in startup companies take usually much lower salaries than in a well-established company but they do it because of the pleasure of ownership and the perspective of earning more money in the future. It worths to mention the experience of my husband as he worked in a startup company. It was made by graduate students who took a fund to bring their diploma-project to the market. The fund has covered their basic needs for office, equipment and their personal monthly expenses. “Even with this basic salary and premises, all the five colleagues work so eagerly that I have never seen before in my career”, said my husband at this time. A startup company with its eagerness to produce will be the building block of our full-ownership-plan.

Startups need to scale up at some point. As they grow up if they manage to clone themselves like Gismo in the Gremlins (Film 1984) then they build the big company as an association of smaller startups. In the course of time, if they remember why they came together and what keeps them collaborating, then the association can be developed in a sustainable ecosystem of startups. In the following paragraphs, we’ll examine the roles of the big company and the startups under its umbrella.

The big company acts somehow like a holding company. It hosts its smaller parts. It provides and maintains their working premises, it gives them a certain initial budget and a basic salary and takes care of the communication channels (the nervous system) throughout the company body. The main duty of the host company is to have a vision and make it concrete to all the employees. This vision will lead their decisions and make clear their dependencies. An example of collaboration in scale struck me right away when Paul, a friend whose hobby is sky diving, told me about an event they had in 2010 in the USA. Three hundred springers tried to achieve a world record. They had to do 3 different formations in the air and come safe to the ground. They tried it out one week long and every day something went wrong. At the very last day, at the very last trial, they succeeded to do it. In the evening event, their leader told them “psychoanalysts give several reasons why the teams succeed at the last try but for us it’s simple. We all just wanted to go proud back home”. A vision that the people are proud to follow is the connecting chain between the startups and keeps in alignment their individual roles.

The role of each startup remains the responsibility to find the customers, identify how their product could cover better their needs and do whatever is necessary to produce it. They still keep the full-ownership of their products in the bigger ecosystem of the host company. Building synergies between them in order to produce a more complex product is also responsibility of the startups. In this area they could receive coaching from the host company. In the end, the revenue is shared. One part flows back to the host company and the rest is divided to the employees of the startups.

I call this model the holistic ownership model. It’s an approach to keep the people responsible and enthusiastic as the company grows. The factors which can kill the holistic model or give it long life will be discussed in a further blog “How to make your ecosystem sustainable”.

I want to thank all the colleagues and friends who shared all those years their experiences with me during the coffee breaks.

Escalation

This is the first word you hear when you enter the office in the morning. The sun is covered by clouds and your smile becomes a question mark. Yesterday evening, everything was cool as expected. Today the CTO has invited the whole department for an extraordinary meeting. What have you missed? Rumours and comments spread around the floors until you reach the main meeting room. The CTO is there and announces: “The company of Mr E is dissatisfied by the performance of our product and has stopped the payments”. The CTO has given Mr.E already a date for the forthcoming solution. You and all the other developers have only to reach this date. That simple.

People start moving

What does it happen now? Adrenaline is increased, the teams are heated up and the people start taking actions. However, as it happens with the air molecules when they are heated up, the people start moving to all possible directions. Uncoordinated, producing chaos. Is this scenario known to you? This chaos in thermodynamic is called high entropy and a system in this state has less power to produce something. High entropy is a natural state for a system under certain circumstances like heat.

Focus

Nature though shows also states of low entropy and high focus if the appropriate elements are set together. A great example is electrical current. Take a battery, put it into a torch and it will light. Why? The two poles of the battery have the tendency one to give away electrons and the other to capture them. When you connect the two poles with a wire you set up a path for the electrons to follow their natural way from negative to positive charge. They go all the same direction magnetised by their nature. All the same direction. Ideally zero entropy. Well, in practice not exactly zero. As the electrons move some collide with the molecules of the wire and heat is produced as well causing some electrons to go off route and moving to different directions. However, the entropy in an electrical circuit is low.

