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.