Agile Innovation Leaders

Bio    Kerrie, a serial entrepreneur, was introduced to mentoring after her last successful business sale. Realising she had no support or guidance in what she was doing, Kerrie founded the Association of Business Mentors in 2011 to provide mentoring skills and training for those seeking to mentor business owners professionally. Kerrie's vision for the ABM was to provide reassurance to business owners that they are in the safe hands of a trusted and experienced ABM professional business mentor. Kerrie mentors businesses of all shapes and sizes. She also mentors within the workplace, working closely with HR departments to run mentoring programmes to support the growth and development of their employees. Interview Highlights 01:30 Give it a go or you'll never know 03:30 Starting out in mentorship 06:30 The vision or the team? 10:30 Boundaries in business 12:30 The onion exercise 16:30 Mentoring v coaching 21:00 The mentoring door 22:00 Quietening the mind  23:30 Embedding an organisational mentoring culture   Contact Information   ·         ABM website (Association of Business Mentors) ·         Association of Business Mentors on LinkedIn ·         Kerrie Dorman on LinkedIn   Books & Resources   ·         The Mentoring Manual - Julie Starr ·         A Complete Guide to Effective Mentoring (The FT Guides), Dr. Ruth Gotian, Andy Lopata ·         Henley Business School webinars ·         Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice, Matthew Syed ·         The Choice: Embrace the Possible, Edith Eger 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   I am very honoured to have the Founder of the Association of Business Mentors, Kerrie Dorman, as our guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Kerrie, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it for ages. Kerrie Dorman You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. Ula Ojiaku My pleasure. So what's led you to the place where you are today and being the Kerrie Dorman that we've gotten to know and admire? Kerrie Dorman Okay, so actually part of my upbringing was being very much around entrepreneurship. My father was a key project manager on business ideas, primarily in Africa, and my stepfather also ran a very large family business. So I had business sort of around me from quite a young age, and I would talk to both my father and my stepfather about why things would happen and et cetera, et cetera. And so I became a serial entrepreneur from quite a young age. I think what gave me the impetus was the fact that I wasn't afraid to give something a go, and actually my motto now is give it a go or you'll never know, and if it works out, amazing, if not, then you learn and you move on. So my first business was in optics, because what I did do was get a profession behind me first, and that was a qualified dispensing optician. And so my first business was in recruitment for people within the optical industry, and I somehow managed to sell that by the skin of my teeth. And I just felt that it was incredibly satisfying, and a great sense of achievement to have been able to build something, even though it was very small, that was attractive to somebody else to want to pay for it. And so hence my entrepreneurialism streak started. So I started all sorts of businesses in all sorts of industries, I saw niches and just as I said, gave it a go. Some work just failed, and some I managed to sell, so I sort of came out vaguely on top at the end of it all, and then of course, there was the Association of Business Mentors, which is still going, and that came about because when I sold my last business, which was probably the most successful of them all, there was a new government funded mentorship program happening. It was an incubation centre, so there were young and bullish business owners wanting to be in this incubation centre to make sure that they had the best start, and so I was asked to come and share all my experiences, the successes, the failures, what I learnt, and I felt that I had a lot to share with these people, and that was my first stab at being a mentor. However, I didn't really know what I was doing, I'd never had my own mentor before, and I felt that I was getting quite frustrated with these young, inspiring people because they weren't running a business the way I had run a business. And I thought that that's what mentoring was about. There was no guidance on this scheme, and I just felt that it wasn't quite right in terms of what I was supposed to be doing. So I looked around for somewhere to hang my hat, find some other mentors, get some guidance, get some training, get some code of ethics, and the whole standard thing was really important to me. And apart from the EMCC, which is very European-centric and it was very coach-centric as well at the time. The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), which is still going strongly to this day, and we sit with them on the Global Code of Ethics Committee. They just have a lot of kudos and I'm very, very flattered that we work alongside them. So then I just realised that mentoring was about to explode in the UK. It was very big in the States and we really needed somewhere for mentors to go and be supported and guided and also for mentees, so for business owners to go somewhere where they knew that a mentor had the guidance, had the structure, had the ethics and they were in safe hands, and that was 13 years ago. Ula Ojiaku Wow. And look where the Association of Business Mentors has gotten to with, I believe, thousands of members across the country? Kerrie Dorman We are up to, I think, two and a half thousand members at the moment. But you know what, Ula, the thing is, is that it's not just been me, it's absolutely about the team and the other people who have helped get it to where it is today. I definitely cannot take all the credit. I can take the credit for having the idea and the initial oomph to get it going, but it's really been down to all the volunteers in all the different regions, the different members of the board. It is really who you manage to bring on board with you and help you get initiatives to where they are. Ula Ojiaku Thank you for that. I'm a big believer that as long as you're learning, it's not really failure. Kerrie Dorman Yeah, absolutely. So it's only a failure if you don't learn, and so I think my fear of failure meant that I had to learn in order for self preservation, if that makes sense, and although it wasn't always apparent, that's definitely the case. There's a wonderful quote 'I never lose, either I win or I learn'. Ula Ojiaku Now, the vision or the team, which one do you think is more important in setting up a successful enterprise Kerrie Dorman The team. Every single time. And do you know why? It's because visions change. Visions can change according to things outside of your control, landscape, you just have no idea where a journey is going to take you, and I think that it's quite close minded to stick to the exact same vision all the way through because you may start an initiative, a business for one reason, and then you end up delivering a solution to something completely different, which needs a tweaked and amended vision. And also, a really good team will help you to shape a vision as you grow, so that's it for me. It's team all the way. Ula Ojiaku And in all the businesses you've founded, how did you go about building the teams, the partnerships, the structure? Kerrie Dorman For me, it was all about the people that I knew, approaching them first and the like-mindedness about the core reason why I wanted the ABM to exist really was about standard support and guidance, and that was my unique selling point, for a commercial phrase, and I just found that there were lots of people out there who were just as passionate about me as those three things. And so, because I was so passionate, and so were they, it was easy to get the right people, and the people who felt that they wanted to join the movement, but didn't quite have the passion fell away along the journey. And that's sort of been a theme, I think, through all the businesses, it's about the people and about who I knew. So initially, when I would have a business idea, the idea was great, but until I had the right person in mind to help me run it, then it was a no go, but interestingly, and this conversation has been a catalyst for this thought, interestingly, it was having great people in my sort of hemisphere that sometimes often made me come to the conclusion that I needed to set up a business in a particular arena with that person. So sometimes it was the person that was the catalyst, and a great example of that, just to be crystal clear about what I mean is, one of my businesses was a beauty salon specialised in pregnant ladies and mums. So pregnant ladies, and then when they had the babies, they could come back. So it was all set up for massaging and wellbeing for mums who had bumps and boobs that couldn't ever lie on their tummies. So I got these special couches from the States and then they could have proper massages and then there was a creche so that once they had their babies, they could come back.  