Be as the electrical current

Low entropy. Moving to the same direction. Charged with high energy. This is the state we need for our teams if we aim to produce something great. Let’s make our teams work as an electrical circuit. How to do that? Removing the “heating sources” from the working environment and replace them with “batteries”.

Which are the heating sources in a company? I’ll list some that I have identified from my 25 years of experience in network maintenance, testing, teaching, developing, project management and research.

Responsibility is separated from ownership: You are put responsible for the product to work but the decisions about the product are taken by the senior management.

Islands of decisions: Decisions are taken by the senior management or the very experienced employees yielding to thinkers and doers in the company.

Customer isolation: You don’t have the tiniest clue how the “customer” will use your product and who is this “customer”.

Missing leadership: Everybody in the company talks about the product but nobody talks about the people making it happens.

One man show: Competent people have an idea and rush to implement it leaving behind the others.

Missing budget responsibility: The teams cannot decide by themselves about their expenses and so they have no idea if the way they go is expensive for the project or not.

Missing training: People are asked to perform in an area where they have little or no knowledge.

Done work is not visible. Open work is undefined: The people don’t know how much of the whole way they have already beneath them and how much is forward.

No time for research and innovation: People are asked to give good results without having the time to try things out and find what a good result is.

Information flow is blocked: Representatives of the teams are sent to meetings but the information stays among the participants of the meeting.

Those “heating sources” if they get combined they destroy the potential and the spirit of the people. In the following articles, I ‘ll go through each of them and we’ll investigate how to transform them into energy sources

Last Saturday my husband insisted that he needed help with the shopping so  I decided to go with him to super market. My son came as well, we were three persons.

In order to finish fast (shopping is a needed waste of time for me) I separated the shopping list in two notes and we discussed how to buy the things in parallel. My son and my husband took a trolley and I took another one. We met here and then on the main corridor and we checked what we’ve bought and if the other needed help. At the end we paid in parallel in two cash points. We finished in half an hour. Usually super market shopping takes one hour. I was excited with our team work. Everybody was satisfied.

This weekend I wanted to repeat the great team work in super market but even more efficient. While my husband and my son were playing I separated the list in three notes. I thought everyone of us can buy things independently and pay as well. I didn’t mention my plan to them. When we got ready to go I gave one shopping list to each of them. ‘Let’s shop in parallel, I have the third list’ I said. Then the first protest came from my husband. Obviously he didn’t like neither to buy things alone nor to get a plan out of the blue. However, he accepted my plan even if he disagreed. This time we met only once. I took care about the time and I didn’t check what we’ve bought. I trusted our lists. The result was that we forgot to buy several things (not in the list) or we bought twice the same things. Additionally everybody was unhappy and we did 1 hour shopping.

Do you see the parallel with the SCRUM and the waterfall model? In the second story I was the Mr.Superman, doing the perfect planning in advance and commanding the people what they had to do. Totally demotivated team because I took all the initiatives.

In the first weekend we did a kind of daily meetings when we met on the corridor to coordinate how far we are and check who needs help. We felt well because we were a team, we did the things together. In the second the time was important for me and for the shake of efficiency I forgot the being together. It turned out that the shopping in the first weekend with the rough but joint planning was far more efficient and joyful than the shopping in the next weekend with the very well organized planning in advance.

Sorry I forgot, people are important.

Have you read the novel of Jules Verne ‘The mysterious island‘?

Five castaways make their isolated island a civilized area. The engineer Cyrus Smith helps them with his knowledges not only to survive but to live with comfort. The other persons in the group trust him. He gains the role of their physical leader. Do you think that the people accepted him as leader because of his experience? If Cyrus Smith was ignoring their opinion, if he was shouting to them and humiliating them would they accept him as leader?

