What’s Love Got to do With It?

My friend and mentor Bryan Franklin recently gave a talk at TEDx Sin City challenging the audience to consider what impact they truly want to have in the world. This caused me to inquire deeply about why I do what I do. Why Agile? Why software? Why not something else.

My response may surprise you. Then again it might not. I welcome your thoughts on what place the word “love” has in the business world.

I also invite you to check out Bryan’s original talk. He is a remarkable thinker, coach and human being.

Collaboration and the Enterprise

A 5-Minute Interview with organizational psychologist Laura Danforth.

Holacracy – Kanban for Everything

On a recent visit to San Francisco I met up with Brian Burt CEO of Maestro Conference – an innovative conference call and remote education platform. It was also the first project I worked on as Product Manager where I applied Agile. We made a lot of mistakes back then but managed to successfully launch a product in very trying economic times. More importantly we learned how to work together.

Brian became so enamored of Agile that he has now adopted a corporate governance system called Holacracy which is based in part on Agile. In this short video Brian walks me through his system. Enjoy.

The Importance of Failure

Chip designer Amjad Obeidat spends his days building stuff that’s never been built before. In this 5-Minute interview he talks about the importance of failure in his process.

For more on failure check out this video from Honda.

Transformation and Management

Speaking with Geoffrey Bourne (SVP at a large financial institution and Agile aficionado) over dinner last night, my thinking arrived at a sticky yet significant point about the role of management in creating organizational Agility.

Management layers in large corporations are numerous and are built on a top-down reporting and power structure. In such environments command-and-control mindsets are crucial for career survival and reinforced by almost every aspect of an organization from the org chart to the placement of desks.

Yet Agility depends on bottom-up empowered lines of communication and collaboration. And this requires individual and team motivation and commitment. But commitment – the ability to say a powerful “yes” – can only happen in an environment where you can also say “no” meaningfully.

So when an organization attempts to reap the benefits of Agile they must also be willing to give up control. The jujitsu of this move however is that by giving up control you gain power and speed – like a cyclist who takes her hand off the brake and can suddenly travel faster and steer more effectively.

Line management seems to be the key. While executive support is important new, their jobs don’t change significantly in an Agile transition – at least not early on. And delivery teams usually get the benefits (and therefore motivation) quickly. It is the managers and business people who work directly with delivery teams who’s lives change the most and unless they are enthusiastic and good managers already Agile will fail.

It now appears to me that when selecting a team to begin an Agile transition, one of the most important filters we can use is to select a project that has a talented, enthusiastic manager (who is not risk averse) already in place. That is they need to be confident and self-aware enough to be able to relax the reigns of command-and-control below while still operating in one above. All they while knowing that the success or failure of the project will reflect on them. A conundrum if there ever was one.

What have you noticed about the role various layers of management play in successful organizational transformations (Agile or otherwise)? What do you look for in a manager (Agile or otherwise)?

Collaboration Can Kill

And why it’s a good thing.

THE END

I got the call just two months after we’d begun – the venture was off and I was out of work. In the weeks that followed my last two paychecks bounced actually costing me money and my friends and I scrambled to take our skills elsewhere.

Why is it that I now view this obvious business failure as a personal victory and a confirmation of the power of collaboration?

THE BEGINNING

The story begins several years ago when I was finishing grad school. Some classmates and I, along with and a few high-powered collaborators were working on a startup we thought would change the world. We were excited, enthusiastic and dare I say visionary.

A partner out of state held the technology, the money came from a local investor, and together we’d assembled a dream team of advisors and collaborators including a well-known former banker and monetary theorist and a former oil executive known for her visionary ability. Most other members of the team had a proven ability to make things happen and to think outside the proverbial box.

We envisioned an enlightened social venture (we were working in clean energy) that would create value and disseminate a simple and disruptive technology. We were sure we could not fail, or if we did we’d have learned a ton about an important sector and moved an important technology significantly forward.

We were wrong.

The business team had been working together for about 2 months and had created a preliminary marketing and business plans. The technology had been in development for a few years inside a university. After working in parallel we decided it was time to come together and “form” as a team with a 3-day, face-to-face session. I helped shape the agenda and ran many of the sessions. We based what we did largely on principles borrowed from Holacracy.

When we left town a few days later we had no agreements and no plan for moving forward. We were demoralized but looking back I believe that, though uncomfortable, this was the right outcome.

WHY IT DIDN’T WORK

The most significant barrier to moving forward was a fundamental disagreement between the technology holder and the business team regarding the valuation of the company. Without agreement we had no basis to raise investment and without investment we had no business. We worked hard to find common ground however it just didn’t exist then and still doesn’t today.

I should mention here that though I have my opinions about who was right and who was wrong, I’m not here to pass judgment. Well meaning people will often disagree and collaboration is not about proving who is smarter. It’s about finding common ground and a common purpose and moving things forward. If that cannot be accomplished then parting ways is usually the best option. Marketers often say the best answer is yes the second best is no and the worst is maybe. The same is true of team formation.

WHAT I LEARNED

Those 3 days were some of the most difficult I’ve ever experienced but the during that time we were forced us to talk to each other, face facts and ultimately decide to part ways.

The collaborative tools we used didn’t cause dissention but they did surface disagreements that were already there. Collaboration and Agile are not silver bullets, they don’t solve all your problems. They are however silver mirrors that allow us to see the present situation more clearly – even if that situation is not pretty.

What lessons do you take for your business from this experience? For me it’s to ask difficult questions early and to not be afraid to walk away.

