The Agile Within
Providing agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.
The Agile Within
We thought Agile would save the day, and it's just not working out, so now what? with Gil Broza
Our guest in this episode is Gil Broza, Gil is founder and principal at 3P Vantage. Close to 100 organizations seeking Agile transformations, makeovers, or improvements have relied on his pragmatic, modern, and respectful support for customizing Agile in their contexts.
We chatted with Gil about reasons why companies fail at "going Agile." It is estimated that 70% of transformations fail at some point. The most likely reasons, and the ones we explore, are lack of understanding of Agile values/principles, an overall sense of fear in the company, and a lack of trust among everyone. Gil provides some practical ways to overcome these stumbling blocks to get you pointed in the right direction, and help you succeed with Agile. If you've ever struggled with Agile at your company, you'll want to use these tips to make your journey more smooth.
More about Gil Broza:
Gil’s popular book The Agile Mind-Set explains how practitioners approach their work to get amazing results. His previous best-seller The Human Side of Agile is the definitive practical guide to leading Agile teams in the real world. His newest book Agile for Non-Software Teams provides a pathway for considering, designing, starting, growing, and maintaining Agile outside of software/IT. He has been a regular contributor and coaching track chair for the Agile series of conferences, a sought-after speaker for other industry events and groups, and a host of numerous public webinars about Agility. Gil lives in Toronto, Canada.
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I think I, I, I look, I, I got into doing this work because I always paid attention to how people do stuff, how people get worked from and so on and something that interested me. And then the whole field of it became a field of study. So I'm really happy it's in my life. And a lot of people don't care about process and let's fair. Let's be fair. They shouldn't. Okay. However, anytime we do any type of work and that includes your hobbies. Okay. And that includes raising a family, um, different kinds of work that has work. Um, anytime you volunteer any time you do anything in society, how society works. That's another fascinating thing. There is more there than meets the eye. There is strategy and there are principles and there are North stars and stuff like that. And it's not just about hitting targets. There is systems that have, you know, interconnections and relationships and so much is not evident. It is not surface level. Um, you make one change and something else breaks and you don't know. I find that to be fascinating, but the point to the there is, is you do have to increase your awareness to the system level. If you want more of the results you want and less of the results you don't want, because just again, changing mechanisms won't necessarily do.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, Greg Miller, welcome to another of the agile within.
Speaker 3:So today is a wonderful day. Today is a very sunny day in my part of the country. Uh, spring is here. Hope everyone's my part of the world, actually, for those in other parts of the world, I hope you're having a great sunny day there too. Um, in order to kick that off in the sunny mood, I've have our guests today. Mr. Gill, Broza Gil Broza started using agile over 20 years ago, actually, before agile was even the name of it. Can you believe it? He's a former senior developer, a thought leader in agile community. He has published three books of which I have two of them. I'm going to get the third one here. Uh, the first one is the agile mindset. He has the human side of agile and agile for non-software teams. Companies bring Jill Gill in many times for leadership and teams in establishing real agility. He's also completed successfully 100 complex organizations across North America. Welcome to the show, Mr. Gilbert, Rosa. Thank
Speaker 1:You. Thank you for having me. Yes.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I hope you're doing well. You're in Canada, right? I am Toronto, Toronto. How's the weather there?
Speaker 1:Um, sometimes sunny. Sometimes sunny. Yeah. Not all the time. Not, not at all.
Speaker 3:You have, uh, you have the four seasons they're there, right? You have spring summer or fall.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. And I really appreciate that. I came from a country that has mostly like a season and a half, so I really like having four distinct ones.
Speaker 3:Yes. Yes. That's that's great. I know. I, you know, I've lived in United States my whole life. So I've been to Canada briefly around the, uh, is it, uh, is it Sardina Sardinia area? I went to college in bowling green. So I got just briefly, but not, not up in your area, but so with that sunny out outlook there, hopefully, um, today we're going to talk about something that may not be as sunny for some companies. They start off with agile, but they, they figure out after a period of time, agile may not be working the way we expected it. So dark clouds come in after the sun goes down, we brought in agile. Uh, we have high hopes for it and we have reasons why we brought it in, but then things come up. So that's our topic today. So Gil and I have uncovered some main points here, maybe some popular things, maybe not so popular reasons why we think agile is not working at a company. So, you know, we have, um, start off with, uh, we have a lack of understanding of values, powering agile, and that kind of fits right in with, uh, the theme here of this, this whole podcast on that side of agile, my opinion is I think it gets overlooked quite a bit. Uh, the values, the principles around agile and scrum. So what are some of your thoughts around that in your experience?
