Agile Innovation Leaders

Bio Dr. Jeff Sutherland is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile framework across the globe.  Originally used for software development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to solve complex projects in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Scrum companies consistently respond to market demand, to get results and drive performance at speeds they never thought possible. Jeff is committed to developing the Agile leadership practices that allow Scrum to scale across an enterprise.   Dr. Sutherland is the chairman and founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile manifesto and coauthor of the Scrum Guide and the creator Scrum@Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile Education Program and share best practices with organizations around the globe. He is the founder of Scrum Inc. and coauthor of, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, that has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.    Social Media:                 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffsutherland                 Twitter: @jeffsutherland Website: Scrum Inc https://scruminc.com               Books/ Articles: The Scrum Guide by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber http://www.scrumguides.org/index.html Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Scrum Fieldbook by JJ Sutherland Agile Competitors and Virtual Organisations by Steven Goldman, Roger Nagel and Kenneth Preiss https://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Competitors-Virtual-Organizations-Engineering/dp/0471286508 Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster Moving World by John P. Kotter Leading Change by John P. Kotter Process Dynamics, Modeling and Control by Babatunde A. Ogunnaike and Harmon W. Ray A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game by Jeff Sutherland, James Coplien, Mark den Hollander, et al    Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Hello everyone, my guest today is Dr Jeff Sutherland. He is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile Framework across the globe. Originally used for Software Development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to deliver complex projects in startups and Fortune 100 companies. Dr Jeff Sutherland is the Chairman and Founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile Manifesto and co-author of the Scrum Guide and the creator of Scrum at Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile education programme and share best practices with organisations around the globe. He has authored and co-authored a number of books which include Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time – which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. In this episode, Dr Sutherland shares the backstory of how he and Ken Schwaber developed the Scrum framework. I was pleasantly surprised and proud to learn that one of the inspirations behind the current Scrum framework we now have was the work of Prof Babatunde Ogunnike, given my Nigerian heritage. Dr Sutherland also talked about the importance of Agile Leadership and his current focus on helping organisations fix bad Scrum implementations. I’m sure you’ll uncover some useful nuggets in this episode. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dr Sutherland.   Ula Ojiaku: Thank you, Dr. Sutherland, for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Jeff Sutherland: Glad to be here. Looking forward to it. Ula Ojiaku: Fantastic. So could you tell us about yourself? Jeff Sutherland: Well, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. And I always felt that I would go to West Point of the United States Military Academy, even at a very young age. And I finally made it there. I spent four years there. And I went on to a program where a certain number of cadets could join the Air Force. And I told the Air Force, if they made me a fighter pilot, I would move into the Air Force, which I did. I spent 11 years as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. And most of the operational aspects of Scrum actually come from that training. My last tour in the Air Force was actually at the US Air Force Academy, I was a professor of mathematics. And I had gone to Stanford University in preparation for that position. And I had worked closely with the, at the time he was Head of the Department of Psychiatry, became the Dean of Stanford who had studied under my father-in-law, he had become an MD under my father-in-law, who was a brilliant physician. And I was working on research papers with him, both at Stanford and at the Air Force Academy. And I asked him for guidance. And I said, I'm thinking about, given all the work we've done in the medical area. Starting in Stanford, I'm thinking maybe becoming a doctor - become an MD. And he strongly recommended against that he said, ‘you'll just go backwards in your career, what you need to do is you build on everything you've done so far. And what you have is your fighter pilot experience, your experience as a statistician, and a mathematician, you want to build on that.’ So, I had already started into a doctoral program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, which was not far from the Air Force Academy. And so, I talked to my department Chairman there who offered me a position in the department running a large research grant, funded by the National Cancer Institute and so, I decided to exit the Airforce and join the medical school. While I was finishing up my doctoral degree. And as soon as my doctorate was finished, I became a professor of Radiology, preventive medicine and biometrics. I was a joint across multiple departments. And I was doing mathematical research on modeling, particularly the human cell on a supercomputer, (to) determine what caused cancer. And to do that required extensive mathematical research as well as the medical research. But at the end of the day, what we found was for any complex adaptive system, like a human cell, or a person or a team, they go through different states. And they're moved from one state to the next by some kind of intervention. And so, if you understand what causes those changes… turned out in the case of cancer, there were four different states that led to a tumor. And in every state, there were certain interventions, and if you knew what they were, you could prevent them and prevent cancer. Or you could even, to my surprise, take a cancer cell and make it go backward into a normal cell. So, this fundamental understanding is the theory behind Scrum. So, while I'm doing this all at the medical school, a large banking company came by and said, ‘you know, over the medical school, you guys have all the knowledge about the technologies; the new technology, we're using (for) banking, you're using for research.’ And they said, ‘you guys have all the knowledge but we have all the money and they made me an offer to come join the bank’    Ula Ojiaku: [Laughs]You couldn’t refuse Jeff Sutherland: Not just me, it was my family. So, I wind up as Vice President for Advanced Systems, which was effectively was the CTO for 150 banks that we were running across North America.   Each was, you know, a dozen, 50, 100 branches. And of course, we were mainly doing the software, installation and support to run the banking operation, which is largely computer stuff – (this) is what banks run off. And as we're building these systems with hundreds and hundreds of developers, one of the first things I noticed is that all the projects were late. And I look at what they're doing. And they're using this process where they spend, you know, six months defining requirements, and then they put all the requirements into a Gantt chart. And then they, they plan on taking six months to build something, but it's never done. Because as soon as they start testing that they find there's all kinds of things that are broken. So, virtually every single project of the bank is late. So, as a head of technology, one day I walked into the CEO’s office and I said, ‘Ron,  have you noticed all your projects are late?’ He said, ‘Yes’. He says, ‘Every morning at least five CIOs or CEOs of the banks, they call me up.’ And he says, ‘they scream at me.’ I said, ‘wow’, I said, ‘You know, it's going to get worse, not better. Because these guys are using this, these Gantt Charts.’ And I showed him one. And then being a mathematician, I mathematically proved that every project would be late at the bank. And he was stunned. And he said, ‘what should I do?’ I said, ‘we need a completely different operating system in the bank.’ This is back in 1983. ‘Let's take one business unit. Let's take the one that's losing the most money, okay, the worst business unit’ Ula Ojiaku: They have nothing to lose then. Jeff Sutherland: And it was the automated teller division that was rolling out cash machines all over North America. It was a new technology and they had a ton of problems. So, I said, ‘let's take that unit and every one, sales, market, support, installation, we're going to split them down into small teams. And we're going to have Product Marketing come in on Monday with a backlog prioritized by business value. And at the end of the week, on Friday, we're going to deploy to 150 banks.’ ‘And I'm going to train them how to land a project every week, just like I trained fighter pilots to land aircraft. I'm going to give them a burndown chart, we're going to throw away the Gantt Chart, I'm going to give them a burndown chart to show them how to land the project.’ So, he said, ‘Well, that's gonna be a big headache.’ I said, ‘look, the bank needs to be fixed.’ He said, ‘Okay, you got it.’ So, I took that unit. I told them, ‘I know it's gonna take several weeks,’ today we call them sprints, ‘for you to be successful.’ Because as new pilots, trained to land, these high-performance jets, th

Bio Brant Cooper is The New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and his new popular book Disruption Proof. He is the CEO and founder of Moves the Needle. He is a trusted adviser to startups and large enterprises around the world. With more than 25 years of expertise in changing industrial age mindset into digital age opportunity, he blends agile, human-centered design, and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action from the front lines to the C-suite.  As a sought-after keynote speaker, startup mentor, and executive advisor, he travels the globe sharing his vision for reimagining 21st century organizations. Bringing agility, digital transformation, and a focus on creating value for customers, he helps leaders navigate the uncertainty brought on by increased complexity and endless disruption.   Interview Highlights 01:30 Background 03:40 First startup 05:30 Learning from failure 06:50 The Lean Entrepreneur 07:30 Empowering employees 15:40 Learning through observation 19:00 Disruptions 22:00 Output vs Outcome 30:45 Working in teams 35:30 Aligning priorities 41:00 Disruption Proof 52:00 Take risks   Social Media ·         LinkedIn:  Brant Cooper ·         X/Twitter: @brantcooper ·         Email: brant@brantcooper.com ·         Website: www.brantcooper.com ·         Website: www.movestheneedle.com ·         YouTube: Brant Cooper   Books & Resources ·         Disruption Proof: Empower People, Create Value, Drive Change, Brant Cooper ·         The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Brant Cooper  ·          The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets, Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits, Eric Ries ·         The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits ·         Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, Brené Brown, Brené Brown ·         Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, General Stanley McChrystal   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me Brant Cooper, who is the author of the books Lean Entrepreneur and his latest one, Disruption Proof: Empower People, Create Value, Drive Change. He also is the CEO and Founder of Moves the Needle. Brant, it is a pleasure and an honour to have you as my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Brant Cooper Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. Ula Ojiaku Now Brant, as I start with all my guests, we want to know a bit more about you. So could you tell us about yourself growing up, your background, are there any experiences that have made a great impact on you that have led to you becoming the Brant we see today? Brant Cooper Yeah, so born and mostly raised in California, which seems to be somewhat unique these days, but also did travel around a bit. My dad was a Navy man. I don't know, I guess I was always a little bit different. I think a lot of us describe ourselves that way, but when I went away to school for college, most people were focusing on one major or maybe two majors because that was sort of the state of the world. It's kind of, this is a little while ago, but supposedly what you needed to do is go and get narrow expertise and then that was what was going to launch your career. But to me, that was boring. And so I wanted to take a little bit of everything. So chemistry and calculus and sociology and psychology and history and creative writing and literature. So I was sort of all over the map and I guess it's kind of funny, you can look back on your life and find these little threads that weave through everything. When I left college and got my first job, I remember specifically, I was in Washington, D. C. and I was sitting on the stoop of the house that I was living in and I was all like, really, is this it? Is this the rest of my life, is it working 9 to 5 doing, you know, what people are telling me to do. Wow. That doesn't seem like the bargain I thought it was. So I actually dropped out and wrote a novel, which was very sophomoric, because unless you're a genius, most 20-something year olds really don't know that much about the world. But anyway, it was sort of a, this empowering moment when I just sort of had faith in myself that I would always be able to take care of myself and figure things out. And so it's really one of these moments where the moment you feel like you can just leave a job, you get a tremendous amount of power from that. Most people go through their lives feeling like they have to do what their boss says and they have to live that life and it becomes, your choices obviously become quite limited. So I ended up crossing the country back to California, moved up to the Bay Area, worked in a few jobs there, tried unsuccessfully to sell my book, and then I joined my first startup. So this is the, you know, dot com era, the nineties, and it was really there at this startup that I caught wind of the fact that there were actually these jobs where you weren't supposed to just do what you're told, that your responsibility was to figure things out, to exercise your own creativity and your own intelligence, and nobody was going to sit there over your shoulder, that you were going to be held accountable to what you were doing or what you weren't doing. But you are literally sort of on your own and that was, again, sort of the second moment of feeling the sense of empowerment. And it's funny, because up to that point, I really, maybe I wasn't an A player as the startup likes to talk about the startup myths, you know, you have to go hire all those A players. Maybe I just wasn't an A player, but I used to be passed around like a hot potato between all of these managers because nobody really wanted to manage me because I really didn't do what they said. I did what I thought was best. But anyway, so the startup sort of launched this new type of, so then even in the startups, I worked at a bunch of different jobs. So instead of again, specialising, I was in IT, and then I ran the professional services group and then I went into product management and then I took over marketing, you know, sort of helping out salespeople. So I, again, I sort of traverse the whole, all of the different functions inside the company. And I guess I think that that was also a big learning moment for me, and so I lived through that, you know, tried a couple of my own companies that failed and others that succeeded crazily and others that, you know, ramped up their sales, but then they tailed off and I was on the management team trying to figure things out. And it's funny, because I used to, you always learn more from failures, and I think that the last one, the way I talk about it is that the sort of the company strategy was dictated every week by whoever was the best arguer. Like, so it was just like a management team free for all. And whoever won, that would set the strategy. And so I sort of won for, you know, a year and a year and a half, and we grew like crazy and I had, you know, allies on the team and then they kind of changed their mind and got rid of me and got rid of my allies. And then they went back and did whatever they wanted to do, the founders. So it was all again, it's sort of this learning moment where maybe that's not the best way to make decisions, but so the dot com bust happened and I was actually writing and blogging about, well, what makes successful startups better, what makes them successful compared to all of the ones that fail and what is it about, you know, sort of this idea of learning and empowering people to learn rather than just execute. And so I was blogging about that stuff and got turned on to Steve Blank and to Eric Ries and I ended up writing the first book that talked about lean startup and product market fit. And then that kind of launched this whole other career where at first we're focused on startups, but eventually, I wrote The Lean Entrepreneur and formed Moves the Needle to start taking some of these principles to large enterprises over the world. So around the last 10 years we’ve been helping some of the biggest brands in the world try to adopt some of these principles of exploration, so learning mode and, yeah, that sort of takes us to where we are today. I am still doing that work in addition to some other things, but primarily it's focused on empowering employees to exercise their creativity and their inspiration and to drive impact. And then, you know, helping the leadership understand that they get more out of their people if they enable that, and take a step back, and then they get to be more proactive and more strategic in their own world, and it's sort of empowering to them as well. And I think really, post pandemic, we've sort of seen this shift where that's happening more once people are remote workers, you know, workers being burned out and frustrated with work is when they don't get to do that sort of work. So yeah, it's sort of an interesting time and really the rise of, you know, sort of Agile reaching the next level and Design Thinking reaching the next level and Product Management and all of these things happening because the world is turning digital, makes this a pretty exciting time to apply a lot of these principles. Ula Ojiaku You have a fascinating background, Brant, and there are some things that you said about your background that had me nodding, because I identify with it and maybe in terms of, I love variety. And yes, I studied Engineering, but I also kind of liked to know a bi

