HENRIK KNIBERG | Confessions of a Change Agent | Agile Rock Conference 2018

alright last thing of the conference you guys you guys still awake yeah that's cool great so you're we're gonna have some fun I'm gonna I'm gonna talk a little bit about I'm gonna tell stories most actually how many of you here get called agile coaches yeah people tend to accuse me of being that sometimes - yeah I started about maybe I don't know 12 years ago people started saying you're an agile coach I'm like what is that I'm still not sure it's hard to describe to someone at a bar like what what do I do like oh I'm an agile coach what no can I forget that I help companies improve like well what does that mean ID bug and refactor and and optimize companies what our management consultant whatever I don't know it it's hard so finally I concluded that maybe change agent is the closest description to of what I do and maybe what many of you guys do as well so I'm gonna be talking a little bit about what I've learned so far in this role as change agents and and also what I what I mean by it right so to me be a being a change agent is it's not a role that you have it's it's more an attitude I'm gonna do this complicate I'm gonna use both that and this I'm probably gonna get out of sync at some point I don't know but what what I mean by that is change agent is to me a person who cannot help but to improve things always looking for ways to improve things it's almost like an addiction or or a habit some people look at the world and all they see is problems and then they complain about it right just complain complain complain I look at the world all I see is problems but they're not try not to complain about it I just try to help improve things it's fun sometimes even you know unimportant things like all I want to get the perfect design of this castle in Minecraft it's not even important or learn how to play a blues in a weird keys see sharp like how that do that that's really tricky I have to learn to do that it's not important but it's fun to improve so how many of you share that kind of habit that you just want to improve things you can't help yourself a hand up it would usually be quite a number of people right so the rest of you you can go back to you know your email or your games or whatever I'm primarily addressing other people who share this this itch right I always want to improve things okay so the golden question is how do you change an organization right so what everyone is asking and I have a short answer and a long answer okay the short answer is is you you can't sorry do we still have more time how much was it an hour maybe we have time for questions all right well thank you very much anyway else great so I assume you're still here because you kind of want the long answer it's a really long answer it's gonna go on for like 50 minutes are you sure right okay so that that longer answer is a little bit contradictory the short answer is you can't the longer the the the other short answer is it's easy and I'm gonna demonstrate it using a little exercise all right go ahead and change yourself right now somehow took classes upside down or cross your arms other way just everybody change something on yourself and I can see everybody saw nobody's getting away right change something something simple or something radical right let's see look around you see change happening here and there right yeah you moved your hair to that side very bold move I'm impressed that's it that's cool yeah that wasn't so hard was it wasn't terribly hard of course the tricky bit is changing other people so go ahead and change someone else they'll be shy you know you're among friends go ahead and change someone else right yeah come on you can do it a bit trickier right a little bit you know a little awkward you're all laughing because it's it's kind of this awkward laughter like no right it's a we just witnessed three changes now three forms of change right one change thing that happened was you changed yourself the second thing that also happened was you changed someone else what was the third thing that would type of change that we also saw right now I changed everybody got you right change Vodou right okay so change is easy the tricky part isn't making change happen the tricky part is making it stick so how many of you have already reverted back look around you've all reverted back all right you couldn't even keep it for one minute right so the change is pretty easy about making it stick is it's kind of hard I find that change is also fairly easy if people want it right in fact that's so important I'm even going to put up a card about that so change is change is easy if people want it and here's a that version right and if people don't want the change it'll be a lot harder right what if I told you all take off all your clothes I'm not gonna stop you but the thing is if people don't want to change they won't generally speaking unless they are under threat or something right plan to change will definitely not stick so yeah how do we change people well basically you don't change people you can inspire them to change themselves that makes sense can inspire people and maybe maybe they'll they'll change themselves all right now I'm sure you've seen this happen you you're at a company and then as a coach or whatever you help them introduce lots of cool stuff and then you leave and then everything goes right back to where it was hand up if you've seen that right well that's very very common yeah I think of it as organizations have a muscle memory kind of and they gravitate towards status quo because it's just you know there's a reason why the structure they had was there for historical reasons and they've built up all kinds of roles and processes in fact their current way of working was probably fine at some point in the past and then why change it right so coming in as an outsider or even an insider causing