Speaker 1:So I would actually start us with a quick explanation on like where values and principles even fit. Right? I mean, we talk about them as if they're a thing kind of off to the side, but they're not. So if you were to kind of model how we get work done or how we do anything in life, we're going to focus on getting work done because that's what agile is for. And so there is this hierarchical concept, a sort of hierarchical set of concepts that, you know, really traces a straight line between why are we doing something and how we actually approach it. And that's where values and principles fit. So you'd be doing work for some objective purpose. Maybe you have a business case and it doesn't quite matter, but there's a reason there's something you're after to accomplish that you need to decide what's important to you because you couldn't be accomplishing this many different ways. What's important to you, for instance, is it important to you to be on time and on budget or, uh, is it important to you to be adaptive along the way? That's an example of values. Okay. Other values are humanistic values. Is it important to you to be collaborative, to grow solid healthy teams? Um, is it important to you to squeeze every last bit of typing out of each so-called resource you have on the team, those are values. Then we implement these. We operationalize these values that we choose using principles, such as an agile collaboration, getting to done, uh, transparency, psychological safety, um, timeboxing, things like that. And those we implement in methods, for instance, burnouts, for instance, retros, for instance, uh, you know, writing stories and looking at the what, who and why. So we go from, uh, purpose to values, to principles, to tactics and the trouble. So many companies end up in is that they focus almost exclusively on tactics, right? That is the easy stuff. Well, it's never easy, but it's the easiest, right? It is the least subjective. You can look at some tactics and say, which, which ones are best, best practices, right? You can document them, you can teach them, you can onboard people with them. Uh, you can show compliance and, um, you can demonstrate, Hey, we're agile. But the thing is, and this is actually easily provable. Those tactics, those practices don't actually matter if you approach them with a different mindset, a different mindset than the one that gave rise to them. So for instance, if you, um, let's say you have a daily standup, and you do it the traditional way, the three questions, you know, 10 minutes, whatever, everybody knows that, right? But you approached this with the principles of, you know, we plan with the work and we work the plan around here and we have specialists and, um, somebody kind of owns this situation. You, you will have those principles because what you're really optimizing for, what you really care about, your real values are predictability like the on time and on budget and making those commitments and so on. But to notice if you have people go in the room or virtually now all going through the three questions and everybody is about, well, how are we tracking to plan? And so on, then you've got a status meeting, right? Which is definitely not what the agile standup was supposed to be. No. Right? Totally not. So it is the same formal procedure, but executed with a different approach, it gets you totally different results. So, you know, think of the product backlog, for instance, you know, it's supposed to be this, you know, list of, you know, valuable work, which is really a set of options that you might get to it it's sequenced by importance and other re other criteria. But again, if you take that and you think about it differently, again, we plan the work and we work the plan and we limit change around here comes change, messes us up. And some of those other non-agile principles, which are usually held over from before and what you get as a project plan is so, so w what happens in companies is that they bring in tactics, they don't realize what's makes those tactics work, right. They also don't realize that other tactics which might be similar or not can achieve the same purpose. Right? I mean, look at the endless, endless argument over scrum versus convent is if those are the only two options in the universe, because we're really, when you think about it, they have so much in common, right? And the way so many agile teams implement them is actually very similar. Even though the focus in both methods is a bit different. They do combine some of them, but really the fundamental difference is how do we control the flow of work? So we actually have flow of work, you know, a scrum, it looks different than conbon, but still, if you think about it, both of them are telling you, constrain yourself, artificially, trust us. It's good, but right. And it is good. It is good because if you look at, again, some of the mindset around this, you realize that, um, the idea is to prevent the trap of over burdening. And the idea is to really finish what we start so we can make a difference and move on and so on. It's just different principles to achieve the same objective. And yes, there's more around it than whatever, but, you know, you have freedom of choice here, but then maybe you think you don't have freedom of choice because you're stuck with the tactics. This is how we do stuff around. Right.
