If you've read the excerpt from the book I'm working on, you'll know the last place I worked was at times a really miserable place to be. And the low point was when the person I have come to refer to as 'John' started to slowly take over our tight-knit team of developers. In a response to criticism over that initial excerpt, I also wrote about John's interesting use of the term 'Devil's advocate':
At the time, I viewed this label as a fabricated pejorative, created only to discredit the people who opposed John. Anyone who didn't agree with him, even if he had a valid criticism of John's ideas would be labeled one, much as people were labeled 'Communist' during the McCarthy era even when they probably didn't even know who Marx was.
Ideas stand on their own, however. I've never denied that John was a very intelligent guy and that he introduced a lot of great ideas to the development team. He was the first person to really bring unit testing and TDD to the forefront, he helped push for things like using Bugzilla (rather than Excel), and a number of other really great improvements. It didn't make him any less of a bastard, of course.
The concept of the Devil's Advocate never struck me as one of these valid ideas. I classed it as one of his attempts at manipulation and back-stabbing. As much as it pains me to admit, though, I've now come to see some validity in what he was saying.
The company I'm at now is a bit larger than that company was and most of the staff have a good deal more professional history. There are a lot of great people who've been around for 7 or 8 or even 9 years. But there's also a lot about the process and tools that I'd love to see change. It is a very meeting-oriented and management heavy company. And I think some bad practices have been around so long that the real veterans can't even imagine that there might be a better way to do things.
In my first two years here, changing some of these behaviors was my biggest goal. I felt that I made progress, but never quite as much as I would have hoped. Recently, I was put on a new team and it feels like I'm now back at square one.
Whenever I join a new team, I mostly keep my mouth shut, observe, and try to think about what I think can be improved. I don't presume to have all the answers, but I *do* have opinions. If was wasn't going to change anything, I really don't see a huge amount of value in what I do. My day-to-day activities, such as updating Excel sheets with who's busy with what, could be done by a monkey. My real value is in helping people to see a better ways of doing things.
Which brings us back around to the Devil's Advocate.
As I've started to feel a bit more sure about myself and a bit more vocal about things I think need to change on my new team, such as the meeting culture and etiquette or how we do estimation there are a few of the 'veterans' who will always point out that things can't change. They have a million and one reasons.
Many of them are valid. All are based on experience.
At the same time, though, it's not constructive. It seems to me almost completely reactive, a recalcitrance that seems to say 'Yeah, things suck, but they have to suck.' I just don't buy that. Things can get better. And this constant complaining about any new idea doesn't really improve things, it keeps the team and culture from evolving. To me it would be as if our prehistoric ancestors had said:
'Hey, this bipedalism thing is stupid. We don't need to walk upright. We're doing fine walking on all fours. Plus if we walk upright, our hips will narrow and it'll be really dangerous for women to give birth. It's probably going to result in a lot of people having back problems too.'
All valid concerns. Every one of them.
But, you see, walking upright allowed us to carry things and use our hands freely, which then led to things like creating tools, and so on. Things are never so simple as they seem. You can have a valid concern and yet the averseness to change still keeps you from evolving into something better.
Back to the present day. The Devil's advocate on a team can often make it difficult to implement change. He's always pointing out all the flaws, criticizing new ideas, yet rarely is offering his own alternative. But the real question is this:
What do about this if you're convinced a change needs to happen?
The thing you don't do is use the label out-loud and attempt to marginalize people as John did. These people *do* have valid concerns as *incredibly* frustrating as they may be. My general approach is to talk to the person offline about their concerns so I better understand them. Sometimes I'll realize I need to reevaluate my own conclusions. I try not to *automatically* assume I'm right and sometimes these people offer me valuable insight into the flaws in my own thinking. Debate is healthy, it's not something to be avoided.
I do however get frustrated, though. After all I readily admit I'm a fairly stubborn person and often it's difficult to sway me from an idea in which I have conviction (not saying this is good). In these cases, if I may slowly try to implement minor incremental change that will go unnoticed. I try to talk to others in my group and convince others (particularly people of authority) of the value of the change so as to create a groundswell.
And then sometimes I just give in. But this is only if it's apparent, that it's a hopeless battle or I don't feel the reward is worth the effort. I'm usually pretty disappointed and angry when this happens. But then failure is part of life.
Sometimes acceptance is the best you can do.
