This is an awesome v1.0. I love the level of abstraction that you've chosen and the simplicity of the principles. It feels like it fills a gap compared to what I've seen in other models.
I have a question about #3 - Be Honest. The way that I'm understanding it, the description says that this one is about creating psychological safety. Making the work visible (#1) and being in control of one's work in progress (#2) lays the foundation, and then layering honesty on top of that creates psychological safety.
If I set the label "psychological safety" aside for a moment, it feels like this principle is about creating clarity about the work by drawing on the group's intelligence. It describes a place where people speak honestly about risks, problems, and issues, so that there can be clarity about what's really going on, as opposed to having to pretend like everything is ok when many people know that it is not. We all dread that environment where half the people know we're marching toward the cliff, but everyone pretends that it's all ok. "Be Honest" feels like an essential principle and outcome.
Going back to psychological safety, my picture of it comes from Amy Edmondson's work, so that makes me feel like there's a different cause-and-effect going on in order to achieve the desired outcome from principle 3. I've encountered plenty of environments where the work is transparent, and there is good control over the work in progress, there is still punishment and humiliation when someone tries to be honest about the risks and problems.
It makes me think that while #3 Be Honest is certainly an essential virtue and principle in order to create clarity about the work and the risks, and while there are parallels and reinforcements to the sense of psychological safety in many of these principles, it feels like a stretch too far to say that #3 *creates* psychological safety. It feels like it would be better to remind people that #3 may backfire if psychological safety has not already been achieved in the team.
I fully acknowledge we can never make these things all cause-and-effect — if only it were so simple! There's absolutely a circular dependency there, so seeing people safely say very honest things *does* reinforce that psychological safety truly is present. It's proof! But I think of it more as a litmus test than *the* cause. Psychological safety is absolutely worthy of mention in #3 somehow, but the current writing feels like it makes too strong and simple of a claim that #1, #2, and #3 alone will achieve it.
How would you steer my thinking? You've got a far deeper pattern match on this than I do, and I'm interested to understand the framework and progression more, and how it relates to what you've experienced.
What I will say, is I rarely (like almost never) see enduring psychological safety without visual systems. What I do see, is a lot people sending people to psychological safety training, over-focusing on the "raising issues" part of it, and not building a system to define safety, instantiate it, and make it enduring.
If you don't include it early in the flow (like as early as number 3), it won't happen because you'll start to build your visual systems to discourage safety (by choosing tools that hide information or visualizing toxic patterns and aggrandizing them, etc.)
But yes, these things do end up being circular, redundant, reinforcing, iterative, and ... human. They fall apart, are plagued with illogic, and have causal chains from the most unexpected of root causes.
So I'd say, focus less on this list as a source of truth and make it more of a guide to discovery. Because it's flawed, but useful.
Love it. Your deeper explanation here brings your mindset around it into focus for me. Personally I think this explanation and context is important, perhaps in an introduction.
Again, I think these principles are a great lens on the subject. Awesome creation. Thank you!
Hi Jim!
This is an awesome v1.0. I love the level of abstraction that you've chosen and the simplicity of the principles. It feels like it fills a gap compared to what I've seen in other models.
I have a question about #3 - Be Honest. The way that I'm understanding it, the description says that this one is about creating psychological safety. Making the work visible (#1) and being in control of one's work in progress (#2) lays the foundation, and then layering honesty on top of that creates psychological safety.
If I set the label "psychological safety" aside for a moment, it feels like this principle is about creating clarity about the work by drawing on the group's intelligence. It describes a place where people speak honestly about risks, problems, and issues, so that there can be clarity about what's really going on, as opposed to having to pretend like everything is ok when many people know that it is not. We all dread that environment where half the people know we're marching toward the cliff, but everyone pretends that it's all ok. "Be Honest" feels like an essential principle and outcome.
Going back to psychological safety, my picture of it comes from Amy Edmondson's work, so that makes me feel like there's a different cause-and-effect going on in order to achieve the desired outcome from principle 3. I've encountered plenty of environments where the work is transparent, and there is good control over the work in progress, there is still punishment and humiliation when someone tries to be honest about the risks and problems.
It makes me think that while #3 Be Honest is certainly an essential virtue and principle in order to create clarity about the work and the risks, and while there are parallels and reinforcements to the sense of psychological safety in many of these principles, it feels like a stretch too far to say that #3 *creates* psychological safety. It feels like it would be better to remind people that #3 may backfire if psychological safety has not already been achieved in the team.
I fully acknowledge we can never make these things all cause-and-effect — if only it were so simple! There's absolutely a circular dependency there, so seeing people safely say very honest things *does* reinforce that psychological safety truly is present. It's proof! But I think of it more as a litmus test than *the* cause. Psychological safety is absolutely worthy of mention in #3 somehow, but the current writing feels like it makes too strong and simple of a claim that #1, #2, and #3 alone will achieve it.
How would you steer my thinking? You've got a far deeper pattern match on this than I do, and I'm interested to understand the framework and progression more, and how it relates to what you've experienced.
Thank you for this important work!
Hey Scott:
Nothing alone will achieve anything. :-)
What I will say, is I rarely (like almost never) see enduring psychological safety without visual systems. What I do see, is a lot people sending people to psychological safety training, over-focusing on the "raising issues" part of it, and not building a system to define safety, instantiate it, and make it enduring.
If you don't include it early in the flow (like as early as number 3), it won't happen because you'll start to build your visual systems to discourage safety (by choosing tools that hide information or visualizing toxic patterns and aggrandizing them, etc.)
But yes, these things do end up being circular, redundant, reinforcing, iterative, and ... human. They fall apart, are plagued with illogic, and have causal chains from the most unexpected of root causes.
So I'd say, focus less on this list as a source of truth and make it more of a guide to discovery. Because it's flawed, but useful.
Love it. Your deeper explanation here brings your mindset around it into focus for me. Personally I think this explanation and context is important, perhaps in an introduction.
Again, I think these principles are a great lens on the subject. Awesome creation. Thank you!