Agile at Solar Car Race

Istanbul Technical University Solar Car Team is a team made up completely of students who participate in solar car races. The team consists of 30 ITU students. They voluntarily put their hearts and efforts into being the champion of solar car races while getting through their undergraduate studies. Their goal is to promote and educate the use of clean energy. They have participated in the World Solar Challenge in Australia and in the ESC – European Solar Challenge in South Africa. As the biggest solar car racing team in Turkey, their project plans are mainly based on one target: Participation in the World Solar Challenge- a road race in which participating vehicles can only use solar power for motion – using the power of innovation, and complete it successfully with the highest yield. They have strong competitors who have extensive and detailed project plans and who are highly motivated to move forward. 

Each of these brilliant students works like a professional and takes their job quite seriously. As the agile42 Turkey team, we really appreciated their ambition and belief in themselves to put in their best effort. Their enthusiasm for continuous learning and improvement really impressed us. That is why we have decided to support them.

We have started with Agile training and aligned their knowledge to be a Scrum team. Following the training, we had coaching sessions to start their Sprints. We started with 5 Agile teams that worked on “Mechanical”, ”Advanced Driving and Strategy”, ”Power Systems”, ”Embedded Systems” and “Production and Composite Systems”. Those five teams were aligned with Scrum values and principles and they adopted the new way of working at a high speed.

Now they are working with Scaled Agile with 5 teams interconnecting each other.

 As we worked with them, we saw that Scrum fitted their structure very well because their environment and working conditions were full of challenges and complexity. They are already conscious of Agile values and are progressing with solid steps on their way to achieve success.

In the words of the ITU Solar Car Team

«In order to increase our productivity and efficiency in our team, we needed to alter our work-flow. ITU Solar Car Team has several teams to work together and we were facing problems with planning work to be done or to be able to follow-up whole plans effectively. Depending on the research we have completed, we came across the Agile-Scrum framework. We had a talk with two agile42 Turkey coaches Ayşe Turunç and Ebru Yalçınkaya, and they agreed to support us without expecting anything in return. We have taken the Agile course to provide the core of Agile principles and applications.

The Scrum Method completely fits our team structure, and we finally have a chance to follow up on our workflow and productivity. We have started to consider the teams’ performance instead of individual performances and are moving forward as a result of this perspective, and we have increased our productivity.

Even though the tasks we completed are built-in, we are conscious of the teams performing. Every team has the authority of deciding which path to go. This plays a significant role when we create our Sprints. By starting to use Scrum, we do not have to spend time on lengthy meetings. With the daily stand-up’s, everybody asks several questions and communicates effectively, it only takes fifteen minutes. Daily stand-ups sped up our process a lot and most importantly, they increased productivity. These meetings should be finished in fifteen minutes; gives a chance to observe each task’s current situation and helps to figure out if there is a need to help other team members.

We get quick feedback when the sprints finish before a particular task proceeds in the wrong direction for weeks, even months. Before, when the task was finished, it could have been too late to fix the problems. Scrum helps us to detect possible outcomes while the process continues. Early detection is important, getting earlier feedback of our items enables the early detection. Then we have a chance to overhaul. 

All of the teams are using a Kanban board in order to visualize and focus on their work. Tasks are divided into three main layers: To-Do, Progress, Done. Also, these To-Do’s are assigned to the members of the team. Thanks to this system, we can easily observe who takes part in a particular task. 

Our Scrum transformation is ongoing and our production process becomes more efficient and our teams have a higher motivation to do the best. Thank you, agile42 family – Ayşe Turunç, Ebru Yalçınkaya and Figen Yalçınkaya – for all of the inspiration that you have given us!»

Presenting at ScanAgile 2019

We are very happy to have two great agile42 coaches presenting at ScanAgile 2019, the Scandinavian Agile Conference to be held in Helsinki on March 13th-14th. ScanAgile also displays some of the cutest conference artwork in the community!

Cliff Hazell will present Moving Beyond Cargo Cult Agile: Most companies claiming to, or wanting to, be agile, start at the team level. Often this involves adopting a model or framework that either only has those parts, or ignoring the Program and Strategy level changes. At best this inspires a change journey, but more often this yields little impact on the core business metrics.

In this session Cliff will draw in his experiences as a Product Lead in Telecoms and experience designing effective organizations at Spotify, to demonstrate how small changes in your program and portfolio layers can yield far great impact than training all your engineers in agile and checking a box.