And so the catalyst for that business was, well A)I had a baby, but B) one of my employees in a current business was a qualified beauty therapist, and she was just having a bit of time out from the beauty world for one reason or another. And so I had my first born, and I had this employee who was really keen to get back and she was passionate about beauty and health. And for me, it then became this no brainer that the concept would

Bio Darren, as the European Managing Director of Cprime, spearheads transformation initiatives in EMEA, leveraging over two decades of experience in banking and IT leadership. As a SAFe Fellow and renowned author, he drives strategic growth by defining innovative go-to-market strategies and deepening client relationships. Darren is responsible for overseeing Cprime's consultancy services, implementing complex programs, and negotiating multi-million pound contracts, positioning the company as a leader in organisational efficiency and performance optimisation.    He co-authored the BCS Book "Agile Foundations – Principles Practices and Frameworks" and "SAFe Coaches Handbook". A contributor to the SAFe Reference Guide 4.5 and "The ART of avoiding a Train Wreck". Finally a reviewer of "Valuing Agile; the financial management of agile projects" and "Directing Agile Change"   Interview Highlights 01:30 Pandemic impacts 04:00 Cprime 08:00 Wooing clients 09:15 Using the right language 11:00 Doing your research 12:30 Mistakes leaders make 15:30 Changing mindsets 16:00 Ingredients for change 17:30 Reading for knowledge 26:00 Three thirds 28:30 Disruption 31:30 SAFe Coaches Handbook 37:50 SAFe frameworks 40:20 Enterprise strategy   Connecting   LinkedIn: Darren Wilmshurst on LinkedIn   Books & Resources -          Strategic Leadership: How to Think and Plan Strategically and Provide Direction, John Adair -          Tribal Unity Book, Em Campbell-Pretty, -          Drive, Daniel H. Pink -          SAFe® Coaches Handbook: Proven tips and techniques for launching and running SAFe® Teams, ARTs, and Portfolios in an Agile Enterprise, Darren Wilmshurst & Lindy Quick -          Agile Foundations: Principles, practices and frameworks, Peter Measey -          The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck: Practical Tips and Tricks for Launching and Operating SAFe Agile Release Trains, Em Campbell-Pretty, Adrienne L. Wilson, Dean Leffingwell -          Industrial Devops: Build Better Systems Faster Dr. Johnson, Robin Yeman, Mik Kersten, Dean Leffingwell -          Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results: Christina R Wodtke -          Who Does What By How Much | Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden (okr-book.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 It's a huge honour and privilege to have again with me as my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast none other than Darren Wilmshurst, Managing Director at Cprime. Darren is an SPCT and a SAFe fellow. So for some context to the audience, Daz was one of the very first people I interviewed for the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast and this was about five years ago or so, and I actually wanted to have a way of speaking with Daz, and I didn't know how to, so I said, hey, can I interview you for a podcast? And long story short, I ended up heading on a plane to Oman, but that's a different story. So, Daz, what have you been up to since then? Because when we recorded the first one, you were not yet a SAFe fellow, it was afterwards that you became a SAFe fellow and lots of other things must have happened. Darren Wilmshurst Well then the pandemic started, and I think that that changed life for all of us, most of our consultancy work stopped because it was discretionary spend, people were in retreat in terms of trying to buckle down and understand, try and reduce costs as much as possible. I think the biggest impact was then training, because obviously we couldn't do training in person. We weren't allowed by the certificating bodies to train online, so they had to give us permission to do that, which they did, and then we had to think about, well, how are we going to do this online? You know, what conference facilities are we going to use? What collaborative tools are we going to use? And how do we deliver this experience to make it still interactive and engaging? So I think that was a major challenge for us as well, and if I'm honest, whilst we're still doing stuff online, we're starting to see some training, at least moving back in person, but my preference is still in person because it's a different experience. The theatrics in me, the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd is still really important as well. So I think that's the first thing I think has changed is that we had that period where everything was remote, I think we're back into a world now where we're more hybrid, which I enjoy the in person stuff, but I think we'll probably never go back to pre-pandemic where everything was in person, both consulting and training. So I think that was the major change, I think for us as well. During that time as well, our major founder wanted to retire, so we sold Radtac to Cprime and that all happened during the early days of the pandemic as well. We had a number of suitors, about six suitors, we decided on Cprime for, for me, two critical reasons and this is quite important, I think as well. Number one is that Radtac felt like a really family firm. We had a set of values and principles, there's a DNA to Radtac and we wanted someone that matched our DNA, I think it was so important for us. We could have gone to some other organisations, but we might have ended up selling our soul to the devil in some respects. Cprime, acquired a company in the US called Blue Agility a few years earlier, almost similar size to Radtac, very similar what they did as well, and what was key for me was that all the people in Blue Agility were still in Cprime. In fact, two had left and come back, so that was a good sign to me that we were aligned in terms of values and principles. So that was number one. The second reason was that Radtac had a heritage of all this training, you know, we're back to 1998. We had all this good training, we'd build up the consulting part of our business, so we're really good in terms of training and consultancy, but we were very agnostic about tooling and technology, because we didn't have the capabilities, or the brand awareness around that part of our business, and it used to frustrate me because, we'd go in, we'd do a great job in terms of way of working, somebody else would go in and maybe do the tooling set up, configure it in a way that wasn't aligned, that wasn't working and that was frustrating. Now we could see opportunities to improve the continuous delivery pipeline, but we didn't have the capability to sort it out as well, whereas Cprime had all of that heritage. So for me, it completed that puzzle where now we can do the training, the consultancy, the tooling to visualise the work, configure the ways of working as well, and also really help with that continuous delivery pipeline as well. So that was the defining decision. We completed that acquisition in February 2021, so literally 12 months