change to happen it's hard because organizations just just tend to want to go back so what what can you actually do about that well sometimes companies are forced sometimes it's like we're fine we work the way we usually do you know we don't need to change here we can't change here we're too big company until the day this little startup shows up and that little startup is stealing your business they are running circles around you now this big companies panicking and suddenly they make radical change really impressive sometimes seeing that happen I worked a lot at at Lego and they had this thing that happened 12 years ago where they completely shifted the company could they didn't change product but there shifted the way they worked because they were running out of money they were getting too spread thin and that was an existential crisis if they did not change they would have disappeared there would be no more Lego so that triggered change now the best leaders don't wait for that moment right so companies that are really good at what they do I find they have change agents all over the place in fact leaders are expected to be change agents and they're consistently challenging each other and their teams to be changing even you know way before there is any kind of crisis and not only that they're also inspiring others to become change agents so it's really a mindset that an attitude that needs to be cultivated all right so what do you do them I mean if you want to create this inspiration you also need to create the practical environment to enable change to happen and I'm gonna illustrate that using a little exercise I'm really not sure how it's gonna pan out but we'll give it a shot all right as part of that I want to talk a little bit about comfort zones right so how many of you here are okay with stepping out of your comfort zone sometimes hand up all right that's cool that's just about everybody that's great now keep your hand up keep your hand up right now take your hand down if you have no problem getting up on stage in front of a big audience keep your hand up if you find that a little bit uncomfortable to thought of getting up on stage in front of a big audience all right cool and I guess you know what I'm gonna say next right so I would like ten of those of you with hands up to get right up here on stage and the rest of you prefer prepare to give them a Rock Stadium applause okay okay okay this is good enough Jesus okay I was planning for this exercise for ten people but you know what the heck we'll be agile about it right yeah this is this is gonna be this is gonna be a challenge no I'm out of my comfort zone thank you very much okay you're gonna need to turn so you can see this right because this is your challenge okay I'm gonna give you a challenge ready Oh before I give you the challenge I need to give them a job to do your job is gonna be you're gonna be the stopwatch you're gonna be counting seconds and to make it fun you're gonna be counting in your own home language so when I go ready set go you start counting seconds in your own home language let's practice ready set go m6 whoo okay cool get my hand there pretty good right yeah great yeah okay so here's your challenge get the brick to everyone on the team that's you in alphabetical order by first name and let me get the brick for you so you gotta pass this brick around everybody here got to get it right in alphabetical order by first name is that clear start counting ready set go [Music] and [Music] Oh sixty okay 60 seconds this is so team you think you can improve this result okay ready set go count okay done command what still alphabetical order though right it's how many seconds seventeen they improved their speed by a factor three and more right pretty impressive okay go ahead do a little retrospective get in a ring talk about how you can do this faster next time just go ahead get in a ring talk to each other right give us some time you guys can talk to your neighbors about something you learn from the conference [Music] getting very creative here cool this is why we want small teams in agile right it gets tricky yeah okay [Music] okay it's an experiment right everything is an experiment all right tell me when are you ready all right tell me when are you ready not telling okay wait wait we forgot the timer okay okay ready set go two seconds thank you very much you can never seen again amazing [Applause] thank you my Blago that's great all right talk about improvement right these people get up and they're they hate getting up on stage they get up and they do this thing and they do a retrospective and they improve by a factor thirty right okay what were the conditions that were put in place to enable that to happen communication they were given time to talk right a shared goal a clear shared goal in this case highly motivated why would they be highly motivated to pass a brick around is that intrinsically motivating I don't know scream commitment why were they committed you know what it's fun passing bricks around in the circle is fun I don't know if that was the key thing you know but there's a number of things right there's a number of things and commitments right yes they were committed because they were on stage so that doesn't mean something a clear goal the ability to retry right they were given multiple chances and it was a safe environment it wasn't like they be punished for being slow as like hey try again you know how to retrospective so all these things are things you can do as a change agent you can put the conditions in place to enable improvement to happen it's not always gonna work but you can maximize the odds but for that to work you need to be willing to slow down slow down to speed up because what if this team was so stressed that they did not have time for a retrospective right what if we just said you have to deliver all the time right they'd be sitting there passing