agileinnovationleaders

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 to be some level of resistance, you know, so we need to really clarify what are the benefits that this will provide for us, why is this going to help us, what specific problems will this solve? And I would suggest that's where you start every time, like what are the biggest challenges you as leaders are trying to solve for? Like, what's keeping you up at night? What are you thinking about? That's why the practices are going to be different. Maybe my biggest problem is I have capacity issues, or maybe my people are feeling burned out, or maybe we're just not getting enough done for our customers, or we have changing needs all the time, or we're getting disrupted, whatever it might be, that's where we want to start. And so, in some cases that might mean, well, we need some portfolio management practices and others it might be, well, we need more customer centricity practices. And others it might be, we need to really focus on our teams. So that's why it changed a little bit. So in this organisation, there was one group who had been pretty successful with Agile and they said, you know what, sign us up, we want to do this, you know, we're ready for this leadership level of agility, so sign us up. And it was a good idea, because it's not going to fail. When you have leaders that are super excited about it, they're willing to put in the effort, and that can at least prove that it can work. And so we believe in what we call quarterly Sprints, we're familiar with a Sprint cycle, two, three weeks, whatever it might be, when you're looking at enterprise transformation, we believe in quarterly Sprints, where you have specific goals you're trying to accomplish for the quarter, and a laid out process, a roadmap to get there. So, we built a quarterly process, kind of the first quarter for this group. We had specific milestones we were trying to meet and the reality is they did an excellent job. You know, there were some learnings along the way and there's always some growing pains, but they did an excellent job to the point where, after the quarter, we came back to the leadership group and they were able to describe, you know, some of the real successes and wins they'd had. Now at that point, we have eight other groups who are kind of on the fence or trying to, you know, is this really going to work for us? And this was a brilliant decision by the senior leader. They said, why don't we go next with our most problematic group, the biggest risk group, in fact, this was the biggest PnL. We basically said, if it can work with this group, first of all, it'll drive some excellent change for us, but it'll prove that it can work for anybody. If it can work for you, it can work for anybody. And that's what we did. And luckily we had some leaders that, you know, weren't necessarily super excited about it, but were at least willing to give it a try and willing to put it in the effort to make it a successful trial, or at least a real trial. And it was great, we had great conversations, we started to implement OKRs, we started to look at their strategy, we started to bring teams in to start to build out some of their agility practices. But the leadership would meet together regularly to talk about what's the next step in our process. We had learning sessions, but all of those were hands-on doing. So, for instance, let's build out our three-year OKRs, let's build out our one-year OKRs, let's bring the work in and let's prioritise on a big board to see where things fit and are aligned, let's start to think about our capacity constraints and all of those things. And yeah, we had a lot of lessons learned, a lot of things that we had to adjust, but overall it was pretty successful. And after that quarter of work, we went back to that same group of leaders and every single leader said, sign me up, I'm ready because if it can work for this group and we're seeing benefits there, then I want to try it here as well. And I love that, because ultimately we want to prove out some success that certain practices can work, or let's learn that they're not working and not be married to something that's just not going to help us. But then let's have leaders engaged from start to finish where they know what they're responsible for, and ultimately what I love to see is when a leader says, you know, at the beginning of this quarter or the beginning of the six months from now, we had these three main problems, and those aren't our biggest problems anymore. We've solved those to a point where we can manage, now we have other problems we need to solve for, and that's what you want, right? And the nice thing is if you've solved the biggest problem, or at least you have a good handle on it, now the next biggest problem maybe isn't as big as that first one was, and we can start to make more progress, and maybe new practices become more evident. So, and that's what we try to do with any transformation. If you're just going through the motions to transform your group because it's what everyone else is doing or it’s  what we were recommended to do or whatever other reason, it's not going to be nearly as impactful as if it's actually solving the things that you know need to be solved for. And that's where you get leaders' attention. Instead of it just being a side project while I focus on my real work, we're saying, this is solving your real work, and that's where they get really excited about, you know, being involved and seeing the day-to-day progress.

Ula Ojiaku

No, that's awesome. So in terms of, you've already mentioned some of it in terms of what leaders should watch out for, one of it is definitely not being passive, you know, go ye be agile whilst we do the real work. Anything else they should be watching out for?

Bryan Tew

Well, you know, that may be a good transition to something I like to share sometimes at conferences. This is what I call the 10 elephants in the business agility room, I mentioned one earlier, but these are things really geared towards leaders. So, I hope that our audience here, if you're struggling with any of these that I describe, gosh, there are real solutions, absolutely, but here's the biggest message. Don't ignore these, because they will eventually bite you and potentially even cause a derailment of your transformation efforts. So I'll just walk through these. Certainly, I'm available for more of a deep dive if anyone wants to reach out, but these are what I call the 10 elephants in the business agility room because no one wants to talk about them, right, they're hard topics, they're difficult topics, but you cannot be truly successful from a business agility perspective all around if you ignore these. So the first one, and this is probably one of the biggest ones that we see, is when we see misaligned incentives, so that's number one. And friends, the idea behind this is sometimes you have these transformation goals and you want these to work, but in reality you have incentives that are very much misaligned to those transformation goals, even some of your product level goals, I'll sometimes see, for instance, product managers who part of their compensation package has maybe an incentive goal around how many projects you start or how many products that we deliver. It's like, all about outputs. Nothing to say about how effective they are or what the actual outcomes from those products might be, it's just as long as we get a project started, well, that's very anti-Agile in reality, you know, especially when we're thinking about true value. So you need to really look at your incentives. Now, leadership incentives we could talk all day about, right, sometimes it's around specific financial goals, sometimes about people goals. What I would always suggest is rethink your incentives to become more outcome-oriented, not necessarily tied directly to an OKR or key result, but related, okay, aligned to those, because what your incentives should actually be around would be your business vision, and the business outcomes you're trying to accomplish, why would it make sense to have anything else? So that's one thing that we see oftentimes has to be discussed at some point, right?

Ula Ojiaku

Definitely, because incentives would determine the behaviour, which leads to the results we get.

Bryan Tew

So, the second one is kind of related and, and this is around sometimes we see a lot of, especially in large organisations, top heavy management, we see a lot of leaders, and not enough doers, and the reality is I get this, because in large organisations we want to reward people for a great job, and so we continue to promote, but we just add more leaders that are sometimes not necessary. And remember, those are highly paid people who now maybe don't have a lot of responsibility. I've seen, some directors, for instance, with like three direct reports and they don't really do a lot, and it's just unfortunate that we're trying to reward people in a way that actually hurts our business. So, I know it's a hard thing to talk about, but at a certain point I would always suggest that let's take a look at what leaders are necessary and what balance do we need between the leaders and the doers, the people in the trenches doing the work. And we've seen lots of, of managers and supervisors and directors and general managers and operations managers and VPs and senior VPs, and some of them are absolutely needed and they do incredible work, but sometimes there are others that just aren't needed, we just don't know how to handle that. So that's something that would be part of a true transformation, is to think about what's the right balance for us, okay, and make small steps to get there. Now, kind of related though is sometimes we see that they're just bad managers, and that's number three, okay, bad managers, where we are promoting people, let's say they were an excellent developer, as an example, okay, or QA leader, or it could be any type of role, and we promote them to be a manager. They don't have good management skills yet, they have never done this before, what they're still good at is what they were doing before. So they like to solve problems, they like to fight fires, they like to do all of the tactical things. And they, some of them, are just really bad with relationships, and so they become almost despised by their people because they're just very abrasive, sometimes they just don't treat their people well, and you have to watch for that. Now, I'll say this as well. Sometimes you have these great performers who don't even want to be managers, but it's the only opportunity they have in the organisation to progress or get a pay raise or promotion. And so, we find that in, especially large organisations, there are so many other needs that these people can move into, you know, for instance, we need, internally we need coaches, like technical coaches or DevOps coaches or architecture coaches, or even people coaches that these people could start to do some work in, we might have some technical roles, or project management roles or whatever it might be, that these people might move into, RTE roles, or continuous improvement champion roles, and sometimes that's a much better fit, or potentially even managing a process or service or operational area instead of managing people, that can sometimes be a great fit. So that's one thing to watch out for, because not everyone is well equipped to become a manager, and you might lose some of your most talented doers because they're sick of their manager, they're tired of being treated the way they have been, so watch for that. Which leads me to number four, and this is where it goes back to leaders. Sometimes we'll see leaders that say they want change, but they don't want change in my area. Change everywhere else, but don't change me, right, because I'm comfortable with what we're doing and I own it and it's my fiefdom. And friends, if you want true enterprise transformation, and really enterprise delivery that is aligned to your strategy, we all have to be open to what changes make sense. Now, we're not trying to force fit any change, I would never suggest that, and if you have vendors or coaches that are trying to just force fit change for the sake of change, then you need to ask questions about that. But how do we actually improve our process so we can deliver more effectively? And this is where I'll just, I hope that this will be a nugget of wisdom for people. But I would say this, the important thing is not your process. Okay, you can have an agile process, you could have a waterfall process, you could have any process. The important thing is your process for improving your process. How are you continually optimising? How are you looking at what's working or what's not working, more importantly, and really take action to fix those things that are not working to improve and optimise. That is a continual thing, and it never ends, especially with the way that technology advancements are taking place. We are always going to get disrupted in different ways, customer changing needs and so forth, that's always going to change the way we work. So let's continually optimise by improving the way that we improve our process. So, kind of with that, leaders need to really own that yes, we are open to change, but let's make sure it makes sense, let's look at what our needs are and how we can actually improve the way that we deliver. Now, the next one, number five, this is maybe the hardest one, and this is where sometimes we have rigid funding models that are just not allowing for agility and adaptability, and I think every organisation struggles with this. And I'll just tell you, I'll just give you one example of an organisation where we actually went through the work to build OKRs, you know, these really great OKRs that all the leadership team was aligned on, and when we actually went to, okay, what are we going to do about it? They said, well, all of our projects are funded for the year, so we can't do anything about it. And when that realisation came that the work that they were actually having their teams do day-to-day was not the work that would actually drive their most important outcomes, it was like this slap in the face, like, we've got to change this, we've got to do something different. And so, having the conversation, starting out with your finance folks, with your product folks, I find personally in my experience, that it is not hard to have a conversation with finance, bring in your CFO, bring in their staff, it's not hard to have the conversation because in reality, any good CFO would be looking at how can we, as a finance organisation, better support our delivery in product organisation. Like, that's what we should always be thinking about. So I find that they're usually open to ideas, they just don't know what they don't know. And so I'll sometimes talk to IT folks, IT leaders, and they'll say, well, you know, our finance group will never go for this. Have you brought it to them to really consider on, because I would be surprised if they would be that resistant, if this is the way the business is going, right? So I don't find that that's such a hard conversation. Now, making the actual changes needs to be a little incremental.

Ula Ojiaku

Can I ask a question about that though? And I do agree that, you know, most people, they come to work, wanting to do their best for the organisation and to move things forward, and that includes finance, legal, whatever, you know, division. Now what if it's a publicly traded organisation, you know, they have regulatory, you know, reporting needs, and so how do you navigate through that?

Bryan Tew

So, in reality, most of the regulatory aspects of your financials are not going to need to change all that much, it's how is the money being used? So for instance, instead of funding projects, which it's easy to see a start and an end date for a project, we're going to adjust this, and that's one of the reasons why using increments like program increments, PIs, is helpful, or even quarterly increments, and saying, we're going to fund teams within a structure, like a value stream potentially, and then we can leave it to the local leaders, the product folks, the product managers, to determine based on our outcomes, what should the teams focus on now. I mean, the reality is we're paying for those people whether they're part of a project or not, right? So if you move the money to fund a backlog of work, rather, that can change and be prioritised based on what we're learning, instead of just a project from start to finish, you'll see tremendous gains in how we can adapt and truly work on the right things in the moment. Now, I will say that maybe that doesn't work for everyone to start out for sure, and that usually is an incremental process to get there, but when you think about it that way, can we still have the same controls in place for how we check in on how the money is being spent? Absolutely. In fact, I would suggest that you're probably going to see a lot more physical evidence that you're providing value as you have Sprint demos and system demos and PI demos to actually see how the work is actually being delivered. And then getting feedback from customers much more effectively. Now it's just a matter of how do we actually look at where our people are, where is the time going? And sometimes that's not even that important when you realise that it's really about how the solutions, the products and solutions, are actually being accomplished. So that, to me, is not the big constraint here, and it's certainly not the problem that I would start with, but it is something that we need to be thinking about. Does that change, and do we have specific nuances based on our regulatory environment, our country, whatever it is, that we have to really consider. And I would say the same thing goes through for Agile capitalisation. So many groups are not capitalising to the maximum benefit that they should be because they're scared that maybe we're going to go off the rails. Friends, there is absolute integrity in doing capitalisation for agile projects or agile buckets of work that you are probably able to really benefit from, and you're probably not, there's a lot of work there that you can actually bring in then for some of your spending around transformation work because of the gains. The sixth one is more at a people level, but can be helped by your leaders. This is an unwillingness to share knowledge and do cross training. Now, sometimes people just don't want to learn new things, maybe we have a fixed mindset. More often, people don't want to share what they know because I feel like I'm the indispensable tiger and that makes me more valuable, or sometimes it's a bigger problem than that, that leadership can manage. It's, I don't have time to do this. I want to share, because I need help, or I want to learn, because this will help my team, but we have so many priorities day to day and deadlines that we're trying to meet, we're working the midnight oil anyway, I don't have time for cross training, I don't have time to teach someone a skill that will actually benefit us for years going forward. So leaders need to actually build time and space and capacity for knowledge sharing, cross training, learning. If you're not a learning organisation, friends, then you are falling behind. And this is the time where we believe that learning may be the only competitive advantage that you'll have, you know, the way that you can learn fast and implement your learning into your delivery system.

