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Gateway Drug to Synergism

September 6, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Dialogue, Fellowship, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
2 Comments

Gateway Drug to Synergism

Tl;Dr: Self-organising teams – if you can pull them off – offer a path into the synergistic mindset.

A Gateway drug is “a habit-forming drug that is not addictive but the use of which may lead to the use of other, addictive, drugs”.

Self-Organising is Bizarre

Have you ever been in a self-organising team? A kind of super jelled team, as DeMarco and Lister call it, in their classic book “Peopleware“.

If you have, then you may understand a little about what self-organising really means. If you have not, then it’s a sufficiently rare and yes, bizarre, state of affairs that you’re unlikely to even begin to understand the dynamics and emotions involved.

Which is rather contrary to common sense. I mean, how hard can it be? People organising themselves, rather than having some one do it for them (or more often, to them). Sounds like it’s fairly straightforward, yes?

We can read books, watch videos, think and talk about the subject – and come to believe we know what’s involved. But really, unless you’ve experienced it, you just not going to get it. Sorry about that.

Maybe a better question is “Do you need to get what self-organising is really about?”. What is the downside of not understanding?

If you’re a member of a team about to dip its collective toes into the self-organising waters, then learning as you go along  seems like a fair approach, especially if you all have someone or something to help navigate those – sometime choppy – waters. A suitably-experienced team coach has a valuable role to play here. Books can also help (see Further Reading section, below).

If you’re a newbie joining an existing self-organising team, then the team should be able to sort things out for you, and with you, automagically.

If you’re a manager or executive (or Scrum Master or Project Manager) “in charge” of self-organising teams, or of introducing the idea to existing non-self-organising teams, then the downside of not understanding the new landscape unfolding before you is that you will unwittingly maim or destroy the very benefits that effective self-organising teams promise to provide:

  • Engagement in the work
  • Commitment to the goals
  • Alignment with the common (organisational) purpose
  • Joyfulness and higher self-esteem for all (not just the team)
  • Motivation to sweat the details, attend to quality, go the extra mile when necessary

Obliquity

Here’s what’s bizarre: if you attempt to exploit these benefits, they will be still-born and ephemeral. Which is why Servant Leadership or even Host Leadership offer a better path. And why I’d suggest approaching the whole effort obliquely. That is, not pushing for your teams to self-organise. Not pushing for engagement, commitment, alignment or motivation. But rather simply, calmly and quietly listening to them, and making yourself clearly available to engage with them in purposeful dialogue and mutual learning about how the work should work.

Paradox

The paradox of self-organising is that the more you focus on it, suggest it, push it, the more elusive it becomes:

  • Focus on self-organising, and self-organising will take longer and end up weaker.
  • Focus on the team’s purpose, and self-organising will emerge, stronger and deeper.

Here’s some two simple questions to get the ball rolling:

  • “What is the purpose of this team from the customers’ (end-users’) point of view?”
  • “What measures will the team use to understand and improve its work?”

These two questions are sufficient to forge the necessary “crucible” for productive dialogue – as explained by William Isaacs in his book “Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together“. And to allow self-organising to emerge, unbidden.

And please note, although most folks talk about self-organising in the context of teams and teamwork, there’s nothing to say that you have to have teams to have self-organising. After all, it’s people – individuals – that self-organise. FlowChain is one example of a (synergistic) organisational approach that allows self-organising to emerge without the need for teams (and thereby avoiding the dysfunctions inherent in team-based working).

– Bob

Further Reading

The Great Game of Business ~ Jack Stack
The Power of Servant Leadership ~ Robert K. Greenleaf
Host Leadership ~ Mark McKergow
Obliquity ~ John Kay
Coaching for Performance ~ Sir John Whitmore
Freedom From Command & Control ~ John Seddon
Misconceptions About Self-Organising Teams ~ Esther Derby

If You Were a Car…

September 5, 2012
Coaching, Dialogue, Organisational Therapy
1 Comment

If You Were a Car…

One technique I find useful, when helping individuals, groups, teams and organisations understand themselves a little better, is to ask the question:

“If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?”

where “you”, here, refers to the entity in question. i.e.

“If your team were a car, what kind of car would it be?”

The answers highlight some essential attributes of the entity in question, as well as the differences in different folks’ perception of that same entity. The answers also provide fertile ground for further questions and conversations around folks’ perspectives, and about their aspirations for the entity’s future, and their part in it, too.

Variants

Other variants I have used include:

  • If you were a vehicle, what kind of vehicle would you be?
  • If you were a City, which City would you be?
  • If you were a movie, which movie would you be?
  • If you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be?
  • If you were a song, which song would you be?
  • If you were a band (popular beat combo, pop group), which band would you be?
  • If you were a cartoon character, which character would you be?
  • If you were a superhero from a comic strip, which superhero  would you be?
  • If you had a superpower, which superpower would that be?

Sometimes, too, it can help to suggest that the people in question choose or invent their own variant. Particular if they find amusement in, or ridicule, the variant you have chosen for them.

Organisational Personas

Olaf Lewitz has just raised the possibility of using this kind of question, e.g.:

“If your organisation were a person, what kind of person would it be?”

to help folks in organisations explore their subconscious attitudes and collective self-image, and maybe to forge a new identify towards which to strive in the future.

He also usefully suggests that this may offer a better approach – avoiding some of the implicit connotations and thus dysfunctions – than the typical “initial assessment” of which I have recently been writing, in the context of Organisational Therapy and e.g. Planning to Flourish.

See the comments on the post “There is No Organisation, but…” for more about all this.

What do you think?

– Bob

Leadership or Fellowship

July 30, 2012
Coaching, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Psychology, Rightshifting
24 Comments

Leadership or Fellowship

“The 21st century doesn’t need more leaders – nor more leadership.”

~ Umair Haque

I used to be a fan of leadership. I saw it as a way – maybe THE way – out of the dismal, bean-counter, management factories of the Analytic mindset. Although, truth be told, and upon reflection, even when I was running my own business (Familiar) I didn’t do much “leadership”. Even now you can go to my website and see my thoughts (as they were several years ago – and yes, I know, the whole thing needs a serious overhaul, for any number of reasons).

Update: 16-Nov-2012 I’ve now overhauled my website, so its incongruity is now consigned to the obscurity of the Wayback Machine.

And even recently, I generally took the notion of leadership as a given, and a “good thing”, without really ever thinking about it much.

But in the run-up to ACE Conference 2012, and the preparation of my keynote on the topic of Alienation, something began to quietly nag at me. With the opportunity to reflect a little more, and as I teased at the loose ends, the fabric of the leadership ideal began to unravel before my mind’s eye.

Fish in Water

“I don’t know who discovered water, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.”

~ Marshall McLuhan

This quote is getting a little threadbare now, I think, but still relevant.

The idea of leadership, and preoccupation with it, seems to be about as old as history itself. Much of modern society has come to regard leadership – at least, of a certain sort – as a noble and revered calling. Accordingly, there is a wealth of research, opinions, models, etc. exploring leadership. Not to mention the global leadership “industry”. It’s as if it’s the only game in town for go-ahead businesses.

Setting aside the specific issues of pathological leadership (Caligula, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Gaddafi, et al), and the crimes committed thereby, I have come to believe there are fundamental flaws in the whole notion of leadership (however well-intentioned or competent). Be that Servant Leadership, Host Leadership, leader-as-coach, joint or shared leadership, whatever. To me they are all tarred with the same brush.

Leadership is a Sensemaking Construct

In his paper The Romance of Leadership and the Evaluation of Organizational Performance James R Meindl describes how the concept of leadership has all but transcended rational enquiry and passed into the realms of romantic myth.

In a nutshell, he observes that people overrate the value of leadership; external influences appears to have more impact on the performance of organisations than we generally assume.

“The significance placed on leadership is a response to the ill-structured problem of comprehending the causal structure of complex, organised systems.”

He asserts that the concept of leadership emerges from this sensemaking process “guided by the psychology and sociology of the observer”.

“The romanticised conception of leadership results from a biased preference to understand important but causally indeterminate and ambiguous organisational events and occurrences in terms of ‘leadership’.”

The Ideal

Let’s take a look at what we’re trying to accomplish in highly effective knowledge-work organisations. Dan Pink cites “Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose” as the key elements for intrinsic motivation in knowledge-work contexts. Anyone who has this software development thing figured out knows that great teams don’t need – or have – conventional “leadership”.

“When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit.”

~ Peter M Senge

Peter Senge suggests the ideal social environment for knowledge work is the learning organisation:

“…where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together”

~ Peter M Senge

Senge postulates five “disciplines” of the learning organisation:

  • Shared Vision aka Common Purpose

    “The organisational vision must not be created by the leader, rather, the vision must be created through interaction with [and between] the individuals in the organisation.”

    ~ Peter M. Senge

  • Systems Thinking

    “The defining characteristic of a system is that it cannot be understood as a function of its isolated components. First, the behavior of the system doesn’t depend on what each part is doing but on how each part is interacting with the rest … Second, to understand a system we need to understand how it fits into the larger system of which it is a part … Third, and most important, what we call the parts need not be taken as primary. In fact, how we define the parts is fundamentally a matter of perspective and purpose, not intrinsic in the nature of the ‘real thing’ we are looking at.”

    ~  Kofman and Senge, 1993, p. 27.

    Which, to my mind, applies at least as much to the (undesirable) partitioning of roles into ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’ as it does to partitioning of the organisation into e.g. silos.

  • Personal Mastery

    “Individuals who practice personal mastery experience other changes in their thinking. They learn to use both reason and intuition to create. They become systems thinkers who see the interconnectedness of everything around them and, as a result, they feel more connected to the whole. It is exactly this type of individual that one needs at every level of an organisation for the organisation to learn.

