Book Review: A Radical Enterprise

Posted on February 28, 2025 by way0utwest

I grabbed this book over the 2024 holiday season as it was on sale and recommended by the DevOps practitioners over at ITRevolution.

A Radical Enterprise looks at a new way of building organizations, actually a few way, where the power and decisions are decentralized.

I am pretty open to trying new things and experimenting, but I was very skeptical this would work in many places as I started this book and remain so after finishing it. I kept thinking this felt like a feel-good, kumbaya approach to running an organization. Giving responsibility, devolving it from management to individual teams and having them collaborate together and with other teams.

While I am skeptical, there are some large organizations doing this, and the description says 8% of corporations do this, which I find hard to believe. In any case, a few of them are:

  • Haier – USD$38b in revenue
  • Morning Star – processing about 40% of the world’s tomato products
  • Buurtzorg: – over €427 million revenue
  • Nearsoft – $80mm consultancy
  • W. L. Gore & Associates – makers of Gore-Tex products, over US$3b in revenue

Those are some impressive organizations. Maybe 8% isn’t wrong, but it feels high. I’ve worked in a few organizations, and all of them have a more central control organization. Even at Redgate, where I think we give a lot of autonomy to teams, I wouldn’t think we’re in the category of a radical organization.

There are some principles to this idea, and some imperatives. The imperatives are:

  • Team autonomy – giving control to small groups in terms of how they practice and schedule work as well as allocate themselves.
  • Managerial devolution – trying to allow individuals or teams to manage themselves
  • Deficiency Gratification – gratifying our higher level needs. Not things we need, but we want and desire. I’m not sure I completely understand this.
  • Candid vulnerability – being open and transparent. Even for someone like me that is fairly open, this is asking a lot.

Ultimately, I’ve worked with too many people who aren’t motivated, who don’t try and drive forward, who don’t want to make decisions, or who don’t want accountability. I think many of the people I’ve worked with wouldn’t thrive in this type of org and would get booted. Maybe that’s OK, and maybe this is only suited to some types of people.

It’s an interesting idea, and I found myself fascinated and rooting for success, but always thinking this wouldn’t work in most places I’ve worked. Maybe all the places I’ve worked.

Give it a try if you want a different way of thinking about work, and if it’s for you, maybe look for a job at one of these organizations.

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Advice I Like: Investing and Growing Rich

Posted on February 28, 2025 by way0utwest

Investing small amounts of money over a long time works miracles, but no one wants to get rich slow.  – from Excellent Advice for Living

This is incredible advice, and something my parents instilled in me at a young age. I’ve had mixed financial success here, but I do think about this in a different way.

Learning new things and growing your career are things that happen slowly as well, but so many people don’t see the value of small things learned every day. Or managers don’t see the value of having employees learn constantly vs taking a week for a class.

Note, they sometimes don’t even want to give you a week to learn.

Whether you want to grow your finances or your career, regular investment is slow, but it pays incredible dividend over time. Learn, experiment, and practice your skills regularly. It works in music, in sports, and it also helps your career.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

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The London Redgate Summit

Posted on February 28, 2025 by way0utwest

In a week I’m heading to London for the Redgate Summit. I enjoyed these last year and had some very interesting conversations with customers, prospects, and a few Redgate fans.

This year the event is on Mar 11 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which should be fun given that I’ve been re-watching Ted Lasso (I still need to make a pilgrimage to Richmond…).

The schedule has a variety of tracks for leadership and tech people. There are even some breakfast sessions if you want to learn more about Oracle or PostgreSQL. I’ve got the keynote session and a panel for leadership on my agenda.

Check out the video from last year, and register to come this year. I’ll see you in London next week.

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Why Not Use AI?

Posted on February 26, 2025 by way0utwest

Erin Stellato, a program manager at Microsoft, asked a very interesting question on LinkedIn: “why do you *not* want a Copilot in SSMS?”

That got me to stop and think a minute. Why don’t we want to use an AI to help us? It’s a good question, given the hype and (maybe) potential of the technology. While it might not help you now, or with your specific thing, it might help others, so are there good reasons not to use AI technologies, like the GenAI LLMs?

Let me know today. What are you reasons for not using them (apart from cost or restrictions at work)?

I will say that I rarely use AI tech to get work done, or even in my home life. I just don’t enough places where I think I need help outside of a search. I search a lot, but I haven’t found AI to be faster than searching. Sometimes it is, but sometimes not and the unreliability of the tech bothers me. That being said, I do have a tag where I write about the AI things with which I am experimenting.

I think for many of us, AI is too amorphous and unclear. We don’t quite know when it helps or doesn’t. We don’t know how to judge the quality of it. It’s also not a habit or integrated into life. Most of the suggestions I see in various places aren’t things I’d ask. The default page in my local mode has these suggestions:

  • tell me a fun fact
  • show me a code snippet of a website header
  • give me ideas for what to do with kids’ art
  • help me study for a college entrance exam

That last one might be the only question I ask, not for college, but maybe for something like an MS exam. However, is the AI better than a search? Maybe, but I’d have to try it. Right now I’d be tempted to just search for a list of things to study. Maybe the AI helps me find those better, but really I’d want it to quiz me on different things.

The problem is I don’t trust it to ask good, relevant questions, or necessarily give me the right answers if I asked it to quiz me.

I guess ultimately is I don’t have enough “I think an AI is better” reasons over the do what I normally do. Without substantial evidence AI is better, I don’t use it much. Do you feel the same way?

Steve Jones

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