Pascal Papathemelis will present Dammit, get together and get the job done! together with Andrey Rusetskiy: After organizations adopt Agile, they start facing new challenges related to running agile projects and coordinating multiple agile teams. Even if mechanisms to coordinate agile teams are in place, organizations face problems and bottlenecks that can’t be resolved by Scrum of Scrums or similar practices.

In their presentation, they will share how they have successfully addressed this issue, evolving their co-working practices in special events several times during development projects. The ideas are based on the principles described in the Agile Manifesto and hackathon events.

Ensure your spot to the conference in order to listen to Cliff and Pascal and other great speakers.

How to plan and create a structured approach to coaching?

Observational Coaching

Starting out as a new agile coach is difficult. Where do you go? How do you start? Learn to leverage a structured approach to coaching that defines a way to prepare and execute coaching activities. This starts with making observations and identifying what behavioural goals you would like the coachee(s) to achieve.

As coaches, our opinions and unconscious biases can mislead or misdirect those we are coaching. This bias occurs when an observer expresses their thoughts and expectations about a situation through tone, word choice, and body language in a way that influences the behaviour of people whom they are observing.

A classic example:

 

This is known as Observer Expectancy Effect, where our own ideas, biases and preconceptions would cause the thing we are observing to take particular actions.

Right about now, you’re probably thinking “Well I wouldn’t do that! I’m a professional!”. Bad news is that WE all do it. We can’t help it because it’s largely unconscious. Consequently, it is important that we are aware and careful of this effect. To help us avoid jumping ahead of ourselves, we can leverage a coaching structure.

Team Coaching Framework™ (TCF)

Team Coaching Framework™ is a structured approach to coaching which aims at limiting or negating the impact of any observer bias we may bring to the table while improving team performance. Through a structured approach, coaches and scrum masters will be able to better target their efforts and create demonstrable improvement in teams.

1. Make observations – what are we seeing

E.g. Conversations in the daily scrum centers around the scrum master.

Does this sound like an observation to you?  In fact this is an inference. An inference is where we add our own conclusions to observations.  When we look at the actual events (i.e. making an observation), we may see every member of the team talking to the scrum master or team members speak primarily to the scrum master and occasionally to each other.

2. Formulate hypothesiswhy are we seeing what we are seeing

One of the most common problem is forming a hypothesis that closely matches our preconceived idea on why we are seeing what we see.  For example, for a dysfunctional daily stand up, we may jump to the assumption that the team doesn’t understand the purpose behind this ceremony.  However, could it also be that the scrum master is seeking to control the stand up? In order to avoid making assumptions, we want to form multiple hypotheses and tackle them one at a time by starting with the easiest ones first!

More often than not, we unintentionally validate the hypothesis by seeking for actions that prove it and filtering out evidence that disproves it.  This is known as confirmation bias.  One way to avoid this is to specially look for information that disproves the hypothesis and highlight any hidden assumptions.

3. Set goals – where do we want to get to

Begin by asking yourself these questions:

  • What would things be like if the team improved?
  • What would the behaviour look like?

Based on your answers for the questions above, set yourself some SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound).

4. Determine the leading and lagging indicators – how do we know we are getting there (leading) and how do we know we have achieved our goal (lagging)

E.g. As the owner of an e-commerce site, your goal is to increase sales revenue by 30%.  If your website traffic remained the same, how likely are you to reach your sales revenue goal? In this case, website traffic serves as a leading metric that tells you whether or not you’re heading in the right direction. On the other hand, sales revenue is a lagging metric that allows you to know whether or not you have indeed achieved your goal.

5. Choose tools – which tools can help you reach your goal

Any action you take that potentially influences how the team or individual behaves is considered a tool.  (Refer to the coaching card example.)

Coaching Card

Coaching card is a template that walks through the TCF (make observations, formulate hypothesis, set goals, determine indicators, choose tools). agile42 coaches have created a repository of over 80 coaching cards that you can use. Please visit the Team Coaching Framework App – https://tcf.agile42.com. Feel free to use the templates or create your own coaching cards in the app.

Tips & Tricks:

– Formulate hypotheses as a group: Other coaches may come up with hypotheses you would never have thought of.

– Pair with other coaches or scrum masters: Extra pair of eyes may result in a different set of observations.

