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

Inspiration

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The Missing Coaching Stance

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The Missing Coaching Stance

I’ve historically shared different agile coaching models that help to define the various focus points (stances) of an effective agile coach. Currently, my favorite model is the one that Mark Summers shared from a Scrum Alliance Coaching Retreat working group. It’s called the Big Wheel of Agile Coaching and you can find out more about it here.

The other day I was in a coaching session with my personal coach and the notion of inspiration came up as it relates to being a coach. And we were exploring how one of the roles of a coach might be one of providing inspiration.

And as I thought about it since then, I’m starting to think that this isn’t simply a concept or minor activity, but that it might be a full-fledged stance (or new spoke) in the Coaching Wheel. So, in a major way, my coach inspired me to write this…

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Every day, wake up, and ask yourself...

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who am I standing on the shoulders of (family, friends, colleagues, experts), and acknowledge them...

what difference will I make today, and make it...

what am I grateful for today, and celebrate it...

who am I grateful for today, and thank them...

what do I dream of accomplishing tomorrow, and take a step towards it...

who can I hug (in-person or virtually), then hug them...

are you doing what you love, and if no, then take a step towards it...

what can I unlearn today, then unlearn it...

what baggage or bias can I reduce today, then release it...

who can I help today, then help them...

do I need help today with something, then ask for it...

what can I do to be kind to myself today, then do it...

what one thing do I need to do today, then do it

what am I worried about, then let it go for just today...

have I walked in nature and been thankful for the greatness of it. If not, then take a walk…

have I hugged myself today, if not, then hug yourself...

what is the one thing I could do today to bring me joy, then do it... 

Every single day is a chance to begin anew—to learn, to grow, to make amends, to renew. Don’t waste it!

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Diversity, Inclusion, AND Equity

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Diversity, Inclusion, AND Equity

Luke Hohmann presented the following scenario the other day on LinkedIn—

If you’re wondering how you think about salary and fair pay, consider the following scenario I gave to my kids at dinner a few nights ago.

A white man and a black woman apply for the same job. They are equally qualified. During the interview process, the you ask the candidates for their salary requirements. The white man provides a number that matches the salary target established by your company. The black woman provides a number that is lower. If you hire the black woman, do you pay her what she requested or the established salary target?

It was fascinating to listen to the debate that ensued. One argument is that the company should maximize profits, so paying the black woman what she requested would be fair. A counter argument is that quite often minorities don’t know what they’re worth, so they often request salaries that are below market rates, and the company should pay the target salary.

Personally, I don’t feel that this is a hard choice. Leaders who have ‘power’ over such things as compensation should use their privilege to compensate people fairly.

I fully agree with Luke’s last point. There needs to be fairness and equity in compensation and there is really no excuse for shying away from it.

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Finding a job as a Scrum Master without Experience

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Finding a job as a Scrum Master without Experience

I agreed to speak at a Scrum Masters of African Descent meetup group yesterday (Sunday, February 21st) in an Ask Me Anything / Fireside Chat format. One of the questions (and some of the reactions) has stayed with me. So, I thought I’d write this post to share some additional thoughts on one of the questions. Here’s the question—

If you don’t have any prior Scrum experience on your resume, how can you show companies that you are capable of doing the job?

My First Reaction

Let me start by saying this.

Finding and landing ANY job without direct experience is hard. Heck, looking for work WITH experience is hard. So, the first thing to think about in addressing this question is—it’s not going to be easy. And, you will get a lot of rejections. So,

  • Get your courage up;

  • Get your persistence up;

  • Get ready to work really hard at it…really hard;

  • And thicken your skin a bit.

Because it will be a bumpy ride. I’m not joking or trying to make it seem unattainable. It isn’t. It IS attainable, but it won’t be EASY!

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AgendaShift – A week with Mike Burrows

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AgendaShift – A week with Mike Burrows

I just spent 4-days of my week (week of February 22nd) with Mike Burrows. The class was a Deep Dive into Mike’s AgendaShift thinking. I say thinking because I’m not exactly sure what to call everything he shared.

It could be part—

  • Agile mindset or principled approach;

  • Approach to organizational change;

  • Continuous change framework;

  • Toolbox of collaboration tools;

  • Engagement Model;

  • Focus on Clean Language throughout;

  • Forms, list, canvases, etc.;

  • OKR/Outcome-based model.

I took the class virtually across 4-days in 4-hour chunks. In my eagerness to attend a class sooner than later, I signed up for a class starting at 4:30am EST. Not my best decision ever.

