Herding Vespas

If your nature is to herd, then sometimes you’ll herd Vespas. I don’t just mean this figuratively.

I used to go to work every day in SoHo, a neighborhood with a seemingly limitless supply of beautiful, neurotic dogs. Many of these dogs aren’t meant to live in a city. They’re bred as working animals, but bought as fashion statements.

One morning I saw a man on a red scooter stopped at a crosswalk as a woman walked by with her miniature Australian shepherd. Something about the Vespa triggered the dog. His wild blue eyes lit up and he jumped into action, tugging at his leash and trying to run circles around the scooter. He barked his little head off. The light turned green, the line of cars behind them honked and honked, and the dog’s owner pleaded with him to get a hold of himself, to just admit he was imagining things and chasing a scooter rather than a sheep — but this dog was born to herd.

Are we really so different from that dog? I know I’m not. I see patterns in everything, even when I shouldn’t. I reach for data and structure and models and theories. I parse. I try to understand things — even when they should not or cannot be understood. I parse, I parse, I parse. This pattern-seeking behavior works wonders in the right circumstances, but not in the wrong ones.

We can be so attracted to certain kinds of work that we see it in the wrong places. We can’t help ourselves — whatever our version of herding is, it just feels so good. It scratches some deep itch and reminds us, in some way, of who we are and why we were put on this earth. The trick is being able to tell the difference between the right situations and the wrong ones. The trick is being able to ask, “Am I herding sheep, or am I herding Vespas?”

Teams herd Vespas too. I’ve found this is especially true as companies get larger. At a certain size, functional teams spend most of their time hanging out together: The engineers spend most of their time with engineers, the data scientists most of their time with data scientists, and the designers most of their time with designers. They develop their own dialects and rituals. They become connoisseurs of their craft. They hire fewer mutts, and more pure breads. And before you know it, certain behavioral patterns that once were one-off quirks are now “typical of the breed.“

Watching someone herd Vespas used to drive me crazy. I’d fight and fight to put the conversation back on track. Of course, it never worked, no more than the woman’s pleading worked on her dog. Now, rather than fight, I just ask myself or the group: “Hey, are we just herding Vespas here?” That’s usually enough to short circuit things.

But you have to respect the hard wiring. With this self awareness about your (or your team’s, or your company’s) deep tendencies comes the power to put yourself in situations that reward them. If you love to herd sheep, live and work somewhere with a lot of sheep. Dogs don’t have much choice in the matter, but we do.