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Short Takes

Goodbye, 2022 and Hello, 2023

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Goodbye, 2022 and Hello, 2023

Happy New Year, dear readers, clients, friends, and colleagues.

2022 was a topsy-turvy, hold-onto-the-rails kind of ride for me. Here are just a few highlights—

  • I published my Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching book in January.

  • I followed up with an audiobook version in July (my first).

  • I delivered in-person coaching again at several organizations, and it felt strange but good.

  • From a revenue perspective, and this surprised me a bit, this was the second-highest year in the 20-year history of my consulting practice.

  • I spoke at many virtual conferences and events. Particularly in the areas of agile leadership and coaching. One of my favorites was a pair of Ask Me Anything sessions at Scrum Masters of the Universe.

  • I was fortunate to go on-site at the Denver Scrum Gathering and the Nashville Agile Conference. At the Agile Conference, Jen Fields and my session on agile coaching was standing room only, AND the EBAC book sold out at the bookstore.

  • I did more pro bono coaching and mentoring than in any previous year.

  • I granted over $25,000 to CAL students with my DEI discount program.

  • I closed the year by running an experiment called Badass Agile Coaching Day. It drew over 190 attendees and generated proceeds of over $6,500 which I split across Agile for Ukraine and Africa Agility (see below).

  • And that’s just a sample…

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Co-Creation

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Co-Creation

I found this short post by Dana Houston Jackson on LinkedIn that I thought I’d share with you—

Co-designing is not the same as: "You'll have a chance to comment before finalized." To get maximum people's embracement, adoption and usage of the solutions then do the hard work and co-design.

Yes-you'll have to deal with human emotions and reactions. Yes-you'll have to move them through a groan zone to arrive at a convergence. Yes-it takes more time and effort at the start. But it is e-v-e-r-y-thing if you want maximum adoption in the end- the result (adoption/usage) that you should be after in the first place.

So, you gotta ask yourself: How much do you want people to sustain the work afterwards?

Then do the harder work at the start.

The post and the comments just struck me as really important considerations if you’re engaging in organizational transformation and change.

And it aligns so nicely with Dan Mesick’s work on invitational leadership.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Future Focused Leaders

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Future Focused Leaders

I found this Forbes article by John Bremen entitled 2021 In Review: Leadership Lessons from Delta, Omicron, The Great Resignation, and Climate Impact.

In it, he shared ideas around the new focus for leaders. He describes it as being future-focused and defined ten aspects of that emergent posture.

  1. Adopt a new mindset with risk.

  2. Commit to elastic innovation.

  3. Drive purpose AND profit.

  4. Use flexibility as an advantage.

  5. Get real about remote and hybrid work.

  6. Focus on employee wellbeing and organizational resilience.

  7. Lead with empathy, compassion, and transparency.

  8. Understand that treating people fairly doesn’t mean treating them the same.

  9. Stay focused on talent during crisis.

  10. Support ESG and sustainability (environment, social, governance factors).

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You don’t understand

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You don’t understand

I saw this post by Jeff Gothelf and I felt compelled to weigh in, just a little. 

First, I don’t believe Jeff needs my help. He did a great job of defending himself, his position, and his thoughts. But I didn’t want him to stand alone.

Points to be reaffirmed and made:

  • Cargo Cult agile is still alive and well in the world and we need to recognize it.

  • We need to be able to respectfully critique, debate and disagree around agile topics.

  • And there needs to be no room for personal attacks. Attack ideas, but don’t make it personal or attack people.

Wrapping Up

The agile world needs more Jeff Gothelf’s. Instead of attacking them, we should be thanking them. Thanking them for challenging the status quo, bringing in new ideas, and having the courage to be a bit disruptive.

Those are the attributes of the original Agile Manifesto folks and we need that more today than we did then.

So, stay agile and stay open-minded, my friends,

Bob.

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The Weeds

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The Weeds

John Cutler recently wrote an article on his Beautiful Mess blog entitled—The Weeds. In it, he explores the notion of going too far into the details of a role/activity from another role perspective. Aka, getting into the weeds.

For example, a project manager might be asking too detailed questions about the design of a particular UX component and trying to reduce the effort associated with it. They have gone “into the weeds” with the developer.

