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
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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.

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What Makes Agile & Scrum Training Effective?

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What Makes Agile & Scrum Training Effective?

Is the title of a recent article by Anthony Mersino. In it, Anthony lists the following factors that increase training effectiveness—

  1. Agile training should be engaging;

  2. Agile training MUST be interactive;

  3. Agile trainers should share real-world experience;

  4. Agile and Scrum training should be fun;

  5. Agile and Scrum training should be Just-in-Time.

I don’t disagree with anything Anthony says. Although, I have written about keeping classes balanced so that there isn’t too much interaction or fun. I know that sounds odd, but there can always be too much of a good thing. You can read some of my previous thoughts around agile training in this list in the following posts:

Assuming Positive Intent

Assuming Positive Intent

Guest Post by Kim Andrikaitis, Vaco

Kim wrote this blog for the Vaco Agile blog and I asked her if I could x-post it on the Moose. She was kind enough to say yes.

This post just resonated with me. I was thinking about it for more than a week after I originally read it. I hope it has the same impact on you…

Post

"The team just doesn't have a sense of urgency."

Have you ever uttered those words? Or felt the frustration from this preconceived notion? Have you ever wondered why your teams aren't performing to your expectations? You question whether they just lack passion or simply don’t care? Or maybe they just aren't into their jobs? Are team members just phoning it in?

Did it ever occur to you that?

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Defining Moments

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Defining Moments

It was 2001 and I was working at Lucent (Bell Labs) here in Raleigh, NC. In their Optical Networking (Telecomm) group.

In September of that year, the attacks on NYC, Pentagon, and Pittsburg occurred. I was working when it happened and I remember with dread watching both of the World Trade Center towers topple in succession. It was terrible and I’ll never forget it.

I’d moved to North Carolina from the Northeast and I’d spent ~10 years of my life working with FinTech clients in NYC. For example, I’d worked with Cantor Fitzgerald folks for years and lost quite a few friends and colleagues there.

A few months later, the Telecomm bubble burst. Which meant firms like Alcatel, Nortel, and Lucent laid off thousands of workers. I was but one of those on the list.

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Elastic Authenticity

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Elastic Authenticity

In a recent article, Tanner Wortham talked about the need for unpolished leaders and leadership. In it he listed attributes of unpolished leaders and one of them was –

It’s our leaders’ ability to be true to themselves but also adapts their style to fit the person or circumstance. Let’s call it elastic authenticity.

It made me think about authenticity in a new way. I’ve always tried to amplify my principles in my leadership. And it’s led me to think of it in binary terms.

  • Either I’m authentic, or I’m not.

  • Either I’m principled, or I’m not.

  • Either I’m walking my talk, or I’m not.

  • Either I’m full of S**T, or I’m not.

You get the idea…

But Tanner’s thought made me reconsider my views on authenticity. To begin changing my mental models to be less binary. Instead, take the view that my principles and values as a set of guardrails. Guardrails that allow me some flexibility to be authentic, but not be so entrenched that I feel it’s my way or the highway.

Some things I might start flexing or stretching on include—

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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.

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Support Systems

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Support Systems

Johanna Rothman shared this article and it made me think a bit. Her writing often does that to me ;-) It made me think about two things:

  1. Identifying who my support system is and,

  2. The notion of asking for and giving help.

Upon personal reflection, I realized a couple of uncomfortable truths about myself.

Announcing - A Coaching Offer You Can't Refuse

Hi everyone,

I'm very pleased to announce that I'm an ORSC trained coach as of February 2020. I can hear you saying...what does that mean, Bob? Well, let me share a bit.

ORSC stands for Organization Relationship and Systems Coaching. It's a coaching program that is sponsored by CRR Global.

I've wanted to sharpen my saw in the pure coaching realm for a number of years. Yes, I'm a knowledgeable and successful agile coach. But that brand of coaching doesn't have a formal/professional system behind it. It's more focused on mentoring, consulting, and teaching than it is on pure coaching. And I wanted to deepen my experience on the pure coaching side of things.

It turns out there are two primary "schools" of coaching. One is Co-Active coaching, which is more focused on individual, one-on-one coaching. The other is ORSC, which focuses on coaching the relationships in systems. Systems, in this case, are small to large groups. They could be a Scrum or Kanban team, a senior leadership team, or a group of Scrum Masters or managers. I've chosen ORSC because of the systems nature of the coaching. It gives me a set of tools and approaches for coaching systems in improving their relationships and their results.

ORSC training is a series of 5 classes, which as of February 2nd, I've successfully completed. Now I'm moving into an 8-month deeper study and practice cohort that will lead to my becoming an ORSC Certified Coach. 

An Offer you Can’t Refuse


As part of that certification, I have to do a lot of ORSC (group-based) coaching. Imagine that. So, I'm looking for anyone in my network for help. If you'd like to explore my coaching—

  • Your Organization (technology, product, customer support, marketing, etc.)

  • You Executive / Leadership teams (either whole or in parts)

  • Your teams (Scrum team, Kanban team, non-profit team, virtually any team)

  • Partner coaching (couples, business partners, collaborators)

as entire groups or in sub-groups, please reach out to me. I'd love to work with you and your partner, team, group, or organization to help your continuous improvement journey.

And, since it's part of my certification journey, the cost will be very low relative to the value you’ll receive. We can either do this in-person or virtually, via Zoom. 

So, if you're interested, please reach out via email - bob@rgalen.com This coaching offer is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Truth

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Truth

I was talking to a fellow agile coach the other day who’s leading her own coaching practice. She’d completed several engagements partnering with two experienced agile coaches and there had been some “rocky exchanges” along the way.

One of the things she said to me that the coaches have given her some really hard feedback of late. Sort of like a firehose of feedback. And that while she appreciated all of it, it was really hard to digest it all. And all of it seemed to be constructive/negative in nature. So, lots to think about and she seemed overwhelmed by it.

I asked her to – look for the truth in it.

And she said something interesting. She said that – it was ALL true.

And I thought for a moment and responded.

No, it’s not all true!

It’s only true from the perspective of the coach’s giving you the feedback. Certainly 100% of what they told you can’t all be true. Nor do you want to take action on all of it.