Velocity role 1 - the Subtractionist

What do the most effective people do to increase the velocity of their teams?

There are several roles people take on teams, that make their teams move faster. I describe one of these roles today, and how you might learn from them.

Role #1: The Subtractionist

A Subtractionist simplifies everything.

Subtractionists see the world in terms of simplification. They take any complex situation, and distill the problem into a sentence or two. Or they ask the critical question that helps everyone focus on what’s important.

They do this by removing the non-essential. They are unusually clear thinkers, because they actually have a less complex version of the world to reason about.

On projects, a Subtractionist prevents feature creep. They cut through bullshit and focus on the core. They speed things up by removing work from consideration. A Subtractionist will say “the best project is one you don’t have to do”. Or, “the easiest way to double your speed is to do half as much.”

How do Subtractionists work?

Part of it is they ask questions differently:

• Do we really need to do this?
• How is this important to our customers?
• Could we cut ___ out and do it later?
• What if we did ___ instead? Wouldn’t that give us almost the same value, but be a lot simpler?

You’ll notice that Subtractionists use questions that require simplification. For example:

• If we only did one thing, what would it be?
• If we only had a month, is there a part of this project we could deliver that would still be valuable?
• If the quarter had 6 weeks in it, what goals would we choose?
• What is the list of things we should remove from our todo list?

What are the dangers of being a Subtractionist?

• Mostly, you have to be careful you’re distilling and not cutting out anything essential.
• Subtractionists can get in trouble when they believe they understand a situation, but they’ve oversimplified the situation or left out something critical.
• Subtractionists tend to ignore the things they have subtracted. So they tend to have bigger blind spots.
• Subtractionists can also sometimes be impatient with complexity. They can think that people who engage with complexity are overcomplicating things. Sometimes systems thinkers can conflict with Subtractionists.

Want to practice being a Subtractionist?

• Practice interrogating yourself with simplifying questions. The questions I listed above can be used to subtract. Schedule some time each week to review your projects and plans and see what happens when you simplify them. Look at your todo list and ask yourself what the one thing you have to get done today is.
• Practice using Subtractionist questions in meetings. There will be times that are ripe for Subtractionist thinking. Try and look for those opportunities, and see how these queries affect the meeting.

Other velocity roles

• Subtractionist
• Mole
• Dodger
• Nowist
• (and I have some more planned for the future)

Implementing velocity roles: team approach

Having someone on your team with this role can speed things up. But there are some things you can do to practice these roles. Here’s an exercise you can do on your team.

• Have each member of a team choose one of the velocity roles. Have them choose so that each person has a role, but there are no duplicates.
• Have them keep it secret which one they’ve chosen.
• See if after a month everyone else on the team can guess which role the other team members chose.
• Rotate the roles each month, so everyone gets to try each role.
• Talk about what you learn.

Your team should be more focused, efficient, and productive. And the team members should have an appreciation for different work styles.

Implementing velocity roles: individual approach

If you are practicing velocity roles as an individual, it’s easiest if you have someone to observe. So start out by looking to see if anyone you know is good at that role. Then watch what they do carefully, and emulate anything you think is effective.

If you don’t have anyone in your work life that is good at that role, then you can create reminders to yourself to practice that behavior. I’ve also found it useful to set aside some time to think about how I could act if I were better at that Role. Thinking through it should give you some concrete actions you can take if you were better at it. Through practice, you may find you exhibiting that role in a lot of your daily life.

A speech, resurrected

I’ve presented this content in a couple of forms: several talks, internal to a company, and external. I’ve also written it up on a corporate blog (it’s since been deleted).

For some reason, this content has resonated more than perhaps anything else I’ve done. I’ve had people come up to me years after one of those presentations and talk about it! After I gave the presentation at an internal company event, someone made laminated cards for all of the roles and handed them out to every team in engineering!

I’m reworking the roles a little as I write them up, so many years later. And let me know what you think – I have never had a reliable way to understand what resonates!

Have you known a Subtractionist?

Are you a Subtractionist? Have you known other people that you now recognize as Subtractionists? Let me know if I missed any observations or could describe this role better!

Thank you

The first version of this was created when Kirby Frugia, Darin Swanson, and I huddled in a room and brainstormed behaviors. I believe Keizan Shaffer and I also brainstormed a version of this for managers.

Image by Jae Rue from Pixabay