trust

Well Yes, They Lie

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’m trying to figure out why people are surprised that other people, especially powerful people, lie.

Yes, of course I’m inspired by the whole thing where people are surprised Trump suddenly backs H1B visas, or at least sounds like he does. I mean why are people surprised that politicians are lying and how do they ignore previous disappointments? People are also surprised that businesses lie to them even after buying a bunch of terrible projects. Don’t even start me on movies, where lying about quality has become an art form while the films aren’t art but so much a sad cry from help from marketing.

I’m looking at YOU, Kraven. How do you mess up “sexy chest-revealing badass hunter”?

Anyway, it seems we can complain but we keep believing the lies. I mean look how people are talking Jimmy Carter being decent like we’re surprised someone is. But then we go ahead and believe some salesman or politician who lies to our faces as it’s the right lie.

And look, I get some people lie, even good ones, especially politicians. Some folks have to keep secrets even if they’re usually terrible about. Politicians and marketers have to put some polish on some potential turds. People are gonna get lie-adjacent, and yeah we get that.

But how do we keep being surprised that people lie to us blatantly when they’ve kept doing it? Especially when they’re politicians and big companies who you’d think we wouldn’t trust, considering our constant cultural elements of “don’t trust these things.”

I think it’s because cynicism also begets faith. Which also sounds like a dynamite alt-metal album title

Anyway by aging fantasies of music aside, think about what happens when you get real cynical about people. You don’t trust anyone. You’re not sure who to count on. Mistrust is hard even when it’s warranted. It’s wearing.

So you also want to trust someone. Cynicism can, in some ways, generate trust because you want someone to help you solve the problem. When you’ve got a big enemy, you want a big friend to help you.

Mistrust breeds trust.

Of course people know this. Ever notice how a lot of conspiracy theorists afraid “of the system” also sound pretty authoritarian? They want to fight The Conspiracy by establishing something that sounds just as bad when you think about it – they just promise you’ll be on top. People trust them because so much mistrust gets sown – or they come with it.

If you ever follow any podcast about conspiracy theorists you’ll quickly see how they’re often absolutely, blatantly lying. It honestly gets tiring, and I follow these things since it’s kind of relevant to my job in IT and medicine where lots of conspiracy theories get pointed.

Ultimately we need to know how to form trust appropriately – with communities. Know who you can trust, know what real trust feels like. That lets you also evaluate other relationships, especially more distant ones like with politicians and media figures. In time they might be worth trust, but you need some real trust to avoid the trust/cynicism fluctuation – and to get together to push politicians and leaders who need some pressuring.

You ever hear people rant about how we lack community? Well, I’m leaning to believe the ranters as I get older. If we form real relationships it may help us detect ones people are using to manipulate us. A little more trust might just breed effective mistrust as we have something to believe in and something to protect.

But at least for now maybe we can be a little more suspicions – even of ourselves.

Steven Savage

My Agile Life: Trust

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life! This one actually gets into my writing – and someone else’s writing.  And work.  Let’s get to it.

So last week I wrote about how the Second Agile Principle helped me deal with changes to my book.  Short form, I learned how to better embrace change and my writing is better for it (despite my resistance).

This got my friend Serdar thinking about his next book, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, and he did his own post on change.  Here’s where he hits on something very important to Agile – personal and professional:

To wit: At one point when writing Flight of the Vajra — in the first draft, mind you — I abandoned several thousand words and backed up a fair distance in the story so that I could explore what seemed a far more fruitful plotline than the one I had cul-de-sac’d in. Better to turn around than to keep fighting against odds I hadn’t a chance of bucking. It meant losing several days worth of work, but when you put faith in the process rather than the resulting artifacts, those hard decisions aren’t so hard anymore.

Agile relies on a lot of trust.  Without trust, Agile falls apart (which I’ve seen plenty of times).  Think about it:

  • You have to trust your Product Owner that they know what they’re doing with their directions.
  • You have to trust your teammates to do their work.
  • You have to trust the Scrum Master to have your back.
  • You have to trust the processes to help you get the job done.
  • You have to trust yourself to do things right.

In personal agile it’s the same thing.  You have to trust yourself, build processes you trust, and keep improving things so you trust they get better.  Personal agile like I use will very quickly show you places in your mind where you don’t trust yourself.

But here’s the funny thing – you trust a lot of things.  But you don’t trust the product or even the product backlog as some kind of perfect result or guide.  Serdar rightly says the artifacts of writing aren’t to be trusted, and I’d add even the artifacts that lead to writing – or any other actions – aren’t to be trusted.  Be it plans for software or a book, they will change.

In fact, trusting your current plans on anything is going to trap you.  Change is inevitable.  The most trustworthy plan will fall apart because the world shifted around it.

Instead you have to trust the processes that keep you going forward. Your sprint standups, backlog planning, the act of writing or coding or whatever.  You trust in them to do good work, get feedback, and set direction.  Good direction – in the forms of backlogs, plans, user stories, etc. – is the result of trustworthy people and processes.  But it is not as important – or as reliable – as they are.

It’s not the map, it’s the confidence of the person giving you directions to help you get to your destination.

In your life, in your own projects, in your Agile (at home and at work) – are you trusting the people and the methods?  Can you?

If not, my guess is you’re none too happy.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

Frustration Friday: The Thing We Lost

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Yes, I know the Great Recession has caused many, many losses.  If I wasn't a news fanatic I wouldn't be able to avoid the stories anyway – and as it is, I seek them out.

Everyone talks about the loss of money.  X billion dollars vanished. 

Everyone talks about the loss of jobs.  This country has Y percent unemployment.

Everyone talks about the loss of national prominence.  The whole world is going through a self-esteem crisis apparently.

What no one is talking about is that among all this there's been a huge loss of something else, a resource that can be made and destroyed – and once destroyed is hard to remake.

That resource is TRUST.  The pundits and economists don't talk about this nearly enough.

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