after the pandemic. Cprime was at the time owned by a French company called Alten, massive company, not well known, but massive company. Cprime probably wasn't really core to Alten, they were a project management engineering company and Alten sold Cprime January 2023 to Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, so that's been a change. So again, we've had the pandemic, we've gone through the acquisition, and now we're owned by a private equity as well, which brings different challenges to the organisation as well, and actually the reality was that after the acquisition, after the earn out, I was looking to maybe semi-retire, spending a bit more time in Spain, fishing and playing golf, but actually this next phase is really exciting, so a testament to Cprime and Goldman Sachs as well, that I want to be part of the next part of the journey as well. So, I'm still here Ula. Ula Ojiaku Well, I am glad you are, and it sounds like it's been a rollercoaster ride and a journey, but part of it is the thrills as well. Darren Wilmshurst Look, we're very privileged, aren't we Ula, because I work with great people, I say that genuinely. I work with great clients, I'm very fortunate in that. And although, you know, if I don't want to work with a client, I don't have to do that, but actually all the clients I work with, I really enjoy working with and I love the work that we do. So it's almost like the Holy Trinity, great people, great clients, great work. Why wouldn't I want to carry on doing what I do? So I always think that we're very privileged in what we do. So, I'm very grateful. Ula Ojiaku And I'll say that the little I've worked with you, what I know is you are a genuine person and you're a great person as well. I can't remember who this quote is attributed to, but people tend to be mirrors. So if you're good, people mirror what you show to them. And I'll say that based on my experience with you, I've learned a lot in terms of how to treat people, being genuine and caring genuinely about their welfare, not necessarily about what you get from them, and that's key. So, that's the sort of person you are, that's who you are. Darren Wilmshurst That's very kind. Ula Ojiaku I want say thank you for that, because there are times when I'm in situations and I'm thinking about maybe somebody or potential someone, colleague or clients, and I'll be like, what would Daz do? How would he probably think about this situation? Now, part of what you do as director involves also wooing, wooing and winning the client and the customer. So, what would you say are your go to principles when pitching, to communicate the value you could bring before an engagement and maybe later on, we can talk about during and after the engagements? Darren Wilmshurst Yeah, I'm still Officer of the company, so I'm still Director of Cprime, the UK entity and

Bio Denise Tilles wrote the recently published book Product Operations. Co-authored with Escaping the Build Trap's Melissa Perri, the book is the must-read guide technology leaders have been missing.  With over a decade of product leadership experience, Denise supports companies like Bloomberg, Sam's Club, and athenahealth by strengthening capabilities around: Product Operations, Product Strategy, and establishing a Product Operating Model.     Interview Highlights 01:00 Background and beginnings 04:00 Product Operations: The book 06:30 Product Operations vs Product Management 07:30 The Three Pillars of Product Operations 08:30 Using Product Operations to Scale 10:20 Leading and Lagging Indicators 12:20 Product Operations in Startups  21:10 Generative AI     Social Media ·         www.denisetilles.com ·         Denise Tilles on Twitter X ·         Denise Tilles on LinkedIn ·         Grocket     Books & Resources ·         Product Operations: How successful companies build better products at scale: Melissa Perri, Denise Tilles ·         Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value, Melissa Perri ·         MasterClass with Denise Tilles: Getting Started with Product Operations — Produx Labs ·         Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value, Terese Torres ·         Lenny's podcast: Lenny's Podcast (lennyspodcast.com) ·         Lenny's Newsletter: Lenny's Newsletter | Lenny Rachitsky | Substack (lennysnewsletter.com) ·         Pivot podcast: Vox Media: Podcast Network | Pivot ·         Melissa Perri's podcast: Product Thinking — Produx Labs     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, Denise Tilles, who is the Founder and CPO of Product Consultancy Grocket. She is also a co-author of the book Product Operations, How Successful Companies Build Better Products at Scale. Thank you so much, Denise, for making the time for this conversation. I've been looking forward to this.   Denise Tilles   Thank you. Me too.    Ula Ojiaku   Awesome. So who is Denise, so can you tell us how you've evolved to the Denise we are seeing today?   Denise Tilles   Yeah. So, I have been in product management for probably 12 years now, both on the operating side, as an individual contributor, and then as a leader, working with companies like B2B SaaS companies, Cision, and a media company, Condé Nast. And then for the past two-ish years, I've been a product consultant and working with really great companies like Bloomberg and Sam's Club, Walmart, we're helping them with product maturity assessments, product operations in terms of like, does this make sense for a company? How do we stand it up? What is sort of day one look like, you know, day 366 and then so on, sort of building it to scale. And then also co-authoring this book with Melissa Perri, the Product Operations book, and as we talk about the book, folks, I think naturally might say, well, why you, why should you be writing about the book? I have experience with product operations before we really knew that's what it was called, and I mentioned this in the book that I was working at this B2B SaaS and I had just started and my manager, the SVP said, hey, maybe we should get some people to think about managing the data, maybe thinking about understanding what kinds of experiments we should be doing. I'm like, we can do that, well, wow, yes, that sounds amazing. And we were going to hire an individual contributor, we ended up hiring this amazing VP level person, and then she built a small team, and it really was a great compliment to the product, I had a product team of about 10 folks globally and really great compliment, because they understood the product, but they weren't so close to it that they were myopic in terms of seeing what the potential opportunities or challenges were with the data, so they became a great partner and sort of highlighting here's what we're looking at for the month, X shows us maybe there's a challenge with the funnel, maybe we could do some experiments, maybe tests, and anyway, they had uncovered a potential opportunity. It was this sort of add on product and we ended up making a million dollars the first year, it wasn't even sort of like an advertised product, it was kind of just back pocket offering for clients. So after that, I was like, wow, this is great, I love this, and didn't really know that was product operations. Fast forward a couple of years later, I start working with Melissa Perri at her consultancy Produx Labs, she mentions product operations, I'm like, what's that? And she explains it, I'm like, oh, that's what we were doing, cool. And then really started to dig in more about the theoretical aspect and understanding what it could look like to build it at a scale and helping companies at the scale up stage with a venture capital company we were working with, think about what that looks like for them, and does it make sense to implement? So that's when I really got interested and excited about it, sort of having lived it and then seeing the potential opportunity of the sort of force multiplier it could be. So I was working with Melissa and in 2021, I slacked her and I'm like, what do you think, I'm thinking about writing a book about product operations, I don't think anyone's written this yet and I can't believe it. She's like, yeah, great idea. I'm like, would you like to do it with me? And she was like, yes, I'll do it. She hesitated a little bit because I heard her speaking about her first book, Escaping the Build Trap, and she's like, never, nope, done.  