The show’s guest in this episode is Paul Reed. He is an internationally recognized consultant and speaker on operational socio-technical complexity challenges and opportunities, Resilience Engineering, and DevOps/SRE. He’s worked with such organizations as VMware, Mozilla, Symantec, and Netflix. And he holds a Masters of Science in Human Factors & Systems Safety from Lund University.

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Experimenting with Retrospective with Paul Reed

Hello, I’m super excited to be here live with you today we have a great show planned for you. And I’m always thinking about my own leadership, my own life. And it’s the time of year where I get a little tired. I’ve been doing lots of coaching, it’s been a long time since my last vacation. And so I’m kind of grappling with burnout, but like, I’m tired. And so yesterday, I try not to take do client work on Mondays and Fridays. And yesterday, I gave myself a really challenging goal. My goal was to seek joy. And I’m in Ontario, and it’s just like magically turned from winter to summer, we didn’t get much spring because it was cold. And now it’s hot. And our pool is open. And and it is all of a sudden blue is kind of green on Friday. And somehow my husband magically turned it blue over the weekend. And it’s just delightful. So it’s like the time of year where you dive into the pool and you go, Cool, that’s terrible. And then by the time you sort of get to the shallow end, it’s like pretty nice. And then you sort of stand there for a minute. And then you go, Oh, that’s good. And then the sun hits your body. And you’re like, Oh, that’s good. And then you stand there a few more minutes, and you’re like, Oh, I’m kind of hot, maybe I’ll dive in again. And, and so I invited a couple of my coach friends over. And for a long time in my life, I had this dirty little secret. And that was I’m like a pretty passionate skinny dipper. And our pool is really private, so no one can see. And so we rarely wear swimsuits in the summer. And we used to say like, oh, well, our big rule in the pool is you have to wear a swimsuit when we have guests. But somehow in my 50s, I just stopped having that rule. So now all my friends love to skinny dip in my pool with me. And yesterday, my gardener was over. So we had to keep running, sending him out on errands so that we could Skinny Dip.

And I’m telling you this story, not because I mean, it’s not fun to talk about skinny dipping, because it is. But it was one of the best cures I’ve found so far for burnout. And I’ve been thinking about why that’s true. And there was like the thrill of jumping in the pool. And that was sort of woke me up. And the feeling of the water and the sun on my skin. And then the fun of doing it with others. All of that was really deeply rejuvenating. And so I think I did pretty well on my seeking Joy yesterday. And I just wanted to share it with you. So I really want to challenge you to do things that you bring you deep joy, if you’re feeling that sort of sense of tiredness and burnout at this time of the year. And I don’t know what they are for you. I don’t know what your version of skinny dipping is. I don’t know if you need a thrill or you need, you know, a nap on the couch. But I needed a nap on the couch later. So I did that too, because that also brought me joy. But what’s your version of skinny dipping? That’s my question for you this week.

And I am super excited about my guest today. J. Paul Reed is an internationally recognized consultant and speaker on operational socio-technical complexity challenges and opportunities related to Resilience Engineering, and DevOps/SRE. And he’s worked with organizations like VMware, Mozilla, Symantec, and Netflix. And he holds a Masters of Science in Human Factors & Systems Safety from Lund University  and I am so excited to have Paul on my show.

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Welcome, Paul.

Thank you, Melanie. It is so amazing to be here with you this morning.

It’s great to have you you have a take on your version of skinny dipping.

Well, no, I was gonna say is that the nap part? Like that’s right now kind of my jam. I was chatting with a friend of mine who has Simon’s about to turn five, five year old and I we were talking about we were all such assholes to naps when we were little and now I just did so I would love to have a nap. I would you know, so when you said that I was like yeah, that’s it right after to have you ever like a really nice lunch somewhere that you know that you treat yourself and then you do something like you said, skinny dipping or whatever your jam is there. The Napa is really the you know cherry on top of the joy sundae as it were.

