Exploring the Business Cultures of Agile, Japan, and Your Own Head

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2. Using Japan as an example, we’ll explore how our ways of thinking affect group work.
Explore how you might use this to transform your work teams.
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3. Culture is the invisible cognitive and emotional atmosphere that surrounds us. You
might live in many cultures; your work culture and your family culture are two
examples. Your attitude and your awareness helps you succeed in cultures or
subcultures different from your own. In our discussion we’ll use Japan’s culture as an
example of cultures different from ours. “Intercultural competence” is the skill of
navigating in unfamiliar cultural waters.
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4. I’ve learned that many business problems are actually cultural or mindset problems in
disguise. Culture is tricky because it’s hard to see or describe, and because our
personal viewpoint prevents us from seeing other viewpoints. Our business culture,
addicted to formal facts and procedure, tends to disregard the impact of culture.
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5. Our business culture likes to write training manuals so our work can be transferred to
others. Because of this, we favor easily documentable “hard skills” like procedure that
exists in the realm of formal or explicit knowledge. Unfortunately, this makes us
disregard domains of “tacit knowledge” that are hard to explain because they are
about relationships and perceptions. Culture is in the domain of tacit knowledge.
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6. Lets define the words I’ll use today. We’ll explore how these concepts are connected.
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7. Today’s themes: the intersections of five concepts.
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8. A camping trip in Japan with Japanese friends teaches me how many Japanese groups
work.
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9. I had trouble fitting into the group. My beliefs and assumptions got in the way.
“Monkey see, monkey do” helped me contribute. It was up to me to fit in.
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10. Lets do an exercise. Explore our heads. Can you hear the voice(s)? That’s one way
culture shows up. Being “logical”, we pretend it’s not there…. It changes depending
on what we’re doing and who we’re with.
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11. Me! I am the center of my personal universe! My identity is shaped by the cultures
around me. I’m probably not aware of the cultures and memes *ideas transmitted
from person to person or culture to culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)]
that influence me. Even atheists are influenced by religious values without knowing
or wanting it.
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12. What is “culture”? It’s our beliefs (you can probably describe a few, but can only
“feel” the rest), that voice in your head (we can’t always describe it), and the people
or groups we admire or aspire to (Mom, Dad, people like Mother Theresa, The XYZ
Political Party, etc ).
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13. “Agile” is a term that’s been superimposed on a number of related concepts,
methods, and techniques.
Underlying “Agile” is the field of complexity science, which posits that the world is
not the mechanistic world of the 1800’s, where one change creates predictable
changes. The world is also not subject to reductionism, so we can’t figure out the
whole world by understanding each of its parts. Instead the world is a system of
interconnected systems where a change in one system creates unpredictable changes
in the rest. These “Complex Adaptive Systems” include hard-to-model things like
financial markets, economic systems, weather systems, and social systems. Love,
family relationships, and work groups are complex adaptive systems too.
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14. I’ll be contrasting “Plan Driven” (AKA “Waterfall) models with Agile. Although some
people argue that true “Waterfall” software projects don’t really exist (there is always
some change management involved) contrasting the two approaches is instructive.
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15. The plan-driven model relies on “Big Up-Front Planning” (BUFP), plus the assumption
that we can anticipate most stuff in advance.
Agile model breaks the project into many short iterations. In each iteration we re-plan
and re-prioritize, enabling continuous change management.
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16. Why do Japanese and Agile business cultures have so much in common? They have
the same guru. Deming was big in Japan but misunderstood in the USA.
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17. ….using Japanese culture as an example, we’ll explore Agile concepts, then relate
them to the beliefs inside our heads.
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18. This is a legend (map) of the symbols and format I’ll use in subsequent slides.
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19. Two concepts behind Japan’s culture of resilience. Used together.
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20. Another concept behind Japan’s resilience. Japanese teams willingly work incredible
overtime to meet deadlines. There’s an admirable attitude of not complaining, and
working selflessly to achieve the team’s goals. In my opinion, “not complaining” is a
great trait to adopt, but the downside I’ve seen is a tendency to maintain
unsustainable workloads. “Death by overwork” = 過労死 (karoushi).
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22. How many Japanese teams are formed.
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23. How the group makes decisions. Why bosses are often “servant leaders”.
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24. How to communicate. Why contracts are often disregarded or seen as formalites.
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25. What Japanese are mindful of. How they self-regulate their behavior. The team
functions well when everyone is mindful of how they fit in. Fitting in is YOUR job.
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26. How quality is developed. A deeply embedded relationship between customer and
provider that’s been around for centuries. Pronounced as: 「お客様は神様」=
“Okyakusama wa kamisama”.
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27. A typical (but tidier than normal) Japanese office. Desk in front seats six. The boss
might sit at head of table watching over the team.
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28. Office seating arrangements obligate you to be part of the team. All the time. Work-
from-home arrangements are very rare.
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29. Japan society is structured by age and gender. This is reinforced by the rank, age, and
gender-aware language you are expected use with your colleagues. Being
professional at work means behaving in ways appropriate to your gender, age, and
social status. This creates “office family” roles and expectations.
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30. From movie “Kamikaze Girls” by Tetsuya Nagashima. Movie portrays real-life female
teenage cliques, their fashion poses, and the romanticized ideals they stand for.
Novels and “manga” comic books might inspire these cliques. See the movie for
funny and enlightening Japanese social satire.
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31. Japanese often criticize their group-oriented culture for creating factionalism.
Factions show up in many groups, creating exclusion and bullying in kids, and
dysfunctional political power struggles in politics and company boardrooms. When
it’s good, it can create healthy competition. Walk through Tokyo’s teen fashion district
Harajuku to see the latest in teenage clique clothing trends....
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32. An online game developer I worked at embraced this fully. The builds were internal
releases for internal evaluation. It worked.
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33. The Agile Manifesto is one of the clearest declarations of Agile principles. It was
created in 2001 by the Agile Alliance and signed by: Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van
Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim
Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve
Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Dave Thomas
Many of the above have written Agile’s best books.
Agile ideas had been around since the mid 1990’s. This was the first attempt to
crystallize everyone’s thinking.
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34. From the Agile Alliance. Useful principles to use in your own organization’s agile
adoption.
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35. From the Agile Alliance. Useful principles to use in your own organization’s agile
adoption.
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36. Download the first item (a podcast) for a riveting story about Japan, Agile concepts,
General Motors, Toyota, and their NUMMI joint venture near San Francisco.
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37. “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught” – Oscar Wilde
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38. Blog ideas especially welcome!
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