    ~ Peter M. Senge

  • Team Learning

    “[In Team Learning] all participants must ‘suspend their assumptions;’ all participants must ‘regard one another as colleagues;’ and there must be a facilitator (at least until teams develop these skills) ‘who holds the context of the dialogue.’ [David] Bohm asserts that ‘hierarchy is antithetical to dialogue, and it is difficult to escape hierarchy in organisations.’

    ~ Peter M. Senge

  • Mental Models

    “Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.”

    ~ Peter M. Senge

And not just any old mental models. A shared mental model of how the world of work should work, with the nature of that shared world-view dictating the effectiveness of the organisation as a whole.

The Dysfunctions of Leadership

The concept of leadership introduces a number of dysfunctions. Rarely are these discussable or discussed in our romanticised conception of the mythological leader:

  • Leadership inevitably produces implicit (or even explicit) Parent-Child relationships cf Transactional Analysis

“Just one of many examples of this type of parent/child exchange is the unwritten pact that if employees do whatever their bosses ask of them (regardless of whether it makes good business sense) the boss will take care of their next promotion/career move.”

  • Leadership validates “followership” and thus increased risk of “social loafing“
  • Leadership cultivates “learned helplessness”
  • Leadership can increases alienation, tribalism and the formation of in-groups
  • Leadership often encourages favouritism, patriarchy, deference, sycophancy and obsequiousness, with a consequent reduction in both the quality and quantity of meaningful dialogue.
  • Leadership compounds and perpetuates the Analytic mindset
  • Leadership subtly undermines systems thinking, by breaking the social body into discrete parts (leaders, followers), and focussing attention on those parts rather than on e.g. the relationships between them, and the whole itself.

Comfortable

“People hate to be managed, but love to be led.”

~ Scott McNealy

And people love sitting on the couch, with beer and pizza, watching a game on TV, too. This doesn’t mean it’s good for them (at least, health-wise), or productive. By all means, folks should be free to choose their own poisons, but from the perspective of the effective organisation, we might hope that we’re working alongside folks that do have some motivation towards the well-being and productivity of themselves, their colleagues and their collective endeavours.

So to Fellowship

I posit that, unlike leadership, fellowship is much more congruent with the ideal social environment for knowledge work, as outlined above. I recently wrote a post describing the idea of fellowship and contrasting it with the more established concept of leadership.

Conclusion

In conclusion then, I believe the idea of leadership has some merits – generally in the context of Ad-hoc and Analytic mindsets (cf. the Marshall Model), but popular mythology, plus certain pernicious cognitive biases, crowd out the greater benefits that fellowship can offer. I feel the Synergistic mindset offers a great opportunity to leave behind us the dysfunctions inherent in the idea of leadership, and thus open the door to the uptake of the idea of fellowship.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Romance of Leadership and the Evaluation of Organizational Performance ~ Meindl, Ehrlich and Dukerich (1985 paper, pdf)
You Are The Messiah And I Should Know – Why Leadership Is A Myth ~ Justin Lewis-Anthony
Leadership Becomes Fellowship ~ Bruce Morton (MIX article)
First Break All the Rules ~ Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
The Builder’s Manifesto ~ Umair Haque (blog post)
Leadership is Overrated ~ Rick McLaughlin (pdf)
Could Leadership Not Matter At All? – Forbes.com article
Good to Great ~ Jim Collins

The Shrink is IN

July 27, 2012
Coaching, Financial, Leadership, Management, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Psychology, Rightshifting
8 Comments

The Shrink is IN

I have struggled for many years to find a model for positive and effective engagement with organisations looking to improve their effectiveness. Agile coaching has not worked for me – or for clients, much – because of its generally limited (i.e. individual, team or departmental) scope. Ditto Scrum Mastering (and this compounded by a widespread misconception about what Scrum Mastering even means, and just why it might offer any value).

Consulting likewise misses the mark, not least because clients rarely understand how to get anything like the best out of consultants and consulting advice. It’s often like the organisation needs consulting on how to use consultants. Of course great consultants should and can do this – clients permitting – but Sturgeon’s Law tells us these folks are rare.

So I’ve been on the lookout for a model of engagement that affords the following opportunities:

  • Models positive behaviours, such as fellowship, mutual respect and collaboration.
  • Promotes introspection and self-renewal, allowing folks to find their own way.
  • Respects the individual.
  • Avoids compounding common dysfunctions, such as parent-child dynamics (c.f. Transactional Analysis) and alienation.
  • Replaces dependency and learned helplessness with self-reliance and self-confidence.
  • Congruent with positive psychology (i.e. PERMA): Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships (social connections), Meaning (and purpose) and Accomplishment.
  • Offers incremental and tangible progress at a pace set by the folks involved.
  • Therapeutic (i.e. healing, curative, but also sometimes preventive or supportive).
  • Social and humane.

Accordingly, I have come to regard “therapy” as a model closely matching these attributes, and specifically, “psychotherapy“. But, from a systems thinking perspective, the clients or “patients” are not the individuals in an organisation, but the organisations themselves.

So these days I choose to call myself an “Organisational Psychotherapist”. What does that mean, exactly? What does Organisation Psychotherapy look like in practise? And how can an approach founded on the principles of therapy help  organisations improve their effectiveness?

Aside: We have to assume that an organisation wants help, wants to improve its effectiveness (or maybe some other aspect of its “personality”, functioning, or well-being). If thirty years of coaching has taught me one thing, it’s that there’s no helping folks (or organisations) that don’t want to be helped.

Why Therapy?

Maybe the first question folks have is “why therapy?”. Why take a therapy stance when most other folks choose to act as consultants, or coaches? Fundamentally, it’s because I believe an organisation, as a whole, has to work its issues through, and take responsibility itself for doing that. Too often, consultants get hired to shoulder responsibility on behalf of the organisation. And when these consultants leave, clients all too often find themselves back at square one – or worse. Like a game of Snakes and Ladders.

So, to organisational psychotherapy. As an analogy, we might consider the work of Virginia Satir, widely regarded as the “Mother of Family Therapy”.

“Families and societies are small and large versions of one another. Both are made up of people who have to work together, whose destinies are tied up with one another. Each features the components of a relationship: leaders perform roles relative to the led, the young to the old, and male to female; and each is involved with the process of decision-making, use of authority, and the seeking of common goals.”

~ Virginia Satir, Peoplemaking, ch. 24 (1988).

“It is now clear to me that the [organisation] is a microcosm of the world. To understand the world, we can study the [organisation]. Issues such as power, intimacy, autonomy, trust, and communication skills are vital parts underlying how we live in the world. To change the world is to change the [organisation].

~ Virginia Satir (paraphrased)
The New Peoplemaking, ch. 1 (1988)

Organisational Psyche

In The Nine Principles of Organisational Psychotherapy, I stated as principle 3:

3. Organisations Have a Collective Psyche that Responds to Therapies

Organisational therapy procedes on the basis that the collective psyche of an organisation is similar in nature to the psyche of the individual, and is similarly amenable to therapeutic interventions (although the actual techniques and underlying concepts may differ).

That’s to say, the collective consciousness of an organisation is a thing in its own right, and we can examine it, interact with it and (help) alter it, for better – or worse.

“…the qualities that all human beings need and yearn for in other humans, a sense of being cared for, valued, wanted, even loved…what for a lifetime, human beings strive to find. Some of the most important :  empathic concern, respectfulness, realistic hopefulness, self-awareness, reliability and strength –  the strength to say ‘yes’ and the strength to say ‘no’.

~ Stanley S. Greben

I believe organisations, too, need these qualities. All too often organisations – in part or as a whole – come to regard themselves with some degree of self-loathing.

Where’s the Value?

Paul DiModica, in his excellent book “Value Forward Selling” suggests that people appreciate a clear communication of the value of an idea or proposition. To that end, here’s what I believe is the (unique) value in taking a therapy stance with respect to e.g. improving organisational effectiveness (a.k.a. Rightshifting):

The organisations with which I work consider therapy because some aspect or aspects of their “cognitive (brain) functioning” is not working as well as they would like. Despite these organisations’ basic competence, they have not been able to resolve these issues to their own satisfaction, from their own resources.

With improved functioning comes an improved ability to cope, to grow, to mature, and to build necessary capabilities. And with these comes increasing effectiveness, revenue growth, margins, and customer, employer, employee and shareholder satisfaction. Not to mention organisations which are able to play a more positive role in wider society.

How Does It Feel?

So, what does it look like and feel like to be an employee of an organisation that has chosen to work with an organisational therapist?

Firstly, it’s probably useful to understand that therapy does not try to “fix” anyone or anything. Personally, I most often choose  to approach a new engagement from a perspective akin to Solution Focused Brief Therapy:

“SFBT focuses on what [the client organisation] wants to achieve through therapy, rather than on the problem(s) that made it seek help. The approach does not focus on the past, but instead, focuses on the present and future. The therapist/counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the client to envision their preferred future and then therapist and client start attending to any moves towards it – whether these are small increments or large changes.”

Given that we’re talking about organisational therapy, there’s the added dimension of working with many different folks within the client organisation – as opposed to working with just one person in individual therapy, or maybe half-a-dozen or so people, in family therapy situations.

This typically involves helping these folks improve their ability to think collectively and purposefully. I believe the key to this is the – often missing – ability to have effective, purposeful dialogue. For those (very few) organisations already skilled in this, little need to be done, but for the majority, basic work on dialogue, and thence to focus, shared visions, etc. will be required.  

What to Expect From Organisational Therapy

Some folks might have some experience of one-to-one, or group, therapy. But few indeed will have had any experience of organisational therapy. Here’s a brief run-down of what folks might reasonably expect from organisational therapy.

Who Receives Psychotherapy

Most organisations, at one time or another need some help. For some organisations, talking together, and assisted by a therapist, helps them understand ways they can improve things. Sometimes organisations seek therapy at the advice of a consultant, coach, executive or investor. Sometimes it is overwhelming stress or a crisis that causes an organisation to decide to choose therapy. In addition, many times organisations might choose therapy to gain insight and acceptance about themselves and to achieve growth and improved well-being. Therapy offers these benefits to any organisation that is unhappy with the way it acts, performs or feels, and wants to change.