the brick like crazy and it would be but it would be really slow so really important thing as a change agent is to teach your organization you've got to make the space so people can sit down and actually talk make the space to to try new ideas even if you don't know they're going to work and if they fail well what the hell that's just a price of innovation right we try something else so yeah great safety so as change agent as I think I already mentioned you work at two levels you are both causing change to happen you are putting these conditions in place but you are also infecting other people with the same disease that you have because if you don't then it doesn't scale right if you come in you're all enthusiastic causing change to happen then you leave well who's what's gonna happen now right so you better make sure that this is attitude this change attitude needs nice nice is spread and the best way I know to make that happen is is by by pairing so basically never work alone always work together with someone else in one way or another and then indirectly you will be teaching the change agent mindset but also some of the practical tools things like you know retrospectives etc okay so let's see yeah there is there is a a problem with the change agent mindset you want to fix everything right you want to improve everything the problem is there's only one you right and there and the list of potential problems to fix is infinite so infinite backlog of problems in a finite u equals stress sometimes right I don't know how many of you recognize this feeling but sometimes it's sometimes people like us that work as change agents struggle with with depression and burnout and stress anybody recognize that feeling we want to fix everything right come on we want to fix everything and of course the list never ends so that's one of those things where we need to work with their own minds right to just accept that you know what there's gonna be tons of problems that don't get fixed today and guess what that's perfectly fine I'm gonna sleep well anyway so to me it's really about not owning the problem if I'm helping a team or a client or anybody I'm not gonna own their problem it may get fixed or it might not I'm not gonna get it let it into my heart right I used to do that in the past I used to be more like really engaged in the problem at hand which meant that whenever I fail which course happens right then then that became really really hard to kind of accept no it's much easier for me because I just yeah I help out I do what I can if it didn't work well it didn't work then we just try the next thing right so and this is also something you need to spread to the team it's a good way to tackle like complaints right say we have a team we asked them what are the biggest impediments for you right what's in your way that may be a list of 20 things right okay let's vote which which three of these things are most in your way and most important to solve they vote vote or something quick analysis and you decide on these are the top three impediments okay out of these top three impediments which one are we going to try to solve right now you pick one if you don't know how to pick it bring up a dice it doesn't matter just pick one and what do you do with the rest ignore write ignore the rest fix it or accept it write that those are the problems later or maybe never it's a very useful mindset to have and also to spread to tell everybody that yes we have a problem with our crappy build server and you know what we're gonna do nothing about all right now we're just gonna live with it so don't worry don't bother complaining and the reason why we're not solving that problem is because we're solving this problem which is bigger and more important all right very powerful way of looking at things okay sometimes when you're trying to help solve some kind of a problem you just keep working and keep struggling and you never get anywhere I think you're kind of like I think it kind of like a wall with strings this is a very silly metaphor right think of a wall with strings right you can pull the strings each string is a problem that you want to help solve you don't know what's gonna happen when you pull the string right is it gonna come right out you solve the problem immediately it was really simple like for example I've seen cases where you know the root cause of the problem the team is spread in different rooms we put them in the same room and tada like magic half of their problems just disappear sounds like one of those simple little strings other times you're like try to pull the string and you're just standing there all the time trying to fix it and nothing happens and it can feel kind of like you're beating a dead horse right so don't do that notice when that's happening and then and then stop and that doesn't mean you should just give up as soon as you get resistance but at some point notice be self-aware enough to realize that you know what this problem does not want to be solved right now apparently for some reason maybe it's not the most important problem after all or maybe it's too tough a problem right now maybe the timing is wrong I don't know but yeah move on right put that problem on the other list and it's a little bit scary cuz those strings right you're pulling these strings sometimes you pull one and out comes a dragon and goes boom what tries to eat you so yeah it's very it's so I think of it as a change agent you're just trying these strings to see what happens which one were where can I make a big difference no I noticed something especially when I spent a lot of time it's modified that after many years that I would often have some main problem on trying to solve right some number one issue I'm trying to help fix sometimes making progress but sometimes really not because the reason why I picked the problem is because it's important and sometimes rather complex cut