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

Leadership

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Dynamics Impacting Agile Teams, part-1

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Dynamics Impacting Agile Teams, part-1

We were talking in the Moose Herd the other morning and Cory Bryan brought up the topic of factors that influenced agile team maturity, performance, and health. We immediately discussed the obvious factor of team size. Chatting about how team cohesion and maturity could offset any negative aspects of the team is larger.

Team distribution also came up, that is remote vs. onsite and geographic distribution. Again, we leaned into the idea that a more seasoned team could probably deliver “in spite of” the challenges of being distributed.

It was a really good topic to explore. And, as we explored it, I brainstormed in my journal and jotted down as many factors that I could think of that directly impact the formation, growth, dynamics, and ultimate success of any agile team.

I also tried to evaluate as to whether each factor was:

  1. Entirely within the team’s control

  2. Entirely an organizational factor

  3. Or something in between, 3- meaning towards Org and 3+ meaning towards the team.

I think this twist nuanced the list a bit. Anyway, I thought I’d share these thoughts with you…

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Self-Organization is a Nuanced Balancing Act

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Self-Organization is a Nuanced Balancing Act

I was reading a post by my friend and colleague Mike Hall the other day. It was entitled—Teams Should Choose Their Agile Approach!

I read it based on the title alone and found it insightful and well-intentioned. But that being said, I’m not sure that I agree with the absoluteness of it or the extremeness of it. Not that Mike used extreme language, but the intent of the approach was extreme, at least to me.

It seemed like Mike was saying that—

Under all conceivable circumstances, conditions, and contexts—teams should be fully autonomous in defining their agile operational dynamics.

And it made me think of a client story from quite a few years ago.

I met with this client. He was an organizational leader, general manager, of a large engineering group. To put it into Scrum terms, his organization was made up of ~100 Scrum and Kanban teams. They had been using both frameworks for about 18 months and he called me out of utter desperation.

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Showing Up

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Showing Up

I was teaching a CAL class last week in Nashville. During the class, I was sharing how important it is for leaders to “bring it” to work each and every day. I was referring to things like:

  • Attitude

  • Energy

  • Passion

  • Focus

  • and Engagement

Someone challenged me about the notion. They said that they weren’t always upbeat every day. And that sometimes they simply had a bad day.

They also said that their personality wasn’t upbeat naturally, so it was hard for them to be a Happy Harry or a Positive Polly all of the time. I explained that I wasn’t referring to anything as extreme as that. But I did think that people were paying attention (close attention) to their leaders, their behaviors, and their attitudes.

That not “bringing it” for too many days in a row was the sign of a problem of some sort…

But it’s not just about energy and attitude. As I think about it, there are really six areas I want to explore where Culture-Shaping focused leaders make a difference in the culture by how they are Showing Up each and every day.

That’s where we’re going next.

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Minding the Gap

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Minding the Gap

I really like the work Frederic Laloux has contributed around organizational cultures. It provides a series of phases (colors) that reflect the cultural evolutionary paths of corporations (organizations).

Unfortunately, there are a couple of negative things that have evolved around it.

One is the relentless pursuit of “Teal” as a goal in the agile transformation community. I liken it to the enthusiasm around DevOps, Spotify, or SAFe in the pursuit of silver bullet solutions or bandwagons.

Another is the realization that Teal isn’t really a good goal, not is it that well-understood or well-references of a model. As alluded to in this article by Corporate-Rebels.

But the reason I wanted to explore it now is to illustrate a cultural phenomenon I’ve often seen in agile transformational contexts. And the Laloux model works nicely as a communications mechanism to explain cultural divisions, which is where we’re going next.

Minding the Gap

One of the things that I think is most useful about the model is how it can represent various stages in an organization. Let me share a story to make that point.

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Reactive vs. Creative

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Reactive vs. Creative

One of my areas of interest over the last 3-5 years is finding a model or tool that could help leaders with identifying their current leadership tendencies and then guide their evolution towards more agile culturally supportive behaviors.

I didn’t want it to be something that was so constricting or binary that it failed to give them guidance (and hope) for change. I also wanted it to be rooted in solid research and data. Finally, I wanted it to compliment my Certified Agile Leadership class (CAL I) and assist me in my leadership coaching efforts.

I explored two instruments/models that I found useful in meeting my criteria. One is the Leadership Agility assessment by Bill Joiner and the other was the Leadership Circle Profile assessment by TLC.

Neither of them is strictly related to agile software development, methods or business agility, as they are more general-purpose leadership assessment instruments. That being said, they both are incredibly helpful for leaders who are on an agile, Culture-Shaping journey.

While I was trained on both of them, I’ve selected the Leadership Circle Profile (for individual assessments) and the Collective Leadership Assessment (for groups/teams).

Both of them have at their core a set of competencies and tendencies that I wanted to explore in this post. Under the banner of Culture-Shaping, one of the first things that I think is helpful is to understand our personal “leanage” when it comes to our leadership stance. And these assessments really help with that. Please keep in mind that I’m not pushing the instruments, but the thinking behind them right now.