What Is Organisational Psychotherapy?

Organisational Psychotherapy is a relationship in which an organisation, as a whole, works with a professional in order to bring about changes in its feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and/or behaviour. The task of the therapist, therefore, is to help the organisation as a whole make the changes it wishes to make. Oftentimes the organisation entering therapy knows changes are needed but does not know what changes to make or how to go about making them. Often, too, the organisation is fragmented not used to holding an organisation-wide “internal dialogue”. The organisational psychotherapist helps the organisation figure these things out. Therapists help clients in many ways. Exactly how depends on the orientation (approach to therapy). Here the therapist’s training and beliefs on how therapy should work can have some influence. The most common therapy approaches I use are Positive Psychology, Solutions Focus, Dialogue, Scenario Modelling and Clean Language, with influences from Eastern wisdom including Buddhism, the Tao, and Zen.

Positive Psychology

“We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities.”

~ Professor Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Positive Psychology involves the use of findings from positive psychology research. It helps organisations to change – in the ways they would like to change. Positive Positive psychologists seek “to find and nurture genius and talent”, and “to make normal life more fulfilling”. There is an emphasis in positive psychology on promoting well-being, as opposed to treating illness.

Solutions Focus

While the method and scope of the Solutions Focus approach to organisational therapy are wide-ranging and comprehensive, the basic principles are simple:

  • identify what works and do more of it
  • stop doing what doesn’t work and do something different.

The Solution Focused approach was developed in America in the 1980s. Two simple ideas underpin Solutions Focus organisational therapy:

  • Even organisations with major dysfunctions will occasionally do good things, and achieve positive results. Solutions Focused practitioners will help uncover these exceptions –  whatever the organisation is already doing, which might contribute to progress on, or resolution of the issue(s) at hand.
  • Knowing where you want to get to, makes the getting there much more likely. Solutions Focused practitioners ask lots of questions about what life might be like if the problem was solved. As the answers to these questions gradually unfold the client begins to get a picture of where the organisation should be focusing.

Choosing a Therapist

“A psychoanalyst’s personality is his [or her] major therapeutic tool.”

~ Henri F. Ellenberger

You will probably want to ask potential therapists about their orientation. Ask them what this will mean for your therapy experience. Most therapists are not rigid in their orientations. You should also ask a potential therapist about use of evidence based practice. Ask them if they use methods that have been found to have evidence that they work for organisations like yours. Organisational therapy is provided in many ways, with a prevailing focus on the  organisational psyche, not individuals per se.

“…it is becoming increasingly obvious that the (psycho)therapist’s personality is a more decisive factor than the school to which he belongs.”

~ Arthur Koestler 

“Psychotherapy…is a craft, the aptitude for which derives more from a general experience of living than is generally supposed.”

~ Peter Lomas

What Happens in Psychotherapy?

The therapy process varies depending on the approach of the therapist. It also differs for each individual organisation, and its situation. However, there are some common aspects of therapy that organisations are likely to experience when they enter a therapy relationship.

The first session with a therapist is often a consultation session. This session does not commit the organisation to working with the therapist. This session helps you to find out whether psychotherapy might be useful to you. In addition, you decide whether this particular therapist is likely to be helpful. During this session, you may want to discuss any values that are particularly important to you and your organisation. This first session is a time for you to decide if you and your organisation will feel comfortable, confident, and motivated in working with this particular therapist.

You should also feel that you can trust and respect your therapist. You should feel that your therapist understands your organisation’s situation. This is also the time for the therapist to decide whether he or she is a good match for your organisation. At times, a therapist may refer you to another therapist who may be able to work better with your organisation.

After an initial assessment stage, the rest of therapy is to help your organisation gain insight and address current problems. It can also help your organisation alter the emotions, thoughts, and/or behaviours it wants to change. The therapy process focuses on the goals which the organisation surfaces during therapy. How these goals are met depends on the orientation of the therapist and the methods the therapist may use.

Organisational therapy typically requires more activity than just talking about particular issues. These activities may include such things as role-playing or homework assignments. This is where parts of your organisation can adopt and develop the new skills it decides are valuable for the future.

The amount of therapy an organisation receives will vary depending on the orientation of the therapist and the specific treatment plan used. Some interventions are relatively short. Others require a longer time commitment.

Each session of therapy usually lasts about an hour, with members of some part of the organisation. Longer sessions, with wider participation, are also sometime advised. The therapist will generally visit with your organisation once or twice a month. However, therapy timelines are rarely rigid (or predictable). Your organisation may change the schedule to fit the needs of various groups and/or the therapist.

It is a good idea to ask your therapist about the general methods he or she may use with you in therapy. Also, ask about the length and frequency of therapy you might expect.

Some therapists suggest other treatments in addition to talking therapy. These may include workshops, off-sites, conferences, reading or other things. They may also use support groups, with members drawn from different organisations.

After a period of time, you and your therapist may agree that therapy has been successful in helping your organisation achieve its immediate goals. Even after therapy has ended, some therapists may suggest a follow-up e.g. several months later to check on how you are doing. If your organisation has new problems or feel that past problems still are not better, it may choose to return to therapy.

One important thing to remember is that all types of therapy do not automatically work for every organisation. You should always consider other options when a particular therapy is not working.

What Makes For Good Therapy?

Even as far back as the 5th Century BC, Hippocrates had apparently expressed the greater importance of studying the patient than of studying the patient’s disease.

Rather than assert my own opinion directly, allow me to share the selected views of some noted folks:

“Experience has taught me to keep away from therapeutic ‘methods’ as much as from diagnoses … everything depends on the man and little or nothing on the method.”

~ Carl Gustav Jung

“Some years ago I formulated the view that it was not the special or professional knowledge of the therapist, nor his intellectual conception of therapy (his ‘school of thought’), nor his techniques which determine his effectiveness. I hypothesised that what was important was the extent to which he possessed certain personal attitudes in the relationship.”

~ Carl R. Rogers

“…the crucial factor in psychotherapy is not so much the method, but rather the relationship between the patient and his doctor or … between the therapist and his patient. This relationship between two persons seems to be the most significant aspect of the therapeutic process, a more important factor than any method or technique.”

~ Victor E. Frankl

“…however much therapists may focus on the technical aspects of their procedures, an increasing body of evidence suggests that it is the personal relationship between themselves and their patients which is experienced by the latter as the most potent therapeutic force.”

~ David Smail

“There are many schools of psychotherapy but results appear to depend on the personal qualities, experience and worldly wisdom of the therapist rather than on the theoretical basis of the method. … There is growing evidence that effectiveness in (psycho)therapy is primarily dependent on the quality of the relationship between the quality of the relationship between therapist and patient and that, in turn, depends on the quality of the therapist.”

~ Robert M. Youngson

“If any single fact has been established by psychotherapy research, it is that a positive relation ship between patient and therapist is positively related to therapy outcome.”

~ Irvin D. Yalom

Organisational therapy works as it does because it is not a pseudo-science, magic or a kind of medical treatment, but simply because it is a highly refined method of therapeutic co-operation, both between the therapist and the organisation’s psyche, and between the folks in the organisation itself.

– Bob

Further Reading

How Psychotherapy Works ~ Online article

ScrumMaster or TaskMaster?

July 4, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting, Software development
4 Comments

ScrumMaster or TaskMaster?

Linguistic Relativity

Maybe better-known until recently as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the principle of linguistic relativity states that:

“the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influence their cognitive processes.”

Whether we realise it or not, software development has a language all its own, and Agile software development a variant of that again. Linguistic relativity suggests that the structural terms we choose to use affects the way we conceptualise our world.

One of the most pernicious and unexamined of these is the term “task”. The connotations implicit in this term include :

  • Activity
  • Work
  • Atomicity
  • Completion
  • Dependency

These connotations have unfortunate implications for developers and development teams everywhere. Put simply, by using the “task” as the atomic unit of work management and control, people automatically and pervasively assume that they have to do some work – e.g. spend some time and effort – to see the task completed.

Artefacts

In our work, we have long (since 1995) eschewed the “task” as the atomic unit of work, preferring instead to use the term “artefact”. Doing so has afforded us the following advantages:

  • Focus on outputs, rather than inputs
  • Focus on completion (90% of an artefact is no artefact at all)
  • Avoidance of unnecessary drudgery (work for the sake of working, busywork)
  • Closer fit with quantification of “quality attributes” (cf Gilb)
Put another way, by referring to e.g. a User Story or Use Case (and their component elements) as artefacts, we constantly remind ourselves that it’s the output that we want, not the work (activity) to produce it. In this way we encourage and remind ourselves to find means other than working to come up with the necessary artefact. For example, if the artefact in question is a source file for a particular class, we might think about producing it by searching for something suitable that exists already, or generating one somehow, rather than working on writing it from scratch. With a task-orientation, in contrast, we may overlook possibilities for creating the artefact by means other than writing (coding) it.
And we all know what it means to be a Task Master, don’t we?

Examine Your Language

How much longer are you going to allow the terms you use in your daily work to dictate the way you do that work – unexamined and unchallenged? What other terms in regular use are constraining your effectiveness and causing you unforeseen consequences?
– Bob

Further Reading

Competitive Engineering ~ Tom Gilb

Bugs Are a Signal

July 1, 2012
Coaching, Psychology, Rightshifting, Software development
16 Comments

Bugs Are a Signal

Most development teams and organisations seem to accept that “bugs happen”. It might not be a stretch to say that most developers [and testers] seem to accept it, too. Few seem inclined to look at the origins of bugs in their software products.

Aside: Some few teams and organisations do have some kind of “causal analysis” for defects a.k.a. bugs. I wonder how many of these get down to the real root causes?