I have another example from my childhood. My parents grown up in difficult circumstances where the surving was not guaranteed. By the time I was born though they had managed to settle a good life. Nevertheless they paid attention mostly on having enough food, clothes, a nice home and the money that my brother and me needed to study. I’m grateful about that. On the other hand my mom never came to a school feast, my father laughed on me when I said I wanted to learn piano, I didn’t dare to show them my paintings, I had to follow their plans and their decisions. Even if they did take care about me, on their way,  I hardly accepted them as leaders in my life. A stronger role in my life played the authors of several novels and philosophical books.

For us, human beings, surviving is not enough. According to Maslow’s pyramide of needs  we have a set of needs essential for surviving and coping with life. If those needs are fulfilled we can go on and try to excite our mind, to make dreams and make them true, to help other people. That makes us happy.

In the example the ‘Mysterious island’ Cyrus Smith not only knew how to make things important for surviving, like fire, but he discussed with the other persons, they took decisions together, their contribution to everydays life was appreciated and no one was less important than the others. Cyrus Smith cultivated higher values in the team. That’s why he gained the respect of the others and the role of the natural leader in their minds.

Taking care about the people, about their basic needs, is an essential thing. Taking care about autonomy, respect, beauty, thinking together, recognition gives us a leading position in other people’s eyes.

to team or not to team?

Twenty years ago, when my husband did his military service, he was in a group of trained lieutenants. They had to learn how to give orders. Everybody had to go forward and give one command to the others in the group. The most popular command was to order the gun on the shoulder. “On the shouldeeeeer Arm!!!” As the time past their shoulder was in pain. The ones in the group begged their colleauge in the front not to give the same command again. He did though. In a strange way almost everybody going in front gave the same order even if he was begging before the others not to do it.

Why do you think he did so? Perhaps revenge, perhaps not thinking enough,  or taking power out of it. All those years I’ve realised that many people on the low layer of the hierarchy spend their time critisizing the ones having the power. When those people though take a leading position they do the same as the ones they’ve critisized so long. What did I when I became a parent? Guess.

Well, I’m on the way to change. What had slowed down my controlling behavior was something my mom used to say. “What are you going to be without me…?” Actually I’ve turned out to be doing pretty well in my life and I kept her out of it. I wanted to prove her wrong. I could achieve something without her. So I thought my kids can find their own sit in the journey of life. If I want to exist in their journey then I’d better be aware of my own attitude so that I don’t miss their flight. If I spend my time trying to make them like me, then I’m wasting my time and I’ll miss the plane. They’ll take off anyway and I’ll stay back complaining that they don’t care about me.

To let my kids go their own path it’s a difficult thing. I have to change my core character. It’s not easy to get rid of the curse of power, being the boss. The curse of power, controlling and commanding the people around me, may cure my old traumas or fulfill some of my needs but do I make a team in this way? Definitely not. Neither me nor the trained lieutenants could gain the role of the natural leader in the mind of the group. We both ignore the needs of the people around us. My kids and my husband have the need of autonomy, the soldiers of physical relaxation. If you have a leading position and you want to build a team you’d better take into account the needs of the people instead of bossing them.

Once I talked with a colleague about SRUM. The dialog went like tthis:

C. Who has the responsibility in SRUM?

Me. Everybody in the team is responsible for the project.

C. If I go on vacations and the team takes a wrong decision it will affect me as well. It will affect my bonus. I’d better depend on somebody who knows what he/she is doing . We need somebody to have the responsibility of the project and gives the direction.

Me. Hm…

A dialog with another colleague went like this.

C. We don’t have any software architect to give detailed requirements.

Me. You are designers and testers in the team. You can discuss  the requirements with the product manager and find out the details by yourselves.

C. I’m not get paid to take decisions. If the company wants me in this position it should give me a higher salary.

Me. Hm…

What do you take out of those discussions?  Do we need a leader to tell us what to do and take responsibility of our actions?

Definitely we didn’t want it when we were children. I’ve never met a kid saying they wanted their parents to tell them what to do and take decisions for them. What happened next? Did we forget our desire for autonomy?