Speaker 3:Right. So in your experience, um, if we back up a little bit, why, why do you think, what have you seen, why do companies in the beginning choose, choose to go agile? Is it because, um, competitive advantage? In my, my opinion, I've seen, you know, a competitive advantage. Um, other companies are doing it. They want to go faster, which I think all of that equates to maybe a higher bottom line making more money. Um, they hear people are doing it. It's the thing to do is, is, is that similar to what, what, uh, what you're seeing? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Look, you know, for the longest time, uh, you know, people have been sold on, uh, agile is for cheaper, better, faster, right. Two of which actually lies, but w we can, we can put that aside for a moment, but, you know, companies are generally looking for ways to work better, by the way. So you mentioned my book about non-software agile. Here's an interesting observation. Agile grew up in the software industry, in the software industry, most organizations, the twins to agile went there because the previous, the traditional methods didn't work as well as hoped. Okay. Right. So there was definitely a case of, you know, fixing something that wasn't doing terribly well. But if you look at, uh, non-software functions, they use practices and methods that are generally okay by okay. By them. They don't think of them as broken, but they still see opportunities to improve. So the motivation is different. The vehicle might be the same, but the motivation can be different. There are other companies, and I've had the good fortune of having several of them for clients, the twins to agile, because they said, you know, that's the culture we want. So they did well because they saw past the practices and pass the frameworks and said, there is something here about how we treat people and how we think of work. That just feels right. We want to be like that right now. The journey of course, took a while and there's always trouble with it and so on, but they made the conscious effort to be different. And here's where it even gets more interesting. You can't be different just by adopting practices. Right. Right. It's not like, you know, you're going to switch from communism to democracy by adopting voting. Right. It doesn't work that way. Right. And so there has been a lot of tension I'm going to say around the world of work, when organizations try to go agile by using that, you show her remodel, which is for learning skills and trying to apply it to the matter of, you know, learning how to be different and how to really act different as opposed to just the, you know, visible the monstrous mechanisms so that they think explains some of the trouble.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I think th th that's that company, you just talked about wanting the culture first I've, I've never been a company like that, that one of the culture first that's, that's actually, I'm sure that's more the exception than the rule still. Yeah. And that's unfortunate and that's kind of why, uh, that's exactly why, uh, I like talking about, uh, the values and the principles, because I think, like you said, tactics seem to come first because they want, they don't want the culture first. They don't understand that the culture comes. And if, what I've seen is that where it gets really difficult is when they move, they got the tactics in place and the processes down, and then they move past that. And then they hire people with agile experience and we start saying, Oh, well, okay, you got the process down, but, uh, what about, um, collaboration? What about communication? What about respect and courage? And what about, um, you know, all those, all those good things that aren't there with waterfall. And then, then they start getting a lot of pushback from my experience, and then kind of have this fight between project managers and the lists because, uh, the project managers get afraid for their jobs. That's what I've seen a lot. You've seen some of that.
Speaker 1:I saw a lot of it in the earlier years, you know, I have been working on helping companies adopt agile going on 17 years. So the previous few years I was just practicing as myself, both as a Devon, as a manager. Um, so in the last 17 years, I would say, I'm still seeing that effect, but a little less. And the reason it's a little less is because agile has become so widespread. And so, um, you know, there's still a ton of this information out there and people still, you know, move companies and they bring experiences with them that don't agree with the experiences of their new colleagues. And sometimes those, those experiences were, you know, really, really not great. Um, and some people have been burnt and so on. Right. Um, but I don't know that it's prevalent to the same extent that it was before. Okay. I think something that's happening in our industry. Um, and by say, I, by saying our industry, I mean, primarily technology, because still this, where it plays, you know, all the shirts of Lakers. Right. Um, I think what's happened is that we've had a bit of a settling. And so you have lots of agile implementations that have sort of settled. They, for the most part, they, they have not settled on. Great. They've settled on Oracle seems better than before, better than what we had before is a great many cases far from it. Right. So it's, it's kinda tolerated. It's funny. I mean, I, I, I actually heard from someone the other day, um, that's th there's a company that he's working with where they are following agile practices, but complaining about them all the time and saying, well, but this stuff doesn't work and we don't think it should work or that it can work. And so like, what, what is that right? Is it just that fetal management forced you to use it and now you're kicking and screaming. It's a horrible place to be. Um, yeah,
