It’s a miracle you are reading this sentence. A miracle that can only be caused by massive global cooperation of people over centuries. I believe it is cooperation that is the single greatest asset of the human race. When we work together we make miracles. When we are selfish and work for ourselves, we corrupt everything that is good about the world.
Just to read this, tens of millions of people have been involved for centuries. Ada Lovelace and early pioneers created the concepts for programming languages and the modern computer system. Innovators in materials, manufacturing, economics, mining, architecture, and more moved the plot along. The internet itself is a massive cooperative achievement with wires being laid at the bottom of the sea floor. The browser, JavaScript, WIFI, PHP, WordPress, Linux, MySQL, the keyboard, the mouse, the screen technology…everything contributed.
We have such nice things because of cooperation. Yet, most of the time, we fight against that benefit, especially when it comes to software.
Conway’s Law
Organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
— Melvin E. Conway
I saw an illustration today that parodied this concept perfectly.
We have all seen this kind of software. There is a mega menu and every single “module” gets it’s own little home. It’s not integrated, it just adds to the mess. The key lies in a lack of cooperative spirit inside an organization. Each module thinks they are on their own and just need to make more features for their own little fiefdom.
I remember at Intuit how Quickbooks, Quicken, and TurboTax all operated as completely different companies. I’ve experienced this many times over the years. Product managers, engineering, design, and executives all have blood on their hands creating these difficult-to-use systems. You can not ask a designer to “fix” something that will meet a lack of cooperation.
I believe it is always up to the CEO to dictate culture.
The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.
Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker, School Culture Rewired, ch. 3 (2015)
This is the key insight. If the CEO is willing to tolerate anti-cooperative behavior, then you will get silos. If they do not tolerate it, you will get cooperation and all of the benefits that come with it.
I sometimes wish I had a magic statistical answer machine. I could ask it to draw a chart of how many acts of corruption by politicians have occurred over the last 100 years. (I said it was magic) I could also ask it to rank the top 1000 software companies by level of cooperation.
We can have nice things
I think the world is acting at about 2% efficiency. We can feed the hungry, house everyone, heal the sick, and allow each person to thrive. We can do it…if only we could cooperate towards that outcome. The world is more divided than ever. I really hope cooperation can survive and allow us to continue on this pale blue dot.
Whatya think?