Bio  Fabiola is a pioneer and thought leader in Agile HR and Co-Founder of Just Leading Solutions, a global transformation consultancy for HR and Business Agility. As a seasoned Management Consultant and Executive Advisor, she works with key players around the globe and across the private, corporate, and social sectors. She helps them become more adaptive and innovative by maximizing the potential of their people function. Fabiola is a Switzerland native living in New York. She is an avid New York Rangers fan.   Interview Highlights 03:20 Business Agility 04:35 The Impact of Technology 07:45 How HR Fits into Business Agility 10:35 Making the Change 13:50 Sustainable Initiatives 16:25 Agile HR vs Agility in HR 18:35 Workforce Planning Sessions 30:15 The Agile HR Course   Links ·         JLS Website: www.justleadingsolutions.com ·         Training Overview: Agile HR Training ·         Agile HR Explorer: Agile HR Explorer Training ·         LinkedIn Fabiola Eyholzer   Books & Resources ·         The Connected Company, Dave Gray ·         Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows ·         The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, Amy Edmondson   ·         The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, Daniel Coyle   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me here Fabiola Eyholzer, she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Just Leading Solutions, a New York based consultancy for Lean Agile People Operations. Fabiola, it's a massive honour and pleasure to have you on this show. Thank you for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Fabiola Eyholzer Thank you, Ula, the pleasure is all mine. Ula Ojiaku So how did you get into this, you know, Lean Agile space? Fabiola Eyholzer So it's actually quite an interesting story. It's now 13 years ago when I was running the Swiss market for a European HR consultancy, and we were looking for a new leadership model for our career starters. And I met some Agile coaches and they're like, oh, you have to do Scrum, and I'm like, well, did you hear me say that we are an HR consultancy, we're not a software developer. She's like, trust me, it's the right thing to do, so we did a test run. So we introduced Scrum, which is the predominant Agile practice with our career starters, and it was such an eye opener to see what actually happens when we work in this new way that I knew this is the future, and I decided there and then to quit my job and dedicate the next phase of my career to Agile HR. Ula Ojiaku Wow. And since then, what sorts of organisations or projects or initiatives have you worked on? Fabiola Eyholzer So we've worked on so many different initiatives and with so many different companies and I actually had to look it up, I was in over 21 countries with the topic of HR Agility, and in that time I worked with companies across all industries, across all sectors, from profit, to non-profit, to education. And something that is really interesting is that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter that much what your corporate culture is, what your social culture is, when it comes to the people function, we want to make sure how do we maximise the people function, how do we leverage what we are doing in HR in a way that is highly beneficial for our employees, and with that, highly beneficial for our organisations. And of course, right now we are in that situation that the world of work around us is changing massively, you know, it's just being turned upside down. And this is, on the one hand, really scary, on the other hand, it's a massive chance to really reinvent HR, and really do things differently. Ula Ojiaku Something that stands out to me is you're saying it's an opportunity to reinvent HR and we will get back to that, but before we do, what does business agility mean to you? Fabiola Eyholzer So for me, business agility is really ensuring that our companies are engaging and adaptive and innovative so that they can thrive in that fast paced and constantly changing, highly dynamic environment. And at the core, what it means is that organisations and institutions are shifting away from being well oiled machines to being thriving ecosystems, because adaptability means exploring change, enabling change and being able to be change ready and to manage change to flex their muscles, to explore opportunities very quickly, to act on opportunities and not be scared, not be afraid to pivot and to course correct. And that's what we are seeing right now, that companies have to shift away from a model that served us really well for 150 years to a new system that is always at the edge of chaos, but that's the only way to continue to thrive and be adaptive in that fast paced, highly dynamic environment. Ula Ojiaku And would you say, I've, this is the first time I'm hearing that phrase, edge of chaos, but I do agree, and would you say that in this day and age, because the nature of the work we do, compared to 150 years ago, or even some years ago, it's for the most part getting to be knowledge-based, especially in technology. Is that one of the considerations for the change we need in the way we organise and run our companies or groups or teams? Fabiola Eyholzer Yes, technology is definitely a massive game changer for us, but it's not just about changing the way we work or changing the way our processes work. And quite often when we talk about technology in the HR space, people think about, you know, putting our HR process onto new, fancier digital process, but that's not just what it's about. It's more about understanding how much is technology and everything else that goes hand in hand with that, how is it changing the way that we work, and it leaves us with that very fundamental question, what type of work is left for us humans? If everything around us is being automated, and you know when we think about automation, a lot of people think about assembly line work going away, you know, routine work going away. And that was true 20 years ago. But today, work is being automated in every single field imaginable. And it's not just routine work that is being automated, and that leaves us with that question, what type of work is left for us? The answer is, it's the type of work that requires our passion and our potential for collaboration, ideation, our social and emotional intelligence. And of course, we are solving problems we never had to solve before, so there is no script, and that means we need to organise our companies in a different way. We need to organise work in a different way so that we can manage that ongoing fast paced change and that we can continue to solve problems we haven't solved before. And that's why we need to shift away from being a well oiled machine that has everything already figured out and written into job descriptions and competency models and objectives and KPIs to a company that can create and respond to change very quickly. Ula Ojiaku So given your definition of what business agility means to you and the case you've made for change, in the sense that we're at the edge of chaos and the sorts of work we need to do right now because technology, almost everything can be and will be automated in one way or the other, so where does HR fit in into this, in the light of business agility? Fabiola Eyholzer I can give you a very straightforward, simple answer. The role of HR in business agility is that HR is the secret to business agility, because if we don't align our people approach, and if we don't align our HR practices to the new realities and new demands, we're not going to be successful. So if we don't engage in talent scouting and talent enablement and performance acceleration in a way that is aligned with the new way of working, we cannot achieve business agility. Ula Ojiaku And how ready would you say the HR function is for this sort of transformation? Fabiola Eyholzer So the companies that we work with, or that I have the pleasure of working with, they are ready, or at least they're not scared to try. So they're courageous enough to try. As an industry in human resources, I think we have a long way to go. On the one hand, we see that things are changing and we're trying super hard to change with the times, but quite often we don't have that fundamental understanding that the entire mindset, the entire DNA of the organisation is going to change, and unless we understand that new mindset, that new DNA, we will not be able to change or maximise the people function in a way that is most beneficial for Agile enterprise. So we have a long way to go. Ula Ojiaku How would you know if an organisation's HR function is ready? Are there some indicators that they're ready to go on this journey if they haven't started already? Fabiola Eyholzer One of the indicators is if they have more questions than answers, they're probably there. So, because the companies are just saying, oh, we've done this, we've done that, tick, tick, tick. They're probably not the ones with that growth mindset that Agile organisations need. Okay, so that's one indicator. The other indicator is that they're not satisfied with the status quo and at the same time they are willing to do something about it. So I sometimes say, we have a gut feeling that tells us there must be a better way out there to engage with people, to create a learning organisation, to inspire people. And if we listen to that gut feeling, then we need to be gutsy about it, to change it, to do something about it. And these are some of the things that we see in organisations that we work with, they are

Bio   Victor is a Lean/AGILE Strategy and Transformation Consultant, helping organisations in emergent environments navigate the path to a successful future via "Agile Ways Of Working". This usually involves developing and implementing Lean/Agile Strategies for these organisations, coaching & mentoring Senior Leaders, Managers and Teams in attaining the Agile Mindset that allows them to achieve high performance. Experiencing this evolutionary journey with clients from traditional ways of working to successfully achieving full Agility is his career passion. With a career path spanning over 30 years, starting as an accountant and Business Analyst, Scrum Master to being an Agile Coach today. His best skill amongst many is as a motivator and his work ethic is all around making work fun. Other passion outside work include helping Africa as a whole achieve Agility – Victor is the creator of the A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S Agile Culture Model and also an amateur chef, gastronome and suffering Chelsea FC fan. Victor lives in England with his family, 3 dogs and 12 fish. Interview Highlights 01:40 & 08:00 Childhood bereavement 04:00 The importance of adapting 09:45 A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S model 14:50 Using local language 20:00 WakandAGILITY 22:25 Sustainable transformation 29:00 Transformation buzzword 32:15 The importance of timing   Social Media   ·         LinkedIn: Victor NWADU | LinkedIn ·         Email: victor@wakandagility.com ·         Medium: Victor Nwadu – Medium ·         Twitter: @wakandagility   Books & Resources ·         The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: Goldratt, Eliyahu M ·         Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders L. David Marquet ·         The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations: James Surowiecki, Erik Singer ·         WakandAGILITY.com: Enabling Agility for Africa: Agile Training, Support and Networking | Wakandagility ·         The A.P.I.A.M. – R.A.T.S. MODEL | LinkedIn Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me here Victor Nwadu, who is an agility strategist, Agile coach, everything-in-between, maestro. Victor, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much. Victor Nwadu Thank you, Ula, thank you for having me. Thank you. Ula Ojiaku So let, just tell us, Victor, about your background. What are the things that you've experienced, that have shaped you into who you are today and how you've ended up to where you are professionally? Victor Nwadu I mean, just cutting to the flow, I'm from Nigeria. I'm also, like all Nigerians, educated in Nigeria and then for some, you know, reason found myself here in the UK. If I wanted to pick on anything that has, you know, brought me to where I am and what has driven me to who I am today, I think it's just, it’s my childhood, right. I was born to working class parents that, you know, Catholic people that worked hard for everything they've got. And as a Nigerian, you are told, it's instilled in you from a very young age, what the benefit of hard work is. Unfortunately, I was traumatised at the age of 13 by the death of my mum. So, and yeah, left with five siblings and my dad was broken by the course of events, but, you know, at that young age getting to where I am, having to, you know, do what I had to do to get to school and all that and still have these five siblings with me as well. Ula Ojiaku Because you're the first. Victor Nwadu Yes, I'm the first. You know how it is, especially when you're Igbo, right, you're expected to be strong and do it. Ula Ojiaku Di-Okpara (First Born) Victor Nwadu Di-Okpara, you say, that kind of thing, you know, so, yeah. But thank God for today and I find myself here today talking to powerful people like yourself. And I mean, I think that that has made me stronger, and I miss my mum terribly, but if I look back, to be honest with you, the course of events in one's life really defines, helps one define one's destiny. And that's how, you know, so I believe that what I went through in life has made me stronger, you know? So, yeah. I came to the UK, became an accountant, funnily enough, I did what we need to do. Then I find myself being a BA then a, after systems accounting, because I loved computers and all that, you know, then find myself doing, I don't know if you know what SAP is, so I did that for a while. Met a chap, a BA guy that I was doing his invoice, I saw how much was earning and I said, what, Jesus, I mean, tell me what to do, man. I then became a BA from that, then became, at that time, luckily, Scrum was just coming into the industry and, you know, we, I found myself doing something called an Agile BA, that's how I got into Agile. Then became a Scrum Master, became an Agile coach, and the rest is history. So that’s basically it in a nutshell. Ula Ojiaku That's interesting, that you started off as an accountant and now you're an agile coach. I mean, I'm not throwing stones. I started off as an Electronic Engineer and I'm an agile coach, but yeah, it's all about, what I'm trying to also tell young people, including my children, that what you start off with doesn't necessarily mean that that's the career you're going to have for your whole life, you know, there is a whole lot of options, but it's just about starting somewhere. Victor Nwadu Especially now, I say the same thing to my kids, especially my son. You need to be in a state of mind where you need to adapt. A lot of paradigm shifts are happening underneath us and, you know, you need to be ready, and you need to be ready to go and adapt to the present circumstances. Otherwise, you know, and this is why we do what we do. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, and I think it starts with a mindset as well, you know, just having that Agile mindset, not to flog it, but agility starts first with the mind. What’s your take on it? Because things are changing to be able to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Victor Nwadu Exactly. I mean, so we are living in exciting times, like you know already, agility was born out of the times that we're living in. It all started with the internet and outsourcing and all that, the world becoming a small village and all that. Then, we then have this digital thing going on and the information age and that brought yourselves all sorts of fantastic things. Things are, because we are utilising and leveraging the power of technology, we find out that we don't need to do certain things. Unfortunately, some jobs have to go, but then new ones are coming in. So all these things started happening, and again, it's affecting generations right now. If you were Generation X like me, you would've seen at least three more generations in your time when these changes are happening. It's crazy. So we now have, how do we survive? You know, you survive by adapting. If you don't adapt, you become obsolete, extinct, and that has tailored it to the industry, and the way we work. And even now talking to you, I'm working from home, I have a home office, you know, and that makes it even more fantastic because I can work anywhere in the world. Right. So what it does now is that it creates a bigger competition, right, where anybody can apply for any job anywhere in the world. It also helps the earth, and I don't want to go into that working from home debate, but that's all these things that are happening are as the consequences of the various paradigm shifts that are happening. So we need to adapt, like you said, in the mind, our mind needs to be open to change. And we need to put ourself in a place where we leverage all the advantages of those changes for our own benefits and so yeah. Ula Ojiaku Well said Victor. I mean, I completely associate with what you've said so far and the changes that are happening, especially with technology. For example, the recent one that's making waves is like AI, you know, so we're now in, someone said we’re in the knowledge, information age, but now it's something like augmented age. So it's not just about the information, but it's also about being able to leverage, you know, technology like AI to still do productive work. But it still ties back with being adaptable, being able to learn and unlearn, to remain creative because machines are not taking over anytime soon. Victor Nwadu They can't take over the creative aspect and we need to automate and become, the competitive edge now is about who does things quicker, who gets to the market quicker and who get to the customer quicker? Who satisfies the customer in terms of the value threshold. So yeah, that's what we are, you know, we’re creative, but we'll still be the same, but if you don't have creative guys in your design and engineering design, or software design, you're still going to fall back into that obsolete group of people that don't change or are not changing as quickly as it should. So yeah, I agree totally with that. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. I know we went off into a rabbit hole, but I did want to just take you a little bit back to what you said earlier when you were talking about the things that happened to you that shaped you into who you are. And you mentioned your mum's death at 13, you know, I'm really sorry about that, and I can't imagine how tough it would be because my son just turned 13 and I can't imagine the difficulty it must be, well, you did say it must have been for you. You said events in one's life defines one's destiny. Can I, so

Bio   Bryan is a seasoned Enterprise Transformation Strategist, Coach and Trainer specialising in the practical implementation of Business Agility practices within all types of organisations. He brings a balance of business, technical and leadership expertise to his clients with a focus on how to achieve immediate gains in productivity, efficiency, visibility and flow. Bryan is a key contributor in the development of the AgilityHealth platform, AgileVideos.com and the Enterprise Business Agility strategy model and continues to train, speak and write about leading Business Agility topics.   Interview Highlights 02:40 Driving strategy forwards 03:05 Aligning OKRs 06:00 Value-based prioritisation 07:25 An outcome-driven approach 09:30 Enterprise transformation 13:20 The ten elephants in the business agility room 14:10 Misaligned incentives 15:40 Top heavy management 18:50 Being open to change 19:40 Process for improving process 25:15 Being a learning organisation 26:45 Leaders drive cultural change 29:50 Capacity and employee burnout   Social Media   ·         LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bryantew ·         Twitter: @B2Agile ·         Email: bryan@agilityhealthradar.com ·         Website: www.agilityhealthradar.com    Books & Resources   ·         The Compound Effect The Compound Effect: Amazon.co.uk: Perseus: 9781593157241: Books by Darren Hardy ·         The Trillion Dollar Coach Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell: Amazon.co.uk: Schmidt, Eric, Rosenberg, Jonathan, Eagle, Alan: 9781473675964: Books by Eric Schmidt and co ·         Project to Product Project to Product: How Value Stream Networks Will Transform IT and Business: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework: Amazon.co.uk: Mik Kersten: 9781942788393: Books by Mik Kirsten ·         EBA strategy model: https://agilityhealthradar.com/enterprise-business-agility-model/   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hello again everyone, welcome back to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. My guest today is Bryan Tew, and this episode is going to be covering the second half of the conversation I had with Bryan on all things enterprise and business agility. So in part one, if you've listened to it already, or if you haven't, please go to that first, I'd really, really recommend, because Bryan talked about how to overcome failed deliveries, meeting teams where they're at, establishing and driving strategy forward. Now for this part two, we went into the topic of OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, and how to align these with strategy. He also talked about the ten elephants in the business agility room, and the importance of being open to change and being a learning organisation and how leaders are critical to driving culture change. Without further ado, part two of my conversation with Bryan Tew. There are some things you've said about what leaders need to do and some of them include, you know, looking at the lean portfolio management, taking an outcome-based approach to defining the strategy at all levels and making sure that, you know, it kind of flows, not in a cascaded manner, but in a way that each layer would know how it's feeding into delivering the ultimate strategy of the organisation. Now, how, from a practical perspective, I mean, yes, you use OKRs, or objectives and key results, you know, that's one way of doing that. But how, are you suggesting then that the leaders would have to write the OKRs for every layer? Or is it just about being clear on the intent and direction of travel and letting each area define it within their context, but with some input from them? Bryan Tew No, it's a great question and I'll try to visualise as much as I can, but when you think about it this way, when you start at the top, and let's say that we're coming up with some enterprise level three year OKRs. So where are we going for the next three years? And you know what, things can change, so that's why we check in on those, you know, at least every six months, if not every quarter, because we're learning a lot and we want to adjust. But the thing is, if we have that level of strategy clarified, and not only that, but we're aligned across our leadership group, that means that the priorities that we're focusing on should align as well, and that's the important thing here. So now as we start to move from the enterprise down to maybe a division or portfolio level, all of the OKRs at that level should in some way align up to our enterprise, right? Whether it's around certain objectives that we're trying to accomplish from a financial perspective, or customer goals, or people goals, whatever it is, but now there's something that we can connect to as a foundation. So those senior leaders, although they can provide support and help, typically now it's your portfolio leaders that are taking the lead on building their OKRs that are aligned, and then down to maybe your program or train or whatever level you'd call it, what those OKRs will look like, all the way down to where every single team, which in reality, every single person in the organisation, sees how they fit in driving strategy. Now, I might be in facilities, I might be in HR, I might be in marketing, but I know that what I do is making a difference in making our strategy move forward, even though it's my small part. And I love that, that's where everyone feels connected. Now, what I see more often, and this is really unfortunate, and some people try OKRs and have a bad experience because leaders will just say, okay, everyone go out and do your own OKRs, but they're not aligned to anything. They're aligned to the local priorities, which may or may not be the right things to be working on at all. And so that's where I would say senior leaders need to take the initiative, and they can have help, that's why coaches are there, that's why their directs are there, they can even pull in people that might have expertise in certain areas to craft the OKRs, but even internally, you're going to have great expertise, but the idea is that, let's craft an OKR, even if it's not the senior leaders writing it, but it's actually showing the right message. Here's what we believe we need to do, and these are the outcomes we need to achieve in order for us to actually accomplish a goal. Like, what does that look like for us? And then I love to just press on leaders and ask, how would you know that we're successful? What would you be looking for? And that's a great start to your key results. So we have a really great framework, a very simple framework to build out OKRs, without just putting it into a template to start out, because I just want those main thoughts, like, why are we doing this? What is it going to accomplish for us? Who's going to be involved and what customer is this going to impact? And what's the best way to measure progress, and measure success? Like, those are the things I would start with, which makes OKRs a lot easier. But then from there, I have to have leaders come together to actually look at the work, and which of those items that, maybe, there may be many, which of those are actually going to be the most valuable to move forward with your strategy? You do not want your lower-level people who don't understand the strategy like you do, making those decisions. What are the best things for us to do? And then from there, that's where we can actually bring in the prioritisation, the value-based prioritisation, which we recommend, and starting to build more of your outcome alignment across your organisation. So yeah, there's so many great things that can be done. It's not a ton of work if you start to build a cadence and just a nice process for, how would you do that every quarter? Ula Ojiaku And that's a great starting point, because that reduces the risk of, like you said earlier, you know, the teams working on the wrong thing, you know, executing perfectly, but it's the wrong thing. Now, in terms of the process, because you've talked about how the role leaders need to play, you've given examples of how, what they could do to encourage agility in the enterprise or in the business. Now, would it be the same for a functionary division in an organisation that's going through their, let's call it, for lack of a better term, you know, an agile transformation, quote unquote, would you expect the process and the practices to be the same for each division, say finance versus IT versus procurement? Bryan Tew Well, so that's a great question and I would say yes and no. So, the process is probably going to be similar. For instance, I would always suggest starting with an outcome driven approach where we have some transformation outcomes that we're trying to achieve. You know, without that, how do you know that you've actually made it or that you're actually getting there? So I would suggest that for any type of organisation, regardless of type of work, but the practices will probably look a little bit different. You know, what you start with might look a little bit different. In fact, maybe I'll share a specific example here for a transformation. In fact, this was more around what leaders need to own around business agility, but this was a large financial services organisation with nine different divisions, and they all recognised that there were gaps in how they were delivering and they needed help, you know, and many of them had tried Agile, but when it came to actually applying OKRs and customer seed and organisational design and all these different ideas, especially things around our culture and leadership, there's always going