Speaker 3:No, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I've been to places too where they, um, they say we're going agile. Okay. And they force everyone to do it the same way. And, um, now you may disagree with this, but w w what I'm going to say here, in my opinion. Um, so, and, and I've learned this, um, for good or for bad, but when I bring in, when I'm brought into a scrum team, a very, a very new scrum team say, and they're still learning it, um, I try to teach, I try to have them follow scrum, you know, let's, you know, by the guy let's follow that, let's get that down. And then once you're in, maybe that's more the shoe higher hiree, which you disagree with, but try to get that down and then leave room for some, for some flexibility. And I don't like when companies say, every team has to do it this way and you can't change. And, and, and I'm kind of going through that little bit right now and like, well, you know, my team seems to be doing, doing well with certain aspects of scrum and, and, um, you know, it's, it's, it's a framework, right. It's, it's even says it's a framework. It allows other things to come into it. So, and I try to allow, uh, for teams to the team to, um, be more self-managed right. If they decide to do something a little bit different, I'm okay with that. So, um,
Speaker 1:But the question is how different, right. Are they allowed to mess with the house of scrum? Right. Well, that's a good question. So maybe they're following, uh, the newer scrum guides, but, um, what about the older versions? Were they wrong? Right, right, right, right. So, so there's that look, I think that scrum can be a good way for a team to get started if it is in fact, a good fit for their situation. And in many cases, it's not okay for whatever reason. And it's not a knock on scrum. It's simply what is true of their environment. That just doesn't make sense for a universal solution. Right. So that's the context question. Okay. But let's say it does fit a lot. Okay, fine. I'm I would coach a table scrum, and I have coached many teams on scrum alongside the understanding of why are we doing things this way? Why does the framework look the way it does? Why is some practice so popular, what's wrong with some other ones, or maybe they're not wrong. Maybe they're actually better for us. So the distinction here from Schoharie is that I do help my teams with the thinking the choice-making the, um, the theory from day one. Now the theory goes that, you know, you can kind of go through the motions, you know, accompanied by a master until you kind of get the hang of it. So that's fine for martial arts. It's fine for learning to drive, but it's not fine for making fundamentally different choices that for many people actually jeopardize their employment, let's face it. Right. Right. So for instance, this thing about a manager coming in and saying, Hey, when will you be done with that? And the answer, you know, more often than not is our agile. So we're not going to answer that really. How can that be a good move? Now, I, I would agree that when your agile dates matter less than other things, such as, you know, customer value delivery and adaptation and so on and so forth, but that does not a good way to answer that particular question, especially when that's somebody who can affect your livelihood. Right. So there's that. And so I, and I'll give you an example when, um, when I start with a new team, which is happening less and less, because they work more with leadership these days. And, and also a lot of the teams I start with, um, have already gone through some kind of training. But so then I adapt what I do a little bit. I give them, I give them some training because they're, you know, we need learning on the job, but we don't want to make silly mistakes and just take forever. Okay. So I do give them training usually like a day or two, more than half that training is teaching to think. Now, of course, people know how to think. I don't pretend to teach people to think about how to think of work differently, along the lines of agile values, beliefs and principles. Because if the stated intent is to be agile, then that means that we intend to espouse those agile values. And we intend to agree with the agile narrative, that's the beliefs. And we intend to make decisions and act and choose based on those principles. We should know what they are because showing up to demos and sprint plannings, won't tell us that you cannot infer several principles of agility from the meetings, from the templates or from velocity or stuff like that. You just cannot, you have to know what's going on there. You have to be cognizant of what am I trying to accomplish here? And so I do this for my teams from day one. If I'm in front of a team that has already been doing, it's usually scrum, it's rarely convent. Right. Right. But I think that's already been doing some of that. And now they want to do better. Most of my training goes to what it means to be agile. I don't teach them better practices. The whole point is that they figure out practices that align with an agile mindset. I can make suggestions. There's plenty of good ideas. Some, there are also plenty of bad ideas I say, so, uh, yeah. Right. But the big idea is you want to be cognizant of what you're going after, and don't leave this to happenstance. Don't expect to get it by just following the motions and you don't, you know what? You don't even learn them just by having a lot of experience. Right. You can go through a hundred sprints and still not really be able to explain why do we self constraint using time? What's the big idea. It's not a law of nature. We're not important that way. Why do we do this? Right. I want team members, I don't managers to explain why that can be helpful and what purpose it serves. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Got it. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Uh, I want to go back to, we talked about the, uh, the project manager. So the, the idea of, of fear. Cause I do, I do see that a lot, uh, that root cause of why agile isn't working because of fear. I, I, uh, you said you don't see a lot of it. Uh, now I still see, uh, since I'm a scrum master, you're working at a higher level than I am, but, uh, I see a lot of it when I interact with project managers or folks working in waterfall and frayed of typically, well change, I guess. And, and some, some people are afraid for their job. They don't see managers. They don't see, um, a lot of managers too. Uh, they don't see their role in the, in the roles. They see project manager, product manager, dev team, and scrum master. I'm not in there. Um, so what do I do?