Ula Ojiaku

I came across this material, and well, basically it just said we're no longer in the information era, we’re now in the augmented era. So before it's like, you know, you're learning right now, it has to be embedded into how you are working, you are learning as you go, and that's the expected norm moving forward.

Bryan Tew

So seven is avoiding the cultural impacts of transformation, right, and I think we're kind of overcoming that hump, but the reality is that leaders drive culture change. It’s not just a grassroots culture that we're looking at, you know, teams can have their own culture, even a train can have their own culture, but when you're looking at an organisational culture, leaders drive the culture through example, through their behaviours, through the values that we articulate and share and reinforce, but it's also about how do we work and what are we trying to accomplish? And so that's why in our EBA model, we actually have a leadership and culture pillar specifically that leaders need to own, because in reality, culture is one of those top most important things that will actually establish lasting change.

Ula Ojiaku

And by EBA you mean Enterprise Business Agility. Awesome.

Bryan Tew

Yeah, which leads us to number eight. And this is where, kind of back to another one, leaders will say something but not really mean it. For instance, leaders will say that they need to prioritise better. Yes, we need better prioritisation. Yes, a value-based scoring system sounds amazing. But then in reality, they'll go and pull the trump cards and they'll escalate and they'll pull things out of the hat because we need this done now instead of actually looking at the value, the business value of the priorities that we should have in place. So it takes some discipline, and yes, we need some level of money to account for those rapid changes or rapid things that come in that we don't want to miss out on. That's why the ability to have adaptive funding is so important. You know, how often can you ask yourselves, have we had an opportunity where if we don't hit this right now, we're going to miss the window of opportunity? And it's shameful when an organisation says, well, we have to approve that in our budgeting process, so that's going to take months. Well, okay, I guess you don't want that opportunity, right? So all of that makes a difference. So how do we prioritise and how do we adjust and look at priorities constantly? We're always reprioritising based on value, and based on what we're seeing in our marketplace, in our industry, with our people. All that matters. But when I see leaders that, you know, they'll kind of say from a word perspective only, yes, I agree, these are the priorities, and then they'll do their very different own thing for their people, that's a problem, right, that's a problem.

Ula Ojiaku

And where I've seen this happen as well, it kind of ties in with your number one, which is misaligned incentives, but sometimes it's really, okay, yes, this is the right thing to do, but my target says X, so we're not going to do Y because I need to hit my targets and get my bonus. But anyway, so that's number eight. Sorry, go on.

Bryan Tew

And so Ula, maybe this sounds familiar, but sometimes I'll hear a leader that will be part of our kind of portfolio or enterprise strategy, and then they'll go back to the people and say, you know, don't worry, those are the priorities for the business, but I'll tell you your real priorities. Really? You mean you're not aligned with your business? Because that's a problem. So anyway, that leads us to number nine, which is putting a blind eye to capacity and employee burnout. Sometimes we just don't want to talk about it, right? We don't want to think about it, we know that our people are, you know, probably burning out. We're asking them to work weekends and late nights, but, you know, they'll figure it out. Or sometimes we'll have leaders that will push more work to the teams that are already over capacity, because in their minds they'll think, well, if they feel the pressure, they'll just start to do more, they'll somehow produce more and we'll force them to kind of get these deadlines made. Friends, you're going to lose people that way. You're going to lose quality. Lots of problems from that perspective. And I will tell you this, that there was one organisation where they wanted to bring in business agility and they said their number one problem was that their best people had been burned out and were all leaving. And when your best people leave, that puts you in a really terrible situation, doesn't it? So they realised they had to stop that, and this was year after year of, you know, it's going to get better, just get this project done, it's going to get better, and it never does. So, which leads us to our 10th elephant in the room. And this one I am, I give you kind of as a bonus because it's not really an elephant anymore. It's more of just something that should be part of our initial conversation. It's not having an outcome-oriented measurement strategy for your teams and transformation. So we kind of briefly touched on that earlier, but starting out any kind of change work or transformation work with specific outcomes that will actually help you to know that you're getting the business value or the needs met that you have in mind, that's so important, whether they're OKRs or other type of format, you know, that's not as important for me, but do you have a plan for how you're driving the right results? That's important. And one of the things that, that we do at AgilityHealth is we build a measurement strategy in place for your teams. You know, how healthy are they, how are they maturing, how are they performing? But also, I would say not just your teams, but your individuals. How do you know your individuals are doing well? But also, how about performance level, whether it's a train, a program, and as well as your portfolio and enterprise. If you don't know how you're doing in each of those areas, you know, that's actually what we try to help organisations with. So that's been really exciting for us to be able to work in. And those are the 10 elephants.

Ula Ojiaku

They're all very thought provoking elephants, if I may say so myself. And this is really great in terms of, and I have attended one of your courses, you took us through the Enterprise Business Agility Strategist course. That was excellent, life changing, I'm saying it not just because you're here, but it's true, it did make me think, it opened my eyes and it gave me a more joined up perspective of, you know, what a true transformation should look like and what are the key principles and pillars that one needs to consider to ensure that their transformation effort is sustainable. And you also have, you know, the tool that you have, you know, the AgilityHealth Radars and the tools, they are quite useful as well. Yeah, so great.

Bryan Tew

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad to hear you say that because ultimately the Enterprise Business Agility Model is really for leaders. It's a strategy model for leaders, you know, leaders, coaches, transformation folks who are really leading transformations, that's the intention, so you can have everything in place so your teams can actually be successful and deliver most effectively. Agile only gets you part of the way, right, and Agile is part of the model for sure, but it's not what leaders focus most on, right? It's what teams will do. Leaders need to do the other things will actually allow your teams to be successful. If anyone's interested in looking at the model, you can actually go to agilityhealthradar.com and that's where you can see our radars, that's where you can also go to the EBA model, and all of that is there.

Ula Ojiaku

So what books have you recommended most to people, and why?

Bryan Tew

Yeah, great question. So, you know, one that I've recommended for years that I really have enjoyed, I mean this was lifechanging for me, is called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, and the reason for that is this will really help you as an individual, a leader, a coach, whatever role, to really build in excellent habits, and there are many self-help books around how to build good habits. This was by far the best one that I've read, and it really kind of goes through a step by step - here's how you start from your morning routine to how you start to build in the right practices day to day, you know, how you influence others, like it's been tremendous. I'll give two others as well. I really loved the Trillion Dollar Coach, and this was written by some of the Google guys talking about a coach that really helped Silicon Valley organisations think more strategically and become real excellent leaders. So it's called the Trillion Dollar Coach, Eric Schmidt is one of the co-authors there, and he happened to be my CEO at Novell back in the day, so that was kind of exciting, and I recommend that for any type of leadership role or coach role. And then another one that is more recent, but I've just really loved is called Project to Product by Mik Kersten, many of you have heard of this one. I see a lot of organisations right now trying to move from projects to more product-oriented organisations, and he has a great way of thinking about that through his flow model to talk about how do you practically do that, so I highly recommend that one as well.

Ula Ojiaku

So where can the audience find you?

Bryan Tew

Well, I am on LinkedIn. I am one of the only Bryan Tews, T-E-W, Bryan with a Y, but I'd be happy to take any emails at bryan@agilityhealthradar.com. I do use Twitter, I don't use it a lot, but you can find me there as well, at B2Agile. Okay. And you know what, I just love having these conversations. So if any of you are interested in whether it's our strategy model or our EBA Radar or our AgilityHealth Radars, we have actually an OKR or outcome dashboard that if you're getting into OKRs, that might be a great thing to try out and utilise, that’s been really helpful, we use it internally. And those are all things that we're real excited about. And sometimes I'll be at different conferences, speaking here and there, and I always love to do that, but to certainly reach out, I'd love to share any thoughts and ideas with you, and certainly help in what problems you're trying to solve.

Ula Ojiaku

Thank you so much, Bryan, these would be in the show notes as well. Any final words for the audience?

Bryan Tew

You know, I'm just excited that this has been such a big part of our community now, thinking about business agility, enterprise agility, it's a different feel than when we were just talking about Scrum and Kanban and some of these more specific frameworks. Business agility truly is opening up organisations doors to a new level of possibility. So I would say if you're just starting out on your business agility, learning and journey, keep that up, look at the resources that will help you learn what's going to solve your biggest challenge, it's an exciting place to be and I love that there are so many getting into this space because it's kind of the next level of really organisational optimisation, regardless of what kind of organisation you are. And what I love about business agility is it applies to any type of team, any type of group, because there are always things that we can do to improve the way that we either support our business, work in the business, or provide services for our customers. So I'll kind of leave it at that.

Ula Ojiaku

Well, thank you so much, Bryan. It's been an absolute pleasure and I've also gained insights speaking with you, so thank you for making the time.

Bryan Tew

Absolutely my pleasure, Ula.

Ula Ojiaku

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! 

 

 

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.

 

 

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 wanting us to be more capable for the environment we're actually in. And so I think that's why it's up for us and up for other people.

Ula Ojiaku

Michael, do you have any more, anything else to add to that?

Michael Hamman

Well, no, what you're saying, Lyssa, just it makes me think of this metaphor that I often use that it's that meaning making, that Lyssa was just referring to, that, which we need to bring to a higher level of complexity to meet the complexity of the world. It's a bit like, you could think of it analogically as a kind of operating system, like an operating system metaphor that, you know, I noticed on my phone, you know, that there are a lot of apps that won't install on my phone because I have to upgrade the operating system. And similarly, in the world of the complex world, the world, I love what you just said, the hockey stick, all the graphs are hockey sticks. Now in the world in which all the graphs are hockey sticks, right, we need, we need new apps. Apps are our behaviours, the actions that we take, and in order to take the kinds of actions that we need to take in this world of hockey stick graphs, we need to upgrade the operating system that informs those actions, and that's what vertical learning is all about.

Ula Ojiaku

Hmm. And to just explore that metaphor of the operating system, would it have any relationship with, you know, our mindset, our attitudes, or worldview?

Michael Hamman

I would say absolutely. In fact, oftentimes we use the word mindset as a kind of shortcut term to point to this realm. But unfortunately, for the most part we don't, you know, we're pretty good at, in the agile world at eliciting ways of understanding things that have to do with engineering and basic management and you know, product management and so we've gotten very good, like business agility has taught us a lot about how to bring a kind of agile competency, agile capacity for action, I guess you could say. The thing we haven't gotten very good at, and that's what the work we're up to here is to, what's the nature of mindset? What's the science and the research behind mindset, which has a comparable depth, a comparable legacy to the various engineering and complexity science lineage that informs other aspects of Agile, and so this is really about bringing those sort of human technology, the lineage of human technology to bear, to help us grow that inner operating system. So this is, in many ways, it's a research-based and science-based sort of set of practices as much as an art.

Ula Ojiaku

That's great. So based on what you've said, that would bring me to the concept of inner versus outer agility. You know, because you said business, we've learned a lot, agile, you know, business agility. But to an extent, and this is me summarising what I think I've heard from you, Michael, you know, it's kind of, we've kind of focused on the engineering of products and services, but there is the inner work we need to do to be able to operate more effectively in a world of hockey stick graphs or some other people will call it VUCA in a volatile, uncertain, complex… I forgot what the A means…

Lyssa Adkins

Ambiguous.

Ula Ojiaku

Ambiguous, thank you so much, Lyssa. So can you, how would this tie in with the concept of outer versus inner agility?

