Rowing Together

In Daniel Brown’s “The Boys in the Boat” the book details the University of Washington (Go Huskies) 1936 US Olympic rowing team and their journey to compete in Berlin.

In order to understand the story, Brown needs to explain the finer details of rowing. (bold parts are the main point if you don't want to read the whole excerpt)

By and large, every rower in an eight-oared shell does the same thing—pull an oar through the water as smoothly as possible, as hard and as frequently as requested by the coxswain. But there are subtle differences in what is expected of individual rowers depending on which seat they occupy. Because the rest of the boat necessarily goes where the bow goes, any deflection or irregularity in the stroke of the oarsman in the bow seat has the greatest potential to disrupt the course, speed, and stability of the boat. So while the bow oarsman must be strong, like all the others, it’s most important that he or she be technically proficient: capable of pulling a perfect oar, stroke after stroke, without fail. The same is true to a lesser extent of the rowers in the number two and three seats. The four, five, and six seats are often called “the engine room” of the crew, and the rowers who occupy these seats are typically the biggest and strongest in the boat. While technique is still important in those seats, the speed of the boat ultimately depends on the raw power of these rowers and how efficiently they transmit it through their oars and into the water. The rower in the number seven seat is something of a hybrid. He or she must be nearly as strong as the rowers in the engine room but must also be particularly alert, constantly aware of and in tune with what is happening in the rest of the boat. He or she must precisely match both the timing and the degree of power set by the rower in the number eight seat, the “stroke oar,” and must transmit that information efficiently back into the boat’s engine room. The stroke sits directly in front of and face-to-face with the coxswain, who faces the bow and steers the shell. Theoretically the stroke oar always rows at the rate and with the degree of power called for by the coxswain, but in the end it is the stroke who ultimately controls these things. Everyone else in the boat rows at the rate and power at which the stroke rows. When working well, the entire boat operates like a well-lubricated machine, with every rower serving as a vital link in a chain that powers that machine forward, somewhat like a bicycle chain.

High performing product teams are no different than Olympic crews. Without exception they succeed because they are, metaphorically, rowing in the same direction. Conversely, teams that struggle or are stuck are often plagued by people working in an uncoordinated way. They work against each other by choosing to row in whatever direction, power and speed they deem to be the right one.

So it often happens that a Design Manager tells a designer to do X while a TPM prioritizes Y and an Eng Manager chooses Z. Each one is trying to determine the best way to row but it is done in an uncoordinated way. The team spends a lot of energy going nowhere. Too many teams act as if the various disciplines operate in a vacuum or are distinct modules that will magically interoperate.

If you find yourself stuck it is worth asking “are we all rowing in the same direction?"