What colour should we paint the Bike shed?

Matt Wagner matt.wagner at redhat.com
Fri Nov 16 19:28:19 UTC 2012


On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 11:46:09AM +0000, Martyn Taylor wrote:
> A guy in our office here sent this to me today, after I was
> complaining that technical discussions generate no interest in our
> office mailing list,  but deciding "What type of biscuits we should
> buy" generates a flood of mails.
> 
> From time to time our list produces similar responses:
> http://puce.bikeshed.org/

That page burns my retinas, but the bike-shed analogy is worth suffering
through it. Bikeshedding is indeed a persistent problem (not just here).
Recognizing it and having a name to put to it is quite worthwhile, even
if you have to stare at a lime-green screen for a while. (The fact that
they chose such a god-awful color is quite ironic, given the context.)

I'm a big fan of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence
People." The book is quite old, and bits and pieces of the advice are
kind of manipulative. But there's a lot of excellent advice about how to
optimally interact with people.

One of the bits that's really stuck with me, and that seems rather
relevant to everyone wanting to pick the color of the bikeshed, is in
the chapter entitled "Let the other person feel that the idea is his or
hers." The actual title is an example of things that sound a bit
manipulative, but the insight into psychology is interesting either way.

The idea is that if you dump an idea on a group of people, it's human
nature for some of them to oppose it, and not necessarily on its merits.
But if you lead people to think that the idea is *theirs*, in whole or
part, they're far more likely to go along with it.

I think bike-shedding gets at the same effect. People try to make ideas
"theirs" by arguing over the bikeshed color, even if it doesn't actually
make any difference. The challenge is how to get people to feel
ownership of ideas without having them feel like they have to make
changes, and without trying to dupe anyone. I think it's a question of
involving people enough that they feel like they're part-owner of the
idea, without letting the discussion devolve into bikeshedding.

-- Matt



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