– Share coaching cards with your team: Create transparency into your coaching. You can apply coaching cards to your 1-on-1 coaching conversations with team members.

– Use coaching card as a retrospective tool with your team:

  • generate data from team observations
  • generate team insights on observations they see
  • generate a team goal of where they want to be
  • generate a team action on how to get to the goal

– Create a “continuous improvement backlog” using coaching cards: Track which hypothesis have met the lagging and leading metrics and can be put to “done”.

Coaching Card Example:

Observation:

The scrum master takes a very controlling role in the meeting – walking everyone through the three questions.  He is quick to delegate work and ends the meeting by asking if everyone has “enough work for today”.

Hypothesis:

1) We think that the scrum master has not internalized the mechanisms he is expected to use. He may have difficulties understanding the role and the dynamics between scrum master and dev team.

2) The team may be afraid of taking responsibility and is happy to hand it to the scrum master.

3) Scrum master may not be familiar with mechanics of Pull versus Push.

***Pick one of the hypotheses to invalidate. (Recommendation: Go with the easiest one first.) It is important that we are trying to invalidate and NOT validate in order to avoid confirmation bias.

Goal:

The goal is to make the team members talk to one another rather than only the scrum master. (i.e. they plan their Sprints and workdays as a team.)

Indicators:

Leading indicators:

  • What percentage of questions in the stand-up are posed by the scrum master compared to team members?
  • How often do the team members say “us” and “we” rather than “me” and “I”?
  • How often does the scrum master NOT ask if everyone has work for the day?
  • Ask the scrum master to skip a daily stand-up. Silently observe the meeting when the scrum master is not present. Do the interactions change?

Lagging indicators:

  • All work items are pulled by team members, not pushed by the scrum master
  • The scrum master listens more than he speaks

Coaching Tools:

i) Teach the scrum master in the role.

ii) Role model for the scrum master. Offer to run the daily stand-ups a couple of times, then explain to him what you did and why.

iii) Gently move the scrum master outside the circle in the daily stand-up. If team members still turn towards the ScrumMaster, move him all the way behind the speaking team member.

iv) Help the team create a pull policy.


Join us on May 6th in Vancouver for the very first ORGANIC agility conference to learn about the Team Coaching Framework™. Build your own coaching card and walk away with practices you can apply immediately to improve team performance.

 

We are also starting a series of Coaching Card workshops in North America where our coaches will walk you through the process of creating a coaching card. Add yourself to the waitlist for the next workshop session >> Link

Basic Desires and coaching

Agile Finland, our local association in Finland on all things agile, organizes regular Coaching Circle events that gather people together interested in agile and coaching. Sessions open with an introduction to a specific topic/methodology and then are followed with a practical exercise on that topic/methodology. We learn new things and practice coaching in a safe to fail environment. The group discusses real problems so that the exercises are as close to reality as possible. Things discussed in the exercises are handled confidentially. Another huge benefit of these gatherings is Networking with like minded people.

In the January event, which took place on Monday 21.01.2019, I co-hosted the gathering in Helsinki where we addressed the topic of basic desires. Surprisingly this topic attracted many people and the attendance was quite good. Ari Tanninen from Zulia facilitated the session in his own enjoyable way with a good mix of new information, humor and personal insights.

The concept of basic desires is based on the book “Who am I?” by Steven Reiss. Steven Reiss has been researching the motivation of people and written a number of books on the topic. Reiss, together with Susan Haverkamp, made an extensive study by asking several thousands of people about what drives and motivates them.They concluded that there are 16 basic desires that people need to have fulfilled. While people are not all the same they still have these basic desires. Different people just have different levels of intensity for each desire. For example one might desire food more, another might desire beauty more, but all desire eating and enjoying beauty.

The basic desires are:

  • Power – the desire to influence others
  • Independence – the desire for self-reliance
  • Curiosity – the desire for knowledge
  • Acceptance – the desire for inclusion
  • Order – the desire for organisation
  • Saving – the desire to collect things
  • Honor – the desire to be loyal to one’s parents & heritage
  • Idealism – the desire for social justice
  • Social Contact – the desire for companionship
  • Family – the desire to raise one’s own children
  • Status – the desire for social standing
  • Vengeance & winning – the desire to get even
  • Romance & Aesthetics – the desire for sex & beauty
  • Eating – the desire to consume food
  • Physical activity – the desire for exercise of muscles
  • Tranquility – the desire for emotional calm

Fulfilling the basic desires at the correct intensity level makes the life meaningful. Different intensity levels make some desires more important (high level) than others (low level).

