Israel Gat - Over the Top

Like every young man in Israel, when I reached the age of 18, I was drafted into the army, and started adjusting to the army way of everyday life. While army life posed many challenges, it soon became very clear and that I faced a single all-consuming question: how do you go over the top at the face of enemy fire? The question actually was two-tiered:

• How do I get myself to go over the top?
• How do I get other soldiers to go over the top?

Of course, physical fitness, small arms handling, and tactical skills were critical. But, they were of little value unless you could break out of the shock and paralysis caused by incoming enemy fire.

While the answer to the question of how one gets over the top might seem complex, the key ingredient turned out to be camaraderie. We were comrades-in-arms. Our bonds enabled us to rise above the instinctive self-centric and self-preservation view of a battle situation and elevated our concerns to the team (squadron, platoon, company) level, enabling us to concentrate on the tactical task at hand. The looming presence of death, particularly during the 1967 and 1973 wars, was omnipotent, but camaraderie was our antidote.

I recently received a lovely email from a former employee of mine, which connected the dots for me from the 1973 war in the Middle East to 2008 Agile in the US, as follows:

 

“…I want to thank you for pushing DSM into the Agile waters "feet first". Working with the agile teams at BMC those last two years were some of the most rewarding in my career because of the sense of purpose, direction and camaraderie that the process instilled in everyone.”

 

The most fascinating point to me in this email was the process -> camaraderie directionality. I had tried hard, perhaps too hard at times, to instill camaraderie as the means to improve our Agile process. As the email attests, the process actually fostered camaraderie among the team members.

I can imagine that camaraderie was instilling process that was instilling camaraderie that was instilling process, and so on, in a virtuous cycle that over time became extraordinarily effective for us. If you accept this premise, you must then ask yourself, “Where does one start in order to trigger a virtuous cycle in Agile?” My hunch is people over process is a good place to start.