Many external observers (external to the systems within which bugs are created) suggest that bugs are due to a number of causes, including:

  • Unclear requirements
  • Coding errors
  • Gaps in communication
  • Complexity of the software
  • Shortage of time to do an adequate job

As a practitioner and observer, I have a different proposition:

Bugs are caused by
a lack of engagement,
a low level of commitment to the work,
absence of motivation.

Allow me to make the case for this proposition, with reference to the above list of causes:

Unclear Requirements

If the requirements are unclear, why do developers not seek clarification? Because they are not motivated to do so. This may be due to a number of different reasons, including lack of convenient access to customers, product owners or business analysts, or because they see the quality (clarity) of the requirements as somebody-else’s-problem.

Coding Errors

Coding errors typically stem from developers lacking sufficient knowledge of the tools (languages, libraries, APIs, etc.) at hand. A lack of knowledge illustrates a lack of learning, this in turn due to a lack of motivation to learn. Some might say that some coding errors are simply “unavoidable human error” – this may be so in the first instance, but what prevents developers from diligently proof-reading and otherwise testing their own code (or each other’s) for such errors? What indeed, excepting low motivation?

Gaps in Communication

If there are gaps in communication, why do developers (and other parties) not seek to close those gaps? Again, I posit a lack of motivation to do so, including a lack of motivation to identify and acquire the relevant skills.

Complexity of the Software

Complexity generally arises from developers taking the shortest path between problem and solution. I suggest a lack of motivation is the causal factor in developers not investing the extra time and thought into simplifying things. Some might say that some developers lack the skill or talent to reduce complexity. That may well be true. But what prevents these more “challenged” developers from seeking help from specialists and senior people – what but a lack of motivation so to do?

Shortage of Time

Rarely do developers have the time they would like to do an adequate job. Again, I posit that a lack of motivation plays a key part in persuading them to not push back against unreasonable demands and schedule pressures, instead resigning themselves to quietly do a half-assed job, rationalising away their chagrin at the “necessary” ugly compromise (see also, below). And from the other side, what but a lack of motivation accounts for managers’ not understanding the developers’ concerns, not listening to their explanations of how long it will take to do an adequate job, not reaching a consensus on what “adequate” even means?

Other Sources

If you can think of any other sources of bugs (a.k.a. defects), I invite you to consider how such a source (cause) might be explained by a lack of motivation, engagement, interest and/or commitment.

The Impact of Low Motivation

In general, a lack of motivation increases the likelihood that folks will skimp on the quality of their work, most often with rationalisations (be they conscious or subconscious) such as:

  • “No one will notice.”
  • “It’ll probably be OK.”
  • “They’ll catch it in testing.”
  • “I’ll come back to that later.”
  • “Someone else can fix that.”
  • etc..

Motivation is a System Condition

I am not suggesting that developers need to “take more care” or “get motivated”. I’m not attempting to blame folks for not caring enough about the quality of their work. Far from it. I’m suggesting that the way the work works lies at the heart of whether folks are motivated or not.

Bill Deming also points out that:

“A bad system will defeat a good person every time.”

and attributes circa 95% of a worker’s contribution to the way the work works, and only 5% to their own motivation, skills, talent, etc. Is this a paradox? Not if we consider that the system (the way the work works) has an overwhelming impact on the motivation of the individuals working within it.

The Science of Motivation

Dan Pink talks and writes extensively about the things that affect motivation of i.e. knowledge workers. He attributes motivation (aka engagement, commitment) to three main factors:

  • Autonomy
  • Mastery
  • Purpose

Accepting this, we might care to ask: how to arrange things such that folks have autonomy, mastery and purpose (Pink), or joy in work, cooperation, intrinsic motivation, self-esteem and learning (Deming) in their work? How should the work work, to optimise these factors? And, by the way, who typically has the whip-hand in such arrangements?

In closing, I’d like to suggest that the presence of bugs most often indicates low morale and a lack of motivation. Organisations can chose to act on this signal, and seek to address the contributing system conditions, or go buy a bug (tracking) database and bury the signal there.

– Bob

Cognitive Easement

July 1, 2012
Agile, Coaching, gilbfest2012, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Rightshifting
5 Comments

Cognitive Easement

It was #Gilbfest in London last week, and amongst other things the week provided a rich lode to mine for blog posts, including this one. The proximate trigger for this post was a discussion during a short presentation by Rolf Goetz (@rolfgoetz) concerning a better way to describe roles and responsibilities in a development organisation. The discussion touched on the RACI matrix, with most folks debating the relative merits of RACI vs Rolf’s suggested improvements, along with some number of other alternatives for clarifying roles and responsibilities seen “in the wild”.

Despite a few dissenting murmurs from the Agile end of the room, what was NOT discussed was the whole issue of whether making folks “responsible” for certain kinds of decision was in fact a good idea at all.

It’s one of the many hallmarks of the Analytic mindset – more specifically, of the Theory X worldview – that someone should “be responsible” for things. In this worldview, ideally, every possible decision should have a “responsible person”. Implicit in this worldview is the assumption that without such “responsible parties”, decisions will be overlooked, and important issues might “fall through the gaps”, disrupting the operation of the organisation and the quality of service to customers. Never mind that in most organisations having this worldview – and with e.g. their corresponding RACI matrices well-defined – operations of the organisation ARE regularly disrupted and the quality of service to customers is typically poor.

“If everyone is responsible then no one is.”

Most of these Analytic organisations unconsciously attempt to substitute “accountability” – aka responsibility – for the commitment they regard as both unreliable and unlikely to be forthcoming from their staff.

Instead of working on the root cause, – the lack of engagement and commitment in their staff – such organisations rely on the idea of the “Single Wringable Neck” or “One Throat to Choke”, expecting (with little supporting and much contrary evidence) that “accountability” – aka the blame game – will bring about the desired effect (a smooth-running, well-oiled machine of an organisation).

Roger Martin describes all this, and more, in his great book “The Responsibility Virus”. He also describes how the Single Wringable Neck idea drives alienation, siloism and other organisational dysfunctions.

Commitment Trumps Responsibility

Actually what we should be looking for most often is not responsibility, but commitment. Commitment to keeping things running smoothly. Commitment to giving the customer a great experience. Commitment to excellence.

Deming’s 14 Points have some advice here too:

  1. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
  2. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
  3. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
  4. a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership
    b) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
Note the key elements:
  • working as a team
  • leadership instead of management (by numbers) – and see also “Fellowship“
  • elimination of fear
All these elements suggest individual accountability has little to zero part to play in the “transformation of organisations” (Deming’s intent).

An Alternative

So, what to do instead of assigning roles and responsibilities to specific individuals? How to avoid the disruptions and wide variations in service quality that characterises the Ad-hoc mindset, the disruptions and variations that the Analytic mindset so eagerly wishes to extirpate? Let’s look at this as two separate issues:

Roles

Instead of well-defined roles, have ‘T’, ‘π’ or even “\(;,,,;)/” (Cthulhu) -shaped people (aka generalising specialists). Have people who can step into whichever roles needs filling at the time. Have well-understood means to recognise when a role needs specialist skills, as well as the means to “pull” someone with those skills when necessary.

Responsibilities

Instead of tightly-defined – and often, imposed – responsibilities assigned to specific individuals,
  1. work to raise the level of commitment and engagement of staff to the point where they can both recognise when some action or decision is required, and are willing to step in and take that action or decision – or at least, act on the recognition and get other involved in taking the necessary action or decision jointly.
  2. Improve the way the work works (“the system”) to the point where the system takes care of the common, routine decisions more or less automatically, leaving humans the space and time to focus their time, attention and special skills on dealing with the wide variety of uncommon, one-off and unusual actions and decisions that inevitably arise every day in the course of running an organisation.

Cognitive Easement

This term refers to the second point in the above list – improving the way the work works.
In situations of potentially high cognitive load (such as flying a fighter aircraft), designers take great care to reduce (ease) the cognitive load on the humans involved by automating as many routine cognitive tasks as possible, leaving e.g. the pilot to focus on the mission at hand as well as dealing with non-routine events.
I have seen few organisations where this principle applies to the design of the work, and almost none where it is applied to the design of “managerial” work. Accordingly, organisations inevitably have decision-makers overloaded with a wide range of cognitive tasks, resulting in poor or delayed decisions or worse. Ironic then, that a focus on making individuals specifically responsible increases the cognitive bottleneck and thereby exacerbates exactly those issues – smoothy, timely operations and quality of service – which e.g. RACI and the like claim to help solve.
– Bob

Further Reading

The Responsibility Virus ~ Roger Martin
The Fallacy of “One Throat to Choke” ~ Post on Mike Cohn’s blog
In Search of Excellence ~ Tom Peters
A Twist of the Wrist – Keith Code – On Cognitive Easement in motorcycle racing

The Games People Play

June 21, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Software development
6 Comments

The Games People Play

“Work is much more fun than fun.”

~ Noel Coward

Gamification bugs me. I mean, really bugs me. Specifically, it bugs me because I see it as too often just doing the wrong things righter. I can understand how teams – and their coaches – fret about how “boring” their group interactions might be on occasions (retrospectives are one kind of group interaction that often raises such concerns). Who would want to sit through a seemingly interminable series of such sessions? And yes, I can understand how folks might think that “spicing things up a bit” by making things “a bit more fun” could help. I’m not anti-fun btw. And as an inveterate gamer myself, not anti-games, either.

“If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago. We do things to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want accomplishment.”

~ Prof Martin Seligman

No, the thing that bugs me is the way in which this seemingly simple and innocuous solution to “boring meetings” derails folks from addressing the root causes of the boredom, and thus from achieving any real and lasting improvement in the effectiveness of their interactions. And from any deeper sense of job-satisfaction and well-being, too.

“The work is the most fun; it seems illicit how much fun it is.”

~ Meryl Streep

Very simply stated, boredom arises from activities which the participants see as having little or no purpose or relevance. Attempts to spice up such activities with games and other “fun” distractions seem to me to be like sticking a band-aid on a broken leg. Palliative, but hardly an effective response.