The following framework from Reiss shows how to improve the quality of life:

  1. Identify the basic desires important to you
  2. Evaluate how well each is fulfilled in your life
  3. If it is unsatisfied is it too much or not enough?
  4. Make a plan on how to adjust the levels

After this basic background introduction by Ari we went into practice. Each participant made their own basic desire profile. Ari showed a list of statements for each basic desire in two groups, one for high intensity need and one for low intensity. The participant could then classify the basic desire as important, average or less important for himself, depending on which group there was a best fit on the statements and himself.

We then reflected on our lives at the moment and judged which basic desires were more or less important, if we should increase or reduce the intensity, and then think of actions to adjust accordingly.

According to Reiss desires are unchangeable but one can adjust the intensity. This affects how we see the world and how well we understand other people. When people have no common desires it is hard to get to a common ground and develop deeper relationships.

As time ran out we ended with a discussion of how to utilise this model. This tool could improve personal relationships, situations at work, etc. For example in a team the basic desires could help open up the personalities of people and get to know each other better. A plan can be done so that the team overall gets the desires fulfillment increased. A coach can facilitate this exercise for the team.

While Ari runs a full workshop on this approach, an agile coach could utilise it at work to identify motivations and help teams or individuals improve. Why don’t you ask a coach from agile42 to help your team?

We ended with some mingling and cleaning up the location. Thanks to Gofore for sponsoring the location and the snacks, to Salum Abdul-Rahman for helping organise the event, and to Ari for facilitating.

If you are interested you should join one of our future events that are organised each month. For notifications when they’ll be join up at https://www.meetup.com/Agile-Finland-Helsinki-Coaching-Circle/.

From Agile to agility: Andrea Tomasini and Dave Snowden keynote at Agile Beyond IT

agile42 founder Andrea Tomasini and Cognitive Edge Chief Scientific Officer Dave Snowden will take together the stage for the keynote From Agile to agility during Agile Beyond IT, the conference held in Berlin from 12 to 14 March 2019. 

Despite the Agile manifesto commitment to Individuals and interactions over processes and tools the reality too often degenerates into certification schemes focused on structured methods or even worse it degrades into tool implementation. Approaches assume a manufacturing model (the engineering metaphor) rather than a network of relationships between individuals (the biological metaphor). Requirements are fragmented, the bigger picture and wider opportunities are lost. Excessive focus on predetermined goals and KPIs fails to support continuous learning and adaptation through experimentation. In this presentation we will look at the next generation of organizational agility, creating real-time feedback loops, adaptive processes and fostering innovation – working out what is a minimal scaffolding or structure around which new and innovative applications can emerge.

Get your tickets for Agile Beyond IT

Don’t Panic Series (Part 3): How can you change organizational culture through stories?

There are four different ways a story can be told: Top-Down, Bottom-Up, Inside-Out, or Outside-In. All of these story types play an essential role in cultural change.

Continuing with the Don’t Panic series, Dave Sharrock and Melissa Boggs will provide examples for each story type and how they can be used to change the organizational culture.

1. Top-Down

Melissa Boggs (MBO): The story we want to start with is Top-Down. One of the things we hear frequently, especially when it comes to agile transformation, is the following: if it is top-down, it is something being imposed on people. For instance, if I tell you that we will be doing this but I don’t change any of my behaviors as a leader, how would you feel? Most likely, you’re going to feel imposed on because nothing is changing for me yet I’m asking you to change everything.

I have an excellent story about a young executive who was struggling with a culture where the leadership team was expected to know everything. However, in this particular organization, they were trying to move towards a culture of transparency and authenticity. The executive team was telling people to be transparent and to tell the truth when things weren’t going right. So when this young executive came across a situation where she didn’t know the answer, she said to the team, “I don’t know.” What’s important about this story is that she went on to tell others about it. After she said that she didn’t know, her team came up with some amazing ideas. Just because she was an executive didn’t mean she had all the answers. The most rewarding part was the feeling of freedom in having the burden lifted off her shoulders and allowing other people to step in.

