Tag: leadership

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Why Starting an Agile Transformation by Hiring Coaches is Bad Idea

I see so many Agile transformations go like this.

“We want to be Agile. Put out an ad for Scrum coaches (or XP coaches)!”

The next thing is that a bunch of coaches are brought in from many different places, each with their own ideas, and they start working with teams. The result is generally chaos, confusion, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

As time goes on, issues get worked out, teams show they are doing Scrum (or XP), and the coaches move on to the next engagement. Then the teams start backsliding, returning to how they worked before the Agile coaches arrived.

Why?

To bring about lasting change in an organization requires far more than coaching individuals and teams. While needing to know a new skill is important, it is only one factor in bringing about change, and it is the weakest way to influence change.  This is not where a business transformation should start.

To enact real change requires you to start with a clear, measurable, compelling goal. Without this, there is no purpose to coaching since we do not know what we are coaching toward. Note that “We are implementing Agile” is not clear, measurable, or compelling.

Consider WHY you want to make a change. What do you expect becoming Agile will do for your company? How will employees’ lives be better after the change? Why will this be better for your customers?  Good marketers know that the most powerful question to answer is WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Everyone impacted by your change needs to know what is in it for them personally. This is how you make your goal compelling.

Now that you have your goal, what are the things today that are preventing you from being where you want to be?  To answer this question, it can be helpful to consider an influencer framework.

There are many influencers of behavior at any company. The team at VitalSmarts described 6 categories of influencers in their book “Influencer” by Grenny, Patterson, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler. Start with the 6 categories and find what things in each category are preventing you from achieving your goal.

These categories are:

  • Personal motivation – what is motivating individuals to not make change.
  • Personal ability – what skills are they lacking that they need in order to make change
  • Social motivation – what is their community saying that opposes the change
  • Social ability – what assistance is lacking in the community that someone needs in order to change
  • Structural motivation – how are we rewarding people for staying with the old way of doing things (metrics, money, praise, promotions)
  • Structural ability – how are the physical space, business structures, and business processes preventing people from making change

I think there is another category to consider as well, and that is what behaviors are the managers and executives modeling? People watch successful people and copy them. If the managers and executives are acting opposite to the new way of being, it will be hard to get anyone to change. People will do what you do much more than they will do what you say. Actions do speak louder than words.

Social influence is by far the strongest influencer and should be addressed long before coaching of individuals and teams is considered. Who are the people that others look up to? How can you convince them to champion the change to Agile? Besides talking, what programs can you set up, set as peer mentoring, an Agile community, or a Scrum Master guild that will show people that their social community supports the change?

Structural influence is also much stronger than individual skill or motivation. Many in the Agile community are aware of the importance of physical space to Agile adoption. But if the business processes, metrics, and rewards are for behavior counter to Agile, then coaching individuals and teams in Scrum and XP practices is a waste of time and money. Change of the cultural and physical environment must come before considering bringing in coaches for the teams.

Executives have tremendous power to influence change and so helping executives model the desired behavioral changes will have a strong impact on an individual’s willingness to change.

Now executives are not going to be doing XP practices, and probably not most of the Scrum practices. But what they can do is model fundamental behaviors that Agile depends on such as honest and transparent communication, using failure to learn (instead of punish), working collaboratively with their peers, and recognizing that they do not have to be right all the time, they need to know how to quickly correct their course when wrong.

Modeling these behaviors sends a powerful message to the organization that everyone should behave the same.  While training is good, reinforcement with executive coaching on these leadership skills will help executives maintain the new behaviors.

With all that in place, most individuals and teams will quickly pick up the basics of Scrum, XP, or other Agile practices. You can send them to outside classes or offer training inside your company.  There will likely be a need for some team coaching for a month or so to support the team as they begin applying the new practices.

As more teams take the training and adopt the practices, the need for Scrum or XP coaches goes away. What you need after that are not generic Scrum or XP coaches but rather experts in the specific areas where teams are struggling.

Are teams having trouble forming? You need an expert on team formation to come in for a short engagement to find out what they are missing and point them on the right path. Teams do not understand pairing? Find someone with extensive experience using pairing in their work and bring them in for a short engagement to find out the problem and help the teams overcome it. Having trouble with retrospectives (this is common over time)? Bring in someone who has many years experience perfecting the art of the retrospective to help the teams learn new and better ways to conduct them.

You do not need long term “Agile” coaches. You need to use the 6+1 areas of influence to create a culture where behaving in an Agile manner is the most natural thing to do. You need people to be good at coaching each other.  Then, as teams grow in knowledge and experience with Agile, you may need targeted coaching by experts to help teams with specific issues.

If you are finding a need for a lot of Scrum or XP coaches over many years, look at the 6+1 areas of influence and find out what you are putting in the way that is preventing your teams from maintaining the Agile practices they learned.