Well It’s so funny because as a coach, like, I find I know what my things are, I’m really clear on them. And I’m pretty good at them. But I’ll invite people over and I’m like, Oh my gosh, do you want to come over and swim naked in my pool? And they’re like, No, I don’t want that at all. And so I can’t You can’t transfer those things. Yeah. And, and you can’t just pass them over. It’s not as prescription.

But it’s, you know, you always find your friends when they say, I don’t want any of that. But I want that for you. Right. That’s when you know, you’re chatting with people that kind of understand what what that’s about?

Well, and I knew I had found a skinny dipping friend, when we skinny dipped on like, a Thursday. And then she was like, wow, where am I going to skinny dip again on Facebook. And I was like, Hey, come back over. Let’s do it again today. And I was like, oh, yeah, we are skinny. Like, this is something we do together. Yeah, I know, she’s always willing to come pop in the pool. And, and so you know, you find your people as you do the same things, you know, over and over again.

Yeah, well, and it’s funny the way you kind of said that, right? The hop in the pool is kind of a metaphor, I think you and I have talked about sometimes about playing in the sandbox, too. There’s kind of these metaphors about how do we you know, find our people and find something that’s rejuvenating for us? In some pretty stressful times. Right now. I didn’t have monkey pox on my 2022 Doom card.

Oh, my gosh, or food or infant formula? is like, I mean, I there is not much that like, triggers my empathy buttons more than infant formulas shortage. Like, it’s just like, I don’t need infant formula. But the people that do like, my heart just like opens for them.

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, from a from a leadership perspective, I think there’s an interesting question. And so, you know, I do a lot of work, you know, as you mentioned in software, so lean and agile have a context of their, but lean, the way we practice it in software comes from lean manufacturing, which has been around for, you know, Toyota in the 50s and 60s, right. But so the point is, a lot of these supply chain shortages, problems that we’re seeing come from, we’ve lean eyes to the entire global economy. And that has some benefits. But I don’t think we realized that it’s like everything. In a system, it’s a trade off. And these are some of the you know, when we see things like a pandemic that you haven’t seen, since we started doing Lean Manufacturing, right? The last big one was 100 years ago, I think we’re finding out we’re having some experiments run for us. And we’re not liking the results, like shortages and infant formula.

Well, and I keep fixing things, like we have a rental property, and our fence fell down. And usually, I’d probably think, let’s just go ahead and fix let’s put up a new fence. And our contractor was like, there’s some really nice panels here. Why don’t we just change the fence posts? It’s quicker, we don’t have to find it. And I’m like, that sounds great. So I think it’s gonna be a pretty inexpensive fit fix, which five years ago, I never would have done. What right now? It’s a really good idea.

Well, it’s funny. So So I was chatting with some contractors too, and same conversations. But the thing that maybe they’re not saying, but they’re certainly thinking is, I can go try to find the supplies, but I probably won’t be able to find them. And if I do, you won’t like the price. I had a friend who did a beautiful remodel, they had this big post in the middle of their condo, and they finally removed it. And so they got a new couch. And it was like, you can have your couch in 2025. It wasn’t quite that bad. But it was like the order to couch eight months, eight months. And I was I mean, I think all of us are kind of, you know, to your point baby formula. I think, you know, I don’t have kids, but I can imagine, just you know, talking about burnout and distress that that adds for parents that are in that situation. But I think all of us are finding just random things that you’re like, wait, what, why? Why is that out? Or why is there a delay on that? Everything is just so intertwined. These days, I think, I think in general, but we’re certainly finding it in the economy. And we’re finding it in a way that I think most of us as consumers in that economy have never experienced,

Right like financially I have money. But like my lawn furniture all needs to get replaced probably like it’s right on the edge. Mostly because I think I forgot to cover it last winter. And in Ontario, that’s it. important, I didn’t even know I forgot to cover it. But I got up this morning and I painted at all, like half of it. Because I looked at it, I looked online to see if I could replace it, it was easier to paint it and see if we can get another year or two out of it, to see if some of these supply chain things will ease.

