haruki zaemon

I am reminded day after day how important it is to remain ruthlessly curious. Smart, capable people will either solve problems for themselves, realise they don’t know how, or realise they do know how but the environment is causing them to not do anything about it. This could be because they lack time, or they’re focused on other things, or any number of reasons. The trap is to think that I have the answers.

Here’s an example where I asked what I thought was a reasonable question but was in hindsight loaded with bias:

Q: Why aren’t we doing {A, B, C}?

A: Because it’s not important.

Q: It’s important to me. We should be doing it and we’re not. Why?

A: This has never been a problem. Why would it be a problem now?

That conversation went around and around for a while getting nowhere. So, I abandoned the approach and reflected on what was going wrong. Why couldn’t they see what I thought I could see? Why weren’t they worried about this the way I was? Were they naive?

At some point I realised I’d become stuck in a cycle of trying to be preacher, politician, and prosecutor. What I needed to do was flip things around, stop assuming the premise, and start acting like a scientist:

Q: What things would, could, or should we be doing but aren’t because we lack the necessary resources and time, or because we have skills and knowledge gaps?

A: {A, B, C, …, X, Y, Z}.

There it was. Smart, capable people already knew the answer. They weren’t naive. They knew what needed to be done, and they knew they should be doing it.

So what was stopping them? Why had they even gone so far as to say it wasn’t important to them?

I’ve observed that people will resolve dissonance in their favour, rather than have to sit with it. I’d mostly thought of it as choosing the “easier” option. What I had never really thought about (until this podcast episode) was that dissonance is a mismatch between belief and reality: You can choose to update your beliefs; or you challenge the reality.

Which in hindsight explains why, when I asked another question out of genuine curiosity, it became apparent:

Q: And, assuming you had the necessary time, resources, skills, and knowledge, how important do you think those things are?

A: Yeah, important. We’ve been wanting to do some of them for a while now but, didn’t feel we could …

They faced challenges they didn’t feel able to overcome, and that meant they experienced discomfort, i.e. dissonance. In order to resolve the dissonance, they had updated their beliefs: those things had never been a problem, and are therefore not important. The resolution of that dissonance looked like resistance to change.

Proselytising, making stump speeches, and reading facts into evidence rarely changes peoples minds. If anything, it’s likely to make them defensive, search for even more ways to rationalise their behaviour, and ultimately reinforce their position.

Instead, maintaining a mindset of curiosity and setting aside your own biases can reveal underlying conflict and help people motivate themselves into action.

Managing work in progress (WIP) is not just about optimising operational efficiency; it’s also about fostering a healthy and empowering work environment:

• When there is too much WIP, people feel overwhelmed. This constant state of feeling overwhelmed leads to a sense of lack of control over one’s work. This lack of control combined with constant task switching and changing priorities leads to disengagement and helplessness.
• The more tasks a team is responsible for, the less time they tend to dedicate to collaboration. Divide-and-conquer is seen as the right approach, while working with others becomes synonymous with inefficiency. This reduction in teamwork leads to a sense of isolation.
• Increased cycle times and reduced efficiency means it takes longer for people to see the results of their work. The harder it is for employees to understand their impact, the more likely they are to feel ineffective.
• With too many tasks in progress, feedback loops become longer and slower. This delay in receiving feedback leaves employees feeling uncertain about their performance, and unable to know how best to make improvements.
• Executives over-emphasis on utilisation and keeping people busy leads to a lack of focus on bigger picture and strategic outcomes. This focus on day-to-day operations leaves little time for alignment and planning, communication of vision and direction, tools and training, or resourcing.

To counter this we need to: Constantly communicate vision and principles so those closest to the work can make better, more informed, more aligned decisions; reassure people that long-term, strategic outcomes are just as important as “quick wins”; make explicit all the things people believe they’re expected to do, discuss what is a true priority vs nice-to-have, and proactively plan for tasks we might need to “drop on the floor”; reward people for reducing WIP rather than taking on more; and keep asking people what they need to be and feel more empowered.

Too much work in progress is one of the more insidious and perhaps inadvertent means by which we disempower people. If we genuinely want to foster an environment where employees feel in control, engaged, and connected, it’s critical we ruthlessly prioritise our own workloads, and support others to ruthlessly prioritise theirs.

Someone asked a question about job levels. I’m paraphrasing here for the sake of brevity and anonymity:

As an early-stage startup, we made a deliberate decision to hire an experienced engineering team. As such, all our engineers have the same title. We’re now exploring the introduction of different levels and would love to hear your thoughts.

I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers however, I have been a part of implementing various approaches (flat, multi-track, sub-levels, etc.) with mixed results.

