The OSS Golf Analogy

Over the years, I’ve often referred to The Corkscrew Analogy or Momentum Spiral to describe a mindset of incremental improvement that’s needed to keep an OSS project moving forward.

Rather than trying to jump straight from scratch (blue dot) to perfection / completion (yellow dot), it’s far more helpful to make many smaller steps and iterate. For example, rather than trying to write the perfect system architecture document from start to finish, instead start with a strawman and progressively add details as needed. That way each section of the document can evolve on a just in time basis to inform other stakeholders only when needed (eg to inform developers what to build on the next sprint). So rather than being a huge bottleneck with many stakeholders urgently awaiting completion of a 200 page masterpiece, momentum can be more easily maintained with an iterative documentation process.

However, whilst playing mini-golf with my family over the weekend, I realised that golf is perhaps a better analogy for iterative progress on an OSS project than the corkscrew above.

Picture this. You’re playing in a corporate golf day with your closest colleagues and many esteemed experts from your industry. You’re standing on the first tee and an expectant audience has assembled, eagerly waiting to see you take your first swing. You’ve never played this course before and you haven’t even swung a club in years. The fear of hacking your first drive onto the adjacent road or duck-hooking it into the thick rough on the other side of the fairway is palpable.

Commencing an OSS transformation can instill a similar wrenching fear. Your colleagues don’t expect you to smash your first drive 300m down the middle of the fairway. However, you know they do expect to see a level of competence and authority that instils them with assurance (no OSS pun intended). But I’m veering off the fairway here. Fear is one common factor between OSS transformation and golf, but it’s not the main analogy I want to share today.

No, I want to suggest that we can’t wait for everything to be perfect before we start. We just have to stand up there and whack the ball as close the hole as our talents allow us on our first shot and then on every single subsequent shot (action) we take. It’s the courage to step up and take the swing that propels the project forward, not endless procrastination about what the perfect swing looks like (that’s the pottery analogy).

It’s not just our own mindset we need to consider. We also need to set pragmatic expectations for our stakeholders, sponsors and colleagues. These organisational groups often fear any missteps in their OSS/BSS transformation journey. There’s often an apprehension that every shot, every action, must be flawless from the first tee to the 18th green. This fear can paralyse decision-making and hinder progress. The imperative for the golfer and the project team is to just keep making those swings – taking those steps towards transformation – despite knowing they will never achieve the perfection that everyone is craving.

Even a golfer as accomplished as Tiger Woods would almost certainly never claim to have had a “perfect” round. He has had many that were remarkably close, but never perfection. It’s this pursuit of excellence, despite knowing perfection is unattainable, that drives success in both golf and digital transformation.

Unlike the circuitous route implied by the corkscrew analogy, golf is by far the better mental model. Every swing a golfer takes is a calculated effort to move the ball closer to the hole. Sometimes you might smash it down the middle. Other times you might scythe it into a position that’s further from the hole or harder to extricate oneself from. Most of the time, your ball inches closer though, in the general direction of its target.

On the rare occasions when it doesn’t, the amazing thing is that the game offers the golfer another chance, another swing, to correct course and continue on the journey towards the hole. This iterative process of setting strategies, giving it a whack, moving forward, assessing outcomes and making constant adjustments is strikingly similar to the path of digital transformation.

But Digital Transformation isn’t a solo pursuit. It’s a Team Sport on an unseen course

Consider the complexity of managing a digital transformation across an organisation. It’s not just a single player aiming for the hole; it’s an entire team, each member with their own set of skills, perspectives and challenges, navigating the course in approximate synchronisation. And much like golfers traversing a new course without a rangefinder or hole map, it’s impossible for organisations to embark on their transformation journeys with a complete view of every twist and turn that lies ahead.

This absence of perfection – of perfect plans, perfect skills or perfect execution – necessitates a more pragmatic, flexible and adaptive approach be taken on every single OSS transformation (regardless of what some experts might want to tell you). The journey of digital transformation, much like a game of golf, is an amalgamation of strategy, skill and the courage to keep swinging despite the risk of embarrassment (and more).

Oh, and if you’d like to engage a caddy to help you navigate your way around the next course you play, we’d be delighted if you would ask us to act as your guide.

PS. There’s one other thing that I really like about the golf analogy. Golf encourages efficiency – the lowest number of shots wins. The same is mostly true for transformations too. The cheaper, the faster, the more efficient, the least resources used to deliver the transformation is better.
However, I sometimes wonder whether this is true of all transformations. For example, Time and Materials (T&M) contracts for suppliers, solution integrators (SIs), etc arguably encourages the opposite. If the transformation can be made more complex then it becomes possible to take longer and generate more billable hours. If documentation, reporting, bureaucracy and meetings can be increased, then it takes longer to get the job done and more billable hours are required. Can you imagine if scoring in golf were inverted, encouraging “Whack-F$&#! Golf,” where the highest score wins and mediocrity was rewarded?