Elegance Is An Attitude
By: Olga Kouzina
Tags: Leadership, Software Development, Personal Development, Ethics, Integrity

Once upon a time… there was a time when people would publish lots of posts that compared software development, or agile adoption, or product development to martial arts: Aikido, Karate, Judo, etc. And, as I’ve observed on numerous occasions, if too much energy is being pumped into a concept or a movement, it’s only a question of how much time it takes for back-balancing narratives to appear and to level the scales. This links to one such bounceback article whose author speaks against the martial arts analogies, considering them harmful.

If we make a direct analogy between becoming skilled in software development and mastering a martial art, it’d be far from being an accurate one. I guess people have resorted to these analogies in an attempt to project their copies as romantic martial arts disciples into their usual lives as software developers, or managers, etc., and to make their life journeys more mission-filled this way. There’s little to no space for showing primeval qualities of a warrior in software development, but the need to exercise this attitude has nowhere to be gone, as it turns out. Well, except that it can be channeled into video gaming, of course :)

Fortunately, most of us have little to do with killing beasts, fighting bloody battles, and standing through mortal combats. The warrior-related wrap-up for courage, strong will, persistence in achieving goals and readiness to fight has remained in the past largely. And, with no wrap-up, people somehow become oblivious to the fact that their personal and professional lives still provide plenty of opportunities to exercise the qualities of a warrior.

Let’s go back to analogies. Roger Federer has represented an unbeatable specimen of mastered elegant performance to me, for well over a decade. Look at the way he plays. No waste. He knows what to do, and he knows when to do what. His game represents a perfect flow, a model for effective lean production and —a model for a perfect modern-life warrior as well. Elegant, no blood on his hands, he fights, has pitfalls on the way, stands up, recovers, plays on, and… is equally graceful both in victory and in defeat.

Roger Federer (source)

But, Roger Federer is just a guy whose on-court apparel has stains of sweat on it. And, the sweat on the software developers’ T-shirts is little different from that of the 20-time Grand Slam champion :).

Here’s the challenge: it’s much harder to fight, win, and achieve goals when there’s no immediate physical danger involved as in martial arts, or when there’s no opponent on the other side of the net as in tennis. There’s only so much room for the elegant warriors… or is it?

The point I’m making is this one: let people compare their lives and their jobs to whatever they want. If the analogies inspire and motivate them, make them feel good about their work, and help them carry themselves with discipline, dignity and integrity as elegant warriors, achievers, believers, fighters, winners.

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