I recently attended GOTO conference in Copenhagen (https://gotocph.com/2025, you can find the slides for some of the presentations there) and would like to share some of the interesting topics.
Kent Beck's "Forest vs desert"
This is about organisations, but I think it has even wider application. There are 2 types of organisations which differ only by the answer to the question: are people bad or good?
After the answer is provided, everything else stems out of it. If people are bad, you need to put the pressure, you need to control and make predictions and you need to add the rest of the evil.
If people are good, you have the purpose, the community and the constant change which everybody deals on daily basis.
These 2 approaches can be seen in my opinion everywhere when there is a group of people which need to follow any rules. This can be for example how the city authorities deal with passengers as far as transportation is concerned.
In London there is an assumption people are not going to pay, so there are physical gates in the subway stations. However in Copenhagen, there are no gates. You can enter the subway (which is automatic and doesn't have any driver by the way!) freely, that is without any barriers. The assumption is people buy tickets. This is fundamental difference which enables completely different atmosphere when travelling in these cities. It works the same with companies.
However, the forest is rare. There are also quite many desert people who like the yellow and in fact most of the organisations are like Sahara. I think the key is just to realize these 2 landscapes exist and know which one suites you best to be able to work effectively.
You can read more about the concept here:
https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/forest-and-desert
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ForestAndDesert.html
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