- What the Textbooks Dont Say
- Descriptive or Prescriptive?
- Estimates or Code?
- Delivery Date or Features?
- Control or Productivity?
- Organic Decision Making or Mechanic?
- The Place for Innovation
- My Personal Tradeoffs
Organic Decision Making or Mechanic?
I’m going to borrow a line from a wonderful blog at the Rands in Repose site:
Mechanics move forward methodically. They carefully gather information in a structured manner and store that information in a manner that makes [it] easiest to find again. They quietly observe, they stay on message, they are comfortably predictable, and they annoy the hell out of Organics.
Organic decision making is gained from a informal communication system: conversations you overhear in the company bathroom, the body language and tone of voice people use in meetings, what you’ve managed to Google on the Internet. Mechanic decisions are made through a systematic process that’s probably documented.
Mechanic-style decision making can take a long time or a lot of consensus, and may lead to over-engineering the solution. Organic decision making may be quick, may be wrong, and often lacks clear documentation on why, when, or by whom a decision was made.
These two examples are extremes; most people act somewhere in the middle. Which extreme would be better for your organization?