Introduction

There’s a term I use quite often in my agile coaching which I call “role not roll, confusion”. And it’s existence makes perfect sense when you think about the breadth and depth of organizational change that occurs in agile transformation contexts. So, it’s prevalent, but quite normal.

What’s troubling is when I see it 2-years after the organization has begun their transformation. At that point, it’s become a problem that is indicative of the organization and leadership team giving role clarity little to no focus.

Agile transformations need to provide role clarity whether we like it or not. I know, I know, we’re supposed to be—

Leveraging the simplicity of the 3 Scrum roles (team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner);
Or better yet, the simplicity of Kanban roles (there are none);
And/or flattening the organization, removing roles and layers (descaling, LeSS).

But I’ve found that the multitude of roles and responsibility descriptions in real-world organizations, really undermine agile’s attempts at simplicity. My experience is that we need to continue to embrace roles & responsibility definitions and job descriptions in agile transformations. Simplification is good, but clarity down to the individual level should trump it.

ORSC View of Roles

My ORSC training introduced me conceptually to a few role ideas that seemed to enhance my coaching approach to roles. To be honest, I’d only ever thought of them from the lens of Outer Roles. But I’ve learned that there’s quite a bit more to it. Here are the five types of roles that my training exposed me to—

Outer Roles - for example: job descriptions, execution / maintenance focus within the system. These are the roles I was referring to above.
Inner Roles - for example: someone who plays devils advocate / black hat, keeper of emotional connection to the teams are examples of inner roles within a system. Very often we’re unaware of these roles or don’t give them sufficient consideration in our system coaching.
Secret Selves & De-triggering - I’m not going to leverage these in agile contexts for now, as they’re a bit too esoteric from my perspective.
Ghost Roles - are invisible, 3’rd party presences that come and go and impact the emotional field. For example—a strong senior leader from the past is influencing everyone, instilling fear and distrust.
Time Spirits - are something that influences the system. For example, racism and prejudice, whether historical or current, can influence the system. As can Covid-19 and it’s impact on us all.

This delineation of role types really helped me to understand the nuance and complexity of roles in my coaching.

For example, I’m now considering the Covid-19 Time Spirit in my coaching. Certainly, it’s not a primary role. But to ignore it and the impact it’s having on the organizational systems, is certainly a mistake.

Ghost Roles - expanded

As part of my ORSC training program, I coached a couple on their relationship while making a transition. They were both working, and one of them was going to quit her job and stay home with the kids. This was a role change on multiple levels (Outer and Inner) and we explored this in the coaching.

But the point I want to share is this. In both of their cases, the fathers-father role had a tremendous impact on the role the father was envisioning and the mothers-mother role was having a similar impact. Point being, the couple was being strongly influenced by the Ghost Roles of their parents in their current roles and in navigating a role transition. And they weren’t even aware of it until I called it out.

Once they became aware of their “ghosts” then they could begin the process of decoupling their own future roles from their parents.

I realize this is a family coaching example, but I’ve found that most (really all) organizations suffer from Ghost Roles of past—

CEO behaviors
C-level behaviors
Specific leaders and their behaviors
Cultural norms
Events—acquisitions, mergers, downsizing, etc.
Hiring, firing, performance evaluation, etc.

Given this, as agile transformational coaches, I realized that discovering and exploring “ghosts” can be of incredible value in helping guide your systems evolution.

Exploration

One of the most common challenges I’ve discovered in my agile coaching maps to roles and responsibilities. It’s incredibly common for organizations and teams to suffer from role confusion related to the move from their traditional roles to more agile-mindset centric roles.

ORSC tools can really help with to navigate these changes. As you move through—

Myths & Change
Dreaming
Lands Work
and Constellations

think about how you might apply them in illustrating “before & after” views to role shifts and clarification.

I’ve also blogged about them before—

This is one of the areas where ORSC coaching can really shine in helping to coach in agile relationship systems. And, as I noted in the articles, it’s not something you’re ever really “done” doing, as the systems are constantly evolving and changing.