Since the late 2000s boom in Silicon Valley, self-help style mantras for start-ups have truly proliferated and seeped into business and popular culture. I am thinking about this scene in HBO’s Silicon Valley where it is proclaimed, satirically, that “Failure = Success.” And the “Move fast and break things” posters hanging up at the Facebook headquarters.
But if you can get past the catchy slogans, “Getting Real” does seem to offer us budding creators some important advice. I have worked for most of my career in educational organizations where long meetings and consensus building are part of the culture. We are probably less efficient than we could be, but when the goal is to build knowledge and supportive communities with diverse groups of people and constituencies — that approach makes sense. If the goal is to make a product, however, I see the wisdom in following some of the mantras about scaling back, staying lean, reducing the number of meetings, launching on time no matter what, and prioritizing.
At the same time, I wonder if any of the values implied by the advice in the Getting Real text contribute to the dismal statistics on diversity in the tech industry. In a recent episode of the Reply All podcast, the reporters interviewed Leslie Miley, who was the only Black engineer at Twitter for a number of years, as a platform for discussing the differences between how diverse and non-diverse teams operate in workplace settings. They talk about how many start-ups have low diversity stats because company heads make assumptions similar to those in the text about how communication should be free-flowing and teams should be lean — which leads them to hire people who share similar backgrounds and cultures to themselves. Research discussed in the podcast suggested that even if diverse teams take longer to build trust, they are consistently better at solving problems because they come at challenges from many different angles. I only read the assigned pages, but up to there, diverse thinking was not a consideration in the Getting Real text.
Of course, as we all know from the campus protests this year, and statistics and accounts from students and professors of color in higher education, academia struggles with inclusion and diversity as well — so its values don’t always correspond either… but I still wonder…
Provocation 1: As you begin brainstorming your project ideas, how do you reconcile the different / incompatible seeming cultures/values of education/humanities fields and the start-up world? What can/should educators and academics learn from start-up culture and vice versa?
Also —
The juxtaposition of the “Getting Real” text with the readings about specific projects and tools seemed very appropriate. On the one hand, “Getting Real” urges us to keep our ideas focused, and to deliver something limited in scope and simple, but powerful and functional. In browsing through all of the project examples (especially the 1989 feature and the Green Book mapping project), however, my mind started racing from idea to idea, and I felt a case of “scope creep” coming on.
Provocation 2: How, practically, can we keep our visions simple, especially in this exploratory stage? I feel like there’s something useful about a “sky’s the limit brainstorm” which then gets paired down. At this point in the game, if I think too small, I think I limit myself. As my writing teachers have said, it’s easier to cut than to add more stuff… How do we balance both kinds of thinking — feasible and idealistic?
Sara! I can’t believe I missed this post! My provocation has been anything but swift (it’s been languishing in “drafts” for long enough to prove that project doldrums are real).
I am excited to have these dual tensions of feasibility and idealism in the context of this class — I think the shared space of multiple disciplines is a useful forum for cutting away to the feasible ideal. 🙂
Thanks, Sara (and Jojo, too!), for posting the motivations this week. The readings this week in some ways appear to run contrary to the expectations of scholarly research. Several of the chapters in “Getting Real” seemed to reflect such a sense of cut-throat practicality that it was almost difficult to internalize, albeit easy to read and understand. In order to balance the ideals of brainstorming with the harsh realities of project design and implementation, I think one almost needs to assume multiple perspectives and to make sure that at each stage of project development is being done to take steps towards a cohesive goal. In generating ideas, one still has to be practical and throw away those that clearly would not fit the project goal and make the project bulky. The reading was very clear about making projects as lean as possible from the start, as things tend to become more complicated in later stages of the project development. Holding simplicity as an ideal, even in the process of brainstorming, can likely support the longevity of the project. I think that it is both a challenge and necessity to determine a purpose that is both simplistic and original enough to carry a valuable project through. In different stages of planning, I guess, you need to serve as your best friend and worst nightmare, in both supporting the proliferation of new ideas, and then scrutinizing and trimming back your own ideas.
Being honest, I was a little critical of the project planning tools that were posted on the 37signals site. The tools seemed well designed, but I fear the consequence of getting trapped into the model plan of a nice-looking Gantt chart, which can make things complicated for later project management. Maybe I’m a bit of a traditional, but for the purpose of early project development, I think there is a lot of utility in using basic applications to lay out a realistic idea with a clear purpose and a feasible plan of action. Later on in project implementation, especially in a project that involves working and communicating with others, I could differently. Any thoughts on this? Feel free to disagree!
Provocation 2: How, practically, can we keep our visions simple, especially in this exploratory stage? I feel like there’s something useful about a “sky’s the limit brainstorm” which then gets paired down. At this point in the game, if I think too small, I think I limit myself. As my writing teachers have said, it’s easier to cut than to add more stuff… How do we balance both kinds of thinking — feasible and idealistic?
This is an interesting question. I understand where you are coming from and can see both sides, so to speak. On the one hand being able to think big is crucial to mobilizing resources towards a greater end, and seeing the bigger picture. On the other hand, I get what the “Getting Real” piece was saying- scale down and lean out. As I was reading that I thought it was actually solid advice for something like our ITP independent project, and it really motivated me to think that way to get a project accomplished in that manner. Sometimes the scope of a project or task can seen daunting and overwhelming, and something like breaking it up and breaking it down to digestible and do-able pieces is something I’ve always tried to do.
On the other hand, I do see some aspects of their assertions to be problematic. I wondered about things like “fund yourself” and “keep your team small”, don’t do things like “multiple sign offs”, and “just get things done!” and their implications. In some ways this reminds me of the housing bubble that burst. The conception of do now and ask questions later, skip the formalities etc can be a dangerous an slippery slope.
All in all, these questions are important to think about as we move forward with our projects. I don;t think there is any singular answer.
Thanks Jojo and Sara for pointing to what the discourse Getting Real might be implicitly embodying. The social context where a company can rely on user feedback for improving its product is something quite specific, and I was left thinking what its Hidden Costs are. The assumption that “everyone already uses the web” reveals something about the assumption of who that “everyone” are. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage) Also, some of the approaches are even contradicting themselves, between keeping it general (Human Solutions, Avoid Preferences) and taking up a specific vision (Make Opinionated Software). But this is about efficiency, so maybe some inconsistency Just Doesn’t Matter.
Cynicism aside, I do think that these are actually helpful insights on getting things done. Accepting constraints as reality and figuring out how to stick to the greater goal is something we need to do whether we are building products or going through academia. This is probably related to Sara’s provocation too, but one way to look at the approaches in the book is that they are attempts to shorten the distance between thought and reality. I think that if I am able write much faster than build digital things, it means less danger for my writing to be disconnected with my thoughts than for my digital things. The emphasis on speed might not be the most important path in terms of education/humanities, but speed can offer the possibility of more speculation and experimentation in a medium—as argued by The Columbia’s Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities. (http://xpmethod.plaintext.in/) So this could be one possible step towards reconciliation?
On a probably unrelated note, the phrase “getting real” made me think of “keeping things in perspective”, which reminded me of the Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
Achim — thanks for the link to the illustrated guide to a PhD — definitely puts things in perspective! Its writer has such an interesting story and profound reasoning for doing the work he does.