Trust and control

In 2016, I was invited to present my Agile experience at an ASML conference in the Evoluon in Eindhoven. Although ASML had already experimented with Agile, I believe this marked the start of a journey that continues today. The theme of the conference – “Trust or control” – stuck in my head for years. It reads as a dilemma. Every manager would like to trust his/her staff and empower them to make their own decisions. On the other hand, as the managers will be held accountable, they’d like a modicum of control.

When preparing for my pilot license, we were trained to keep the plane very precisely at a certain altitude. There’s an instrument for altitude, but we quickly learned that it’s not very useful for this purpose – you’re always late, resulting in large fluctuations. It’s what I like to call a lagging indicator. A much more useful instrument to spot altitude fluctuations is vertical speed. The ultimate indicator for altitude changes, however, is the artificial horizon. This is what pilots use.