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. And that's another element of, you know, we bring a framework. What happens if you don't fit the framework? What happens to you? Right. And that is, that is particularly interesting considering the fact that the very first line on the agile manifesto, where they state the values is individuals that attractions over processes and tools. And so if we actually do value individuals, what happens to you project manager. Right. Right. So here's the thing. There's definitely still fear. I still see fear, but I think I see a different kind of fear than the one that's. Um, you have been seeing more, I think some of that fear will never go away and it could have to do with, you know, it was just fear of change, right. The old comfort zone. Right. But the other thing is organizations, even the better meaning ones still operate within an ecosystem where people do have a lot to fear. Right. And we don't even need to go back to March, 2020 to realize that, you know, there's a whole new set of fears. Will my employer keep me straight through no fault of my own. Right. So there's that I have seen this also in companies that have really made a good shift where you'll have managers or team members. Um, basically anybody, you can tell that some of what they do, some of the actions they take are driven by some kind of fear. What is a truly an and why, why is it still there? I think it's still there because people still see a, an as symmetrical relationship between themselves and their employer and let's face it as symmetrical relationship. Is there, the employer can fire you. Correct. Right. And when you have that, even if the culture is really much, much better than before, there's still the old stories. There's still the rumors there is still the, um, not 100% transparency, right? Yes. So, I mean, yes, we can read books about teal and stuff like that and say, wow, there are companies that run totally like family. Well, you don't even have 100% transparency and family,
Speaker 3:So no, you don't.
Speaker 1:Uh, so you are working with other human beings who, you know, fundamentally are looking out for number one, as they probably should. And some of them are in more powerful positions, which can even be scarier if their compensation is particularly high, let's say C-level, that might be even more pressure. You have this dynamic and this dynamic, I don't see disappearing anytime soon, anytime. And so we still have to just live with it. Right. And agile is one particular case of change that is particularly deep, the way most companies go about it. That's actually not deep at all. It's superficial, but it's still big. And that will scare some people. So I look, I can tell you one, um, one part of my overall approach to helping companies shift is to spend enough time with leadership, particularly at the beginning, making sure they understand what they're getting themselves into and what it also means to them in terms of showing up differently. Right. And they don't always want to hear that. And sometimes they realize it's way more than they hope for
Speaker 3:Exactly. That that's exactly what I was talking about earlier. Yes. I think they, they don't. Yeah. And I'm glad that you did. I'm glad that you do spend time with them. I have not seen in my experience, people spending enough time with that, I've actually been at companies where I'm sure you have to wear it. It starts at the, you know, starting at the bottom, it starts at the scrum or whatever they're using the agile. Someone gets a hold of it and they start doing it. And if it doesn't, it doesn't reach the, a, usually my experience, it might get to the director and they sometimes kind of, sort of buy in, uh, sometimes the manager is buying more, but getting up to the C level, it's more like lip service. And it sounds great. Right. And, uh, but they don't completely buy in. So I do think there needs to be more time, more time spent there.
Speaker 1:Yes. And, and look, um, in the last few years, especially since the mindset book came out, um, I have been spending even more time with management. At least now they'll give me the time of day because I have the book exactly. Right. I'm not just, you know, a coach. Um, and there is a course I teach it's called the executives guides to the agile mindset. That's four hours usually teach it over two days, two hours each. Sure. And more and more companies are making the time to have their C-level at 10 thoughts because they realize how much they don't know, even after these four hours. And I pack them tight because they, my executives like to move fast. Even after those four hours, there's still additional check-ins and conversations and some so that, yeah, because learning about it, you know, that's just creating awareness, but now you also need to understand, okay. So now, okay. So I kinda get that. They need to show up differently. I have a situation here. What do I do now? Correct. And it is really hard, but what I like about this particular course is that, you know, I get like an entire C level or in some cases it will be like SVPs or VPs depending on the organization. And, um, they all take it together. So it's not like, it's not like just the VP of engineering who heard this. And now, um, you have the single leader of the front while everybody else is doing business as usual and still asking him when will you'll be done. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So how, how, how, if I could just talk a little bit about that. That's very interesting to me. So how, um, how has that been going? Ha ha have you been having difficulty getting executives to come to that? And what is, what is their feedback from that?