But she's like, well, maybe it'll be different writing it with somebody. So I'm like, how long does it take? She goes, I don't know, as long as it needs to take, maybe a year, two and a half years. So we kept each other honest and it was, I don't know any other way of writing a book, but it was really great to have a partner and like, I've hit a wall here, can you pick this up? Or I map this out, like, here, does this make sense to you? And challenges, wins, whatever, just having someone to feed off of was really great. And it was just a lot of fun to do. So it was really a great excitement and relief to have it published in October of 2023.   Ula Ojiaku   Congratulations, that's a massive achievement, and I couldn't help wondering when you were talking about co-authoring the book with Melissa, whether you applied some of the product operations concepts in getting your book done?    Denise Tilles   That's a great question, we had a lot of qualitative inputs. We had peer reviews from folks that were from like a CPO, Chief Product Officer, all the way to an individual contributor, kind of brand new Product Manager, and the questions that they raised were totally different. So it was really great to sort of get those inputs and balance and think about like, who's the archetype we're creating this book for? And I sort of ignore my own advice when I work with product people, like if you try to serve everybody, you serve no one, but we really were trying to think about like, this could be a book that a product person could hand to their CEO. This is the power, here's some great case studies. Or the individual contributor thinking, I've heard about this. What is this? Would this help our company? So we really wanted to, you know, as well as Chief Product Officers, VPs thinking like, I've heard about this, what does that look like? So that was an important aspect.    Ula Ojiaku     Makes perfect sense. Now I know that some of the viewers or listeners would be wondering, then, we might as well cut to the chase, what exactly is Product Operations? Most of us are conversant with the term Product Management, what is Product Operations and how is it, if it is, different from Product Management, please?   Denise Tilles   Yeah, great question. That was one of the most common questions, that was another reason we wanted to write the book, because we just kept getting the same questions like, here's a book. Product Operations just so quickly put is really increasing the speed and accuracy and quality of decision making, right? It's about surrounding your Product Managers with all of the inputs they need to make really, truly informed decisions. It's about supporting them to execute on the things you hired them for - building value, growing revenue, and not necessarily writing SQL scripts, because at the end of the year, it's like, well, I wrote 10 of those. Great, but you didn't deliver X product, who won, so that's a big piece of it. And the way that we think about Product Operations, it's really three pillars. So business and data insights, which is the quantitative, right? Customer and market insights, the qualitative. And then the third one is the operating model, sort of process and practices, and we like to think of it that way and sort of broke the book up like that as well, to sort of like focus on that, each section and at the end of each pillar, it's like three things to get you started today. If there was like three things to do, and one other aspect of it is that we think about how to implement it, and that's a question that we get a lot. And as we mentioned at the beginning of the book, don't try to do all three pillars, figure out where the biggest challenge and opportunities are, start there and build out. Some companies I've worked with have just stuck with one of those pillars and that's good enough for them. It really looks different everywhere. This is just what it could look like.    Ula Ojiaku   No, that m

 Bio: Pete Newell Pete Newell is a nationally recognized innovation expert whose work is transforming how the  government and other large organizations compete and drive growth.  He is the CEO of BMNT, an internationally recognized innovation consultancy and early-stage tech accelerator that helps solve some of the hardest real-world problems in national security, state and local governments, and beyond. Founded in Silicon Valley, BMNT has offices in Palo Alto, Washington DC, Austin, London, and Canberra. BMNT uses a framework, called H4X®, to drive innovation at speed. H4X® is an adaptation of the problem curation techniques honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the best practices employed by successful Silicon Valley startups. The result is a disciplined, evidence-based, data-driven process for connecting innovation activities into an accountable system that delivers solutions and overcome obstacles to innovation. Pete is a founder and co-author, with Lean Startup founder Steve Blank, of Hacking for Defense (H4D)®, an academic program taught at 47+ universities in the U.S., as well as universities in the UK and Australia. H4D® focuses on solving national security problems. It has in turned created a series of sister courses – Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Oceans, Hacking for Sustainability, Hacking for Local and others – that use the H4X® framework to solve critical real-world problems while providing students with a platform to gain crucial problem-solving experience while performing a national service. Pete continues to advise and teach the original H4D® course at Stanford University with Steve Blank. In addition, Pete is Co-Founder and Board Director of The Common Mission Project, the 501c3 non-profit responsible for creating an international network of mission-driven entrepreneurs, including through programs like H4D®. Prior to joining BMNT, Pete served as the Director of the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF).  Reporting directly to the senior leadership of the Army, he was charged with rapidly finding, integrating, and employing solutions to emerging problems faced by Soldiers on the battlefield. From 2010 to 2013 Pete led the REF in the investment of over $1.4B in efforts designed to counter the effects of improvised explosive devices, reduce small units exposure to suicide bombers and rocket attacks and to reduce their reliance on long resupply chains. He was responsible for the Army's first deployment of mobile manufacturing labs as well as the use of smart phones merged with tactical radio networks. Pete retired from the US Army as a Colonel in 2013. During his 32 years in uniform he served as both an enlisted national guardsman and as an active duty officer. He commanded Infantry units at the platoon through brigade level, while performing special operations, combat, and peace support operations in Panama, Kosovo, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an Army Ranger who has received numerous awards to include the Silver Star and Presidential Unit Citation. Pete holds a BS from Kansas State University, an MS from the US Army Command & General Staff College, an MS from the National Defense University and advanced certificates from the MIT Sloan School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Bio: Dr Alison Hawks Dr. Alison Hawks is one of the leading experts advancing public sector innovation. A researcher and academic-turned-entrepreneur, she is the co-founder and CEO of BMNT, Ltd., the innovation company that is changing how public sector innovation happens; and Chair of the Common Mission Project UK, BMNT's charitable partner that guides mission-driven entrepreneurial education in the UK. Dr. Hawks co-founded BMNT Ltd with (Ret) Col Pete Newell, the CEO of BMNT, Inc., in 2019 to bring BMNT's proven innovation approach to the UK market. Under her leadership BMNT has become a trusted innovation partner across all single Services of Defence, the Cabinet Office, and the national security community. She has also helped change how real-world government challenges