5 Steps to Collaborative Culture

A keynote address on collaboration at a Rally Agile Success Tour in New York on Thursday March 3, 2011.

How Many Coaches to Form a Team?

Last December at the quarterly Rally coaches gathering in Boulder CO, four coaches (Isaac Montgomery, Steve Adolph, Scott Dunn and myself) resolved to form a team to write a book about Agile aimed at a general business audience. And we resolved to write it in an Agile fashion – eating our own dog food as they say.

Today marks the acceptance of our third iteration plan and I think we are finally getting somewhere. Along the way we’ve learned that Agile is not as easy as we sometimes make it out to be. Here are a few specific lessons.

BEGINNING: It takes time and commitment to form a team. As coaches who travel a lot and are focused on delivering in-person trainings 2-4 weeks each month finding the time to commit to work was challenging at first. We found that we had to first commit to a few meetings to shape the project before we could find the time (e.g. motivation) to commit to working on the actual writing.

DO SOMETHING: Early in the project we had a vision and a team and not much else. This lack of clarity early on nearly overwhelmed our enthusiasm and it was only by focusing on the small chunks, that we could do, that the project began to take shape.

CREATE SOMETHING TO KILL: We began, logically, with the introductory chapter only to realize that this was best written last. This chapter is sitting in our repository unfinished – we may never use it but it was an important step nonetheless.

DECLARATIONS ARE IMPORTANT: Early on we formed a product team – stakeholders from each part of Rally – that we would demo our work to (at the end of each two-week iteration). Without assembling this group, and declaring to them what we are working on, we might never have made it through the early stages of the project and developed the momentum it now appears we have.

IT’S EASY TO FORGET TO INSPECT & ADAPT: We are coaches, we advise and train teams for a living frequently admonish them that the Retrospective is perhaps the most important meeting in any Agile cadence. Yet it wasn’t until this morning that it occurred to us that we should schedule a retrospective as part of OUR cadence (doh!).

This has been a humbling and educational experience for us all and we’re beginning to realize that the story of creating this book may be more interesting than the story itself. Stay tuned for future updates.

What would you like to know about the project?

Appreciation – the Key to Change

When I quit smoking for good 5 years ago I did it through deep appreciation for cigarettes and all they’d done for me. I’d quit several times before, sometimes for years at a time, by punishing myself and hating cigarettes – but the smoke had always returned.

As I was being particularly hard on myself one day a friend asked me what I enjoyed about smoking and suggested I connect with that, and see if I could quit from a place of gratitude.

He was right. I found I deeply enjoyed many things about cigarettes. Socially they kept my hands busy and gave me reasons to connect with others – sometimes attractive others. Professionally they gave me a reason to take a break and let my non-rational mind take over. And they also were enjoyable sensory experiences in their own right – the taste and smell (and nicotine hit) had become deeply enjoyable to me over the years, especially with coffee involved.

Over the course of the next two weeks I let myself smoke as often as I liked and each time pushed myself to be consciously and specifically grateful to cigarettes. I turned off the critical mind and allowed myself to fully enjoy and appreciate smoking. I found I liked it, a lot but not enough to compensate for some things I didn’t like – smelly clothes, financial expense and impeded health.

When I opened the last pack I added “and I think I can get along without you from now on” to my gratitude. I explained to the smoke that it wasn’t that I hated it I just felt we’d learned as much as we could from each other and it would be best if we parted ways from here on out. And I knew it was true. I could get the good things cigarettes gave me in ways that didn’t cost so much.

The smoke tries to pull me back in occasionally but I’m clear I’m done and it gives up quickly. I guess I’m not an enticing mark anymore.

My friend, fellow coach (and personal hero) Bryan Franklin often says that appreciation is the key to change. That is that you cannot change until you fully appreciate where you are. I’ve found this to be true in many areas of my life, but nowhere was this more present than with cigarettes.

I think there are several reasons for this but the most important is that appreciation helps you see exactly where you are – the plusses and the deltas. If you are fighting the current state of affairs, you are probably not fully seeing things as they are. This means you are missing the options you have and therefore are feeling forced into change. And, whether internally or externally imposed, the use of force never bodes well for building true, sustainable change.

Agile adoption is about changing how we view our jobs, our organizations and ourselves. What can you appreciate about your team today – especially the deltas? How can you help your team appreciate (e.g. fully see) where they are?

Agile is Not Pretty

I recently took pictures of myself in my underwear. I also weighed myself, measured the circumference of several parts of my body and had a trainer measure my body fat. I then recorded the results in a spread sheet – I’ve never done this before and, until I did, I thought I was in pretty good shape. It was a humbling experience.

I did all this because I’m reading The 4-Hour Body and I am generating a before picture of myself that I’m hoping will contrast nicely with the picture I create after a couple of months of focused exercise and dietary change. [And no, you cannot see the pictures, not yet anyway.]

Some of my favorite coaching tools help teams take “pictures” like these. We estimate capacity, measure velocity and work to get a clear picture of the throughput we can anticipate for a team. We do this in an effort to get a realistic idea of where a team is and what they can actually accomplish in the time they have.

I’ve posted my pictures in a place where I see them every day and I encourage teams to do the same. “What gets measured gets managed” as Senge says of course but – there is also Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that the act of simply observing something can change it. I’ve seen this time and again.

Agile is a way for your organization to get real with itself. The mechanism is simple but the results of such truth telling can be astounding. And, just like those painful pictures I look at every day, you may not like what you see.