The hurting coffee machine

This is the story of the hurting coffee machine.

The Story

Jacob had been working for a few days at pressmynuts.com (a company specializing in selling products that you were forced to buy with annoying advertisements).

Jacob and 2 new colleagues (John and Christel) went to the coffee machine. Unfortunately, there were 2 other people in queue: Max Raismountains and Den Roostersin.

When Max and Den saw Jacob, John and Christel, they said "Hey, You!". "Us?" Jacob answered. "Yes, You!", Den continued: "You are breaking Tomcat! You need to move away the blahblahblah.conf file, because it is in the wrong place!".

Of course, Jacob didn't know what they were talking about.

Den and Max came out with other technical jargons spread everywhere pushing again.

John and Christel started answering in an animated way.

Den and Max replied strongly... again.

It probably lasted a few seconds, but for Jacob it was like a month.

Jacob was completely confused by all these talks.

His mind started sending messages to itself like:

• "What's happening here?"
• "Is this a fight?"
• "What happened between these guys in the past?"
• "Do I need to fix that Tomcat?"
• "What was the name of the file? Oh gosh I forgot it! Am I in danger if I interrupt them to ask again about the file name?"
• "Which time is it? Maybe it's time to go home"
• "I knew it that I should have applied to the other job!"

When Jacob shyly began to say something, John raised his voice, stopping everyone else in the room.

He spoke up and said "OK, but you can't annoy me while I am drinking my coffee!".

The bad energy among people eased.

Den and Max left the room muttering.

Silently, Jacob, John, Christel approached a table to drink their coffee and heal their mental wounds.

The Analysis

What's happened in this story?

Lots of things.

Jacob knows nothing about the past of the people involved and we won't know the flavor of that much-needed coffee.

But what we know is that:

1. there are 2 teams
2. the bad behaviour of one of the two teams (from now on 1st Team) begun to have an effect on the bad behaviour of the other
3. the other team (from now on 2nd Team) responded the same way
4. the 1st team continued again
5. the 2nd team responded again
6. etc...

We can represent this dynamic in this way:

This is a diagram of effects. This kind of diagrams is used in System Thinking as a support for seeing interrelationships and patterns in situations, stories, communication, etc... It stimulates thinking.

Looking at this example, we can understand that the "bad behaviours of 1st Team" (the cloud on the right) has an effect (the arrow) on the "bad behaviours of 2nd Team" (the cloud on the left). But also that the "bad behaviours of 2nd Team" has an effect on the "bad behaviours of 1st Team". One last thing is that it is a loop (the so called positive feedback loop) and so the bad behaviours will be out of control. They will "explode".

Consider that with just those 2 clouds and few arrows I have been able to communicate all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph. Imagine how many dynamics you can represent with such a tool.

This is not the end yet, stay with me.

At some point, we know that John intervened.

We can represent it this way:

As you can see a black square appeared. That means that there is a human intervention. Because it is black, it means that the effect of "bad behaviours of 2nd team" started to have an closing effect on the "bad behaviours of 1st team" helping to defuse the situation.

John acted as a barrier for bad behaviours.

Did John solved the problem between the 2 teams? Absolutely not. But he helped to avoid the escalation in that moment.

What Jacob didn't know was that the organisation had more than 10 teams and that what happened between those 2 teams was basically the normal interaction between all of them.

We can represent the dynamic with this diagram:

If you think this is a mess of a diagram, imagine Jacob immersed in that mess trying to survive to the inevitable explosions around him.

The good news is that the situation changed, but only after few years.

If you are wondering if it was fixed by the magic wand of a group of brilliant managers, I have to disappoint you (by the way, how can you think that a brilliant manager could work in a company called pressmynuts.com?)

The reason the situation evolved for the better was that people leave. And the more they were replaced by new hire that didn't live in that mess, the more the situation stabilized for the better.

We can represent this dynamic in this way:

So basically, the "blaming between teams" has an effect on the "level of frustration" that has an effect on the "number of people leaving" that has an effect on the "number of people hired".

That dot means in the end that "number of people hired" decreases the "blaming between teams".

Now, what do you think about a situation that was resolved not by management, but simply by the way things work?

We may not have an answer to this, but Jacob thought that if management remained indifferent to such a compromised situation, that same situation could happen again.

But that's another story.

Now it's time for Jacob to drink that damn coffee.