across organizational boundaries so we're working on it and obviously never alone you normally really can't do much at all as a change agent if you work alone so working with other people trying to inspire them right creating this based experiment but yet we kept week not really making progress so real life example I had that situation I don't remember what problem I was trying to help solve but then at some point I was just walking by the coffee machine and I happened to talk to somebody they're a tribe leader and he's like you know Henrick in our tribe we have a challenge our teams structure isn't really working anymore because we've outgrown it so can you like a good team structure we talked a little bit and finally I suggested hey you know how about the idea of of the team's self organize their team structure based on the work at hand and you could redo that on a regular basis you get kind of dynamic team structure and he's like that's interesting do you have any examples so I sent him an article I think um and that was just a 10-minute conversation but then he went ahead and tried it and it worked really well so then it spread to other tribes as well and apparently that was the right solution at that time to that problem I had no idea so i spending week trying to solve problem a and i spent ten minutes not even trying to solve problem b and that liked me it made a huge difference so in the beginning I was kind of feeling bad about that I'm like wow I'm not I'm not in control of things until one day I realized that ah yeah that that's it I'm not in control of things it was like realizing that and I don't need to be in control of things because that kind of control is an illusion so now I think of it more like as a change agent it's good to be focused it's good to pick a few problems to focus on but don't get over focused I think of it as planting seeds right throw seeds around randomly or every time how you interact with somebody you're planting a seed if you send a link to an article planting a seed running a workshop is planting a seed and all these are kind of at I think of them as kind of like agile seed so you don't know which which ones are gonna sprout right some what some are gonna work out some not some might work out nicely and then they die after a year it's it's out of my hands it's about I just keep planting sometimes I get surprised by what I see so that's also one of those good anti stress mechanisms right plant the seeds and then see what happens sometimes you need to add some water or some light right okay and that kind of bakes the question okay if I'm just this weird guy going around planting seeds how do I know if I'm adding any value right how many you've gotten that question like how do you know that you are adding value right any any answers analysis so suppose I'm ionic I'm a coach type person and I and I gotta go to a team and I let's say I ain't reduce scrum I help them get going with scrum and then after I leave we look at the results the team is happier they're delivering faster and they're delivering better quality objectively measured would you say that that was a successful engagement for me as a coach yeah you have no idea maybe they would have done even better if I wasn't there you have no idea right or maybe they would have done the same if I if I wasn't there so the only way you could know is if you can somehow create this parallel universe where you didn't interact with the team and then do an a/b test and compare you can't so you really don't know so or maybe I came into the team and then everything went south right just crashed they might have crashed anyway maybe they would have crashed even worse if I wasn't there so at the end of the day you don't know you can guess you can get a sense so I've just given up on that it's not important to me anymore to measure to know exactly was this my contribution or not right I'm planting seeds and I'm watering but guess what lots of other people are also planting seeds and watering and stuff so when we look at the result was that because of me or was it despite me I don't know and don't really care but what I do care about is are people happy to have me around so so I think the closest equivalent to you know knowing if you're adding value is to people want to have you around are they happy to have you there in that case you're probably doing something right however maybe they don't want you around maybe they're saying you know what we don't need help right now we're fine what does that mean but it could mean that you're just an annoying person who doesn't help the team or it could mean that you are awesome but they don't need your help right now again can't really tell the difference so give up on measuring exactly what your contribution is and in fact I would recommend this this attitude right it's a team game it's a number of people involved the whole idea with a cross-functional team is we kind of mix the roles up a little bit right it's no longer obvious exactly whose code was that or whose decision was this or we don't really know we we we look at the team results not individual results so that goes for you as well as a change agent okay funny story at Lego after about a year and a half going there frequently I was gonna my contract was gonna get extended and I wanted some feedback so I got so I met a bunch of people and I just showed them a list this is a type of stuff I've been doing here and running workshops doing inspirational talks standing in front of a whiteboard doing problem solving asking stupid questions I just made this list of stuff and I asked people what's most valuable do you think what should I be doing more in the future do you think so I always got the same answer what do you think the answer was an answer wasn't whatever it was one of those items I listed for you it was actually the fourth item there he was asking stupid questions yeah they all told