I’m currently of the view that unless you are a mega-corp (and perhaps even then) or Government:

• External title != internal role. Externally, people can call themselves whatever they want, within reason.
• Don’t use roles/titles and promotion to reward and recognise people. Have a smaller set of roles with large overlapping pay bands and use expectations to provide additional compensation.
• Accept that some people will want to focus on deep coding and that’s ok. Some folks will want to extend into other duties, and that’s ok too.
• Use roles as a way to provide clarity and focus on what’s expected. Expectations are the things people can meaningfully compare, hold themselves accountable to, and be assessed on.
• Look for ways to provide people with opportunities to extend themselves in their current role. If in doing so, they periodically fulfill the expectations of other roles, recognise and reward them for that. Don’t demand they do it all the time, and don’t delay that recognition and reward until they’re “officially” in another role.
• Even within a role, there are likely fundamental things we expect of everyone, and then specialisation that allows people to contribute in different but nevertheless meaningful ways.
• Avoid creating roles based on “jobs to be done.” The classic example is tech or delivery lead. Depending on the nature and scope of the work, it could be performed by a junior engineer, or a principal.
• People management really is a different skill set. No really. You may or may not need specific roles but whatever you go with, give people explicit and ongoing support and training.
• Minimise the number of vacancy-based roles. Make them accessible to internal staff (as well as external candidates) and invest in opportunities and training to maximise their chance of success.
• Don’t create “unicorn” roles by back-solving for people you want to retain. They lack clarity of expectations, lead to the perception of (if not actual) favouritism, and easily become misaligned with real business needs.
• In a small startup, roles are far less clear. If you’re vetting people sufficiently in the hiring, you’re likely to bias towards people who will pretty much do anything, so the above matters far less.

Companies want to attract and retain people, and to set pay and benefits. Individuals want to feel a sense of progression and achievement, and to signal this to others.

A mistake I’ve made repeatedly in the past is trying to capture everyone’s needs in some form of job level structure where the only way is up, and in which people are inadvertently incentivised to compete and outshine one another.

These days, I advocate for a simple structure with multiple overlapping levers. One in which there is more clarity in what’s expected, more opportunity to be recognised and rewarded, and more flexibility in how organisations can support people to grow and perform at their best.

I’ve seen a number of posts recently both supporting and criticising Team Topologies and Dynamic Reteaming. I didn’t write either so I can’t say for sure what was intended. What I have observed though, is they’re essentially patterns books.

Like other patterns books, the problems I see aren’t so much with the book as the misapplication of the patterns (yes, we’re “doing it wrong”). In my experience, people tend to read patterns books and feel the need to apply every pattern. They want one of everything.

I’m old enough to have experienced this first hand with Design Patterns and Analysis Patterns in the mid ‘90s, and again with Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and Enterprise Integration Patterns in the early 2000s (guilty as charged, your honour!), and I’m seeing it happen again with Team Topologies and Dynamic Reteaming.

I don’t think I’ve read a patterns book and thought the patterns were right or wrong. They’re usually descriptions of useful ways of approaching various problems, or in some cases simply observations of how people have solved them. Frankly, they all look appealing in some way, and that’s part of the challenge: patterns are heavily context dependent, and adequately conveying that context through a book is difficult.

Do you need a factory, or a unit of work, or a tiger team, or a platform team? I have no idea. I do know that just because a book talks about a pattern doesn’t mean you should use it.

Understanding patterns absolutely helps us understand the problems we want to address, identify the patterns we’ve already implemented (not necessarily by design), and compare that to what we think we need.

Above all, resist the urge to have one of everything.

UPDATE 1: John Cutler prompted me to point out that I’m absolutely in the loved Team Topologies camp. It’s one of the books I regularly recommend people read.

UPDATE 2: Peter Sommerland pointed out I’d missed an important and influential series, Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture.

It’s sometimes hard to know just how much involvement to have. Too much and I can come across as micro-managing; too little and I’m an absent parent who only shows up when something goes wrong. I can think of numerous examples where I’ve left it too long or I’ve expected too much of a team and things have gone sideways, or other times I’ve allowed my discomfort at having less control get the better of me and I’ve jumped in too soon.

I’m not sure I have good heuristics for how much is required at any given time. Sure, there are some possibly obvious things like: Long-running, high-performing teams already know how to operate and improve and may only require intermitent involvement; Less experienced people might need more direct involvement day-to-day. But even then, as teams evolve—new people come and go, or goals and objectives change—so too must my level of engagement.

These days, I try to stay connected by attending rituals (stand-ups, etc.), offering support if/when needed, and asking individuals and teams who, what, when, and how questions to get a sense of performance and progress. In cases where they don’t need alot, I can work on building trust and understanding, and reward them for their efforts. When I sense that a team needs more, I can lean on that trust to help them navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity, redirect their efforts where needed, provide organisational support to unblock them, and coach them through the challenges.

By staying connected to the teams on a regular basis, even in a light-touch way, I get a better sense of how they are travelling and what level of involvement they need from me. For the most part, I no longer scare people when I turn up and ask questions.

There’s no such thing as common sense, so you can’t leave it to people to figure out what you think is/isn’t sensible. It’s especially difficult for them when they are presented with counter-intuitive viewpoints that challenge their beliefs—how will they have any idea which other beliefs they should hold vs challenge?

Somewhat circularly, I came to this view while reading back a list of principles (like this one) I had been collecting. I found that each time I went through the list I internalised them a little more. After a while they became familiar enough to me that I started to say to myself “well, d’uh!”

The reflection of course is: They weren’t always so obvious, even to me.

A bunch of years ago, I found I’d reached a ceiling on my personal and professional growth. For most of my life, I’d relied on instinct, gut-feel, intuition, call it what you like. This got me so far but I was at a point where it was holding me back.

Learning and growth require failure, and failure requires taking risks. When you run on instinct, you can leave a lot of decisions until the last minute. This increases the likelihood that you will be successful, but mostly because you’re choosing the least risky option. You can see the problem.

