A Primary Directive

Michael Pollan's brilliant TED talk asks that we consider that human consciousness might not the crowning glory of Darwinism -- a humbling notion, particularly to those who insist on clinging to the slippery pedestal of human exceptionalism.

Other species have developed refined systems for foraging, attracting, defending, and, in short, optimally surviving with the least expenditure of energy. We ignore these wonders of cut-throat evolutionary optimization to our detriment.

Seeing an organic and undulating cloud of starlings dancing in the sky, I can't help but wonder about how people work together.



Observing schools of fish, flocks of birds, or a stalking wolf pack, I wonder what we can learn from other species.

In the Harvard Business Review post The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives, Biology professor Thomas Seeley draws from his study of honey bees to suggest ways teams might build consensus and make better decisions. Seeley suggests:

1. Remind the group's members of their shared interests and foster mutual respect, so they work together productively. The scout bees know instinctually that their interests are aligned toward choosing the optimal home site, so they work together as a team. There are no clashing curmudgeons in a bee swarm.
2. Explore diverse solutions to the problem, to maximize the group's likelihood of uncovering an excellent option. The scout bees search far and wide to discover a broad assortment of possible living quarters.
3. Aggregate the group's knowledge through a frank debate. Use the power of a fair and open competition to distinguish good options from bad ones. The scout bees rely on a turbulent debate among groups supporting different options to identify a winner. Whichever group first attracts sufficient supporters wins the debate.
4. Minimize the leader's influence on the group's thinking. By functioning as an impartial moderator rather than a proselytizing boss, a leader enables his group to use its combined knowledge and brainpower. The scout bees have no dominating leader and so can take a broad and deep look at their options.
5. Balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence (absence of peer pressure) among the group's members. Only if ideas are shared publicly but evaluated privately will the group be good at exploring its options and making good choices. Scout bees share freely the news of their finds, but each one makes her own, independent decision of whether or not to support a site.

When we have a common interest, people can be efficient collaborators. Scout bees have an evolutionary advantage in community collaboration. That is, bees know instinctively to search for a new hive location that is

10 meters off the ground and has 40 liters capacity. 

Eons of optimization baked into their DNA, scout bees know instinctively what their primary directive is (i.e., what's most beneficial to the survival of the community).

A Primary Directive

Honey bees have a clear understanding of the criteria for success. Not always so for people meant to collaborate on teams. On software teams, we rarely have a concise expression of the purpose or the desired end state (cf. Team Decisions & Commander's Intent).

At a recent Practical Agility gathering orchestrated by David Hussman, Mary Poppendieck scoffed at the mention of self-organizing teams. It struck me as gratuitously dismissive. Drilling down I was able to determine her derision was based in that observation that, unlike other species, people working on software teams don't intuitively know what their most immediate directive is. That is, we rarely know what to do next. An important point.

Having 10 meters off the ground and 40 liters capacity baked into your DNA is quite different from a software team, with varying levels of commitment, discovering what it is they are to build. Still, I'm taken by the prospect of observing and learning from the collaborative successes of other species.

The UX of Desire

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan gives a compelling perspective on how desirability determines viability and how plant species have thrived by co-evolving with humans. Michael Pollan's insights are wildly applicable to software User Experience (UX).

Pollan begins with the premise

Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.

He demonstrates how four plants have survived through adaptation, and have ultimately thrived by capitalizing on human desires and needs:

• The Apple - exemplifies our desire for sweetness & intoxication (apple jack),
• The Tulip - exemplifies our desire for beauty,
• Marijuana - exemplifies our desire for pleasure, and
• The Potato - exemplifies our need for sustenance.

Human Desire & Software

Facebook grew from an idea in a Harvard dorm room to over 500 million active users in a hand-full of years (cf. Facebook Timeline). My hunch is that Facebook's popularity is based on its appeal to human behavior and its fulfillment of human desires. That is, by tugging at our narcissism, our curiosity and our instinct to connect with others, Facebook enables us:

• to know what our friends, and would-be friends, are saying & doing, 
• to surreptitiously learn more about particular love interests, 
• to be flirtatious within a socially removed virtual cocoon, or simply 
• to be noticed.

The Botany of Desire reversed my bias about humans domesticating plants like corn or apples or cotton. Perhaps it was the other way around - could it be that the plants domesticated us? Plants have, at the very least, used humans to co-evolve and thrive.

I now think of my killer app as a "species" co-evolving with humans. Future startup software might well have to be every bit as cunning as a Venus Flytrap. Our software must provide the sensory lures, then deliver on needs. Future apps might well be like successful plants -- spawned by and grown by adaptively fulfilling specific human needs in a survival-of-the-fittest environment.

The Lean-Startup approach seems a fitting platform for the evolutionary experimenting that future killer apps might require. Lean-Startup is rooted in the principle of iteratively adapting and refining a business model (i.e., an evolutionary concept), based on proving the viability of features (meeting needs that customers desire).

INot only will killer apps have to provide features and fulfill needs, they will also have to present desire fulfillment in an alluringly positive experience not unlike a flower's nectar lures and intoxicates a honey bee to better serve the flower's ongoing reproductive purpose.

The UX of Desire means attracting and delivering (...so beautiful and so effective) as if the life of your app depended on it!

It's People, Not Machinery

Before we learned Toyota doesn't know jack about software, the software community embraced Lean Manufacturing hoping to mimic Toyota's legendary quality & efficiency.

In her post Creating a Mess by "Eliminating Waste, Esther Derby reminds me how principles built on assembly line manufacturing efficiencies don't necessarily translate to people-centric businesses like software.

...any tool can and will be misapplied. This is especially true when a tool is plucked from one context and applied in another and when the use of the tool is divorced from the thinking and philosophy behind the tool. ~Esther Derby

Bill Clinton's advisor James Carville coined the phrase

It's the economy, stupid.

In the same vein, I advance a rule of thumb about the making and consuming of software:

It's people, not machinery.

The simplest caution I offer is "…start by understanding", not by applying the tired bromides of manufacturing efficiency.

Lean's three-legged stool of waste, overburden, & workload unevenness are more readily measured and tweaked in the context of machines and assembly lines — not so easily with people.

Yvon Chouinard, founder & visionary behind the outdoor equipment company Patagonia, has a mantra "Let my people go surfing" which is shorthand for

My business is focused on the fulfillment of my employees, and by extension, the fulfillment of my customers.

Encouraging your teammates to ditch work when the surf's up is distinctly not a production-driven view that activity equals cost.

I cringe when referred to as a resource. I'm not a lump of coal to be burned. The phrase "efficient use of resources" is much less offensive to me when applied to carbon-based fuel than when applied to people.

Over-clocking a CPU & demanding higher output from people probably doesn't overlap on any Venn diagram.

If it’s your job to nag me to cut waste, I'm left to wonder how and why you exist.

As a teammate, you may lean on me. But as a misguided efficiency weenie, please don't Lean on me.