Identify your heroes to find out what really matters to you.

I was reading Focus (which is a great book and I’ll blog about sooner or later) and there was a bonus chapter about How to do Great Work that totally rocked my world. It was a simple question:

Who are your heroes?

At first I thought, I don’t have any heroes. But then my mind started wandering. My first hero surprised me. A lot.

But the really interesting part is why they are your hero.

I am sharing this exercise because it can help you discover who you really are and what is important for you. For me this short activity was profoundly insightful. YMMV.

#1 Conan the Barbarian

I imagine that at this point many readers are having a hard time relating to my hero or are perhaps even begin to wonder about me as a person. I was mystified myself until I thought about what attributes of Conan make him a hero for me:

Strength of mind, courage, and for doing what is right. Conan strictly adhered to the warrior code and would often get into all kinds of difficult situations for doing the right thing no matter what the cost. Conan spent much of his life as a wandering mercenary – I finally seems to have found a path as a consultant in the guise of an Agile Coach.

At a young age, Conan was taught what was best in life: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of the women.” Metaphorically, I see this aligned with the Good To Great management practice of getting the right people on the bus.

#2 Mahatma Gandhi

He is my hero for selflessness, courage and wisdom. Gandhi believed in a cause and purpose greater than himself. So do I. My mission is to make a difference in the lives of the people and companies I work with.

“Be the change you want to see” is a famous statement from Gandhi and is central to how I think about myself and my work. Whether at home with my kids or working with clients, the better I am at modeling useful behaviours, the more effective I am in helping others.

One consequence of this is that I am very dedicated to not only learning useful tools (communication, facilitation, etc.) but more importantly mastering my inner game and developing myself as a human being. Like Stephen Covey says, victory begins at home.

#3 Captain James T. Kirk

 I’m 42 and I watched a lot of Star Trek when I was a kid.

The aspects of Captain Kirk that I admire are leadership, ingenuity, boldness and passion.

Leadership: Kirk pursued his objectives with a single-minded purpose. He was caring and supportive of his crew and yet could make difficult decisions in times of great need.

Ingenuity: Perhaps creativity captures what I mean. With laser-like focus on a goal, there were no holds barred in how it was achieved. I get goosebumps when I think of Kobayashi Maru – a demonstration of changing the rules of the game (literally) in order to win.

Passion: Kirk brought energy to any situation he was involved in. He lived life with a vim and vigor, one day at a time.

#4 Sarwan Sahota

I was startled and perhaps even alarmed to find my dad on my list of heroes since I am still working through the usual stuff that goes on in families (See Brene Brown’s Gifts of Imperfections).

When I started to think about what I admired in him, I realized I admire him for doing the right thing and having a strong code of ethics.

My dad was raised as a Sikh. The religion – designed to help people to survive via fighting prowess – says to always carry a weapon (Kirpan); never cut your hair so that long beard and hair demarcate you as a Sikh. I learned the attitude – to quote Rodney Dangerfield – “I don’t take shit from nobody.”

My dad has a strong sense of ethics that would often put him controversial situations with those less concerned. One simple example: I remember as a kid when we visited his office and would use the photocopier (when prepping to play one of a myriad of games) he would have us keep track of the number of copies and pay the cost into petty cash. I still think about this today – when I am at a client site and use a printer, I make sure to offset the cost.

Sacrifice. When if came to doing the right thing, my dad was prepared to make whatever sacrifices were needed. He put his job and career on the line to fight for what he thought was best for Ryerson University (where he worked) and his coworkers.

Deep Insight – what defines me

When I look at my heroes, I see they have a lot in common that define how I see myself and what I value. Heroes are what drive our behaviour.

Do the right thing regardless of personal cost.

This is what defines me. It is a chilling and profound insight.

The scary part is that it explains why I have cared more than others around me for doing what is best for the people, for the team, for the company. It explains why I have swum so hard against the current to the point of rupturing relations and employment. And my own personal cost has been high.

Finding Balance

I am fortunate that in the last year, I have found balance.  Flawless Consulting helped me learn to ask clients what problem they want solved and to focus only on that. So I am doing better than ever staying aligned with those around me.

I do not have a guardian angel like Conan and Kirk, so I remind myself to pause and reflect on my personal safety in potentially risky situations. I am doing a better job, but it’s hard not to be distracted by doing the right thing.

Who are your Heroes?

I encourage anyone interested in self-discovery to do this short exercise. And for those who are particularly courageous, to share them and link back here.

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The essential message is that we can create positive environments and emotions to create an upward spiral of openness, resilience, and better performance.