Learning and growth also require feedback, and feedback requires being wrong. When you run on instinct, you don’t need to make explicit commitments ahead of time. This reduces the likelihood you will be overtly wrong, and it’s being overtly wrong that causes reflection and introspection and long-term pattern matching.

For the past few years, I’ve been attempting to capture my implicit decision-making principles in as close to realtime as possible. This has forced me to introspect and try to understand why I’m making the decisions I am. As someone who has a lifetime of running on instinct, this can be challenging to do. But, I’ve found that as with any practice, the more I do it, the easier it becomes and the more value I derive.

Periodically reviewing and reflecting on them helps me internalise things I still believe, and challenges me to rethink things I perhaps no longer agree with. This in turn helps me learn from my mistakes, helps others understand what I’m thinking, improves the feedback and input I receive, and improves my ability to support others to develop and grow.

Being explicit about my principles makes it easier for me to hold myself accountable, and for others to hold me accountable, by making sure my words and actions are consistent and coherent.

That’s not to say that I don’t still use my instinct, I absolutely do. The difference today is that I try to be more deliberate about how I use my intuition, and more explicit about how I make decisions.

I sent a variation of this internally, and posted to LinkedIn on Wednesday:

🦁 Today is my last day at Envato after a wild checks notes 7 years, 2 months, and 18 days.

💔 I have very mixed feelings about leaving. There are without doubt some amazing people here and I will very much miss working with you.

🎓 I’ve made plenty of mistakes and would like to think I’ve grown from them all. I encourage you to take a deliberate approach to your own development. Embrace change and constant improvement, be resilient in the face of set backs, and importantly (in fact the crucial step) don’t shrug off the failures as simply a necessary outcome. Instead, reflect on what you can learn from them and, knowing what you know today, what you will do differently next time.

💫 I’m super proud of the transformation we’ve been able to achieve, through an incredibly challenging few years: embracing change, focusing on improvement, and bringing many parts of the business together.

🧬 At the same time, there’s always more to do, and I felt Envato needed fresh eyes, fresh energy, and fresh DNA to capitalise on new opportunities.

🌱 Hopefully, me stepping out of the business also creates new opportunities for others to grow and succeed, and I look forward to seeing what you all manage to achieve.

🙏 I have one request, and it’s absolutely optional, of course. If you have any advice for me to take into my next role (good, bad, more of, less of, etc.) I would love to hear it. Help me be better.

📜 Lastly, it wouldn’t be me without a Haiku:

Beginners mindset
Give it everything you have
Start each day anew

👋 Goodbye, adiós, hei konā mai, tạm biệt.

One of our apprentices asked me recently: “What’s one good thing and one bad thing that’s changed over your career?” I said I think we have lost connection to, empathy with, and focus on the customer.

When I started as an apprentice analyst programmer (as we were known) c. 1991, the customer wasn’t just at the centre of everything we did, but we worked with them regularly. This customer engagement continued throughout most of my career.

Early in my career, software development felt less about the technology, and more about starting directly with the customer, and working backward to deliver outcomes early, and often. We’d go on site to see how people worked, and to listen to their pain points. Pre-sales was also an opportunity to understand customer needs. Doing customer support meant empathising with their problems, and more often than not turning them into evangelists for our product.

That doesn’t mean we always got it right, of course. Resourcing, prioritisation, and speed of delivery, have always been a challenge. As a software developer, of course I have always liked trying new technology and understanding better practices, etc. At the same time, in my mind at least, it was always a means to an end; not the end itself.

In the past 10-15 years, I’ve experienced a trend I think has been detrimental namely, intermediating cross-functional software development teams from the customer, and spending more time building technology platforms than delivering customer outcomes.

In my role, I am acutely aware of the challenges that come with not operationalising a product and ways of working. Ultimately, if the platform is fragile and hard to maintain, teams will become overwhelmed with rework and will slow down. I don’t think the two need be in opposition.

The more connection development teams have to the customer, the more they can understand their impact (positive and negative), and the more they are empowered to own the relationships, the more they are incentivised to deliver value incrementally while keeping their systems maintainable.

One of the challenges now is we’ve lost this muscle. There are many causes however, a generation (developers, designers, and product managers) has grown up in organisations structured around multiple layers of management, strict delineation between roles, and many degrees of separation from the customer.

We need to nurture a new generation of technology teams to directly engage with customers and value their feedback and needs; break down organisational barriers; encourage cross-functional collaboration; emphasise ruthless iterative and incremental delivery; and take ownership and accountability for customer relationships while ensuring system maintainability.

We need to stop intermediating and genuinely participate in the day-to-day; model how to exploit every challenge as an opportunity to incrementally deliver value; and innovate by ensuring our practices are truly generative and emergent.

Related, I loved this interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on why he’s deep in the product details. It resonated with me on a number of fronts, especially the functional org (vs matrix), and the customer focus. He talks about how they organise and coordinate the entire company around a coherent outcome, and the trade-offs of that approach. He also talks a lot about specific customer pain points, how they identified them, and the choices they made when addressing them.

As leaders, there’s a fairly narrow gap between absenteeism and intervention. I’ll readily admit that I have found it challenging to get that right. We want to encourage empowerment, autonomy, and agency; on the other hand, we want to ensure we are providing the right level of support and guidance.