A couple of things that this article made me think about including—

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A SAFe Interview

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A SAFe Interview

My friend and colleague Mike Hall inspired me with a recent article he shared on Choosing a SAFe Training Partner.

To be clear, I was once an SPC but I fell away from being an active practitioner of SAFe. That being said, I’m often quite opinionated about it, but over time, I have less and less direct experience.

Mike is the opposite. He’s incredibly experienced with it. So, when Mike tells me something from a SAFe perspective, I know that’s not based on opinion but on hard-won experience. And I respect that.

I really appreciated his questions about engaging a SAFe training partner. But I felt there might be some additional questions to add. Not only for a training partner but for a consultant who is prescribing SAFe as the scaling solution for my organization.

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Managers as Coaches

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Managers as Coaches

My friend and colleague, Anthony Mersino recently wrote an article that explores a new shift for managers into becoming coaches. The first part of the article mentions me quite a bit, but that’s not what caught my eye. And I also borrowed his photo.

But I digress.

What stuck with me is the notion that managers (traditional organizational leaders/managers), need to be converted somehow to be better coaches to their teams. Especially in agile contexts. And, I couldn’t disagree more.

Why?

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The Balancing Act of Agile Adoption

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The Balancing Act of Agile Adoption

I’ve been thinking of balance lately when it comes to agile transformations. And, the sad truth is, I don’t see that much of it.

I either see organizations who are too focused on leadership and leaders driving the transformation, so skewed towards them. Or organizations that are coddling the teams and letting the inmates run the asylum, so skewed towards the team.

What does “Balance” need to look like?

I’ll give you a quick example. There’s the notion of servant-orientation and servant leadership in agile contexts. This is normally focused on leaders serving their teams. For example, a Scrum Master is a servant leader in their mindset and they need to serve their team.

But for every reaction, there should be an equal and opposite reaction to achieve better balance. So, yes, leaders need to serve their teams.

But the reciprocal is that teams need to serve their leaders as well. They need to give be respectful of their roles, inclusive of their ideas. They need to provide the transparency of forecasts, work, and progress to support the leader’s operational needs. 

Josh Anderson and I explored this notion in more detail in one of our recent Meta-casts. We called the episode The Reciprocal Conundrum. I’m hoping you give it a (balanced) listen to see if it changes (or rebalances) your thinking.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Principles as Questions

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Principles as Questions

I saw a tweet by Cory Bryan that referenced a tweet from John Cutler from April 2021. I’m not sure how widely cast it was, so I thought I’d share it again here.  

To say that I love where John went is an understatement. And Cory’s edition of—

  • “How” can we…

  • “What” can we…

  • And “When” can we…

Added even more value for me.

Here are John’s questions—

  • Can we do more work we are proud of? 

  • Can we work more joyfully, and sustainably? 

  • Can we work together more often? 

  • Can we learn more effectively? Can we accelerate/amplify feedback loops? 

  • Can we shorten the distance between our team and customers/users? 

  • Can we create more lasting value for our customers, users, and company? 

  • Can we connect more of our work to real impact instead of proxies? 

  • Can we delay certain decisions until we have more information? 

  • Can we reduce the cost of changing our minds (both now, and in the future)? 

  • Can we reduce our “inventory” of unfinished, non-value-producing work?

  • Can we reduce waste that doesn’t serve the team, our customers, and our company? 

  • Can we lay the foundations that will support our future success?

I think this list is particularly useful for my colleagues in the product space. I hope the questions are as thought-provoking for you as they were for me. John is a treasure in the community in that he makes me (us) think more deeply.

I need to do more of that…

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Culture Design Canvas

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Culture Design Canvas

Based on a bit of a lark, I attended Gustavo Razzetti’s Culture Design Masterclass on March 19th. I’ve been wanting to get around to talking about it for quite some time, so here are some reactions…

https://www.fearlessculture.design/

First of all, the attendees were outstanding. It was a very diverse and eclectic mix of folks that were fare wider than my typical “agile coaching” colleague universe. I enjoyed and learned much from the diverse perspectives.

Second, I want to highly recommend the Culture Design Canvas as a very general-purpose tool for exploring, exposing, understanding, and potentially changing your culture. As an agile coach, I saw many applications of it in my Enterprise-level agile coaching activity.

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