Bio   Bryan is a seasoned Enterprise Transformation Strategist, Coach and Trainer specialising in the practical implementation of Business Agility practices within all types of organisations. He brings a balance of business, technical and leadership expertise to his clients with a focus on how to achieve immediate gains in productivity, efficiency, visibility and flow. Bryan is a key contributor in the development of the AgilityHealth platform, AgileVideos.com and the Enterprise Business Agility strategy model and continues to train, speak and write about leading Business Agility topics.   Interview Highlights    04:15 Interrogating KGB agents 06:00 Now that I see it – overcoming failed deliveries 07:15 Agile ways of working 09:00 Meeting teams where they are at 11:50 AgilityHealth 14:10 Business Agility vs Enterprise Agility 17:30 Establishing a Strategy  21:25 Driving Strategy forward   Social Media   LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bryantew Twitter: @B2Agile Email: bryan@agilityhealthradar.com Website: www.agilityhealthradar.com  Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku  Hi everyone, my guest for this episode, actually, we're going to have a two part episode, is Bryan Tew. Bryan is a seasoned Enterprise Transformation Strategist, a coach and a trainer that specialises in the practical implementation of business agility practices within all types of organisations. I first came across Bryan when I did the Agility Health Enterprise Business Agility Strategist Course. I was mind boggled, my mind opened to possibilities, and I thought this is someone I would really like to speak with. In this episode, Bryan and I, for part one anyway, we talk about overcoming failed deliveries, or overcoming failed transformations, the importance of meeting teams where they're at. We also looked at the term Business Agility versus Enterprise Agility and Bryan explained his view on what that is all about. We also talked about strategy and how to establish that and drive that forward. I hope you enjoy listening to Bryan Tew's episode, as much as I enjoyed having this conversation and recording it with him. So part one, Bryan Tew. So I have with me Bryan Tew, who is a seasoned Business Agility Strategist, coach, trainer extraordinaire. He is just an all-round awesome expert in the Business Enterprise Agility space, and he works with AgilityHealth. Bryan, thank you so much for making time out of your busy schedule to have this conversation with me as my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast.   Bryan Tew   It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Ula.   Ula Ojiaku   Awesome. Thank you again. So, growing up, can you tell us a bit about your experience, your background, and how you wound up to where you are today?   Bryan Tew Sure, absolutely! So I grew up in the state of Utah, in the United States. It's a wonderful area, there’s lots of mountains, and many outdoor things to do, so I love the outdoors. I grew up skiing and snowboarding and playing outside, hiking, I do a lot of canyoneering and rock climbing and all kinds of outdoors, sometimes extreme sports, I just love those kinds of things, it helps me connect with nature. I had a great growing up, great schooling, but I'll tell you the thing that really changed my life, what's most influential for me is when I was 19 years old, I decided to serve a two year mission for my church, and I was called to St. Petersburg, Russia. You don't get to choose where to go, and that was actually a very interesting area for me. As you can imagine, this was in the early nineties, so a lot of different things changing in that area. And I had the most amazing experience, you know, two years where I wasn't focused on myself at all. It was all about serving others, and we would do things from helping kids in just these terrible orphanages, helping people on the streets, working with youth to try to help change their lives, teaching about God, helping families, it was just such an amazing experience and that really changed me and made me into a person that really was not so much about me, and kind of the selfish environment that we typically are in, but more about what can I do to maybe better myself so I can help others, and that was phenomenal. Now, as part of that, you know, obviously I was able to speak Russian every day, every day, all day, and so I became pretty fluent in the Russian language. And so following my mission, I came back, and as part of my schooling, I decided to use that, and I, just as a part-time National Guardsman, I joined the US Military Intelligence as an interrogator. So I actually was able to use my language to interrogate former KGB agents, Russian scientists, you know, different things to get information, and that was tremendous. And that just helped me through school. I didn't do a lot with that other than, you know, those six years where I was in the Guard. But that was a really influential time as well, and you know, as it came time for a real career, I actually started out in Washington DC, that's where my wife and I, after we were married, we moved there. She was working in congress, as a staffer, and so I started working for a lobbying firm, and that was really cool, you know, in fact, my interrogation skills helped a lot. Ula Ojiaku I can imagine. Bryan Tew Right? But you know, the reality is that it's a sleazy industry, and we saw some things, even just day to day, some things that I just didn't approve of. So I knew that that wasn't going to be a career for me. So, I actually decided to pursue an MBA, a Master's in Business (Administration), and we moved back to the state of Utah where I went to BYU for a Master's degree. And we thought, you know, while we're having our first child, it'd be nice to be close to grandparents. We just loved it back being home, so we've actually been there ever since. And from there, after my Master's degree, I actually started my technology career, that's where I became a Project Manager at Novell, which does infrastructure and networking software… Had a great experience there working waterfall projects. But the problem was we had many failed deliveries. And I remember hearing sometimes these five little words that I've come to dread, which is now that I see it, and maybe you've heard those words, maybe audience you've heard or maybe even said those words, right, usually something bad follows like, now that I see it, I don't think you understood my requirements. Or now that I see it, we have to go back and really fix a lot of things, or now that I see it, we completely missed the boat. And we had some of those experiences. And so it was multiple projects later where we were working on an enterprise service bus and my team had a real need for some expert consulting help. So we had this great gentleman from Australia, can't even remember his name, but he had some expertise in that area, but he also had some ideas on our broken process. So he would talk to our team and he said, you know, because this is such a large and complex project, I recommend that every day, let's just come together as a team, we can invite any of our key stakeholders who want to be part of it, but let's just stand up and talk about who's working on what and what our daily needs are, and how we can resolve some of these dependencies and just try to get on the same page as far as a daily plan. So we started doing that. He didn't call it a daily Standup or anything, it's just, this is something that can work. And so that was helping us for sure. He also said, you know, because we need to be on the same page as a team, I suggest that every couple of weeks or so, let's get together and let's talk about what's working and what's not working and what we can do to improve maybe the next couple of weeks. And again, that was just a really, just great idea to get us starting to think more collaboratively as a team. And he said, you know, because this is such a complex project with lots of moving parts and lots of different stakeholders, let's actually bring them all together. Let's try to help them understand and collectively build out a vision for where this is going. Let's think about how, what some of those customer needs are, and let's start to build a backlog of prioritised work that they can engage with us on. And let's start to deliver that maybe every couple of weeks to show our progress. I mean, as you can tell, just bringing in some of these Agile concepts without calling it a certain methodology. I mean, this was back in 2002, I didn't know anything about the Agile Manifesto at the time. He just said these are some practices that can work. Now having gone through that project, implementing some of those ideas, we just thought, wow, this is such a better way to work. And that's when I started to really start researching, what is this called? What is this all about? And so I got a little bit of agile experience there, and it just so happened that at the time in this area in Utah, we call this area the Silicon Slopes, because it's kind of like Silicon Valley in terms of technical experts here, lots of great developers and that understanding. So there were a lot of technical firms and there was one organisation that was actually looking for some Agile help, so this was about 2005 now, and I was one of the only ones that had Agile experience. And so I was hired on to help lead some of the effort there, and it was tremendous. In fact, I loved going from team to team, helping to introduce Agile concepts and kind of looking at a strategy. We had some software teams, and this was at ancestry.com, but we had software teams and operations teams and all kind

Bio Marsha is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, a respected and sought-after leadership   development firm that equips leaders, at all levels, to facilitate and lead sustainable behavioural change.  She partners with leaders and leadership teams to clarify their desired change, develop communicative competence and think together - accessing their collective intelligence to bring about change. TeamCatapult is a partner to mid-size start-ups and global fortune 500 companies across sectors like entertainment, game development, banking, insurance, healthcare, communications, government, information technology, consumer goods, and retail. Clients have included Microsoft, Riot Games, Epic Games, Capital One, Blizzard Entertainment, Starbucks, Liberty Mutual, Fidelity, and Chef. Marsha Acker is an executive & leadership team coach, author, speaker, facilitator, and the host of Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast. Marsha’s unparalleled at helping leaders identify and break through stuck patterns of communication  that  get  in  their  way  of  high  performance.  She is known internationally as a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue and a passionate agilist. She is the author of Build Your Model for Leading Change: A guided workbook to catalyse clarity and confidence in leading yourself and others.  Interview Highlights 04:15 Having effective conversations 04:45 Move-follow-bystand-oppose 09:30 Functional self-awareness 15:50 Build Your Model for Leading Change 18:00 Articulating your own model for change 26:00 Collective alignment 27:20 Getting messy 30:00 Making space for open conversations 35:40 TeamCatapult    Social Media  ·         LinkedIn: Marsha on LinkedIn ·         Website:  www.teamcatapult.com ·         Twitter: Marsha on Twitter    Books & Resources ·         The World of Visual Facilitation ·         The Art & Science of Facilitation, Marsha Acker ·         Build Your Model for Leading Change, Marsha Acker ·         Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders, David Kantor ·         Where Did You Learn To Behave Like That? (Second Edition), Sarah Hill ·         Coaching Agility From Within: Masterful Agile Team Coaching ·         Making Behavioral Change Happen - Team Catapult ·         Changing Behavior in High Stakes - Team Catapult   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. In this episode, I have Marsha Acker, the CEO and founder of TeamCatapult. Marsha is a respected and sought after leadership development expert and her team, or her company organisation, TeamCatapult, focuses on equipping leaders at all levels to facilitate and lead sustainable behavioural change. So this is the second part of my conversation, the second and the last part of my conversation with Marsha. And in this conversation, in this part of the episode, we talk about, or Marsha talks about having effective conversations, functional self awareness, what does that mean? She also talked about how one can articulate one's own model for change, and the need for getting collective alignments and the fact that it's not easy, sometimes it gets messy, but it's important to make space for open conversations. I found both the part one and this conversation, which is the final part of my conversation with Marsha, very insightful, and I hope you get something useful out of it as well. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Marsha Acker. Marsha Acker I’m very focused on behavioural-led change at the moment. And so in that behavioural-led change, what I place at the centre of any change is how are people communicating with one another? Are they able to actually have the real conversation? Is there enough awareness in the system that they can kind of catch sight of when the real conversation starts to go underground? And can they actually have the muscle, the range in their leadership to catch sight of it and then bring it back in the room? Change doesn’t happen until people feel heard and understood. I think one of the biggest questions that I think we help leadership teams look at is how do we work with difference, and actually welcome it rather than try to minimise it, because I think that’s the rub where, if we don’t have skills to work with it, we tend to minimise it or send it out of the room or suppress it. Like we say, you know, we don’t have enough time for that, or, gosh, we’ve got this deadline, so we’ve become super deadline driven, and I think sometimes at the expense of having a real conversation with one another. And I don't know that I could find you an example of any organisation that I've worked in, including my own TeamCatapult, where something that we're trying to do or accomplish or move forward doesn't meet a roadblock when some aspect of our conversation isn't fully online or we're not fully having the conversation that we need to have. So you asked how would I do so how, one of the ways that I would do that today is, first, whenever I'm engaging with a leadership team or any other team that's really trying to bring about change and just noticing like they're trying to level up or there's something that they're wanting that they feel like they're kind of capped at is I just start to help them look at the way they engage in conversation, because I think in the conversation there are lots of indicators about how that conversation plays out and are people really able to say what they're thinking or do we get stuck in some common dysfunctional patterns that can show up? So one example of that would be, we use a sort of a technology for looking at conversation and there are four actions that happen in all effective conversations, a move, a follow, an oppose, and a bystand. So a move sets direction, a follow supports it, an oppose offers really clear correction. It says, no, hang on, wait a minute. A bystand offers a morally neutral perspective, so one way is to help a team onboard that, but there are common patterns and one of the common patterns that will come out, particularly in tech teams where there's pace and we need to move things forward, is that they can get into this pattern of someone makes a move, and everyone else just sort of remains silent or, so something to the effect might voice ‘sure, you know, that sounds good.’ So they start to fall into this pattern of move and lots of follow. And what's missing often is the voice of bystand, which says, hey, I'm wondering what's going on, or I'm wondering what we're not saying. And then really clear opposition. So the ability to bring pushback, constraint into the conversation. So if you go back to that original leadership team that I was telling you about, you know, way back when, I think one of the things that was going on in that team is they weren't, no one was able to say, this is an incredibly difficult decision, and I don't think I can make it unless I have these things answered. So they kept making it about the process and it wasn't really about the process at all. It was really, it had a very personal component to it that wasn't being discussed, and so the inability to discuss that really created the drag. So the way that I think about helping any team work through any change is, helping them onboard the skills of being able to have, we call it bringing, it's a principle that we hold about bringing the real conversation in the room. Can you bring the conversation online versus offline? So the other flag that you might have for when your conversations are going offline is, if you feel, I often think about if I leave a conversation with you and I, for example, if I left this conversation and I went off and I felt the need, or I was compelled to one of vent or complain about it to someone else, that's my kind hazard flag. But, there was something that I was holding back from in this conversation that I didn't say, and that's my signal to actually circle back around. And so maybe, maybe I need to check in with myself, maybe there's something that I left unsaid. Ula Ojiaku That's so insightful. I've been making notes, but the question I have, one of the key ones I have right now is based on what you've said, you know, if one is to go out from a conversation and realise, oh, there's something I'm needing to vent, which I didn't say, you know, in front of the people or the person involved, as a facilitator or coach for that team, how can you help them to, because there could be several factors. It could be that they don't feel safe, they feel that they might be punished for actually saying what they have in mind. So what would be the process for addressing it, such that people can actually say what they actually feel without feeling that they would be punished or side-tracked or ostracised for it? Marsha Acker Yeah. I think there's two things that will be happening, and so when we are working with leadership teams, we're often helping them onboard these skills collectively. And that does take a process, right? So I think there's a piece around helping them build a container. So when I say container, I mean we're talking about the four actions, we're talking about the value of the four actions, we're talking about kind of normalising that oppose can feel really scary or difficult, but that'll very much be based on the individual. So we're working at both that whole team or system level, but also at the individual level, because for me, you know, in my own behavioural profile, oppose can be low, and there are really good reasons for that. Like I grew up in a household where it was rude to oppose an adult, so I've got that, you k