So here’s a question for you, you kind of started talking about feeling a little burnt out. And then what you were doing, have you found and I’ve had the same sort of experience where it’s like, you know, maybe repair or maybe, you know, get the get the duct tape out and try to fix it that way. Have you found that experience like painting your lawn furniture to also be would you put that in the bucket of sort of rejuvenating?

Yes, absolutely. It’s like, tow I feel so good that I painted my furniture this morning.

I felt like there’s part of it is Zen, you know, because you get to like paint and just be there. But part of it, I think too is there’s a good feeling of, you know, I got another year or two or three out of this thing I didn’t.

I also like the thing I bought 10 years ago or whatever. Like I really, I really liked this furniture, I didn’t really want to replace it. So there wasn’t something that I liked better. But yes, I felt, you know, I got up this morning, I was gonna drive to the gym to exercise half an hour away. Then I was like, but and I’ve been watching the weather. So it gives me this connection to weather. But it’s going to rain tomorrow, but it was going to be really hot today. So if I got up this morning, painted it, we can cover it so it won’t get rained on, then it’ll dry. And it was like so there were all these connections to like the earth like, you know, I’m painting I’m outside. My dogs were like, right there with me outside. And and I had to prep the table. So I’m standing and I’m like shaking the paint can I’m like going like this. And I’m like, I think this is a workout. And it’s in my backyard. And you know, we’re not sure what’s special, Sandy. I know. So it’s like, not only did I paint the furniture, I don’t think I missed my workout. Because I was bending over and standing up. And so I mean, I actually felt like I got a workout too. So I don’t think I missed anything. And, and, you know, I I realized I used to do a lot of this stuff. And then I had to get knee replacements and and then I my mom died and I was grieving. So I got kind of detached from doing these things for a few years. And Mel, my husband’s been doing them. So it felt really good to reengage with my property.

Yeah, yeah. So I’m really curious, actually, you know, because you again, you were talking about burnout, do you find a lot of the leaders that you’re talking to right now? Are are similarly kind of burnt out?

Right. I think they’re crispy. Yeah, right. Yeah. That’s such a such a techie term like…

Yeah, crunchy, crunchy, crispy…

Crispy… They have a whole bunch of synonyms for that.

So you know, it’s really interesting, because I was talking to a friend of mine who who’s a director at, you know, a company we’d all know the name of, and she was saying that there’s some big changes coming down the pike. And her experience of burnout was, you know, not only the pandemic, and being a parent, and during a pandemic, and all of those things, but because of these changes, doing, you know, she’s talking about having to do emotional labor, because she cares about her direct reports in her teens. So she’s kind of doing all of this extra emotional labor that you know, that you would do normally. Right? Good leaders do that normally. But then on top of the pandemic stuff and the the general sort of malaise of the last two and a half years. It’s just, you know, just so much.

I think like, whatever it is you do, you’re probably going to have to do it several times. There’s going to be some element you didn’t expect, somebody’s going to have a meltdown that you weren’t expecting. It’s it’s not business as usual, even if you are taking your mask off, like, like, whatever it is, it’s not over. Because the or somebody’s gotten cancer because they didn’t get any care during the pandemic. Like it’s something weird that’s going to impact it, or there’s a whole generation now of people that I heard about with one leader, where they’ve been they’ve been working at home and they’ve all had babies during COVID and now they expect their employer to just put up with the fact that they don’t have childcare. So they never got childcare. And now they’re like, Well, I don’t have childcare, and the, and they’re like, do you want to get childcare? And they’re like, No, that doesn’t seem safe. That’s where people get COVID. And so the employers having to grapple with telling their employees that they’ve had for a long time that they have to go get childcare.

