The Agility Narratives

Larry's shares his agility narrative, tells us a story of many aha! moments where he learned the power and impact of innovation in terms of:

• technology 
• work process
• focus on the why? and targeting impacts
• people
• having real conversations. 

Enjoy!  Larry 

Thank you Janet for being the co-host on this event and for your highly insightful questions. 

0:00
Welcome to The Agility Narratives Podcast
2:18
The first time Larry moved away from how projects were done And the Ice service in CANADA
3:55
Speed of delivery through early version of service orientated architecture
5:29
Learned that innovation delivered great results, this time changing how people work together
7:32
More Aha! moments - the importance of why and impact
9:02
Training on Agility and Value management, working with PMI and Prince2 on Agile - Too early
10:41
Cognitive diversity and putting people at the centre of transformation
11:23
The system is the villain and the people are the protagonist
11:49
Change is about engaging with people and creating the environment for it to happen
12:34
The Theme of Larry's Agility Narrative
13:54
Optimizing contribution - Intuitively knowing how best to contribute and the invite
15:06
Constrained innovation and Covid-19. If you are not willing to look at the fundamentals, then you are not serious about change
18:24
What is at stake for government and commerce if they don't take change seriously
19:28
How do you address your villain i.e. "the system"? A fundamental change in how leaders think.
20:46
Learning to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity as they have weaned on predictive planning
21:10
Thinking/behaviour patterns, and real conversations
23:32
Call to action - Start small, invite people and see how it works
25:27
We just need to understand how to have a conversation
27:41
Acknowledging the conversation we have had and going full circle.
28:02
Thank you and opportunity to take the threads of this conversation forward.

Peter Merel, founder of xScale Alliance, in his Agility Narrative talks through the xScale's approach to agility, and enabling organizations build capability to respond to market conditions. 

He talks through how learning flow in an organization is key to responding to market change. This is something that 95% of agile transformations do not achieve effectively, according to the longest and largest survey in the Agile world, "The state of Agile Report". 

Peter is highly entertaining, with great stories of the birth of Agile and XP.  Enjoy... 

0:01 Welcome & Intro

1:21 Peter's early engagement with XP

3:49 The birth of Agile (before the manifesto)

5:01 then Snowbird happened and I was busy...

5:21 The story of to xScale

8:35 Why is learning flow so critical?

11:00 How to improve learning flow by looking at constraints?

12:14 Learning flows as a product

13:03 Importance of market constraints

13:51 Onboarding people

15:33 "The Progressives"

17:00 using trust to scale teams

19:04 Responding to market conditions

21:01 Changing market conditions, design and patterns

24:32 "How do teams make decisions?"

29:19 Villains are also heroes

30:33 Changing the game - game theoretics to reward mutual benefit

32:28 What at stake for us?

35:22 Noble intent and the wrong track

37:04 Call to action - key learning constraint, starting with an open space

40:39 Pattern language used to have a conversation

42:21 Ongoing process, 3 month change increment

44:40 The threats and opportunities are often same

47:31 Getting ahead - pirate canvas

48:11 As business agilists, who are our clients?

49:08 xScale Alliance offering's

50:50 The importance of these conversations

Mike's journey has been driven through curiosity. As an agilist with IT software delivery background,  he brings organizational & relational systems coach and mediator to leadership coaching. 

He uses a broad set of tools he integrates to great effect to help leaders as a coach. His protagonists in his agility narrative are leaders seeking change. The theme is meaningful connection with showing how fear, the villain of the narrative, breaks trust and connection. He also discusses resolution processes where interests compete and trust is in place. 

His call to action is to work with neutral third parties to help lay out your thoughts, similar to how executive coaches are used today, but for relational issues. He sees great opportunity in the movement towards the engaged workforce, people oriented cultures, purpose driven organizations. 

We really enjoyed this conversation and seeing how Mike integrates mediation into his coaching practice with leaders.  We hope you will enjoy this conversation and find it insightful. We did.