I’ve only heard Mike speak a few times at conference events and in overviews of his thinking and materials. So, the Deep Dive was a welcome immersion into his approaches to learning, his thoughts, and stories. I was also curious as to how his approaches could benefit me in my agile coaching practice and with my clients’ interests in change.

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Company We Keep

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Company We Keep

One of the coaches in my ORSC residential session this past weekend, Jennifer Davis, mentioned in a very casual way that—you are the company your keep around you. It inspired me to think about WHO I want to keep around me.

Hey everyone! Look around. Who’s in your professional life? Who’s in your personal life? Who do you engage, listen to, model?

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Mad Scientist Inclusion

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Mad Scientist Inclusion

In my last post, I talked about the importance of diversity when building agile teams. But diversity in and of itself, won’t get the job done. In fact, in many ways’ inclusion is the activation counterpart of diversity. So, I wanted to explore inclusion a bit more in our agile contexts.

All voices matter!

As many of you know, I’m in the middle of a coaching certification program called ORSC (Organization Relationship Systems Coaching). In ORSC they teach about Meta-Skills, which are essentially an aspect of your mindset in how you enter systems (organizations, groups, teams).

One of the meta-skills is something called Deep Democracy. In simple terms, it means that all voices matter, and all voices need to / deserve to be heard. And as an ORSC coach, one of my prime directives is to facilitate so that all of the voices come out of the system.

And you might think this only relates to people who are present. But it doesn’t.

For example, we’re having a team meeting about making a decision about a feature’s dynamics. And Sue is out sick. We might want to ask the team, what do you think Sue’s reaction to this would be? We might also ask the team, what do you think the customer’s reaction to this feature will be? In this example, we’re going so far as to try and be inclusive of the “missing voices” in the system.

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Mad Scientist Diversity

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Mad Scientist Diversity

We were having a discussion in my Moose Herd the other day about aspects of diversity in constructing your agile organizations and teams. And there were three key themes that came out of the discussions that I’d like to share.

Teams are where the magic happens

I mentioned the work of the team is the value proposition. Leaders need to serve the teams and that includes how they recruit, hire, and onboard folks into the culture.

The true magic of agile teams is NOT in the organizational structure, or the leadership experience level, or in the detail of your project plans, or whether they’re practicing Scrum or Kanban.

Instead, it’s pulling together an empowered, cross-functional team that—

  • Has a focused mission or goal;

  • Have matured their agile mindset;

  • Have intentionally formed and established itself as a team;

  • Has a diversity of skills & experience to deliver on their mission;

  • Is strongly connected to the customer;

  • Has the organizational trust to meet their commitments.

Then create the cultural ecosystem where they are supported, trusted, challenged, mentored, and encouraged to succeed.

If you get the balance right between leadership and team accountability, then magic can happen.

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Exploring Resilience

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Exploring Resilience

This is something that’s been running around my brain for quite a while now. The notion of resilience.

  • What is it?

  • Why is it important?

  • And, how do we build muscle around it?

I think the genesis point for me is when my friend Mary Thorn shared her intent to do a keynote focused on the term Grit or Gritty, at the 2020 Spring AgileDev conference. If you know Mary, she is incredibly gritty. Mary is smart and experienced. But her ability to preserver over diversity and around resistance is what makes her a phenomenal coach.

Here I want to explore it as the term resilience and see where things go…

What is it?

There were two definitions that came from a dictionary search—

1. The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

2. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

I also discovered this definition from the American Psychological Association—

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.

Why it’s important?

I liken resilience as an extension of our fight or flight reactions. It’s how we recover, how we respond, and how we grow.

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The Agile Game of Thrones

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The Agile Game of Thrones

I have a confession to make. And as someone strongly tied to software development and technology cultures AND a die-hard reader of science fiction and fantasy books, this is incredibly embarrassing. But I’ll share it anyway and hope for your grace.

I never watched Game of Thrones in real-time. Instead, I collected the videos for all eight seasons with the intention of binge-watching them at an opportune moment.

Well, enter Covid-19 and opportune moment.

1—A Lannister always pays his debts.

I’m thinking of something related to technical debt in all of its forms. And in this case, have the organizational (and family) fortitude to always pay it down.

2—Winter is coming.

It’s a warning and a threat. Its reality hitting you between the eyes. It’s something that you’ve avoided for too long. I guess in agile, I’d like to connect it to Scaling Frameworks. All of them. And the acknowledgment that winter (the end) is coming for all of them. Or, at least I hope so.