Corporate Culture Tectonics
There is an impressive amount of neuroscience research related to making decisions based on "gut feel." The research is showing when "gut feel" works and when it doesn't. Two important variables can determine which of these two outcomes is more likely:
The level of experience the decision maker has that is relevant to the decision domain and
The context in which the decision needs to be made.
In his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," Danial Kahneman relays the following story:
The psychologist Gary Klein tells the story of a team of firefighters that entered a house in which the kitchen was on fire. Soon after they started hosing down the kitchen, the commander heard himself shout, “Let’s get out of here!” without realizing why. The floor collapsed almost immediately after the firefighters escaped. Only after the fact did the commander realize that the fire had been unusually quiet and that his ears had been unusually hot. Together, these impressions prompted what he called a “sixth sense of danger.” He had no idea what was wrong, but he knew something was wrong. It turned out that the heart of the fire had not been in the kitchen but in the basement beneath where the men had stood.
In this case, the fire commander was highly experienced with fighting fires and he was making decisions while in the midst of fighting a fire. If the fire commander needed to make a crew decision while on a sailboat (assuming he had no experience with sailing boats), the experience of fighting fires would not have easily or rapidly transferred to the sailing context.
Kahneman's entire book is essential reading for understanding just how problematic "gut feel" decision can be. We hear about the spectacular success stories where "gut feel" decisions paid off. But we don't hear about all the equally spectacular, and probably far more common failures.
So what might happen to a person's ability to make good "gut feel" decisions when an organization's culture undergoes a significant change?
Prior to the culture change, long-term employees have been making decisions within the context of an entrenched culture. They made "good" decisions in the sense that they had years of experience in making decisions about their area of expertise within the legacy corporate culture. They knew the politics, the communication patterns (Conway's Law), the players, the unstated protocols and rules, etc. Much of what they knew was unconscious. They were good firefighters while when working with the fires they understood.
Along comes someone dedicated to introducing a paradigm shift, a significant change in the organization's culture. Maybe this shift is from a siloed waterfall project development culture to a collaborative Agile project development culture. Suddenly, the old way of making "gut feel" decisions no longer applies. The old corporate system expertise no longer works in the new context with new rules and expectations. "Gut feel" decisions are likely to lead to poor quality outcomes if the decision makers don't update their understanding and decision-making capabilities to match the new context.
Left un-monitored and without a sustained effort, old decision practices won't actually change and people will work to re-establish the old context using the words from the new. This is the system pushing back (Shalloway's Corollary to Conway's law) and the end result is Frankenagile or cargo cult Agile.
Image by Роман Никифоров from Pixabay