Michael Hamman

It brings to mind, you know, young children learn programming, you know, like young nine year olds and ten year olds. But it's unlikely that they'll ever be able to build huge, the kinds of huge software systems that professional software engineers are able to build. And it's, and it's partly due to skill, but at some point that young child, you could teach them more and more advanced programming skills, but they're, at some point they're not going to be able to absorb it. And that points to their inner meaning making. And it's similar in organisations that we could teach them, you know, agile frameworks, but they may get better and better at it at first, you know, but then at some point they hit a ceiling, and that ceiling is defined by their capacity for inner agility. And so when we hit the ceiling, we could see that as a signal, wow, we need to start to do some work on both our individual and our collectively held sense making frames if we're going to actually get past that ceiling. We will not get past that ceiling, I think we all know that by now, unless something shifts in the area of inner agility, or you could say mindset. But I use the word mindset somewhat reluctantly because it's become a buzzword and we really, for the most part, we really don't know what it means.

Ula Ojiaku

I didn't mean to impose that word on you, that was me trying to make sense (of the concepts)...

Michael Hamman

The word is so out there and so I kind of want to, whenever I have an opportunity to do a little bit of violence to that word, I would rather talk to it.

Ula Ojiaku

No worries at all. And something you said about, you know, individuals and teams hitting the ceiling, getting to a limit with applying the Agile frameworks, due to their operating systems needing an upgrade. It reminds me of, I believe it's the writing of John Maxwell. He's a known leadership expert and he has something called, you know, the Leadership Law of the Lid. You can only lead effectively to a certain extent, and it kind of ties in with what you're saying about you'd have to do the work, because once you’ve hit that limit, you have a choice either to remain at that level or you upgrade yourself, you expand your capacity by learning, by being coached by, you know, being willing to learn, or, I mean, unlearn and relearn or, you know, learn new things, but change the way you do things to get to the next level. Now, how can one upgrade their operating system?

Michael Hamman

Well, that's what vertical learning really ultimately points to, and it's a different kind of learning. So you could say that there are three different kinds of learning. The first is informational learning, where we, you know, basically teach concepts and we give information. And the idea is, is that then people take that information or those concepts and apply it, you know, into their life and, you know, into their work, and so that's one form of learning perfectly valid and legitimate for certain kinds of learning needs, I guess you could say. The second kind of learning or the second sort of method of learning is behavioural, where we teach skills and competencies to people, with the idea that they will then take those skills and competencies out into their world and exercise those skills and competencies. The problem is, is that what we often find is that both with, in terms of informational learning and behavioural learning, is that there's a missing ingredient. Oftentimes, for instance, people don't know when it's appropriate to bring a certain information to bear in a given moment, or, for people who have learned particular skills, they find themselves unable to exercise those skills when it really matters, when the heat gets high. And this is where the third quality of learning comes in, which is called transformational learning. And transformational learning doesn't happen in the same realm as informational and behavioural learning. It can't, it's not taught by telling people. It's not even taught, you know, through behavioural practice, although that can be part of it. It has to be taught in a very different way, and this is where Vertical Facilitation builds because you can only bring about transformational learning through the design of a learning environment. And it can only be done by creating situations in which people experience a kind of inner dilemma between what, how the categories with which they already make sense and the category that is likely to be necessary to make sense of the current situation being presented to them.

Ula Ojiaku

Lyssa, do you have anything to add to that?

Lyssa Adkins

Well, just that it is so much fun to present a group of people with a disorienting dilemma, and to watch them reach the edge of their known meaning making, and to find out that it's actually not the edge of the world, they're not going to fall off the world. They can say, oh, wow, now I see that that frame of reference I was holding, it's just a frame of reference, it's actually not how the world is. You know, now I can look at it, I can take it off of me and look at it as an object and say, okay, well how has this frame of reference served me in the past? And do I still need it now? What pieces am I bringing forward as I expand into other frames of reference that can inform me more completely about the situation I'm in? And so it's just, you know, for about a decade, I suppose. Michael Hamman and I were involved, this guy right here, with others, were involved in conducting these transformational learning environments in our agile coaching work. And it is such a joy, it is such a joy to see people break through this concrete, calcified way that they were viewing the world and to realise, ah, there's like a field out here with flowers and butterflies and there's all kinds of other options now available to me, and you know, we have a lot of lived experience in those kinds of transformational education environments. And that builds on training that we've all had, but also on Michael's really long history with transformational education environments and I think the modern need for us to help others increase their vertical capabilities.

Ula Ojiaku

I know that some of my audience, or people who are listening or watching, would be wondering, what Vertical Facilitation is, and they also would be wondering if you have any stories. And of course, I'm here as your student, maybe there would be a demonstration, but before we all, you know, go to the stories and all that, what's Vertical Facilitation? Because you've already defined for us what vertical learning is.

Lyssa Adkins

I want to set the stage for Michael to say what it is because this is where Michael's thought leadership is really coming to bear in the world. He's creating a new composition for us to live in because he's taking what was once implicit about Vertical Facilitation, learning environments, and making it explicit. And so many people have components of this in their leadership development programs, in their agile coach training in their, whatever they're doing, but to make it more explicit and usable for them would really amp up the results they're getting from whatever program they're in. And so that's, those are the people who we're trying to reach and I just want to say this is a new composition.

Ula Ojiaku

Thank you, Lyssa. Michael, please.

Michael Hamman

I feel incredibly humbled by what you've been saying, Lyssa. Thank you. Yeah, I would say that Vertical Facilitation is a way of working with groups leaderfully. So it's a leaderful way of working with groups. So it's not, you know, the typical sort of neutrality of facilitation that we ordinarily think of it. So there's a leaderful intention, but the leaderful intention has to do with being able to be attentive to what's the quality of the sense making that's going on in this moment with this individual, in the interactions between these two  individuals or the interactions among the individuals within a group, and the group energy. So it's a, so Vertical Facilitation is about paying attention to all of these things with an ear for what's going on here developmentally and developmentally is just another word for vertically. What is the sense making that's going on? And Vertical Facilitation is about creating moments, creating situational moments in which people experience what Lyssa just termed a moment ago, a disorienting dilemma, and it could be a, and a disorienting dilemma, again, is the recognition that something about the way that I'm making sense of this situation is insufficient to be able to successfully manage myself in that situation. So it's a kind of an ‘aha’ and sometimes it's a moment of fear or anxiety, right? And so Vertical Facilitation includes having this sort of loving manner that allows for people to come face to face with whatever emotional emotions they're experiencing as they encounter a particular disorienting dilemma. And just to say one more thing about that, the disorienting dilemma can be experienced within an individual or within a group, and Vertical Facilitation is simply about surfacing moments in which that disorienting dilemma becomes present for people, whether individuals or the whole group, such that they can make a choice. So the important thing here is awareness and choice, and I called it an existential choice because it's a choice in how to exist in relation to this situation. And when people can make that choice toward a more complex way of making sense, not only does it alter the way they relate to this particular situation, but in that very alteration, it alters the sort of neural connections by which they make sense of other similar situations. And so that's what we mean by transformation. A transformation occurs when there's the, an alteration through the exercise of this existential choice of those that the kind of neural network by which we've come to make sense of a given situation or set of situations. So that's about the shortest way I could say it was.

Lyssa Adkins

Well, and let me just highlight how incredibly powerful this fulcrum is, because once we can get up underneath the unexamined lenses that people are looking at the world through, and once we can help them encounter this thing that used to be like perfectly fine and it's somehow limiting now, then it's not only the situation that they're presented with right now that has different outcomes and maybe more success, but it's everything like this and everything in the future that is related that gets a lift. I mean, so like the leverage capability is really, really high with this kind of development and this kind of transformational experience.

Michael Hamman

Yeah, and at the expense of elongating this, this part, but I just want to build on something that Lyssa said here that part of what happens when vertical learning happens, or when transformational learning happens, is that people have a state, have state experiences, and so a state experience, we've all had them, it's a moment, it's a kind of an ‘aha’ moment, so it's a sort of cognitive insight, which is combined with an emotion. It's a certain emotion. And you could say that at those moments, something in us gets connected to something much deeper. It's like we have a moment where we're drilling down into some deeper part of ourselves and being able to pull up a kind of wisdom. Now we've all had these, you know, these moments of, we call them state experiences and oftentimes we pooh-pooh state experiences because, well, you know, that was so, you know, last week because quote unquote state experiences fade. Now part of what happens with deliberate Vertical Facilitation is that we stage sequences of moments in which people experience state experiences. And what the research shows is that when people can repeat state experiences, it tightens up the new neural connections that get created during any given state experience. And so there are many pieces to the art of Vertical Facilitation, and one of them is this kind of engineering of situations that bring about these state experiences where people have an ‘aha’ by virtue of having gotten to the other side of some sort of disorienting dilemma.

Ula Ojiaku

Right. Wow. Are there any stories that you could share highlighting, you know, like where you facilitated or you implemented Vertical Facilitation, created a situation or scenario where people were put into, you know, where they experienced dilemmas and then you were able to facilitate them to get to that state experience, are there any stories that you could share just to give some of, myself included, you know, a kind of example that we could identify with?

Michael Hamman

Yeah, I think I would like for us to offer a couple of examples, maybe one that's, maybe from when we were doing the Coaching Agile Teams classes. And then I'd like to offer an example from something that's a little bit more personal in tone. So, I don't know, do you want to speak to the first one, Lyssa?

Lyssa Adkins

Well, what I'd love us to do is for you to offer the example and then let me help you make it clear how that example created heat experiences, connected to the bigger game, like the different aspects of Vertical Facilitation that you are now exposing for the world. Does that sound good?

Michael Hamman

Yeah, that sounds good. So, the first example used to happen a lot when we were teaching this class Coaching Agile Teams. And a lot of our listeners probably took it years ago. And there's a moment in that class, this is just one example of many such moments, but there's a moment in this class where we teach a skill that we called Level Two Listening, and the distinction between Level One and Level Two Listening and Level One, just to say something about that distinction to get the example across, Level One Listening is listening to my own thoughts and paying attention to my own thoughts, I'm with this other person, but I'm really not with them, whereas Level Two Listening is as I'm really with them, and I'm not only hearing what they're saying, but I'm actually,  I'm not only listening to what they're saying, but I'm listening for who this person is. So there's a quality of genuine relationship in this moment. And I'm not trying to take this person anywhere, I'm not trying to get them, you know, I'm not trying to figure anything out with them. And so then we invite people to practice this and what happens invariably is that people have this, first of all, it's very uncomfortable initially, that they have this disorienting dilemma because they're so used to like having to figure out, okay, well how can I help this person, or what can I say, or, you know, I'm not really understanding what this person's saying, or, you know, all the stuff that goes on when we're in that Level One Listening. So there's a disorienting dilemma. But then there's the ‘aha’ that happens when something shifts in the way that the other person is expressing themselves. You know, like they suddenly become more, maybe coherent or they become more self-expressive, or maybe authentic. And so they have the experience of that connection and it becomes possible for them to make that existential choice. Wow. That was really amazing. You know, typically we have those kinds of experiences when we're falling in love, but not when I'm talking with somebody that I just met earlier today. So that would be one example.

Ula Ojiaku

Would you say Level Two Listening again, and this is me trying to make sense of the terminology, would that equate to what, well, I know as active listening, because that is really about just listening, not just for the words that are being said, but what's the, you know, are there any emotions being conveyed with it? What’s the body language, can you read in between the lines, but just focusing on what they're saying without thinking about what your response is going to be or what your counter-argument is going to be.

Michael Hamman

Yeah I would say that Level Two Listening, how I would really clearly differentiate is that it's me being silent, you know? So I'm not trying to establish camaraderie with this other person, quote unquote, camaraderie. I'm simply being present and hearing what they're saying and listening to what they're saying and being attentive to who they're being. And what I understand about active listening is that sometimes you want to say things to indicate to the person that you're following them, that you're with them. And, you know, we find that to be actually, counterintuitively perhaps, a bit distracting, whereas Level Two Listening is just, it's actually more uncomfortable, because we're not really saying and to clarify Level Two Listening there.

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah. And for people who are more interested in that language level of listening comes from the Coactive Coaching School, it's often also called focused listening or listening for, those are and active listening is an adjacent and related topic, but has been, has the history that Michael just talked about that sometimes is counterproductive. Okay, so Michael, for that situation that you just talked about, which used to happen every single time and every single Coaching Agile Team's class, we could rely on this being a disorienting dilemma for people, right. So, just to be clear about the four perspectives, heat experiences, stretch practices, social container, and bigger game. So how does that situation, how is it an example of heat experience?

Michael Hamman

So a disorienting dilemma is a heat experience. And by a heat experience we mean it's an experience in which something in us gets challenged, some known category gets challenged, and we often feel it at first as anxiety. Sometimes we feel it as a sense of excitement, oftentimes it's a mix of feelings. But it's always this sense that something is getting challenged, some category. I don't mean us as a person's getting challenged, but the way in which we are making sense of something is getting challenged in the moment in which that sense making is occurring. So it can't happen, you know, retroactively, it can't happen with respect to something that I did or said yesterday. It has to be elicited in this moment and that's the key to creating a heat experience. And there are lots of different ways to create heat experiences. But that's one of them, that's the most classic way.

