Learned (And Actual) Helplessness

Management identified "learned helplessness" is usually actual helplessness.

The basic idea of learned helplessness is that, when you are exposed to punishment for things you do not do or have control over, you learn that punishment is inevitable, no matter what you do. The result is passivity. You just lie there and take it. You don’t bother to try to improve because there’s no point. The random punishments will continue, regardless. That does happen in particularly bad situations (e.g., where the team is punished for random stuff the boss does), but it’s actually pretty rare.

What I see more often is actual helplessness. I see companies where managers roll their eyes and complain about the team’s “learned helplessness” when the teams have no control over what is asked of them. That’s actual helplessness. I find it ironic that the managers who roll their eyes most often are usually the ones who are creating the helplessness through bad management.

I once had the misfortune of working for a company that had lots of those management eye-rollers. The teams were forced to march through a backlog created quarterly by management without their involvement, and they were punished if they didn’t complete it. There was insane pressure to deliver on a schedule decided by management without team input. One programmer had a breakdown in front of me, complete with tremors and tears, because of that pressure. All the teams were forced to march in lock step with each other and to a perverted form of Scrum that seemed designed to eliminate any goodness. They were punished by a particularly abusive “Agile Change Manager” when they pushed back or deviated from the orthodoxy. People were literally terrified of her. The control even extended to the coding level. For example, the teams were forced to have 75% test coverage even though test coverage had zero impact on reported defects, most of which were caused by the system doing the wrong thing, not bugs.

Needless to say, the teams didn’t bother to try to improve. This is actual helplessness, however. They weren’t permitted to do anything that would actually help in any significant way, so why bother? When nothing improved, the managers blamed the teams for their “learned helplessness,” and bonuses went down. Who, exactly, did those managers think the teams learned that helplessness from?

Of course, team autonomy is impossible in this situation. Management complained that the teams wouldn’t act autonomously, while punishing the teams that tried. That’s not going to work.

So, how do you fight back? At this same organization, a group of three teams got together and essentially formed their own organization within an organization. They found a corner of the (rather large) building that was insanely difficult to get to (You had to go up four floors, take a 10-minute trek to the end of a very long corridor, go down a floor, and then up some steps.) They then walled off a corner of the room with portable whiteboards. There was one “door,” and it was made very clear that entrance was by invitation only.

Within those walls, real Agile was happening. Work was pulled, temporary teams were formed around the work, customers were contacted for feedback, delivery was frequent—the whole nine yards. Nobody—particularly that Change-Manger bully—new what went on behind the walls, but but they were the most effective teams in the organization, so nobody bothered them.

It’s an indicator of exactly how bad things were that management didn’t say, “Wow, we all need to be that good. What are they doing?” Management just ignored them. They were too threatening, I think. On the other hand, those teams were the only ones in the building that were actually happy. They were lucky, I guess, that management didn’t just fire them all, but they were too productive for that to be an option.

I found it interesting that none of the other teams emulated them. That may have been learned helplessness, but I think that plain-old fear was a bigger factor—actual helplessness.