Am I pushing change here or what?

Recently, I had a dialogue which went like this ...

I say: From my point of view you have a problem.

Answer: No, we don’t.

I say: I think, you do.

Answer: No, we don’t.

I say - Why do you want me here, if you deny the problem once I think there is one?

There was no question asked like – “what is the problem you think we have?” or “what do you mean by that?”. I am fully aware that the opening was rather provocative, however, IMO this was already the sugar-coated version. I am aware that this is a kind of “fixing on a position” and typically it is not leading anywhere. On the other side, this was not the first discussion, oh boy NO - we are now at a stage where people in the organization want to hear my observations, findings and thoughts – or at least I thought so ...

Right now I feel like like I am pushing an entire organization to become agile!

This is rather frustrating and I get a headache. I remember what Paul said about headache, its not your problem and this is true here as well. I need to go back to my purpose why I am conducting this experiment and why I want to be in this organization. My goal is to learn (whether I solve some problems along the way is pure coincidence – a side effect).

So, what do I learn here: I see a big junk of denial of reality and a “It's not so bad after all” - attitude. This is complemented with a crunchy “ I can't do” and “this is impossible to change” attitude. I face reactions like “Wolfi – now you really lost all your marbles – go away I am busy – stop annoying me you crazy external coach”. This amount of resistance is too much to handle for a single person (even for a big guy like me) by maintaining a healthy mind at the same time.

If you feel to be in a similar situation, the question for you might be what can you do? Here comes an idea: Find alleys, people who think in the same line of principles, others who are stamped to have lost all their screws. And you might be surprised where you find those people … team members in the next room, people working in support function e.g. building CI-system .

Persons who are titled Scrum Master or Agile Coach are not automatically fit for this community. I have seen so called Scrum Masters where I would say that a mouse impresses me more. I have met so called Agile coaches which think that “Agile is a process” and thus they favor “management by metrics”. Those kind of people are the ones which need to be influenced not the ones which influence others in the spirit of Lean, Agile and Scrum.

Stop bugging me with those Agile values and principles

As part of a workshop preparation a few months back, I have been warned – better said the host had urged me to avoid to talk about Agile manifesto and principles. Confusing to me – why would anyone NOT like to talk about Agile manifesto and principles. To me, those are the closest kind of a description of management support & guideline, Agile offers you. In Lean Product Development, management support is more in-build and e.g. documented as the foundation of the Lean House.

It seems that besides the struggle of this organization (in which I currently work as a Scrum Master), I find evidence from within this company as well as other companies, that there is a struggle with realization (or better saying implementation or mental models) of the Agile values and principles. People seem to be hasty, and not taking the time to discuss those values and principles, trying to understand them, reflecting what this means to them in their environment. So, what is the solution: make people come together and let them discuss.

Working for us ??? NO!!!

What happened? We tried so hard! What is missing?

I realized that a group of people, who have about the same (I say light; or superficial) understanding of Agile values and principles discuss e.g. one principle in ten minutes. They reach a conclusion and go to the next principle. Give them credit for trying, and remember: those people simple might not know any better. The content of two-day training which they received months or even years back with the 200+ slides, is long forgotten (if the Agile values and principles were even discussed deeply in the first place).

Once more (see previous post “Why an organization needs an (external) agile coach”), I see a clear benefit to have somebody from outside of this organization (might be from within or outside the company) with deeper understanding of the meaning of those Agile values and principles. Then by e.g. asking questions, this coach can guide the discussion into a direction so that the participants get this deeper understanding.

In the current group of (only) six people, a single principle requires a 30min – 1h discussion to get a deeper understanding of what is means to behave, act, “live” the Agile values and principles. How could anybody think that participating e.g. a two-day CSM course gives sufficient time to gain such understanding?

This is only a first step. The next steps would include to understand the current state of thinking, followed by ideas which potentially get the organization to the desired state.

Let the team decide

My journey is not yet over. In the beginning, I committed to stay for two to three sprints (i.e. 2-3 months). The first two sprints are almost over and now the question is how to make this decision: to stay or not to stay? Well, I decided to let the team decide (and the APO). In the end those are the ones who might be affected by my doings the most (besides some potentially insulated and/or annoyed managers).
So simple rules: team consists of eight people and the APO makes nine votes. I went for a clear majority (about 80%) which means I required seven yes-answers in order to stay for one more sprint. The person could vote also no, or anything in between which did not make any difference – only yes counts.
In the end, I got eight out of eight yes-answers, as one person was not able to come at this time. Which means there are more posts to come in the future :)

What am I doing in daily work?