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah. And I would say that people did experience that heat experience as very confronting. We would often ask, so what was that like? And they'd be like, I hated it, oh my God, I felt so weird. You know, it was like this whole mix, and then there would also be the person who would say like, oh, I found it so relieving, right. Like, so there's a whole mix of how people are dealing with it. And I think that moves to the second of the four that we could talk about now, which is social container. So like how in that situation was there a social container, Michael, that helped make this a Vertical Facilitation moment?

Michael Hamman

Yeah, great. So this was toward the end of the first day of Coaching Agile Teams. And by that point we had, there's a way in which, Lyssa, Michael Spayd and myself, the three of us who led these courses, there was a way in which we held the space, we use that term holding the space, which is paying attention to not only what's happening with individuals, so we might be interacting with an individual, but also scanning, we're constantly scanning the space to see what's happening. How is this landing? You know, does the space feel stuck, and from time to time, giving feedback to the group or to the class, you know, wow, the space, the energy feels stuck, what's happening. And so inviting people to get involved, to elicit their own awareness of the space or the group, or the emotional energy, which oftentimes, you know, we don't pay attention, as human beings we are aware of these things, but we have so long ago lost our ability to have our awareness of that awareness. And so part of what happens is we elicit this awareness of group energy and what that does in combined with, you know, the fact that we're bringing people to these disorienting dilemmas is a certain kind of bondedness happens. There's a unique quality of bondedness and this is something that people always remarked about these courses and in other courses that both Lyssa and I do, the quality of social bondedness creates an environment of safety, right? So we talk about, you know, emotional safety, right? But it makes it possible for us then to challenge each other, it makes it possible for the environment to be challenging. So it's both safe and challenging. So in that moment, it was, that environment was really starting to come alive.

Ula Ojiaku

On that point about the social container and, you know, saying you create a state where, well not state, but you create a situation where there's a social bond with the group. Would you say that what something that would help with that bonding is trust, an element of trust that I can be vulnerable is there?

Lyssa Adkins

So trust is a tricky one, because everyone's got a different definition of it. And so one of the things that we would do, and that I would suggest everyone do in a transformational learning environment is to just consciously and explicitly design the alliance of how this is going to go between all of us together. And the purpose for doing that is to put the participants in the driver's seat in terms of being responsible for their own experience, but also to empower the course leaders to lead people through these experiences. And so when someone would say, well, we would say something like, so what do we need in this environment for you to really get the most out of it? Oh, I need it to be, I need to trust it. Okay, great. What do you mean by trust? So once we get below sort of the easy word, then we get to what people really need in the container. And the most important thing then, as the chorus or as the program or as the leadership development longitudinal thing goes on, whatever thing you're doing, as it goes on, what the most important thing is, is for the leaders to constantly be affirming of, bringing in Vertical Facilitation to whatever program you're doing, and the other two are stretch practices and bigger game.

Michael Hamman

So stretch practice is a practice that requires that somebody stretch some known category. So it's very much related to, by the way, all four of these qualities, we call them design elements, overlap, and they, you know, they synchronistically, you know, interact with one another, so they're not really to be seen in isolation. So stretch practice is one that, the practice of which requires that something in my way of understanding things has to shift. So for instance, in this case, you know, inviting people to practice Level Two Listening, which by the time they did it for the third time, they were starting to get it. You know, there was that shift from awareness of the disorienting dilemma to an existential choice, wow, this is really a profound way to work with other people. And so the stretch practice here was a very simple one, which is this thing of Level Two Listening. So, you know, oftentimes, in fact, almost always transformational learning happens through the introduction of some sort of stretch practice, that the stretch practice is a kind of vehicle, a kind of catalyst for creating a situational moment in which transformational learning becomes possible, because I want us to keep in mind that this is not about reflecting on things that happened yesterday or last week. This is about bringing situations present in the moment,  and there's a whole psychological research called memory reconsolidation that's in the background of all of this. We're not going to get into that right now, but it's an important technology and this is why it's important to make these situations that are happening in the now. And so that would be an example of a stretch practice, the practice of which something has to shift in the way that somebody makes sense of something.

Lyssa Adkins

And to just be really clear about what the stretch practice was, like the first stretch practice was so simple on its face. It was basically this. Now that you have heard about Level One Listening, which is all about you, your ideas, how you want to be valuable, how you want to be smart, how you want to show this person you're listening. Shift to Level Two, which is you being focused on what they're saying, what's behind the words, and as you said earlier, Ula, what's the emotional content that's going on there? So here's the instruction. You're going to listen to this person talk about something real and something that is on their mind for three minutes, and you're not going to say anything. And the reason you're not going to say anything is because you want some space in your mind to notice, ah, when am I with them at Level Two? And when do I fall back to Level One? No big deal, just come back to Level Two. So it created a new, on the face of it, very simple practice, but it confronted people's as yet unexamined beliefs about how they bring value.

Ula Ojiaku

That's powerful, powerful.

Michael Hamman

And again, keep in mind that this is a synergy. So we need all four of these, right? So we've just related our thinking to three of these design elements: heat experiences, social container best practices, and so now there's a fourth one. You can kind of think of this as, you know, the legs of a table. You know, the table will stand up with, may stand up with three legs, but it's going to be very wobbly, you need all four of these to create a solidly transformative learning environment, and the fourth of these is what we call a bigger game and a bigger game is that we relate to what we're doing with a commitment to our own growth. So for instance, in this example, many people came into this course with a commitment to growing themselves as an natural coach, and because of the way we open and start the class, people start to confront what does it really mean to be an agile coach? And people realise that the commitment is ultimately to their own inner growth,  they don't necessarily know exactly what that means, and it's a shared commitment, there's a quality, so this is, the bigger game has to be a shared commitment, it can't just be, you know, I've got this commitment, and maybe you do, but we're clear we're kind of in the same boat together, and what holds us together is this shared commitment. It's what gets us through those moments, say, of conflict, you know, when it's hard, or when, you know, I'm having kind of a really tough moment, right here, and what gets me through it is this commitment to, maybe even to other people, but certainly for myself.

Ula Ojiaku

It's a bigger game, shared commitment to a common goal. Lyssa, what do you want to add anything?

Lyssa Adkins

I would say so common goal makes it sound like we all want exactly the same thing, and that's not necessarily, so I like what Michael says, like, we're all in the same boat together. This boat is going in one direction, right? There's a lot of variability between people's bigger games and how they think about those and how that pulls them forward to get them through these heat experiences and all of that. And so that's, I think, another function of the bigger game that is really important is oftentimes people will come to a transformational learning experience thinking, I'm going to get some more tools and techniques, and fair enough, certainly they will along the way, but those tools and techniques, that sort of content, that knowledge that's getting transferred to people is happening in the context of those people confronting the lenses, the glasses they had on, they didn't know they had on, confronting the fact that they're just sort of maybe bobbing through life and they're not connected to a bigger game. You know, so all of that is happening at the same time. And so I would say that the, in a Vertical Facilitation, from a Vertical Facilitation perspective, the content that you are trying to convey as a leader of, let's say it's a leadership development program, or a five day transformational learning experience, whatever it is, that content is a peer to the transformational learning experience itself. They go together, and that's what makes it transformational. Otherwise, we could just, you know, record a video and say, download this information to your brain, operate here, and that would work fine as long as the world weren't getting more complex, but it is.

Michael Hamman

You know, so for people to get a real genuine taste for this, we are starting what we call a learning journey, a Vertical Facilitation Learning Journey. And the journey actually has two parts: the first part is a free series of webinars, emails, us providing resources so that people can get a strong foundational orientation around what Vertical Facilitation is, both conceptually, but also they will get an experience of it because it's very, very hard to demo it unless you're actually doing something with a group, so people who would like to see this at work, we invite you to go to https://www.theverticalfacilitator.com and sign up and join the learning journey. The first part is free, the first three months is free, and then if it's something that is truly compelling, the second part, which is the paid part, takes you on a very deep dive into developing yourself in terms of skills and leadership stances as a vertical facilitator. So I think that's what I would invite people to do.

Ula Ojiaku

Okay. You said that if there's a learning journey, three part experience, there's the webinar, and the part one is on, you know, the intro to Vertical Facilitation per se, and the second one is paid. I don’t know if I got the third part, what would be part three?

Michael Hamman

The third part is for people who do the deep dive, the paid deep dive portion, and it's a set of follow up emails and other resources that help people to integrate what they learn, because what happens during the deep dive, among other things is that people actually design and hopefully facilitate a small either workshop or intervention of some sort where they actually practice the skills and distinctions that they have learned, both in that free orientation part, but also in the deep dive. So that's the third part. The name of the course is the Vertical Facilitator.

Ula Ojiaku

And there is something on, you know, the latest post you made on LinkedIn, about something starting in August. Is this related to that course or is it different?

Lyssa Adkins

It is, that's the deep dive portion. So between now and August are going to be the webinars, the free resources, but basically getting us into this new composition together.

Ula Ojiaku

And would it be in person, or virtual, the August dive?

Michael Hamman

It will be virtual.

Lyssa Adkins

Because that's the hardest, so virtual's the hardest, we figure we might as well go ahead and go there since that's going to be people's context, not all the time, but more of the time.

Michael Hamman

Yeah. So at a future time, probably the second time we do it, we will do the deep dive portion or part of the deep dive portion as a live event.

Ula Ojiaku

Okay, and then one last thing, any final words for the audience in terms of what we've covered so far?

Michael Hamman

The only thing that comes to mind is that join us on this learning journey so you can get a taste of this. So, you know, we've, the best we've been able to do is sort of maybe elicit a little bit of the quality that's present when Vertical Facilitation is happening and, people may have noticed perhaps the way of being a way of Lyssa and I working together, and Lyssa and I are both very skilled vertical facilitators and so we would invite you to come and join us.

Ula Ojiaku

Thank you, Lyssa, anything?

Lyssa Adkins

No, I think we have said so much and I've so appreciated the richness of this and also that Ula, I'm so appreciative that this podcast gets to be part of the kick-off of what's truly a new thing.

Michael Hamman

Yeah, I also want to express my appreciation for you, because this is, you know, you have a certain grace in your manner, and I felt like this has just been a really wonderful podcast experience for me, thank you.

Ula Ojiaku

Thanks, both of you are very kind and very gracious, and the honour is mine and (it’s been) a great experience for me. 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! 

 

 

Guest Bio:

Rita McGrath is a best-selling author,  sought-after advisor and speaker, and  longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita is one of the world’s top experts on strategy and innovation and is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50.  McGrath’s recent book on strategic inflection points is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Rita is the author of four other books, including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

Since the onset of the pandemic, Rita has created workshops, strategy sessions and keynotes, applying her tools and frameworks to strategy under high levels of uncertainty to specific issues organizations are facing.  As Rui Barbas, the Chief Strategy Officer for Nestle USA said, “You were incredibly insightful and, despite the virtual setting, there was lots of engagement and comments from leaders sharing eye-opening observations and building on your examples throughout. You delivered the inspiration and illustration desired and it was exactly the right focus and challenge for this team. Appreciate your time throughout the process to align on content and delivery. The future-focus theme was the perfect close to our leadership summit.”

Rita’s work is focused on creating unique insights.  She has also founded Valize a companion company, dedicated to turning those insights into actionable capability.  You can find out more about Valize at www.valize.com.

McGrath received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She is active on all the main social media platforms, such as Twitter @rgmcgrath.  For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

 

Social Media/ Websites:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritamcgrath/
• Twitter: @rgmcgrath
• Instagram: @ritamcgrathofficial
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rgmcgrath
• Websites: https://ritamcgrath.com and valize.com

Rita's Newsletter/ Articles

• Substack: https://thoughtsparks.substack.com/
• Medium: https://rgmcgrath.medium.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/thought-sparks-6787762418471755776/

Books

• Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Around-Corners-Inflection-Business/dp/0358022339
• The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillian https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entrepreneurial-Mindset-Continuously-Opportunity-Uncertainty/dp/0875848346
• The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Competitive-Advantage-Strategy-Business/dp/1422172813
• Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disrupt-Yourself-New-Introduction-Relentless/dp/1633698785
• Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/1633696022
• Reimagining Capitalism by Rebecca Henderson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reimagining-Capitalism-Business-Save-World/dp/0241379660
• When More is Not Better by Roger L. Martin https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-More-Not-Better-Overcoming/dp/1647820065/
• Being An Adult by Lucy Tobin https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Adult-ultimate-getting-together-ebook/dp/B07GQ1KRTC/
• Only The Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Andrew-Grove/dp/1861975139 

Ula Ojiaku:

My guest today is Dr. Rita McGrath. She’s a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker and advisor and consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50.

