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The purpose of the IT Leaders Council is to bring together IT Directors and Managers for leadership training, educational content from guest speakers, and peer discussions in a vendor-free, collaborative environment. IT Leaders Councils are currently offered in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH, with more cities coming soon!
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;26
Speaker 1
Hey, everybody. First off, thank you, Doug, for the invitation. Very kind of you. And thank you to Eric and Bellarmine for hosting Eric wherever you are. Appreciate it. And thanks to each of you, I'm excited to get to work with you today. This is going to be fun. I'm Rick. So I'm an Agile guy. What does that mean?
00;00;19;27 - 00;00;46;13
Speaker 1
I help teams and groups of teams solve complex problems. I worked across, gosh, health care, energy, IATA, Hospital quality, and now finance a bunch of different industries, anywhere from one or three teams all the way up to 30 at a time. And I want to talk with you today a little bit about agility, which is a subject near and dear to my heart.
00;00;46;14 - 00;01;12;15
Speaker 1
It's a subject that many of you probably have visceral reactions to in one way or another. It's been used and abused in many different ways, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. A lot of the talk about agility that we hear these days is really about business value, right? We promise to deliver maximum value in minimum time. We have much better success rates than those blue waterfall projects.
00;01;12;15 - 00;01;34;24
Speaker 1
Right. And that's all you've heard that before? Probably if you've been around the block. I want to focus on something a little different. I want to focus on the connections between agility and its truest chorus form. We're going to go all the way back to the manifesto here today. I want to focus on connections between that and humanity, broadly speaking.
00;01;34;24 - 00;01;56;15
Speaker 1
And my reason for doing this is I really think that this is one of those opportunities that's sitting out there waiting to happen. And you can probably see this if you've been on a team that works together really well. Those people were able to bring out their humanity with each other in a way that's pretty special and motivating and helps with retention helps with delivery.
00;01;56;17 - 00;02;17;02
Speaker 1
In other words, the better humans we can be at work, the better our projects will thrive. That's part of what I'm going for here. And I'm going to talk a little bit about those connections and give some quick tips on how to do that. So my basic thesis here is that agility makes us enhances our humanity at work.
00;02;17;04 - 00;02;40;16
Speaker 1
That's another way to put it. So to get started on your table, you'll find some small slips of paper with some factors that are important and valuable in any project. There should be eight of them. And I'd like you to take a minute at your tables. Just I'll time it. This is going to be a five minute exercise, and for those of you joining, virtually, don't worry, we're going to show these up on the screen later.
00;02;40;18 - 00;02;58;25
Speaker 1
I want you to go ahead and try to figure out which of these are most important. Go ahead and have a conversation and try to star the one or three or however many things you think are really the most important. There is no one right answer. This is based on your own experience and those experiences will diverge. On your mark, get set.
00;02;58;28 - 00;03;05;23
Speaker 1
Go. All right. Right. I mean, I. Yeah, use.
00;03;05;25 - 00;03;11;12
Speaker 2
That. I just getting shredded.
00;03;11;14 - 00;03;32;17
Speaker 1
Everybody's at a place with this. It doesn't have to be a final place because there is no final place. But tables. Raise your hand if I don't know. Documentation made it on your list of more important things. Hi. How are you? Okay. One table. Poor documentation. All right, Go ahead and raise your hand if individuals in interactions was on your list.
00;03;32;19 - 00;03;59;27
Speaker 1
Holy cow. All right. We have a very near consensus on that one. Great. Well, so the story goes that many moons ago, a group of middle aged white guys got together in a ski resort out west. This is literally true. And there they wrote the Agile Manifesto, which is the founding document of Agile. So when we speak about agility, we should really be talking about that.
00;03;59;27 - 00;04;26;00
Speaker 1
And it comes from a very particular perspective, right? A certain socioeconomic perspective. But there are some lessons to be learned from that document nonetheless. So what we have here is the four Agile values, the Agile Manifesto, which you can still see on the original website. It has the worst pattern background ever. And Sarah font, it hasn't changed a bit since 2001.
00;04;26;03 - 00;04;57;18
Speaker 1
What it says is that we we see value in all of these things, but we believe there is more value in the things on the left. So when you have a choice between individuals and interactions on the one hand and processes and tools on the other, guess where the more value is? It's in the individuals and interactions. If you have a choice between customer collaboration and contract negotiation, guess which one is more valuable?