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If it is not Command and Control, What Does the Executive Do?

I had the good fortune recently to spend some time with a VP I know who is currently working for a very large company. This is someone I think is very effective – his organization runs well, his people are empowered and love working for him, and he is not spending all his time fighting fires. He has built 2 such organizations at his current company and was just assigned a new one. His previous organizations continue to run well without him (which is one of his personal tests for whether or not he has done a good job).

I really like, admire, and respect this VP (he is my role model for an executive) so I asked, “What do you do? How do you make all this work?” He was happy to share his thoughts with me. What follows combines things he told me and things I have observed over the years I have known him.

When I start with a new organization, I do not hit the ground running, ripping everything apart and rebuilding it. Rather, I wait at least 90 days until I am sure I understand what is going on before making any change. Often, I think I know early on what the needs are, but as I spend more time with people, I find my knowledge grows deeper. I often change my mind as to the best approach before the 90 days have passed.
I also spend time learning what my leader really wants. How can I personally support his or her goals? What does my organization need to do to support those goals?
The best use of my time is to keep an eye on 3 years out. I should not be involved in the day-to-day business. My directors should be working on the 1-3 year period. The front line managers should be looking at the next 1-13 months. The project managers and their teams worry about the day-to-day.  I have to trust my teams to do the job. I do not sweat the details.
I set the vision, strategy, and rules of engagement, then let my teams run. The know they can come to me any time with problems they cannot solve themselves. But they also know I expect them to solve the problems they can solve. I need to leverage relationships, influence, and my position to remove barriers for my teams so they can do what they need to do.
My job is to shake hands and kiss babies, to build those relationships with other executives. I also have to tell compelling stories. Statistics and reports are not compelling stories, people are. What are the people stories that will inspire and motivate my organization? Stories about us yes, but more importantly stories about our customers, the people we serve. If we do our jobs well, what will their lives look like in 3 years or even further out? What is that future we are looking toward?
I walk the floor at least an hour a week to give people the opportunity to reach out to me in a less formal manner. This is not to look over their shoulder, but rather to provide an opportunity for them to share with me whatever they want me to hear. I cannot rely on statistics; I need to spend time with the people behind the numbers. It is important that I really listen and provide a psychologically safe environment so they can share. It is about building trust with the people who work for me.
I look out for my people and they know it. I have put myself at risk to move the executives working for me to other organizations to build their careers. When they transition to a new area, I continue to meet with them one-on-one until they are really transitioned. I work with their new manager to share with him or her how I think these people need to develop.
If I do things right, if my teams are truly empowered, I work my way out of a job. The organization should be able to perform at a high level without me.

So what does this look like from below?  What is work like for people supporting such an executive?

Throughout the organization, everyone always know the goal and purpose of the organization. Communication through all levels of the organization is frequent and clear.  People are comfortable asking for clarification when they do not understand.
Doing something wrong is not bad. Continuing to do it wrong is bad. Failure is an opportunity for growth, and those who do not take that opportunity will be moved somewhere else.
Decisions are made close to the action. The person with the most knowledge is the person making the decision. People are not waiting for permission but doing what needs to be done to support the goal and purpose.
People working in this organization know they are expected to grow and learn.  There is no place to hide and get comfortable until you retire. Some people do not like that and move elsewhere.
People at all levels of this organization are comfortable proposing ways to work better or more efficiently. The person with the idea is generally the one tasked to try it out and report on the results.
Managers at all levels are expected to actively help their people develop professionally. This is part of how managers are rewarded.
Executives working for this VP know that he will pull them out of a fire, get them special opportunities, and always be available to lend an ear. He really works hard to help the people working for him progress in their careers.

By describing a clear purpose, encouraging and rewarding mastery, and granting a large degree of autonomy, in return this VP gets an empowered organization of enthusiastic and dedicated employees, and a tribe of executives who support him.

If you liked this article, you might also like this recent article in the Harvard Business Review:  What Amazing Bosses Do

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People are People, Not Objects

I was recently reading “Leadership and Self-Deception” by the Arbinger Institute. Fundamentally, this about the two mindsets we have when interacting with others. We either see the other person as a unique individual or we see them as an object (problem, hinderance, annoyance, etc.). We go back and forth between these two mindsets all day every day, even during the same conversation, and they color the effectiveness of our communications.

I got a personal taste of this when returning home from the business trip where I was reading “Leadership and Self-Deception”. Since I live a 4 hour drive from the San Francisco airport, I had left my car at the airport parking garage for the return trip. When I got to my car, I discovered the battery was dead. I was a little annoyed by the delay, but someone from airport parking authority came right away, jump started my car, and I was on my way.

I got on Highway 280 and headed north to San Francisco. Just after exiting on Highway 1, the heavy traffic slowed to a brief stop and my car died. I was in the middle lane with no power in the car. No flashers, no lights, no starter. I was on a flat spot of the road and could not get the car rolling. There I was completely stuck with heavy traffic all around me.