In this episode, Rita talked about the concept of inflection points from her book ‘Seeing Around Corners’ and how as leaders, we can train ourselves to spot these inflection points and act on the information we receive. She also talked about making complex things simple for the people we work with.

I learnt a lot speaking with Rita and I’m sure you will find this conversation insightful as well. Thank you again for watching!

It's an honor to have you on the show, Rita McGrath. Many, many thanks for joining us.

Rita McGrath:

Well, thank you Ula. It's a pleasure to be here.

Ula Ojiaku:

Great. Now, can you tell us about yourself? How did the Rita, Dr. Rita McGrath we know today evolve?

Rita McGrath: 

Well, it would have to start with my parents, of course. I mean, all great stories start with your parents.

And so, my parents were both scientists. My mother was a Microbiologist, and my father was an Organic Chemist. And so, I grew up in a house where, you know, (if) a question couldn't be answered, you went and got the reference book and figured it out. And both, (had) incredible respect for science and for diligence. And, you know, the house was always full of books and lots of emphasis on learning.

I wouldn't say we were, financially all that well-off – we weren’t poor by any means. But it was, you know, there wasn't like a lot of money to spare, but there was always money for books, and there was always money for, you know, educational experiences and that kind of thing. So, that's the household I grew up in.

So, my parents, when I was born, were both on the staff at the Yale Medical School. So, they were both researchers there. And then my dad in the late 60s, got an offer to go join this upstart, fledgling company that was at the cutting edge of all kinds of things in his field and that was Xerox Corporation. And he was very conflicted about leaving academia, but went off eventually to Xerox.

So, we moved the family to Rochester, New York. So that's where I did most of my growing up. And my mother at that time, decided to stay home, more or less. And then she started a scientific translation business. So, she moved into an entrepreneurial career more than her scientific career. And then when it came time to go to college, I went to Barnard College in the City of New York. I’d always thought New York was an amazing place and was accepted there. So, went off to New York, did my Bachelor's and my Master's in Political Science and Public Policy. I was very interested in public policy and matters of social contract and those kinds of things.

And then my first job was actually with the City of New York, I ran purchasing systems for government agencies. It doesn't sound very glamorous. But today, we would call it digital transformation. It was the very first wave of companies taking their operations in a digital form. And it was very exciting and I learned a lot.

Then I got to the end of… the thing about public service is when you start, there’s (this) unlimited sort of growth that can happen for a few years, and then it really just levels off. And you're never going to go beyond that. So, I kind of reached that headroom and decided to do something different.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Was it at that point that you decided to go for your PhD?

Rita McGrath: 

And that was one of the options I was considering. And my husband basically said, ‘look, if you get into a top five school, it's worth doing and if you don't, it's probably not.’

But you have to think in that time, MBA programs were just exploding, and there'd been a lot of pressure on the administrators of MBA programs, to put PhD accredited faculty in front of their students. The big knock against the MBA at the time was, oh, they're just trade schools. You know, we've got some guy who ran an entire company comes in and talks and that's not really academically suitable.

And so, there was a huge pressure for schools to find PhD accredited people-  that still exists (but) the market pressures has changed a lot. But when I was doing my PhD, it was pretty sure I would get a job if I managed to complete the degree. So that that gave me that extra input to do that.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Did you already have like children when you started the PhD?

Rita McGrath:

Yes

Ula Ojiaku: 

And how did you cope?

Rita McGrath: 

Our son was, how old was he? He would have been nine months old when I started my PhD program. Yeah.

Ula Ojiaku:

Wow, 9 months old.

Rita McGrath:

Oh, yeah, it was a real challenge. And I guess everybody manages those kinds of challenges in their own way. But yeah, it was a struggle because, you know, typical day would be you know, get up, get the baby to daycare or wherever and then do school or whatever I had to do that day. And then it was sort of pick them up.

By the time I had a second child it was pick them up, get them dinner, get them bedtime, get them story, and then I'll be back at my desk at nine o'clock at night, trying to do what I needed to do.

So, it was a new turn. It was tough. It was difficult years. I mean, joyful years though but it was just hard to fit everything in.

Ula Ojiaku: 

I can imagine. I mean, although I'm thinking of starting my PhD (studies), my children aren't that small but I do remember the time (they were), you know, I was still working full time.

So, the challenge is you'd go to work and then come back to work. I mean, to another type of work. And then when they go to bed, the work continues. Yeah, it's interesting.

Rita McGrath:

Quite exhausting.

Ula Ojiaku:

You can say that. I'm so glad they're not in diapers anymore. So, it's baby steps, we are getting there.

So, can we go on to your book, “Seeing Around Corners, How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen”. I'd like to start from an unusual place in the book.

I started from the dedication page, and you know, reading everything, and I noticed that, you referred to a conversation, one of the last conversations you had with your mother. Could you tell us about that?

Rita McGrath: 

Oh sure. She was well, at the time, she was quite ill, she had sarcoma in her lung, and she was quite ill. It's a horrible disease, and we haven't got any real treatments for it. So, the recommendation is you do chemo and that really knocks you out.

So, she was quite ill and sort of migrating between the chair and the couch and the chair and the couch. And in one of those conversations, she just said ‘I want you to know I'm proud of you. And I've had a good life and I'm prepared for whatever comes next.’

And I thought that was lovely of her to say and I thought in that moment to pass it on to all these other women. And you know you bring up motherhood and being a working woman and all those complicated emotions that come with that because there seems to be guilt around every corner you know, if you’re not at home full time, oh you’re a terrible mom. And if you’re not at work full time, you're a terrible worker. I just I think so many of those things are just designed to twist us up into little balls.

And when I look at my own mother's experience - she was a working woman… I grew up but I think I'm third or fourth generation working woman so it never even occurred to me that wouldn't be possible.

But I think what often is missing is this validation, you know that for women who are trying to you know make their way professionally and be great, responsible parents and do all these other things that often there's a sense of a lack of self-worth you know, ‘oh, I'm not doing enough.’ The more I hear that…

Ula Ojiaku: 

I feel like that some… most days I feel like that…

Rita McGrath:

Believe me, you are doing enough

Ula Ojiaku: 

Sometimes I ask my children, am I a good mom?

Rita McGrath:  I think part of it too is we, and when I say we, I mean baby boomer mothers and maybe a little younger. We got ourselves all tangled up in this if it's not like organic, hand-processed  lima beans with you know, organic succotash, mixed in you know, it's not good baby food.

Honestly, Gerber's exists to provide perfectly nutritious food for really young babies and they've been doing it for decades and you can trust that and if it makes your life easier, go with it.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Thank you!

Rita McGrath:

You know, I think we I think we get ourselves all tossed up in like, what does good mean? I mean, honestly, the kids don't mind you know? I mean, they’d celebrate if it was chicken finger night.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Let's go to the book. You know, because in your book you said you it's about how to spot inflections before they happen in business.

Can you give us examples of, you know, businesses that had these inflection points occur, and they failed to recognize it and what was the impact?

Rita McGrath: 

Sure, let's take one that is quite sad to me, which is Intel. And Intel built its, well, Intel went through a major inflection point, in fact, the originator of the concept was Andy Grove, who was their former CEO.

And he talked about his inflection points in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, which is really a brilliant, brilliant book. And one of the reasons I wrote my book was that very little had been done since his book on that topic. And Grove built this incredible company, Intel. And they were making microprocessor chips. And they were very, very powerful, very fast chips.

And so, the assumptions inside Intel's business model was, what customers were going to pay for was faster, faster, faster, more computation power, more and more powerful. But what they didn't really think about was energy consumption. And as the world went more mobile… so the Intel product is the PC, and the PC, the desktop PC remains firmly plugged into the wall.

And then later, we make PC chips that maybe have slightly lower power consumption to power PCs, but it's still that notion of power, you know, and I think the inflection point that caught Intel by surprise, to some extent was, this movement towards mobile, where the vast majority of chips being made were these completely different architecture chips by  companies like ARM and you know, and companies like that, which, from their inception, recognized that low power was the way to go. Then they weren't very powerful in the sense of speed, which is what Intel was driving its business towards. But they were powerful in the sense of ubiquitous low power, long battery life, that kind of thing.

And I think that's an example of the kind of assumption that can cause a company to get into trouble, when the underlying shift in the business environment says, ‘wait a minute, this thing you've been building all this time may not be what is needed by the marketplace.’

Ula Ojiaku: 

That's interesting. So, it brings me to the point of, the points you made about, you know, the indicators, the early warnings, and you mentioned the concept of you know lagging, current and leading indicators. And there was an emphasis in your book on, you know, leading indicators. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Rita McGrath: 

Sure. Well, so leading indicators are today's information about tomorrow's possibilities. And what we unfortunately rely on a lot in business is lagging indicators - so profits, performance, you know, ROI, all those things are lagging some kind of decision that you made a long time ago.

So, the concept of leading indicators is to try to get business leaders to think about what would have to be true, you know, before I was able to make a certain decision, what are the leading indicators?

So, an example would be back in the 90s, computer scientists all over the world realized that come the year 2000, from the turn of the millennium, that the way computer programs had been programmed, was only two digits for the year.

And so, when the year went to zero-zero, computers, were going to think it was 1900 and this was going to be terrible. Because they all get out of sync, you know, and planes would drop out of the sky. You're gonna become unstable, and you’ll all need to move to Montana and stuff … I don't know if you can remember this.

Ula Ojiaku:

Yeah, the Y2K bug…

Rita McGrath:

Oh my goodness…!

Ula Ojiaku:

It was a big sensation. Yeah…

Rita McGrath:

Apocalyptic – remember?! And yet, when the big moment came the year 2000. What happened? Well, nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? We looked at that early warning, and we said, whoa, if that happens, it's bad.

And then so companies, prodded by their accounting firms, prodded by other security considerations invested billions in correcting that flaw. And so, that's an example of an early warning. And there are a couple of things to understand about early warning.

So, the first important thing is, the measure of a good early warning is not, did it predict what happened. The measure of a good leading indicator is, did it help you prepare for what might happen?

And so, I think that's a really important distinction, because we oftentimes, oh, you that didn't predict this or that. But that's not the point. The point is, did it help you think more broadly about what might happen so that you could be prepared? So, I think that's the first thing.

The second thing to remember about leading indicators is they're often not quantitative in the way that we like to think about quantitative things. They're often qualitative. They often take the form of stories. And they often come from what are called unrepresentative parts of your mental ecosystem. So, you know, it's that person on the loading dock (saying to themselves), ‘this is, well, that's weird, a customer never asked for that before’, or the person answering the phone, you know, in headquarters going, ‘Well, I don't understand why they need that information…’ You know, it's those little anomalies or things that depart from business as usual, that are often the weak signals that you need to be paying attention to.

Ula Ojiaku: 

So, can you give us an example where you mean, I mean, of how we can go about choosing good leading indicators?

Rita McGrath: 

Well, in the book, I describe a technique that I use, which is you take a couple of uncertainties and juxtapose them on each other. And that gives you four or more you can do this for as many as you like, stories from the future, possibly a future that we could live in. And then depending on which one you want to think about, you say, ‘okay, I'm gonna write a headline as if it came from a newspaper story about that scenario. And I'm gonna work backwards and say, what has to be true for that headline to emerge.’

So, take an example that's playing out right now, chronic and accelerating decline in birth rates in the United States. People are just deciding not to enlarge their families or not to start their families at all.

And for very good reasons, you know, the level of social support for families is very low. Mostly women are bearing the burden. And very often women are the ones that make a large part of the decision about whether the family is going to grow or not. And so, we're facing a real baby bust.

Well, if that's true, and we follow that along, well, what are some things that would be early warnings or indicators of what that world will be like? Well, you'll see a decline of working people relative to retired people, or people needing assistance, you'll see, you know, fewer kids with more resources to support them.

So, the kind of baby Prince phenomena we saw in China. There are lots of things you can kind of work through. But once you say, ‘okay, I see a world with a million fewer children three years from now, than we would have expected well, okay, what now working backward? What does that tell us we need to be paying attention to today?

Ula Ojiaku: 

Yes, yes. That's a great example. And I wonder, though, so given all, you know, the research that has led to, and your experience as well, consulting with, you know, most of these large organizations, the case studies, you've come to witness and all that, what would you, what would be your advice to leaders of such organizations, you know, in terms of how they can better prepare themselves or equip themselves to recognize these inflection points, and lead effectively?

Rita McGrath: 

Well, I think the first principle is you have to be discovery driven. In other words, you have to be curious about what's going on. And if you're the kind of leader who (when) someone brings you a piece of information, and instead of treating it like a gift, you're like, oh no, you don't understand that's wrong. That's not the way the world works. If you're dismissive of information people are bringing you that's very dangerous.