Well, so you said a couple of interesting things that I think capture that sentiment. So you, you said about, you know, folks may be having a meltdown, because of the challenges, and then you said kind of taking taking your mask off. And when I’ve been looking at socio technical systems, throughout the pandemic, and different organizations, there’s an interesting thing around, some people lean into taking their masks off, they lean into sharing with their teams with their manager, what’s really going on, it’s a sign of a really healthy team, I think. It’s It’s funny, there was a team that I was I was working with recently that that changed managers in the middle of the pandemic, and the, the man, the manager at the beginning of the pandemic, all of the team really leaned into that, you know, sharing their struggles, you and they would do it just on the email list that the team email us it was, you know, there was a record of it, you could go look at it, right. And they did that, because the leader there was super honest about what was going on in their lives, and they made it safe for the other folks to do that. And then there was a manager change. And, you know, instead of saying, hey, you know, I’m having, I need to go to the doctor, I’m having a health problem, all you hear is I’m going to be gone for the afternoon. And it was amazing to watch how that team just closed up, they kind of all put their masks back on. People would just be I’m out as opposed to a My grandmother is is close to the end of her life, I need to go see her. Right. So that was super fascinating to sort of watch. But I think what we’re really talking about there. And software, you’ve probably heard the term API’s application programming interfaces, right? And and so for those that aren’t in software, right, the whole idea there is that I don’t need to learn everything behind the API, I can just make a call and does the thing, right, I can write to a file, but I don’t have to understand how hard drives work or the storage works. It just it’s there’s an abstraction there. And I think one of the big things, if you kind of zoom out is in this is with your childcare example. All of the abstractions, and I’m talking about the human ones, not the technical ones, have fallen apart, right. And so companies expect their employees that have kids to have childcare, because it abstracts in a sense the messiness of being a parent away from I have an employee that’s doing their job, right. And so now those API’s in all sorts of ways have gotten all sorts of messed up. And you’re finding not only individuals, like, you know, one to one, you and I figuring out the API that we had, I’ve worked with you for two years, it’s different now. And having to maybe sometimes know that and readjust that maybe sometimes, it’s just weird with this other person now, and I need, you know, I need to figure that out. But also, you see this with large companies that are like, You should come back into the office and our employees are kind of like, I don’t think I want to do that. And their API is all over that, that situation, that dynamic, that have broken down.

Well, and I think it’s interesting, and I just want to comment on your example of the team is something came to mind like a million years ago, I got a bachelor’s in communication. And we studied interpersonal communication, we looked at relationships. And, and we thought, I mean, mostly we’re looking at romantic relationships. But one of the signs of a relationship being good and heading in a closer and closer relationship is that the number of topics that you talk about is expanding. And one of the signs that a relationship is falling apart, or concluding is that the number of topics that you talk about is? What’s the opposite of expanding, like, shrinking or contracting? Yeah. And so what you’re talking about so So you notice that just in that one measurement, like how many things are you talking about?

No, I’m laughing because I’m like, Can I pay you to be my couples therapist, because there’s, I’ve never heard that before. But like, that’s actually kind of spot on. And I was thinking about, you know, you hear stories of, of relationships in the pandemic, that fell apart. And those two that blossomed and it’s one of those things where it’s like, if you lock a couple people in a room for a year, you’re going to find some something out about the other, you know, good that you’re probably going to find good and bad. But to that point, there’s these little metrics, like what do you do with that? Do you? Do you lean into talking about that? Or? Or does it is? Yeah, people clam up, you know?

Well, we found we found out at our house that we like separate streams, like separate screens. So we stopped having family movie night. And we liked cocktail hour. Like, it was nice to have a time that we came, and not just the grownups, but like the kids came to happy hour because there were snacks. Yeah, yeah. And so it was separate screens and cocktail hour. Yeah. There were times to be together and times to be apart at our house.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and, you know, it’s, it’s funny to me, going back to this concept of experimenting, and experiments, I think the pandemic has caused us to run some experiments, that I don’t think we’re, we’re deliberate, conscious, no well defined in the way that you talk about. But it doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable. And I think the the thing for for all of us right now, is if we can find enough time, maybe when we’re painting our furniture or skinny dipping, to reflect on these things, there’s almost this. And it’s funny, we haven’t touched on the retrospective part. And I didn’t plan it this way. But there’s almost like a retrospective understanding of the experiments, it’s almost like you can kind of try to look at the variables. And then what’s interesting about that is because those experiments are kind of emergent. And they’re fuzzy, because you didn’t control for the variables. They’re really informative about what experience you might actually consciously run. But in a sense, our entire social lives have been a Petri dish of experiments over the pandemic. There’s a lot of air.

