Legacy can be a tricky concept with a lot of meanings and nuances. It can refer to words, actions or people. People and legacy, unsurprisingly, tend to be the messiest combination.
With teams, once companies are around a while and build up some history, legacy can be active – in the form of code, systems, and people – or inert – roadblocks to progress and change.
A close-up but external view of a company’s growth and change can look more like tree rings than a line chart. The innermost rings are the company’s earliest code, products and staff. They’ve been essential structures providing stability and growth. But, as often happens, to provide greater stability to a growing structure over time, those core structures become more rigid.
Part of this rigidity is the full-time work of getting a company running and keeping it going, front and back end. Operational trumps innovative. Which tends to mean that those responsible for that are left to it, and may not end up fully part of plans for growth and change. These legacy team members may not really get looped in until they get marching orders to integrate new people or processes into their well-oiled machine.
It can seem like sweeping change has appeared out of nowhere, and they weren’t consulted, even though they’ve been running things for ages. People who don’t have years of experience with the company and its systems are suddenly expressing a lot of opinions and ideas, but no one seems to be concerned about maintaining what’s made the company successful to date – and how much work that is.
From the other side, for those brought in to fix what hasn’t been working and take the company to the next level, it can start to seem like those core rings aren’t holding up the company from the inside anymore, but rather are bands around the outside, constricting growth and change and getting in the way.
New people will come on board with their skills and enthusiasm and desire to help and fix and innovate. They’ll look around at the code base and the product and the customer requests and the roles the legacy staff do… and wonder what the hell everyone’s been doing prior to their arrival.
Spaghetti code with no comments or tests. Sites and apps that haven’t been refreshed or launched new features for ages. Manual processes that are a huge waste of resources and that should have been automated ages ago. Assorted billings that keep getting paid for… who knows what. And spreadsheets. Everywhere.
Usually, the specific problem can’t be tackled or the important new thing built until this legacy mess has been at least partly cleaned up. Where to even begin?
Legacy team members just love it when it’s implied or said outright that they’ve been twiddling their thumbs and hurting the company. New team members love it when legacy team members are about as helpful and positive as the Muppets’ Statler and Waldorf.
Good luck with that, company leadership.
Everyone really is on the same side. They want the company to do well. They want to do their jobs well (and keep them). They want to make cool stuff. Aligning new blood with legacy experience and infusing it with respect, motivation and shared knowledge is challenging. But it’s not optional.
Trees stop adding new growth rings for two reasons. One, they’re under so much stress and/or deprivation that they don’t have the resources to grow. Or two, they’re dead.
All those messy, outdated and manual aspects of operations listed above? The legacy staff are aware of them. Intimately. Most likely they’ve been a thorn in their sides for a very long time. They would love to get rid of or change them.
If it hasn’t happened, there are Reasons. Lack of money, bodies, management roadblocks, technical roadblocks. Someone might forget to cancel a domain the company’s never used, but no one forgets to make e-commerce work seamlessly on mobile.
Even more rare is progress being intentionally blocked. Malignant corporate lifers who gatekeep ferociously and give their all to preventing change to safeguard their perceived power can exist, but you’re more likely to come across one on a sitcom than in real life.
Small companies simply can’t afford that kind of dead wood, and there’s not enough places to hide, especially over time. Maybe at giant corporations where they can burrow in over decades.
A better question to ask when these overdue innovations or entrenched messes are brought to light is, “So, how have we tried to address this in the past and what roadblocks have we hit?” This puts everyone on the same page. It will result in a lot more information sharing and encourage the new “rings” and the legacy ones to work the problem together.
Knee-jerk assumptions, on the other hand, that the people who did not solve the problem are incompetent, lazy, or think doing the grunt work is beneath them, are a bad idea. Voicing such assumptions is an even worse idea.
Additionally, while it is possible that newer staff are a bunch of fickle, reckless cowboys addicted to shininess, but don’t know how to put on their grownup pants and actually run a business... also unlikely. Small companies can’t afford to hire just for funsies. They hire for desperately needed new skills, ideas and energy. And they try to get the most skills and experience possible in as few packages (persons) as possible.
People who take jobs with small companies tend to do so because they want to make a difference. They want more agency and influence and to be part of it all, not just some dusty cog in a grey cube farm. People hired by small companies also tend to have skills and experience (and a broader range of them) not already held in the company. They can be the new blood or kick in the pants that’s needed.
But without the deep operational knowledge, they’re not going to get anything done. Nothing substantial, anyway.
When you’ve worked at a company for some time, especially in the same role or work, you can, indeed, develop some operational tunnel vision. Failing to fix something or getting shot down repeatedly when trying to make change will discourage anyone from trying. And yes, staying in one place can cause complacency on some fronts and allow people to be less than aggressive about ongoing learning.
Without additional resources, new ideas and influences that haven’t yet developed the patterns and ruts present in legacy people and processes, significant company-wide change may not be impossible, but it is pretty unlikely.
Without the core rings, the tree lacks stability, and its history. Without the new growth, the tree will die. Ultimately, stories about a company’s amazing evolution and growth make for a much better legacy than sad analyses of how many signs and chances the company missed to course-correct and embrace change.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached on Twitter at @melle or by email at me@melle.ca.
