You May Have Said Or Heard It
An organization is trying to improve or adopt a new technique, perhaps product thinking, and a leader says ‘Well, that is all great. But you need to meet us where we are.’
Maybe a team was told they need to work on test automation. In meeting with the team, a senior engineer says ‘that sounds great, but you need to meet us where we are at. We can’t just start writing unit tests.’
This statement is a signal. The challenge then is finding the appropriate lever.
What Is Intended By ‘Meet Them Where They Are’
The statement is simple enough and has good intentions. Some changes may be difficult for an organization or a team. Instead of saying ‘this is the way it has to be done (or even better, this is the ** Best Practice ** ), it is better to work an organization or a team where they are to make incremental improvements. What is the confusion then? ‘Where They Are’ is amazingly loaded. Think about it, ‘where they are’ is based on, at a minimum
- Their current context
- Their current constraints
- Their current desires and motivation for a change
Their Current Context
Context is the cumulative effect of previous decisions. Those decisions may have been made before the current leadership was at the organization or decisions that have recently been made by current employees. At the team level, the decisions could be made outside the team or within the team. And all of these decisions create context. If you aren’t sure ‘how did they get here?’, then meeting them where they are at will be challenging.
Based on previous decisions, some choices are available and others are not. For instance, if an organization has decided that teams will be staffed globally, then the option of teammates working together may no longer be an option because of timezone challenges.
Their Current Constraints
Constraints, through either formal policy, informal standards, or general culture along with context inform what changes might be possible. Imagine a team has constraints where only certain team members, perhaps team leads, are allowed access to certain tools. Maybe it is for a good reason even, say compliance or in response to a previous audit. Those are real constraints. Helping a team improve without understanding their current constraints, along with the reason for the constraint, will be maddening.
Perhaps an organization has a culture of individual contributors; they even use that language and celebrate the promotions of IC1 to IC2. A culture like that may have a natural aversion to more team oriented changes. ‘Hey IC1-Dev, can you help IC2-QA make the tests easier to setup and teardown?’ In a culture that celebrates individual deliveries, that may be met with a quizzical look and a ‘well, for a few minutes but I really need to finish my task.’ You have to help them with finishing work that spans skills, but, you know, ‘meet them where they are at.’
Let alone if the organization focuses on governing constraints or enabling constraints….
Their Current Desires and Motivations
How could you possibly help an organization or a team if you don’t even understand their current desires or motivations? In working with organizations, many want to ship software faster. Sounds like a good idea, but what is the motivation? Are all of your product ideas crushing it, and so shipping more would mean more $$? Or is the current desire to have a better market impact? Or better serve your customers needs? Sure, meet the organization where they are, but understand what they are asking for, which might not even be what they are saying they need.
Working with a team? If a team sees no value in automated tests, let’s say regression, because they have never helped them before. Previous regression tests were full of false positives, took forever to setup, and were a pain to maintain, telling them ‘this time will be different, you just did it wrong!’ might not be the best approach. Start by asking the team what is frustrating for them, what they have tried, and would like to try.
Now What?
Meeting an organization or a team ‘where they are at’ is not as simple a statement as it sounds. Meeting them where they are at includes understanding context, influences, desires, as well as inspection into data so we can talk to data and not emotions.
Next blogs will address how to effectively ‘meet them where they are at’ using a combination of systems thinking tools.