Bio Marsha is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, a respected and sought-after leadership   development firm that equips leaders, at all levels, to facilitate and lead sustainable behavioural change.  She partners with leaders and leadership teams to clarify their desired change, develop communicative competence and think together - accessing their collective intelligence to bring about change. TeamCatapult is a partner to mid-size start-ups and global fortune 500 companies across sectors like entertainment, game development, banking, insurance, healthcare, communications, government, information technology, consumer goods, and retail. Clients have included Microsoft, Riot Games, Epic Games, Capital One, Blizzard Entertainment, Starbucks, Liberty Mutual, Fidelity, and Chef. Marsha Acker is an executive & leadership team coach, author, speaker, facilitator, and the host of Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast. Marsha’s unparalleled at helping leaders identify and break through stuck patterns of communication  that  get  in  their  way  of  high  performance.  She is known internationally as a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue and a passionate agilist. She is the author of Build Your Model for Leading Change: A guided workbook to catalyse clarity and confidence in leading yourself and others. Interview Highlights 02:30 Background and beginnings 03:35 Reaching a cap 08:50 Working with difference 10:45 Process-centred focus vs people-centred focus 15:50 Behavioural-led change 17:25 Having effective conversations Social Media LinkedIn: Marsha on LinkedIn Website:  www.teamcatapult.com Twitter: Marsha on Twitter  Books & Resources Making Behavioral Change Happen - Team Catapult Changing Behavior in High Stakes - Team Catapult Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hi everyone. My guest for this episode is Marsha Acker. Marsha is the Founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, and she is a respected and sought after leadership development expert, and her firm works to equip leaders at all levels to facilitate and lead sustainable behavioural change. This episode is the first of a two part series, because there were just a lot of nuggets to get from Marsha and in part one, we talked about Marsha's background and beginning, how she got to a cap and she knew that she needed to break through a certain ceiling to get to more, to achieve her potential. She also talked about process-centred versus people-centred transformation and the differences and where each one might be considered. Of course, there is a bias for, and I am biased as well towards the people-centred focus, but there is a place for process and how you might go about implementing a behavioural led change. Without further ado, Part One of my conversation with Marsha Acker. I hope you find this as insightful as I did. I have with me the very one and only Marsha Acker, who is the founder of TeamCatapult and a coach, facilitator, much, much known in the Agile coaching discipline and beyond. Marsha, it is a big pleasure and an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you. Marsha Acker Thanks a lot. I'm super excited to be here with you today, so thanks for inviting me. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. So, Marsha, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Marsha Acker Yeah, well, I often say my first career was, you know, two degrees in software engineering and I spent some time working with developers, sort of bridging the gap between end users and developers. And so that was my first start, it's actually where I learned about facilitation, was trying to bring whole groups of users together to align on what they wanted in terms of requirements. So it was back before we talked about Agile, it was back before any of those methods and processes had made their way. But that's really where I got my start in facilitation. And then, yes, towards what I call my own retooling around my career, was when I, I actually went to look for professional coaching as a way to up my leadership. I didn't have a desire originally to become a coach. I wanted to do and learn coaching because I wanted to up my leadership, I just, I had reached a point where I was really challenged in my own leadership and so the very short version of that much longer circuitous path was, I found that I did go through coactive coaching. So I started in that space. CTI (Coach Training Institute) had a huge impact on me personally, it's responsible for many life decisions that I made coming out of that program. But that was where I got my certification in professional coaching with individuals, and then I went on to do ORSC from CRR Global, and then I went on to do structural dynamics and that's where I met the work of David Kantor, where I met David Kantor. And we can talk more about that, but that's certainly changed my whole view of how we enter interpersonal relationships, how we have conversations with one another, it gave me a lens for sort of looking at even some of the previous coach training that I did. So yes, I have, I often say I sort of have two backgrounds that I think the tech side helps me just stay connected to a, you know, I have a soft spot in my heart for techies and people who have a lot of technical and scientific knowledge. And then I often say I learned a lot about process improvement and automation and making things effective and efficient, but I think one of the things that I really lacked in the first part of my career was the human skills, like how to work with other human beings. And I would say the second half of my professional career has been, yeah, how to work with others. It's a big thing. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for sharing that, Marsha. Something you said about the second part of your career has been focused on working with humans. Well, I have a technical background in Electronic Engineering, Bachelor's degree, a Master's in Computer Science. And at the beginning of my career, it was more of, okay, what could you do? You know, what's your technical understanding? But as you move on, it's really more about how, you know, work well with people and get people to do the best work together. Would you say that's a general trend that you've also observed apart from your own personal experience? Marsha Acker Yeah. I don't know if it's, sometimes I wonder, you know, it's maybe just the lens that I look through or it's the organisations and the kinds of leaders that I somehow attract into my sphere. But I do find myself working a lot with technical leaders and I think one of the things that happens, technical and scientific tracks, you know, we move forward in our careers, we get rewarded for knowledge, for having the answer, for being able to connect and do things quickly. And I think in that career progression, we get really good at knowing the answer, having the answer, you know, we're working with things that we feel like are discreet, you know, we can own them in some way, but as we move up, and I think many, you know, I've talked to many a developer, engineer who, you know, sometimes reached that cap, and then the next step is to lead people, to lead others, and to, you know, to be the senior architect, to be the senior engineer, the Vice President or the Director. And you know, it's that famous saying, what got us here won't get us to the next level, and so I think there are those moments, I certainly experienced that, that was one of the reasons I went off to coach training was I just, the metaphor I use often is that I was out over my skis. I knew something was, like I was trying to make something happen or I was trying to get things to happen, and my only model for that was because I said, so, like, please do this, because, I think this is the way. And I just, I really, I started to realise, I felt like I was running on a hamster wheel some days, and I'm like, this isn't working and I feel like I'm missing something. So I often do find myself working with leaders or leadership teams who are, it's not that they're underperforming, it's just that they've reached a cap. The place where all that they know and all that they have, have served them really well, up until this point, and then like what's required to go to that next level or to be effective and efficient in a different kind of way. It's sort of when our focus starts to come off of the very discreet task and it becomes more about how do we create an environment, a space, a container for others to be their best, so it's no longer going to be, you know, me making all the decisions or me moving something forward, it's that we need to work together. And boy that we space is tricky. Yeah, we are going to see things differently and there's going to be conflict and there's going to be difference of opinion. And then, you know, ooh, how do I work with that in a way that's, I just, you know, I think one of the biggest questions that I think we help leadership teams look at is how do we work with difference, and actually welcome it rather than try to minimise it, because I think that's the rub where if we don't have skills to work with it, we tend to minimise it or send it out of the room or suppress it. Like we say, you know, we don't have enough time for that, or, gosh, we've got this deadline. So we've become super deadline driven, and I think sometimes at the expense of having a real conversation with one another. Ula Ojiaku Gosh, I have so many questions. I don’t know which one to ask, but I'll just go with the last, based on what you've said, the last few sentences in terms of not having time, you suppress the conflict or the differences or the disagreements, because we're alw

We are thrilled to announce that Season 4 of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast with Ula Ojiaku is almost here!  With a line up of expert guests including Marsha Acker, Bryan Tew, Victor Nwadu, Fabiola Eyholzer, David Bland, Brant Cooper, Luke Hohmann, Myles Ogilvie and many others, each episode is packed with insightful discussions and actionable takeaways on topics touching on leadership, business agility, innovation and much more. Trailer Transcript Marsha Acker: “Whenever I’m engaging with a leadership team or any other team that’s really trying to bring about change, like they’re trying to level up, I just start to help them look at the way they engage in conversation.” Ula Ojiaku: Get ready for Season 4 of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Bryan Tew: “If you’re solving the right problem but you have a terrible solution or a solution that doesn’t really fit the need, then you’re still not winning.” Ula Ojiaku: Join us every episode as we embark on a journey with thought leaders, industry experts, entrepreneurs, and seasoned professionals. Victor Nwadu: “The success of the transformation depends on the leader, the leaders and the person at the top, how committed they are to it.” Ula Ojiaku: Who will be sharing with me strategies, insights and stories that would empower you to lead with agility, drive innovation, and thrive in the digital augmented age. Subscribe now to be the first to know when the first Season 4 episode drops.    

Ula’s Social Media/Websites: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uloakuojiaku/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/uloakuojiaku Website: www.agileinnovationleaders.com   Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Hello wonderful listeners, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if there are any of them, which will be very impressive. But I'm recording this special episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast to one, announce that we've come to the end of Season 3, and two, there is a special milestone that we hit yesterday, which I'd love to share with you and a huge kudos and thank you to all of you out there who helped us reach the incredible milestone of having a hundred, no, 1-0-0 subscribers on our YouTube channel, me doing the Happy Dance. It is a milestone for me. It's hard to believe that it's been about two and a half years since the first episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast was released. From the very first episode we've been on a mission to explore the world of agile innovation, you know, lean, and the practices, the principles, and these disciplines. And in the process, I've had wonderful guests who have brought us inspiring stories and invaluable insights and practical advice around these topics. So right now, today, as I'm sitting here, I am filled with gratitude as we celebrate this incredible achievement. And actually, I'd like to give the tributes and a shout out to my children, Ife and Kiki, they were the ones who suggested that I start a YouTube video, I mean a YouTube channel, so that there could be a video version of the podcast, and this was when they were ages 8 and 10 respectively. So it's never, one big lesson here is that you can always learn from anyone, people younger than you included. And as I mentioned earlier, today marks also the end of an amazing season, Season 3 of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I hope each episode has left you inspired, informed, and empowered, just like they have left me, each and every one of them. It's been a transformative journey and it continues to be so. So before we move on, I just again, want to say a huge thank you to you, my audience, my wonderful guests, past, present, future, and last, but not the least, my wonderful team. Thank you. We wouldn't have made it to this point without you. I'm also thrilled to announce that we have lots of exciting announcements that will be coming up in future, sometime in future. We are also, my team and I, are also planning, working right behind the scenes, working hard on an interesting and inspiring line-up for Season 4. So stay tuned, because big things are coming your way. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on any of our future episodes and announcements, and also share with friends. Let's continue pushing boundaries, embracing change, leading the way, and demonstrating the change that we wish to see. And of course, fostering that culture of innovation and creativity. So, my amazing agile innovation leaders, thank you again for being a part of this great occasion. We've come so far, we’re not where we started, even though we're not where we are meant to be yet, our adventure is just beginning. Until we meet again in Season 4, stay agile, stay innovative, and keep leading the way. I believe in you. Thank you. That’s all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I’d also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

Bio Mahesh Jade is an esteemed agile evangelist and thought leader dedicated to the noble cause of fostering winning teams and products. His expertise lies in coaching teams, companies, and departments to implement Scrum and Agile methodologies, instigating profound improvements and transformative changes in their work processes and value delivery. Beyond coaching, Mahesh frequently conducts enlightening workshops and sessions on various topics including Scrum, agile leadership, facilitation, team dynamics, and experimentation, providing firsthand experiences in the realm of agility. Notably, Mahesh serves as the esteemed organizer of the India Community of 'The Liberators', further showcasing his dedication to fostering a vibrant and thriving agile community. With a multifaceted background encompassing roles as a developer, project manager, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach, Mahesh possesses a comprehensive understanding of both technical and organizational challenges. Leveraging strong visual acuity and an unwaveringly innovative outlook, he continuously discovers ways to infuse agility tailored to the unique shape and structures of teams, products, and practices. Mahesh's outstanding achievements have garnered recognition and widespread acclaim. His work has been featured in renowned platforms such as the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, research papers in the International Journal of Trend in Research and Development, and their YouTube channel, which hosts captivating recordings from a series of their talks at conferences, agile festivals, and workshops. Interview Highlights 04:25 The Agile Manifesto and Choosing 07:35 Research Paper Findings 08:25 Facilitation over “Facipulation” 09:40 Done over Doing 13:35 Now over Then 17:30 Visual Scrum 28:16 A, B, c, d way of managing Self 30:00 A.R.B Formula to Stay Present 33:15 Business Glossary of Agility for Presenting a Change Social Media          LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/iammaheshjade/          Medium https://medium.com/@maheshjade/about          YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/MaheshJade         Medium Article on Visual Scrum Experiment https://medium.com/@maheshjade/visual-scrum-reach-goals-every-iteration-fefb86c1aa35  Books           Mahesh’s paper Title: The Weakest Link: Towards Making An Organisation More Agile Link: http://www.ijtrd.com/ViewFullText.aspx?Id=25113           Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy Eat That Frog!: Get More Of The Important Things Done Today: Amazon.co.uk: Tracy, Brian: 9781444765427: Books           Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fixing-Your-Scrum-Ryan-Ripley/dp/1680506978          Evolvagility by Michael Hamman Evolvagility Explorer Series — MichaelHamman           The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Better-Decisions/dp/1444759566           Movie - 3 Idiots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots  Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hi Mahesh. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Mahesh Jade Thank you Ula, thank you so much. I'm completely excited. Ula Ojiaku I'm excited as well and I'm looking forward to our conversation. So you currently work for PwC, and we understand that everything you say is your own opinion, you're not representing your employer. So we acknowledge that. So on that note, can you share with us your journey so far and how you've gotten to where you are right now? Mahesh Jade Mm-hmm, yeah I follow metaphors pretty much in my life, so today I have really this metaphor in my mind of a story, of a book of short stories where we have got plenty of short stories, and at the end of each story there is some wisdom, some cool things, some good thing to remember. I mean, if I try to summarise my growing up and becoming what I am today, it was a journey of trying to be meaningful, because of the simple reason that when I started off as a software developer, I was doing development, pretty well, but then internally within me, I don't think I enjoyed that completely. Then I thought, okay, I find a lot of passion towards creativity, so let's do UI and UX. I did that, did it pretty well, and again, noticed that, okay, again, this is not something that I completely like that I, where I completely find my character, and then I got introduced to Scrum and Agility, and it was around 2016 end, and I know that there have been no moments after that where I have looked back. It's like I have found my passion, found my energy, found my character. And then there are a couple of small instances into my journey which really map to what we do in Scrum and Agility. So I can share them. So, it's like, I was third day of my career when I was in office, a small office where we used to sit just together, my CEO will be just next to me, and it was just third day in my office and I went into his cabin telling him that, you know, we have a potential to build this feature. It is very much there, but we do not see that on our website, and people just thought, okay, you are just doing crazy, it's your third day in office and you are directly getting into conversation with your leader and suggesting something, which is a change into the product. So I think my career, and my journey have been, on a very similar note, it has been fearless. It has been about making some change happen. It has been about trying out something different, that excites me. So, while I was working into softwares, I'll just connect these dots together. So, at one point of time, because I was not enjoying things completely, I thought, okay, I'll try filmmaking and I will get into the field of creative copywriting. So I tried that at a certain moment, but I could not go further into that. And then there was this moment when I decided that, okay, whatever I do in my career now, whichever field I get into, I'll make sure that I put my creative into my field. And Scrum was that point, I found Scrum to be the perfect ground to apply creativity, to work with people, to really circle around changes and improvements. I really enjoy that and I find it to be the perfect ground to apply creativity at work. Ula Ojiaku That's interesting you saying something like a journey, you want it to be meaningful and you tried different things until you hit on what seemed to be, you know, the thing for you that taps into your creativity, your enthusiasm, your passion. And so you said something before I hit the record button to me, you know, in terms of what, a parallel you've made between the Agile Manifesto and for the listeners, if you're not aware of the Agile Manifesto, it's more of a, you know, a set of values and principles that govern the ways of working that have come to be termed as Agile, which originated in software development. But back to you, Mahesh, you know, something in the power in the Agile Manifesto and the power of choosing. Can you tell us about this? Mahesh Jade Absolutely, Ula. I think I'm really fascinated by this word ‘over’, which is used into Agile Manifesto. As an example, when we say individuals and interactions over processes and tools, I find power into it because, it gives us a choice to make. It is not a directive, a sentence that you do this and you do not do that, because I feel we, as humans, are wired to given choices and act into the zone of freedom. And there we come into our character more, more often  than not. So if we tell a small kid that don't look at the red pen or just don't do something, they are, they're prone to do the same thing again and again. And as we grow up, I think that that innate behaviour stays within us, where if we are told to not do something, we might actually do that, and we may not enjoy that. So this notion of something over the other, like more valuable over less valuable, I feel that to be very powerful. When I wrote my research paper, probably my second research paper on IJTRD, which is the International Journal of Trend in Research and Development, I was reading through materials and then I found everything that was getting discovered, landing into a theme that was around something over the other. So I would like to talk about that as well, the research paper ended into six different themes, about something over the other. And this paper is for leaders to really have the right goals into their minds. And when they are getting into a new ways of working where things are not straightforward, things are complex, and we have to be adaptive. So how do we set up the right goals? Like a highly valuable goal over a less valuable goal. Ula Ojiaku That’s interesting, the power of choosing, you know, what’s more valuable, and it also aligns with, you know, Agile, the heartbeat of Agile, you can't do everything at once, so you prioritise. And as human beings, the way we work is we thrive in environments where we feel like we have a say instead of being compelled to do something. So you are pulling or drawing out that motivation that's already inside people when they feel like they have a choice and they can, you know, have that say in terms of the direction of things. So tell me more about the findings of your paper. Mahesh Jade Yeah. So the first chapter in this paper was about unleashing the voices, and it was because, it is based on the premise that the organisational structures, they have got(ten) upended. When we say upended, I mean to say, the people who used to be vertically downwards in hierarchy somewhere, now they are actually customer facing. So if we take example of a Scrum team, the members of the team, they get a chance to meet the stakeh