Dave Sharrock (DSH): One thing to highlight is that if the top-down stories are instructional, they don’t tend to work. But when the top-down stories are modelling the behaviors that people are looking to see, that tends to work very well. By creating a modelled intent of where to go, it’s a very powerful way to help people understand what that change is.

2. Bottom-Up

DSH: What about the Bottom-Up stories? We often see teams who don’t feel that they have the power or ability to change the organization. Our experiences have indicated otherwise. There are very real situations where you can only change an organization from the bottom-up. For those of you who are working in a team, recognize that there are a lot of bottom-up stories that can be filtered through.

Bottom-up stories start in very small parts of the organization and then they rise and grow throughout that organization. An example where bottom-up works way better than top-down is in engineering practices such as test automation. If I try to do a top-down modelling of test automation, unless I’m a CIO that’s still coding in a small organization, there is very little opportunity to do the modelling and provide a story that can be shared across the organization. Then what happens is that it becomes a directive: we need to do test automation. This is ineffective in getting the team to do test automation.

From my past experience, what I have done is I grab a seat with the developer and we figure out how to do test automation together – running the first test, then the second one, and soon enough we see the advantages such as rapid feedback. The developer that I worked with would begin telling his colleagues, and in a matter of days, three and four of the developers also began to do the same thing. Before you know it, two and three teams began practicing test automation.

This created the permission for development teams to start learning themselves and start working together in making those changes. The nice thing is that this was something driven by the teams themselves, so they own it.

MBO: I also have a funny story to share. One of my favorite teams to work with is high school students. So I work a lot with agile educators and high school teachers who use agile values in their classroom. An interesting story was that one of the high school teachers began applying Agile in his classroom. The first week or so, the kids were very silent. After a couple of weeks of staying silent, he started hearing murmur amongst the students. What he didn’t expect was to have other teachers come up to him and ask what was going on in his classroom. What happened was that the children were super excited and it began travelling from one classroom to another.

3. Inside-Out

MBO: On to Inside-Out stories, these are close to bottom-up but they are slightly different. Inside-out stories spread out from one team or department to other functional teams and departments across the organization. For instance, if you work in the IT team, these stories don’t spread to your peers on the same team but to other teams such as Marketing or Sales. One example is how a stakeholder of the software team, such as the marketing team, would observe how the software team was working and became inspired to apply Agile to their work.

DSH: Inside-out is that internal department-to-department communication; you are learning what is happening next door.

4. Outside-In

DSH: For Outside-In, this is probably one of the most underrated communication story channel that we see. Outside-in are from the customers coming in, who see from the outside. Often, these stories are distant so it is hard to find what they are.

One of the banks we worked with encouraged their teams to go out to the branches where they deployed the software they built. One of the team members described this as a very powerful experience. By working directly with the tellers at the branch, he was able to share the experiences back to the team and this changed the way his team built their product. In fact, the bank took one of the branches and located them to the ground floor of the office where the development team worked at. By bringing in customers and end users’ experiences, this changed the way people worked.

MBO: Similarly, I had an experience with a medical equipment company that provided motorized vehicle and wheelchairs. One of the wonderful things that the organization did was that they brought in customer stories. This included bringing in customers during their quarterly meetings or having people go out on what they called “ride-along” where they would go to a delivery and see the people receiving the equipment. The stories that came back after the ride-along started a movement. It inspired change. The employees started to take more risk and began to increase their transparency so that they can have better conversations with their customers. This was all because of the realization that they were making an impact for the people on the other side of the wall.


Special Notes:

1. Missed our previous blog posts? Click here:

2. Be on the lookout for the final blog post in this series: Don’t Panic Series (Part 4): What to look out for during your cultural transformation?

3. To listen to the full webinar, click on this link: https://goo.gl/E6H4H1


Don’t Panic Series (Part 2): How does culture change?

Fundamentally, changing culture is going to require some pretty significant changes. There’s going to be a new direction on where to go, and you’re almost certainly going to have to stop doing something. This means interrupting the way you normally work because in order to change direction, you have to pause and put the brakes on.

Continuing with the Don’t Panic series, Dave Sharrock and Melissa Boggs will explain how culture changes as well as discuss the technique of storytelling.

How does culture change?

Dave Sharrock (DSH): When it comes to organizational change, there are going to be new structures and processes. As much as we can email powerpoints and do roadshows to explain what those structures and processes are, the truth is that this is NOT the way we change what we do. We have to understand the human nature of organizational change.