00:00:00
Welcome to The Agility Narratives Podcast
 
00:00:13
Mike's Introduction
 
00:00:46
Mike's Agile Origin Story
 
00:02:19
Mike's journey to the organizational-leadership aspects of Agile
 
00:05:02
Mike's experience with conflict
 
00:06:28
Context to Mike's agility narrative - How he integrates coaching, relational techniques and mediation
 
00:08:49
Martin's experience with integrating different relational approaches
 
00:09:47
Mike's protagonist - Leaders wanting to make an impact
 
00:10:00
Mike's theme is connection to self, others and the ecosystem
 
00:10:58
We are hardwired to be in connection
 
00:14:18
Discussing the "villain" - Fear breaks connection
 
00:17:32
Fear, conversations, assumptions, experiments and challenging assumptions
 
00:19:20
Exploring interests in context of trust and shared interests
 
00:21:04
Exploring competing and underlying interests are
 
00:24:23
What's at stake of not having these types of conversation that make connection meaningful
 
00:25:52
The call to action - Understand the value of a neutral third party
 
00:28:01
The opportunity in movement towards the engaged workforce, people oriented cultures, purpose driven organizations
 
00:29:10
Threats to human connection
 
00:29:55
Thank you - Sharing about how we enjoyed "geeking out" as agilists and mediators

I really enjoyed hearing about Francois' transition from an early idealistic young agile evangelist to an independent coach and trainer. And how a crucial conversation with a wise mentor helped him make the decision to transition. The context of his Agility Narrative is leadership in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world. Key insights he shared are about sensing reality, being open about our models’ limitations, connecting through conversations and iteratively taking adaptive action. He cites examples such as COVID-19 and Climate change. He talks about types of leaders we need in a VUCA world and we discussed how aspiration or fear impacts how we respond and take adaptive action.

In his Agility Narrative, he identifies that this journey starts with ourselves doing personal work to create a culture of conversation, referencing gardening and permaculture. With his narrative theme, he invites us to improve how we have conversations, how we listen/hear ourselves, our teams and organizations, and the broader world including Mother Earth. Francois wants for his clients to venture into deeper conversations and explore the many dimensions of working together. He talks about the value of clarity, learning from antagonists, learning to let go, and the importance of generative conversations to face our future. Thanks Francois. 

0:00
Welcome to The Agility Narratives Podcast
1:11
Francois's introduction to Agile
3:11
Francois's story of the young evangelist comes home.
4:57
Francois's leap into being an independent coach and trainer for scrum teams
5:59
Agile in 2008-2010 - Speaking at conferences, training and helping establish new teams in a diverse set of mandates
8:16
Francois's career at 2015-2016 - Big frameworks competing, certifications, lipstick on the pig!
10:04
Context for The Agility Narrative - VUCA World - who is suitable to lead in a world with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity? i.e. during COVID-19 and Climate Change
13:47
Impact of aspiration and fear as a driver of adaptive action. We need the type of creativity that comes from safety
16:59
One of the protagonists in Francois' Agility narrative - Your soul searching, your heart, your guts, your thinking and way of looking at the world
18:00
The WE quadrant - culture eats strategy for breakfast AND comes from gardening
19:29
The "Learning to be in conversation" is the theme of Francois' agility narrative
22:00
Listening to ourselves
23:41
Relating the power of listening for Agile and Organizations
25:37
Francois struggles with naming constraints as Villains - they are reasons for our adaptive action! How can we make this interplay between protagonist and antagonist as fruitful as possible.
29:01
Clarity in conversations around constraints enable the protagonist to refine the journey
31:27
What's at stake? My turning point in Francois's Agility Narrative journey came when I realized it is about people
32:34
What is the value of your narrative? Have I been able to deepen the conservation?
34:31
The monkey trap and what do you feel you need to let go?
36:01
Conversations, neutrality, and Switzerland - commit to be part of the conversation and a catalyst for a generative conversation
39:30
Thank you

We started this conversation with Steve Tendon talking about the theory of constraints and doing a deep dive into how Steve has taken the theory of constraints and applied it to knowledge work. It's fascinating. It's interesting. We didn't end up getting to the agility narrative until 25 minutes in. Feel free to skip around this interview. 

Steve has applied the theory of constraints to a service based business. The big challenge when searching for the core constraint in the system is the high variance in knowledge work. i.e. The wandering constraints symptom

He explains that he instruments for work execution signals studying how work moves across the organization. Logging when work starts and finishes provides the core data to manage operational flow.