Our desire to step back and let go can lead us to not being around and only showing up when something goes wrong. As a result, we can lack understanding of the context and the challenges our teams are facing, making it more difficult to know what they need. When we do turn up, our presence signals a lack of trust and confidence in others’ ability to do the job and diminishes our ability to support them when they need it most.

Our desire to nurture a culture of continuous improvement can lead to us being too involved. If our identity is as a problem solver, we might be too quick to jump in and fix things. Perhaps worse, we might so crave the need to solve problems that we don’t realise we’re creating them in the first place. Longer term, we are likely to engender a culture of dependence and learned helplessness where our teams don’t believe in themselves sufficiently to solve their own problems.

In my experience, the best leaders genuinely participate without judgement or agenda in order to enable and empower their teams. They are there when they’re needed and not when they’re not. They are present and engaged without taking over. They are involved and invested without looking for problems to fix. They are supportive and encouraging without building dependence.

Participatory leadership is knowing when to lead, when to be led, and when to get out of the way. It’s connecting people, creating and holding the space for them, helping with jobs to be done, and allowing things to play out. It’s fostering a sense of ownership and accountability by actively involving and guiding others in problem-solving and decision-making. It’s recognising that no individual possesses all the necessary information or expertise, and that we don’t need to have all the knowledge and all the answers. It’s being comfortable being uncomfortable.

The best and most inspiring leaders I’ve seen deliberately learn and practice techniques that enable them to truly participate.

Chatting with Ray the other day, he posed the question (in a specific context): “Are we looking to move fast, or build capacity?”

This afternoon, as I was reflecting on the events of the day, I remembered something my old Sensei once said:

In the Honbu (“Headquarters”) style, you can get good fairly quickly, but only a very few people achieve greatness. Lots of people stick with it because it’s so enjoyable to practice.

In our style, it takes a long time to get good, but if you stick at it, almost anyone can achieve greatness. Very few people stick at it long enough because it’s so rigorous.

This Dojo, the Founder’s Dojo, is for teaching teachers.

I realised that this has influenced my thinking for over 30 years. I’m more interested in teaching teachers than teaching students. I’m more interested in leading leaders than managing reports. I’m more interested in effectiveness over efficiency. I’m more interested in long-term outcomes than quick results.

I don’t think it’s a question of “which is better?”, but rather “what are we trying to achieve?”

In a genuine desire to move fast and innovate, leaders can become frustrated when people don’t “just get” what they mean. I can still remember my first management role when I’d spend time “briefing” people on their tasks, then come back to find they hadn’t done what I had expected. I assumed the way forward was for me to either explain harder, or when that failed, to do it myself.

The temptation is then to hire in “like-minded” individuals who presumably require less effort to get on the same page. People who look like us, sound like us, have similar experiences and cultural backgrounds to us. I’ve certainly perceived a genuine connection with a candidate when in reality it was the comfort of sameness.

Some leaders may turn to what they think of as coaching, “I’ll lead them to my idea by making them think it’s their own.” I’ve experienced first-hand managers who were trying to coach me and ended up playing what might be described as a “guess the number in their head” game. I can also think of times I’ve naively done the same.

We reflexively seek homogeneity based on the (often implicit) premise that it is the differences and the effort required to align and remain aligned that create friction and slow things down. The problem is, if you want innovation, divergence is good. The differences aren’t the problem; they’re the catalyst for making better choices and finding better solutions:

Modern leaders embrace complexity, tolerate uncertainty, and manage tension in searching for creative solutions to problems […] managers feel a huge temptation to relieve tension by chopping out complexity and ignoring some of the variables that cause complexity at the outset of the thinking.

Building teams and communities of practice around people with divergent yet complimentary skills, thinking, and ways of working definitely comes with challenges:

It is therefore important to consider – and compensate for – potential negative consequences of team diversity on communication, cohesiveness, and consequently performance.

Taking the time to slow down and consider differences leads to innovation and improved effectiveness:

research has shown that when members of a diverse team proactively take the perspectives of others, it enhances the positive effect of information sharing and increases the team’s creativity.

when a team contains members who all feel included (that is, accepted and valued for their unique characteristics), the team becomes significantly more cohesive, which in turn has a positive impact on its effectiveness.

Interestingly, and perhaps counterintuitively, people don’t necessarily need you to agree with them to feel included. Once people feel and have genuinely been heard and understood, they are much more likely to be open to hearing and understanding others, including you.

I’ve really come to appreciate making the time to practice, facilitate, be aware of, and genuinely value:

1. Divergence: Creating the space for people to come together and unpack and understand their differences;
2. Emergence: Holding the space for others when things become uncomfortable in order to develop understanding and insight; and
3. Convergence: Knowing when and how to help them synthesise concrete outcomes and next actions.

I’m still learning how to be effective at it, and I’m also looking for ways to enable others to do this for themselves.

I consume most of my day-to-day content via RSS feeds and newsletters using Unread and FeedBin. I love the aesthetic and user experience of Unread. I’ve tried so many feed readers and nothing compares. I also love the ability to seamlessly subscribe to newsletters via FeedBin. I’ve tried so many hacks, e.g. kill-the-newsletter, and I keep coming back to FeedBin. My usual workflow is to skim the summaries, skim the articles, bookmark stuff for later, take notes, then if I really liked it, I’ll publish something here as a bookmark. As of writing, I am subscribed to 249 feeds.