To Melissa’s point about the traditions, behaviors and habits in an organization, all of those norms need to be redefined. Those norms need to be changed step by step, piece by piece as we go forward and what we would like to do is talk about how that happens.

1. How do changes in a culture happen?


Melissa Boggs (MBO): This is so much more than change management. As shown by the Results Pyramid, it is about changing Experiences. When you change an experience for someone or you create and share a new experience, it begins to change one’s belief. Those beliefs are strongly tied to the traditions, habits, and behaviors that we talked about earlier. Once beliefs start to change, we see new actions which then ultimately generate new results. So it’s important to understand that you can’t just start at the top and tell people, “this is what it will be like now”. Instead, change starts with the experience.

DSH: In my experience and unfortunately for myself and the teams I’ve worked with, I’ve learned to do many things wrong before I began to understand what was going on. When I look at this Results Pyramid, what I find is that I used to work according to the “Manage” piece involving only Actions and Results. I would define clear processes and I would communicate what my expectations were for the teams and direct reports whom I worked with. But I got so frustrated because it felt like I was pumping up a tire. As soon as I turn my attention away, everything breaks apart and I have to pump things up again.

It was only through many experiences like that when I began understanding and accidentally coming across the idea of creating experiences that helped people to buy in and change what they were doing. As a result, you don’t have to go back because people are now taking ownership of their actions. They own the processes and they will fine tune them. In this case, the role of leadership is to proactively and deliberately create those unique experiences that can change the behaviors, habits and behaviors of an organization.

MBO: It’s important that people are doing things because they believe in them. If they are doing things for you or doing things because their leader told them to, then they will only do them when the leader is watching. When leaders help them to have a new experience or even model that experience themselves, then it starts to change people’s beliefs.

2. What makes stories powerful?

DSH: Telling is not about scaring people into where they are going to be if they don’t act. To provide you with some context, I would like to touch on what it is about stories that make them so powerful. Here, I would like to cover how science shows that stories is a form of communication that optimizes how we hear things and how we think about them.

A. Historical Tradition

Let’s start with Historical Tradition. Before we ever wrote things down as human beings, we would talk to one another – telling stories backwards and forwards. Studies have shown that historical traditions have gone back tens and thousands of years ago. As an example, in Australia, scientists and historians have discovered that the current day aboriginal people have stories that date back to 10,000 years ago. They are able to name, describe situations, and point to islands which are now submerged due to the rising of sea level. They talk about islands, lands, and experiences from 10,000 years ago which scientists and geographers are able to uncover.

So the historical tradition of telling stories is how we communicated with one another as a species. Not only do we appreciate stories, but we use them to communicate important messages.

B. Retention

The question then is does science back us up? So there are a couple of things we have seen, and one of them is Retention. Many of us are probably familiar with the notion that we are more likely to remember either first and last or unusual things. For example, Stanford research studies are finding that we will remember statistics much more closely if an anecdote is associated with them. By attaching an anecdote to a statistic, our retention goes from 5% up to 65 to 70%.

C. Mirror Neurons

Further to that, there’s the interesting idea of Mirror Neurons. When we listen to a well-told story, we are able to walk along that story – the emotions, actions, scenarios. We are able to put ourselves in those situations and experience those feelings along with the storyteller. The reason behind this is that the brain is effectively mirroring what is happening or what the storyteller is telling. What’s intriguing is that the storyteller is going through the exact same experience. This is the result of mirror neurons. They are neurons that copy what somebody else is telling us and recreate those emotions ourselves or equally if I’m telling that story, I would have those experiences as well.

The benefit of those stories is that both the storyteller and the listener is reliving those experiences; thereby having a much stronger feeling as a result of that.

D. How information is processed

Finally this leads us to how information is processed. Psychologists Melanie Green and Tim Brock have also found that the way we absorb information is driven by those stories as well. In a well-told story, we hear and we process information in a different way. We have the tendency to follow that line in the story and that story changes those people. You can see the effect it has on particular neurons. The way the brain is processing the stories is very different to the way we absorb information without an anecdote or a story associated with it.

3. What are the top 3 rules when telling stories?

DSH: So diving in, Melissa can you tell us some of the rules with telling stories? What rules or techniques do you apply when telling stories?

MBO: The first rule is something you have to do wherever possible, which is using a Third Party. When you’re involving someone else in your story, this lends more credibility. For instance, Dave gave a great example about how this had worked with him and his kids.

