In Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg warns the reader that,
... you’ll be tempted to side with the writer, to think, “I know what he means” or “I can see what she’s saying.” But that’s because it feels so normal to try to deduce the meaning of the sentence instead of observing what its words actually say. We’re so trained to read for meaning—to look through the sentence to what we think is the author’s intention—that in our search for it we’re prepared to disregard the literal significance of the prose itself.
It's a valuable warning on two levels — for interpreting what is said, and also for interpreting what is done.
What is Said
Outside of your primary timescale of play, visibility is limited. You cannot see into the larger plays underway or the smaller steps being taken, especially for games that are not directly adjacent to yours. All you can do is look at what is said, and try to understand its literal significance.
It's tempting, as Klinkenborg points out, to create our own meaning where that significance seems limited or confusing. But the confusion is instructive: it points to where we should look and which questions are worth holding on to. To smooth it out — to force it into our current frame of understanding — is to ignore the most important place of interpretation.
Concerning the trading of companies, slower timescale work is designed to be opaque to all but a very small set of players. Even so, what is said can give up the game. Embedded with one client, I saw a co-founder explain a recent restructuring in unusual terms, noting how a private equity firm was likely to evaluate a company's performance. One product leader immediately recognized what was being said, and recognized that his job would probably not exist in 3–12 months. Another PM explained it away in vague terms that fit his existing view: the business needed better financial performance for potential investors. The organization was acquired six months later, and it was dramatically restructured three months after that.
What is Done
Where you do have access to play, within your timescale or within adjacent games, the same sensibility applies to action. You need to look at what is being done and interpret its actual significance.
It's tempting, once again, to look at what a team is doing and, instead of taking their action at face value, inject your own meaning about what they are trying to do. This is especially true when a team is working on a problem or in a direction that you support. But you need to see what traction the team really has, and ask what happens if they continue to do what they're already doing.
On another project, I dropped into a team who had been fighting an uphill battle for almost three quarters. They were working on a clear and pressing customer problem, recognized widely as a troubling consequence of legacy decisions. Some stakeholders I spoke with initially believed they were moving in the right direction, and just needed more time to figure it out. It was a messy problem, after all. But their past trajectory and current action suggested otherwise: they were packaging and repackaging an ungrounded model of user needs into a solution and had been unable to make progress or find a viable move that would return helpful signal.
When you see the team's actions like a text, so long as you are human, you will try to read between the lines and find the hidden intentions or meaning. But you must also look head-on and understand the literal significance of those actions.
Incongruence in Said vs. Done
There are many ways to confuse what people say, what people mean, and what people do. Sometimes they simply don't align.
If what is said ("espoused theory") and what is done ("theory in use") are incongruent, organizational defenses will seal away the un-discussability of that incongruence. These ideas from Chris Argyris' Overcoming Organizational Defenses inspired the notion of self-fulfilling projects and one of four archetypal product problems, the self-sealing narrative, in earlier updates.
Now I consider a self-sealing game the singular, archetypal class of product problem, from which every other problem stems. A game is self-sealing where the incongruence between its theory and its action is visible, but protected from intervention. The other kinds of problems that product leaders and their teams fall into — blind pursuit of poor ideas, inability to recognize a wrong turn, over-investing on past success, or the inability to adapt ways of working to changing conditions — are all instances of self-sealing gameplay.
But sometimes, we simply create the problem by finding what isn't there, or interpreting what is in our own familiar and comfortable terms.
Other things of note
- Argyris' analysis in Organizational Defenses remains sharp even as its package is aging. I continue recommending it to anyone working in the slower timescales of play or dealing with incongruence between what is said and what they see playing out in the organization.
- Last week I finished The Women Are Up to Something. It weaves three major threads together, (1) exploring four friends' individual lives, (2) the second world war and the Oxford philosophical scene that shaped their thinking, and (3) their conversations and contribution to moral and ethical philosophy while fighting against the "Dawkins sublime" notion of a harsh and value-less world. Well done, though only recommended if you have a grounding interest in 20th century Western philosophy as it's not an ideal entry point.
Until next time,
This is Dave's Monday newsletter for leaders in the product org: make good moves, help others play, reshape the game.