Guest Bio : Michael Hamman Michael Hamman is dedicated to the possibility that the workplace be a site for personal, professional and social transformation. Trained in the 1980s in coaching and large group facilitation, Michael went on to train in systems thinking and methods, group dynamics and facilitation, professional and executive coaching, and in human and organization development. He is a decades-long student of the nature of human transformation, in himself, in others, and in organizations.  Over the course of the last 20 years, Michael has brought together these various strands into a unique approach to coaching, consulting, and teaching Agility within large organizational settings. Along the way, he has coached dozens of Fortune 500 companies and teams, and hundreds of leaders and coaches toward greater holistic team and enterprise-level agility.  He is recognized as a highly effective workshop leader, and for his skill in creating deep learning environments which leave participants feeling inspired by the insights and inner shifts they experience. His book, Evolvagility: Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out provides a blueprint for what it means to be an agile leader in today’s complex world, and offers a practical roadmap for getting there. Guest Bio: Lyssa Adkins  Lyssa Adkins is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the Agile community. She is deeply trained and experienced  in human systems coaching and facilitation and she is a frequent keynote speaker. Her content expertise is agile coaching, adult human development, and working with change and complexity. She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which is still a Top 10 book a dozen years after publication. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching to help leaders take up the individual and collective transformation that is theirs to do. Episode Highlights 05:15 Vertical Learning 09:40 Upgrading our Operating System 12:20 Inner versus Outer Agility 16:30 Three Types of Learning 19:20 Disorienting Dilemmas 21:15 Vertical Facilitation 30:00 Heat Experiences 38:45 Building Trust 42:00 Stretch Practices Websites ·         https://www.theverticalfacilitator.com Social media ·         LinkedIn: Michael Hamman ·         Twitter: Michael Hamman  @docHamman ·         LinkedIn: Lyssa Adkins ·         Twitter: Lyssa Adkins @lyssaadkins   Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku) Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. This episode is a special one to me. I am humbled and honoured to be in the virtual presence of giants and pioneers who have shaped the Agile Coaching discipline into what we know it as today. I have with me Lyssa Adkins and Michael Hamman. Not just one, but two, so this is like, I won the lottery today, and I'm so excited to have you both on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast for this episode. Welcome. Now Lyssa, I had the honour of interviewing just you for an earlier episode and for the benefit of the audience, who, you know, some, I mean, for most people, Michael wouldn't be a stranger. They would be well acquainted with him, but for some of my audience who may not be familiar with, you know, your background. Michael, would you mind telling us about yourself? Michael Hamman Hmm, where do I even start? Ula Ojiaku I understand you used to be a music composer, software engineer, or developer, you know, how did that trajectory lead you to here? Michael Hamman Well actually it, you know, for those years when I was a composer and a scholar, I had a dual life. One life was this sort of creative life of the artist and the writer. But the other life was that I actually was working with people, and I got exposed to transformational learning in 1985 when I took a course. In fact, even before then, I got exposed to it because other people had taken this course. It was called the Est training, and so I got trained to lead seminars back in the eighties and the early nineties, and I brought all of that into my work with software teams. And at first I was a technical, you know, advisor. And then I got into like, well, you know, how do we make these teams work better? And that just, you know, one thing led to the next, and you know, I studied human systems and systems thinking and coaching, I was trained in professional coaching. I brought all that into the agile world when I started consulting in 2004, specifically in Corporate Enterprise, Agile Coaching, probably one of the earlier people to be doing that, and, but I was really known for bringing this sort of transformative angle to it, you know, so there was always a, some people thought it was a bit odd, like I was kind of like the weird uncle in the room, but people really liked it because they found something shifting in themselves while they were learning to do this thing called Agile and Scrum and XP and all that kind of stuff. And so it sort of has just grown, you know, my work has really grown from there. And maybe just to add one last piece that I regard my own personal transformation as part of the work that I do with other people and with the organisations, for me, they're inseparable and, to the degree that I myself am evolving and developing, then I can become an authentic conduit for others to do the same. Ula Ojiaku Wow, that's very inspirational. Thank you, Michael, for that great overview. Lyssa, I'd love to hear your crack at it. Lyssa Adkins Yeah. What I want to say about Michael is that you brought in a word Ula, that I want to just reprise here, which is pioneer. So Michael's talked about his trajectory with transformational learning, and he is indeed a pioneer in that and sort of making the implicit explicit, you know, and that's exactly what he was doing with computer music as a composer, and it was at the very early dawn of computers making sounds. That's where Michael Hamman composed his works, right, and so it's the confluence of a couple of different worlds coming together that he was able to bring forth into a new composition. And that's exactly what's happening here now with bringing these different worlds and experiences and lived experiences together in this new composition called Vertical Facilitation. Ula Ojiaku Wow, well, thank you Lyssa. That brings us nicely, segues nicely into, in terms of what you've been working on lately. So you mentioned Vertical Facilitation, but before we get to Vertical Facilitation, so Michael, I was looking at your website earlier on, michaelhamman.com and you said something about vertical learning being a process by which we evolve the psychological and emotional structuring process that determine how we think, understand and emotionally grasp our work. Do you want to expand on that, please? Vertical learning before we get to Vertical Facilitation… Michael Hamman Yeah, I think what I would say about that is that, at any given moment, there are the things that we're doing. So at any given moment, we are in action and we have a sense of where we're going in our action. So we have a sense of maybe a sense of direction, maybe even a goal, we might even have a vision, right? And so there's this, the world of our action. And at the same time, there's that world, there's that which informs our action at any given moment, there's a sort of sense making that's going on that informs our action, that informs what action we'll take. What's the appropriate action? How might we act? And it also determines the competency with which we act. So there's this sense making that's going on. And you could say that it's an individual sense making, a kind of a psychological layer, but it's also something that happens with us collectively. And so it's this realm that's happening, of which we are for the most part, unaware. And so what vertical learning is about, is to bring awareness to that realm, that dimension, which informs our capacity for effective action, and to the degree we become aware of that realm, we become better able at crafting action that is truly effective, that is action, that is truly congruent with what it is that we are committed to, what it is that we intend. Ula Ojiaku What comes out to me is, you know, that vertical learning is about bringing awareness to the realm that informs how we, you know, act when we've made sense of our environment. That's powerful. Lyssa, do you want to add anything to that? Lyssa Adkins Well, I think I'll add the dimension of why this is even important right now. I mean, there's, you know, for a long time sort of just getting more and more skills, more and more competencies sort of, as a collection, as a basket of things we were now capable of doing. For a long time, that was really sufficient for the context that most of us were in. And, you know, you probably know Ula, and maybe everyone listening that we're in this age of acceleration where everything is speeding up, almost every graph looks like a hockey stick. And, you know, and things are not straightforward anymore. In fact, the complexity of the situations that get served up to us, and especially those ones we don't want to have on our plates, you know, that complexity is beyond most of our meaning making right now. So that's what this is about. It's about closing that gap between the complexity of the situations we're in and the complexity of our own meaning making so that we can be more of a match for the confounding, you know, ever-changing, constantly anxiety-producing situations that we find ourselves in, in our whole life, and especially in business these days. So there's a really important thing pulling us forward to help to, and wan

Bio Jeff helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Lean UX (now in it’s 3rd edition) and the Harvard Business Review Press book Sense & Respond. Starting off as a software designer, Jeff now works as a coach, consultant and keynote speaker helping companies bridge the gaps between business agility, digital transformation, product management and human-centred design. His most recent book, Forever Employable, was published in June 2020. Social Media ·         LinkedIn ·         Jeff Gothelf - coaching, consulting, training & keynotes ·         OKR-book.com ·         Twitter ·         Instagram ·         Jeff Gothelf - YouTube    Interview Highlights 04:50 Early career 16:00 Thought leadership 19:10 Outsource the work you hate, it shows 23:00 Defining a product 24:35 Product Managers as navigators of uncertainty 28:15 Succeeding as a Product Manager 37:25 Strategy, vision and mission 42:00 OKRs 48:00 Leading and lagging indicators 54:10 Do less, more often    Books and resources ·         Forever Employable - how to stop looking for work - Jeff Gothelf      ·         Best product management books - Lean UX, Sense & Respond... (jeffgothelf.com) ·         Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking: What You Really Need to Know to Build High-Performing Digital Product Teams: Gothelf, Jeff ·         Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously: Gothelf, Jeff, Seiden, Josh ·         The role of a Product Manager: Product Managers are Navigators of Uncertainty https://jeffgothelf.com/blog/product-managers-navigate-uncertainty/ ·         Information Architecture, Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Jorge Arango ·         The Lean Startup | The Movement That Is Transforming How New Products Are Built And Launched ·         Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, Tony Fadell ·         The Creative Act: A Way of Being: Rubin, Rick Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. So I have with me the legend, Jeff Gothelf, who is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, highly sought after keynote speaker I must add, coach and much more. So Jeff, really honoured to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast, thank you. Jeff Gothelf It's my pleasure, Ula, thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Ula Ojiaku Oh, good. Well, I usually start with a question for my guests to find out more about themselves as individuals. And during our pre-recording session, you mentioned something that was intriguing to me, that you actually played piano and you were part of a touring musical band, could you tell us about that? Jeff Gothelf Absolutely. I've played piano my whole life, my dad plays piano, there was always a piano in the house, and I had pretty big rockstar dreams as I was a kid growing up. It's really all I wanted to do. I can remember in high school everybody's like, what are you going to go to college for? I was like, I'm going to be a rockstar, figure that out. And, you know, I played in bands in high school, I played in bands in college, and towards the end of college I started playing in a couple of relatively serious bands, serious in the sense that they were decent bands, in my opinion. They were touring bands and they, you know, they made enough money to sustain themselves. They weren't jobs, they didn't sustain us as individuals, but they sustained the band system. And it's fascinating because, you know, at the time I was 19 and 20, I did this really until just about the time I met my wife, which, I was 25. And so I did it until about, I was about 25, and, you know, in hindsight you don't see it when you're in it, especially if you've never really done anything else. I'd always had jobs, but the jobs were always, you know, I delivered newspapers and I made sandwiches and I was a, you know, worked for a moving company, whatever, right? But in hindsight now it's clear to me that I was being entrepreneurial. In those days, the bands, each of them, especially the touring bands, were startups, you know, it's a bunch of folks getting together with a crazy idea, thinking that everyone in the world will love it, it's going to change the world, and doing everything they can and putting everything into helping folks realise that, and building that vision and, and executing on it. And, you know, scraping by and hacking things together and hustling and doing what you can to build a successful, in this case it was a musical group, but it was essentially a startup. And these days, not only do I look back fondly on those days and all those, all those guys that I played music with are my best friends to this day, we still talk almost every day, but I learned so many skills about being entrepreneurial, about experimenting, about learning, about failure, about iteration, about, you know, what's good, what's good enough, when do you call it quits, that's a really tough thing to do, you know, letting something go that you love is really difficult. And I know now, you know, 20 years later, that so much of that experience figures into my day-to-day work today. You know, even to this day, like if I get a new speech to give, if I get, a new client or a new, you know, assignment, I call them gigs. You know, I got a new speaking gig, I got a new consulting gig, I got a new coaching gig, that type of thing. It's impossible to remove that. And it's, it's amazing to me really, because at the time, you know, I could not have told you what I just said to you and, but in hindsight it's super clear to me what I was doing and what I was learning because I've put it to use over and over and over again in my life. Ula Ojiaku That's fascinating. It reminds me of what one of my mentors said to me, and he said, whenever you are given an opportunity to learn versus, you know, get more money doing what you already know, always choose to learn because there's no wasted knowledge. So it's more of tying it back to your days that, you know, as a musician, as a part of a touring band, you were learning and you're now using those transferrable skills, right? Jeff Gothelf Yes. Ula Ojiaku And would you, well, I don't play any instruments, but I used to be part of, you know, different choirs and my daughter also now does that, you know, kind of sings. But there are times when, you know, things would go wrong and you're finding yourself having to improvise so that the audience wouldn't know, okay, this isn't part of the script. Would you say that has also played a part in your experience as a band member did such? Jeff Gothelf I mean, the thing that comes immediately to mind is just comfort on a stage, right? Comfort in front of people and being able, you know, being comfortable in front of a room and performing to some extent or another. I think that that's, that came from that, the ability to, you know, hide or improvise, mistakes that happened. You know, I remember I was, we did this as a band all the time, and nobody ever knew really, unless they knew a particular song of ours very, very well. And you know, some things like that happen all the time when you're, giving a speech or teaching a class or whatever it is. I mean, I remember giving a speech in Budapest one time at Craft Conference in front of 2000 people, and the screen kept going out, my slides are up there in front of, and they kept flickering and, and going out. And it was just a question of, you know, what do you do? Do you just sort of collapse and be like, well, the slides are gone, I can't do anything, or do you keep going? And I think a lot of that drive and that ability to land on my feet in those situations came from being in that band and putting on so many shows. Ula Ojiaku And I'll say it helps that you knew your content as well, because if you had just read it 10 minutes before and you got on the stage, then it would be a different thing. Jeff Gothelf It would not have gone well. Ula Ojiaku Yes. Okay, now I understand you have a BA in Mass Communication and you also went on to do a Masters in Human Factors in Information Design, and in your previous life you used to be a software designer. Jeff Gothelf Correct. Ula Ojiaku How did the winding road go from band member, you know, through the academics, to Jeff we know today, I mean from software designer to now. Jeff Gothelf Yeah, it's interesting, it's a great question. The, look, the rockstar thing didn't work out, you know, there's a thousand reasons, but I think the bottom line is we just weren't good enough, that's, that's probably where it netted out, but… Ula Ojiaku  And you were getting married, you said you met your wife. Jeff Gothelf I was getting married, yeah. You know, and having no money doesn't, those two things don't really play well together, you know, and so the band thing was ending and, you know, the web was starting, so we're looking at the late nineties at this point, just to kind of date myself a little bit, we're looking at the late nineties and in the late nineties as the band was, the last band that I was in, was winding down, the internet was coming up and I'd always been prone, you know, to computers and a little bit of computer programming, just very basic stuff, you know, and I started building websites, basic, you know, brochure websites for my band and for other bands, and I taught myself HTML to be able to do that. And then as the band was winding down, web 1.0 was happening and, you know, back in 1999, if you could spell HTML, you could get a job, you know, and I could do a little bit more t