are addressed in the UK, launching the "Hacking for" academic programmes created in the U.S. These courses that teach university students how to use modern entrepreneurial tools and techniques to solve problems alongside government at startup speed. As a result of her efforts, 14 UK universities are offering Hacking for the Ministry of Defence, Hacking for Sustainability and Hacking for Police. More than 480 students have taken these courses, addressing 103 real-world challenges. Dr. Hawks teaches mission-driven entrepreneurship at King's College London, Department of War Studies and at Imperial College London's Institute of Security Science and Technology. She was named the Woman of the Year for Innovation and Creativity at the Women in Defence Awards in 2022. She serves on the Board of Directors of BMNT, leading development of BMNT's innovation education programs while also guiding the integration of BMNT's rapidly expanding international presence. She was previously Director of Research at the Section 809 Panel, a U.S. Congressionally mandated commission tasked with streamlining and codifying defense acquisition. She was also an Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, as well as King's College London, Department of Defence Studies where she taught strategy, policy and operations in professional military education. Dr. Hawks' doctoral thesis was in military sociology. She received her Ph.D from the Department of War Studies at King's College London, and her MA in Strategic Studies from the University of Leeds. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. She has multiple peer reviewed publications on her research. Interview Highlights 03:50 BMNT 06:20 Serendipity 10:00 Saying yes to the uncomfortable 11:20 Leadership 15:00 Developing a thick skin 20:00 Lessons of an entrepreneur 22:00 Stakeholder success 25:00 Solving problems at speed and at scale 28:00 The innovation pipeline 29:30 Resistance is rational 34:00 Problem curation 38:00 Dual use investments 43:00 Accelerating change 47:00 AUKUS 52:20 AI   Contact Information   ·         LinkedIn: Ali Hawks on LinkedIn ·         LinkedIn Peter Newell on LinkedIn ·         Website:  The Common Mission Project UK ·         Website: BMNT US ·         Website: BMNT UK   Books & Resources ·         Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less: Robert Sutton, Robert , Huggy Rao ·         Value Proposition Canvas ·         Business Model Canvas ·         Hacking for Defense ·         Hacking for Allies ·         AUKUS DIN ·         Impromptu : Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI, Reid Hoffman ·         Huberman Lab Podcast ·         Allie K. Miller ·         Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification: Gene Kim, Steven Spear ·         The Friction Project - Bob Sutton, Huggy Rao 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 My guests for this episode are Pete Newell and Ali Hawks. Pete Newell is the CEO and Co-founder of BMNT, an innovation consultancy and early stage technology incubator that helps solve some of the hardest problems facing the Department of Defense and Intelligence community. Ali Hawks is CEO of BMNT in the UK and also a Co-founder of BMNT in the UK. In addition to this, she is the Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Common Mission Project, and she Co-founded the Common Mission Project in 2019 and drove its growth as a Startup charity in the UK. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Pete and Ali, I found it very insightful and I'm sure you would as well. Pete, thank you Ali, thank you so much for being with us on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you here.  Pete Newell  Thanks so much for the invite.  Ali Hawks  Yeah. Thank you for having us.  Ula Ojiaku Right, this is the second time ever in the history of my podcast that I'm having two people, two guests. The first time was fun, and I know this one would be as well, and informative. I always start with asking my guests to tell us a bit about themselves. So your background, any memorable happenings that shaped you into the person you are today?  Pete Newell  So I'm a retired army officer. I enlisted when I was 18 and was commissioned when I left college in the mid 80s. I spent most of my career as an Infantryman in tactical units. I spent a great bit of time in the Middle East and other war zones. Towards the end of my career, I ended up as the Director of the Army's Rapid Equipment Force, which is essentially the Skunk Works that was stood up at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to accelerate technology to solve problems that were emerging on the battlefield, that weren't part of something else, somewhere else. And in that three-year journey, it probably exposed me to first and foremost, the speed at which new problems are presenting themselves, not just on the battlefield, but in the rest of the world. It exposed me to the speed at which technology is changing, being adopted and then being adapted for other purposes. So it's almost like chasing technology as it changes is a whole new sport, and it exposed me to  the challenges of large bureaucratic organisations and their inability to keep up with the speed of the changes in order to remain competitive, whether it was on the battlefield or in the commercial markets or something like that. Those epiphanies really drov

Bio   David is known for his ability to deliver inspiring and thought-provoking presentations that challenge audiences to think differently about innovation and product development. His keynotes and workshops are engaging and interactive, with a focus on real-world examples and case studies. David's message is relevant for entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations of all sizes and industries, and he illustrates concepts live on stage to leave attendees with concrete tools and techniques they can use to drive innovation and growth in their own business.   Interview Highlights 02:00 Early Startups 02:45 Dealing with uncertainty 04:25 Testing Business Ideas 07:35 Shifting mindsets 11:00 Transformational leadership 13:00 Desirable, viable, feasible 14:50 Sustainability 17:00 AI 22:50 Jobs, pains and gains 26:30 Extracting your assumptions 27:30 Mapping and prioritisation 28:10 Running experiments   Social Media   LinkedIn:  David Bland on LinkedIn Website:  davidjbland.com Company Website: Precoil YouTube: David Bland on YouTube     Books & Resources   ·         Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation (The Strategyzer Series): David J. Bland, Alex Osterwalder ·         Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals Course: https://precoil.teachable.com/p/assumptions-mapping-fundamentals/ ·         The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World's Best Business Models (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, Frederic Etiemble ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses: Eric Ries ·         Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights- 2nd Edition, Steve Portigal ·         The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You, Rob Fitzpatrick ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win: Steve Blank   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. I'm really honoured and pleased to introduce David Bland as my guest for this episode. He is the best-selling author of the book, Testing Business Ideas, and he's also the Founder of Precoil, an organisation that's focused on helping companies to find product market fits using Lean Start-up, Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation. He's not a newcomer to the world of Agile as well. So, David, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much for making the time. David Bland   Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, I'm excited to be here. Ula Ojiaku   Right. So, where I usually start with all my guests, because personally, I am interested in the story behind the person - are there any happenings or experiences that have shaped you into who you are today? David Bland   Yeah, I think through childhood, dealing with a lot of uncertainty and then ended up going to school for design. I thought