C2 vs. Human Knot

BSS Lesson of the Day: Trust

Today we had someone come into Boston Startup School to go over Agile development. All the developers and designers were put together in one room and we went through a series of exercises. We did two primary exercises, Command & Control (C2--can't shake those DoD acronyms!) and something our facilitator called 'Self-Organizing Teams' (but you might know better as 'The Human Knot').

As we were going through the C2 exercise, one person played the employee, and one the manager. A basic task, walking 60 paces, was broken down into discrete one-pace units, through which the manager had to directly manage the employee and attempt to complete the goal as quickly as possible. I was partnered with Aman, a current Olin student, and as we went through the exercise it felt a little ridiculous to have to wait for each command before taking a single step.

(critical thinking note: the exercise is purposely designed to point out the negative aspects of over-managing, not managing in general, and that lesson was not lost on me).

What I did find, though, is that when I shifted my mindset away from having a specific goal and just listened to Aman's instructions, it became more fun. I started wondering which direction he would ask me to go in next, and began to just listen and trust to his direction, rather than attempting to 'figure it out' myself. When I did that, my frustration with not feeling any control over the process evaporated.

The second activity was the human knot. I'm a huge fan of this exercise, although with large numbers of people sometimes it can become a bit of an ordeal (and can sometimes take a long time to finish!). The first time around we had a small group with a dedicated 'manager' to provide a birds-eye perspective, along with direction, to the team. We had a smaller team (5 people) and so we completed the exercise relatively quickly.

The second human knot experiment was done with 8 people (other groups had 12--we apparently were the 'straggler' group) and no 'birds-eye' perspective to help us along, and it was amazing how quickly the lesson was to just trust the people around you. When in the human knot, very little perspective on what's going on with your body is offered to you; instead, you provide the most value to others by being able to let them know where they are in space and in relation to the other members of the knot. In turn, it's difficult to make a good decision on what to do based on the information you can gather with your own eyes, and is, in fact, much more effective to listen to and trust the other members of your knot when they tell you to 'step over my arms' or 'twist around.'

I know from my Y-Combinator experience (even though it was several years ago) that it is a similar experience in a start-up. Often it can be difficult to have a good perspective on where you, or your specific piece of the app, sit relative to the vision for the company, and it can be great to get outside perspectives on what you're working on, or what direction you are headed in. The key, then, to being able to successfully function as a part of a team is to be able to trust those around you to act in the best interest of being successful as a company and as individuals; without that, it is too easy to lose focus.

Passing along experiences

I'm a big believe of giving back. Sometimes I forget how good it feels to inspire someone else, and it's nice to occasionally be reminded (even if I need to be poked and prodded).

Yesterday was pretty busy. Brunch in the morning near Davis Square at Sound Bites, then a Skype chat with someone founding an educational startup, followed by some Rails/Twitter hacking, Ultimate Frisbee with other Boston Startup School people, and a Skillshare between all the different Boston Startup School tracks.

At the end of it, I was ready to just chill out and play guitar.

Fortunately, though, Chris and Alex convinced me to join them in talking to a lot of high school students attending MITES (I was on the fence) about startups and entrepreneurship, and how to think with an entrepreneurial mindset.

There was a lot of advice shared, and it was really interesting to see where these kids' heads were at regarding their passion. Some had an idea of how they were going to change the world, others knew what they enjoyed, and still others were still 'figuring it out.' The best we could do was offer to inspire and give a little guidance as to how to have the 'entrepreneurial mindset,' something I think engineering has a lot in common with.

It's all about being able to look at a problem from as many imaginative angles as possible, and understanding how to go about solving a problem. In fact, it's why I believe an engineering education is the most versatile education out there; the ability to solve a problem can be applied to any discipline, especially when trying to solve a problem to make the world a better place.

Snakes in a Building or:How I got back in to Python

Last night was awesome. On the recommendation of a contact in the recruiting area, I checked out a networking calendar from Venture Fizz (www.venturefizz.com) and saw there was a Python meet up scheduled for yesterday evening at Microsoft NERD (New England Research & Development) in Cambridge. Naturally, I was interested in going!

I wrapped up the minor amount of Ruby on Rails I was working on in the Wilmington Panera (my favorite place to code--just enough people and coffee to not feel totally isolated) and headed on down. Getting there was interesting; while parking at the NERD parking garage was okay ($10 for the evening), there were a few other garages within a few blocks (but on the other side of Broadway) that were $8. Small difference, but I'm sure it will add up over the months. The building NERD is located in is amazing, with a great view across the Charles of Boston--next time I'll have to take pictures with a camera (at the risk of looking like a complete noob).

The actual meet up was awesome. Matchbox (http://matchbox.net/), a company making an iPad app to make processing college applications easier, sponsored and provided free pizza (wooh!) and I ended up sitting next to one of their software engineers. Also at our table were a handful of current students (none of whom were CS majors, but hey, neither was I!), and one of the founders of Career Village (http://careervillage.org). The conversations about what everyone was working on were great; I hope that by the next meet up I will have improved my django and refreshed my Python enough to contribute a little more to questions about AJAX and scripting and all that, but for now I'm content that I (felt like I) blasted through the first two parts of the django tutorial.

Also there were the founders (I think?) of US Green Energy, which was super convenient because I had been emailing back and forth with them a bit courtesy of our mutual friend Matt (whom I went to school with), so we chatted for a while about what they were working for and both agreed I probably wasn't good enough for the full-time position, but that an internship might be a possibility. Wooh! But before that could be talked about I need to dig up some code samples from back in the Mod Four/Y Combinator days and definitely brush up on my Python for an interview.

I'm so glad I went! And the pizza was good too (not just cheese, but veggie lovers and pepperoni (though I abstained))!