Speaker 1:It doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen because there's doubts. And of course they're always too busy. Right. Learn, learning it, learning isn't usually prized. Right, right. Um, so I, I, I can tell you this, some of the organizations where I have, um, enjoyed my work more is where I have that level of openness. Sometimes it doesn't happen at the beginning. Sometimes I do work with like, you know, VP engineering and there, you know, the directors and so on. And then they say, okay, now talk to the C-suite, they're looking at it. They're saying, okay, we want to understand this better. So it doesn't happen with every client. You know, some clients only want me to teach a course. I love teaching courses. I think I do that well, but the effect of that is of course naturally limited. Okay. So I do also make this particular point early in, in, um, in the engagement with the client. Like we talk about, well, okay, can we go, come in and do some work for us? Well, what work would matter? And, and I tell them straight, I tell them, you know, I can show your team practices. It's not going to matter. Don't even waste your time and money. Okay. We need to work on shifting the thinking so that those new practices have fertile grounds to catch in. Right. And so that's this whole continuous improvement actually lives in some context and you actually do get different results. Right. And, and I also explain some of the things I said at the beginning of our conversation. Whereas, you know, you can go through all of these, you know, fancy agile practices, but if you still manage the system, right, the human system that does work using your pre-existing values, none of that will matter. And you'll just confuse people. And here's something else. People really don't like agile makeovers. So you do get more than one chance. And of course you never got it right the first time. But I I've had several clients where, you know, I came in to help them basically restart the agile because the first attempt was botched so badly in the level of motivation is so much lower because before legitimately asked, how is it going to be different this time? Right. And, you know, part of that that's because they think that the only thing that exists is crumb. And so he's going to teach the scrum again, there is so much more conversation that needs to be had here in order to help people realize that, um, this code play out really differently, but we have to be intentional and open to it. Right. Yeah. And I don't take on work where I can see that. There's just no point course.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Beating your head against the wall. You're not going to get anywhere. Yeah. I think that's wonderful that you do that. You work with executor. I just that's, that's fascinating to me cause I don't, I've not heard of, um, to that level. And usually like you said, executives are too busy or unwilling to do that. They just, you know, tactical and just do scrum and them are agile. Um, but uh, I want to move on to kind of fitting in with that. The, uh, another reason is, is trust and I've seen that and it kind of fits in with the executives. There there's a lot of, um, mistrust and organizations, especially I've seen with executives and I've had it myself. I've I've, you know, gotten burned by executives in the past. And um, like you said, in the beginning here, you know, anybody can be laid off at any time and the bottom dollar wins out a lot. So what a and, uh, lots of micromanagement still going on. So even in an agile so-called transformation. So how do, how do we build that trust? What is your experience been to, uh, overcome, overcome that pitfall?
Speaker 1:So this goes back to something I mentioned earlier, which is the first thing you need is awareness, right? When an organization has had experience or is used to control trust, doesn't figure if you're in a position where you can tell somebody else what to do, they're supposed to follow it and do it. Um, why didn't he trust? Now we have a different mechanism. It is called accountability. And so in the absence of trust, we use positional authority and we supplement it with this concept of accountability. So we close the loop on that, right. So you're supposed to do what I told you. And if you did not tell me what, tell me why and what you'll do instead, and blah, blah, blah. So as part of building awareness, whether it's with, you know, team leads or C-level, I bring up that distinction, I almost always get asked. Okay. So who's accountable for what? Or, um, how do we distribute accountabilities and this and that. And I helped them think that's maybe the, the, those questions are misplaced. They are misplaced because they come out of, again, the traditional mindset. I don't waste people's time say, well, it's the industrial revolution, right? Frederick Taylor, like, who cares about that? Right. But it's, it's, it's the mindset of a power dynamic that allows one side to determine the work of the other. And they don't need trust in order to do the work. Agile says, what if we told a different story? We don't know when we say that we touch on the third element of mindset beyond principles, which is beliefs, right? What do we take for granted? What sort of stories that we tell? What, um, what do we think is true? And agile says, you know what? We have a different set of beliefs. And one of them is that, uh, people who feel trusted and empowered, um, and you know, of course they're competent. They, they will do the right work and it's might not be exactly what you set out to do, but they will mean well, and it might turn out really, really good. And this is something that in a way, is an addition to the worldview of such leaders, because they have not had use for that belief so far. Now, if you work with somebody on changing beliefs, especially limiting beliefs, right. They kind of forced them to stay within a certain dynamic. You have to help them put a different belief in place, meaning that they, they need to have some other worldview. It's not like, you know, now there is a void. So agile provides that. Agile comes again with that narrative, which again is totally not obvious from, you know, sprints and backlogs. Right. Right. I mean, yes, it, it, it's in the background, but you need to know. And most people never ever see that. So, so there's that, um, once, once we're past the awareness bit, the other thing that goes hand in hand with trust is psychological safety. So we work on that. Even psychological safety is not something that many managers are aware of. No, it has not been a thing now it's kind of started a management staple or literature state probably should stay, uh, let's say, uh, in the last, what, 10, 15 years. But it's not like everybody's read it. Okay. Um, and in fact, most people have not. So even helping them raise the awareness that people need to feel psychologically safe in order to engage beyond checking boxes. Right? Yes. Okay. And that goes hand in hand with