I do a weekly roundup of tech stuff.[1] I flagged this story for inclusion, mostly because of the types of conversation I'm seeing on HN today.
This is not "New age bullshit", although I understand the sentiment. The most frustrating part about studying how teams self-manage for success is that management theory consists of a lot of words and emotions and very little concrete theory. That doesn't make any of it wrong; it just makes it very difficult to discuss in the same logical way we'd discuss, say a new theorem.
What's missing here is any sort of agreed-upon discernment function. Psychological safety is important. Ok. But how do we tell when we have that versus when we don't? Process exists in service of people. Ok, what does that mean? Should a process, for instance, inform people of things they don't like or want to hear? I would think that if a process wasn't ever uncomfortable, it's not much of a good process. But then again, we don't know.
The entire list is mostly like that. It's not things you can disagree with, it all sounds pretty good, but as a reader you're left with an empty feeling. Just what the heck am I supposed to do with this?
There's an old saying that much of being a management consultant is pandering to a natural type of person who wants to burn it all down. The rest of it is just telling clients what they already want to hear. It doesn't give those folks a good reputation.
Once again, though, it doesn't mean any of it is wrong, it's just intractable. As much as mankind has tried over and over again, it remains barbarously difficult to translate feel-good things we all instinctively know that work into practical and actionable advice, at least when it comes to knowledge work. (For assembly-line production/manufacturing work the situation is different, thank goodness)
I believe there's a lot of overstatement on both sides of this discussion, a lot of posturing and demagogurely, even by people who mean well and don't realize what they're doing. It's not that there's nothing there, it's that there is a lot of work still remaining. This is too important for all of us to simply bounce around off-the-walls about. There's something of value there. Let's go find it.
1. If you're interested in my weekly roundup, shameless plug: https://danielbmarkham.com