Because the information you need is not going to come from your lieutenants at headquarters, it's going to come from that guy on the loading dock. So, I think you want to think about establishing some kind of information flows, that go directly from where the phenomena are happening to your desk.

So, as an example, a company I really admire is the German metal services company Klockner. And their CEO, Gisbert Ruehl was taking them through a digital transformation. And his big concern was not that they meant it, right? But that his lieutenants, his middle manager, cohort, would be so expert, and so experienced at the way business was, that they would just shut down these digital efforts. And he was very, very concerned about that. He said, well, I need some way of making my message heard directly to the people that are on the frontlines and I also need a way of hearing from them what's going on.

So, he implemented Yammer, called non-hierarchical communication. And the deal was anybody in the company that had something he needed to know should feel comfortable sending him a note. And I'm told, I don't know this for a fact that I'm told that at headquarters, he had his instance of Yammer set up so that the lower the hierarchical level of the person, the higher it came in his newsfeed.

Ula Ojiaku: Oh, wow.

Rita McGrath: So, you know, I can talk to my lieutenants, anytime. Information I need is in the, you know, 24-year-old person who's just joined us with an engineering degree, who's looking at our manufacturing process for screwdrivers and saying, ‘Why do you do it that way? There must be a better way of doing this…’ That's the information I really need and he set up a whole system to try to get that information to him, to himself.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Would you say there's a typical kind of leader with, you know, some certain characteristics that's best equipped to spot the inflection point, and you know, kind of lead the charge and get the organizations in line?

Rita McGrath: 

You know, I think it's more of the behavior, it's not the characteristics. So, I've seen charismatic, attractive, you know, movie star type CEOs be good at this. I've seen people you look at and you go ‘Really? He looks kind of like he slept in his clothes all night.’ I've seen those people be good at it.

So, you know, I think the differentiation is this, this hunger for new information, this curiosity, this relentless… ‘tell me again…’ and ‘why was that and why was that?’ It is this urgent need to really learn what's going on. And then and then putting yourself in the, in the context.

So, one of the people I'm working with right now is a brilliant retail CEO, and everything. And one of the things he would do before hiring anybody into his senior team, is he would spend a day or two walking the stores, you know, and in his explanation to me was, ‘I want to see how they react to the stores. I want to see how they treat the people working in stores. I want to see what they notice, you know, I want to see if they notice that there's a thing out of array and I want to see how they are with me, like if they spend their whole two days in store visits, sucking up to me - that's not somebody I need, you know.

And so, I think the best leaders along those lines are people who are relentlessly curious, bring people around them who are diverse, you know, you don't just want echo chambers of themselves.

Ula Ojiaku: 

True, true. You don't want ‘yes’ men if you really want to make an impact really. Yeah, and how can I, as a person, train myself to also recognize these inflection points.

Rita McGrath: 

Well, it depends what the inflection point is. So, if it's a question of, you've been making nice steady progress in your career, and now you've hit some kind of ceiling and you just feel you're not growing or developing any more, then that choice is really okay, I need to… the way Whitney Johnson would put this, she's written a great book on this, “Disrupt Yourself”, right?

You go up this S curve, then you need to make the decision if you're going to take on the J curve, right, which is the part below the S curve before you get into the next round of learning. So, that's a personal decision, really only you can make a decision like that.

Then there are the cases where inflection points are thrust upon you. So you lose a job, your spouse has some setback, a family member has an urgent need that makes whatever you were doing before impossible. I mean, there's all kinds of outside things that can happen to you.

Ula Ojiaku: Yeah…

Rita McGrath: And I think the best way to try to look at those is. ‘is this a slingshot to a better future, potentially?’

And you know, how many people have you talked to who got fired, and some years later say, ‘that was the best thing that ever happened to me, it shook me out of my complacency. It made me think differently.’

And so, I think a lot of times, you know, we, it's very comfortable (staying) stuck in our ruts. And sometimes it takes a bit of a jolt to get us out of that.

Ula Ojiaku: 

That's a great one. Can I just ask you about so it's not really about your book, Seeing Around Corners, but this one is about the Entrepreneurial Mindset? Just one quick question. Because there's a quote, in your book, that book that says, you know, “the huge part of becoming an entrepreneurial leader is learning to simplify complexity, so that your co-workers can act with self-confidence.”

That quote, it made me kind of be more conscious about, am I really making things simpler for my co-workers instead of, you know, rather than to enable us, you know, achieve the best that we could as a group? So why did you, make that quote and associate it with an Entrepreneurial Mindset?

Rita McGrath: 

Well, because if you make things complicated for people, there's maybe three responses, right? One is they'll start on whatever they start on, which is kind of random. And maybe they finish it, and maybe they don't, but it's really now you're leaving it to chance. Because if you give people more to digest than they can manage, you're going to get back some fraction of it. So that's one thing.

Second thing that happens is, if it's too complex, a lot of times people will pick what they want to do, not have anything to do with the agenda that you want to set for the organization.

And the third thing is there's just a laziness that comes from having things be complex. I know for myself, when I've had to do strategy statements for myself, or my business, it takes a long, long time to get it done into a few simple things. And each word has to mean something.

So, as an example, some years back, I started a sister company. It's called Valize. And the strategy really is to its mission, its purpose for me, is to help organizations create innovation and transformation capability as the basis for shared prosperity. And that sounds really simple. That sounds really kind of ‘duh, that’s not so grand, but I mean, the hours it took to get to that simplicity of statement.

And then once you've got something like that, you can go back and you could say, okay, well, here's the thing that I'm being asked to do or think I'm thinking of, does it build capability? Yes. No. Does it build shared prosperity? Yes, no. Does it help organizations to help themselves? Yes, no. And it sorts out a lot of stuff means a lot of stuff we could do. But there are only a few things that really fit into that sweet spot of shared capability.

So, having that simplification allows you to clear out a lot of the …, there are always wonderful options that you got to do things, right? And it's a question of abundance, you've usually got more great options than you could possibly exercise. So, picking the best ones is the challenge.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Wow, wow. I'm going to listen to this part again.

You've mentioned some books already, like Andy Grove’s, Only the Paranoid, I mean, Only the Paranoid survive. And you've mentioned the book, Disrupt Yourself… In addition to these books, and your wonderful suite of books, what other books would you recommend to the audience that you believe have influenced you that you'd recommend to the listeners that would help them you know, learn more about this topic?

Rita McGrath:

Oh, that's hard, because there's so many. Well, I love Safi Bahcall’s Loonshots. I think that's a brilliant, brilliant book. And it really gets to the heart of how innovation actually happens rather than how we think it happens.

I rather like Gary Hamel’s and Michele Zanini’s book, Humanocracy which has the basic question, you know, if you look at Instagram, or Twitter or any of these social platforms, you see these people who are just brilliant. I mean, they're creating incredibly creative stuff. And then we put them inside companies. And we insist that they do things by the rule, and we block all the creativity out of them. So, why do we do that? You know, I think that's a really great one.

I'm very taken with Rebecca Henderson's, Re-imagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. Very, very brilliant. Roger Martin, When More is not Better. Just recently had a Julie Lythcott-Haims on my fireside chat program, which is and she's got a book called Your Turn, How to be an Adult”, which is, on a personal level, absolutely fascinating - really good book. I like Peter Sim’s, Little Bets. You know, they're just so many I mean, I wouldn't even know where to where to start. Those are the ones that are sort of top of mind at the moment.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Okay. scribbling away as you're talking, and yeah, these all these would be in the show notes with the links to them. So that's great. Now, how can the audience reach you? If they want to, you know follow your work.

Rita McGrath:

The best place to start is my website, which is really ritamcgrath.com, that's easy. I have columns that I write for. They’re currently going up on substack and medium. If you just search my name and or medium, you'll find me there. I do weekly, LinkedIn post, which goes to subscribers on LinkedIn. Also, that's all sort of good places to start.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Okay. Are you on social media?

Rita McGrath: 

Oh, yes. So yes. I'm on Twitter @RGMcGrath. And I'm on LinkedIn. Okay. I'm not on Facebook so much. But I have put things I post there, but I'm not really on it very much.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Okay. All right. That's, I mean, thanks for those. Now, let's wrap up any ask of the audience first?

Rita McGrath: 

I think we're in a remarkable moment, right now, you know, we've had so many of our previous habits and assumptions disrupted, that I think it would be a shame to lose, to lose all that and just go back to the way things were.

So, I think it's an opportunity to reflect and to really think about, what kind of future do we want to build now that so many of our assumptions and institutions have been challenged, and we learned whole new tricks, we learned whole new ways to do things. Let's not just snap back to the way it was, let's think about inventing better.

Rita McGrath: 

Really, I think there's going to be great opportunity coming out of this current crisis and those who are thinking ahead will benefit from it.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Okay, great. Well, Rita, thank you so much for your time, and it's been a pleasure again, having you on the show.

Rita McGrath:

Thank you very much.

 

Bio

Lyssa Adkins is a coach, facilitator, teacher and inspirer.

Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching. Making difficult decisions faster and with clear alignment, unknotting challenging multi-department impediments, creating the conditions for smooth organizational delivery, helping leaders take up the “Agile transformation” that is theirs to make…this is where she thrives and helps thrive.

Her Agile community focus is amplifying women’s voices, which is why she is a founder of the TENWOMENSTRONG #WomeninAgile programs.

She has been pleased to serve the emergence of Agile Coaching as a profession. In 2010, she co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. Since 2011, she has been a member of the ICAgile working committee that defines the learning objectives for Agile Facilitation and Coaching and she assesses candidates for the ICAgile-Expert in Agile Coaching competence-based certification. She has also served the Scrum Alliance as an application reviewer for the Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) designation.

She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which, as a top ranking Agile book, was released as an audiobook in its 10th year.

She likes to explore facilitating intense conflict, societal change, organizational change, the benefits and costs of being human in the workplace, agile coaching, agile transformation, adult human development, human systems dynamics, the role of nature, and books of all sorts. She tends toward a balance of the provocative and practical.

Lyssa holds an alphabet soup of certifications: ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC), Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach Emeritus (CEC-E), International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Organization and Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC) and Certified Integral Facilitator (IF).  She is also a trained Co-Active Coach and Leader.

Social media/ website(s):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssaadkins/
• Twitter: @LyssaAdkins
• Lyssa's Website: https://lyssaadkins.com/

Interview Highlights

Timestamp

05:35 How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing?

08:00 Coaching leaders – Lyssa’s 5Cs

21:05 Agile Mastery

24:55 Using agile to author a book

30:52 TENWOMENSTRONG

37:50 Expanding leaderfulness

Books/Resources Mentioned

• InspireMe! card deck
• Lyssa's 5&5 Podcast: Essential Shifts for Leading in Turbulent Times https://lyssaadkins.com/55-with-lyssa-adkins-season-three/ Listen on Spotify Apple or your favourite podcast platform 
• One-on-One Leadership Coaching & Mentoring
• TENWOMENSTRONG: Influence & Impact in the Agile World plus other great programs

Episode Transcript

Ula Ojiaku (Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.

Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello everyone. It’s my absolute honour to introduce my guest for this episode, she is no other than the legendary Lyssa Adkins herself. We met at the Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam and she graciously agreed to be my guest. Lyssa is renowned for her groundbreaking work in defining the Agile coaching discipline and she is known for her book as well, that is titled Coaching Agile Teams. She is also one of the original founders of the Agile Coaching Institute. In this conversation, Lyssa talked about some things that are currently on her mind, and a little bit more about her work that she is currently doing which is focused on coaching the leadership teams in organisations. Without further ado, my conversation with Lyssa.

Ula Ojiaku

So, Lyssa, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast.

Lyssa Adkins

You're welcome. I took a little peek at your previous guests and I'm like, oh wow, there have been some really amazing people on this podcast. So I'm hoping that this goes well for you and me and all the people who listen to it.

Ula Ojiaku

I have no doubts, Lyssa. It's a known fact that I’m a big Lyssa Adkins fan. So for me, this is like a dream come true. I am speaking, well, virtually, face to face, with someone that I absolutely admire and it was a pleasure meeting you as well at the March Agile Coach Conference back in Amsterdam. So do you want to tell us a bit about yourself so we can know how your journey has brought you this way?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah, I sure will. I think that the thing to know about me is that the places where I find out that I am not a match for what's going on in my environment is the thing that propels me forward. So I'm thinking about the things I've been learning about recently, and they are things like trauma informed coaching, how to deal with grief and loss and suffering. And this is all because, you know, we're sort of in a time where these things are up and I don't have the skills for it. And so, you know, as you mentioned, those things like, you know, I like to sing and all this work and I've just, I was realising that these are the places where I find in myself that I'm just not capable to meet the complexity of the world around me. And so I try to do something different. One of those things in meeting the complexity of the world around me is that we've just bought a collaboration space property in Portugal. So that's a little bit about what's happening in my life and my home and my work. And my adult daughter is going to go move there with her partner and they're going to be the full-time caretakers of it. So that's a whole new thing that's just opened up for us and will allow us to do some really deep and wonderful work with people.

