It’s good to have experienced a lot of things and have learned from it; however, if you can learn from other peoples’ experiences, do that as well! No need to repeat other people’s experiences specially mistakes!
Sharpen your skills set! Books, read books! Audio books … good for road warriors… learn whilst driving, in flight, walking, etc.
A book I liked a lot is ‘Team of teams“, by General Stanley McChrystal.
What resonated to me is the importance of ‘Shared and collective consciousness’ vis-a-vis SAFe principle #9 (decentralize decision-making). In the book, it did not mention ‘SAFe principle #9’ of course … I made that connection based on the narrative they were providing.
How can the troops on the ground make instant responsible and accountable decisions when there is no constant flow of shared and collective consciousness? Impossible! Hence the importance — as the book stressed — of shared and collective consciousness flowing freely and continuously from every direction and source… so that the troops on the ground — in addition to what they know locally — have greater sense of the situation with greater context… enabling them to make better judgement and decision-making.
This ‘Shared and collective consciousness’ is also apparent whilst driving on a highway: drivers are conscious of the cars around them… they all have a dynamic and ever changing shared and collective consciousness of what is going on every second… being proactive and ready to react to avert an accident from happening in a split second.
There are lots more narratives… like cross-team synchronization… the narrative that was used was the Somali pirates’ hijacking of a Maersk ship — a film was made about it with Tom Hanks as the protagonist. Three USA navy SEAL snippers synchronized shooting of three hijackers at the same time (all three shots were at the same time and super accurate!) from various vantage points … SEALs and hijackers on various positions and locations.
Must read book, from my perspective. Just sharing.
What is your favorite book on or related to Lean-Agile? Please share and comment to this blog post! Thank you!