Bio  A technology lawyer of some 40 years’ experience, Richard has seen the IT industry from all sides - as an in-house lawyer with two substantial UK based systems houses, a lawyer in City of London practice and now as the head of his own practice offering legal services to IT companies large and small as well as acting as mediator and arbitrator in IT disputes.  Over the course of his career, Richard has been involved in some of the largest IT litigation and transactions and now gets involved in particular with Cloud contracting. When Richard set up his own private practice, the Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession described him as a “leader in his field” and as “good news on the most complex of matters”. Richard is a well known IT lawyer, having served two years as Chair of the Society for Computers & Law and is currently serving as Chair of the Legal Affairs Group at techUK. He has been a regular speaker at conferences both in the UK and internationally and has been providing training for over ten years: his annual lecture on Contract Law Developments attracts hundreds of attendees every year. More recently, he has ventured into writing with the publication of “Stephens on Contractual Indemnities” published by Law Brief Publishing.     Social media/ website(s): ·         LinkedIn: Richard Stephens on LinkedIn  ·         Richard’s Website:  https://www.the-lors.co.uk   Books/References ·         ‘Stephens on Contractual Indemnities’ by Richard Stephens – Law Brief Publishing   Interview Highlights 07:20 Don’t leave any slippery bananas 09:15 Kicking the can down the street 15:20 Peppercorn rent 16:55 Blue v Ashley case 21:31 DSDM 22:40 Agile contracts 32:20 Atos Origin v De Beers 37:15 Hogjaard v EON    Episode Transcript  Ula Ojiaku Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. So, Richard, thank you so much for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders’ podcast.    Richard Stephens Pleasure to be here.     Ula Ojiaku Fantastic. Now, as I start with all my guests, we want to know who Richard Stephens is. So, can you tell us about yourself?    Richard Stephens Well, it depends what you want to know Ula. I'm a solicitor, and it's not terribly exciting as professions go. So, I spend a lot of time reading long documents, commenting on them, marking them up, doing contracts. It’s probably everyone's worst nightmare when it comes to a profession really, I suppose, I don't know.    Ula Ojiaku Well, I like the way you've just summarised your profession as reading long documents and making comments. I'm wondering if you ever had long debates over phrases and words in a document?    Richard Stephens Yes, that's what the job consists of. And when you get into negotiating big contracts, and over my career, I've done, I’ve been involved in huge global outsourcing of huge cloud contracts, huge this, huge that, huge development implementation contracts. The job consists of arguing about words and trying to get it right for your client to be honest, you don't want to leave any slippery bananas in there which are going to trip them up later on.    Ula Ojiaku So that phrase slippery bananas, we'll get back to it. But in the meantime, how did you end up in a career in law, because you said, the way you've described it, you said it's not the most exciting thing. So, there must have been something that still drew you to this, “non-exciting path”?    Richard Stephens Well, I don't know, really, you just, I don't know, why do you do anything when you're young, and you decide to become, you know, typically, young little boys will say, well, I want to be a train driver or whatever. And you just, as you grow up, you just become gravitated to do something, and there are a lot of us in our school who said they wanted to be lawyers, others said they wanted to be consultants or some wanted to be accountants, but you have to understand that I worked in a time when IT didn't really exist. So, I don't think there was anybody who wanted to go into technology, for example, because I was, you know, at school in the 70s. So that was very much an arcane shut away job where people would wear white coats and go into air conditioned, filtered air rooms to feed mainframe monsters. But of course, that sort of thing, we knew nothing about. I don't know, I don't know why I went into being a lawyer. I mean, I could have run away to the circus, I suppose, but I lacked the courage to do it, I suppose - too boring and unadventurous is typical lawyer you see.    Ula Ojiaku Okay, okay. Well, that's an interesting, will I say, narrative of your career to date. So, do you have any thing you would have done differently, knowing what you now know?    Richard Stephens I think I would have run away to the circus, Ula.    Ula Ojiaku Okay, well, that's an interesting response, Richard. Well, thanks for sharing your career story to date. And so, for someone who is, for example, listening, and that's considering a career in law that you know, no matter what stage in life they're at, what would be your advice?    Richard Stephens Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Robinson, I think is probably what I would say. You know, they're all different types of lawyers. And you can go through lawyers who do criminal work, for example, and I think some lawyers get a good deal of pleasure out of doing that sort of thing. I don't think the criminal lawyers make a huge amount of money out of it. Or a lot of people do very harrowing areas of law like family domestic law and they’re dealing with battered people of, frankly, these days, both sexes and horrible emotional scars and, you know, battles over, but I, you know, I went to, did some of my CPD and I went to a talk given by a probate mediator. Now you think that probate was a nice sedate area of the law, but that's the most, he said, is the most vicious, dispute ridden thing, because he said all families will have secrets and they will harbour them. And he said, what will happen is that, you know, Aunt Maud dies, and she has some valuable art collection or something like that, and then all these little, all these little disputes and resentments that you had against your elder brother for 30 years suddenly all bubble to the surface. And he said, it all comes out as a horrible, vicious fight. People are going into Aunt Maud’s house and stealing her property while she's dead. And they're arguing over who gets the fine china and who gets this and who gets that. He said, one of the horrible things is that you, know, when he does the settlement between the brothers or whoever it may be, and one of the clauses he's very often asked to put in is that such and such brother, should not ever again seek to contact him by phone, email, writing, or anything. So, you get that sort of thing as well. So, but you know why it is I would become a commercial lawyer, I say it's not that boring and actually, when you get in a deal, you get the excitement of trying to work the deal together, put it all together, bring it all together for the day of signature, I say there is a pressure, a dynamic, and every team has its own dynamic, and you're working towards getting something done. A bit like looking at your agile principles as well, I suppose. You know, you're trying to get it done. Although it's not done in incremental delivery, it's all done in one big drop at the end on the day of signature, of course.    Ula Ojiaku Now, that's an interesting story about, you know, different kinds of law, probate and going kindly back to commercial law, which you practice, if I'm correct in the understanding.    Richard Stephens That's right. I mean, I work for myself, when I say I do the big contracts, and I certainly do that, I work for SMEs as well, one of the things I also do is, I work as a mediator and an arbitrator in the IT sector. So, I'm there either helping people resolve disputes, or as an arbitrator, I'm actually resolving disputes, issuing binding awards. But I also provide some coaching in commercial law subjects as well. So, I do a variety of different things that helps keep my sanity.    Ula Ojiaku Now, the phrase slippery bananas because you said, you know, when you were, you know, you when you're drafting contracts, you make sure you're avoiding those slippery bananas. So, what's the perspective? Could you give us a glimpse into what goes on, you know, behind the scenes or in your mind, at the back of your mind when you're, you know, drafting, you're involved in drafting, and reviewing contracts on behalf of a client. What's the perspective you're doing this from?   Richard Stephens The first line is, and the first principle I start from is that projects, as has been said before, projects don't go wrong for terms of conditions. And I have a friend in the industry, who says that, and he, like me, works for himself. And he says that when he's doing a big contract or for a major client, he's up against a really big city of London law firm. He's there, he'll be negotiating the front end, as we call it, the terms and conditions, the legal bit, that goes at the front, the core of the contract, he'll spend days talking about liabilities and warranties and indemnities. He says, I'm talking with a partner of the law firm on that, he said, but when it comes to talking about the scope, the SLA, the charging schedule, all these things, he said, I end up negotiating with the trainee. He said, well, why does a contract go wrong? It won't be for anything to do with the indemnities or the liabilities or the warranties. They're there for after it has gone wrong. Why does it go wrong? It goes wrong for the things that are in the schedule, the op

Bio As CEO of Agile Velocity, David Hawks guides leaders through their agile transformation with a focus on achieving business results. David is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer who is passionate about helping organisations achieve true agility, not just implementing Agile practices. He helps create transformation strategies and manages organisational change through leadership coaching and was the creator of Path to Agility®.  Interview Highlights  03:58 Stumbling into agile 05:25 Agile Velocity 09:00 Path to Agility 14:30 Applying a different lens to each context 20:25 Philosophy around assessment 27:20 How to lead transformation  Websites: ·         https://pathtoagility.com/ ·         https://agilevelocity.com/ ·         Agile Transformation Management Tool | Path to Agility Navigator  Books: ·         Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Language-Hidden-Power-What/dp/B083FXXNSP/ ·         Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers/dp/B09BNR6L51  Social media: ·         LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhawks1/ ·         Twitter: @austinagile Episode Transcript Intro (Ula Ojiaku): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Thank you, David, for making the time for this conversation. David Hawks Thank you for having me. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. So let's learn a bit more about you, David. Can you tell us about yourself? David Hawks Let's see. So, I founded a company called Agile Velocity about 12 years ago. I live in Austin, Texas, and have two kids that are in college, trying to figure out how to get through ‘COVID college’, which is quite the crazy time to, you know, one of them started college in COVID times, and so that's definitely a whole different experience. And, let's see, so I'm an avid Longhorn fan. So, Longhorns or the university here, we don't have any professional sports teams in Austin. So, that was my alma mater, and so I am known for long football tailgates and being at all the sporting events. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. Did you play any football yourself? David Hawks I did not play football, but I was, the surprising thing for me is that I was a, not in college, but an all year round swimmer for about eight years of my life. So, strong swimming background, started doing triathlons about five years ago. So I hadn't swam, I mean, I swam in like, the ocean, but like, I hadn't swam in any competitive way for like 20 years. And then I picked that back up and started doing triathlons a number of years ago. So, I put that on the shelf, but I'm starting, the itch is coming back. So I'm starting down that path again. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. So, could you tell us a bit about your background, you know, growing up, did you have any experiences that you would kind of see the inflection points that maybe guided you on the path that you're on today? David Hawks Yeah. I mean the one that comes to mind. So, my dad started his own consulting company when I was in middle school, and so I always had this vision of being an entrepreneur, starting a company. Now, when I was, you know, middle or like college and after college, I always thought it was going to be like, start some custom software. I can, I got a technical degree. So I thought I was going to be like a custom software development company or something. And then the dot com bust happened. And it was like, oh, that, and then I started having kids and it didn't seem like the risk to take at the time of going and doing that, so it took a little longer to get going, but what is interesting as I ended up starting my business when my son was in middle school, so it’s like, he's kind of got a little bit of the same type of like, hey, I've, you know, experienced, this entrepreneur kind of building a business. And, but that was always my bucket list. That was always the, like, that's, what I want to do is go build a business.  I stumbled into agile in around 2003 at a company where it was, you know, we were doing agile things and, you know, there weren't a ton of books at the time, right? Like, it wasn't until I think Mike Cohn's Agile Estimating and Planning book came out that I was like, oh, now I see how we can run our, you know, our projects, our work and plan and forecast and do all those things, and so I had the luxury of, I worked for a company around 2003 to 2005, where we started some things, but then the company I went to next, I was able to hire much of the team from the previous company. We continued our agile journey together, and then some of those same folks were the first employees of Agile Velocity in around 2011, 2012 timeframe. So, we all kind of had this agile journey over 10 years and then kind of ended up building this business to help organisations that are trying to adopt agile practices and agile ways of working. And so, yeah, those were kind of two pivotal things that like shaped ultimately building this organisation that's now, you know, helping companies across the world with their agile transformations. Ula Ojiaku That's very impressive, David. So what made you know, this is the right time to start my David Hawks To start Agile Velocity? I would say I kind of stumbled into it, right? Like it was, so I ended at the one company, I picked up what was supposed to be just this short term contract, a company that had just been bought by, that was like, it was called Wayport, that was bought by AT&T, but they were doing like all the wifi for Starbucks, for Hilton at that time. And they were trying to scale, and they were like, we're agile, but we just need help scaling. And so I just kind of went in as a consultant to help them with that, it's supposed to be like a three to six months engagement. Well, I got in there and I was like, y'all are not as agile as y'all think y'all are, right. And so I ended up, I remember putting together this, like, one page spreadsheet that was like, here's what I observe, here's what you could be doing better, here's what the impact of that would be. And they said, okay, go help us do that. So I didn't even know, like agile coaching was a career, and all of a sudden I kinda stumbled into like coaching them, right, and helping them and guiding them. You know, I had been a, like director, executive over software development groups up until that point, but always was kind of focused on the process and the way we work and how we collaborate and how the teams are structured and all, that was always what was my focus less, about like, the technical architecture and other things like, other people were better at that than me, but like, thinking about the flow and all that before I understood lean, before I understood any of that, right, like that was just kind of innate and what I would always look at. So then all of a sudden where I'm coaching them. And I always thought like, after that three to six month engagement, I’d just go back and get another kind of leadership role in one of the Austin companies and, but about six months in, I was like, this is kind of fun and I'm not half bad at it. You know, maybe I could build a business around this, right. And, and so that's when Agile Velocity was formed in 2010, about six months into that, where I go, okay, and then created the company and started doing, getting more active in the local kind of user group, which Agile Austin is pretty active, they've got over 10 meetings a month just happening within that umbrella. So I started getting involved in that, started kind of building a brand around helping folks in agile space. And then by the end of, well, I guess it was kind of into that next year that I started picking up other clients and then added a first employee and then like, oh, okay, like, now we're off, right, and it wasn't just that, you know, we got past that first engagement and then, okay, now there's a business here and more people are interested in, and really the beginning of 2012 is when we started getting, oh, we got this client and this client, and this client and this client now I'm stretched everywhere and now I need to start adding people. So, yeah. Ula Ojiaku That's really awesome. So let's move on to, because I noticed on your website and actually it was via your Agile Velocity website that I learned about Path to Agility, also known as P to A. So can you tell us what P to A is? David Hawks Yeah, so Path to Agility is something that emerged over, kind of our years of guiding transformation changes within big enterprise organisations. And it started out in kind of two forms. One was, we started in, for those that are on video, if you're not on video, you can go to pathtoagility.com It's like, we started to build out this kind of model, and the model was in response to a couple of things.  One is every time the sales hotline would ring, it would be a leader saying, I need to do agile, can you come train my teams? Right. And we would be like, all right, we can do that, but it's not just a team level problem. Right? Like it has more levels to it. So we are trying to, how do we articulate that? And two, it's more than just a training thing, right? You're going to need more than training. You're going to need coaching and support and rollout. And you need to think about this as an organisational change. So we started to build out this model called Path to Agility. At the same time, we had a coach who took the Scrum guide and reverse engineered it into a set of stories that were like, you know, we're cards on a wall that we're like, all right, I'm here to coach you on getting a product owner in place. In