I use Readwise Reader as my read-later and highlighting tool. I love the seamless integration with Readwise for spaced repetition. I was a long-time Instapaper user (which also has Readwise integration) but seeing as I pay for Readwise anyway, … Most of the links I post here have gone via Readwise at some point. I also like that Readwise can read articles to me. Instapaper recently added Apple CarPlay support which looks great and if anyone from Readwise is listening, at least one customer would love CarPlay support. As of writing, I have 310 unread articles, and 42 articles waiting for me to publish a link to with commentary.

For books, I am an audiobook addict. I find I get through so much more and can take advantage of so many more opportunities to read e.g. shopping, washing, cleaning, road-trips, even coming home after dropping the kids off at school. When listening to audiobooks, 1.2x-1.5x is my sweet spot, depending on the natural cadence and the topic. Audible is my weapon of choice, which is surprising to me given I’m so far into the Apple ecosystem. If anyone from Apple is listening, if you did an audiobook subscription, I’d throw my money at you instead!

Because I’m a maniac, I’m currently reading the following books:

1. Motivational Interviewing for Leadership. A few years back I did an MI course and it quite literally changed my life. Sadly, there’s no audiobook version so I’m reading the dead-tree version, like an animal.
2. Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps. It’s a little out-of-date now given the authors’ most recent research, but it’s a good fundamentals book nevertheless. Well worth reading.
3. Scaling People. A bit of a hard slog, this one. I generally find the style off-putting but there’s enough in it to keep me going at the moment.
4. Essentialism. Recommended by Warren. I’m finding it quite validating!
5. Buy-In. A very short read that I only just started. So far, I’m enjoying it a lot, even though I’m normally put off by the Goldratt-style narrative.
6. Wool. I really enjoyed the TV series on Apple TV+ and (perhaps unsurprisingly) I’m enjoying the book even more.

And yes, before you laugh (oh no, I’m too late), Essentialism (4) would suggest I’m reading 5 books too many.

So then, how and why am I reading 6 books at once? Mood, really. Depending on how I’m feeling, time of day, context, what’s just happened in my work or personal life, etc. I’ll naturally gravitate towards different topics.

What about podcasts? Surely, I’m missing out there? I used to consume a large number of podcasts as well. These days, I’ve all but given up, aside from the occasional recommended episode. I’ll probably switch back at some point. I’ve found my content consumption habits go through various ups and downs over time.

UPDATE: I’ve since switched back to Instapaper. Readwise Reader UX just didn’t work for me in the long run.

Aside from helping my 15yo debug their latest Unity game bug, server firewall issue, or infrastructure provisioning dilemma, I’ve been “off the tools” for a long while. My day job would (hopefully) not be described as Individual Contributor.

That doesn’t mean I don’t write code. It’s more that the code I write is mostly for my own use, fix a bug in some software I’ve written in the past, or maintain my blog.

For the longest time, I’ve hosted my blog, my dojo, and whatever else I needed on GitHub Pages using various incarnations of hand-rolled HTML and CSS, and various incantations of CSS.

Recently, I redid my blog using Hugo. That was a journey back into templating, and GitHub Actions and Docker containers and things I’d either forgotten, or hadn’t existed when I first started the blog.

Then, as everyone does, I decided that what I needed was a way to generate short links for posting to social media. If you’ve wondered where all the Yaks in the world went these past few days, I’ve been shaving them…

A little scripting-fu to generate a mapping file in Hugo each time the site is deployed, and a few hours reading the Cloudflare Docs figuring out how to move my blog and spin up a serverless app to do link expansion, and I’m done!

OK, so building out a static website using Hugo and deploying to Cloudflare Pages alongside a Cloudflare Worker in 35 lines of TypeScript is not exactly “on the tools”, but it’s still a lot of fun.

I’m still a Doozer at heart.

How can we expect people who’ve never seen what good looks like to perform to their potential? It’s up to leaders to role model the behaviours we expect–and in my experience people crave it.

People with experience might not even realise they need to explicitly role model. Perhaps they’ve internalised what good looks like and think “surely it’s obvious?!” Even when they realise they need to role model, doing so might not come naturally, and a bit of coaching is in order.

I first heard about Andy Molinsky’s 5 psychological barriers to pushing outside our comfort zone via Leisa Molloy. I think at least 4 apply:

• Authenticity - When we feel like we’re performing, it can feel fake, foreign, and false–“This isn’t who I am!”
• Competence - In addition to feeling inauthentic, we might also feel like we’re not doing a good job–“They’re going to realise I’m an imposter!”
• Resentment - This usually manifests as frustration or annoyance at the very fact that we have to do this in the first place–“These people should know this already. They’re paid as much if not more than I am. Why am I always the one to have to drive things?!” or “I’m a parent at home. I just want to come to work and deliver, not parent work colleagues as well.”
• Likeability - In this case, we might worry that people will stop liking us for being a version of ourselves they are unfamiliar with–“I’m usually the quiet one. They might think I’m ego-centric and that I’m trying to prove how good I am.”

(For the record, my two biggest challenges are always Authenticity and Resentment with Competence running a close third.)

In my 20’s, I had a friend who was a student at the Australian Ballet School. I would go and watch them practice regularly. For hours on end they would go over the same moves, the same techniques, the same routines.