DSH: Yes. Interesting thing that I found is that if I tell my kids I think they’re smart, you can see their doubt. They don’t really believe the words coming straight from me. The reason being is that I don’t have the credibility because I’m their father; thus, I’m going to say these things. On the other hand, if I say, “your teacher says you’re smart and you’re going to do great things”, bringing that third party builds a whole lot more credibility and they are much more likely to take that feedback seriously.

MBO: Moving on, the second rule is Sharing Emotions. If you think about your favorite books or poetry you have read, it’s often a description of how they feel – the thoughts that were going through their mind and what had inspired them in that moment. The emotions help you to remember that story.
Lastly, always Keep It Simple. Be descriptive but don’t go on for so long that you end up losing the clock.


Special Notes:

1. Missed our first blog post? Click here: Don’t Panic Series (Part 1): What is culture?
2. Stay tuned for our next blog post: Don’t Panic Series (Part 3): How can you change culture through stories?
3. To listen to the full webinar, click on this link: https://goo.gl/E6H4H1


A year in the life of agile42

It’s been quite a year! The agile42 companies, operating in three continents, have reached and surpassed our goals and we have crossed the 10M US$ of combined revenue. We have opened an official company in Italy, after a number of years of operation in that market, and our founders Marion Eickmann and Andrea Tomasini have invested together with our friend Dave Snowden in a new venture. And Paul Culling joined as President of North America.

This year also saw the planting of the seed of ORGANIC agility and big improvements in our new tools, the OrgScan and the Agile Strategy Map.

We have opened an event and training space in Berlin, next door to our HQ office, and brought all the team to Thailand for our annual Innovation Sprint.

Photo: The agile42 team at the summer Innovation Sprint in Thailand

We have welcomed new coaches, in Sweden and Canada (Cliff Hazell, James Shew, Kemmy Raji and Sunny Dhillon) with more announces coming in the early days of 2019!

The coaching world is in continuous change, and we’re happy to witness that 9 agile42 coaches have been approved as Path to CSP Educators from the Scrum Alliance, 5 have reached the status of Certified Team Coach. In addition to that Giuseppe De Simone has also been approved as a Certified Scrum Trainer and an educator for the CAL program. Congratulations Giuseppe!

Short break and… fast forward to 2019.

Looking back and looking forward

We are approaching the end of yet another revolution around the Sun and we want to thank all of our friends, customers, partners and readers for this wonderful year in the life of agile42 when our culture allowed us to keep growing organically. We are excited at the improvements that 2019 will bring with new developments for ORGANIC agility, the revamped Agile Strategy Map, more tools and more ideas.

We are grateful for our clients that are always very open, engaging and critical… which helps us improve and focus deeper into what they need.

Hope you will find time to relax and be with your special ones, plus a little time for yourself to read, learn and have fun!

And, one more thing…

We work with people all over the world, and we meet some who do exceptional things. This year, in Kenya, we visited the Blooming Lily Foundation, a non-profit challenging young people, especially girls, to overcome their obstacles and live a purposeful, fulfilled life. Their programs include Kenya and Louisiana and address issues from providing mentorship and connections to giving access to clean water and sanitary products. We were impressed by their bravery and their commitment to strengthening relationships and providing opportunities for growth in harsh conditions. To us, this is true resilience. 

We wanted to offer them more than just words, and, in this Christmas season, we invite you to join us. You can take a look at their work and donate at www.bloominglily.org. 


Photo from the 2016 Finding Your Purpose Retreat of the Blooming Lily Foundation.

Don’t Panic Series (Part 1): What is culture?

Kicking off the Don’t Panic series, Dave Sharrock and Melissa Boggs will provide a definition of culture, explain the purpose that culture serves, and share a number of stories about how culture can be changed through storytelling.

What is culture?

Melissa Boggs (MBO): A lot of times people approach us saying, “I can’t change the culture. I’m one person amongst tens of thousands and I can’t make that change.”

Because “culture” has become such a buzzword that we see in every job description and it’s what every company talks about, this has caused us to over-inflate the idea of what culture is. At the end of the day, culture is our values that are demonstrated by our traditions, our habits, and our behaviours. 

1. Defining what culture is

MBO: When I say Traditions, it’s what we celebrate and how we celebrate, which is really not that complicated.