You have to understand how truly awful an experience it was to be there during his rise to power. He actively marginalized people like Andrew and I whom he saw as a threat. We had established ourselves, we were his competitors in some sense. He actually *disinvited* Andrew from the team offsite and then made reference to people he called "Devil's Advocates". These were people, John told us, who stood in the way of change and improvement by always offering up reasons things couldn't change. He then told us that someone had been disinvited from the offsite, because he was one of these characters. Since Andrew was the only one not there, it was pretty obvious to whom he was referring. This was just before Andrew was transferred to the 'technology' team, which consisted solely of Matt. I'm fairly certain the whole thing was an attempt at removing Andrew from the group so he'd have no base of power.
At the time, I viewed this label as a fabricated pejorative, created only to discredit the people who opposed John. Anyone who didn't agree with him, even if he had a valid criticism of John's ideas would be labeled one, much as people were labeled 'Communist' during the McCarthy era even when they probably didn't even know who Marx was.
Ideas stand on their own, however. I've never denied that John was a very intelligent guy and that he introduced a lot of great ideas to the development team. He was the first person to really bring unit testing and TDD to the forefront, he helped push for things like using Bugzilla (rather than Excel), and a number of other really great improvements. It didn't make him any less of a bastard, of course.
The concept of the Devil's Advocate never struck me as one of these valid ideas. I classed it as one of his attempts at manipulation and back-stabbing. As much as it pains me to admit, though, I've now come to see some validity in what he was saying.
The company I'm at now is a bit larger than that company was and most of the staff have a good deal more professional history. There are a lot of great people who've been around for 7 or 8 or even 9 years. But there's also a lot about the process and tools that I'd love to see change. It is a very meeting-oriented and management heavy company. And I think some bad practices have been around so long that the real veterans can't even imagine that there might be a better way to do things.
In my first two years here, changing some of these behaviors was my biggest goal. I felt that I made progress, but never quite as much as I would have hoped. Recently, I was put on a new team and it feels like I'm now back at square one.
Whenever I join a new team, I mostly keep my mouth shut, observe, and try to think about what I think can be improved. I don't presume to have all the answers, but I *do* have opinions. If was wasn't going to change anything, I really don't see a huge amount of value in what I do. My day-to-day activities, such as updating Excel sheets with who's busy with what, could be done by a monkey. My real value is in helping people to see a better ways of doing things.
Which brings us back around to the Devil's Advocate.
As I've started to feel a bit more sure about myself and a bit more vocal about things I think need to change on my new team, such as the meeting culture and etiquette or how we do estimation there are a few of the 'veterans' who will always point out that things can't change. They have a million and one reasons.
Many of them are valid. All are based on experience.
At the same time, though, it's not constructive. It seems to me almost completely reactive, a recalcitrance that seems to say 'Yeah, things suck, but they have to suck.' I just don't buy that. Things can get better. And this constant complaining about any new idea doesn't really improve things, it keeps the team and culture from evolving. To me it would be as if our prehistoric ancestors had said:
'Hey, this bipedalism thing is stupid. We don't need to walk upright. We're doing fine walking on all fours. Plus if we walk upright, our hips will narrow and it'll be really dangerous for women to give birth. It's probably going to result in a lot of people having back problems too.'
All valid concerns. Every one of them.
But, you see, walking upright allowed us to carry things and use our hands freely, which then led to things like creating tools, and so on. Things are never so simple as they seem. You can have a valid concern and yet the averseness to change still keeps you from evolving into something better.
Back to the present day. The Devil's advocate on a team can often make it difficult to implement change. He's always pointing out all the flaws, criticizing new ideas, yet rarely is offering his own alternative. But the real question is this:
What do about this if you're convinced a change needs to happen?
The thing you don't do is use the label out-loud and attempt to marginalize people as John did. These people *do* have valid concerns as *incredibly* frustrating as they may be. My general approach is to talk to the person offline about their concerns so I better understand them. Sometimes I'll realize I need to reevaluate my own conclusions. I try not to *automatically* assume I'm right and sometimes these people offer me valuable insight into the flaws in my own thinking. Debate is healthy, it's not something to be avoided.
I do however get frustrated, though. After all I readily admit I'm a fairly stubborn person and often it's difficult to sway me from an idea in which I have conviction (not saying this is good). In these cases, if I may slowly try to implement minor incremental change that will go unnoticed. I try to talk to others in my group and convince others (particularly people of authority) of the value of the change so as to create a groundswell.
And then sometimes I just give in. But this is only if it's apparent, that it's a hopeless battle or I don't feel the reward is worth the effort. I'm usually pretty disappointed and angry when this happens. But then failure is part of life.
Sometimes acceptance is the best you can do.
8 comments:
So, let's see...
1. You admit that some people are in fact Devil's Advocates, and that John had a point.
2. You take people aside after meetings to discuss their disagreements with you
3. You secretly implement your own solutions and hope nobody notices until it's too late
4. You believe in evolution
Wow. So, allow me to make a quick Perl reference... s/John/Code Monkey/g
You're such a manager. See, I honestly don't see anything wrong with what you've said here. As I've gotten older I've come to realize the same things you describe. I can pick out the Devil's Advocates on my team or our sister teams, and they're the limiting factors in our growth.