Steve introduces Herbie as the constraint that limits the performance of a system. How can we find Herbie? Finding the constraint in each team i.e. the constraints in the work process. And the constraint that limits performance of the entire system - The constraint in the workflow. And finally the constraint in the work execution

And much more…. 

Steve talks about the value of agility and who is his protagonist in his agility narrative. Steve's theme for the Agility Narrative? 3 Foundational Patterns - Inspired leadership, Unity of Purpose and Community of Trust. And he identifies the more important question is to connect intent with "what I should not do today?"

More about Steve and his work can be found on https://tameflow.com/

Ardi learned Agile & fell in love with products working with small teams in a startup and a 3D product company. After this, she became an Agile coach, exploring agile in government, through consulting assignments and in large financial services.  She has impacted many in the Toronto area as a community leader, supporting and running meetups. 

For Ardi, Agile is like bamboo - a living organism, flexible and strong. It's sustainable and green. It grows and evolves.  In her agility narrative, the protagonist is the organization that needs to fully adopt  agile. She sees herself as an advisor helping this happen, understanding how hard structural change is, especially when it involves adapting governance. 

The theme of the narrative is continuous delivery with sustainability and a strong focus on customer.  She reminds us to know frameworks but apply as it makes sense. To learn from challengers.  And to take the opportunity with agile as survival, and/or growth could be at stake. 

For leaders and coaches, she calls for more courage to do what it is right and consider the human side to increase employee engagement.

Michelle shared her story of going behind the iron curtain visiting East Germany as a 16 year old and wanting to become a spy. Disillusioned by a CIA job fair decided to be a management consultant and worked with PwC and E&Y in Russia.

Her protagonist for her agility narrative is a caring leader that sought for the team high performance and high well being. The theme was about breaking through the iron curtain  of oppressive technology that seemed to eat attention and oppressive leadership to recover from stress.   The villain was largely tech that focused on stealing our attention. Her hope for the future is that we will be the masters of our tools again and that we as humans will continue to be as creative, as innovative and as magnificent as we are able to be without compromising our own well-being.

Learn about Michelle's perspective on  the battle for attention.  

Enjoy Alok's personal story as a change maker, his patterns for success delivery of agility, organizational constraints, and his call to action... (a list of 5). 

There is no cookie cutter...  Yet Alok outlines key principles and lights the path towards success. 

Alok, Thank you for sharing Your Agility Narrative.  

ENJOY! 
  
4:04
Alok's origin story with Agile
5:55
Alok's first experience with iterative process (DSDM) - Early Agile
6:52
Back to India and a process role - how this connected for him
7:54
Learnings from advising on effectiveness and efficiency
9:18
Balancing internal controls with external delivery - still as part of the mid-career journey
11:30
Starting Alok's agility narrative for today - Change maker or Agile leader?
12:35
Alok introduces the protagonist in his Agility narrative
13:56
When Agile is working well, what does that feel like?
16:10
Alok outlines patterns for success
16:41
Pattern #1 - Leadership through sense of purpose - The Why
18:38
Pattern #2 - Establishing The Agility Why
19:14
Pattern #3 - Know your customer
19:31
Pattern #4 - Adapt Agile to your core agility requirements
20:00
Pattern #5 - information radiators - Data, data, data
20:28
Pattern #6 - Equipping people to co-create the Culture Change
21:19
Intro to exploring underlying constraints
22:18
Organization structure as a constraint
23:32
Constraint created by lack of clarity for Middle management
24:47
Hard"er" constraints
25:39
The unspoken "internally-held" constraints
28:41
Alok, what is your theme for this Agility Narrative?
29:51
Villians! "impediments" - who are they?
31:02
What's at stake if these impediments aren't addressed?
33:14
In talking to a leadership who aren't where they want to be, what is your call to action?
33:45
Action #1 - go and meet organizations who have been on this journey
34:28
Action #2 - Articulate the need for change - The Why as well as the Upside & downside - real open discussion - Have guard rails
35:10
Action #3 - Based on that - agree on certain guard rails
35:38
Action #4 - Leadership create a safety net
35:56
Action #5 - Use an iterative approach to do transformation - And build in inspect and adapt
36:53
Exploring a practice shift to Product thinking
37:42
Exploring site reliability engineering
38:17
Alok, Thank you for sharing Your Agility Narrative

Episode is Live
Published: Nov. 19, 2021 @11PM Edit