It seems that the posts in my blog come less frequent and one of the reasons is that I am working on removing impediments, supporting the team, the Area Product Owner (APO), other scrum masters and other people in the organization. I am giving trainings, facilitate workshops, participate in workshops as a scrum master and being "summoned" to other meetings (well, one way to figure out what needs improvement is to participate the meeting and then see). Even though I am not willing to share my observations and findings in public, I am sharing with you HOW I attempt to tackle the issues e.g. how to approach people and situations.

In this way, I am happy that I have the opportunity to test the different techniques which I learned in the past in the “real” life. It's not more and not less - applying the theory in praxis. All those trainings seem to pay back now. In many cases I try a systematic approach to an issue with a (fact-oriented) focus on product and people instead of process.

Step one: Create common understanding of the issue

First of all, I observe my environment and try to be objective in those observations. This means I avoid to interpret a situation or even judge what is happening. Typically, I do not get the full picture and thus I need to ask questions to understand the situation better. I try to visualize the situation in various ways - it typically helps all of us to see what is the issue and understand the context. When I approach people, I ask them about their point of view, their findings and their ideas. Of course, I am not telling others that now you must make this visible … I rather ask e.g. “do you know? if not, would you like to know? Do you have any ideas on how to make it visible?”. I also remind others to e.g. tolerate other people’s opinion, not to jump to conclusions, seeing the issue from a different point of view (e.g. if you would be APO, how would you interpret the situation).

Step two: Make people think on where they want to be

This has been a though nut. Too often the motivation is low, the context right now appears to be one in which people believe only negative things can happen. It requires more energy from me to convince people to let go from the misery and the negative thoughts and start thinking "out-of-the-box", without limitations (In another case, I stated the facts like it is possible to switch off the lights in the building - just to show that it can be done). Also here, I like to stimulate discussion by e.g. drawing a picture of the ideal situation (similar idea as above), followed by asking people what is hindering them to get there. Often, the discussions lead quickly (with haste - no time to think) to a situation in which some key individuals think that they have the one and only solution (and of course only they and nobody else in the world would ever be able to do any better). I think it is important to document the solution as a potential (!!!) solution or let's call it experiment (or even potential experiment).

Typically I discuss with people to create understanding in what is hindering them in getting to the ideal state (aka root-cause-analysis). When doing so, I try to avoid why-questions and I rather ask like “what makes you think that this …”. I observed that why question are making people nervous, "itchy" and they feel sometimes offended and become defensive. Somehow it might be that the underlying tone in a why-question is that “you did it wrong … “ - something like in this direction.

Step 3: Asking others - what can YOU do?

Like in the our issue mgmt board (see earlier post and more coming later), I show people how easy it is to pull an item and start working on it and demonstrate what I can do to help. Even it is a little step forward, yet I can typically choose from various options on what to do next (and show this to others as an example). Furthermore, it seems important to demonstrate this "I take responsibility" attitude to others that even though I am not the expert in a particular field, I can facilitate the discussion. Once more, the wording is important. Instead of talking about solutions (often people hear that this is now THE final solution and written in stone), it seems important to ask people whether they can support an experiment. Generally I prefer talking about experiments instead of solutions because the solution first needs to proof that it works (difference between hypothesis and theory, or theory and praxis).

two additional thoughts on the previous post ...

#1 an external coach is not a garant for a successful Lean & Agile transformation/journey/change, however if there is no external coach, it will be even more difficult.