Bio Bjarte Bogsnes has a long international career, both in Finance and HR. He is a pioneer in the Beyond Budgeting movement and has been heading up the implementation of Beyond Budgeting at Equinor (formerly Statoil), Scandinavia’s largest company. He led a similar initiative in Borealis in the mid-nineties, one of the companies that inspired the Beyond Budgeting model. He has helped numerous other companies globally getting started on a Beyond Budgeting journey.  Bjarte is Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT).  He is a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach, and a winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation award. Bjarte is the author of "Implementing Beyond Budgeting - Unlocking the Performance Potential", where he writes about his almost thirty years long Beyond Budgeting journey.  His new book “This is Beyond Budgeting – A Guide to more Adaptive and Human Organizations” with a foreword by Gary Hamel is just out. Bjarte is available for speaking engagements and select consulting work through Bogsnes Advisory.  Episode Highlights  04:33 New book ‘This is Beyond Budgeting’ 07:40 Beyond Budgeting 16:25The issue with the current performance appraisal process 19:45 The case for change 31:00 Becoming braver 33:50 ‘Losing’ control 49:10 Reflect on the risk picture  Books ·         This is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations by Bjarte Bogsnes This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations: Amazon.co.uk: Bogsnes, Bjarte: 9781394171248: Books ·         Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential by Bjarte Bogsnes Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential: Amazon.co.uk: Bogsnes, Bjarte: 9781119152477: Books ·         Maverick by Ricardo Semler https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0712678867 ·         Humanocracy by Gary Hamel et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/B08F2TCKWN ·         The Future of Management by Gary Hamel and Bill Breen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Management-Gary-Hamel/dp/1422102505  Websites ·         Beyond Budgeting Institute https://bbrt.org ·         Bogsnes Advisory (Bjarte’s consulting firm) https://bogsnesadvisory.com  Social media ·         LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/ ·         Twitter:  @bbogsnes  Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku) Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hello, Bjarte. Thank you for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast, it's a great honour. I remember meeting you for the first time last year in Copenhagen at the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, and you kindly accepted. So thank you for being here today. Bjarte Bogsnes Thank you for the invitation. Ula Ojiaku Great. So could you tell us any experience that you might have had growing up, that would have led to where you are today? Bjarte Bogsnes Well, the author Douglas Adams, he once wrote that: “I might not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I needed to be”, and that's basically the story of my life because it was in no way given that we should sit here today and talk about Beyond Budgeting, because my career started in a very different place. I'm a finance guy by education and after I finished my business studies, I joined a company called Statoil, it's today called Equinor, it's Scandinavia's largest company, it's an energy company, and my first management job in this company, the year after I joined, was actually Head of the Corporate Budget Department. So I have been heading up more budget processes in my career than I want to be reminded about in that job and in many other Finance Manager jobs in different, you know, jobs. I've been working abroad quite a lot for the same company. So I used to be a big fan of this way of managing, there is actually an interview with me from the company magazine at the time where I'm praising the brilliance of budgeting, and I hope that there are no more copies around. And another reason I like that quote from Adams is that I come from a teacher family. My parents were teachers, my sister was a teacher, so I was in the way, the black sheep in the family because I went for Business Studies. But these days I really feel that I'm back in the fold, because I feel that that is what I'm doing now, teaching, and trying to make a positive difference, just like my parents and my sister did. Ula Ojiaku So teaching, it seems like it's a full circle, but you wouldn't have gotten here without, you know, still going through that process of working in business. Bjarte Bogsnes No, I think I'm very glad I have that background because it means that I know what I'm talking about. I know most of the fix in the budget book and some of them are quite nasty, and so when I would discuss with managers, finance people and others then, I mean, I know the arguments, and I know how to respond. Another important part of this journey was that I am one of the few finance persons, I believe, who has also worked in Human Resources. I was heading up the HR function in a large European company for some years, and that experience was also a big eyeopener for me when it comes to the leadership, the people side of Beyond Budgeting, which is just as big as the kind of finance process side. Ula Ojiaku Nice. Now, I mean, we will be getting to talk about your book, which is This Is Beyond Budgeting, that was released this February, 2023. Congratulations! <Ula holds up a copy of the book in view of the camera> Bjarte Bogsnes Thank you. Ula Ojiaku What I noticed was that the difference between This is Budgeting, I mean your, your second book and, Implementing Beyond Budgeting, which preceded this, this is actually a quicker read, you know, smaller, it seems like it was condensed and it was done on purpose. Could you tell us about this book, the main message? Bjarte Bogsnes Yes. Now, first of all, I mean, that is a correct observation. This is a shorter book, on purpose, and the simple reason is that we need to reach people, busy people, with limited time to read, and they don't have time to read bricks. So, yes, it is a shorter book, it is recapping some key messages from my earlier books, but there's also a lot of new stuff in it. I have learned a lot since the other book you've shown was published back in 2016. I've written a lot, I've worked with a lot of great organisations. So, again, a lot of new learning also. And I really do hope to reach, I did reach a number of executives, managers with my previous book, and I know, because of nice feedback from many of them. But there are so many more of them that still needs to hear this message. So that is why it's the shorter one. And I'm also very grateful and happy that Gary Hamel agreed to write the foreword. I mean, he is such an inspiration when it comes to management innovation and has been for such a long time. I mean, hearing Gary speak is simply mind-blowing. I mean, he is dynamite as a speaker and I think he's written a great foreword, and there are also some, quite some nice endorsements from important people in the agile community and kind of borderline agile community, Rita McGrath, Dave Snowden and Julian Birkinshaw, Jos de Blok, the founder of Buurtzorg. So I'm also very happy that these people took the time to read it and write these nice endorsements. Ula Ojiaku Indeed, we will go into some key points in the book for the listeners or viewers, they would have to buy it to go through it, to know what it's all about. But can you tell us, because there might be some people listening to this that don't know, what Beyond Budgeting is all about. Bjarte Bogsnes No, that's obviously an important question and let me start with saying that Beyond Budgeting is a somewhat misleading name, we know. It was, Beyond Budgeting was invented, developed 25 years ago, and back then there was nothing called agility, agile, or business agility, so if that label had been around at the same time, maybe that would've been the name of this. But it is basically about business agility. And, as the subtitle in my book states, it's about creating organisations that are more adaptive and more human, and Beyond Budgeting is very much about changing traditional management. But at the core of traditional management, you find not just the budgeting process, but also the budgeting mindset, built on the assumptions that the world is predictable and plannable and that you can't trust people. These are assumptions that we really challenge in Beyond Budgeting, because it isn't true. So if you want to change traditional management, you need to do something with the elephant in the room, the budgeting process. And that is something that, if you look at Agile, I think Agile has kind of avoided that elephant throughout all these years. It's been regarded as something unavoidable, a lower business, which isn't true, because more and more companies are skipping this way, or managing. And talking about Agile, I'm a big fan of Agile, but what I'm going to say now is not criticising Agile, but I think it would also help to explain what Beyond Budgeting is. I think part of the success of what I call early Agile has to do with its birthplace in software development, and how teams are working. And I think in those early years, I think what executives in big companies, what they observed and heard about Agile was better projects, faster projects, more value, more engaged people, and who can be against that, wonderful, I love it, come on guys, Agile is great. Then for obvious reasons, companies star

Bio When Primo was young he wanted to be a Film Director.  Today he directs his own business – helping individuals and teams be more effective through the power of coaching and Insights Discovery.  With 30 years’ experience in corporates such as IBM, GE, T-Mobile & BP, Primo has made the transition from IT Project & Programme Management to Learning and Development.  He has always used his core values of Empathy, Trust & Honesty to build deep relationships with others and support them in achieving their career potential.  He has a wealth of experience developing others, both as a Line Manager to global teams and in designing and delivering a global Leadership Development Programme. Now he can use this experience to support individuals and teams in their journeys using Coaching and the Insights Discovery tool. LinkedIn - Primo Masella | LinkedIn  Interview Highlights Project work – 04:15 How leadership sets the tone – 08:00 Insights Discovery – 13:26 Recruitments styles – 27:08 What makes a good leader? – 32:15  Books  ·         The Development of Personality by Carl G. Jung https://www.amazon.co.uk/Development-Personality-Collected-Works-C-G/dp/0415071747 ·         The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl G. Jung https://www.amazon.co.uk/Archetypes-Collective-Unconscious/dp/B08RF2RGSM ·         The Psychology of C G Jung The Psychology of C G Jung Rev: 1973 Edition: Amazon.co.uk: Jacobi, Irving G.: 9780300016741: Books ·         The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey https://www.amazon.co.uk/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Anniversary/dp/1471195201/ ·         No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention/dp/0753553651 ·         The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Out-Revolution-Thing-Change-Forever/dp/1781800790  Episode Transcript Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku)  Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me Primo Masella as my guest of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Primo, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. Primo Masella My absolute pleasure, Ula. Lovely to see you again. Ula Ojiaku Great. I've been looking forward to having this conversation. Can you tell us about yourself, Primo? Primo Masella Gosh, there's a question to start with. So I'm the youngest of five siblings. My parents were both Italian, but I was born here in the UK, and grew up in the Midlands, in the UK, in Coventry. And then, for most of my career, I worked in IT actually, so I was an IT Project and Program Manager for a long time. And then I moved over into HR and got really interested in developing talent, and especially developing leadership skills and future leaders. And I guess that's how I've ended up where I am. Ula Ojiaku Okay, so growing up, what would you consider were the significant happenings, the choices that put you on the path you are on right now, career wise? Primo Masella Yeah. So I liked things at school, but I also really liked both arts and sciences. So I kind of always felt like I was that person who could bridge that gap between two things. So, you know, I loved English at school and at the same time I loved physics, which I think is kind of unusual. People tend to go one way or the other, don't they? And so then when I did a degree, it was an Applied Sciences degree where I could choose lots of different modules of things, and so it was at that point that I kind of got into IT really, because I chose quite a lot of IT elements and I guess early on in my career, again, I was using that skillset of bridging the gap between technology and business. And so I've never done coding for a living, but I've been the guy that could speak to the coders and then translate that for non-coders to understand. Somehow I kind of fell into that quite early on. My first real job, actually, when I moved down to London, I was in quality assurance. So my first ever job was testing software and also proofreading user guides for software, so that was always quite interesting. Ula Ojiaku So what do you do for leisure? What are your interests? Primo Masella So I'm a huge movie fan, so I've been passionate about movies my whole life. If I hadn't ended up where I am today, I would've loved to have been Steven Spielberg. I just, being a director would've been amazing. So I still love movies, anything to do with cinema and film, and in the last few years I've become quite a keen road cyclist as well. So I got myself a bike, which worked out brilliantly during the pandemic because at the time when we were still allowed to go out and exercise once a day during the lockdowns, that was just perfect. That gave me my escape for the day, and it also acts as my kind of way of just getting out and being mindful. So rather than purposely practice mindfulness, I tend to just go out on the bike. So yeah, that's kind of the key thing you'll find me doing when I'm not doing this. Ula Ojiaku Okay. So what do you do now? Primo Masella So I wonder if before I come onto that, I just give you a couple of key things which led me to do what I'm doing now I think. So back in the day when I was in IT and an IT Project and Program Manager, the thing that I really loved about project work was the variety and the fact that we got to work with different stakeholders all the time. And I think in my experience, there are broadly two types of Project Manager – there’s the kind who's really good at managing a schedule and keeping on top of a plan and a risk log and an issue log and really executing a plan - that wasn't me. I'm the other type that's really good at working with stakeholders, defining the scope, making sure that the business case is sound and what the customer wants. And so the piece that I really enjoyed about projects was starting them to be honest, and once the project was underway, I lost interest pretty quickly. And so the first kind of real inflection point for me was when I stopped delivering IT projects and instead, I looked after the pool of Project Managers, I became the resourcing and Line Manager for a group of project professionals, and that was probably the first time where I specifically had people's development at the heart of my job. And whereas previously I'd had people's development kind of tangentially really, when we worked together, when we first met each other, I was doing little training sessions as a kind of an aside really. It was something I really enjoyed doing, but it wasn't part of my job description. So being responsible for a pool, and I was lucky enough that we worked in a model where we had a bit like a consultancy, we had a pool of Project Managers who were then allocated to different project sets, and they all reported to me from a people perspective. And so I could really focus on, how are they developing those skills? Are we giving them the best projects to help them on whatever career path they all wanted? So, I guess that was kind of the first kind of real thing. There might be three things I haven't counted. So the second thing was, I'd kind of mentally checked out of delivery for quite a while then, so I was looking after resourcing, I was focusing on capability development and how do we develop IT professionals? And then I had the opportunity to step back into delivery, to deliver a really large transformation program, and that was a serious inflection point, because I consciously made a decision where I thought I could add value because I think I can bring some people skills, which were lacking at that time in that particular program. And so I stepped in, and that true, that turned out to be a massively significant part of my career. So without going into lots of details and we don't need to name anybody at all, it was a very challenging piece of work and there were lots of things going on, and I was tested to my absolute limits as a Program Leader, as a person, to be honest, it was probably the most stressful part of my entire career. And I went on this kind of emotional rollercoaster and I left that program on my own terms, having taken away one of the key things that I still hold to this day, and that is that leadership sets the tone. So depending on how the leaders shows up, that cascades to everybody else in that program, in that organisation, it reflects in the culture of the group of people that are working together. And I felt like I learned that the hard way. It was a huge lesson for me, you know, to the point where I was considering leaving the industry. I was, in my mind, at the point where I was going to make some really fundamental decisions about what I wanted to do next. So I say that because that, I don't, as I look back, I'm massively grateful for that experience because I think many of us would agree that it's when we're challenged, that we truly learn about ourselves. We learn about what we want and we learn about what we're going to do next. And so that led me then, that helped facilitate a move out of the IT sector and into HR. That was one of the key catalysts of me moving functions. And I'd always been an IT guy, so this was, you know, although, you know, as I said before, not hands on, not a developer, but IT felt like my home, those were the people that I understood and I knew really well. So to move to the dark side of HR, seemed like a really strange thing to do. And I remember being asked at an interview, this seems a bit odd, you know, you are a project guy, why do you want to come and work in HR? And it was absolutely the right thing for me, because I'm all about people, and eve

Bio Dave West is the Product Owner and CEO at Scrum.org. In this capacity, he engages with partners, and the community to drive Scrum.org’s strategy and the overall market position of Scrum. Prior to joining Ken Schwaber and the team at Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company’s executive management team was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100. As one of the foremost industry experts on software development and deployment, West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including the Unified process and Agile methods. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then he served as vice president, research director at Forrester Research, where he worked with leading IT organisations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance Agile-based methodology and tool breakthroughs in the enterprise. Email –  Dave.west@scrum.org Twitter - @davidjwest LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjustinwest   Interview Highlights Growing up with dyslexia 03:10 & 10:20 Water-Scrum-Fall 07:40 Psychological safety 15:40 Lilian the rockstar - 'who have you helped today?' 18:55 Is 'project' a taboo word? 21:53 'Humble and Kind' - not just for country music 44:30 Books ·         Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design by Dave West, Brett McLaughlin and Gary Pollice https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Object-Oriented-Analysis-Design/dp/0596008678/ ·         The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum by Dave West, Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nexus-Framework-Scaling-Scrum-Continuously/dp/0134682661 ·         ARTICLE: Why Kindness Matters by Dave West https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-kindness-matters ·         Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L Friedman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Being-Late-Accelerations/dp/0141985755 ·         Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Pocket-Companion-Practice-Publishing/dp/9087537204 ·         The Professional Scrum Series by various authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+professional+scrum+series&crid=1WVNY1VHR0QAQ&sprefix=professional+scrum+series ·         Zombie Scrum by Christiaan Verijs, Johannes Schartau and Barry Overeem https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Scrum-Survival-Guide-Professional/dp/0136523269 ·         The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader’s Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations (The Professional Scrum Series) by Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema, foreword by Dave West https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Agile-Leader-Growing-Organizations-dp-0137591519/dp/0137591519/ Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. It's my honour to introduce my guest for this episode. He is Dave West. Dave is the CEO of Scrum.org and prior to joining Scrum.org as CEO, he led the development of the Rational Unified Process, also known as RUP with IBM. He was also Chief Product Officer for Tasktop Technologies and Managing Director of the Americas at Ivar Jacobson Consulting. He is a widely published author of several articles and research reports, as well as the books The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. In this conversation, Dave talked about growing up in the council estates, being raised by his grandparents who were of great positive influence in his life, especially his grandmother. He also talked about navigating the challenges of being dyslexic, especially as a student in secondary school with the silver lining being that he got introduced to computers. Dave also gave his perspective on one of the ongoing “agile wars” quote unquote, on the concept of projects and whether they still have a place in agile or not. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dave, I am sure you would find it very, very interesting, relevant and insightful. Thanks again for listening. Ula Ojiaku So we have on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, Dave West, who is the CEO of Scrum.org. Dave, it's a pleasure to have you on this show, thank you for making the time. Dave West Oh, well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad we've finally managed to make the time to do this. It's great to talk to you. Ula Ojiaku Yes, well, the honour is mine. Let’s start by talking about, you know, getting to know about the man, Dave. Can you, you know, tell us a bit about that? Dave West Yeah, I'll try not to bore your audience. So I was brought up on a council estate in a little town called Market Harborough, just outside Leicester. I lived with my grandparents, and which has definitely, my grandmother's definitely shaped who I am, I think, which is fantastic. So I got into computers, sort of a little bit by accident. I'm dyslexic and I found school, particularly secondary school, very challenging. I don't know if any of your audiences had a similar experience, but, you know, I went from a very protected environment and secondary school is a, oh my gosh, it's like an experience that could scare any human being. And so my dyslexia really was a challenge there and there was a teacher at secondary school called Phil Smith. He drove a sports car, he was sort of like that young, you know those teachers that you remember from school that are the good looking young ones. And he ran a computer lab and it had, you know, RS236, it had these really old computers, well, now we would look at them, they were brand new at the time, computers and some BBC model As and some other things. And I helped him and he gave me a lot of time in the lab and it was my sort of like escape. So I got very into computing and helped him and helped other teachers who were rubbish, I’m not going to lie, with computing. So that allowed me then, you know, I went through, managed to survive school, went to a further education college called Charles Keene where I studied, well I did a computing course, so not traditional A’levels and all of that. And then got into Huddersfield that was a poly at the time, became a University whilst I was there. And I think that that gave me a great opportunity, it was a fantastic university, it was a very practical course. My dyslexia became less of an issue because of, you know, word processing and I'd be honest and, you know, the ability for it to read back, even though it was an awful read back, it was like listening to say, you know, to like an old fashioned Stephen Hawking, you know, sort of, and then got me a job at Commercial Union, which then led to me doing a Masters, which then led me to move to London, all this sort of stuff. The adventure was great. The thing about, I guess, my journey is that it, I was driven at a certain point, I became very driven by the need to improve the way in which we delivered software development at that time, and that led me through my Masters and, you know, Object-Oriented and then to a company called Rational Software where I became the Product Manager for RUP, the Rational Unified Process. Now for the agilists listening, they're probably like, oh, boo hiss, and that's totally legit. It was in fact, that's when I first met Ken Schwaber and he told me I was an idiot, which turns out he was right. Ken Schwaber the creator (of Scrum), who I work for now. Anyways. Ula Ojiaku I mean, who wouldn't know Ken Schwaber if you're a self-respecting agilist.  Sorry, go on please. Dave West Yeah, he's an interesting character for sure. Anyway, so I was the RUP Product Manager and I realised I went to this large insurance company in the Midwest and it's a huge organisation and I met this lady and she said, I'm a use case. I said, what do you do? She said, I'm a use case specifier, and meet my friend, she's a use case realiser and I'm like, oh, no, that's not the intent. And so I realised that there was this process that I loved, and I still definitely love elements of it, but was fundamentally flawed in terms of helping actually people to work together to work on complex problems and solve them. So that, you know, and I'd written a book and I'd done some other things on the way to this point, but this point really did make me realise that I was going wrong, which was a little scary because RUP was incredibly popular at that time, and so then that led me to work with Ivar Jacobson, tried to bring in Scrum to the unified process, spent more time with Ken Schwaber who'd finally realised I may still be an idiot, but I was an idiot that was willing to listen to him. Then I ended up at Forrester Research, running the application development practice, I became a research director there, which was super interesting, because I spent a lot of time looking at organisations, and I realised a really fundamental problem that I think probably will resonate with many that are listening to this podcast, that people were doing Scrum yeah, Scrum was incredibly popular and people were doing Scrum, but they were doing it in an industrial context. It was more like Water-Scrum-Fall. And I coined that term in a research document, which got picked up by the, InfoQ and all these magazines, it became this sort