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Repertoire of Values

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Repertoire of Values

With All Due Respect

First, I want to state something that I didn’t in the first post.

I respect the role, art, craft, and challenges of leadership in agile contexts. I REALLY do! It’s not for the faint of heart and, in a word, it’s HARD!

So, when I provide leadership advice or perspective, I’m not providing it in a trivialized, marginalized, unempathetic, or judgmental fashion. I’m only trying to be helpful. Helpful to those leaders who are struggling with what it takes to lead in agile contexts. It’s those leaders who are my primary persona in everything I’ve written and will write around agile leadership.

Not that I’ve cleared that up…

Values First

Andy Bleach wrote a wonderful article entitled—Embracing Values – Agile’s Toughest Challenge. I’d never read anything from Andy before, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read it. And I thought it would be a nice addition to my thoughts around Leadership and Culture-Shaping.

Here’s the LinkedIn post with comments - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stefanwolpers_embracing-values-agiles-toughest-challenge-activity-6638782881915256832-bAAR

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Beginning

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A Leader's Guide to Culture-Shaping: Beginning

Where does culture come from?

  • Is it a bottom-up thing?

  • A top-down thing?

  • An inside-out thing?

  • Is it organic or intentional?

Depending on who you read, reference, or talk to the answer is…it depends. There’s also an allusion to the point that culture is highly complex and difficult to understand or influence.

But from my perspective, the answer is much clearer and simpler on both counts.

First, I believe that culture is largely dependent on leaders and their leadership. In fact, I believe leaders by far play the most significant role in the culture. Or in what I like to refer to as their responsibility in and for Culture-Shaping.

That if you look at any organization, really look at the culture within, it reflects the behavior of the leadership team in the cultural landscape or ecosystem.

How does that happen?

Well, with their vision, words, actions, expectations, commitments, behaviors, body language, and business goals. With what they choose to amplify as important and with what they choose to not amplify.

And second, I believe that culture is incredibly simple. Since it aligns with the leader’s actions, it simply requires focus and intent if you want to change or reshape your culture. And not in one big change, but via a myriad of small, everyday actions.

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Leadership Transformation - Changing our Stories from the Inside-Out

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Leadership Transformation - Changing our Stories from the Inside-Out

It’s hard for me to admit sometimes, but you can teach an old dog (yours truly) new tricks. But I’ve discovered that I am “teachable” at least some of the time.

I’ve been on a journey of new learning over the last few years related to—

  • Developing my Certified Agile Leadership (CAL-I) class;

  • Developing myself as a Leadership Circle Profile coach;

  • Receiving training in ORSC – Organization Relationship and Systems Coaching.

Not only have I been learning, but I’ve been reflecting A LOT. Much of the learning has been changing me from an inside-out perspective. And some of that reflection has led to this article.

Specifically, it’s been inspired by my LCP instructor and coach, Shahmeen Sadiq. In a very short period of time, she had a profound effect on my thinking.

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Leaders…Are you Kind?

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Leaders…Are you Kind?

I read this short post by Cristin Hernandez on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kind-leaders-cristin-hernandez/

And was inspired by it.

Cristin offered the following list for leaders:

  • A person can be kind and still be pragmatic.

  • A person can be kind and still earn respect.

  • A person can be kind and still be ok with not pleasing everyone.

  • A person can be kind and still be credible.

  • A person can be kind and still have deeply candid discussions.

  • A person can be kind and still be committed to company goals.

  • A person can be kind and still make difficult decisions.

And she alluded to today’s leaders need to be moving towards a view where vulnerability, bringing one’s whole self, personalization, transparency, and yes, kindness are more practiced skills.

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The Cat is Out of the Bag!

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Sshhh….

Let me share the BIGGEST secret in agile transformations. But first—

  • Let me apologize in advance to all of those agile coaching & training firms for letting the cat out of the bag. And for any impacts to your revenue streams.

  • Let me apologize in advance for any impact this might have on any firm “doing agile”.

  • And finally, let me apologize for not saying this sooner. I should have probably been saying this loudly and often at least a decade ago. If not earlier!

That being said, I’m sharing it now, so better late than never…

Bob, we can’t stand it. What is the secret?

Drum roll, please…

It’s that – Leaders need to go first. In everything!

  • Go first, in understanding the agile and lean mindsets;

  • Go first, in attending sufficient training to understand of what good looks like;

  • Go first, in internalizing all of this so that they begin to become agile from the inside/out;

  • Go first, in shaping the vision, why, and stories behind their agile journey;

  • Go first, in inviting their organizations to be part of their agile why and vision;

  • Go first, in walking their talk each and every day. Modeling an agile mindset, setting the culture appropriately and showing everyone the way forward…

You can take and invest in all of the “team focused” activity you want to. But it’s not going to work out as well as it will when leaders (senior leaders, mid-level management, PMO’s, etc.) actually work on transitioning themselves to agile before they inflict it on their teams or organization.

There! The cat is out of the bag!

Enjoy the benefits of this secret information and share it with all of your friends.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.