One of my favorite essays is Eric R Raymond’s ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ – if you’re not familiar with it, it’s well worth a read, and if you are familiar, a re-read.
At work, we’re defining our approach to agility/adaptiveness/organizational fitness and in conversations with the folks responsible for it, I had a notion as I sometimes do.
My original thought was ‘We tend to oversimplify transformations into cathedrals’ – but I quickly realized that was wrong. The characteristic of cathedrals is fixed design, immense effort and long duration – persisting long after the original designers are gone. Very few transformations actually last that long…
Better to think of them as ‘ingots’ or ‘castings’ – something intended to be relatively atomic (in the ‘taken as a whole’ sense) and uniform – with relatively common patterns across the organization.
But in reality, the State of Agile survey points out that most organizations are operating in a hybrid mode.
And ‘bazaar’ is a wrong metaphor as well. There are stronger central forces, and fewer degrees of freedom.
So I thought about ‘weaving change together’ and came up with the notion of transformation as ‘making a tapestry’ – one that ideally is defined by a common vision, but can be woven together from a number of disparate elements. They rely on some foundational patterns (warp and woof) and in theory present a unified vision – but they can be made from varying materials, are extensible (I can weave an area, take it off the loom, and then restart – even with different materials), and can be made by different people.
Some weaving requires high levels of standardization; some is intended to have none at all. But it all requires a vision – a mechanical one (to get it to all physically hang together, forfor the fabric to have the properties intended) and an aesthetic one (to make it look the way the creator intended).
And personally I much prefer the notion of ‘weavers of change,’ which feels modest and craft-like to the notion of ‘forgers of change’ which feels overly heroic and industrial.
So imagine thinking of our effort to change an org as a series of small, delicate threads that we work to tie together into a robust and flexible fabric.
And better, it’s a process that will never be complete, and where we need to understand that what we do may wind up being useful for a while and may even be pulled apart and redone.
Hey, Marc, Thanks for sharing your thoughts on change and how to approach it!
It's interesting that because I just used 'weaving change together' and 'make a tapestry' as metaphors for my coaching approach, in a separate conversation with a diverse group of agile coaches across the globe. It's almost as if the answer came to me serendipitously, in a moment of synchronicity. I don't recall using that phrasing before; but then again we did just talk yesterday and perhaps you 'wove' that into our conversation and I forgot until today. So, while it was surely just a coincidence, it's still a unique and thought-provoking way of thinking about change.
.. Still, just out of curiosity, were you writing or posting about this at the time of our conversation? It would be strange if the answer came to me in such a synchronistic way and you were already thinking about it. Regardless, thanks for sharing this idea with us and for letting me weave in my own thoughts here as well. It's always interesting to see how different perspectives and experiences can shape our understanding of complex concepts like change.
I'll be sure to include the forging analogy into the weave next time I talk about this. I think that can be playfully used to answer questions on 'how might we address a mandated agile rollout' while honoring individuals and interactions" .... At that point, I can now answer, it depends on if you want to weave or forge the change. and I, like you, prefer to weave change rather than forge... "which feels overly heroic and industrial."
what if our small changes in the weave have a greater impact than we imagine? wouldn't even our chat here be evidence that we shouldn't underestimate the impact of even a small weaving into the fabric of reality. .. not a bad thought experiment ... "how might our daily interactions weave changes with rippling effects?"