Personally, I would much rather feel whatever I was spending a part of my time – my life – on was working towards a common purpose, with shared meaning, than some kind of specious, self-indulgent pleasure-seeking. Surely a better approach to dealing with boredom and poor ineffective group interactions would be to recognise the boredom as a signal and seek to restore purpose and  relevance?

Fun is the New Opiate of the Masses

The job satisfaction in doing purposeful, relevant work far outweighs the superficial attractions of having forced “fun” from time to time. Of course, many teams have little prospect of turning things around in their workplaces such that purpose and relevance manifest themselves in daily business. In these cases, maybe the empty joy of “fun and games” is all they have, within their limited remit. I feel deeply for these poor unfortunates. However, personally, I believe that, as ever, the old adage applies:

“Change your organisation, or change your organisation”.

In a previous blog post I described one way to restore purpose and relevance to the retrospective.

“Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.”

~ George Santayana

In closing, I’ll reiterate: I embrace the value in enjoying what we do at work, and in finding well-being in (and through) our labours. My impetus fro writing this post is the concern that in attempting to inject some fun into sometime dull and unfulfilling work, we miss the real opportunities for deeply fulfilling experiences through a preoccupation with the superficiality of games disconnected from purpose.

What do you think?

– Bob

Further Reading

The Games People Play ~ Eric Berne (book on Transactional Analysis).
A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness – NTY article on Seligman’s PERMA model
The Antidote (Video intro to book)

Skinny Dipping

June 11, 2012
Coaching, Dialogue, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
1 Comment

Skinny Dipping

The Pool

“The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy”

~ Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations

Note: It’s no coincidence that I’ve chosen this particular quote, containing as it does a reference to synergy, and indirectly to the synergistic mindset (c.f. The Marshall Model).

In Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson et al use the term “Pool of Shared Meaning”.

“People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool–even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.”

Two good things happen when the Pool of Shared Meaning swells:

1. More information means better decisions can be made. This just makes sense. The IQ of the group goes up with the addition of more information. And the EQ of the group goes up as people become more comfortable with revealing themselves and their thoughts, and build vulnerability-based trust.

2. More information from more people encourages “buy-in.” Buy-in means people are engaged in finding answers TOGETHER…and will be more willing to work to find solutions.

Skinny Dipping

What does it feel like when folks first realise they’re expected, or have the opportunity, to add to the pool of shared meaning in their workplace? A bit like skinny dipping. Embarrassing, awkward and a little exhilarating. Folks can feel shy, reluctant, and very vulnerable.

The water may be lovely, but folks are likely to avoid taking the plunge unless they feel safe and happy.  Even a few tentative toes in the water will be discouraged by the presence of onlookers who are just there to gawp rather than be prepared to strip off and join in, too.

And like skinny dipping, it’s pretty much impossible to force, mandate or cajole folks into taking part.

So if you want to see the Pool of Shared Meaning deepen and grow within your organisation, be sensitive to the feelings of the folks in question, take it gently, and bring some joy to the experience. After all, skinny dipping is meant to be fun!

– Bob

More Reading

Crucial Conversations – Kerry Patterson et al
Defensive Routines and Organisational Learning – blog post
Communicating Without Defensiveness – Article
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni

What Veiled Magic Hath the Question?

May 31, 2012
Coaching, Dialogue, Psychology
7 Comments

What Veiled Magic Hath the Question?

Did you know that Indira Gandhi said:

“The power to question is the basis of all human progress.”?

What’s the most useful opening question in fostering understanding? How about “What would you like to have happen?”?

Have you tried using this question yourself, and under what circumstances?

What responses does it typically elicit? And how does it affect the dynamic of the relationships between the asker, the askees, and the (group’s, team’s, or organisation’s) “collective psyche”?

How would you feel if I told you about my recent experience with this and other “facilitative questions“?

When you ask questions, do folks see the answers as the goal, or do they appreciate the veiled magic of questions – that is, the mental state and reflection they induce in the person being asked the question? Did you realise, for example (as suggested by Patterson et al in Crucial Conversations) that when answering questions, the circulation of blood in the brain changes away from the Amygdala (fight-or-flight lizard brain) to the cerebellum (rational thinking part of the brain)?

– Did you realise Bob wrote this?

How About Some Other Related Things to Read?

What Are Questions For? ~ Sharon Drew Morgen
Is Less More? ~ Penny Tompkins and James Lawley
The Art of Powerful Questions – Article by Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs
The Interrogative Mood ~ Padgett Powell
This Question Could Change Many Of Your Habits ~ Dr Jeremy Dean

Mea Culpa

May 10, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Dialogue, Ethics, Leadership, Lemons, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Rightshifting, Software development
8 Comments

Mea Culpa

Marcin (@mfloryan) asked me a while ago if I could ‘balance’ (or complement) my posts about Lemon Agile Consultants and the problems of having managers. He suggested another post exploring how some developers seem unwilling to adopt or engage with Agile development methods, or appear disinterested in the whole idea of improvement – either of themselves or the working practices in which they participate.

The Peg

I’ve since been struggling to find a ‘peg’ upon which to hang this idea, and thus, hopefully, make it interesting and relevant. So here it is: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My mistake – it’s all my fault.

Assumptions, Assumptions

It seems to me that implicit in the general question of “why do some developers seem uninterested in Agile – or the wider issues of improvement” lies the assumption that anyone in their right mind should be so interested.

Most of the folks that I know, talk with regularly, identify with are so interested.

Thus a lack of interest seems an aberration, a deviation from the norm. I seem to have succumbed to the fundamental attribution error – attributing the behaviour of others (the disinterested developers) to dispositional factors. Factors such as; they can’t be bothered, they’re unimaginative, they have poor a sense of social responsibility, they lack a sense of teamsmanship, and so on.

Are We Learning Yet?

How about we learn from the fundamental attribution error and admit the possibility of situational factors playing the key role? I’m not trying to deny the widely-reported observation that some developers do behave as if they have little interest in raising their personal skills, or the capabilities of their group, team or organisation. But how about considering why this should appear so?

Awareness

Number one on my list of possible reasons why, is that no one ever told them that it’s even possible to spend time on, invest effort in, self-improvement and/or group improvement. (The A.R.C. coaching mnemonic reminds us that Awareness is at the root of commitment to e.g. action). I mean, it’s not like this possibility is taught in schools or Universities, is it? The capacity for “divergent thinking” is actively degraded by our educational systems, according to @SirKenRobinson. Nor is the possibility for intentional improvement taught or experienced in the workplace, either, by and large.

Absent any such information or awareness, is it reasonable to expect folks to have some kind of natural, inborn predisposition towards self-improvement or group improvement? In the general case, I think not. (I’d be delighted if anyone can share any research or findings on the presence or absence of such a predisposition).

Other Factors

And then there’s a whole bunch of other situational factors which can come into play in any given set of circumstances. Can you think of some that might apply in your context, in your team or organisation? (If yes, might you like to share them, here?) .

So yes, I’ve fallen foul of an unwitting assumption about these developers’ dispositions. But maybe, just maybe you could find it in your heart to pray for me? And maybe have a chat with them about their perspectives – on the issues of both self-improvement, and improvement more generally?

Thanks. :}

– Bob

Further Reading

The Three Ingredients of Commitment (Agile Studio Blog post)
Coaching For Performance ~ Sir John Whitmore

Kinky Agile Sex

March 31, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Ethics
10 Comments

Kinky Agile Sex

Linkbait Apology

If you’ve arrived here expecting some kind of titillation or advice on athletic sexual technique, then, as Ackoff once observed, you may “feel like a pornographic movie being shown to people who’ve just engaged in sex… in short, anti-climax”.

Oh, and if you don’t enjoy ethical dilemmas, this post is probably not for you, either. Sorry.

The Lede

So, here it is. The ethical dilemma in question:

When do the noble aims and aspirations of Agile Coaching, Agile Software Development, etc., cross some invisible line and degenerate into “base and unworthy use” of folk’s talents and abilities?

My contention is that this happens all too often.

Why it Matters

I see and hear of a lot of folks that are unhappy or stressed-out by the uneasy tension that exists between many Agile people and teams, and the wider organisations that they serve. This makes me want to help. To the extent that talking about things helps, that’s what I’m doing with some of my blog posts, including this one.

Words, Words

I have to thank @pablopernot for guiding me to the roots of the word “coach”, including the insight that “En Normand, le terme coche désigne une prostituée ; le mot encore utilisé aujourd’hui dans toute la Normandie” [Translation: In Norman , the term coach designates a prostitute; the word is still used today all over Normandy].

You can see where this is going…

pros·ti·tu·tion

[pros-ti-too-shuhn, -tyoo-]  noun

2. base or unworthy use, as of talent or ability.

I know many Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, Agile Developers, and Agile folks in general. Many of these are highly talented, with many fine abilities – not Lemons. I feel for them in the situations in which they often find themselves – prostituting their talents and performing unnatural acts, against their natural inclinations and better judgements, for money. If that’s not kinky, then I don’t know what is.

kink·y

[king-kee]  adjective

3. (Slang) marked by unconventional preferences or behaviour, as fetishism, sadomasochism, or the like.

4. having to do with someone or something strange or weird.

In case you’re wondering about what I mean by “performing unnatural acts”, etc., here’s just a few things that some of my Agile friends have mentioned to me recently:

  • Coaches being asked to provide estimates for a project, even commit to them on behalf of their team
  • Scrum Masters being compelled to “open” the black box of the Scrum iteration and report on progress / status during a sprint.
  • Developers being moved from one team to another at the behest of management and without the consent of anyone involved.
  • Teams being “stuffed” with narrow specialists, with regard to neither flexibility nor social “fit”.
  • Teams compelled to conform to corporate “standards” with regard to development tools, practices.
  • Teams precluded from implementing improvements because they “deviate from the Book“.
  • Restricted (or no) access to business domain experts.
  • First deployment into production deferred until six months after project start.
  • Scrum Masters whose time is divided between a number of teams, to the detriment of all.
  • Being asked to do things that will likely undermine the trust, commitment and cohesion of the team.
(If you have any other examples, I’d love to add them to this list).

