I am sure many of us have confronted with the classic DIY (do-it-yourself) members in our teams. They do not ask for help. They love to brute force 'invent' everything from first principles. And hence they introduce delays and frustrations all around with this behaviour.
I am sure I have at times exhibited this behaviour myself. I often wonder whether this is a result of our education system. I cannot remember were we encouraged enough to build on things that already existed. On the contrary, we were - may I say inefficiently - made to prove theorems that were already proven since centuries. Made to solve math problems manually when calculators were around. And more such examples.
I think as we were made to 'work hard' to grasp the inner theory of everything, deep inside we formed a belief that it is 'wrong' to get answers easily by looking up somewhere. We felt we must 'spend effort' to understand (and possibly ourselves work out) all the steps that lead to the answer.
We must admit that the body of human knowledge has become vast and growing each day. Machines have grown faster and supposedly more intelligent. Today searching through the web and getting information out is cheap and fast. The DIY's need to be coached to not feel 'guilty' when they get their answers cheaply and did not have to work hard.
Progress can only happen by combining and building on things that exist - not by (proverbial) reinventing the wheel and feeling good about the effort spent.....
I am sure I have at times exhibited this behaviour myself. I often wonder whether this is a result of our education system. I cannot remember were we encouraged enough to build on things that already existed. On the contrary, we were - may I say inefficiently - made to prove theorems that were already proven since centuries. Made to solve math problems manually when calculators were around. And more such examples.
I think as we were made to 'work hard' to grasp the inner theory of everything, deep inside we formed a belief that it is 'wrong' to get answers easily by looking up somewhere. We felt we must 'spend effort' to understand (and possibly ourselves work out) all the steps that lead to the answer.
We must admit that the body of human knowledge has become vast and growing each day. Machines have grown faster and supposedly more intelligent. Today searching through the web and getting information out is cheap and fast. The DIY's need to be coached to not feel 'guilty' when they get their answers cheaply and did not have to work hard.
Progress can only happen by combining and building on things that exist - not by (proverbial) reinventing the wheel and feeling good about the effort spent.....
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