One day I went to a performance. Even though they were students, they made it seem so natural–the graceful movements, the interaction between the characters, the sets, the costumes, … Afterwards, I met my friend at the backstage door. As they came out to greet me I was taken aback. They had yet to remove their makeup and it was, to be blunt, hideous! It had never occurred to me that making dancers’ appearance realistic to the audience required makeup that was over the top.

Inside your own head, explicit role modelling can seem a bit like wearing stage makeup–unnatural and inauthentic; to the audience, it seems natural and authentic–because it is!

Deliberately growing and developing people requires role modelling, and role modelling takes practice, vulnerability, and pushing outside your comfort zone.

As managers and leaders, driving and supporting change is a critical part of the role. When we go about making change, we can inadvertently subvert the process and slow things down. Worse, we run the risk of losing the trust and confidence of the very people we need to enact not just the current, but future change as well.

The hard work is rarely the change itself. The hard work is developing the trust and understanding to make the change in the first place.

When most of us experience what we perceive as resistance to change, our initial response will be to lean into what Adam Grant calls Preacher mode–“they don’t understood how right I am!” If that fails, we’ll become a Prosector–“I’ll show them how wrong they are!” If things get out of hand, and we realise that we’re “losing” the “argument”, we might turn into a Politician–“maybe I need them to like me more?!” If none of that works, we become frustrated, judgemental, angry, and start to blame, at which point we might withdraw and find someone else who is more “willing” to help.

I know this because it was exactly how the majority of my interactions used to go.

What many people perceive as resistance to change is actually discord: between the therapist and the client; between the coach and the player; between the manager and the report; between the executive and the company. When you’re trying to evoke change in someone and you feel they aren’t responding, stop pushing for change and get back to strengthening the relationship before trying again.

Research also shows that self-efficacy is a significant predictor of change success, and that what we perceive as resistance, may actually be ambivalence. People who have been a part of failed change in the past have mixed feelings about their ability to enact change in the future. This experience of failure leads to a lack of confidence in the themselves and the system. When planning change, ensure people feel empowered, have agency, know what good looks like, and understand what might be holding them back from playing a part in their own journey.

Relying on a few “willing” people to drive change and “tell others what to do” may seem like a fast track, but it can be frustrating, exhausting, risky, and unlikely to generate long term improvement.

Scaling change through others requires effort to empower and give people agency. It requires engaging and listening and taking into consideration that you might be “wrong,” and that even when you’re “right,” that you took the action you did after considering their perspectives.

Most people want to improve, know that improvement requires change, and want to take an active part in it. Engage with them early and often, be explicit about what is known, and what is still to be worked through, and help them understand for themselves how to use their own skills to drive the change you want to see.

UPDATE: Catching up on my reading and unsurprisingly, Ray Grasso recently posted on a similar topic. Go check it out.

Leading people is uncomfortable and requires overriding the urge to “fix” everything and everyone.

The instinct to avoid failure (rather than seek success), and the pressure to deliver, cause people to optimise for efficiency over effectiveness. Except, the efficiency is an illusion–you will always have to pay back the debt (people, time, resources) you borrowed to get to whatever outcome you thought you could achieve faster.

If the thing you care most about is perfectly executing, then telling people what to do, and in what order is fine. Except, only a handful of people will learn from the experience, and you’ll need to continue with the command and control approach on the next thing. That doesn’t scale.

Leadership requires constantly communicating intent. Leadership requires constantly seeking to understand. Leadership requires constantly bringing people back into alignment. Leadership requires scaling through others by giving them agency. Leadership requires empowering and supporting people to try, fail, and learn.

(via Harold Jarche):

In the book Range, David Epstein states that, “learning is most efficient in the long run when it is inefficient in the short run” […] There is no Red Pill.

Leadership takes a lot of effort and feels inefficient.

It was lovely to meet and chat with such a great bunch of open, curious, and pragmatic leaders:

• Kunal Madhav, GoodHuman’s CTO.
• Nadeesha Cabral, Mr Yum’s Director of Engineering.
• Sumesh Suvarna, Aesop’s Head of Engineering.

We discussed challenges, approaches, mistakes, and lessons we’ve learnt scaling teams.

Mostly though, I just enjoyed the conversation. It didn’t necessarily always stay on topic, in a good way.

Recently, I’ve been thinking and about how to make Aikido more accessible. I wondered: perhaps if people understood a little bit more about me and my personal journey then hopefully they might get more out of their own Aikido training.

I didn’t have a particularly great childhood. I didn’t go for want of food or clothing but family life was tough and I was unhappy, angry and directionless. I searched desperately for an escape, something to bring some structure to my life. I did just about everything you can imagine: Athletics, Gymnastics, Yoga, Jazz Ballet, you name it. Some of it I was naturally good at; some of it not so much. But ultimately, nothing held my attention and I continued to feel lost.

When I was 15, I saw a TV show called The Way of the Warrior, which documented various martial arts. The one that stood out for me was Aikido. It had a man seemingly effortlessly locking, pinning and throwing. That’s what I wanted to do! So I found a Dojo and started.

It was like nothing else I had done before. It was seemingly easy enough for anyone to learn and yet difficult enough that its secrets have remained elusive for nearly 30 years—and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. For anyone who’s ever hiked, Aikido practice is a bit like climbing along a ridge line—you see the top but the moment you reach it, you realise there’s another peak just behind it.