Dave Sharrock (DSH): One of the organizations that I worked with and in fact I was there 6 weeks ago, had a very interesting topic where they wanted all their departments to start talking to one another and start working together. So they instituted a tradition whereby the third Thursday of every month, one of the departments would host a meal or a break in the afternoon.

The particular day that I was there and I still remember this one because it’s a very Vancouver thing, they had sushi and ice cream which I’m still not sure whether or not I’d highly recommend that as a combination, but this certainly brought the organization together.

MBO: It’s memorable! That’s the thing with traditions; they continue on and people remember them.

The next thing is Habits. Think of habits as status reports. They are things that we do because we have always done them – whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. And with status reports, it’s not just the fact that we do status reports but the habit is actually what we report on, how we report and why. Sometimes it’s simply because we’ve always done it that way.

Lastly, we have our Behaviours. Our behaviours are water cooler conversations – what we say and how often we say. Your behaviour can include talking about your mission or purpose all the time. But ultimately, behaviour is how we do things around here.

So culture can be changed. It’s a matter of realizing what it is – knowing what your traditions, habits, and behaviours are. Then deciding if those are helpful or if they need to be changed in order for you to be more agile.

2. What purpose does culture serve


MBO: I love this picture because essentially what you have are two houses. Functionally, they’re the same so they both have rooms, windows, and a roof. However, they’re obviously very different. They tell different stories to the world. So if these houses happen to be offices, they would tell very different stories about what the traditions, habits and behaviours are and they would require different habits to take care of them as well.

DSH: I love this picture as well because it highlights the power of culture in the sense that culture attracts different types of people. There are some people in the audience today who would think that the picture on the right looks like a great house to live in, and they would want to be there and own that house. Whereas there are others who would absolutely not enjoy living in that house but would very much enjoy the house on the left side.

So one thing about culture is how it allows us to attract the right kind of people who want to be working with us opposed to having a random lottery of people coming through the door and trying to figure that out over time.

3. Case study on how culture can be changed


DSH: Let’s kick into some stories on how culture changes. One of the stories I lean on quite heavily is Ford’s turnaround during the 2006 to 2014 period. The picture you see now is Alan Mulally who was brought into Ford as the CEO in 2006. At the time, Ford along with the other two primary car manufacturers, was very much struggling. In fact, Ford was losing $20 billion in revenue and they were struggling from quite a toxic culture.

As Alan Mulally walked in on his first day, he had to start planning the turnaround. How was he going to change an organization with hundreds of thousands employees with billions of dollars in missed targets? The beginning of it was that he started by creating an experience – a story. One of the first things that happened was that Alan Mulally met with his direct reports. The first thing he wanted to do was find out what was going on in the many different projects and initiatives taking place across the organization. In order to do that, he asked each direct report to make each report based on a red, amber, and green traffic light system.

In the first meeting, nearly every single report shown by the direct reports were green with maybe one or two yellows. At the end of the meeting, after every direct report had walked through the initiatives, Alan turned around and made only one comment. He said, “If these were all green, why is it that we’re looking at a $20 billion loss this quarter?”

We need to see what we’re really seeing. So the next meeting, the first direct report stood up and showed real statuses of their initiatives which were all in red. Bear in mind that this was an extremely toxic culture. Ford at that point, the culture was one where if you showed any weakness in your initiatives, you would get torn to pieces by your colleagues and peers in the room.

As Alan Mulally was being shown these red symbols, you could hear clapping going on in the room. You could hear clapping just coming from Mulally, and him clapping and cheering the direct reports became a story that was shared across the organization. With that one experience, this changed the mindset of that organization. They realized that people weren’t going to get torn down by showing what was really going on and that encouraged cooperation.

This was the first step in significantly changing how people managed that organization. For those of you who know the story, Alan Mulally went on to becoming incredibly successfully as Ford’s CEO. He laid a strong foundation for the company. Even after 2008, Ford was the only one out of the big three American car manufacturers that did not need a bail out and continues to be a very successful car company today.

The thing to realize is that changing culture is tough. It’s a hard thing to do and there are many things to look at. If you want to examine and understand how to change culture, I would recommend looking at John Kotter’s work on leading change.


Special Notes:

1. Be on the lookout for the next blog post: Don’t Panic Series (Part 2): How does culture change?

2. To listen to the full webinar, click on this link: https://goo.gl/E6H4H1