I called 911 and a kind woman in dispatch took my information and forwarded it to the San Francisco police department. Meanwhile, people all around me were shouting at me and honking, but there was nothing I could do. I was feeling pretty miserable and I was afraid I might be hit by a car trying to go around.

Then a nice gentleman in a car on my left asked if I wanted help pushing the car. I replied that I thought it was probably too dangerous with the traffic. His companion pulled off the road and the gentleman carefully got out, paused traffic, and came to my car. He talked me gently through what to do as he held out his right hand to pause traffic to the right. People actually stopped and let us in!!

The next lane over was an exit to another road, and again a polite hand gesture stopped traffic to let us through. He pushed me past the exit to the right shoulder and said:

“A while back my car died on the Sacramento Bridge in heavy traffic. There was nothing I could do but wait for help. For 2.5 hours I was the most hated man on the bridge. So I had to stop to help you.”

People who were angry with me were treating me as an object, and it was a pretty miserable experience. I was upset and not thinking very well about what to do. The gentleman who stopped to help saw me as a human being in need and it changed my whole day. I still had a problem with the car, but I was able to resolve the issue (and get home) quickly, easily, and in a positive state of mind.

It does feel different to the receiver of your message when you view them as an object or an individual person. When you view them in any way as an object, no matter how kindly, they will tend to resist you and your message. When you view them as a person, unique and special, they will tend to be positive and receptive.

In business, we have to work hard to get over the people are objects mindset. How often do you hear people referred to as resources (you mean like paperclips?) or they are the “offshore group” or the “contractors”, but certainly not people like the employees right here in the room. How often do you refer to the people working for you as “my directs”?  Of course sometimes we need a shorthand way to describe a whole group of people, but if we get into the habit of doing it all the time, we stop seeing the individuals and just think of the group, and the group is usually “them” not “us” or “me”.

Language is a huge indicator of our mindset toward others. Being aware of and changing the language we use when thinking, writing, and speaking is a big step toward seeing others as people.

While reading “Leadership and Self-Deception”, it hit me hard that one of the business situations where we most often treat people as objects is when giving a presentation. The other people are “students”, “employees”, “delegates”, “congregation”, etc., but we are not thinking of each person as a person. They are not people “like us” because we are the “teacher”, “boss”, “expert”, “minister”, and so are in some way “better”. This us-versus-them mindset is treating others as objects. We are less effective at communicating our message when other people feel we are treating them as objects.

Interesting, in 2009 I took a workshop with Edward Tufte on data visualization. During the workshop he mentioned that he hates using PowerPoint. He says the word power describes precisely what happens – the speaker is in a position of power over the others in the room. He does not use presentation software in his workshops; he makes use of posters and other objects to illustrate his points, and he spends a lot of time walking among the people attending the workshop.

Over the past few years, I have worked with a small group of consultants on creating professional training that does not involve someone presenting at the front of the room.  Making the training more interactive is another way to get past the “I am an expert, you are not” mindset that creeps into typical training.

I have been doing something similar with progress reports. Instead of creating a typical report, I create some kind of interactive tool to help people get engaged with the information and make it their own. For example, after interviewing a lot of people on a particular topic, I created a poster that looked like a bunch of sticky notes with statements gleaned from the interviews. Then I invited the leadership team to not only review the suggestions, but cross off the ones they disagreed with and create their own stickies for things they thought were missing. This provided far superior feedback because the leaders were engaged with the information in a way they had never been when reading a report or seeing a PowerPoint presentation.

If you are paying attention, you will see that this article itself is not very personal. As an example, I will rewrite the previous paragraph using names of people instead of referring to them generically.  See how this changes the feel of the information for you.

“I have been doing something similar with progress reports. Instead of creating a typical report, I worked with George to create an interactive tool to help Helen, Mike, Sarah, Jason, and Henry get engaged with the information. After interviewing Mike, Sarah, Jason, Henry, Bob, Joe, Liz, Mary, Susan, and Paul, George and I created a poster with sticky notes that had statements from the interviews. Then I invited Helen, Mike, Sarah, Jason, and Henry to review the suggestions, crossing off those they disagreed with and creating new stickies for information they thought was missing.”

Now instead of a generic “leadership team” reviewing the information, we have Helen, Mike, Sarah, Jason, and Henry reviewing the information. It is easier to see them as people when they have names instead of a generic description.

It is real work to change a mindset from viewing people as people instead of objects. No one is perfect at it. But when we really try to think of the actual people, then not only do we communicate better, we also create a work environment that is a much more pleasant place to be. I think you will find that when you really focus on thinking of the individual people working for you, instead of thinking of them as “my directs” or “my resources”, you will become the kind of leader that everyone wants to work for.