Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching

It’s finally here. What’s here, you might ask?

My new book.

Cool! What’s the title?

Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching

The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond

About the Book

The profession of Agile Coaching is, in a word, confusing. That’s because of a number of factors, including:

• It gets conflated with Professional Coaching and it’s so much more than that;

• There isn’t a standard or generally accepted model for what it is and isn’t;

• Clients don’t understand it, so shared accountability is unbalanced with their coaches;

• There is specialized nuance around the skills of coaching at the Team, Enterprise or Organizational, Technical, and Leadership levels.

This confusion has created a space where nearly anyone can claim to be an Agile Coach with little experience and narrow skills. Resulting largely in mediocrity and negative impacts for our clients, who by the way, are counting on and paying us for help.

Bob Galen has written Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching to help alleviate the confusion. The book centers on the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as the competency and skill maturity model to baseline your agile coaching skills against. Its core goal is to “raise the bar” as to what true excellence looks like and to help you establish a personal development and growth plan.

Bob intentionally uses the term Badass to create a vision of professionalism, craft, passion, accountability, and expertise that you need to bring to bear in service of your clients if you represent yourself as an “agile coach”.

Being an Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coach isn’t easy, quick, or for the faint of heart. It takes lots of hard work and dedication. It also requires a map to point you in the right direction. Consider this book that maps to coaching badassery, personal growth, and client service.

Sample Chapter

If you’re “on the fence” about whether the book is right for you. I’d recommend reading the Introduction, as it explains the intent, overview, and major themes within the book.

• Introduction

Getting a copy?

If you’re mostly interested in e-copies, I’d recommend purchasing your copies from Leanpub. You get more version flexibility that way AND you’ll be able to receive future updates too.

• Amazon versions are available here Paperback & Kindle.

• Leanpub (PDF, EPUB, and MOBI) versions are available here.

Landing Page

Once you get your copy, you’ll want to check out the book’s Support & Repo Page for helpful information and ongoing shares & updates.

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Why over Way!

I often see something that I re-post on my blog. Something that I think is thoughtful, compelling, and useful in our agile journeys.  

Some folks influence me more than others. John Cutler is one of those. Here’s one of John’s posts that I just had to share with you. I like it that much…

I continue to encounter agile coaches / transformation coaches who position the Why of "digital transformation" as "agility" or "learning faster" or "a mindset shift". When I ask what the burning business need is for agility, outcome-centricity, product thinking, learning faster, or a mindset shift, they often don't know. When I ask about the existential threats to the business, they don't know, or they respond with something very high level like "innovation".

I ask more questions..."will the business exist in ten years if the status quo remains?" ... "what is the biggest product fail of the last year?" ... "where would learning faster and experimentation have helped?" Not sure. "Would you invest in company stock? Why? Why not?" Not sure. "If things were working, what would you observe?" "Well, more empowered teams". Why? Not sure.

To me, this is putting the Way before the Why. The goal isn't product transformation. The goal is what product transformation will enable!

You have to know the business reality. For example...

"At the moment our commercial business accounts for 60% of revenue, and consumer business accounts for 40%. We're paying more and more to keep that 40%, and despite our efforts, we're losing to upstart fintech companies that know that demographic better, and aren't saddled down by the weight of a commercial business. If we can't figure this out, we'll continue to lose market share, and our share price will plummet. Meanwhile, the commercial side of the business is rife with opportunities to use data science to streamline operations and eek out margin. Supply chain disruption will eventually get us there as policies come up. The three major efforts from last year fell flat with no outcomes. We need to do better in a highly complex environment..."

"And this is how product thinking can help....[here]"

You have to know this stuff like the back of your hand. Listen to every investor call. Know the existential threats to the business. You have to think like a business person and an entrepreneur. Otherwise, you'll find yourself just going through the motions.

The goal isn't agility. It is what agility enables. Same with product thinking, DevOps, rate of learning. Etc. Why over Way.

I hope found it valuable. Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Am I…in the Arena?

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about internal vs. external agile coaches and the possibility of being “pickled” as an internal coach. The first one was the primary point and the second was a response to the large number of comments the first received. As I recall, this was one of my most widely read and reacted to articles.  

Here are links to the two articles. You might want to give them a quick read for context for this one…

• The Trap of Being an Embedded Coach

• The Trap of Being an Embedded Coach – Following Up

• And to explain a bit more on pickling – The Hammer and the Pickle

Several internal coaches in my network, all of whom I know and respect, were taken aback by these posts. I remember one in particular as really being moved by them. And not in a positive way.

I was reading a newsletter the other day and the following quote was mentioned as part of an article that was warning of too much criticism on the web nowadays and reminding us of the need to ignore our critics.

Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

And it hit me. Hard!

Not that I was wrong in my embedded agile coaching posts, but it reminded me that I had forgotten a very important point.

In The Arena

To all of the coaches who were touched and influenced by my articles, I solemnly take my hat off to you in respect and support.

You all, whether you are pickled or not, are IN THE ARENA. And I am NOT.

Which is something that an external coach or consultant, like myself, doesn’t always realize nor respect enough. We’re often critical without stepping onto your field and being side-by-side with you. In your arena.

Wrapping Up

As an external agile coach, the quote reminded me of two important things:

1. To first, always approach my criticism with positive intent, empathy, and an understanding of the arena that everyone is in.

2. Secondly, to try very hard to partner with my clients, stepping into their arenas to better my understanding of the field of play. From a player’s perspective.

And to hope that I too can occasionally step onto and into a variety of ARENAS to become a better Agile Coach.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Gaining Perspective

In our Moose Herd session this week (July 7th) we explored aspects of changing your perspective when engaging individuals, teams, groups, and organizations. 

It’s not about changing THEIR point-of-view or perspective. It’s about changing OURS.

Some ideas that came out of this were—

• Applying Weinberg’s – Rule of 3

• Leveraging DeBono’s – 6 Thinking Hats

• Entering every conversation API - Assuming Positive Intent

• Cynefin – considering the complexity and the situational context

• Listening more and discerning the 2% Truth in all feedback

• Applying Ritual Dissent

• Getting out of your comfort zone – experiment more, take risks, play around (Be a YES, Man)

• And here’s a bonus post.

Wrapping Up

We all need to be in the business of expanding our perspectives. My hope in writing this was to share a few models or tools that you can apply and use to do just that.

Now everyone, prepare to be amazed!

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Your story...

We are our stories.

No. These are not stories that surround us or that are told about us. These are the stories that we tell ourselves, that we share in our heads. Stories of… 

• I am not good enough

• I am not skilled or experienced enough

• I am not smart enough

• I am not strong enough

• I am not…enough

Instead of those, perhaps begin telling yourself different stories, stories of…

• I am magical

• I am complete

• I can do this

• I am resilient

• I am unique

• I can survive this

• I can overcome this

• I am complete and I am…enough

When do you tell these stories?

All of the time. Quietly and continuously. One story at a time, shift from ‘not’ to ‘am’ stories and become what you truly are.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

BTW: this blog post contains a nice graphic around our old versus new stories - https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2019/2/25/the-leadership-circle-initial-thoughts