#2 with each book I read, I find at least two more books which I want to read, more topics which I want to study and understand deeper. In other words after several years of coaching, training and consulting, I consider myself as a novice in the field ;)

Why an organization needs an (external) agile coach

I recognize another pattern in my daily work. The need for an external agile coach in an organization which wants to become agile. Sounds trivial – doesn't it? (I know it also sounds like I am advertising my own company here)
Here is what I see happening. A person in an organization starts working (voluntarily) as an agile coach. The person might attend courses, conferences, seminars, discuss and exchange ideas with others in the community. Assuming that there are no left-overs from the previous work area and nobody will ask question from this person concerning the old work, the person should have pretty much time to start doing the work. Yeah right – we talk about a BIG change here ...
The issue is that Lean and Agile might be to a traditional-oriented organization as big of a change as the “eponymous laws of planetary motion” by Johannes Kepler in the 17^th century. The mental model is put upside down (actually downside up, as it already flipped once – see below). In Lean the management is supporting the people, not commanding them around and doing micro management. The one who is creating value to customer i.e. the value worker is the center of the universe and the others need to help those people.
For those who go back a little longer in the history of management, you will find a definition that a manager's role is to remove hurdles from the subordinates so that they can do a better job. I think that definition got lost somewhere on the road.
What about the coach now? Well, the observation is that our coach seem not really to know what to do in the beginning – how could he? He is fresh in this. Now it happens that OTHER work is giving to the person, OPERATIONAL work – participating meetings, doing this and that side job. The result of this is that the agile coach is too occupied and has no chance to learn truly what lean and agile is all about. This might lead to the situation that the speed of change in the organization is slow – in worst case the change stalls. In disaster case the organization will abandon Lean and Agile and starts to blame Agile for its failure.
Now I see, that an organization needs someone with whom they have a chance to reflect their decisions, models, WoW – are those in line with Lean & Agile values, principles and its “spirit”? The people in an organization make so many decisions – every day. And even though people received trainings and had some personal coaching on Lean and Agile, they need help in understanding how to BE agile, not how to DO agile.
The other day, a group of six people discusses for one hour and tries to create a common understanding of the Agile Principle #1:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer

through early and continuous delivery

of valuable software.

I think that was a good investment of time and energy.
There are also other factors influencing the outcome of becoming Lean and Agile. Many of them, you can read in books – “management support” being there on the top of the list. I have read many articles in management science and “management support” has been so often mentioned that I got really numb to it – yeah again “management support” … and again … well – yes it is #1 item in a successful change. Meditate over that for about two days.
Personally it took me about two years to get the basics “right” and make sense out of it, another year to be able to learn what “counts” (yeah yeah, I am a slow learner) by interacting with others in the organization in form of training, coaching and consulting. Thanx to my boss, I could do that. I did nothing else then learning how to be a coach – no “operative” work.
I like to draw to a black and white picture – for the purpose of stimulating discussions and bringing people out of their comfort zone. Life is grey. If you accept grey, there hardly will be a pure white. I would have been so much happier in my years as a program manager, would I have known about Lean. I think that an external coach is needed for the white (or the black – which ever you prefer).

Company policies are one big source of waste

I think I start to see what is waste.
Here is what happened: I went to an outdoor store to get me a winter-jacket. The store has a local shop in Espoo and one in Helsinki. I found a jacket but it was a little too small and I ask the sales guy if they have a bigger one. He checked from the computer and said that they have one in the Helsinki shop. That happened on Tuesday. I asked whether they can reserve it for me until Friday, because then I am in Helsinki and I could check it out whether this one would be big enough.
The sales person said that they cannot do that - they cannot reserve a jacket for three days - it looks bad in the inventory (or somethings like it). What he can do is let the jacket come to Espoo. This takes two days, so the jacket arrives in the Espoo shop on Thursday, then it can wait for only one day and I can get the jacket on Friday from the Espoo shop.
Now the jacket traveled from Helsinki to Espoo - causing all sorts of costs (logistic, transport etc.) and in addition the transport caused air pollution due to CO2 emission (not very environmental friendly policies)



What a waste of money!!!



In addition I wanted to visit the Helsinki shop anyway for some other purchases which I now postpone to somewhere in the future (the selection in main store is much bigger). Why did I not go to Helsinki in the first place? I did that earlier and then the thing I wanted was in a store in another location. Then I appreciated the service to have the item transported to the Espoo shop, which is the nearest for me to visit.
Back to the company policies...
The good thing is that those policies are made by the people in the company, so no outer force is demanding those from you and the policies can be changed.
The hard part is that those policies are made by the people in the company, so in order to change the policy, the policy maker needs to change the model (call it also mindset, belief system) which the policy is based on. And takes typically time.