Historical Parallels and Ironies

I spent some months working in Munich, Germany in the mid-90’s. One of the strangest things this repressed Anglo-Saxon discovered was that German brothels were legal and state-licensed. The parallels between my status in Munich as a IT contractor and the girls working in the brothels seemed ironic.
Deeper ironic asides:
  • Although foreign IT workers and sex workers at that time were both required to register with the Police, foreign IT workers were not required to be regularly “tested”.
  • The charging for licences seems strangely analogous to the Certification scams long foisted on the Scrum community (and, indirectly, its clients) : “Pay us for even the very opportunity to be exploited.”

Moolah

It’s all about the dollar, baby.
“Most [sex workers] actually become numb to it. They begin to view sex as a very emotionless thing. Most prostitutes will do anything but kiss on the mouth.”
Of course, I’m not trying for one moment to equate the travails of sex prostitution with the much more cosy and comfortable prostitution of Agile Coaching, Scrum Mastering, Agile Consulting, Agile Development, etc.. But when the practices and/or outcomes are so doubtful (or even distasteful), why else do it, except for the money? And yes, I know the justifications trotted-out in defence of this sorry situation:
  • Everyone has to make a living, somehow.
  • Some of the ‘Johns’ (like the development team members) do enjoy the experience, at least in the short-term.
  • Most jobs are some form of prostitution.
  • Even folks who are not paid money for their work, or who are unemployed, prostitute themselves in other ways.
These all seem like pretty thin excuses, to me.

Kinky Clients

When money is the primary motivation, then is it also true that anything goes? If the client asks for “strange or weird” things – that is, strange and weird (not to mention distasteful) from the Agile perspective – should we accede graciously, cavil but comply, or refuse altogether? Where to draw the line? Can we even draw any kind of line, when it’s all about the dollar, baby?

Exploitation or Symbiosis?

Some folks say that sex prostitution exploits women (the workers). Some say it exploits men (the clients). Most regard it as regrettable. Many regard it (for example, the Germans) as necessary. Nearly everyone chooses not to talk or think about it much, if at all. You’re probably quietly cursing me for even mentioning it. Again, where’s the line between exploitation and symbiosis?

What’s Wrong with Prostitution, Anyway?

My back-of-a-fag-packet definition of prostitution is “any activity that would not normally be undertaken in circumstance of choice, free will and mutual consent.” How many Agile Coaches, Consultant, Scrum Masters, etc, can honestly say they would be servicing their current clients were it not for the money? There are some, I know. And fair (e.g. consensual) exchange is no robbery, after all.

This post lays out the whole thorny question quite well, I think.

Maybe one distinction in the case of things Agile is the nature of the (implicit) contract underpinning the exchange: The Agilist will serve the client, including their kinky requirements, in exchange for money – and, more importantly, for the opportunity to make a positive difference (e.g. to folks’ lives). When the latter element is removed, or fails to materialise, or turns out to be an empty promise, then the implicit contract degenerates into a simpler time-for-money equation, which may negate the fairness from the perspective on one – or even, both – parties. Put another way, when do the noble aims and aspirations of things Agile cross some invisible line and degenerate into “base and unworthy use”? My contention is that this happens all too often.

Pimps

Whether or not we each choose to regard Agile Coaching, Scrum Mastering, Consulting and Development as prostitution, or as something else, a special place in Hell is reserved for the pimps. You know who I mean. The unsavoury, coercive, sociopathic types that find the clients for their (own – and owned) workers, and take their – generally, considerable – cut. As long as the money’s coming in, as long as the clients are not complaining to the police, as long as the workers keep grinding away, and as long as society continues to look the other way, they’re in clover.

Further Reading

The Ethics of Prostitution

– Bob

Better Conferences

March 26, 2012
Coaching, Dialogue, Rightshifting
12 Comments

Better Conferences

I’m becoming increasingly dissatisfied with conferences, both as a speaker and as an attendee. Rather than rant about their present format (be that speaker-led, open-space, or what-have-you), I thought I’d make a constructive suggestion about a different format for conferences, a format that I myself would prefer.

Conferral

Seems to me that the very idea of “Conference” has become detached from its roots:

con·fer

[kuhn-fur]  verb, -ferred, -fer·ring.

verb (used without object)

  1. to consult together; compare opinions; carry on a discussion or deliberation.

[C16: from Latin conferre  to gather together, compare; from com- together + ferre to bring]

The Problem

Let me start out by describing the problems I have with existing conference formats.

  • Push – Most often, know-how is “pushed” at the participants by people with that know-how, albeit with the best of intentions. Many times these good intentions go awry and create waste:
    • Wasted time for speakers sharing know-how that few if any folks find valuable
    • Wasted time for participants hearing about stuff that lacks relevance for them personally
    • Presentations / lectures being the classic form of “push”
    • This all seems contrary to what we in the Agile and Lean communities have learned about the benefits of “pull”.
  • Not purposeful – Folks generally drift in and out of sessions with little purpose and little idea in advance as to whether a particular session is going to serve their needs  (“fit”). Further, few folks I have met at conferences come with any kind of specific “learning agenda”.
  • Unconscious incompetence – how do folks get to find out what they don’t know, that might be valuable to them in their current situation, or their future? [My thanks to @papachrismatts for this suggestion.]
  • Structure set at the outset – Particularly an issue with open space, where, even though the agenda is co-created at the outset, there is little  or no flexibility in time slots, nor much evolution of the agenda or timing structure after the start.
  • No adjustment to the process/structure during the event. Even within a one-day conference, participants are learning about the format and how it suits them. I would favour a means to encourage and incorporate that learning through ongoing evolution “in flight”.

Purpose

As I see it, folks participate in conferences to the following ends:

  • To learn (from acquiring a basic awareness of things unknown, through to detailed and specific know-how)
  • To socialise
  • To share (e.g. mutual learning)
  • To proselytise (e.g. to promote ideas)
  • To promote (the profile of oneself or one’s organisation for e.g.commercial purposes)
(And let’s not overlook the organisers’ purpose: whether it’s about community, or more commercial ends).

A Solution

My solution to the above collection of problems and requirements would be to have conferences where:

  • Attendees each have their own “ignorance backlog“, drawn-up in advance, and evolving throughout the conference. For those for whom this might prove a challenge, the conference could and should provide some guidance, in the form of e.g. coaching, in the construction and evolution of this backlog. I for one would be delighted to volunteer for this duty.
  • Knowledge is pulled, on demand, by the attendees, from the pool of available “subject-matter experts”, and in accordance with their “ignorance backlogs”. Given the likely ratio of learners to subject-matter experts, this pulling may necessarily happen in groups, rather than on a one-to-one basis. Although, this format does afford the delicious possibility of allowing anyone (attendees included) to play the part of subject-matter expert in at least some subjects. As Ackoff and others have said, “in the classroom, the teachers is always the one that learns most”. So I posit it would be for the best to encourage non-subject-matter-experts to do as much of the “teaching” as possible.
  • Sessions are organised on-the-fly, with duration, location and participants “pulled” according to availability and priority.
  • The core of the conference organisation task would involve:
    1. Delineating the topic landscape (scope).
    2. Finding the venue, sponsors, etc
    3. Encouraging folks to participate
    4. Cataloguing the expertise present on the day,
    5. Providing the “ba” (spaces where mutual meaning can emerge)
    6. Facilitating the scheduling (times, durations, locations) of the “ba”.
    7. Consolidating the experience via follow-up activities (photos, slides, videos, blogs, etc).

Risks

Risks I can envisage include:

  • Folks with knowledge may be reluctant to spend their own coin to particiapte, given that “speakers” often get their expenses reimbursed (and sometimes fees, as well) as part of the “deal” (i.e. in token exchange for sharing their know-how and experiences). I do have some tentative – i.e. not yet well-formed – ideas on how to address this.
  • Folks looking to proselytise or promote their ideas, company or personal brand/celebrity may be unwilling to participate fearing a dilution of their profile. I am less concerned by this, as personally I  dislike being sold to, favouring rather co-learning with like-minded others.
  • Organisations sponsoring their employees to attend conferences in this kind of format may wonder if they’re getting value for money, and may baulk at the unconventional nature of the format. Given the likely much improved outcomes (in terms of participants’ learning, experiences) I suggest this might be an initial hurdle but less of a longer-term issue.
  • Participants coming unprepared/unbriefed for such a format may not get as much out of the conference as they would if skilled in this particular approach.

Sponsors

Let’s not overlook the key role of sponsors and sponsorship in reducing the financial risks inherent in organising conferences, and in making conferences financially viable. I for one understand less than I’d like to about the motivations of sponsors and how – or even if –  their needs can be met by this format.

Names

I’m not going to name this new format. As Ohno said: “Don’t codify method”. Maybe you might consider the advantages of so refraining, also?

Given my proposal of this kind of format as a means for mutual learning (or co-exploration of a topic/topic-set) it might be more suitable to refer to everyone as “participants”, “co-learners” or even “conferrers”, rather than split people up to different categories such as attendees, speakers, etc.

Early Trials

We have trialled some aspects of the proposed format at the various Rightshifting conferences of the past two years. I’d love for folks who attended those events to share their experiences of the format, here.

– Bob

Agile Coaching is Evil

March 14, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
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Agile Coaching is Evil

And Scrum Mastering is the work of the Devil.

[Update: 15 March 2012]

It’s nice to see this post has generated some discussion both on Twitter and in the comments below.

It seems clear that some folks object to the term “evil”, which surprised me a bit, as the dictionary entry says

e·vil [ee-vuhl]

adjective

  1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.
  2. harmful; injurious: evil laws.
  3. characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering;unfortunate; disastrous: to be fallen on evil days.

