John Cutler recently wrote an article on his Beautiful Mess blog entitled—The Weeds. In it, he explores the notion of going too far into the details of a role/activity from another role perspective. Aka, getting into the weeds.
For example, a project manager might be asking too detailed questions about the design of a particular UX component and trying to reduce the effort associated with it. They have gone “into the weeds” with the developer.
A couple of things that this article made me think about including—
Role confusion, Role overloading, and Role clarity—being something that is often a challenge in agile contexts. Mostly because of two factors in my mind. First, many don’t believe roles are needed in agile contexts. And second, because the roles contain lots of overlap and ambiguity.
Trust—agility requires a high level of inherent trust and psychological safety in your culture. When you have it, you’ll avoid the weeds, but usually, both are a challenge.
Is it inherently bad to wear multiple hats? I think of T-shaped-ness here and my reaction is no. Multiple hats are good as long as there is role ownership/clarity and trust.
How does shared responsibility work? It’s often confusing for many. That is if everyone is responsible then who is really responsible? Or does responsibility by committee work?
And I LOVED his ebb & flow point –
I wanted to end with an observation.
In most companies, you see a natural ebb and flow. There’s a push for more collectivism and shared responsibility. And then a swing back to more specialization and boundaries. Everyone gets excited about strategy. And then there’s a swing back to getting into the weeds and craft. Developers want to be involved in the discovery. And then a swing back to “you know, it would be better if the product manager and design lead focused on discovery.”
We need more high-level context!! No wait, that’s not actionable.
Everyone decides. Oof. One person decides. Wait! No! Everyone decides again.
The trick then is riding that wave in the healthiest way possible.
Wrapping Up
I do want to also make the point that no matter how many hats you’re wearing, I think there is a strategic (big picture) and tactical (weeds) nature to everything. Or, at least there should be. Another way of saying it is I don’t think it’s healthy, wise, business smart, or even viable to be:
100% of a Weed Wacker
Or
100% of a Big Picture Thinker
We all need to be adept and sensing and responding in both dimensions as required of us in our roles.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
BTW: Have you put John Cutler and his writing on your radar? You should! Subscribe to the Beautiful Mess here - https://cutlefish.substack.com/subscribe