I was coaching a team once and I made a suggestion to one of the developers about something they could do differently. The actual suggestion isn’t important to the story so I’ll ignore that.
The developers response was “that’s a great idea but the team lead wouldn’t let us do that”.
So I talked to the team lead and he said “that’s a great idea but the architect wouldn’t let us do that”.
So I talked to the architect and she said “that’s a great idea but this group over here wouldn’t let us do that”.
So I talked to that group and they said “that’s a great idea but this person over here wouldn’t let us do that”.
Are you seeing a pattern yet? I went up five levels and everyone told me what a great idea it was. They also told me how someone else wouldn’t let them do that.
I could have kept going but I was already convinced at this point that there was no reason to not do that thing. So I went back to the original developer and told them about all the conversations I’d had. We did that thing and nobody ever complained. In fact, everyone thought it was a great idea and were happy with the results.
What can we learn from this?
Sometimes the obstacles we face are entirely in our heads. We often avoid making changes because of assumptions we’ve made, that we’ve never validated.
Perhaps it’s time to question our assumptions.