00;04;57;18 - 00;05;17;15
Speaker 1
What's going to lead to the delivery of more value? Collaborating with the customer, actually working together to figure out what the most value is, as opposed to haggling or negotiating over a document. Same thing with working out. Which would you rather have, you know, a book about a car or an actual car? Right. This this one is kind of self-evident.
00;05;17;15 - 00;05;40;01
Speaker 1
And lastly, which would you rather do and this is what I call the lemming principle. Would you rather follow the plan or adapt to the right? Of course we should adapt. We should change course rather than blindly follow a plan. That's a no brainer. So again, these are not this is not to say, please, that there is no value in the things on the right.
00;05;40;08 - 00;06;06;23
Speaker 1
All of these things are valuable. It's just to say that in the Agile mindset, we favor the left side factors. Okay, we can group these a little bit and here I'm going to draw some connections to the previous presentation. Right? So the first to the top left quadrant, if you will, the values of focusing on individuals in interactions and customer collaboration.
00;06;06;26 - 00;06;31;22
Speaker 1
You can see in there that the document points to a kind of mutual recognition, right? It's about it's about connecting with others. It's about mutual regard. And in that in some way it's about compassion, right? We're engaging with these people not to dominate. We're engaging with these people to collaborate, to work together, to understand what each other need and help meet those needs.
00;06;31;25 - 00;06;54;26
Speaker 1
It's very basic. And you can see on the two on the bottom left that here we have what the word empiricism comes up, right? This is the scientific enterprise. We're going to be flexible, we're going to grow, we're going to adapt, we're going to try and see. We're going to learn by doing. This is how we got to the moon on kerosene, right?
00;06;54;27 - 00;07;28;14
Speaker 1
Is by trying things. Verner von Braun, the famous rocket guy. Right. Why was he so good at building rockets? And his answer was, I crashed more rockets than everybody else. That's how I got good at launching rockets. All right. So we learn by doing All right. I want to engage you in a little act of exercise. But in order to do that, and then I'll bring out the next point, I promise I'm going to need three volunteers, one to is your chance to be brave and famous.
00;07;28;17 - 00;07;51;09
Speaker 1
One more. Come on. S three. All right, come on up. So these three people have won one important job. You don't have to come up on stage. You can stay down there. And the job is as follows. On that table over there are two buckets. One of the buckets contains a whole bunch of blocks. Your job is to very quickly get all of those blocks.
00;07;51;09 - 00;08;22;08
Speaker 1
Each of them must touch the table. Everyone's hands and into the other bucket got it. So every single block must touch each of your hands the table, and then go into the other bucket. On your mark, get set, go.
00;08;22;10 - 00;08;24;12
Speaker 2
How did it?
00;08;24;15 - 00;09;17;07
Speaker 1
They're doing great. Well, somebody's helping. That's so nice. I can see Theresa thinking this is the worst project charter ever. Yay! Yeah. Have a round of applause, please. Very good. On up, step, step, step and come back. All right. 14, 3 seconds. I want you to have a quick conversation and think about how you do it differently the next time.
00;09;17;09 - 00;09;18;12
Speaker 1
Great.
00;09;18;14 - 00;09;34;01
Speaker 2
Okay, so a writer idea. Should we say that? What do you think we should sit down at Born, Touch your little quick and then be just shifted. Got do all that or whenever you're touching your feet is putting it in the box.
00;09;34;04 - 00;10;33;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. So she would be like, it's okay. All right, they ready? On your mark. Get set, go. Stop. Okay. You reduced your time by 10 seconds. Give them a round of applause. Okay? Now, I'm not going to make them do it. But if they had to do it a third time, see, they love each other. Now, if they had to do it a third time, do you think they would go even faster?
00;10;33;10 - 00;10;58;02
Speaker 1
Yes. My record that I've observed is 6 seconds. One person poured the blocks through the other person's hands with their own in there as well. And Gravity did all the work and they got all of them in in 6 seconds. Right. That's the kind of innovation that we unleash with agility. There's my page. But notice what happened at the end.
00;10;58;02 - 00;11;22;29
Speaker 1
What happened at the end of the second exercise? Wonderful moment. What did they do? They gave high fives, right? So they I mean, this is folks, this is hardwired into us. This is what humans do. We build teams, right? This is how we survive. This is how we we invented agriculture, right? We invented cities. This is how we relate to each other fundamentally.
00;11;23;01 - 00;11;48;04
Speaker 1
Agility draws this out. A great way to do this is with the virtuous cycle of empiricism, what we might also call the three pillars of Scrum transparency inspection and adaptation. First, you have to observe what's there, which means you have to be willing to expose it. Here we come back to honesty, right? You have to be willing to see what's actually happening.