trust. Okay. So how do we make that happen? They legitimately ask. They want to know. And the answer is, you go first, you start little, you build it up, you demonstrate vulnerability. You don't bet the farm on day one, but you allow things you open up in such ways that demonstrate that you're taking trust and safety. Seriously, you're even explicit. That's another really important thing. You're also being explicit about trying to be like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So it's not like, you know, yesterday you took this course with me and the next day you show up and you've become this benevolent, empower a step back, Hey guys, you're all empowered, whatever. Then it's like, what the hell exactly. Right. So, so it's definitely not like that. Um, like imagine a leader going through their team, whether the team is a team of directors or a team of pharmacies, and the leader says, look, I've been thinking about my leadership style. And I've realized that I'm not as trusting or as empowering as could be good for all of us. And I'm, I intend to be better. It will be better for you. And it will be better for me. And this way we'll, we'll have better success together. Right. And the leader can say this without, you know, appearing like a pushover or appearing like a converted zealot or anything like that. In fact, I would say that most teams, people will go out and say, I never thought this would happen. So they're going to be cautious. Right. They're gone. There'll be doubtful. Of course. And it will take time to build, and it will take very little efforts to destroy safety and trust. Just like all of leadership are measured in times of trouble, not when things are good. So the leader's work is cut out for them. It won't happen unless they realize that it's a thing and it matters. And can actually don't have agile without it. You can have really busy air quote resources churning out, you know, being backlog, lumberjacks. I really love that expression, but that is not how you create, you know, a culture with drive and customer obsession and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3:Right, right. Yeah. You said a couple of things there, uh, that, uh, that got my interest is, is the idea of it takes time. Um, I can't tell you how many times I've, I've been at companies and they want to push, they want to push you to go, you know, why is it, you know, not that the work is taking so long, not when things will be done, but the idea of, um, you know, Greg, why, uh, you know, why, why isn't the team maturing faster? Um, I've, I've had that question before. Why Y Y you know, Y Y you're not making more progress with the team. Why are you not, you know, um, moving the needle, right. I expression always, uh, moving the needle more on your team. And, uh, it, it, it kind of is frustrating because I, you know, my response is what you just said. It takes time. I don't know,
Speaker 1:Because they're human, they're human, not resources, right. That's why my kids are almost off the university. Why are they not maturing faster? That's just how long it takes. Right. It takes for ever. And that's just how it is. Um, and yes, there will be some differences and so on. I'm not going to get other kids right now. Um, but I will do the same thing a servant leader will do. And that is to give them the most support and cultivation I can, and things will take their time. And if I acted differently, they would mature differently. And the same applies at work. That's right. So that's just how it is. I mean, look, we can inflict process on people like tomorrow, that's not a problem, but again, if we, and that is the conversation with the executives, if we want to be different, like really be different, not just, you know, follow different recipes. That's like the old Dino chef versus Coke, you know, lots of analogies there, but if we really want to be different so that we achieve different outcomes, that does not change overnight. And it definitely doesn't change merely by, you know, pointing at seven people and calling them a team and having them plan together and writing requirements a different way. It doesn't, and, and it takes other things, right? Oh yeah. It doesn't. Yeah. You can just, yeah,
Speaker 3:I I've looked at the teams I've had before and they just yeah. Throw them together and call them a team. And I've actually had the team teams say to me, you know, they don't see themselves as a team and they just, they just been put together and, uh, and by, uh, by management and I'm brought in, in, okay, you're the scrum master and here's your team. And, uh, they're like, well, okay, I guess we got to work together. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so for instance, one of the things I teach in all my classes, including the executive guide to the agile mindset is, you know, team evolution, not a matter of time, it's a matter of this mental switch. Like the move from storming to norming is when everybody in the team actually wants to be a member of that team and will subsequently make an effort as opposed to storming where you have a few people who are kind of holding out and they're not quite sure. And some of them feel like, well, they have to be with those colleagues. And so it's not just a matter of, you know, assigning a scrum master or assigning a coach, or just giving them time. It doesn't work that way. And again, many, many executives don't realize that another thing, Oh, okay. We had to go to that point. Um, and other things they don't realize is what does it, why does a trial a few people up when they use the word resource in relevant, uh, in reference to a human being or, or if nobody gets riled up, why is this troublemaker, guilt telling them, have you noticed the effect of that word? And it's like, it's a war. What do you want? Well, it's the word that communicates certain things and it's directly affects how you work when you, um, when you have a need on project B and you just pluck that person out of project a and you, and you also do that by, you know, cascading down the management hierarchy until, uh, the, let's say the team manager plucks out a person and moves them to team B team B never asked for the person teammate doesn't want to lose that person. And that is a person and yes, they'll do the work because yeah. They work here and they're on contract. But, um, what does that do to your overall theme Mark? Exactly. And do you realize that teamwork is actually more than the sum of the individuals? It's not just being in the same room or, you know, zoom or whatever, there's something else there, there, there is, there's a secret sauce there there's, it's in the white space, there's a bunch of stuff going on that doesn't happen when people are heads down working on their own thing. So many executives have no clue about that. For years, they grew up with resource management, resource planning as if those are not human beings on the other end. And not only that is if they themselves were not such human beings 20 years ago.
