Swarming Problems

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville writes that he believes that mores in the US, or "habits of mind," play a prominent role in the protection of freedom. These "habits of mind" include township democracy and civic associations. These associations and political structures, it is argued, bring people together outside of party politics to solve problems.

In "Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems before They Happen," Dan Heath recounts the effort in Newburyport to combat death from domestic violence. He identifies as a specific point of leverage when groups with different responsibilities, powers, and perspectives sat down together to identify women at risk and and how they could be supported. Then someone made the call or did the drive-by to check-in. Prior to their work, there was an average of 1 domestic violence-related death each year. In each the 14 years after there were none.

In the DevOps approach to software development, we talk about swarming the problem -- attacking the problem with all the resources we have. At the same time, instead of blaming people, we view people who make a mistake or identify a problem as messengers that are part of the solution. This is a practice that evolved from "pulling the andon rope" in lean manufacturing. In lean manufacturing, again, the focus is on working as a team to solve a problem and assigning blame is discouraged or forbidden.

What all these have in common is moving from pointing the finger at others to identifying problems. And then enlisting the broadest possible group of people and organizations to help solve the problem in a coordinated and efficient way.

We should do more of that.