In the early pandemic, I was doing a lot of podcasts because my book came out. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like the Olympics of leaders experimenting, like, it’s like, some people are doing well. And it didn’t end up that the leaders that were doing poorly in the beginning of the pandemic, like, as you watched, like, New Zealand did really well, early. In the early horse race, they were really ahead, but didn’t end up that way. Because everybody got COVID later, because they didn’t have anybody with COVID. So it’s interesting how, you know, there’s, it’s a long game.

So I’ll share something with you, that is part of my current sort of journey. And it was super fascinating to me. So the team that I was actually on, during the pandemic. What we realized is, I was one of those, these folks, there were two or three or four of us that were really like, Alright, there’s pandemic, we got real tactical, you know, we, you know, as, as individuals, and as a group of, you know, about a third of the team. And it and then other folks with other constraints, right, I don’t have kids, but other people had kids. So that was kind of their primary thing they had to worry about, which is understandable. But what was interesting is where you could kind of graph how they fared in the pandemic, because some of us started real river strong. And then we just hit a cliff just fell off a cliff, right? Other people, the sort of way that they dealt with it, they kind of dropped really early, and then kind of came back up and then dropped and came back up, right. And I think, for a really healthy teen, you actually want all types, right. But it was interesting, from an individual perspective, much like you’re saying, different countries, I think Japan was another country that started out real strong with a pandemic, right, China to when they were initially kind of isolating folks, but now they’re having their troubles. Right. So it’s one of those things in these little kind of long running situations. I think it’s important for leaders to take stock of what are the different kind of personality? It’s not really personality types, but it’s what are the different constraints of the folks that you’re working with? And that and that you see day to day, and then how do those constraints come out in situations like this? And then how do you, you know, how do you leverage those? I have a friend who’s a big gamer, right? And so they were talking about the different roles that you play when you go out and play group game together in Warcraft or Minecraft or some of those games. I’m not I’m not that type of gamer, but they were talking about their different roles. and you really want someone in each of those roles, because they complement each other in different ways.

Well, and like Texas, had all these anti vaxxers And I went to Midland to a swim me in January or early February, late January or early February, and I was sitting in the stands fully masked, with people unmasked screaming in front above me. And Omicron was like rampant. And I was like, there is no way I leave this swim meet without COVID There’s no way. I didn’t get COVID I think they all had it already. I think they’d all had COVID I think I was the safest place on the planet was in Texas at that point.

Yes. It’s funny you say that I had a similar story here. But you know, if you want to talk about like large scale, like retro, there’s turned me off in retrospective coherence, right. I was in Austin, for DevOps Days. Austin, one of the really interesting things is that DevOpsDays, Denver had been a week before. And they didn’t really do the masking thing. And Colorado, I think, had better overall vaccination rates in Texas. But they are something like 18 to the 20, organizers got COVID, and a bunch of people got COVID, because they just didn’t mask it all. Now, DevOps says Austin took a different tack, and they said, Alright, we’re going to have masks at registration, we’re going to tell folks, you have to wear a mask, and we’re going to ask you leave, they had a big thing. It’s like, it’s not even a discussion, you sign, you know, you click the little checkbox, we’re not trying to be mean, but this is what we’ve done for this community, right? They had big outdoor spaces for lunch. So you could go outside and eat lunch, when you’re unmasked. And they’re there. I mean, maybe not surprisingly, because they were very deliberated about it didn’t have the same kind of COVID issues. Now. Now, I know organizers and I love organizers from both groups. The reason I bring it up is this is another one of those informal experiments, where, you know, DevOps Days, Denver informed the behavior of DevOps Days. Austin, in a way that you couldn’t, you almost couldn’t model or predict, right, you wouldn’t wait, you know, and so those are skewed. I mean, that’s the thing, I would say in this guy, you know, these very chaotic times. Look, you know, look for those particular types of experiments. And that’s really when we talk about retrospective coherence, what that’s about. And they can then help, like I said, inform future, more deliberate experiments, where you actually can control the very identify the variables that control for them.