Speaker 3:Right. That's right. They came from there too. Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, that's how
Speaker 1:They started. They were moved around like pawns themselves. Right. So it's just like, you know, um, you know, kids grow up and become, I grow up and become parents and they kind of act like their own parents. That's how it works. So now we have outsiders like you and me coming in and saying, you know what, there's, there could be a totally different narrative here. Uh, are you willing to take the leap? And so there's a huge challenge with that. And not everybody hears that it actually is a leap. Right. Because you know, it is so there's so much about it. That seems to be documented best practice blah-blah-blah right. They really don't realize that it is not the full picture. It's not even the important part of the picture.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I wanted to get in one more thing here. Uh, you mentioned to me earlier, before we started recording, uh, your agile blind spot and you have a, is it a little course or something you wrote up?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yes. It's a, it's a mini program. It's basically seven little, um, discussions that are available in text and audio with my beautiful narration, with my beautiful accent. Uh, I love it. And so, you know, you can sign up for that on my website. That's totally free. It comes in an email every two days. So there's time for the concepts to sink in. It is at a three P vantage.com/blindspot, totally free, no strings attached. And, um, what it, what it's there for is to help people notice, uh, weaknesses in their agile implementation. Even if things look okay, it's not for people whose agile is the monstrously broken it's for people who think it's good and they don't necessarily realize that it, it has actually plateaued on mediocre and it could be a lot better if they made a change to something that's invisible.
Speaker 3:Right. So that's,
Speaker 1:That's the point of that's a program.
Speaker 3:That's wonderful. It sounds great. Yeah. So anything else that, uh, comes to mind as far as we talk around this topic of why our agile isn't working as expected, we've had some great conversations here. Uh, anything else that comes to mind, uh, that you can think of that would be very helpful to our listeners?
Speaker 1:I think it would be really helpful for people to realize that the agile is not scrum and is not convent and is not safe. It is a whole world of thinking that gets implemented by these in different ways. All of which are legitimate in various contexts. And it is, it has fascinating stuff. Okay. Maybe it's fascinating to me. I don't know. It's fascinating. I think I, I look, I, I got into doing this work because I always paid attention to how people do stuff, how people get work from and so on and something that interested me. And then the whole field of it became a field of study. So I'm really happy it's in my life. And a lot of people don't care about process and let's fair. Let's be fair. They shouldn't. Okay. However, anytime we do any type of work and that includes your hobbies. Okay. And that includes raising a family, um, different kinds of work that has work. Um, any time you volunteer
Speaker 4:Any time
Speaker 1:You do anything in society, how society works. That's another fascinating thing. There is more there than meets the eye. There is strategies and there are principles and there are North stars and stuff like that. And it's not just about hitting targets.
Speaker 4:There's
Speaker 1:Systems that have, you know, interconnections and relationships and so much is not evident. It is not surface level. Um, you make one change and something else breaks and you don't know. I find that to be fascinating, but the point to the lesson there is, is you do have to increase your awareness to the system level. If you want more of the results you want and less of the results you don't want, because just again, changing mechanisms won't necessarily do.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly. Yes. And with that, I think, uh, that's a great way to close out this episode here. Thank you, Mr. Gilbert, Rosa so much for joining us from beautiful Toronto Canada there, uh, hope everything's going well with you there and during the pandemic and everyone stays safe and your family. Um, so this has been a episode here with Gil on talking about why agile isn't working out as expected. Hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have Gil. And I have talking about this. It's been very enlightening. I really enjoy talking about this. So a bit of the agile within where we help you to be more agile. So Gil, if people want to get ahold of you, how can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 1:Uh, so the best means is LinkedIn, um, Gil bros out on LinkedIn, there's only one. And, uh, when you connect with me, please do it from a desktop. So you can add a note and say on the notes that you heard me on this podcast. And that's how I would know, and we can actually have a conversation. And the other means is my website three P vantage.com. Um, lots of updates there as well. So great and great.
Speaker 3:And I want to also mention your, your wonderful books, the human side of agile, the agile mindset and agile for non-software teams. Did I get that right? Yes. Um, the first two are available on audio as well. Um, they're also available electronically. Um, if you buy them from me directly and not through the behemoth Amazon, um, I actually donate the money to charity so well, great. We can do good. And they can go directly to your website to get links on the website. Yes. Okay, great. And then also the agile blind spot too. That's on your website as well, right? Yeah. So that's one, like we said, it's totally free. Got it. That's free. Awesome. Great. So thank you, Mr. Gill. Broza appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you.[inaudible].