me that yeah all this other stuff you do is valuable too but you know asking stupid questions that's that's the most valuable like whoa okay so that's that's very interesting you know things like we're sitting here arguing about quality but what do we mean by quality how will we know when we have it like hmm or why we organized this way what led us to that what what are we optimizing for when we're organized in this way this kind of questions that are easier to ask when you come from that outside a not part of the system right but even if you're embedded inside an organization as a no matter what your official role is right again eh agent is an attitude not a role just asking those rather naive stupid questions don't be shy they're usually very valuable even if they can feel a little bit embarrassing but again if you skip the Eagle part it gets a lot easier to ask those stupid questions I almost I was really kind of worried therefore when I just came to that engagement my first day at Lego I did something that I thought would get me kicked out I was in I went to I had just interviewed a bunch of teams to learn about what they're doing and what their challenges are and then I ended up in a war room where a bunch of managers we're discussing the state of things so there was one of those status boards with red and green and yellow flags and they went through all the different projects and it was mostly green I just interviewed the teams I knew the real story so after as they finished a meeting they asked me the new guy like hey so any what do you think you know any thoughts around this meeting and before I could stop myself I said this thing you call the project board sounds to me more like a board no like did I just say that and they totally burst out laughing they're like you know that was the elephant in the room this is a board this is just a ceremony let's talk about the real problems so yeah sometimes it takes this kind of naive the child like a change agent to come in and like hey what's going on here okay so you're probably wondering about the stupid toaster so let's let's let's get it over with I'm gonna talk about a pitfall which we often fall into the pitfall is solving symptoms rather than solving problems can I Ellis trait that using an example so let's say we have a team right and their job is to make toast okay it's a very silly metaphor but you know bear with me right their job is to make toast and the problem is their toast looks like that right burnt toast so they release this and then their product is not very appreciated by their customers so and the sales are going down and it's a problem so finally our manager shows up and says you know we need to do something about this so he brings in a consultant of course because that's what you do when you have a problem right organic consultant and the consultant comes in and says hmm I know I know what it is you guys have a quality problem the managers like yes and and the reason why you have a quality problem is because you don't have quality control how could you get quality if you don't have quality control sounds pretty sensible doesn't it right so we need to introduce quality control all right quality control this is quality control team right they receive this product from that team they test it not good not good but better ship it no [Music] this happens right this happens we have teams that do this we have organizations that work this way and technically Jesus wait whose stupid idea was this technically we fixed a problem though right it's a better product the customers are not going to complain as much about this anymore right so we could say yeah a great consultant he introduced quality control quality went up great happy story but guess what you just solved the symptom right you solved the symptom burnt toast you didn't fix the root cause so now you've made the problem permanent right now we have a longer cycle time it's got to go through this team this team is not incentivized to care about quality at all because look here we have people that fix it maybe they hand it back to the team they have to do the scraping but it's the same story and then of course this team is paid to scrape toes so they're not incentivized to get better toast right they want this burnt toast or else they lose their job so now you've really created a problem so rewind how what would we prefer how we fix the root cause of the problem without quality control what does this team need to do let me give you a hint what the team should be doing they should eat toast every day right they should be or maybe it's a product that they don't consume maybe it's a product that let's say they're building and expert system for doctors right they're not the user so they release the doctors but the team should go out and watch users using their product right watch the doctor cry and scream at your software all right watch the customer cry eating your toast right and then of course now the team is incentivized to make better toasts and they're gonna start exploring that and they might learn something interesting the customer would like to have something on the toast maybe some jams and butter right so they start exploring that and now suddenly you're building a better product so I'm not saying we shouldn't have testers just that the tester would be on the team of course helping them make better toast not just scraping right so yeah that's an example of a pitfall avoid being a toaster scraper don't be a toe scraper okay so again how do you make change happen here's another good trick that I learned from a guy named Jerry Weinberg who I consider a mentor he died just a few weeks ago which is very sad I would say about half of everything I'm talking about here I learned from Jerry and one one of those things is don't sell solutions sell problems when you talk into a team it's very tempting just want to you know convince them to