I want to ask you a question about retrospectives in general, because I really want it somewhere. I want to just talk about retrospectives for a minute. And I want to talk about it because I know you’ve read my book. And I know we’ve talked in the past. And I always feel like this is the hardest part of experimentation is. I always say like, Okay, if you’re gonna experiment, then the next step is you have to think about did it work or not? Like you have to look back. And in my mind, that’s what the word retrospective means. I might have that wrong. But can you just define the word retrospective to start with?

Well, I mean, it’s all context dependent. Right. But I think the whole part, I’ve used the term retrospective coherence. And the reason that I kind of liked that phrase in answer to your question is because the point there is to sort of look back and make the situation coherent, right, to make it make sense, in some way. And so it is sort of that backwards looking process. One of the things that that I will say in terms of, you know, you talk a lot about running experiments. This was a tool that, you know, I was using, with with the teams that I was working with, for a long time. And one of the big and you talked about this in the book, one of the big things that I think people get tripped up on is, okay, well, if I understand the variables, or what I’m looking for, what am I going to measure? They kind of run the experiment, and then they search at the end for what the measurement is. I agree. Yeah. And that’s, that makes it really hard. Now, the flip side, if you’re if you get really good, if you practice and get really good at running experiments, you will identify I’m going to look at these metrics. Now the interesting thing about an interactive, deeper retrospective process, and I the most of the work I do around retrospectives is like incident operations retrospectives in with software, so, you know, some big web site goes down. How do we make sense of that? You know, what, what incidents review or retrospective process? Do we use an experiment context? I, the advice that I would give is that it’s important to not only look at the experiment itself and the metrics that you’ve identified that you’re going to look at. But there’s also like a made up part of that around retrospect, in the actual experiment. Is there other data that just came to me that I didn’t, I wasn’t measuring. But as I’m looking at the data, it’s like, oh, I, I should have measured that, right. And that’s a really good thing. I, people that are really good at running experiments, look also at that kind of made a data and have made the data that comes in, that helps them refine, and then define the next experiment. Because you know, we all have you, we’re all gonna have inputs and things that we notice that we don’t account for, in that initial experiment design. So when you know to answer your question that’s really about what retro suspecting is, it’s not just the experiment you defined, but it’s the experimental process itself, so that you get better at defining not only better at the skill of defining an experiment and running it, but you start coming up with more interesting experiments to run.

Well, and I think this is a place where I, you know, will admit, you know, here on my podcast that I’m a little loosey goosey on that. I know, it’s important to experiment, because it’s good leadership. I know it’s important to help others experiment, because that’s good leadership. I know it’s important to measure things, things, because that’s good leadership. And then about here, I start to go Yeah, I don’t know. Like, it can get really dogmatic if you drill down too far here, too. So I think it’s important to make sure you think about what you might measure. And then be curious about what you see. And then for the next experiment, start to get clearer and clearer about what you measure. But all around here, you probably want someone with more of your brain than my brain. And so it’s lovely that you’re here.

So I’m going to challenge you on that, because here’s the thing, I think I actually think you’re selling yourself short, and also leaders that think about the problem this way. And here’s why I say that a lot. I’ve used the term metrics, metrics, metrics. And so a lot of times in incident retrospectives, people are really interested, especially, you know, this is very common, you’ve got a big company, they want to understand their incidents, right? And what will they do? They’ll go to the ticket system, and they’ll try to look at all the incidents, and then they’ll try to like, slice them and dice them in a spreadsheet by numbers and categories, and blah, blah, blah. That’s very quantitative data. And when we think about experiments, a lot of times our brains go immediately to what’s the data I can put in a spreadsheet…

and KPIs to put in here? Yeah, you hate him. I hate him. Yes, I hate him.

