Israel Gat - The Social Contract Revisited

Macro-economics were very much on the mind of everyone I spoke with during last week’s Agile Development Practices conference and APLN Summit in Orlando, FL. While the specific financial concerns pertaining to Agile varied from one conference participant to another, the overarching theme was the inevitability of change. For some, it was the way in which Agile would be impacted. For others, the way Agile could impact the new economics, micro- and macro-, we all face.

In response to these concerns, I tweaked my “Leading the Agile Disruption” presentation. Specifically, I proposed the following variant of the Social Contract I had originally posted in Agile Thinkers:

• “Team, my overarching organizational objective is to preserve our team and its institutional knowledge for our corporation and its customers for years to come
• We will achieve this goal by enhancing our software engineering prowess to the level that the resultant benefits will outweigh the repercussions of the current financial crisis
• The state of the Agile art should enable us to attain hyper-productivity
• In the event that we fail to accomplish hyper-productivity and our assignments fade away, you will find the Agile skills you developed much in demand in the market
• Whether you will or will not be with the company in the future, I acknowledge your need to develop professionally as an Agile practitioner and commit to invest in your education/training”

Later in the day I discussed this subject with an Agilist working for a Fortune 500 company. She was kind enough to say the proposed Social Contract went straight into the bottom of her heart. Yet she was emphatic that HR and Legal would never ever allow her (or anyone else) to propose such a “contract” to the teams with which she worked.

We discussed in some length and depth why the proposed “contract” - which is basically a gentlemen’s agreement between an Agile executive and his/her teams - would be a non-starter in her company. Both of us agreed that the five points listed in the contract need to be stated. To ignore the subject would be like denying the existence of the flu.

While I can’t say I really know this Agilist well, she undoubtedly was a smart and knowledgeable lady. I was surprised that an Agilist like she would feel hesitant about addressing the subject in her company. It was obvious she considered doing so a career limiting step.

As I felt a fairly strong cognitive dissonance during and after speaking with her,
I e-discussed the subject with a few knowledgeable colleagues and asked for a second opinion on the Social Contract. Here is a summary of the reflections I got:

• Jim Highsmith, Information Architects, thinks the Social Contract actually goes beyond the current economic situation. Tenure, in Jim’s opinion, is variable. The Social Contract is for the period of time in which an employee and employer are together.
• Debra Germaine, CTPartners, agrees with Jim’s observations. She views mutuality of interests as the “cement” in the employer/employee relationship. To quote Debra: “contribution to company in parallel and in sync with increasing the dollar value of the employee.”
• Tim Miller, Rally Software, indicates Rally already took the proposed path. The key, according to Tim, is to create the culture within which employees are pursuing the goal of “creating your own reality.”  By helping folks create their own reality Tom creates loyalty to Rally. The temporal nature of the Social Contract is very clear to Tom: “Sometimes the only progress is by transferring or moving on.”
• Evangelos Simoudis, Trident Capital, suggests reinforcing the principles articulated in the Social Contract by highlighting the power of Agile as a “differentiating weapon to augment a software solution in ways that will satisfy a customer or prospect and facilitate the closing of a sale.”
• Steve Greene, Salesforce.com, believes the Agile Social Contract should be framed in optimism with a nod to the reality of the current macro-economic environment. He suggests the message “now is the time for us to invest in the company's future and your future (increased skills, Agile in particular)”.

Having received the second opinions cited above I am even more perplexed by what I heard from this Fortune 500 Agilist. Call me naïve if you want, but for the life of me I do not know how to instill trust, collaboration and empowerment in Agile teams without having authentic conversations on the subject of layoffs and doing something meaningful to counter the corrosive effects of layoffs. The Social Contract proposed above is an informal antidote anyone of us could easily apply at the team/project/business unit level. I trust many of us will do so.