I guess we’ve grown up and become what our parents have shown us with their behavior. And they became what their parents have shown them and so on. This is tradition. Can we break it?

Let’s go back to our childhood and remember how we wanted our parents to be with us. Keep this wish in mind and return to now. We are adults and we can make our wish real for our own kids. Finally we can build the family team as we wished it to be. At least for me it is without a CEO.

Today a colleague told us about the time he were doing his internship, 30 years ago. He recalled that there was a big rivalry between the Azubis and the Praktikanten. He said their manager had cultivated this attidute. I made the question “Didn’t he try to make you a team?”. My colleague laughed “Team is a modern thing” he said. “By this time there was no team”.

His story made me think of my school years. We never had a work to do as a group. Twelve years at the school I learnt to act on my own. One man show, no dependencies, no compromises. Only the punishments were in a team spirit ☺. It is difficult to teach teamwork if you haven’t lived in it.

In the rest of my life I ‘ve tried to conform to several forms of teams. Friends, university, relationship, family, work. I’m sad to discover how unwilling I am to work as a team. It is also difficult to learn teamwork if you haven’t grown up with it.

Why do we have to learn it? Isn’t it natural for human beings to live together with other people? A spark needs a team to be a fire and a person needs a community to flourish. But is that right? Do the human beings need a team? I think there is no doubt, the answer is yes. The right question is what kind of team the human beings need. It is easier to answer this question if we think of our family. How I wished my family when I was a kid?

One day in January it was snowing very heavily. We live on a hill and as I came back in morning from shopping, I saw a car slipping on the ice. It couldn’t go forward and there was a small man pushing it from below. His child was waiting on the pavement.

I waited for a minute to see if there was any success but it didn’t go any better. So, I left the shopping bags on the snow and I started pushing the car as well from the other side. Unfortunately I have to admit that I have little strength and I’m not athletic at all. The situation didn’t change, the car continued to slip on the ice inspite of the driver’s effort. We continued though to push, the small man and the powerless woman. I was looking down to the street putting all the power I had. Suddenly the car moved on!!! I was surprised and then I saw a big strong man standing between us and pushing as well. The car went up the hill.

The small man had left his child at the side waiting and tried pushing this big car. This view and his insisting effort had empowered other people as well to help and we’ve got a result.

Through this blog I want to bring up the spark of a youthful dream, a dream that the children usually have. A world without borders. I’m a small person in front of the huge earth BUT I’m not alone. I want to start pushing in the dream’s direction. We all can contribute in ideas independent how naive or impossible they shine. It’s a dream, we can say anything.

If you could see the earth inside the whole universe I’m sure you would describe it as a small town of 7.000.000.000 people.

When I was eight years old I watched in the news the war between Iran and Irak. Year after year.  My impression was “it lasts for an eternity”. With my small mind I thought: “What a pity, they have so similar names and they fight each other”. I would have been even more suprised and sad if I knew that they have even more things in common than only the similar names. By this time I thought I’m too small/young to understand why they fight. Which was partially right. I couldn’t think about the power or the money or whatever it was. I saw only human beings suffering, I saw the horror, I saw the disaster and I couldn’t find out why.

I used to make in my mind a world without borders where WE are important and not I. I tried to play this “film” in my mind. How would the people behave, how it would be.

What happened later? I grown up. The dreams were too naive for an adult. Many years have passed since then and my only concern was to find a job, to make friends, to make a family, to have a nice home. I spent almost all my time around myself.

It was going like this until I read the book of Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander “The art of possibility”. It made me remember all my abandoned dreams. I saw clearly how less visions we the adults have. How much we are caught in the lower layers of our needs. When we are kids we have so many dreams but not the power to realise them. As adults we have the power but no dreams anymore.

Thus I decided to join the dreams of a kid with the power of an adult. I start thinking again of the borderless earth.