I can’t say for sure what ultimately convinced my parents but I suspect due in part to sheer desperation, six months later I was in Japan studying under a direct student of O’Sensei (lit. Great Teacher; Ueshiba Morihei, Founder of Aikido) in the Founder’s very own Dojo (lit. way place). For the next 12 months I lived in the Dojo, slept on the mats, worked in the field of the Dojo farm, and trained a minimum of 2 hours every day—sometimes 4-6 hours if there was a university group visiting.

It was tough to be sure, but it was also the most incredible time of my life. I had structure, I had good role models, and I was growing physically and mentally fitter and stronger. Sensei (teacher) and his family were strict but they were also the most kind and generous people a young person could hope to come in to their life. In short, it changed my life. It also changed what Aikido meant to me.

In your training do not be in a hurry. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in Aikido.
— O’Sensei

Aikido is Budo. To most people Martial Arts and Budo are probably interchangeable but they are not. At the risk of sounding clichéd, Budo is more than an activity, more than a sport. It’s not about fitness or fighting. There are no rules; no competition. Budo is living, and by extension practising in the Dojo as if every moment is life or death. Training in Japan feels like this—every class, every day as a live-in student feels as though at any moment something might happen. Morihiro Sensei (9th degree black belt and direct student of O’Sensei) said that Aikido techniques are 80-90% striking; we happen to focus on the other 10-20%.

Morihiro Sensei also said that “Aikido is like a mirror on your soul.” With vigorous training and constant vigilance your awareness heightens and your empathy grows. You begin to understand what others are thinking. You begin to anticipate what is needed in any given situation. You begin to read people more intuitively. You begin to see people for who they really are. But more importantly you see yourself and the way you handle the fear, the anxiety, the excitement, and the nerves that are part and parcel of the training.

Aikido builds strength both mentally and physically. Aikido practice is hard. The throws are vigorous and they toughen the outer layers of your body. The locks and pins are effective and strengthen your muscles and joints. Techniques are painful but at the same time they don’t last forever. They strengthen your mind by teaching you that it’s just pain and it will end.

Aikido is an internal art—more in common with Bagua than say Judo or Jiujitsu even though that’s where the obvious roots lie. Everything in Aikido moves around centrelines. Everything draws power up from the ground, through the feet, legs and hips, and delivered outwards through the rest of your body. There is more, much more to Aikido than the physical manifestation of the techniques. That said, it is through the vigorous practice of these physical techniques that the other aspects will manifest themselves.

Aikido is a life long endeavour. There is no point at which you can say “I have mastered Aikido.” Even as a teacher you are a student. Through circumstance rather than choice alone, I just happen to be a little further along than my students. Every class, no matter how experienced you believe you are, you should try your best to achieve “beginners mind” and look at every technique and every situation a new.

Aikido is mosogi (purification). The mindset, the self-reflection and introspection, the physical and mental strengthening, the development of internal power, and the constant and relentless renewal of your understanding and awareness can and hopefully will leave you feeling calm, confident, relaxed, and refreshed—even after a long hard practice or a tough day at work.

Aikido is family. No matter where I go in the world, I always have somewhere to stay and somewhere to train. The friendships I make on the mat extend far beyond the boundaries of the Dojo, or Japan or whichever city or country I happen to be in. When we are on the mat we train like life depends on it; off the mat we are always there for each other.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
— O’Sensei

The Dojo is a special space and demands special behaviour and attention. Traditionally, Aikido tatami (straw mats) are hard and covered in a rough canvas—in the old days mats were only used on special occasions and instead they trained on floor boards with nails sticking out that needed to be hit back in before each class. The tatami have a unique smell which, when combined with the wood of the Dojo walls, transports your mind away from the outside world. It’s almost impossible to replicate that outside of Japan but nevertheless it’s your mindset as much as anything that is important.

When you walk through the door of the Dojo and bow toward the shomen (front), take off your shoes and put on your clean white dogi (uniform), you begin the process of misogi. This is further reinforced as you clean the mats and then bow at the beginning and end of each class. Look around the Dojo for there are always things that need cleaning, fixing, tidying. Use each step as an opportunity to leave your worries behind and recapture your beginners mind.

Be respectful to the space and to others. Be aware and respectful of other classes that may be in progress. Say “onegaishimasu” (please) when you bow in to your partner, and “domo arigatou gozaimashita” (thank you) when you bow out. Aikido is an inherently dangerous activity. Your partner is giving themselves to you. Understand and respect this and return the gesture.

Even though there is a hierarchy of rank between students there is only one Sensei and for the most part all students are otherwise treated equally. Class is an opportunity for you to practice and learn—instruction is the role of Sensei—so keep chit chat to a minimum. If you have a question, ask it after class. Understand that not everything will make sense and not everything you practice will be directly relatable to a “real situation.”

Hold on firmly and strike effectively. Learn the intent behind each attack—it’s not always obvious. As uke (receiver) your primary role is to help your partner learn through diligent, genuine and respectful attacks. If you end up in a wrestling match or a “but what if someone does this?” situation, nobody is learning anything. The best way to get better is to help your partner get better.