I hate him because they don’t always capture. I mean, they capture what they’re measuring, which might be the right measurement. But so here’s the thing, when I talk about our socio technical system, one of the things at Netflix that we were doing that is so so important, is qualitative data after an incident. So one of my jobs was to go and talk to the people interview them, right. And we would come up with themes around what was their cognitive process? What systems were they interacting with? And what user interface things could we improve there? And so the point is, you were talking about I’m a little loosey goosey the way I sort of see that is no more you. And when I run my own personal experience that was just for me, it’s like I want to eat less ice cream, or whatever it might be right? That the data you want, there is qualitative. That’s not less valuable than the quantitative data. And that’s there’s a couple of things there that there’s a lot that you can lose in the experiment, if you’re not interested in the qualitative data. But I use the you know, in the intro, you we I love the word sociotechnical. The qualitative data is often the socio part. It’s the people part. And going back to burnout, you can have an experiment where the metrics look really great, like the KPIs look really great. And you have toasted the people, but you would never know that if you didn’t talk to them. And that’s kind of the essence of a well designed experiment is that we’ll have a qualitative socio aspect to it, even if it’s measuring something very technical and very quick.

For me just now that’s amazing. Thank you so much. I love that so much. And I think it’s it’s so important and to tie it back to life. You know, Toyota kata Japanese. It’s the Gemba walk as opposed to the, the metric or the KPI or the you know, whatever it’s, it’s go look and see what the people are doing on the floor and get in touch with them. As opposed to, you know, everything’s a measurement to the enth degree until you can’t stand it anymore. But find out what it feels like what people are actually doing. What are you noticing? What are you seeing? Learn?

Yeah, I mean, to that point, what I would say is, I don’t always succeed at this. But when I run experiments, especially ones with teams, or leaders, and especially if I run an experiment with a leader, about a team dynamic, you need to identify where the, where you’re measuring, which, again, is a qualitative measure, in this case, the humanity in the experiment, right? gimble walks are about the humans and the humanity in the system. It’s understanding why people do what they do. Even if you know, why do they pull the end on cord that stops the line. There’s a great story about, you’ve probably heard this one where the the jab, the Japanese executives came over the GM, here in Fremont, California, just down the road. Now at the Tesla factory when there’s interesting parallels there, but you had an American car company, and they had a bunch of Japanese executives. And they built the plant like a Japanese plant. So it had the add on Puerto Rican stop the line, but the American managers, instead of being like, Okay, help me understand, like, let’s fix the issue. Help me understand why you did that would go yellow, the people that pulled the end on cord, because that’s American Management, you know, and this was in the 80s, I think, late 80s. That’s just the way it was, right? I mean, it’s just like, you’re missing so much data there, about the people in the system?

Yeah. I think that’s often the case, it’s like, you want to solve the problem? Spend a day with the people? Yep. And then you can find out what it is like, fix the things fix the things for a long time?

Well, on the one thing, the last thing I would say to that is, there are certain things you can fix as a leader. But I think also, this is probably more leverage, you can figure out the things that you can do as a leader to empower the people closest to the work to fix it.

What did you just a little retrospective on COVID? Burnout, like what you’ve learned, because I know you’ve spent some time thinking about that this year. And I just want to tap into your wisdom, my wisdom, like besides skinny dipping in my backyard secluded pool, what do you think people can do for themselves? Like, what’s the like, what, what other things could they do for themselves right now to, you know, heal, heal the place we’re in as leaders?