I was going to go a different career path and then at the last moment I was like, I want to really dig into design and I think people were sort of shocked by that, with the people around me, and so I really dove into that and then I came out of school thinking, oh, I might join a startup and retire in my mid 20s, because this is a .com craze, everyone was making all this money. Obviously, that didn't happen, but I learned a lot at the startups and I was introduced to Agile really early on in my career at startups because we had to go really fast and we were in a heavily regulated industry so we couldn't break stuff and we had to have kind of processes and everything. I did that for a while and then I realised, wow, there were some people that could learn from my mistakes, and so we kind of switched coasts. So we were near Washington DC for a while, and then we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I started working with companies there, and I was like, well, let me see if I can just really dig in, help people learn how to apply stuff and coach them through it, and that was around 2010 or 2011 or so, and I've been doing it ever since, and I think why I love it so much is that it kind of helps people deal with uncertainty, gives them a process to deal with uncertainty, and at the same time, I have a hard time with uncertainty. So maybe it's kind of a little bit therapeutic for me to help others deal with uncertainty as well. So yeah, I just love what I do. Ula Ojiaku   And so you mentioned you don't like uncertainty, but helping other people deal with uncertainty helps you, that's interesting. Do you want to expand on that? David Bland   I mean, I very much like my routines and everything, and I feel like I come at it from a process point of view. So when I'm dealing with uncertainties, like, oh, what kind of process can I apply to that? So I feel a little better about things, even though there's a lot of stuff outside my control, at least I can have kind of a process. So I feel as if, when I'm dealing with people, I feel all of this anxiety, they're working on a new idea, they're not sure if it's going to be any good or not, giving them a process to work through it together, I don't really tell them if their idea is going to be good or not because who am I to judge their ideas most of the time? It's more about, well, here's a process you can apply to all that stuff you're working through and maybe you can come up to some sort of investment decision on whether or not you should go forward with that idea. So I feel as if my demeanour and everything comes off as someone that you're like, oh, I can talk to this guy and he's actually going to respect me, and so I feel like my style plus the uncertainty bit fits together really well. So I have a style where I come into orgs and say, you have a lot of uncertainty, here's a process, you're going to be fine, we're going to work through it together and it tends to work out pretty well. Ula Ojiaku   What comes across to me is that you give them tools or a process to help them hopefully come to an evidence-based conclusion without you having to share your opinion, or hopefully they don't have to have personal opinions imposing on whatever conclusion that is.   David Bland   Yeah, it's just a process.   Ula Ojiaku   And so what put you on the path to writing the book Testing Business Ideas, I was one of your students at the masterclass you and Alex Osterwalder ran during the covid lockdown, and you mentioned during that session, I don't know if you remember, that you probably went for a retreat somewhere, or you went on a hike as part of the writing process and that Alex gave you a hard time or something, so can you share your version of the story? David Bland   Oh yeah, I mean it was a joy writing with him. I think one of the difficult times for me writing that book…So first Alex approached me writing it and eventually, I mean initially it was just going to be me and then I mean he needed to be involved and so he played a big role strategically in helping me kind of think about the book writing process because I've never written a book like this and then also had it published and also did the whole four colour landscape style, very visual book. It's not that you just write an outline and then you start putting in words, it's a very different process. So yeah, he pushed me a little bit during that process, I would say, he would challenge some of my ideas and say like, are you explaining this in a way that where people can understand, you know? And so I feel as if it was a very productive process writing the book with him. It took about a year I would say. I think the way it came about was it was pretty much from my coaching, born out of my coaching, because I was helping companies with a lot of uncertainty, early stage ideas and they would say well we're now going to have interviews and we're going to do surveys and we're to build the whole thing. And it's like, well, there's other things you could do that are beyond interviews and surveys. And so he and I were continuously talking about this, and it's like, well, if people are only comfortable doing interviews and surveys they're not going to address all their risk, they're going to address a part of their risk, but not, you know, there's so much more they can do. And so, we started thinking about, well, is there a book that we could put that together and give people a resource guide? So, it's more like a textbook or almost something you would read in a university. My editor, I just spoke to him a couple weeks ago, he's like, this is required reading at Stanford now, and some other places in the university programs. And so it's very much like a textbook, you know, but the reason we wrote it was, you know, to help people find a path forward, to find a way to go and de-risk what they're working on. And so I felt it was very ambitious to put that all into a book, and of course, it has some flaws, but I think for the most part, it does the job, and that's why it's been really successful.   Ula Ojiaku   It is, in my experience, very well laid out. It takes a lot of work to distill these ideas into something that seems simple and easy to follow. So I do concur, it's been very help

 Bio    Rob is the co-founder of propertyhub.net and the bestselling author of The Price Of Money (Penguin). He co-presents the UK's most popular property podcast, and has a weekly column in The Sunday Times.   Interview Highlights 02:30 Jack of all trades 06:00 Recruiting interested people 07:45 Life as a digital nomad 10:50 Getting into property 12:00 Podcasting – the magic ingredients 17:40 Property investment 20:20 Long term vision 23:10 The Price of Money 26:00 Inflation & interest rates 31:00 Diversified portfolios 34:00 The end game 36:40 Seeking advice 39:40 Systemising property investments 42:30 Sharing strategic decisions 46:20 Goal setting 48:40 Parenting perspectives 59:20 Increasing your own earning power 1:02:40 Consume less, do more   Social Media ·         LinkedIn:  Rob Dix on LinkedIn ·         Instagram: Rob Dix on Instagram ·         Twitter: Rob Dix (@robdix) ·         Website:  Robdix.com ·         Website: propertyhub.net Books & Resources ·         The Price of Money: How to Prosper in a Financial World That's Rigged Against You, Rob Dix ·         How To Be A Landlord: The Definitive Guide to Letting and Managing Your Rental Property, Rob Dix ·         The Complete Guide to Property Investment: How to survive & thrive in the new world of buy-to-let, Rob Dix ·         Property Investment for Beginners, Rob Dix ·         100 Property Investment Tips: Learn from the experts and accelerate your success, Rob Dix, Rob Bence ·         Beyond the Bricks: The inside story of how 9 everyday investors found financial freedom through property, Rob Dix ·         The Property Podcast - YouTube ·         Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life, Bill Perkins ·         How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty, Harry Browne ·         Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Peter Attia, Bill Gifford ·         The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar ·         The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society, Azeem Azhar   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    I'm pleased to have with me here as my guest, Rob Dix, who is the co-founder of Property Hub and he's also an author, investor, entrepreneur extraordinaire, and we'll be learning more about it. So Rob, thank you so much for making the time to be my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast.   