Bio  Evan is the Founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute; an international membership body to both champion and support the next-generation of organisations. Companies that are agile, innovative and dynamic – perfectly designed to thrive in today’s unpredictable markets. His experience while holding senior leadership and board positions in both private industry and government has driven his work in business agility and he regularly speaks on these topics at local and international industry conferences.    Interview Highlights  01:10 Nomadic childhood  08:15 Management isn’t innate  14:54 Confidence, competency and empathy  21:30 The Business Agility Institute  31:20 #noprojects  Social Media/ Websites:           LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanleybourn/          Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eleybourn          Twitter: @eleybourn          Websites: o   Business Agility Institute https://businessagility.institute/  o   The Agile Director (Evan’s personal site): https://theagiledirector.com/          Books/ Articles                   #noprojects: A Culture of Continuous Value by Evan Leybourn and Shane Hastie https://www.amazon.co.uk/noprojects-Culture-Continuous-Value/dp/1387941933          Directing the Agile Organisation: A Lean Approach to Business Management by Evan Leybourn https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directing-Agile-Organisation-approach-management-ebook/dp/B01E8WYTQ6          Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Crisis-Press-Edwards-Deming/dp/0262535947          The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement-ebook/dp/B002LHRM2O          Sooner, Safer, Happier by Jonathan Smart, Jane Steel et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sooner-Safer-Happier-Antipatterns-Patterns/dp/B08N5G1P6D          Dare to Lead by Brene Brown https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dare-Lead-Brave-Conversations-Hearts/dp/1785042149          Article: Evan’s Theory of Agile Constraints https://theagiledirector.com/article/2017/04/27/evans-theory-of-agile-constraints/ Episode Transcript  Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.  Ula Ojiaku  I am honoured to have with me Evan Leybourn, he is the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute, an international membership body that champions and supports the next generation of organisations. I am really, really pleased to have you here. Thank you for making the time Evan.  Evan Leybourn  Thank you Ula, I'm looking forward to this.  Ula Ojiaku  Awesome, now, so I always start with my guests and I'm very curious to know who is Evan and how did you evolve to the Evan we know right now today?  Evan Leybourn  I suppose that's a long one, isn't it? So I'm Australian, I was born in a small country town in the middle of nowhere, called Armadale, it's about midway between Sydney and Brisbane, about 800 kilometers from both, about 200 kilometers inland, and moved to Sydney when I was fairly young. Now I've spent my entire childhood moving house to house, city to city. So  the idea of stability, I suppose, is not something that I ever really had as a child. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I don't, I had as good as childhood as any, but it's, I love moving, I love new experiences and that's definitely one of the, I think drivers for me in, when I talk about agility, this idea that the world changes around you. I think that a lot of that early childhood just, disruption, has actually put me in a pretty good place to understand and deal with the disruption of the world and then so, well, we've got COVID and everything else right now. So obviously there is a big, there are issues right now, and disruption is the name of the game. I started my career as a techie. I was a systems administrator in Solara Systems, then a programmer, and then a business intelligence data warehousing person. So I've done a lot of that sort of tech space. And, but you mentioned like the Business Agility Institute and this is the organisation I work now, but probably have to go back to 2008 when, I've been using agile, capital A agile, Scrum and XP, primarily a little bit of FDD in a data warehousing business intelligence space. And in 2008, I got promoted to be an executive in the Australian Public Service. And this was, I think, my first exposure to like, before that I'd run teams, I'd run projects, I knew how to do stuff. And like being a first level leader or project manager, it's, everything is personal. I don't need process, I don't need all those things that make organisations work or not work as the case may be, because when you've got seven people reporting to you, like that's a personal form of management.  So when I became a director, this was, I think, my first exposure into just how different the world was when, well the world of business was. And, I'll be blunt, I wasn't a good director. I got the job because I knew what to do. I knew how to, like, I could communicate in the interview how to like, build this whole of governments program, and that isn't enough. I had this assumption that because I was good at X, I would be good at being a leader of X and that's not the case. And so I actually, there's a concept called the Peter principle, being promoted to your level of incompetence. And that was me. I, it's, that's literally, I didn't know what I was doing, and of course, no one likes to admit to themselves that they're a fraud. It took my boss at the time to tell me that I was arrogant, because, and, and that actually hurt because, it's like, I don't see myself as arrogant, it's not part of my mental model of myself. And so, that push, that sort of sharp jab at my ego, at my sense of self was enough to go, hang on, well, actually, maybe I need to look at what it means to be a leader, what it means to create that kind of skillset, and I had this idea at the time that this thing that I'd been doing back as a techie called agile, maybe that might help me with, help me solve the problems I was facing as an executive – coordination, collaboration, not amongst seven people, but amongst like five, six different government agencies where we're trying to build this whole of government program and long story short, it worked. And this was sort of my first ‘aha moment’ around what we sort of now would call, or what I would now call business agility, though definitely what I was doing back in 2008 was very, a far cry from what I would think of as good business agility. It was more like agile business, but that's what sort of set me up for the last, almost 15 years of my career and helping and advocating for creating organisations that are customer centric with employee engagement, engaged people, that idea of, we can be better if we have, take these values and these principles that we hold so dear in a technology space and we make that possible, we make that tangible in a business context. So it's a bit rambly, but that's kind of the journey that got me to where I am.  Ula Ojiaku  Not to me at all. I find it fascinating, you know, hearing people's stories and journeys. Now, there's something you said about, you know, you, weren't a good director, you knew how to do the work, but you just didn't know, or you weren't so good at the leadership aspects and then you had a wake up moment when your boss told you, you were coming off as arrogant. Looking back now and knowing what you now know, in hindsight, what do you think where the behaviours you were displaying that whilst it wasn't showing up to you then, but you now know could be misconstrued as arrogance?   Evan Leybourn  So let me take one step. I will answer your question, but I want to take it one step before that, because I've come to learn that this is a systemic problem. So the first thing, I shouldn't have been given that job, right. Now, do I do a good job? Eventually, yes, and I grew into it, and I'm not saying you need to be an expert in the job before you get it. Learning on the job is a big part of it, but we as a society, see that management is innate. It's something that you have, or you don't, and that's completely wrong. You don't look at a nurse or a doctor or an engineer and think, I can do their job. No, you think if I go to university and train, I can do that job. I don't think we look at a janitor and go, I can do their job without training. And a janitor is going to receive on the job, like it might be a couple of days, but they're going to receive on the job training. There was a study by, I think it was CareerBuilder, 58% of managers receive no training. We just have this assumption that I'm looking at my boss, I can do their job better than them. And maybe you can, but better isn't the same as good. Like, if they've reached their levels in competence, yes, you could probably be better, but not good. And so I think the skills of management are, it's an entirely different skillset to what, the thing that you are managing. And so I was good at, I was Director of Business Intelligence, so I was good at business intelligence, data warehousing systems. I didn't have the skills of management, no, running a thirty-five million dollar P&L, coordinating multiple business units, building out those systems and actually designing the systems that enabled effective outcomes. And so I think, I'm going to touch on two things. The first is, people and I, definitely, should have invested in learning how the skills of management before I became a manager. Not so that you're perfect, not so that you're an expert manager before you start, because you will learn more on the job than you ever will, from anything before you, before you do that job. But I didn't, it's the, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't kn

Bio Lyssa Adkins is a coach, facilitator, teacher and inspirer. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching. Making difficult decisions faster and with clear alignment, unknotting challenging multi-department impediments, creating the conditions for smooth organizational delivery, helping leaders take up the “Agile transformation” that is theirs to make…this is where she thrives and helps thrive. Her Agile community focus is amplifying women’s voices, which is why she is a founder of the TENWOMENSTRONG #WomeninAgile programs. She has been pleased to serve the emergence of Agile Coaching as a profession. In 2010, she co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. Since 2011, she has been a member of the ICAgile working committee that defines the learning objectives for Agile Facilitation and Coaching and she assesses candidates for the ICAgile-Expert in Agile Coaching competence-based certification. She has also served the Scrum Alliance as an application reviewer for the Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) designation. She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which, as a top ranking Agile book, was released as an audiobook in its 10th year. She likes to explore facilitating intense conflict, societal change, organizational change, the benefits and costs of being human in the workplace, agile coaching, agile transformation, adult human development, human systems dynamics, the role of nature, and books of all sorts. She tends toward a balance of the provocative and practical. Lyssa holds an alphabet soup of certifications: ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC), Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach Emeritus (CEC-E), International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Organization and Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC) and Certified Integral Facilitator (IF).  She is also a trained Co-Active Coach and Leader. Social media/ website(s): LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssaadkins/ Twitter: @LyssaAdkins Lyssa's Website: https://lyssaadkins.com/ Interview Highlights Timestamp 05:35 How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? 08:00 Coaching leaders – Lyssa’s 5Cs 21:05 Agile Mastery 24:55 Using agile to author a book 30:52 TENWOMENSTRONG 37:50 Expanding leaderfulness Books/Resources Mentioned InspireMe! card deck Lyssa's 5&5 Podcast: Essential Shifts for Leading in Turbulent Times https://lyssaadkins.com/55-with-lyssa-adkins-season-three/ Listen on Spotify Apple or your favourite podcast platform  One-on-One Leadership Coaching & Mentoring TENWOMENSTRONG: Influence & Impact in the Agile World plus other great programs Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello everyone. It’s my absolute honour to introduce my guest for this episode, she is no other than the legendary Lyssa Adkins herself. We met at the Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam and she graciously agreed to be my guest. Lyssa is renowned for her groundbreaking work in defining the Agile coaching discipline and she is known for her book as well, that is titled Coaching Agile Teams. She is also one of the original founders of the Agile Coaching Institute. In this conversation, Lyssa talked about some things that are currently on her mind, and a little bit more about her work that she is currently doing which is focused on coaching the leadership teams in organisations. Without further ado, my conversation with Lyssa. Ula Ojiaku So, Lyssa, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Lyssa Adkins You're welcome. I took a little peek at your previous guests and I'm like, oh wow, there have been some really amazing people on this podcast. So I'm hoping that this goes well for you and me and all the people who listen to it. Ula Ojiaku I have no doubts, Lyssa. It's a known fact that I’m a big Lyssa Adkins fan. So for me, this is like a dream come true. I am speaking, well, virtually, face to face, with someone that I absolutely admire and it was a pleasure meeting you as well at the March Agile Coach Conference back in Amsterdam. So do you want to tell us a bit about yourself so we can know how your journey has brought you this way? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I sure will. I think that the thing to know about me is that the places where I find out that I am not a match for what's going on in my environment is the thing that propels me forward. So I'm thinking about the things I've been learning about recently, and they are things like trauma informed coaching, how to deal with grief and loss and suffering. And this is all because, you know, we're sort of in a time where these things are up and I don't have the skills for it. And so, you know, as you mentioned, those things like, you know, I like to sing and all this work and I've just, I was realising that these are the places where I find in myself that I'm just not capable to meet the complexity of the world around me. And so I try to do something different. One of those things in meeting the complexity of the world around me is that we've just bought a collaboration space property in Portugal. So that's a little bit about what's happening in my life and my home and my work. And my adult daughter is going to go move there with her partner and they're going to be the full-time caretakers of it. So that's a whole new thing that's just opened up for us and will allow us to do some really deep and wonderful work with people. Ula Ojiaku So are you planning to do some sort of retreats there as well? Because you said it's a collaborative working space? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. So people who have programs, and want to bring people to the property, it's a beautiful property, on more than an acre of land and beautiful, mature fruit trees and all of this and lovely property. And so people who want to do deep work with their groups or people who want to come and co-work together, you know, just to be in the same spot, you know, they don't even have to be from the same company necessarily. So that's something that's happening now, more in the world. And we just want to create this as a space for people to really get in touch with the fullness of what's going on in their work, in their life, and ask themselves some really different questions and perhaps even start to generate a completely new way of forward. Ula Ojiaku Interesting, given the world we’re in now with the whole change caused by COVID 19, it means that we can remotely work from almost anywhere in the world. So that is something I think is very relevant to the times we’re in and the opportunity to as well, do the deep work you're talking about. So we will put the links to more details on this in the show notes of this episode, but can we then go, because we are also interested in knowing about you Lyssa, you know, the person who is Lyssa Adkins? Lyssa Adkins Oh, I'm someone who is, on a daily basis, confounded by the world and by the difficulties we're in. I find myself experiencing a significant amount of grief about the things that are falling away in our society, and my outlook on where we're headed is that things are going to continue to fall away. And so a really big question I'm sitting in, I guess, two questions I'm sitting in for myself right now are, one is, you know, who do I want to be as a leader while things are collapsing? And the second question I'm sitting in is, it's so funny, because I just drew this Inspire Me card right before we got here. And I was thinking about this question. This is a card deck that I created with my husband and another agile coach, Deb Preuss, years and years ago. And so for the people who are listening to the audio version, it's a picture of someone driving like into fog and they can't see much, and the question is from Peter Senge and it's this, How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? And I think that's a really big question for me, as a leader in the world, like how can we get off the crazy merry-go-round we have created because we can't expect the same level of performance we did before. We can't expect that things are going to remain certain and stable, actually, I'm pretty sure they're not. So I, you know, who is Lyssa Adkins is someone who sits in these big questions, and for like months and months and months, like a really long time, I sit in these big questions and, according to the strengths binder, my top two strengths are connectedness and futuristic. So that's where my mind tends to move a lot of the time. And what I'm realising as I'm working with leaders is that they hang on to all those things that aren't going well. And that compounds the problem that, that makes it so, now our nervous systems are on high alert, in addition to the thing that's going the way we didn't want it to go. Ula Ojiaku What could be those things that actually lead us down that path of holding on to things when we should be letting go? Lyssa Adkins Well, so there are three broad areas I'm talking to leaders about right now, and I've created them sort of like little bumper stickers so we can remind ourselves of them. And the first is upgrade your complexity of mind. The second is downshift your nervous system. And the third one is expand your team's core capabilities, core competencies. Five Cs for short, because there are five of them. We remember them. So, I mean, so your question is squarely in the bumper sticker of upgrade your complexity of mind, right. So when