Do? I think we could do a whole, like, round two on that. So I’ll try to be quick, because it’s a huge, huge question right now. So one of the things that I would say, is that there burnout is it there’s there’s been a ton of research on burnout, you know, 3040 years. And and so this is science, it’s not as a this, as a manager once told me burnout is a meme, it is not a meme. But one of the things that I will say, I’ve used this as my, my phraseology, there’s a difference between sort of lowercase b burnout and capital case b burnout. And the difference is the capital B burnout. When I talk about that, again, that’s my terminology, I’m referring to the research around burnout. And the distinction is this. I was recently talking to a friend who was saying the same thing, I feel really burnt out whatever. And, and but the what they were saying is they had changed jobs. They were in a new job, they were just kind of feeling tired, and burnt out from all the stuff that we’re dealing with. And that was sort of more of a lowercase b burnout, a capital case b burnout, the distinction is that there is an organizational dynamic at play. So the research that was done around it studied, like teachers and social workers and nurses. And so in those environments that were sort of very toxic, you know, pick teachers or whatever, there’s a systemic issue around underfunded schools, or, you know, long standing sort of economic disparity and racial, racial, you know, disparity, you know, disparity in funding and all of that kind of stuff, right. So the point is, that it’s really important to understand with capital V burnout, you can’t solve it yourself. It’s actually an organizational problem that’s impacting the people that are inside the system. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that I would suggest folks look at is, if they’re experiencing burnout, and I don’t want to diminish anybody’s experience of burnout, it’s not that it’s more about, if I’m feeling tired and sort of lowercase b burned out the way that you would sort of address it, it’s different than I’m in an environment that is causing capital B burnout, because in that case, you literally cannot solve it on your own. It’s actually the organizational dynamics. So that’s one big sort of takeaway from the pandemic that I think has made it a little more acute, because you, you saw how organizations reacted differently to the pandemic. And in certain cases, those organizations caused capital V burnout, because they tended more to, you know, a toxic environment when they were trying to deal with that. The other thing that I would say that I struggle with, I think you struggle with, I was chatting with a friend the other day, who was talking about, they had read an article saying, Yeah, I mean, the way Corona viruses are, we’re just kind of going to have peaks every six months. Like that’s the way it’s going to be. If you look at the Spanish flu, it took four to five years to get the 1919 Spanish flu, which is a misnomer, because of historic racism, because it started in the US, not Spain, but anyway, four or five years. So we’re in what year, two and a half, and they were just like, it’s gonna peak every six months. It’s just the way virus vile research is. So in that regard. It’s, I mean, it’s bad news, but it’s gonna be a slog for the next three years. And hopefully, we can all find some solace in the dip of between those two peaks. But it’s, I mean, if the last two years are indicators, and the research is right, you know, paint some furniture and go skinny dipping when you can because hitting right…

Yeah, like, find the joy. I’m not that I believe everybody’s got to find their joy. But make sure you grab it right now. Was it when the dip is on? Like, you know, grab the dip? Well, where can people find you? Do you want them to find you?

Yeah, so the the best way to Yeah, the best way to interact with me is probably on Twitter. I’m in the tweet sphere. I’m @JPaulReed on Twitter. I’m on LinkedIn too. If you search J. Paul Reed, you’ll find me. LinkedIn is… I don’t know. I like LinkedIn and but I don’t hang out. I don’t have a main LinkedIn window open all day. I have my Twitter window open all day. And then you can find some of my writings and stuff at Jay Paul read.com. All one word. And I look forward to hearing from folks both interested in retrospectives. And who wants to discuss burnout. My DMS are open.

Well, it’s been a joy hanging out with you, as always. And thank you so much. I loved having you on the show today. Yeah, it was wonderful. Yeah, thanks for being here.

—

Well, that was so much fun. And I think it’s really important to look at both retrospectives. And to think of that socio technical complexity and how it intersects with the gimble walk. I reference it. It’s not my concept, but I referenced it in the experiment leader. It’s important to look at the human components of measurement. As we try to figure out whether or not our experiments work. Can you I really challenge you to look around at the experiments that you’re doing in your work and you’re with your people, and to see what the people are doing this week. Go experiment

Important Links: 

• Paul Reed – LinkedIn
• Paul Reed – Twitter
• Paul Reed – Website

Paul Reed

J. Paul Reed is an internationally recognized consultant and speaker on operational socio-technical complexity challenges and opportunities, Resilience Engineering, and DevOps/SRE.

He’s worked with such organizations as VMware, Mozilla, Symantec, and Netflix.

He holds a Masters of Science in Human Factors & Systems Safety from Lund University.

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