Rob Dix    It's a pleasure, thank you.   Ula Ojiaku  Yes. I usually start with this question for my guests because personally, I am curious. I love learning about people. So what would you say have shaped you, looking at your background, into the Rob Dix we know and admire today?    Rob Dix    Well, it's a well trodden career path. I studied cognitive neuroscience, went to work in the music industry, obviously, as you do. And then sort of ended up leaving that and going into property. None of that makes any sense, and I think that sort of sums up how I've got here, which is just by following my curiosity and doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time, and so if something seemed interesting to me, I would do it. And property, which I got into by accident in my early thirties, was probably the first thing that I've really stuck with and it's held my interest for the long term. I'd always just sort of like, wanted to figure out how something works, once I knew how it works I got bored, moved on, but with property it's like you kind of never get to the end, there's so much to it, and then it's also served as a gateway into investing more generally and into economics, ended up writing this book about how the economy works and all this kind of thing, but it's the same old theme of just kind of going with whatever seems interesting.    Ula Ojiaku    A very fascinating background. It sounds to me, and I'm not trying to box you in or label you, but you sound like someone who's multi-passionate and multi-talented, would you call yourself a jack of all trades?    Rob Dix    Absolutely. Yeah. I've written an article actually, in defence of being a jack of all trades, because I think people fixate on the master of none bit, but I think that there's a lot to be said for knowing a little about a lot, and I think it's a natural tendency. I was saying to my wife the other day that I don't think I would be able to, if I had to like knuckle down and it's like if you just do this one thing for three years, then there'll be this incredible payoff at the end of it. I don't think I could do it, even knowing that that payoff was there. I'm just naturally a little bit of like, sort of taking bits from everywhere. So I don't think there's any point in fighting it. I think you kind of skew one way or the other, and so I'm trying to embrace that tendency and use that to pull in ideas from various places into what I'm doing now, and yeah, make the best of it rather than just being completely scattered.    Ula Ojiaku    I feel like I am the same. I tend to get bored with things, I learn things quickly and once I've learned it and it's kind of routine, I get bored, and the only way to keep consistent is just about broadening my horizons, so learning from different fields. I have an engineering background, but I love learning about philosophy, psychology, how can I bring ideas out there into the field? From all outward appearances, you are successful. So what would you say has been the benefit of being a jack of all trades and kind of understanding who you are, embracing it instead of fighting it? How has it benefited you?    Rob Dix    A good question. Not something I've thought about, but I'd say on a purely social level, knowing a little bit about a lot is helpful, because you can end up talking to pretty much anyone about anything, whatever they're interested in, you know something about it and have some kind of a way in, rather than just having your one topic that you can bore on about forever. And I think in general, it just means that I'm always excited to be doing whatever it is that I'm doing, there's never like a, urgh, I'm still in the grind, because even if, you know, everyone has grindy periods of their career, their business or whatever, and I don't think that's necessarily avoidable, which is how it goes. You can't be absolutely delighted with everything all the time, but even when that's happening, there's always something I'm excited about, even if it's just being able to watch a YouTube video about something that evening that I'm looking forward to, like learning about something completely random, there's always something that means that it just never feels mundane.    Ula Ojiaku    And actually what you've said here with the whole buzz about GenAI. Where are we going? How is it impacting us? And it kind of reminds me of the World Economic Forum, their Future of Work publications, they do this annually, and one of the key attributes that would be needed in whatever future roles or responsibilities that you're going to have, is the ability to learn and unlearn. So that curiosity, being able to look out, I think it's something that, well, I am trying to teach my children as well, which is yes, you can learn a subject, you can learn things in school, but what's going to sustain you and keep you relevant is going to be your ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn, so it's really key.    Rob Dix    Totally. When we're hiring people, we always look for people who are interested in something, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be work related, even if it's super weird, better if it's super weird, because people who are interested in something, and people who push themselves in some way and challenge themselves, whether that's in a physical way, like doing an ultra-marathon or just taking something and seeing how far they can push it, I think if you put those two things together, we've found, that those are the traits of the high performers who you want to have around.    Ula Ojiaku    Yes, because there's something in the bias of past performance, but it doesn't necessarily predict the future performance, but the attributes of being excited about something, being able to dig into something of one's own initiative, not relying on external motivators, that is a better predictor of future performance than what one did in the past. I don't know what you think about it?    Rob Dix    Yeah, totally, and that's why we put very little weight on a CV because you can bend your life story in all kinds of different ways, but yeah, I think those internal attributes, like you said, are a better predictor.    Ula Ojiaku    Hmm. Okay, well, I'm glad to hear I have someone who thinks similar in this path. So you did say, just back to your background again, which is fascinating. You studied cognitive neuroscience, then went into music, found that boring, you then lived as a digital nomad for seven years before falling into property. Can you tell us a bit more about that?    Rob Dix   Yeah, so that was another classic example of just doing whatever seems fun at the time, and so that was when I left the music industry, because I'd got to roundabout 30, and when you're into music, as a way to spend your twenties, fantastic, you get to claim it's work, but it's just, if you're out every night, then you're doing a really good job of work, but then I was looking at the people who were 10, 20 years ahead of me and had families and the rest of it and they just didn't seem to be having fun anymore. They didn't really want to be out every night doing all this stuff, and so I thought, well

