Multi-sensing success


We are learning machines and a fundamental skill that we have is the ability to naturally discern a success from a failure. This is what enable us to learn from experience. This is the first sense.

For example we see that the team on the left is more engaged, involved and collaborative so is probably exploiting the team potential while the team on the right looks less interested, a little bored and detached so is probably not performing at his best.


This is a qualitative first impression. Are we sure that it can tell the whole story or there is more that we can get to know ?




What we can do more is to make informations very visible to anyone and measure important indicators. This is the second sense.

It can help us to see that a team works better than another team and produces more. It helps to overcome preconceived ideas, cognitive bias and helps to see things that we usually ignore or prefer not to see.

This is a quantitative assessment of the team performances. Are we sure that it can tell when the team is building the right software and is delivering value for real to customers and stakeholders?



We are social animals
also. So the third sense is the ability to make questions and ask to the team, to  customers and stakeholders.

This help us to get a view from different perspectives and capture a multiplicity of expectations with all their diversity, similarities, conflicts and insights.




When we get the same result from all the three sense we ca be pretty sure of our judgment, when we get conflicting results instead more investigations are required. Indeed jumping to the conclusions is not smart: Laurence J. Peter says that

<< Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. >>




Tags :   |  |  |  |  |

Print | posted @ martedì 18 maggio 2010 23:35

Comments have been closed on this topic.