Happy Friday,

The whole quote is, "I've been listening to my guts for 11 years, and they have shit for brains!" This is from the movie High Fidelity, in which the main character talks to the camera as he realizes he is his own worst enemy.

The thing is, though, that quote is pretty accurate when I work with engineering organizations.

Most groups tend to be fairly unaware of the patterns they rely on to make decisions during their day-to-day. Those patterns are born out of a need, but because they exist in the background, it isn't obvious that those patterns often have undesired consequences or reinforce themselves.

Let's talk through an example. A group is about to build a new project. This is pretty exciting since, most of the time, they are adding to and maintaining a larger and older product. The team wants to pick something modern and fun, and after lots of discussions, they pick their new tech stack and get to work.

Within three months a few things start becoming obvious. First, the team very much underestimated how hard it would be to pick up the new tech stack, and second the same types of problems that are in their legacy system are showing up in their brand new one. The developers begin making statements about tech debt, how hard it is to do certain things, how slow it is.

It can leave a leader in a position of frustration that we're back where we started.

This happened because the teams and leaders relied on a set of patterns that were built and strengthened over time while working in their legacy system. When confronted with a new problem, they rely on those patterns to help inform their decisions. In other words, history will repeat itself.

I know this idea sounds a little nuts, but I've seen it over and over again. Development teams pick a new tech stack swearing off their past suffering, but rebuild the same suffering with the same structure within months.

This is listening to your guts and realizing later it has shit for brains.

So what can you do?

My advice is to accept that when you're about to do something new, your instincts will make it feel like what is old. So, you need to do things that feel backward, silly, and ineffective. Note I didn't say things that are ruinous or high-risk. Rather, things that feel wrong and backward.

A way you can spark this is before starting something new, take a little time to reflect on all the things your group dislikes about the old things they deal with, and get very specific about what they must not do in the new project so they can avoid seeing those issues again.

What about you, though? Have you noticed this idea that groups tend to operate with deeply held patterns even when it's obvious it doesn't work out the way they want?

Sincerely,

Ryan