do agile or whatever that means right start doing scrum or XP or Kanban you have the solution in mind and resist doing that think about well what problem I'm not trying to solve actually and sell the problem instead right so in this case I might instead of trying to convince the customer to build a bridge I might help them see that the river is is a barrier it's in the way and once they agree that it's a barrier then no they're motivated to talk about how might we get over the barrier and maybe your original idea a bridge wasn't the best solution anyway right what are some other ways to solve the river problem boat is already up there right what other ways shuttle plane right get more creative cannonball yeah now we're getting there yeah you dig a tunnel change the course of the river right why do we need to cross the river that's a good question too maybe there's because art because the business department is on the other side ah maybe we should all just move there or move them over here just you know explore the nature of the problem don't just try to push your solution because if you do that if you sell solutions rather than problems you'll get well it'll be easier to cause change to happen because now you get you know people get inspired they and they want to change but you'll also find better solutions right better better better solutions then maybe you thought so back to the ego thing you're probably not the smartest person in the room it's very unlikely especially if it's a big room right so help sell the problem and then unleash all these wonderful brains around you and people normally have really interesting solutions to things and I guess as part of that make things visible the more visible the better right I struggled with coming up with a metaphor my wife helped me with this one so basically yeah this person I've been trying to convince her for a long time didn't he say he needs to extinguish his hat but he was resisting I brought up a fire extinguisher to shoot at him and he's like to get that away from me right finally I just showed him a mirror and he's like bye give me the fire extinguisher so holding up the mirror making problems visible it could be for example doing a burn up chart in an on an existing project and you can show that in the current velocity we're never gonna make it right or customer satisfaction is going down or you have this wonderful product but you have a team that is depressed and burned out make that data visible try write whatever it is make it super visible sometimes you may be surprised right when I show this guy this mirror I expect him to go I gotta extinguish my hands but what might happen instead you might break the mirror stupid mirror could be yeah I like my hat this is a fashion statement could be right yeah or maybe you know this is this is a problem but I have another problem that's more important right now so let's just leave that thing alone so yeah make make things visible and then see what happens right super powerful but I would say that's probably the most powerful way to to to create the wand for change and to inspire people and as part of that also learn to ask it's something I don't know why it's so hard it took me probably seven eight years before I realized that it's a good idea to ask people if they want help before you actually help them why is that so hard to realize I was really surprised like that seems kind of obvious doesn't it yet I spent so many years not doing that so ask people if you're gonna work with a team or somebody and you're trying to help them just take a step back especially if you notice resistance right say do you want to help with this because if not I won't bother you because you know life is too short to waste trying to help people who don't want help so there's another Gerry Weinberg ISM don't inflict help on people right this guy was perfectly happy swimming around in the water and Here I am with a life you know what's it called lifesaver like mmm what problem am I trying to solve here my own fear he doesn't have a problem but he's happy that guy right so what i'm a i-i-i-i i'm pretending that i'm solving his problem but actually i'm solving my own problem which is maybe fear or lack of control or something so be clear about what problem am i really trying to solve now and whose problem is it because if it's only my problem let's not inflict that on other another people all right so it's a very simple question to ask what would you like help with this um okay as an external consultant somebody comes in from the outside we cheat and what I mean by that is when I when a client calls me they already want to change otherwise they wouldn't have called right so it's easier for consultants at least at least that person wants change maybe nobody else wants change in his organization but then it still gets tricky but if your internal then it's harder because maybe you weren't asked you know I'm a developer on this team and now I'm gonna cause change but nobody asked me to drive any change so now you have to do a lot more work you have to make the problem visible influence people in a whole other way so I think that's really important to acknowledge but there's another really weird thing how many of you are know about the out-of-town consultant syndrome it sound familiar an out-of-town consultant syndrome what's that yeah it only lasts for a while right it's when an external consultant comes in and says something like something of profound wisdom like how about cross-functional teams and everyone's like wow that was a really good idea thank you and of course people in the team were like we've been asking for this for years and now this idiot comes in from outside it says exactly the same thing and now all the managers listen right how many recognize that problem it's really common right it just seems to be a fact of life I can't really explain it but use it use it shamelessly