Bio Luke Hohmann is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks helps companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold the SaaS B2B collaboration software company Conteneo to Scaled Agile, Inc. Conteneo's Weave platform is now part of SAFe Studio. A SAFe® Fellow, prolific author, and trailblazing innovator, Luke's contributions to the global agile community include contributing to SAFe, five books, Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, Participatory Budgeting at enterprise scale, and a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world's first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife's cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains.    Interview Highlights 01:30 Organisational Behaviour & Cognitive Psychology 06:10 Serendipity 09:30 Entrepreneurship 16:15 Applied Frameworks 20:00 Sustainability 20:45 Software Profit Streams 23:00 Business Model Canvas 24:00 Value Proposition Canvas 24:45 Setting the Price 28:45 Customer Benefit Analysis 34:00 Participatory Budgeting 36:00 Value Stream Funding 37:30 The Color of Money 42:00 Private v Public Sector 49:00 ROI Analysis 51:00 Innovation Accounting    Connecting   LinkedIn: Luke Hohmann on LinkedIn Company Website: Applied Frameworks    Books & Resources   ·         Software Profit Streams(TM): A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business: Jason Tanner, Luke Hohmann, Federico González ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play: Luke Hohmann ·         The 'Color of Money' Problem: Additional Guidance on Participatory Budgeting - Scaled Agile Framework ·         The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries ·         Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2, Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres ·         The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering: Brooks, Frederick Phillips ·         Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud ·         Ponyboy: A Novel, Eliot Duncan ·         Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel, Bonnie Garmus, Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes ·         What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce D. Perry ·         Training | Applied Frameworks   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 Luke Hohmann, who is a four time author, three time founder, serial entrepreneur if I say, a SAFe fellow, so that's a Skilled Agile Framework fellow, keynote speaker and an internationally recognised expert in Agile software development. He is also a proud husband and a father of four. So, Luke, I am very honoured to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Thank you for making the time. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me, I'm very happy to be here, and hi everyone who's listening. Ula Ojiaku Yes, I'm sure they're waving back at you as well. I always start my conversations with my guests to find out about them as individuals, you know, so who is Luke? You have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, but you also studied Cognitive Psychology and Organisational Behaviour in addition to Data Structures and Artificial Intelligence. AI is now making waves and is kind of at the forefront, which is interesting, you had the foresight to also look into these. So my question is, what took you down this path? Luke Hohmann Sure. I had a humble beginning in the world of technology. I worked for a large company, Electronic Data Systems, and it was founded in the mid 60s by a gentleman named Ross Perot, and it became a very, very large company. So my first job at Electronic Data Systems was working in a data centre, and we know what data centres are, but back then, data centres were different because they were predominantly mainframe-based data centres, and I would crawl underneath the floor, cabling the computers and cabling networking equipment. Now, when we think networking, we're really thinking one of two kinds of networking. We think of wireless networking or we think of some form of internet networking, but back in those days, there were varieties of network protocols, literally the standards that we use now weren't invented yet. So it was mainframe networking protocols and dial ups and other forms of networking protocols. From there, I worked my way from beneath the ground up. I had some great managers who saw someone who was worthy of opportunity and they gave me opportunity and it was great. And then eventually I started working in electronic data systems and there was, the first wave of AI came in the mid 80s and that's when we were doing things like building expert systems, and I managed to create with a colleague of mine, who's emerged as my best friend, a very successful implementation of an expert system, an AI-based expert system at EDS, and that motivated me to finish off my college degree, I didn't have my college degree at the time. So EDS supported me in going to the University of Michigan, where as you said, I picked up my Bachelor's and Master's degree, and my advisor at the time was Elliot Soloway, and he was doing research in how programmers program, what are the knowledge structures, what are the ways in which we think when we're programming, and I picked up that research and built programming environments, along with educational material, trying to understand how programmers program and trying to build educational material to teach programming more effectively. That's important because it ignited a lifelong passion for developing education materials, etc. Now the cognitive psychology part was handled through that vein of work, the organisational behaviour work came as I was a student at Michigan. As many of us are when we're in college, we don't make a lot of money, or at university we're not wealthy and I needed a job and so the School of Organisational Behaviour had published some job postings and they needed programmers to program software for their organisational behaviour research, and I answered those ads and I became friends and did the research for many ground-breaking aspects of organisational behaviour and I programmed, and in the process of programming for the professors who were in the School of Organisational Behaviour they would teach me about organisational behaviour and I learned many things that at the time were not entirely clear to me, but then when I graduated from university and I became a manager and I also became more involved in the Agile movement, I had a very deep foundation that has served me very well in terms of what do we mean when we say culture, or what do we mean when we talk about organisational structures, both in the small and in the large, how do we organise effectively, when should we scale, when should we not scale, etc. So that's a bit about my history that I think in terms of the early days helped inform who I am today. Ula Ojiaku Wow, who would have thought, it just reminds me of the word serendipity, you know, I guess a happy coincidence, quote unquote, and would there be examples of where the cognitive psychology part of it also helped you work-wise? Luke Hohmann Yeah, a way to think about cognitive psychology and the branch that, I mean there's, psychology is a huge branch of study, right? So cognitive psychology tends to relate to how do we solve problems, and it tends to focus on problem solving where n = 1 and what I mean by n is the number of participants, and where n is just me as an individual, how do I solve the problems that I'm facing? How do I engage in de-compositional activities or refinement or sense making? Organisational behaviour deals with n > 1. So it can deal with a team of, a para-bond, two people solving problems. It can deal with a small team, and we know through many, many, many decades of research that optimal team structures are eight people or less. I mean, we've known this for, when I say decades I mean millennia. When you look at military structure and military strategy, we know that people need to be organised into much smaller groups to be effective in problem solving and to move quickly. And then in any organisational structure, there's some notion of a team of teams or team engagement. So cognitive psychology, I think, helps leaders understand individuals and their place within the team. And now we talk about, you know, in the Agile community, we talk about things like, I want T-shaped people, I want people with common skills and their area of expertise and by organising enough of the T's, I can create a whole and complete team. I often say I don't want my database designer designing my user interface and I don't want my user interface designer optimising my back end database queries, they're different skills. They're very educated people, they're very sop

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