Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
We've Moved
We've Moved
Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

Team Performance

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The Emperor Has No Clothes

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This is going to be a short and hopefully sweet post. 

First, I need to acknowledge Sandy Mamoli. My goodness, I love her perspective. I think she’s smart, relevant, wise, experienced, pointed, and courageous. She’s one of those honest folks we need around us to tell us when we’re off-track. When we’ve made a huge mistake…that we continue to make. That is…when we have no clothes.

Sandy recently published a blog post entitled—Individual performance is not relevant. 

In it, she makes a really compelling case that we should stop worrying about, considering, measuring, and rewarding individual performance. Instead, we should be solely focused on teams and teaming and team results.

I’ve always felt this way. Always.

But I’ve been encouraged (forced) to measure individuals for years. Sure, I can say…

  • My boss made me do it

  • HR made me do it

  • The company culture made me do it

  • My peers made me do it

  • Etc….

I wasn’t a victim either. I opted into assessing individuals. But years ago, I decided to opt-out of that…forever!

To entice you to read the entire article, here’s a snippet—

Stop “managing” individual performance. I recently spoke in Hamburg at an Agile People HR meetup and someone asked “How do you manage performance?” To that person I want to say, it’s a moot point, really. Individual performance is irrelevant. You can’t win (or lose) as an individual. So, let’s please stop wasting everyone’s time trying to measure and manage individual performance.

Wrapping Up

So… 

What are you going to do with this new information? Are you going to pivot from individual to team considerations as a leader? In the end, you know in your heart what Sandy is saying is true. It just is. 

So, the real question is—Leaders, are you going to change?

Thank you, Sandy! 

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.