right so sometimes when I come into an organization I go find the teams and I asked him what is it you've been trying to get these guys to do for years what should I say cross-functional teams right it works right and if you're the other guy if you're the guy in the team dump your ego somewhere and call that external guy and just say you know can you just pair up with me to say what I've been saying all along and they'll listen to you because you're an external guy that's what I mean by using a chain Leslie it's sad but what the heck we use whatever tools we can write okay that's a dirty trick of the day and that's that's also a nice example of pairing don't work alone as an external person and an internal person it's a great couple because the internal person knows how things work knows who to talk to right knows where to go knows what people are talking about but doesn't have as much credibility for being an insider unfortunately it's unfair but it's just fact of life right the external guy has maybe the credibility of being a new voice but doesn't really know the REA around the organization put these two together magic it's great plus then when you leave as an external person this other person locally will kind of continue so it's great pairing when it comes to to organizational change I know I noticed another dirty trick so I'm ready for a dirty trick number two people hate organizational change generally that seems to be the hardest sell but people normally don't mind experiments as much so yeah if I have this vision that these this team should get together and work as a cross-functional team I wouldn't go and say let's change the organization I would say let's try an experiment it's easier let's just move into the same room for a while oh no no we're not changing the organization no no we're not doing that we're just taking our chairs and going into this room here you still report to the same managers before etc and do that and then you may notice that oh my god this was a lot better a lot faster a lot more fun and then suddenly you've unleashed the inspiration and and the desire to change and now it's a lot easier right so in some cases I've seen major organizational change happen although I didn't do anything except start that experiment and then just back out and then BAM all this stuff happened that I never would have been able to cause otherwise that's a very nice trick and Spotify we have or used to have I'm not a Spotify anymore this thing called hack week which is it's everybody gets together for a whole week and just as hacking and that started as an experiment I would never have been able to sell that idea convincing the management and saying let's take all 1500 employees and do one week of hacking and then have a party at the end wouldn't have worked but the idea of let's try an experiment here all the teams are doing hacking anyway and it becomes an alignment problem if this team is having a hack day and they need something from them so how about we just try once to do it together just within development just within tech and product and let's try and if you don't like it we can go back to the way we normally do things so they're like ok let's give it a shot and it turned out to be really effective and lots of innovation happened and it was a good thing so then you know the next time we did the whole company for a week and then it this became institutionalized it became it became a habit but it would have been impossible to sell this from the beginning as a Hey twice per year let's get everybody to do a hack week wouldn't have worked so yeah definitely sell experiments and when he do that find volunteers right who wants to participate it's hard to force people right but if you ask hey who wants to try this idea of working in a cross-functional team who wants to try this idea of doing sprints or try and come bomb or whatever it is right portfolio level of Kanban whatever it is find volunteers and then once they've tried it and if it works then you've learned something and it'll probably spread if it didn't work it won't spread and you still learn something right okay there's a really useful technique another one by the way which I call get the right people into the room this has happened several times I come to an organization and they're like our biggest problem is X so then and I have no idea how to solve this problem but I can find out who's involved so I can find out you know who is suffering under this problem who is who might be able to do something about it let's say the problem is how we do how we interact between department a and Department B right and there's like crashes all right so get a few people from here get a few people from there involved into a room and then invite them just say hey let's talk about this problem and once you get this this group of people stakeholders into the room ask them the question like I hear we're having huge problems with the interaction between these two departments would you agree and that's really important to check because what if they say no there's no problem well guess what you need to sell the problem you know before we before you sell solutions right so if they don't agree that the problem is a problem then that's your biggest problem but normally by the time you get that far yeah they'll say yes it's a big problem the next question is do you want to solve it it might sound silly to ask but it's important because maybe they agree that it's a big problem but you know they have other problems that are more important right now or we're kind of busy with other stuff we're not willing to spend time on this right now check that right because again don't inflict help on people if they don't want help right now don't bother so anyway question everyone do you agree this is a problem yes we do do do you want to solve it yes yes we do okay question number three what do you think it would