4 ms·

> When presented with more effective, new practices Yeah but... how can you judge the actual effectiveness of some practice if it's new? There's no long-term e

> When presented with more effective, new practices Yeah but... how can you judge the actual effectiveness of some practice if it's new? There's no long-term empirical evidence to judge it by.

cle 6y ago
I don't think the author is trying to say "don't try anything new unless you have evidence", but "don't use something without understanding why". Experimenting with a practice to understand it better is a perfectly valid reason. Adopting a practice and expecting it to magically solve your productivity problems, without understanding why and whether the tradeoffs are appropriate, is not a valid reason...that's cargo culting. Another way to look at it is...what are your expectations? If you are using something with the expectation that it'll magically solve your problems, and you don't really know why...you're cargo culting. If you're using something and suspecting that it'll solve your problems, and you expect to watch it and gather feedback and evidence on whether it's actually helping or not, and potentially axe it in the future if it's not working out...that's not cargo culting at all, but effective process.
Jtsummers 6y ago
Experiment. If you desire evidence-based management, you have to seek out case studies (and actually consider them, not discard them when brought to you like one manager did to me, "Show me the evidence." "Ok." "Whatever") or run your own experiments. Even if you do seek out case studies, you will still want to run your own experiments because what works for X may not work for you. Find a low impact project or a project that can absorb a potential setback and try it out. If it fails, you at least gave it a shot. If it succeeds, promote the idea among other teams and projects. You can always apply a sanity check on ideas before trying them, just like in other things. "I heard that having a foosball table in offices increases productivity by 25%." "That doesn't sound right, but we can try to create better break areas."
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > Find a low impact project or a project that can absorb a potential setback and try it out. That's how I introduce every new thing to the companies I've worked for. Use it in a non critical project first. The problem with using a new thing is a critical project is if anything goes wrong the company hive mind will scapegoat the new thing and you.

> When presented with more effective, new practices Yeah but... how can you judge the actual effectiveness of some practice if it's new? There's no long-term empirical evidence to judge it by.

cle 6y ago

I don't think the author is trying to say "don't try anything new unless you have evidence", but "don't use something without understanding why". Experimenting with a practice to understand it better is a perfectly valid reason. Adopting a practice and expecting it to magically solve your productivity problems, without understanding why and whether the tradeoffs are appropriate, is not a valid reason...that's cargo culting. Another way to look at it is...what are your expectations? If you are using something with the expectation that it'll magically solve your problems, and you don't really know why...you're cargo culting. If you're using something and suspecting that it'll solve your problems, and you expect to watch it and gather feedback and evidence on whether it's actually helping or not, and potentially axe it in the future if it's not working out...that's not cargo culting at all, but effective process.

Jtsummers 6y ago

Experiment. If you desire evidence-based management, you have to seek out case studies (and actually consider them, not discard them when brought to you like one manager did to me, "Show me the evidence." "Ok." "Whatever") or run your own experiments. Even if you do seek out case studies, you will still want to run your own experiments because what works for X may not work for you. Find a low impact project or a project that can absorb a potential setback and try it out. If it fails, you at least gave it a shot. If it succeeds, promote the idea among other teams and projects. You can always apply a sanity check on ideas before trying them, just like in other things. "I heard that having a foosball table in offices increases productivity by 25%." "That doesn't sound right, but we can try to create better break areas."

Gibbon1 6y ago
> Find a low impact project or a project that can absorb a potential setback and try it out. That's how I introduce every new thing to the companies I've worked for. Use it in a non critical project first. The problem with using a new thing is a critical project is if anything goes wrong the company hive mind will scapegoat the new thing and you.