»Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessman had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, in disgust at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt.«

– George Eliot, Felix Holt, The Radical

Wow, that struck a chord! What an refreshing realistic view on strategy!  It demonstrates that the soft factors of strategy in business is more than just something to »consider«. Without embedding them into strategy and business transformation efforts right from the start at last strategy implementation is destined to fail.

What does this mean for strategy as a whole? You mustn’t ignore the inner and outer complexity of  and around an organisation which humans are an essential part of. Do it and fail. See planning and design as just one perspective from many on the strategy process. At the same time use complementing »lenses« like cognition, culture, powerplay and learning.

I’d like this post to become the starting point for an introduction and discussion of the most important views on strategy. Please feel encouraged to post your comments, thoughts and maybe wish-lists of what to cover!

I stumbled upon a blog entry from Jeff Langr today in which he challenges the concept of »chickens and pigs« in agile development.

His line of reasoning: Having a rule which forbids communication is not agile at all. He suggests to sustitute an other agile value instead: courage. Simply ask people who are not helping in the daily to stop. And talk about it.

You can read his full view here.

I like his suggestion for dealing with chicken-rule-fetishists:

The next time someone calls you a chicken, let them know that there is a new animal in agile. It’s the ass. The ass is the person who dictates how things must be. They are stubborn, controlling animals. Perhaps the best thing to do with an ass is to give it a good swift kick.

I think Jeff has a valid point there. Nothing is more tedious than being constantly remembered by a Scrummaster(tm) that something »isn’t following the Scrum rule book«. On the other hand these rules are necessary scaffolding for beginning project managers without a lot of experience under their belt. Maybe the truth is somewherein  between again. If you need this rule, use it. But get rid of it as soon as possible.

What do you think of this rule? Do you use it?

I just discovered the works of John Gall and I LOVE IT!

Just two quotes for now:

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
—John Gall

and

Complex systems tend to produce complex responses (not solutions) to problems.
—John Gall

Wonderful.