Chapter 7 is one of my favorites in Why Limit WIP: We Are Drowning In Work. One of the chronic problems I help teams deal with is the perceived need to start everything that comes to them, generating huge amounts of WIP. Many of the items sit in an on-hold status until something else happens. The iron-willed self-discipline of starting is great at creating on-hold items and crap at getting work done. There is a gap in understanding the impact of the consequences.
IMHO one of the most critical ideas in Why Limit WIP is learned helplessness.
“Learned helplessness, in psychology, is a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the situation.” (https://www.britannica.com/science/learned-helplessness)
An example of this phenomenon that I encounter far too often occurs when teams (or organizations for that matter) can not control work entry. Work presents from any source and they have to “take” it. Each new item trumps the priority of the last. Instead of pushing back team adopt the fatalistic attribute of “that just way we do it here” and/or “I just do want I am told.” They are helpless. An equally common example is caused by poor team design. The WIP problems for the team referenced in the first paragraph are a reflection of poor organizational design. In the example, the organization created teams by discipline. The team accepts new work and starts working on it. After a few days, they hand the work to another team. That team something important that takes an unpredictable amount of time and then hands it back. Once the work is returned the original team can finish the work. Two handoffs and a ton of wait time are required to perform a common piece of work. Instead of reorganizing the teams to reduce the handoffs and minimize WIP the organization pays the penalty of increased cost, lower customer satisfaction, and increased stress on team members. When asked whether they had ever tried to streamline the flow team member said they had suggested combining the teams a few years ago but both of the team lead thought it was a bad idea. The teams have developed learned helplessness – they can see a path to empower themselves to tackle the problem (except to change jobs). The organization looks at the daunting task of reorging and feels helpless to address the root cause.
As a side note, organizations and teams learn to be helpless. No amount of transformation, exhorting people to have an open mindset, or chanting agile slogans will reverse helplessness. The only way to address learned helplessness is to execute experiments that help people see that they do have the power to make changes and decisions and then explore the consequences.
Individuals, teams, and organizations can fall prey to accepting or being forced to accept too much work. The more overloading WIP is pushed the easier it is to learn that resistance is futile. When an individual feels they are helpless the most common request you will hear from them is “just tell me what to do.” If you are a leader, you own this problem, you need to fix the root cause of the problem which may mean that you have to address your own learned helplessness.
One last thing – I am looking for suggestions for the next book in the re-read series. What should be next?
Remember to buy a copy and read along. Amazon Affiliate LInk: https://amzn.to/36Rq3p5
Previous Entries
Week 1: Preface, Foreword, Introduction, and Logistics – https://bit.ly/3iDezbp
Week 2: Processing and Memory – https://bit.ly/3qYR4yg
Week 3: Completion – https://bit.ly/3usMiLm
Week 4: Multitasking – https://bit.ly/37hUh5z
Week 5: Context Switching – https://bit.ly/3K8KADF
Week 6: Creating An Economy – https://bit.ly/3F1XKkZ Week 7: Healthy Constraints – https://bit.ly/3kM8xqh
