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I have spent my entire adult life learning and adjusting my approaches to leading people and teams.

From my youth, until today I have watched leaders, observed how they lead, interact and develop people and teams. How they build teams and how they adjust teams.

I have studied multiple approaches to team development from the Tuckman cycle to Theories and approaches by by Connie Gerseck and others. Of course these studies also included Covey, Maxwell and Lencioni

In all that time I have found useful ideas, opinions and approaches from each and many more.

I have also developed my own ideas and merged their ideas into a set of guidance I mentor others on.

The following is a subset of some of that learning, and I will continue to develop them here and in other places.

Leadership

Business, Team and Personal Productivity

Change Management, Business, Team and Personal

Technology

Please feel free to share what works for you and what doesn’t.

https://blog.iconagility.com/empiricism-in-the-age-of-covid19-part-1-learning-and-preparation

Over the last several weeks, I have supported a number of remote ceremonies and these are some helpful tips I am providing to Release Train Engineers, Scrum Masters and fellow coaches. They are also downloadable here.

Let me know what your tips are!

Some helpful reminders for remote PI Ceremonies:  Note: Share these guidelines with your presenters and Scrum Masters and Product Management as well!

• Plan, plan a backup, practice. 
  1. Have people designated to troubleshoot team issues in real time (make sure they either know the tools well, or have specializations)
  2. Have a backup for each tool you plan to use
  3. Practice sessions identify challenges, practice, it won’t make you perfect, it will make you better prepared to adjust on the fly
  4. Expect problems, have a plan
  5. Give preference to web-based products, define the best browsers for users
  6. Understand if people will be interacting on mobile platforms
  7. Understand that having users logged in/registered on multiple devices (call in on phone, logged in on web) provide guidance
  8. If people are using their own ‘zoom’, phone etc., creates complexity and security concerns, give guidance
• Try to use interactive engagement
  1. Communications at scale can be challenging. I was just in a session using zoom on a corporate laptop and remained maxxed on cpu, which destroyed the presentation)
  2. Give preference to internal tooling first, scale can create issues for ‘free tooling’ that is outside your organizational control
  3. Tools like mentimeter, kahoot etc. are engaging, but use them as needed, not as your platform, unless you are mixing interaction with presentation.  Balance!
  4. Remember when engaging people in a large gathering conference call, use good etiquette AND smart speaking.  Don’t ask, ‘Can you hear me?’, ask ‘Bob, is my audio clear?’  ‘I will pause for 1 minute for questions, before continuing’ vice, ‘Does anyone have questions”
  5. Use and promote chat sessions in conferencing tooling, have a designated support person monitoring chat.
  6. Have speakers show video when possible and not specifically presenting content but just talking
  7. If a large group, certainly try to avoid large introductions, or begin the meeting with a ‘coffee break’ (note: this helps mitigate late joiners as well)
  8. Remind people to ‘state their name’ when talking.  Tip – Post etiquette rules in the chat session/background for presentation screen! (mute when not talking, state your name etc.)
• Give teams time beforehand to practice using new tools
  1. Create individual sessions for SM, PO’s and teams
  2. Create session for 1 tool per session
  3. Making them fun (using Mural in a virtual happy hour, using mentimeter for interactive trivia sessions etc.…) (see leadership check in notes)
  4. If in an increment, create your electronic boards in Mural/Miro etc now, and run your ART syncs using these tools for exposure and familiarity/awareness.
• Understand time boxes and prepare to adjust time boxes as necessary (it will probably take longer the first time; scale will increase the likelihood & impact of this)
  1. Remember ‘walk/bio breaks’
  2. Remember your audience is sitting and listening mostly, see interactive sessions
  3. Break the monotony when appropriate – quick tip- Have people vote by standing/sitting
  4. When your setup meetings, be aware that you might have time zone management (mornings/afternoon/lunches/breakfasts etc.)
  5. Whenever possible use ‘local’ monitors to give feedback and keep team health and temperature in mind
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – We must focus on making tools the medium, not the focus!  The more you can make this seamless for the teams, the better your chances of success!
• Be Great (Just like every other day)

If you are #socialdistancing and I hope you are, a great read to pick up to develop your individual skills and create personal ‘to-do’ list for improving your #leadershipskills is a book by William Cohen.

It is not new. It is in fact, timeless (IMHO).

For anyone who has been part of my #mentoring in the past, it is a required read.

I want to highlight 4 of what Cohen calls the ‘Universal Laws of Leadership‘.

• Declare your expectations
• Show uncommon commitment
• Expect positive results
• Take care of your people

During combat, individuals go through many emotions on top of constantly changing and evolving environments, disruption to personnel and unexpected and unforeseen events. Cohen’s Leadership Laws are derived from learnings in these environments as well as modern business.

They are applicable today.

The pace of changing events is accelerated by the current global conditions.

Declare your expectations: Set daily goals, while maintaining a vision for weekly outcomes.

