“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs
Every process, person, or thing that is exceptional became that way through lots of hard work and intention. When we talk about best practices, and management processes we as an industry seem to leave that part out. It is easy to talk about what “magic” successes have been had, but hard to describe the sometimes grueling process and reasoning that made the magic happen. I believe this is related to Survivorship bias which is a cognitive bias where we tend to focus on successes rather than failures.
Understanding that as we share our successes, it is important to also share the decisions and hard work that went into the creation of those successes, is the first step. By sharing information about the work that the success was built upon lets others examine its context, and gives hopes to those currently struggling.