To turn on a dime for a dime

I gave a talk and ran a Knowledge Café at a recent Large-Scale Scrum Conference in London and had the pleasure of meeting Craig Larman, the co-creator of LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) with his colleague Bas Vodde.

A few things Craig said stuck in my mind. First:

What gets measured gets gamed.

Credit: Craig Larman

I have long been critical of measures because they are too easily gamed and I only wish I had come up with this catchy way of expressing it myself as an alternative to "What gets measured gets done."

A second quote from Craig was:

To turn on a dime for a dime.

Credit: Craig Larman

This was said in the context of adaptive capacity - a key goal of Agile software development. So in other words "to quickly change direction at a low cost".

It reminded me of this quote that is so often miss-attributed to Darwin:

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

Credit: Leon C. Megginson

Though this statement is more accurate:

It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of species that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

Credit: Kamal S. Sayegh

In our rapidly changing, unpredictable world, the ability "to turn on a dime for a dime" is fundamental to personal, organizational or societal survival.

In order to adapt, we need to better understand the changes taking place and to act accordingly. We can only do this through open conversation and collective sensemaking. Hence our "conversational capacity" - our ability to hold strategic conversations is key.