Ula Ojiaku

So are you planning to do some sort of retreats there as well? Because you said it's a collaborative working space?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah. So people who have programs, and want to bring people to the property, it's a beautiful property, on more than an acre of land and beautiful, mature fruit trees and all of this and lovely property. And so people who want to do deep work with their groups or people who want to come and co-work together, you know, just to be in the same spot, you know, they don't even have to be from the same company necessarily. So that's something that's happening now, more in the world. And we just want to create this as a space for people to really get in touch with the fullness of what's going on in their work, in their life, and ask themselves some really different questions and perhaps even start to generate a completely new way of forward.

Ula Ojiaku

Interesting, given the world we’re in now with the whole change caused by COVID 19, it means that we can remotely work from almost anywhere in the world. So that is something I think is very relevant to the times we’re in and the opportunity to as well, do the deep work you're talking about. So we will put the links to more details on this in the show notes of this episode, but can we then go, because we are also interested in knowing about you Lyssa, you know, the person who is Lyssa Adkins?

Lyssa Adkins

Oh, I'm someone who is, on a daily basis, confounded by the world and by the difficulties we're in. I find myself experiencing a significant amount of grief about the things that are falling away in our society, and my outlook on where we're headed is that things are going to continue to fall away. And so a really big question I'm sitting in, I guess, two questions I'm sitting in for myself right now are, one is, you know, who do I want to be as a leader while things are collapsing? And the second question I'm sitting in is, it's so funny, because I just drew this Inspire Me card right before we got here. And I was thinking about this question. This is a card deck that I created with my husband and another agile coach, Deb Preuss, years and years ago. And so for the people who are listening to the audio version, it's a picture of someone driving like into fog and they can't see much, and the question is from Peter Senge and it's this, How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? And I think that's a really big question for me, as a leader in the world, like how can we get off the crazy merry-go-round we have created because we can't expect the same level of performance we did before. We can't expect that things are going to remain certain and stable, actually, I'm pretty sure they're not. So I, you know, who is Lyssa Adkins is someone who sits in these big questions, and for like months and months and months, like a really long time, I sit in these big questions and, according to the strengths binder, my top two strengths are connectedness and futuristic. So that's where my mind tends to move a lot of the time. And what I'm realising as I'm working with leaders is that they hang on to all those things that aren't going well. And that compounds the problem that, that makes it so, now our nervous systems are on high alert, in addition to the thing that's going the way we didn't want it to go.

Ula Ojiaku

What could be those things that actually lead us down that path of holding on to things when we should be letting go?

Lyssa Adkins

Well, so there are three broad areas I'm talking to leaders about right now, and I've created them sort of like little bumper stickers so we can remind ourselves of them. And the first is upgrade your complexity of mind. The second is downshift your nervous system. And the third one is expand your team's core capabilities, core competencies. Five Cs for short, because there are five of them. We remember them. So, I mean, so your question is squarely in the bumper sticker of upgrade your complexity of mind, right. So when we upgrade our complexity of mind, this isn't requiring a new skill or a new model or a new whatever best, it's definitely not a new best practice, what it is, is being able to take in so much more information, especially contradictory and competing information, which is happening to us anyway. But to be able to bring on a deeper level of meaning-making about all of that. And in part of what is required, there is not necessarily to stop going fast, but what's required there is to start listening and bringing in different essence energies that allow you to make different kinds of decisions. Because I see leaders right now making the same kinds of decisions over and over, and we're just trying harder. We're just trying harder at the things that don't match the world, where supply chains are failing, where we're having multiple climate disasters at the same time where, you know, we can just keep going on and on about the things that are walking our world.

Ula Ojiaku

Are you able to also talk about the other two, you know, you said, downshifting our nervous system, I couldn't get the C, and then upskilling your team's competency as well. Those other two.

Lyssa Adkins

Sure. Let's just touch on those briefly. So downshifting your nervous system is actually one of the key capabilities for having a more complex mind, because what happens to us is that when we encounter something that is a threat of some sort and a threat can be to our sense of identity, to our ego, to our intellect, those are all very related. You know, a threat can be that there's just, you know, now a global supply chain meltdown, and all of a sudden, as an executive, I'm going, oh my God, what do I do? You know, I mean, it's like deer in headlights moment. Like now I'm at the edge of my meaning-making and I don't know what to do and what happens is that our bodies respond and our bodies respond, according to something called neuroception. It's a type of perception, but it's based on your biology, it's based on your actual, your animal body, this thing that you, that you are in, this animal body, responds to these threats in the world before you have cognitively realised them. And so what it does is a very smart thing. It floods your body with all kinds of anxiety hormones, you know, adrenaline, all of these. Yeah. Right. And it gets you ready to take some immediate action because your body does not know that the idea that feels like a threat to you is not the same thing as a sabre tooth tiger chasing you. Your body actually doesn't know that, right. Now, good news is that we have this amazing prefrontal cortex. Human beings get the luxury of a prefrontal cortex where all our executive functions, reside and work. And we can recognise when the animal of our body has taken over and flooded our body with these stress hormones, and we can go, okay, I have the ability to interrupt these. There are really easy ways to interrupt it, actually, and to bring back online those executive functions, because that's the important thing. Things like decision making, critical thinking, empathy, logic, they all leave the building when your body is getting ready to have you run or freeze or fight. Right. And so what I'm noticing is that this happens in really subtle ways on leadership teams and people don't know that their body has been hijacked. They don't know it's happening, but I can, because I'm working with teams, leadership teams on sort of like the pattern level of their interaction. I can sit there and go, huh? It looks like she's hijacked, and I can watch this interaction, and a couple minutes later. Oh, he is too. Well, there's a third. And so, pretty soon you have an entire executive team operating without their executive functions online and no one is recognising it. So part of what I think is important for us to do in this particular time we're in, when things are incredibly stressful and our ways of coping don't necessarily work in the complexity that we're in.

One of the things that's important is learning about our nervous systems, because it's actually super easy to interrupt this whole process of your lizard brain getting hijacked. It's super easy, but people don't know to do it. And people feel a little bit embarrassed about it. They're like, oh, well this is like my thing I have to deal with. No, actually it's a group thing. So that's maybe a little more than an introduction to the idea of downshifting your nervous system, but that's the idea there that I've just really gotten clear about how much people are operating, not at their best.

Ula Ojiaku

And then what about upskilling your team's competency? The third one. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah. I think executive teams, as I watch them work and as I interact with them to help them work better together, I notice that they have the same, this might be a little bit unfortunate to hear, but they have the same sort of mediocre conversations that delivery teams have. And by mediocre, I mean, they don't have a high level of competence in conflict, in collaboration and creativity and communication, and definitely not in change. Because all they keep doing is driving, driving, driving, driving. They keep moving through these very surface level conversations and making decisions from there. And we're basically getting the same results we've been getting, you know, we're not going anywhere new and we're not able to take in the fullness of the context we are now in, which is something human beings have never encountered before. So as I work with executive teams, I'm like, okay, great, you've got your key result, great, fantastic. Those key results happen through a series of conversations, decisions, work sessions. In those work sessions, the way that is happening is through these five core competencies, communication, collaboration, creativity, conflict, and change. And then to the core of that is actually the intelligence that resides and how the relationship system is working. So if we can focus on that, then those five core competencies increase. Then we have much more effective working sessions and decisions. Then we meet our goals. So it's like working from the core out.

Ula Ojiaku

It's really an interesting framework. I don't think this is yet out in the world or in any of the materials you've released to us yet. So I hope to learn more about it at some point in time. Is there anywhere that I could actually…?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah, I've just now realised there is somewhere. So I created a keynote around this last year, and it's one of the keynotes I give publicly and to make myself get clear about the contents of the keynote, I made myself record my own podcast, which is called the 5 & 5, five minutes a day, five days a week. And it's all around this topic of the five essential shifts for leading in turbulent times. And so we can absolutely provide that link in the show notes. So that definitely gives people, a flavour, in five minute bites, of these things we're talking about. Upgrade your complexity of mind, downshift your nervous system, and expand your team's five core competencies.

Ula Ojiaku

That's awesome Lyssa, we'll definitely have that in the show notes. Now I'm curious, in working with, you know, the leaders that you do, how do you go about setting the intention for the engagements and how do you measure the progress towards meeting that set intention?

Lyssa Adkins

That's a really good question, and I have to say, I have not found a secret sauce that I'm happy with here yet, because most executives and executive teams don't know that they're in over their heads in a way that they certainly are in over their heads. They keep thinking that if we just apply the same things we've been doing, we're going to get out of this mess. They keep thinking normal is going to come back. They keep thinking, well, maybe normal won't come back, but we'll just keep going. And I don't know that we're going to be able to just keep going, I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep going, because we are absolutely encountering, now, the limits to growth that were predicted back in the 1970s, you know, so everything that we've predicated our business world on, the idea that growth is good, growth is what we go for, you know, and we always have to have this sort of sterling impression of our service and we can never let anyone down. Well, we're going to start letting people down. We are absolutely approaching limits to growth. We're not going to be able to keep growing as we were before. And so I think that what is going on is that I move into executive teams starting with this idea that I'm going to help them develop their leadership. And it usually is around a goal that the organisation has. So for example, the organisation will have a goal that, hey, we're going to expand threefold in the next year, which means we have got to make ourselves, leaders, capable of creating leaders. And we've got to do that at the next two layers down as well. So now, so that's a phrase that people understand. We now, as leaders, our job is to create leaders and we now realise that we're not very good at that. So that's one way that people think, oh yeah, maybe I need some leadership development help. And it could be around any kind of crisis. That's also a certain time that people will, executive teams will say, yeah, I guess we should look at the way we're working, but pretty infrequently, you know. So, I’m now sitting at the crossroads, wondering where is the greatest impact for me as a practitioner? Is it working with an entire executive team or is it working with those two people on the executive team that are really ready to level up? And so I'm actually in the process of expanding my one-on-one leadership coaching for the latter half of this year, because I want to just really find out and, you know, have a sense at least of how is the return on investment for them and me? You know, where is the greatest impact, basically?

Ula Ojiaku

That's really interesting. And I would be keen to know what the evaluation is at the end of the year, when you've… because it seems like it's an experiment to understand where are you going to make the most impact? One of the things that you are renowned for is the fact that you made some breakthrough contributions, you know, in the field of agile coaching, you, co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute in 2010, and you wrote the book, which is still helping, you know, lots of people, agile coaches and other people who, you know, play servant leadership roles in organisations that are in their journey towards embracing agile ways of working and mindset, coaching agile teams. What led you to that? If you don't mind, if we could take a walk down memory lane, what led you to writing the book and coaching, and co-founding the Agile Coaching Institute?

Lyssa Adkins

So I love this trip down memory lane, and actually it's not totally in the past, because as you say that book is still doing its work in the world, even though it is now 12 years old, it's still selling as much as it ever did, and so right now I'm actually recording what we call a guided study and practice group that we're going to open for ongoing admission. And it's sitting inside of this really beautiful community called Agile Mastery, so like it's the lessons from me, which are something like a book club on steroids. So we're taking just a section of the book at a time, a metabolisable section, there's field work that people are doing in between each session and they're interacting with each other on it, and they're helping each other learn. There are accountability conversations that are going on. And so that sort of action learning cycle takes place to help people really use what's in that book. Because what I kept hearing is like, gosh, I’ve read this book four times and I can't believe I'm still discovering something new, or like I've had this book for 10 years, I just opened it again, like, oh my gosh, how did I not see this before? So there's a lot in it, it's really sort of dense actually. So there's a way in which, although my personal practice is now with leadership teams, I am still very much involved with people who are working with delivery teams and the portfolio level and that sort of thing through helping people use what's in that book well, and where that book came from was my identity crisis. I mean, so we started this podcast by saying, well tell me a little bit about you and I’m like, well, I'm someone who, you know, grows by realising I'm totally in over my head and I don't know how to deal with this. And so instead of doing the same stuff I did before, like, what skill do I need to get? And what I love about people in the agile community is that's a very common mindset. You know, what I think is not so common is allowing the identity crises in and allowing them to inform us and allowing those crises to break us down, which is what I did. I allowed the identity crisis to break me down. And I started writing about that on this little blog called The road from project manager to agile coach. And so this is in 2008 or something like that. And so that's what eventually led to the book. I, you know, gave a talk at a Scrum gathering, my very first Scrum gathering. My very first public speaking thing called The road from project manager to agile coach. And talking about that, now the things I do as an agile coach now that I would have never done as a plan driven project manager, like I would've thought were stupid or ridiculous, or like magical thinking or just wouldn't work, you know, and of course they worked beautifully. So you know, from that point, I got asked to write the book, you know, and I had no intentions of writing a book and actually resisted it for a while, and kept getting all these sort of messages in the phone with people saying, gosh, that's good, you should write that down. And eventually, got in the place where the Coaching Agile Teams book just galloped its way into the world through me, it just, it was, it took one calendar year to write it and really, I didn't start writing it until May and it got turned in in November. I mean, so it just moved through very quickly.