I'm as stubborn as you, so I'm not easily swayed away from my opinions either. In addition, I find myself fighting for the greater good more often than not, often dismissing other SDE's opinions and freedoms. It just seems like the correct thing to do to implement positive change and move things forward.
Looks like John implanted his seed in all of us. Is that why you always said that he was a pain in the rear?
What's interesting (to me) is the valuation of the devil's advocate based on different views from b-school. It always depends on the culture of the company. A firm, where the devils advocate shuts down valuable change, can not afford that advocate. A firm where cronyism and "yes men" rule the roost tend to desperately need DA's but root them out quickly.
In both instances DA's tend to be worthless. The value of the DA is that they require that you have a rubric for determining the value of an action. There are costs and benefits to any decision you make. Not being able to articulate that the value exceeds the cost is a complete and utter failure on the part of a business owner. Executing actions that are not sufficiently valuable is a different class of failure.
I've always seen it as the responsibility of the decider, from both an accountability and leadership perspective, to be able to effectively utilize a DA. I've even been in workshops where a a DA is assigned yielding two key benefits.
1. It impedes group think if you have a good one, specifically by forcing problem/solution discovery rather than statement.
2. It gives you an easy way to shut down a bad devils advocate by telling them its simply not their turn to play that role.
The limiting factor in a groups growth should never be the DA. That's a failure of leadership if that is the case. Either remove the advocate or learn how to deal with them. I often find that meetings for creating solutions are merely soapboxes for announcing solutions at which point a DA needs to be told that the intent of the meeting is to say what's going to happen not to help refine whats going to happen.
@Silent Observer
I'm actually surprised you agreed, but it's comforting to know I'm not the only one who's seen some validity in the idea.
The Perl regex is a low blow, but I admit I fear at times, you're right. For everything else I do wrong, though, I like to think i maintain a healthy empathy for the people reporting to me and, at the end of the day, I'm a fair boss.
Of course, maybe John thought that too.
@shinier ball
Dammit, your post is more intelligent than my original blog post. It's not supposed to work that way! Don't you know anything!
First, out of curiosity, is 'Devil's Advocate' used in formal literature or are you just using the lexicon established within the blog post? I'm curious, because I've never heard it used with quite that connotation by anyone other than from John.
You are arguing that the Devil's Advocate essentially forces you to identify quantitative measures by which you can judge the success or failure of a change. I'm not sure I agree. To me, a Devil's Advocate, is someone who definitionally is contributing no value within a given conversation beyond impeding change.
I think it's incumbent on any leader to articulate the value of a change he is suggesting. To use a concrete example, a suggestion to my group was that meetings begin and end on time, we keep the audience limited, and people either focus on the meeting or not attend (i.e. they shoudl not be multitasking on their laptop). I then listed the benefits: decreased time spent in meetings, more effective utilization of the time spent in meetings, less time wasted waiting for people to show up for a given meeting, etc.
To which the Devil's Advocated replied 'But that will impede my work. I have to work in a meeting and I shouldn't be expected to be on time, because I'm often working on important stuff'.
None of these arguments add value. But because it was said by a person who contributes enormous value (and often the Devil's advocate does), the response is somehow valued even though in my opinion it's a crock.
A Devil's advocate arises in any given instant. It is not a permanent state of being. Just as someone is *only* a pedestrian while walking, and ceases to be once he sits down, a Devil's advocate is only one while he is impeding change yet not offering substantive alternates.
I do agree that heathy criticism and debate around new ideas ads tremendous value, but again definitionally if value is being contributed, that person is *not* a Devil's advocate.
You didn't think John originated the usage of that term in that context did you? It's called out in various business texts and articles throughout the years as the persona of the great innovation killer. What's interesting about the persona is that in the last few years its gained a less negative connotation in certain camps. I guess there's a fine line that can be drawn between playing a devils advocate and being a devils advocate.
The most extreme interpretation of the DA is that its an innovation cockblock. I'm firmly of the opinion that for a weak organization that can't handle conflict and constructive debate that is true. But for other organizations its a powerful tool for enforcing due diligence and getting to a more valuable solution. Even if their intent is to simply block anyone from getting things done, if their arguments make sense, put their objections down, put your positives and negatives down and weigh them to decide if their is enough value to move forward. Include the DA in the evaluation process to break them down or extract their value.
