Recently I had the great fun of watching a group of people work through a simulation. The simulation required that the participants work as a team to build a product for which they would get “paid.” Several rounds had passed and the team had not yet “shipped.” The team was divided into several separate working groups, and, just like in real life, there was a little tension between the groups. Some folks were getting frustrated. There was some finger pointing going on. The participants were scattered around the room, each group working independently. Close to the end of the simulation, I was beginning to wonder if the participants would be successful and make their “revenue” goals.
Then magic happened. The team gelled. They gathered around a single table and cranked out a working solution. The “customer” (a facilitator in the simulation) bought it and the team finally made money.
In that last round, I thought the group looked energized and focused. They collaborated beautifully. Each member of the team contributed their expertise. The results were undeniable: the customer’s acceptance tests passed and the product shipped.
When asked about their impressions of those moments in the simulation, some participants reported that it felt a little chaotic. They pointed out that having everyone around a single table was noisy and crowded. I was left with the impression that some people thought the chaos they felt was an obstacle that they’d had to overcome in order to succeed. And that thought led me to reflect on my own experiences in the real world.
I’ve certainly worked on teams where we all said to each other, “Things are really chaotic around here…yet we ship despite the chaos. Think how much better off we’d be if we could just eliminate the chaos!”
The simulation reminded me that there are different kinds of chaos. Sometimes a feeling of chaos means that things really are entirely out of control. But sometimes it means there’s just a lot going on all at once. The hubbub of an energized group collaborating to achieve a shared goal may feel chaotic, but it’s not the same as everything-out-of-control chaos. It’s easy to mistake the bustle of getting things done with confusion and disorder. That’s unfortunate, because it blinds people the fact that teams succeed because of, not despite, a high level of interaction.
Why is this important? Because if we see that bustle of activity as bad chaos, we’ll try to eliminate it. Hallway conversations will be replaced with formal meetings. Whiteboarding sessions will be replaced with documentation reviews. People will work quietly, heads down, in their private workspaces. When that happens, we lose the magic. In our attempts to cut down on the chaos, and we also dramatically reduce the communication, interaction, and collaboration that made us successful.
There’s an old saying, “never confuse correlation with causation.” Perhaps there is a related lesson to be learned here:
Whenever you think you succeeded despite something, consider the possibility that you succeeded because of it.
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