Ula Ojiaku

Wow. Is there anything, because, you know, knowing what you now know, that you would do differently about the process of authoring a book and the messaging in it?

Lyssa Adkins

I think I would use the same process of authoring the book, and I think it's probably worth saying a little bit about what that is, because I actually went and found some mentors, people who've written books and said, so, you know, I don't know how to do this, you know, what's your advice? And so some of, the main process I used was agile. And so I had an outline of the book that had come to me over like a six month period of time before I turned in, before I finally decided to, well, I guess I’ll go ahead and turn in this book proposal. It seems like I already have it written. And I, at the time we were in a Facebook group, I sent that out to the group and I said, put these in business value order. You know, and they put it in a business value order about 90% of the way I would have. And so I started writing the book in business value order. And when I met the publisher in August and the book was due in November, he said, I guess you probably want an extension. You know, cause you surely the book's not going to be ready in November. I'm like, hmm, yeah, it is. He's like, well, how can you be so sure. I'm like, well, I'm writing it in business value order. I mean, so I'm writing the chapters that are most useful to people. So if we get to November 1st and something's not written, it's just not going to be in the book because it's the lowest value content anyway. He was like, wow, really? And he still didn't believe me that I would make the deadline, but I did, November 1st. So, you know, so I think that's an important thing. What was, what was important then, and I think it's probably even more important now is timing. You know, I had the sense that the content of the book was important, and that the sooner it got out there, the better, and that was more important than it being great or amazing, definitely not perfect, definitely more important than being perfect, that's something that I struggle with all the time. So it turned out though that my husband quit his job, retired a little bit early and he became the proofreader of the book and he and I were in this amazing cycle for the last few months of the book. And it all got written, every chapter.

Ula Ojiaku

Wow. That's amazing and inspiring. So what about the mentors? What was their inputs in addition to, you know, telling you how, their own process for writing? Did you also get their input to, you know, proofreading and suggesting?

Lyssa Adkins

We got a lot of people's input to the book. The book went out for review to about 12 people, and there were some really useful things that came back from that, and that affected how it, how it rolled out eventually. But one of my mentors was a guy named Lee Devin, and he's written a few books, but the one he's most known for in the agile world is called Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work is what that book is, and when we got together, he gave me two pieces of advice. He said, don't let your writer and your editor be in the room at the same time. And so what he meant by that is, your job when you are getting content out is just to write and don't even worry about spelling or punctuation or anything. And don't judge it, just get it out, come back in another time with the editor, who's got the red pen. It's like, oh, I don't like that language, this is not even a well-formed idea, punctuation, whatever. Now, to the extent that I can do that, the book flowed very beautifully. I can't tell you that I could do it all the time because I am so critical. Most of us are so critical of ourselves that we are writing and editing at the same time and what that, what that means is that our ideas die before they get to be born. And so the other thing that he recommended as a practice, which I did religiously, was before you start writing content for the day or whatever session you were, open a Word document and just start typing whatever is in your mind. And what you're doing there is you're trying to get your fingers and your body to move as fast as your mind. And so you're literally sort of warming up, you know, like a pianist would warm up or like someone playing soccer would warm up, so you're literally warming up this whole mind body instrument because the mind moves so fast. And it turns out, of course, that through that stream of consciousness writing, there were some real gems in there that got pulled into the book, but usually it was just a bunch of junk, you know, and I only, I set a timer for only five minutes. It didn't take a long time to do it, but the times that I didn't do it, the writing was not as good.

Ula Ojiaku

It's almost like, you know, priming a pump, because when you're speaking, I'm thinking of an ancient well, where you'd have the manual pump, you know, you'd have some prime it before the water starts flowing and you get into the zone and interestingly, that's also what, so Marie Forleo, she's more of a, she has a podcast as well and a course, I mean, what's it called, but the key thing is she said, interestingly, she said the same thing about, you know, just typing or writing and not minding whether it's quality or quantity and at a point in time, you know, you'd get flowing.

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah, exactly. There are all of these beautiful books of writing prompts too, you know, I mean, there's just, you're making me realise I need to start writing more. I think I've let the well go dry a little bit. Yeah. Thank you for the reminder.

Ula Ojiaku

Could we talk about your organisation, because there is your TENWOMENSTRONG Program. Is that still on? And if so, can you tell us about it? What's the vision behind, your putting that organisation together and how is it going right now?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah. So I am a co-leader and a contributor to TENWOMENSTRONG. It's actually an organisation owned by Carolyn Dragon and Carolyn, and I've known each other for more than a dozen years. We were in a really intense year-long leadership program together in 2010. And so she had this program and this company, TENWOMENSTRONG, and about the time that I sold Agile Coaching Institute in 2017, you know, she would, she said, I'm going to put myself on your calendar every six weeks just for us to have coffee, and I want to hear that you're doing nothing but singing and gardening and whatever you want to do, and that you're actually taking a break because it had been, you know, about a decade of really intense work, following my mission to help professionalise the discipline of agile coaching, you know, and working with so many people on having, you know, such a focus on that for so long and, you know, and it totally worked because now dozens of people are carrying that forward, you know? So my role in sort of, again, priming the pump, we're back to this metaphor, right? So my role along with Michael Spayd, like our role together, priming the pump for agile coaching you know, was done, it was done. And the next question is, well, what do I do next? And so Carolyn, true to her word, we got together every six weeks. What a great friend in that, in that following year, while I was busy transitioning Agile Coaching Institute to its new owner, but not really having a new mission for myself. And she was telling me about the impact of this program she has called TENWOMENSTRONG, and it's basically a program to help women reconnect with their purpose, and go through this process of discovering who I am authentically, you know, what are all of my creativities, especially the ones that I've forgotten about or that I think aren't wanted in my work world or in other parts of my world. And then what's the creative expression I'm here to bring. And so, at the time I had been looking around the agile world and going like, where are the women? I mean, I kept looking and going, like, there are plenty of us at these conferences, there are plenty of us at these meetups there, you know, like there's plenty of women in the agile world, but when you ask, you know, who are the people who I should read, you would get a list of men's names predominantly. Maybe my name would be in there and maybe Esther Derby and maybe a few others, but just, just a few. And so, as Carolyn was telling me the impact of this program, where she'd been running it inside of corporations and publicly, all of a sudden out of my mouth, I was like, oh my gosh, we need that for women in agile. And so we started, I think it was probably in 2019 with virtual and in-person programs, maybe it was 2018. So and then we did those for a few years and then the pandemic hit, and it was a real reassessment of what we wanted to do. And it was also Carolyn's decision, which I thought was a very brilliant business decision, to pull back, because people had enough on their plates, you know, another constant self-improvement like this whole sort of constant self improvement thing we do is another trap, you know? And so she did things that supported women in her circles, women who've been through her program that she attracted through various free offerings. She did things to support them, but not to add anything that would, you know, just contribute to the stress of the moment, they were under enough stress. And so now, as it is, she's now starting to bring back more programs, but she's doing them shorter duration. And so the one that I'm contributing to TENWOMENSTRONG right now is called Influence and Impact in the Agile World and it's a workshop where women come and they share with each other, the places where they're not having the influence and impact they wanted, and they don't know why, they've tried all different kinds of things, and so it's a workshop to take, you know, to create community about that, to actually be vulnerable and say that to other people, and to know that you're going to be received. And then we go through some different steps that allow the women to have some insight about their specific situation and they leave with an idea of what they want to try next. So those are the types of things that she's doing there, couple of other programs, but that's the one that I'm leading with her.

Ula Ojiaku

Now, based on what we've talked about so far, what are the books you would say have influenced your thinking and, you know, your approach as a coach, as a professional?

Lyssa Adkins

Well the books that have influenced my development as a coach and a professional are the ones that are written by the people who are in the coaching schools I went to. So, Co-Active Coaching is one, and then there's just a new book out now that encapsulates what I learned in organisation and relationship systems coaching, and that book is called Systems Inspired Leadership. It encapsulates the coaching approach, but talks about it from a leadership perspective, so it marries those two worlds for me. And then there's the whole genre of learning about Zen Buddhism, which I think has been a really important contribution to my ability to be a good coach. And so Pema Chödrön is someone I read there. There are many, many others, but she's the one that comes to mind right now because she has books that are called, well, hang on, what are they called? Get a load of these titles. The Places That Scare You, Comfortable With Uncertainty, Welcoming the Unwelcome, The Wisdom of No Escape - those are just some of her books. So what she helps me do, is actually what we talked about at the beginning, upgrade my own complexity of mind to work with what actually is happening and not ignore it, or try to bypass it. Downshift my nervous system, and then expand my ability to see the web of the relationship system to expand those five core competencies in myself and in my interactions with other people. So I think that for me, that's an essential piece of learning and, I would say, not so much learning, but leaderfullness, expanding my own leaderfullness, and ability to be in the world and with the world as it is.

Ula Ojiaku

That’s a new word for me, leaderfullness. It's almost like…

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah, it's a funny word, right. I think I picked it up from the Coaches Training Institute. They used to, have said that for years and years, but I think it conveys something really important, which is that leadership is not even primarily anymore about knowing better or doing more or any of these things that we promoted and we lauded leaders for, you know, leadership is about working with the world as it is and bringing to every moment, your authentic leaderfullness, you are full up with leadership. You are a full up, it's like a fully embodied way of expressing leadership and expressing our ability to take in what's really happening, to slow our minds down, to not be hijacked by the situation, to ask some deeper questions, and to look squarely in the face of the things that we don't want.

Ula Ojiaku

Awesome. Are there things that you'd like the audience to know in terms of what you're doing currently?

Lyssa Adkins

Yeah, I would direct people to lyssaadkins.com for what I'm doing currently, and of course you have to know how to spell it. L Y S S A A D K I N S.com. I know it'll be in the show notes too. The thing I think I want people to know is that something really exciting is just now starting, and I'm part of starting it. And I would say it's going to be, the kickoff or the beginning of a worldwide movement in the agile community, all centered around the question, if it's no accident that agile has emerged at exactly this time, what is its role in the planetary challenges and the paradigm shifts we are currently experiencing? That question, both enlivens me and haunts me. I've been holding that question for a long time and the first thing I know that is related to that question that's going to be moving out into the world will happen at Agile 2022 in Nashville in late July. And I am the moderator of a panel, essentially about what is Agile's bigger role and the panellists are all using agile in ways that help make our current situation better, help try to fend us off from the worst of the impacts of our previous behaviour. So there are people who, for example, are working in climate change, they're working and bringing agile into helping democracies arise. They're bringing agile into pulling girls out of poverty and the only option for themselves is sex trafficking, for example. All right. So these are some of the leaders who are going to be speaking about how, what they've been doing to investigate this question of like, if we agilists have something that's useful and we know how to do and be a different sort of person, have a different sort of skills, like what can we add to the people who are already doing this really important work on the planet right now. So I'm really excited to find out how that conversation goes. We're hoping to see that the sparks from that panel fly all over the world and ignite these conversations and agile communities all over the world, because I think we do have a role, and I think we have something that's so different and so useful, and I don't think we need to force it on anyone, but I think we’re good at experiments, you know, so like why don't we run some experiments, go find out, like would what you know, as an agilest be useful for an organisation who's responding to climate disasters, for example.

Ula Ojiaku

That's inspiring. What one thing would you like to leave the audience with?

Lyssa Adkins

You know, there's a quote, I don't even know where it came from that I say to myself all the time and I think that's what I want to leave the audience with. For those of you listening, first of all, thank you for your attention. I know that is the most precious thing we have. So what I'll leave you with is this. It will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

Ula Ojiaku

That's a great one. Thank you so much Lyssa for your time, it's been an insightful conversation.

Lyssa Adkins

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed this exploration and I've found some new ideas too

Ula Ojiaku

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! 

Agile Innovation Leaders podcast with Ula Ojiaku: an insightful series of conversations with world-class leaders, experts and doers about themselves and topics spanning leadership, digital transformation, lean-agile practices, innovation, entrepreneurship, and much more.

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