TheStickingPoint

In a deliberate play on TheTippingPoint, Malcolm Gladwell's book, I propose TheStickingPoint. Gladwell measures populations mainly in terms of adoption of a novel technology. Eventually, when a technology achieves enough penetration into a population it's adoption becomes self-reinforcing. The game changes, with that little step. One example is how the network effect worked with Fax machines.

So, I propose TheStickingPoint. Many things seem to get stuck at a particular point, of refinement, of adoption, etc. and won't budge. In systems thinking terms, a sticking point and a tipping point are complementary kinds of balanced feedback loops.

With a tipping point, you have two kinds of positive feedback balanced - more stuff you get more with one loop, less stuff you get less stuff with the other. Push the system either way and it will take off in that direction under it's own power.
With a sticking point you have two kinds of negative feedback balanced - more stuff you get less with one loop, less stuff you get more with the other. Push the system either way and it pushes back to the sticking point.

Talking about methodologies made me think of sticking points, especially because with methodologies we so often seem to insist on doing something that isn't working, or retreat from something that does. So what do we do about the feedback loops that make up a sticking point when they leave us stuck somewhere we don't want to be?

-- JimBullock 2003.08.20 (". . . stuck in the middle with you . . . ")

Think a bit about the times when the sticking point helps us stay where we want to stay. I'll bet that will help us understand how they keep us somewhere we don't want to be.

--DaleEmery 2003.08.20 ("... I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair ...")

In biology and medicine, this is called homeostasis (coined by Walter Cannon). Without it, we'd all be dead. Basically, we're stuck beings. - JerryWeinberg 2003.08.20

Yeah, OK, but:

Robust changes happen sometimes, so that would be in spite of homeostasis, and
Sometimes we're in homeostasis in a place that isn't so good for us.

I'm all for my being alive being a homeostatic state. But there's this problem when being stuck on the tracks with the oncoming train isn't so good. If homeostatis is life, how do we change at all, or do we?

- JimBullock, 2003.08.20 (Still stuck on this question.)

For the sticking points that keep us where we don't want to be, I propose the following:

Sticking Points = habitual patterns we don't recognize

It may not always be accurate (nothing is) but it sure has been the case many times for me personally. And, in organizations, it is the same -- habitual patterns we either don't recognize OR habitual patterns we have not be able to change because we haven't addressed one of the key factors in the feedback loops (which means, we haven't recognized the critical issues)

An interesting topic!

DianeGibson 8/21/03

Nice addition. Building on that, in organizations one approach to this is externalizing tacit knowledge. If you can make a picuture of the balanced feedback loops, for example, you might move from there to considering moves that change one loop or the other, or change the system in a different way. If any of the loops involve people, the people can change what they do, which changes the relationships in the loops.

I did a workshop-y thing on systems as part of a software engineering class some months ago. The design had ideas and material for 4 cycles of work. We got through the first 2 cycles during the class meeting time - about what I expected. So the students have an analysis technique they can use that they got some practice with, and also exposed some of their assumptions about how software systems get built. In terms of timing, making it a whole day would have given us time for 2 more cycles which were about noticing strangeness about a system, and moves you can make to change a system, respectively.

I'd be really, really curious to do this whole thing, all four cycles of work, with an actual development organization that is exploring it's own practices. How to manage the personal experience and what comes out during an exercise like this is another whole question, and frankly scares me.

I think having a sticking point in an organization is a lot like Diane says. It's in the rest of the song I quoted at the beginning, as well: Clowns to the left of me . . . jokers to the right; here I am (stuck in the middle with you.)

-- JimBullock 2003.08.21 ("What can we <mess> with next?" - Eddie Murphy in 48 hours.)

How did we get stuck on this topic? - AnonymousLurker (and spelling corrector)

Updated: Thursday, August 21, 2003