take to solve it right okay if it's a complex problem you might want to do a little bit of root cause analysis and things like that right like in the toast situation but generally speaking take it to the team ask the people in the room what do you think it would take to fix this problem and surprisingly often they have awesome ideas in fact the reason why they have this problem in the first place is because they've never been together in this particular combination of people that's why they got the problem so your biggest job sometimes as a change agent is just get the right people into the room and then back out of the way let them figure out the solution surprisingly powerful you know this thing about scrum right scrum is a framework so you can use it for different types of things you can use it to build a product and of course you can also use it to actually run an organizational change so that's very powerful so in some cases when when I get a group like this together I'm like you guys are like some kind of virtual team now cuz you're all in different departments right but how about wheat is that we scrub this problem now right because you just came up with three possible solutions let that be this sprint and then every week we'll have a synchronization meeting just to check how we're doing and every month we'll get everyone together into the room again to check so did it work if not what are we gonna try next basically using a kind of scrum scrum ish approach to solve the problem itself very powerful anybody tried something like that scrubbing the problem itself yeah very powerful technique an interesting question when it comes to problems though is what is definition of dung in that case when are you done right let's say the problem is we have trouble collaborating with the customer okay well when are we done it's never gonna be perfect right so one technique I like to use sometimes is in the organization you get a cross-section of the company together and you vote what are the biggest impediments for our department for our company whatever vote identify the top three right now we have the top three impediments a really bad user stories B people hate coming to work C our offices have really bad air okay when are we done well I'd say definition of done enough is when the problem is no longer top three right so we improve our stories maybe we fix the top problem we start improving that next time we get together and talk about the biggest problems maybe that one's no longer top three it's down here either because we improved it or because something else popped up well it's done enough right we focus on something else right that way you don't get stuck beating a dead horse because you can always improve right in on one thing so yeah lots of little tricks I'm gonna start wrapping up here the ultimate trick is when you've been working for a long time trying to make things better and you keep failing there's a final trick in your back pocket and it's called the law of two feet how many of you know about the law of two feet often used at conferences law two feet says if you're not learning or contributing or having fun I added to having fun part if you're not learning or contributing or having fun where you stand right now use your two feet and go somewhere else where you can learn or contribute and have four have fun right so again life is too short to beat a dead horse life is too short to help people you know what help life is too short to help companies that seem to be hell-bent on dying get out of their way let them in peace and you know focus on companies that want to succeed because you know what there are plenty of those companies around right find them they will appreciate you better and you'll be a happier person right okay so some final words here I think of what would be the essence of being a good change agent and I would probably summarized it as be brave because if you're really scared of stepping on people's toes you're not gonna be a very effective change agent because no matter what you change somebody's gonna probably be a bit upset by it even if only temporarily and plus you don't know if your solution is gonna work right maybe we introduce cross-functional teams and it got worse like oh my god all these other times we introduce cross-functional teams and it worked like a charm because that's what the agile books say and then here it didn't guess what that's reality for you right you know the whole no silver bullets thing yeah that one right there's no silver bullets no guaranteed solutions so you don't know if what you're doing is gonna work but you need to do it anyway and that's what I mean by being brave right be humble again you're not the smartest person in the room and if you act as if you are you're not gonna be very effective so be humble realize that your past experiences are useful but they don't give you the absolute answer and there's gonna be other people in the room who have really great ideas you should listen to them right see be brave be humble realize that we're all in a learning journey and of course stay curious because it seems like in my case no matter how much I do this I always get surprised in some cases like oh that's interesting this thing worked here that never worked anywhere else hmm what can I learn from that right so a-plus it's it's quite fun it's a I think it's a it's a fun way to look at the world I was being curious yeah that's it this you know this cool book kind of a description of what a good talk should be like there should be just a few learning points right three or four I have a 16 for you so pick any ones you want pick your own three or four thank you very much

Channel: Scrum Ukraine

Views: 11,719

Rating: 4.9396987 out of 5

Keywords: scrum, agile coach, agile, scrum master, lean, less

Id: c1W6U2duXdI

Length: 56min 45sec (3405 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 03 2018