So I’d like to explain why I (carefully) chose this particular word, despite the risk of being accused of click-baiting. Please note I am particularly focusing on definition 2), above, although I’ll touch on 1) and 3) a bit, too.

Why Agile Coaching is Evil

I have done much Agile Coaching myself over the years, and know a whole bunch of excellent, sincere, and lovely people who put their heart and soul into trying to help others through Agile Coaching.

But Agile Coaching make implicit promises. Promises about collaboration, treating people better, giving people more say in the way the work works, self-organisation, and a whole host of other ideas – which I’d collect together under the label “synergistic thinking”. The organisations who commission Agile Coaching rarely, if ever, appreciate that these promises are part of the package. And these organisations are rarely, if ever, prepared to deliver on the promises being made on their behalfs. In fact, it’s the raising of these hopes and expectations in the players, and the wider organisation’s ignorance, indifference or downright opposition, that contributes to much tension, stress and frustration (i.e. misfortune and suffering) all round, only a little while down the line.

Is wasting people’s time, good intentions, hopes and dreams evil?

I’d have to say “yes”.

And as a local optimisation, even if the Agile Coaching itself goes well, as Ackoff taught us:

“Optimising one part of a system ALWAYS leads to sub-optimisation of the system as a whole.”

Is burning through clients’ money whilst delivering little real value-for-money and few bottom line benefits (or even net dis-benefits) evil?

Again, I’d have to say “yes”.

Does this mean I think Agile Coaches are evil? Certainly not. As Gandhi said:

“Hate the sin, love the sinner”.

They Know Not the Evil that They Do

The saddest part in all this, for me, is that few Agile Coaches seem to be aware of these issues. Or, for those who are aware of them, they seem to regard them as inevitable, intractable, insoluble, or irrelevant. In their genuine keenness to help people, to spread the “Agile goodness”, they wrap themselves up in the minutiae of daily coaching practise, and sooner or later become inured to the dysfunctions imposed by the wider system – dysfunctions outside their remit or influence.

As William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879) said:

“it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

I hold that is is wrong (unethical, immoral, and, yes, evil) for us all to continue believing (or is it pretending?) that:

  • Agile Coaching generally has much impact on the bottom line of business.
  • Agile Coaching, as a local optimisation, does not contribute to the sub-optimisation of the whole organisation.
  • Agile Coaching does not falsely raise players’ hopes, over the longer term.
  • Agile Coaching does not make implicit promises the organisation cannot or will not keep.
  • Agile Coaching does not make players less employable (see my Magralls11 video for more on that argument).

With the lights of Ohno, Deming, Ackoff, Senge, et al to guide us as to the crucial role of “the system”, we know better, now. Is ignoring that knowledge evil?

I’d have to say, “yes”.

So, It seems clear to me that Agile Coaching, in its common form is a largely irrelevant local optimisation that is, on balance, harmful or injurious to both the client and the individual players (team members being coached), and that ignoring this is morally wrong. That’s the evil.

[End of 15 March 2012 update]

The Agile Manifesto

That was then, this is now.

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the enemy’s main body.” ~ Von Moltke

For its day, the Agile manifesto was a landmark in bringing some sanity to the world of software development. But things have not gone according to plan. The issues noted and addressed by the manifesto and its signatories have turned out not to be the core issues affecting software development. There is merit in the argument that we could only have discovered this by addressing what we imagined those issues to be – to learn whether our hypotheses were relevant.

Indeed, some of those hypotheses were, and remain, marginally relevant. But newer, much more relevant hypotheses have now come into sharp focus.

Unfortunately, we appear to have become rather too wedded to the “plan” (hypotheses) of 10+ years ago. We have discovered that the enemy’s main body was not where we thought, but we continue to conduct the battle as if it were. Are we just paying lip-service to the value of learning, and that it’s OK to fail, so long as we learn from our failures? Or can we truly embrace that idea, and learn from the failure of the Agile Manifesto and all its works?

Agile Coaching

Agile Coaching is a case in point. With the very best of intentions, Agile coaching has climbed into bed with the enemy, and is now comfortably(?) making it breakfast every morning. And just like any loveless marriage, no one is really happy, but having a roof over one’s head and a modicum of social standing, on the one hand, and daily breakfast in bed, on the other, often outweighs matters of principle. Agile coaching is thus now clearly evil.

Scrum Mastering

Similarly, Scrum Mastering is the work of the Devil, bending its considerable efforts to accommodating the status quo and deliver more-or-less irrelevant local optimisations (and that’s in those rare cases when it’s working “well”).

A New Plan

We need a new plan. One that recognises present intelligence (sic) on the disposition of the enemy. And to draw up a new plan, I suggest we might also do well to pay attention to Clausewitz and Von Moltke (among others) and:

  1. Very clearly articulate our “commander’s intent”.
  2. Listen intently to the junior officers and serve their need for information (and the necessary resources).
  3. Get the hell out of the way and let the folks on the front line make it happen.

– Bob

Further Reading

Product Aikido ~ FlowchainSensei

Mutual Learning

March 6, 2012
Coaching, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness
2 Comments

Mutual Learning

I have an admission to make. (I have others, but I’ll stick to just the one for now).

I’m not very good at mutual learning.

I mean, I’d like to be. And on those rare occasions when it has happened, I can admit to feeling a sense of well-being and connectedness that’s hard to describe.

I can espouse all the values of mutual learning. But living them (putting them into action) is another matter. I guess the nature of one’s role naturally constrains the opportunities for mutual learning. However, that said, I am resolved to experiment with increasing the mutual learning opportunities in any future roles I may have.

Mutual Learning and The Coach

I suspect that, as a coach, I have a bias in action away from mutual learning. When actively coaching, I’m most interested in what the player is learning about their chosen topic/field/subject/issue, and I’m also interested in what I’m learning about coaching more effectively. But I couldn’t call that very mutual. It’s not like we’re co-exploring the same landscape together. And that makes me feel like we’re both missing out on something. Ditto for team coaching, only on a larger scale.

If you’re a coach, or have coached in the past, have you experienced this too? How do you feel about that?

I’d love to explore the possibility of more mutual learning in coaching assignments and I’m wondering how that could work. I suspect that if there is a way to make it happen, it could have some useful benefits, including:

  • Quicker learning for all parties
  • Increased retention of things learned (more scope for putting the learning into action)
  • Higher commitment to coaching sessions (on both sides) and to the idea of coaching, in general
  • Improved working relationships (and not just between coach and player)
  • Greater personal satisfaction all round

I am resolved to experiment with increasing the mutual learning content in future coaching sessions.

Mutual Learning and the Scrum Master

The role of Scrum Master has much in common with coaching, but differs in that folks typically expect the Scrum Master to be a subject-matter expert too. Whether these two aspects are compatible is another issue (see a previous blog post on this).

As a (some time) Scrum Master, I have noted more opportunities for mutual learning than in a pure-play coaching role. Upon reflection, I believe this is one of the main reasons I enjoy Scrum Mastering. I suspect not all Scrum Masters have the luxury (or wish?) of being able to indulge in mutual learning, at least openly, preferring or being obliged to appear omniscient.

Mutual Learning and the Consultant

Not many consultants I have met seem interested in mutual learning, except discretely and at the expense of the client and or co-learners. Not to say that consultants avoid learning, rather the opposite, just that the nature of the relationship is too often one of exploitation rather than partnership.

I am resolved to experiment with increasing the mutual learning content in future consulting engagements.

Mutual Learning and the Manager

In “The Great Game of Business”, Jack Stack tells a number of stories of managers who stepped outside their comfort zones, deciding to stop pretending the had all the answers, and embrace mutual learning alongside their employees. In the book, at least, this turns out well, variously delivering some or all of the various benefits promised by the mutual learning approach. In my own sojourns under the management hat, barring or perhaps because of the failures of my early attempts, I have always tried to join with others to find stuff out together.

Nevertheless, I am resolved to experiment with increasing further the mutual learning content in future management roles.

Mutual Learning and the Leader

Finally, we come to leadership. On the home page of my website, you will find this paragraph:

“you’ll never guess what I’ve found”

Effective transformational leaders engage people with the idea that meaningful change is possible. Specifically, by encouraging people to look with them at how the work works (understanding the business as a system), effective transformational leaders build engagement, enthusiasm for improvement, and an infectious sense of urgency and shared purpose. This approach requires strength, resolve and, perhaps above all, the courage to be different.

(Note: This was not intended to imply that a leader is “above” others in some hierarchical sense, more that anyone can adopt this role when they discover something curious and potentially significant).

I am resolved to experiment with increasing the mutuality of the leadership role and the mutual learning this implies.

Finally

In the spirit of mutual learning, please let me ask: “What has been your experience?”

– Bob

What Makes a Great Software Developer

March 6, 2012
Agile, Coaching, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness, Software development
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What Makes a Great Software Developer

Most pundits who attempt this question focus on the personal characteristics of the developer as an individual. Accordingly, some say it’s about technical skills, some about abstract reasoning, some about the ability to work in a team, some about an improvement attitude, some about hard-working dedication, some about systems thinking… yadda yadda.

I have a different take.

Dr. Deming has taught us that circa 95% of the performance of an organization is attributable to the system (processes, technology, work design, regulations, etc.) and just 5% are attributable to the individual. If we accept this (and I certainly do), then all the discussion about attributes of the individual becomes essentially moot.

If we extract an outstanding developer from one system (e.g. the team, business, in which they “have performed well”) and place them into another system, their performance will depend almost entirely (95%) on the new system within which they are now working. And NOT on their own personal attributes, skills, talent, or whatever.

This realisation can be a bitter pill to swallow; not only for you, dear readers, but also for the developer in question.

Frederick Herzburg is famous for (among other things) saying “If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”

Many times, the effect of the system on the performance of an individual can be masked, or hidden entirely, by similarities in the “from” and “to” systems. This is quite common, given the preponderance of “Analytic” organisations, with consistently poor scope for effective working.