Above all enjoy yourself. Practiced correctly, you will grow stronger physically, mentally and technically. However, as you improve so too will your partner. As everyone grows stronger so too will the attacks, grips, resistance, etc. and the frustrating side effect of this is that you never quite feel like you’ve improved but you have. When a beginner joins the class take a look at them. That was once you. See how far you have progressed?

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.
— O’Sensei

As you may have gathered, Aikido is a very traditional art and the practice is no less so. We are not focused on winning a fight or a competition. Just like scales on the piano, not every technique you practice will have an obvious practical application but every technique embodies some principle that is important.

Learn to be an effective uke (literally, receiver). Learn to protect yourself whilst delivering an attack. Learn to fall safely without exposing yourself to counter-attacks. When you’re thrown get up quickly—every minute of practice counts. Learn your own limits—only attack at a pace and with a level of strength you could comfortably handle in return. Use your turn as uke to practice your footwork, to develop a better, stronger grip and to feel what does and doesn’t work. If you only focus on doing the technique you’ve wasted half the class.

You should be able to knock a bird in flight out of the sky.
— O’Sensei

A ki-ai (short yell or shout uttered when performing a move) is integral to every movement we make in Aikido. It promotes correct breathing. It helps develop internal strength. And as O’Sensei alludes to, performed well a ki-ai is in itself a form of defence and attack.

Every open-handed—as opposed to weapons—class starts with Tai-no-henko (literally, body, change). It’s a seemingly innocuous practice but its simplicity belies the inner secrets of Aikido. At face value it teaches you to merge rather than clash with your partner’s strength; to generate movement and power through your feet and develop strong, stable hips as well as the subtle train ma’ai (distance) and intention. And for your partner, by holding on strongly and never letting go, it’s a great way to develop strength that starts from your belly, extends through your torso and culminates in an iron grip.

Next we take Tai-no-henko and attempt to perform it ki-no-nagare (literally, energy flow). Again, it’s not just the person performing the technique that benefits. Your partner is also practicing the application of a controlling grab whilst moving.

Together, these two practices set the pattern for learning everything else: first perform a technique statically a few times; then attempt it a number of times on the move. You will find that techniques “work” when performed statically and likely fall apart once they are done in a more flowing fashion. This is perfectly natural. Observe your self on the move: Where are the holes in the technique? Where did you feel yourself come unstuck or lose balance? Then try to fix those deficiencies when next you have the opportunity to practice statically.

The third practice we do every class is morote-dori koku-nage (literally, two-hand grip breath throw). This takes the principles of the first two techniques and introduces the concept of kokyu (breath power) and oshidashi (pushing power). It’s also the first time you will throw (and be thrown). Remember, when someone is learning to throw they will be ineffective at it. As uke, use this as an opportunity to hold strongly, keeping your feet anchored to the ground and not stepping forward. Practice your falling even when you don’t necessarily feel that your balance has been broken. Start to understand the subtleties of resisting your partners movement without stopping them completely.

Taken together these three practices embody so much of Aikido that they will continue to baffle and reward in equal parts for your entire Aikido life.

By this stage you should already be sweating. In Japan I have often looked up at the clock after the first few techniques and thought “What?! There’s till 45 mins to go!” As nage you have been working hard to move your body in the face of resistance; as uke you have been trying to find that balance between giving your partner enough resistance to learn, but not so much as to prevent them from moving. Remember, if your partner can’t move at all they’re never going to learn and your role as uke is to help them learn.

From here classes consist of various techniques from the Aikido syllabus. When you consider all the different combinations of attacks, throws, locks and pins, Aikido has literally thousands of variations. At first this can be daunting but slowly you come to realise that there are common threads that run throughout them all. Try to learn the names of the various forms and attacks. Understand the relationships between them all.

There are standing techniques, seated techniques, half standing/half-seated techniques, sword, staff and knife techniques. There are techniques to the front and to the rear. Some techniques will be throws; otherwise will be locks and pins. Again, not all techniques have obvious practical application—in fact there are techniques specifically called oyowaza (applied techniques)—but all are designed to teach you something or strengthen you in some way. Be open to them all. It’s not a fight. It’s not wrestling. There are no rules. There are simply pre-arranged ways of learning and practicing.

We preserve and share the great influence of my father Morihiro while remaining faithful to the technical and spiritual heritage left by the Founder Morihei Ueshiba. We continually try to improve ourselves through the intensive and systematic practice of kihon (basics), and we believe each training session is a unique opportunity to feel closer to the Founder. I firstly apply this permanent training to myself.
— Saito Hitohira Jukucho

My Sensei once told me you should spend at least 5 years finding a practice and a teacher that is right for you because ultimately your life and your martial arts journey is very personal.

Just as there are many styles of martial art, there are many styles of Aikido. The style of Aikido we practice is very traditional, very rigorous, very technical and can be traced directly from the Founder. It is hard work. It takes a long time to learn. And it has held my interest and kept me fit and healthy for nearly 2/3 of my life.

Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals.
– Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer.

It is fairly easy to formulate a set of values that sound pleasing and for which no real action is required. We might instead call these truisms.

It is much more difficult to define a set of values upon which we will act and for which we will be champion.

Harder still is finding others who share our values and our desire to act upon them, especially as values change over time.

The past while I have too readily been angered by what in hindsight was a mismatch of values. As a good friend and mentor once observed:

There is no right or wrong; there is only compatible or incompatible.
– James Ross