Why? They will create small victories, and learnings on which to build stronger teams and team cohesion, with more #Endurance  Teams that can follow a vision, and make their own path tend to be more successful, but also build stronger character and cohesion, because they trust each other.

Show uncommon commitment in the book this refers more to the mission but is equally applied to your people.

Why? By keeping the team focused on the vision, they are focused on things they can control.  Their ability to control the influences from the external world are minimal, but they can control their actions and their outcomes. Further, by keeping them focused on an attaining the outcomes daily, you are helping them cope better with the unpredictable outside world.  In short, you are leading them well.  Make sure you are checking in with them, #Equip them to be successful daily and weekly. Help them #Envision their success, then achieve it.

Expect positive results As a leader, if you are setting realistic and achievable goals, even in failure, there should be valuable learning.

Why? Expecting positive results, combined with Declaring your expectations, creates an environment for your teams where you have let them know what you want, and you believe and trust in them to get the results.  This is the power of many agile teams, and an inherent component of many of our top military units.

Take care of your people Fundamental to all leadership, your people are your greatest asset, and will ensure the future of your organization.

Why?  Few, if any companies can say they had a business plan for, or a risk mitigation strategy for, a global pandemic and then an almost near total economic shut down.  There were no plans. Companies People, that work for companies, have adapted and the companies have benefitted.  If you are not sure how to take care of your people in this environment, I recently posted a short guidance here.

We are all in this together!

#BeSafe

#Lead

#Mentor

#Investinpeople

It’s been a while since I posted publicly due to <insert many excuses here>

That said, let’s get to it!

What’s happening in your world?  Anything new?

Obviously, EVERYONE is impacted by the spread of the virus, COVID-19, and daily life is a disrupted mess at varying levels of insanity.  I though now might be a great time to revisit some of our core agile thinking and principles as we march into the very unpredictable future.

The latest survey for agile adoption shows that consistently, companies leverage agile adoption to deal with uncertainty (or at least that is how they say the use it).

I wanted to insert this information here as a baseline for a couple of thoughts revolving around conversations I have been having with clients and peers recently.

Before getting into those conversations, I want to refresh our thinking on Core Agile Values and Principles:

Ø  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Ø  Working software over comprehensive documentation

Ø  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Ø  Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

I know you have probably read these before maybe even many times, but please read them again.

The agile philosophy began as a better way to provide customers with value while embracing the iterative and incremental way of building solutions.  The principles specifically embrace the outcomes of mitigating risks early and often but embracing learning and empiricism.  This concept is critical in understand our why.  Mitigate risk, deliver value, learn. 

Wikipedia describes it as: The basic idea behind this method is to develop a system through repeated cycles (iterative) and in smaller portions at a time (incremental), allowing software developers to take advantage of what was learned during development of earlier parts or versions of the system. Learning comes from both the development and use of the system, where possible key steps in the process start with a simple implementation of a subset of the software requirements and iteratively enhance the evolving versions until the full system is implemented. At each iteration, design modifications are made and new functional capabilities are added.

Again, the value here is in reduction of risk, with addition of value, while learning.  The proposition is incredibly valuable if we can learn to leverage it within our workforce!

As this way of working became increasingly popular, new methods were applied within it, such as Lean & Six Sigma type thinking.  Certainly, waste reduction is good, and if we can reduce waste, and mitigate risk, deliver value and learn, the world may in fact become a happy place!  Viola!

In this new, easy to understand set of principles and values came new business focused less on the underlying reasons and more on how they could contribute, or in some case redefine the underpinnings of this simple set of rules.  As we learn with most systems, they can become greedy and protective of themselves, and eventually even learn or be designed to protect themselves.

Oddly (or not so oddly), those traits reflect the larger human condition.

I was listening to the news, as I believe everyone is/has been.  I was taken by some things I observed how the federal government and state governments were working or attempting to work.  It was interesting to notice how the federal government was ceding decision making to local authorities on everything from restrictions on travel/gatherings to acquisition of services and supplies they needed.  Decentralizing authority for speed and accuracy of execution while also providing guidance on execution and planning as well as reducing the larger scale risks by providing country wide guidelines on access, restrictions and best practices.  It was an Agilist’s dream to be able to easily identify how the government was effectively stepping in and out of solutions to guide but not dictate, except where they were required.  You could almost envision the perfect architect/product management balance.

Sadly, it was also easy to recognize that is not how the government functions regularly.  Unfortunately, an international crisis was required to get the team on the same page (mostly).

This article is not meant to be political in any way, you can find that everywhere any day.

It is simply meant to allow us to look at the function of a system, as designed, when it is working towards a common goal, when teams are gathered and motivated to overcome a challenge and deliver value to the customers.

This time of constant change is bringing many new challenges, in the next post I will begin to address specific challenges for teams and leadership in the new work we live.

Until then, remain safe, practice smart activities, follow good guidance!