The easiest way to break a cockblock devils advocate is to get them to make an ass out of themselves and destroy their credibility. Ask them what they think the value is in the idea. If they see none make them break down what you can point out as valuable. Put the onus of disproving the value on them in a logical fashion. They are either right, in which case they aren't a DA, they'll admit they were wrong at which point its a relative value conversation, or show themselves to be completely inflexible in the face of reason and lose all credibility (this does not equate to loss of power, but will equate to loss of influence). Big time contributors are often big time contributors because they have mastered their current domain, telling them they have to change is a threat to their ability to contribute as effectively as possible. Of course they are going to push back unless they see the aggregate long term value to themselves. If they push back after its been shown that its in the best interest of the company, that's an issue for HR.
"To which the Devil's Advocated replied 'But that will impede my work. I have to work in a meeting and I shouldn't be expected to be on time, because I'm often working on important stuff'."
If the persons work is so important they should not be at the meeting period. Everyone's work is important, either the meeting has enough importance to be warranted or it doesn't. Show that the persons attention to the meeting is more valuable than the work they are doing or they can not be at the meeting. Otherwise be flexible. Simple calculation. n people in meeting, cost of those people for x time, value of other persons work for x time. If they can legitimately claim that the 10 minutes of everyone else's time they just wasted is worth less than the 10 minutes of work they did then they should break your stupid rule. Otherwise they should get their ass kicked for being a pretentious git. When people go around saying my time is more valuable than all the rest of you combined, if they aren't delivering on that, they pretty quickly make a ton of enemies.
I think the whole DA is wholly evil concept is firmly in the "no assholes" in business camp. Without assholes how do you get rid of your waste? That's a nasty way to die.
@Silent Observer
" It just seems like the correct thing to do to implement positive change and move things forward.
Looks like John implanted his seed in all of us. Is that why you always said that he was a pain in the rear?"
It sounds like your making an assumption about John's intent there. While I'm sure he was for moving things "forward" and change you have to remember "positive" is a matter of frame of reference and perspective. What's good for the goose may not be good for the gaggle.
Also the Devils Advocate term is a great way to black ball someone. Especially when they never get a chance to defend themselves and aren't even given feedback that they are considered such an entity.
@Code Monkey -
It's one thing to push for TDD its another thing to actually measure and enforce its implementation. Without measurement and enforcement you are not doing TDD, your just throwing a buzzword around to make yourself look better. Execution is king.
@shinierball
You make a lot of excellent points above (I guess that MBA paid off). But then, as I pointed out in a previous blog most things are easy in the abstract.
"Oh, just logically deconsruct your oppositions arguments, and show that your value preposition is greater than theirs" or something.
But when you're face to face with some obstinate complainer, it's hard to not get annoyed. It's hard to not start gritting your teeth and lose objectivity. Of course, it is sound advice and I'll give it a shot along the lines of what you describe.
I don't think either Silent Observer or I were ever suggesting that John's actions were done for anyone's benefit but his own. And while we're on it, yes, he paid only lipservice to TDD and unit testing and any number of the other changes he 'introduced'. Very few were ever rigorously implemented and when they were it was usually due to the efforts of someone other than himself, which he then took credit for. As with everything, much of what he did was publicizing himself as an agent of positive change. If he talked about it enough, it made it seem to those above him as if he was actually doing something. I think to a large extent this is true of any successful person. It's called marketing. But, and it's an important, "but" he did introduce the idea to me. He started the dialog and whatever else negative I would say about the guy, that had definite value. Not really for our former company, but for me personally.
As for the term 'Devil's advocate', I didn't say I believed he coined the term. It's just that previous to him, I'd never thought of it negatively. I thought of it in the terms of the Hegelian dialectic, in which you have thesis-antithesis-synthesis or abstract-negative-concrete. In fact, my definition would have simply been someone that brings up the flaws in an idea, that serves as a reality check to ideas that haven't really been though through very thoroughly. I was not aware it was something discussed in business as an innovation killer. Even doing a quick Google search, I think the comments in this blog seem to be the most nuanced, information view on the positive and negative roles this person can play. Here's the other stuff I found (none of it that useful IMO):
Leadership by Devil's Advocate
The Ten Faces of Innovation
The Most Powerful Role in Business
Just to add one more thought I had, perhaps in addition to Socratic dialog in which you force the opponent to admit the value of your proposition (assuming there is one), I think using the 'role playing' gambit could also help defuse the power of the DA.
Explicitly naming someone the DA during a discussion (and by doing so explicitly disallowing others from playing that role) might be one way to disempower him and/or marginalize his viewpoint. Once they've been formally termed as such, you can say something flippant like 'We no longer need the DA viewpoint, you can stop'. Don't know if that would work in real life, but I might try it.
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