In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People [1], Stephen Covey presents a maturity continuum that progresses from dependence, to independence, and then to interdependence.
[2]Dependence, Independence and Interdependence
Covey concisely observes: “Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greater success.”
As we develop along this continuum, it’s obvious that our level of capability expands tremendously. In the workplace, dependent employees need guidance for major work tasks; independent employees can figure out what they need to know, but they might not share that knowledge; interdependent employees, in addition to their self-sufficiency, are constantly learning from and teaching their network of peers. Interdependence is highly regarded by employers, and shows up on many statements of corporate principles and values.
So how can IT organizations actually develop interdependent thinking and behavior? Here’s where open source comes in. People need experiential learning [3] opportunities that present themselves in day to day work. In my experience with IT organizations, open source (and more broadly, open ways of working [4]) has the power to fundamentally improve the way that people work. In the course of doing their jobs, they can readily adopt behaviors and mental models that move them higher on the maturity continuum.
Consider the staff of a dependent IT organization whose relationship with a proprietary vendor centers around licensing and support fees. If they want a new feature added to the product and the vendor has other priorities, there’s not much they can do. They may be able to get some attention by offering to pay even more money. But even if money talks, if it’s the only thing that can talk, the conversation becomes significantly constrained. Worse, if they carry that same mindset into internal interactions, thinking that “this is the only way that business works”, they risk reducing their own position to a zero-sum game where they can win only by competing for scarce funding. They then remain largely unaware of and unable to tap into the broader resources that they already possess, both individually and collectively.
Open source can liberate IT organizations from that dependence. For starters, they no longer have to pay a licensing fee and can run as many software instances anywhere they want, anytime they want. This is especially relevant in virtualized, cloud computing environments where most traditional licensing metrics (like the number of processors) effectively stifle exploration. They’re welcome to customize products as much as they want to, since the source code is freely available. Even if they don’t have the skillset to fix bugs or make enhancements, they can choose to contract with any company that does. In all of these cases, they become more independent than they were before. As they continue to develop, their vocabulary grows to include a fuller range of their skills and capabilities. This enables them to make more granular, intelligent tradeoffs across the spectrum of buying, integrating and building. At the independent stage, IT organizations learn to control their own destiny.
IT Organizations get a taste for interdependence when they contribute code changes to an open source project. For example, let’s say they submit a simple patch to make a particular parameter configurable instead of being hardcoded. Once this change is accepted, instead of having to re-port this patch each time they download a new release, they can rely on it being maintained by the project developers. Developing trust with the project team can encourage them to make further contributions, with the immediate payoff of support and the longer-term reward of getting their most important features added. What really expands their horizons is when they see their work being built upon and extended further by the community, in ways that they could never have previously envisioned. They realize how much more they can accomplish through collaboration than they can on their own. At the interdependent stage, IT organizations can have holistic conversations that represent the capabilities of an entire ecosystem, bringing it to bear to solve their employer’s specific problems. And as they solve those problems, they can contribute their learnings to advance the capabilities of the ecosystem, fueling a virtuous cycle.
Not all of this happens automatically, of course, or by some fixed timetable where after N months of implementing activities X, Y and Z, IT organizations graduate to interdependence and experience all of its benefits immediately. But it does happen naturally, when people with sufficient baseline capability are immersed in an open environment, are given ample coaching and support, and can see examples of highly skilled behavior in action. Let’s look at some on-the-job experiences that illustrate this point.
When IT organizations are customers of a proprietary product and something goes wrong, it’s easy for them to develop a kneejerk reaction to call the vendor and complain. For starters, they’re paying for support. But what intensifies this is when they feel like they’ve hit a brick wall and can’t go any further because the product is closed. If this happens frequently, they may give up even before trying, become even more frustrated with the vendor, or adopt some other less effective behavior. With open source, nothing stands in the way of their own problem-solving skills. IT developers can browse through the code and see if something catches their eye. They can invoke a debugger and see what might be happening in real-time. They can run third-party analysis software on it, or undertake a detailed review themselves if they have the time and inclination. The more familiar they become with a particular project’s code and with reading source code in general, the more competent they become at solving similar problems in the future. Even if they contract for support on an open source project, they can submit more informed requests that enable the support provider to zone in on their problem more readily. They can also gauge the competence of that support organization based on their grasp of the code, and switch to a better provider if necessary.
Working with high-quality open source projects instructively leads IT organizations to a deeper understanding of and appreciation for open architectures and open standards. Code that reflects a broad understanding of the problem that it’s solving, addresses it in a clean way, and is as simple as possible, tends to be accepted. Whereas code that defines a problem too narrowly, introduces unnecessary kludges, or increases complexity without substantially increasing usefulness, tends to be rejected. This is an effective counterweight against a tendency in many IT organizations to rush out incomplete solutions that end up causing more problems over time. When contributing code, IT developers learn to think more globally, putting themselves in the shoes of others who share similar challenges albeit in vastly different environments.
As they succeed with contributing to open source projects with the support of their employer, they gain the respect of fellow users/developers, which directly translates into leadership and influence. Their personal brands and their employer’s brand increase both in value and in affinity with each other. Employees get public recognition for their efforts, and simultaneously are incented to continue to be affiliated with their employer’s brand. This type of synergy is a hallmark of interdependent organizations.
An important lesson learned by IT organizations on the road to interdependence is where and when they can optimally invest their resources with open source projects. Some projects are very open to input from the practical experiences of Corporate IT. Other projects are unwilling to adopt suggestions that don’t align with their strict tenets. The best projects balance purity with pragmatism, maintaining the essence of what makes them valuable as a whole. While experimenting with various approaches, IT organizations discover which problems they want to solve on their own, and which ones they don’t. They identify where they want to be treated as a customer, where they want to interact as a peer, and where they want to play a leadership role.
People who work in this kind of environment, day in and day out, can develop strong collaborative networks all over the world. These networks help to identify those relationships with customers, partners, and others that can be transformed from largely transactional relationships into ones of deeper mutual benefit. They develop instincts for and insights into what makes blogs, wikis, and other social software work best, and can be invaluable in shaping their employer’s social media strategy. On a broader level, interdependent IT professionals are powerful catalysts of outside innovation [5] as described by Patricia Seybold, and exonovation [6] [interview [7]] by Michael Tiemann. They can operate from a visionary mental model [8] of commerce and community.
Open Source is a complex, multidimensional subject that intersects and often integrates the fields of science, technology, business and psychology. By expressly choosing open source as a strategy for developing interdependent capability, IT organizations can provide a growth path for knowledge workers that engages them in a variety of ways and on many levels. Those who become adept at making the interdisciplinary connections can represent their organization to a number of audiences in ways that are directly compelling, and can create new streams of value. They help bring a unified sense of purpose, energy, and vision that inspires people to realize their potential.