The one ray of light in all this? If a particular developer has skills related to changing the system, and can negotiate the minefield that is “changing how the work works”, then as the system changes, they – and many working with them – will “perform” that much better. And most likely feel much happier for it, too.

BTW All the above applies not only to developers, of course, but just as much to other job titles in an organisation, management included.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Great False Dichotomy – Pay for Performance ~ Tripp Babbit’s Blog
The 95/5 Rule ~ Tripp Babbit’s blog

Coaching and Peer-instruction More Effective Than Teaching

January 3, 2012
Archive, Coaching, Ex-Amplify.com, Snippet
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Coaching and Peer-instruction More Effective Than Teaching

[From the Archive: Originally posted at Amplify.com Jan 3, 2012]

Excellent article (well worth reading the whole piece) presenting quantitative evidence that teaching / lecturing is way less effective than “coaching” and “peer- instruction”.

Taken from the domain of Physics education, but I see many parallels with e.g. Agile coaching and, yes, even Scrum Mastering (done well).

Amplify’d from www.npr.org
Mazur sees himself now as the “guide on the side” – a kind of coach, working to help students understand all the knowledge and information that they have at their fingertips. Mazur says this new role is a more important one.

Read more at www.npr.org

– Bob

Applying Silent Grouping to Sprint Retrospectives

August 26, 2011
Agile, Archive, Coaching, Ex-Amplify.com, Software development
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Applying Silent Grouping to Sprint Retrospectives

[From the Archive: Originally posted at Amplify.com Aug 26, 2011]

I recently tweeted about the advantages of Ken Power’s Silent Grouping technique for Scrum Release Planning sessions. We have found it much preferable (i.e. quicker, more fun) to the more common “Poker Planning” approach.

I have been thinking about using the same principle more widely, and had the opportunity yesterday to apply a variant of Silent Grouping to a Sprint Retrospective.Our teams have recently found the Speedboat Game a welcome improvement to retrospectives, but have been somewhat frustrated by the time it was taking for everyone to contribute their ideas (leaving little time to prioritise issues and discuss possible remediations).

So I suggested we apply Silent Grouping to the contribution, and prioritisation, of issues via the speedboat’s ‘anchors’.

This turnout out swimmingly (sic) and gave us much more time to identify and discuss some Rightshifting (i.e.. improvement) stories – as backlog candidates for the next Sprint.

Approach

  • Briefing: Folks were encourage to write (just) one or two (super) stickies identifying issues that they really thought needed positive action and resource to address in the next sprint (i.e. fix or do more of).
  • Round 1 (silent): Each team member in turn adds ONE sticky to the speedboat, until all stickies have been posted.
  • Round 2 (silent): Each team member in turn has the chance to move one group of stickies (i.e. one anchor chain) towards to the bow or stern of the speedboat (we arbitrarily decided that the highest priority anchor chain would be the one nearest the bow). When movement ceased, we proceded to round 3.
  • Round 3 (discussion): The team then discussed the issues in order of priority (top priority first). In this case we devoted about 10-15 minutes to each of the top two issues, clarifying the issue (reaching some consensus on the nature of the problem) and floating possible (general) solutions. Each such issue then became a candidate Rightshifting story for the next Sprint.

Possible improvement for next time: Start with the speedboat and chains from last time, so as to sweep up issues not yet actioned as e.g. Rightshifting stories.Happy to share more detail/ideas on this with anyone interested…

– Bob

Further Reading

Using Silent Grouping for Rapid Story Ranking – Blog post

Rightshifting and the Senior Management Pitch

November 21, 2010
Agile, Archive, Coaching, Ex-Amplify.com, Rightshifting
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Rightshifting and the Senior Management Pitch

[From the Archive: Originally posted at Amplify.com Nov 21, 2010]

Introduction

A number of folks have said to me recently that although Rightshifting strikes a chord with them personally, it’s their senior management that really needs to hear the message.

Few indeed are the organisations where ideas from the rank-and-file are taken seriously by the senior management. It’s almost as if these senior people are conditioned to automatically discount anything said to them by their “minions”. Maybe that’s one reason why consultants seem to have more success in bringing ideas to the attention of decision-makers.

I’ve been using “Value Forward Selling” for some years now as a means to engage with decision-makers, and a key technique in Value Forward Selling is something the originator – Paul DiModica – calls “The Three Box Monty”.

Not that I’m suggesting technical folks start learning how to sell ideas to management – that could be a whole new career! And most software people I know prefer to get on with the job at hand, rather than spend time and effort on “politics” and the like. Whether that’s a productive perspective or not is a different question, and maybe one for a different post.

Aside: There are a number of people in the Rightshifting community, myself included, that can help practitioners build and present a *tailored* case for more effective software development to their decision-makers. Go ahead, don’t be shy, ask for help and advice – that’s one of the reasons the Rightshifting community is here!

So, let’s take a closer look at the Three Box Monty, and why approaching it from a Solutions Focus perspective makes it even more powerful than the original technique.

The Three Box Monty Explained

The justification for the Three Box Monty is the observation that executives relate best to people they trust, and an effective means to build mutual trust is to establish a peer-to-peer relationship. Simply put, people listen more to and are more open to advice from people like themselves (“Business Peers”).

The Three Box Monty helps build that kind of mutual trust and peer-respect in a quick and simple fashion (i.e. during a thirty-minute to one-hour presentation).

So what is a Three Box Monty?

A Three Box Monty is a presentation technique using three boxes drawn on a Whiteboard or Flip chart:

BoxA            Box B

BoxC

The Three Box Monty serves to position the presenter (typically, a sales person, coach, consultant, etc.) as a peer of the decision-makers in the audience. (An audience might generally consist of five to fifteen people, including decision-makers and members of their respective staffs).

The three boxes of the Three Box Monty are:

  • Box A: The general business issues (pain points and problems) that are addressed by the presenter’s idea, product, or service and faced by all organisations in the same line of business, or industry sector, as the organisation being presented-to.
  • Box B: The specific business issues currently faced by the people in the audience (and their organisation).
  • Box C: A short list of ways in which the presenter’s ideas, products or services will directly contribute to the reduction of the problems listed in boxes A and B – and thus to the organisation’s declared objectives.

The presenter starts a Three Box Monty by writing a list of known “industry-wide” issues or problems into box A. This helps establish “peer credentials”, credibility, a common frame of reference, early consensus, and a basis for tackling box B.

With some five to seven items in box A, the presenter then moves on to box B, listing two or three business issues or problems specific to and familiar to the audience. Most often, these will have been learned from earlier discussions with the organisation. After inviting the audience to validate and contribute more items to box B, the presenter moves on again to box C. In box C, the presenter lists key solutions to the issues already listed in boxes A and B. Box C both shows how those solutions will help the organisation reach its desired goals, and highlights the role of the presenter’s organisation in providing key elements of these solutions.

Note that there’s a lot more to an effective Three Box Monty presentation than this brief introduction covers. In particular, I have skipped some of its most powerful aspects, centred around the psychology and sociology of meetings. See the very excellent “Value Forward Selling” by Paul DiModica pp 190-220 for much more information and explanation.

So, the normal Three Box Monty as just described concentrates on *problems*. What is “Solutions Focus” and where does it come into the picture?

Solutions Focus and the Three Box Monty

Solutions Focus is an approach to coaching and positive change that’s finding increasing acceptance in the world of business. It’s based on the basic principle of “finding what works, and doing more of it”. Rather than spend time analysing the past and its problem, why not just head directly for a solution? I recommend reading the excellent book “The Solutions Focus” by Jackson andMcKergow if you want to find out why this is nowhere near as trite as it may at first sound.

I’m not going to go into the details of the effectiveness of a Solutions Focus approach, except to say that there are some number of case studies describing the remarkable results a Solutions Focus approach can deliver when applied to e.g. business change.

So, the three boxes for my modified “Solutions Focus Three Box Monty” looks like this:

  • Box A: What the leading businesses in the industry do (well)
  • Box B: Which of those things the audience’s business is also presently doing (well)
  • Box C: Which other things the audience would like their business to do (well) in the future

Note here that the key point is to change the focus of the Three Box Monty technique from problems to solutions, from the very outset. This is, of course, similar to the generally thrust of my “Perspectives on Rightshifting” presentation.

But wait! There’s another variant for us to consider:

The “Outcomes Focus” Three Box Monty

This variant adds to the Solutions Focus Three Box Monty by replacing the focus on solutions with a focus on outcomes:

  • Box A: What positive outcomes the leading businesses in the industry are seeing presently
  • Box B: Which of those outcomes the audience’s business is also presently seeing (and maybe one or two where they’re ahead of the competition)
  • Box C: Which other positive outcomes the audience would like their business to see in the future.

Note that here, in this alternate variant, which I’m calling “The Outcomes Focus Three Box Monty”, the key point is to focus on positive outcomes – both those already seen and those desired for the future – from the very outset.

I’d be happy to explain more, particularly about the psychology underpinning this approach, should anyone express an interest in this line of thought, or wish to begin using it to positive advantage in their own situation.

I’d also love to hear from anyone already doing stuff like this.

– Bob

“Coach as expert” vs “Coach as facilitator”

June 29, 2010
Archive, Coaching, Ex-Amplify.com, Snippet
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“Coach as expert” vs “Coach as facilitator”

[From the Archive: Originally posted at Amplify.com Jun 29, 2010]

I myself sit very much in the latter camp (coach as facilitator). In fact, I have found that “coach as expert” can often have serious disadvantages for the coaching relationship and the progress of the player, both. It’s unhelpful that hiring managers and/or HR folks have so little clue about this.

Amplify’d from marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com:

I cannot make the successful people I work with change. I don’t try. Too many people think that a coach — especially an accomplished one — will solve their problems. That’s like thinking that you’ll get in shape by hiring the world’s best trainer and not by working out yourself.

Read more at marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com

– Bob