Priming

I'm working on the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics. As you might guess, the book is about how the brain works, based on years of research. He talks about the mind as two systems, the first being fast and intuitive and the second being more deliberate.

One of the ideas he discussing is that of Priming. Priming happens when something such as a set of words impact our thought and actions. He gave a great example of an experiment with two sets of participants. One set was given a set of words associated with being old (gray, wrinkle, Florida) and another group had words not associate with being old. They were asked to create sentences with the words. They were then asked to walk down the hall for the next experiment. The group with the "old" words walked down the hall much slower than the other group...these were all college students so it had nothing to do with their actual age. One group was primed; they had the idea of old planted in their minds and they acted differently because of it without knowing it.

In another experiment, people were asked to put money into an "honesty box" based on how much coffee or tea they drank. There were different posters placed on the wall above the money box. On weeks when the posters had eyes looking down, people paid more money than on weeks when the posters were of flowers.

Think of how easily priming could impact a team. Imaging a team trying to overcome a complex technical challenge such as getting a test case to pass. They aren't sure why it isn't passing and they are discussing solutions. One person's comments could lead the team all in the wrong direction without them even realizing it.

So how do we combat this? The reason priming happens is because our fast, intuitive mind takes over. To combat it, we need to rely on our more cognitive side, which Kahneman points out is also lazy and willing to let the intuitive side run the show. For this imaginary team, using a red teaming approach might work, or an analytical took such as Five Whys. Anything that will get the team to look beyond intuition and engage their more deliberate thinking patterns.

As far as Thinking, Fast and Slow, I'm only about a quarter of the way through and have come across a lot of interesting ideas, so I am sure I'll have more to post on the book.

Psychological Safety

I had an interesting experience recently. I was working with a team as they went thru their sprint planning. They had figured out their capacity based on yesterday's weather and their average amount of interrupt. The product owner suggested the sprint goal and they started picking stories based on the goal. They reached the point where one more story met the sprint goal, but put them over their estimated capacity. The scrum master pulled it into the sprint and said he thought they could get the story done.

At this point I stepped in and commented that it was up to the developers to decide if they wanted to commit to the work. The developers remained silent. I made a comment about not over-committing and finally some comments were made by the team to keep the story out and pull it in if they get everything else done.
So what happened here? Why didn't any of the developers speak up when the extra story was first pushed on them? Based on this and other observations in the organization, I attribute it to a lack of psychological safety. The developers didn't feel safe to say "No, that's more than we can get done."

I wrote another article recently talked about group think. The two ideas are related. Group think exists in situations where people don't feel safe stating an opposing view. But psychological safety goes much further than that. A team without psychological safety will be reluctant to take chances, it impacts their ability to learn, they will be afraid to admit mistakes. In general, it keeps them from becoming a high-performing team.

So how does a team fix this? The reality is they can't. It's not the team but the organization around the team that will or won't create a space of psychological safety for the team to exist in.  Product owners and chief product owners need to be coached to understand how their actions impact the environment. It's starts with them showing they are vulnerable, by admitting their mistakes. They need to encourage teams to take risks and not punish failure but show how it can be used as a learning event. It's only when teams see these kinds of behaviors that they will start feeling safer, and next time a developer will speak up and say "No, that's more than we can get done."