00;11;48;06 - 00;12;08;20
Speaker 1
Then you have to dive into it a little bit and get critical. You have to move beyond blame and think about like, what's the root cause here right? Why would someone think this was the best way to go? What conditions existed to make that seem like a good idea? It's a really powerful question. Right. And then lastly, we adapt.
00;12;08;20 - 00;12;40;07
Speaker 1
We're willing to change. We're willing to try new things. You can also see this inherent mutual regard in what's often called the Agile Prime Directive. For those of you Trekkies, right? The Prime directive is that, you know, the folks on the Enterprise aren't allowed to interfere with the developing civilizations right here in the world of Agile. It means we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what was the case.
00;12;40;09 - 00;13;10;18
Speaker 1
Right? Nobody's going to work in the morning trying to do a bad job, right? So we grant each other again, compassion, mutual regard, the best of humanity. We try to rise to that level of understanding every day in the agile world. Okay. So if you take a minute and think here is I think we may be done for maybe the first time today for each of you about what makes humans great, right?
00;13;10;23 - 00;13;33;24
Speaker 1
Those are likely traits that one has an opportunity to cultivate in an agile context. That's my message today mutual regard and compassion, accepting our differences and our faults so that what? So that we can transcend them. So that the team can adapt. If one of these team members had one arm, they would still the team would find a way, right?
00;13;33;24 - 00;13;57;02
Speaker 1
If all we have is kerosene and a rocket, the team will find a way, right? Learning, experimentation and empiricism. There's this for those of you who do a lot of anyone use Kanban with their teams. Kanban Agile Framework. Okay, few people do. There's the spooky moment if you're doing it really well. There's this spooky moment where the the statistics diverge.
00;13;57;05 - 00;14;33;11
Speaker 1
Individual productivity at the issue level drops. In other words, Bob and Gene are each doing fewer tickets, but the throughput of the group increases. How do you actually get more done with a team when the individuals are doing less? Right? It's spooky, it's counterintuitive, but that's exactly what happens. And little's law proves it. It's really cool, right? So, you know that that learning that empiricism, that experimentation, it unleashes the group does it lead to heroes and heroic individuals?
00;14;33;12 - 00;14;56;13
Speaker 1
No, but it leads to a healthier group. It leads to a healthier society, and it allows us to transcend our limitations as humans. So how might one proceed on this journey, if you're wondering? Well, this sounds great, but how do I get going with it? There are a number of options you could choose, and they're all over the place.
00;14;56;15 - 00;15;26;05
Speaker 1
One is if we were simply to migrate back a slide, choose the things on the left, over the things on the right. That's called having an agile mindset and it works. It will eventually lead to transformations in your organization and it will help others do the same, get closer to customers, actually meet a customer, actually collaborate with them, bring them into your team, have them ride along for a week and get them what they really want.
00;15;26;07 - 00;15;50;12
Speaker 1
It's another that's another good option. Deliver more frequently. Many of you are probably delivering an actual thing on the scale of six months, right? One of the places I worked, we managed to drop that to three weeks and the results were dramatic. The customers had something they could actually touch and see and feel in three weeks. Now, did we stop working on it?
00;15;50;12 - 00;16;15;11
Speaker 1
Oh, we had we had to have trust with them that we would stick with it, that we would continue, but that trust can be built. And lastly, I would encourage you all those leaders this goes back to something that AJ shared earlier. I would encourage you all as leaders to move away from control and towards support, move away from control and towards support.
00;16;15;16 - 00;16;36;10
Speaker 1
So you engage the group, you look at metrics, you look at progress and performance, not to tell the team what to do. I did not tell them how to make those blocks go into the box faster, right? You don't tell people what to do. You offer support. You offer an opportunity to try again. You offer whatever training is needed.
00;16;36;10 - 00;16;58;01
Speaker 1
You say, How can I help you? Be the best team you can be? What would your next step be? Team? How would you like me to help you do that? What a fantastic way to lead right servant leadership and what that does is it cultivates group ownership, right? Because it's now the team that's accountable. It's the team that owns the things.
00;16;58;06 - 00;17;18;02
Speaker 1
That's all good stuff. So, all right, in the end, I should add that these are only words so they can be used, as we said, for good or evil. And many of you have been in a context where they've been used for evil probably, and have some scar tissue related to that. So I'd just encourage you to give agility a second look.
00;17;18;04 - 00;17;26;10
Speaker 1
You know? Yeah, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much.