This is in line with my use of Agile as a way to transform the world of work. And of getting innovation and results through play.

The flow of the diagram below is: Positive emotions –> Expand’s Awareness –> Other thinking –> Mind Meld

Dr. Fredrickson argues that Positivity is a lifestyle change that can result in a upward spiral of positivity with all the associated benefits. Masking the negative does not help, we actually need to focus on the positive – at least three positive events for every negative event.

I really appreciated Barabara’s message, however, the one part I will differ on is that in many environments we need to create trust and safety to reduce the background noise of negativity. This needs to happen in tandem with positivity.

You can learn more through Barabara’s website or book.

Update: Full Video is available on Agile Alliance Website.

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This video is pretty long, but the best bits for me were in the first 12 minutes. Some great parts:

• Letter using Remember the Future for remembering why the student will have been wildly successful (3:43)
• You can give an “A” grade to anyone – to transform the relationship (4:25)
• “How Fascinating!” as a celebration of errors to maintain an available state (10:53)

Also, Benjamin Zander has a book with this title (haven’t read it yet).

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Stuart Brown shares an insightful quote:

The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.

In the following TedX video, Stuart Brown explains the importance of play.

Key Take-Aways

• Lot’s of great science on the importance of play for learning and development.
• Play is hard-wired into our brains (stories of Polar Bear with Husky and Mother with infant)
• Use of play skills in children is critical for adult development of problem solving skills. In particular, play involving hands is key.

For more information, there is Stuart’s book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

Many thanks to Yves Hanoulle who first shared this with me.

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Let’s face it, if you are running Scrum well, then there will be all sorts of ugly problems that pop out of the woodwork: decaying technical infrastructure, technical debt, people struggling with new roles, people no longer able to hide behind the fog of waterfall, and conflicts between groups.

Scrum is designed to make impediments visible. Management’s role is to act on these and remove them to support the team. Usually, these problems have been around for a while.

Consider the Matrix

What does the film The Matrix have to tell us about this situation?

Neo is Seeking

Neo is not satisfied with the status quo. He knows that something is wrong but is not sure what it is.

Morpheus is the Guide

Morpheus acts as a guide. He tells Neo that everything is not as it seems. Neo must decide if how badly he wants to know the truth.

Neo must choose

Morpheus gives Neo a choice:

• Red Pill: Learn the truth about and discover how deep the rabbit hole goes.
• Blue Pill: Remain in his current reality and wake up the next morning believing whatever he wishes.

What does have to do with Agile?

• The Matrix = Organizational Reality
• Neo = Transition Sponsor
• Morpheus = Agile Coach

When a client swallows the red pill, they choose to confront the red flags and problems. Just like the recommendation from one of my favourite management books - Good to Great. In this situation, it is possible to do what Michael Spayd call Strategic Agile. This is represents the fundamental shift in behaviours and values called for by Agile. It leads to a learning organization that is on the road to joy in work and high performance.

When a client swallows the blue pill, the we are in a Tactical Agile situation. In this case, it might be possible to find some local wins with morale, teamwork and productivity. It might also lead to organizational backlash that reverts Agile. Sadly, what frequently happens is that  the Agile champions and advocates who want to create a better company leave to find a place with a future.

My Stories

In every transition, I have seen red pill, blue pill situations. Some of them are minor decisions. Some are major like investment in repaying technical debt and investing in improving productivity.

At one company, the top 10 contributing staff built a value stream showing that a “5 day project” actually took 9 months to complete and the $5k revenue was offset by $25k of costs. More than half of the executives (CEO, CTO, VP Sales, VP Engineering, CFO) discounted the data. It was a blue pill moment.

At another company, we talked about the science of motivation, and they took the red pill. The yearly bonus went bye-bye. On the other hand they later took the blue pill on technical debt. Can’t win ‘em all.

One of the biggest problems I have seen is that the sponsor of the Agile transition is often the author of the problems. For example, the VP Engineering who was on watch when technical debt was piling up – it’s hard for him to get excited about sharing this problem with superiors and asking for patience while he fixes it.

If you are a coach, it’s your job to know where the boundaries are and help clients cross them when they are willing.

Your turn!

Next time you are working with someone, think about their reality and how they see the situation. Then find ways to share yours. At the end of the day, it is their choice.

The Video

Take a few minutes to watch this video clip from the movie. It’s fun and will help your brain remember this post.

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Status Games is a modeling technique that comes from Improv theatre. They are all about power and dominance. When we communicate we can raise or lower the status of others by implying something positive or negative.

Here is a quick example.

Statement: “I just finished my part.”

Status lowering response: “Well, I’m glad we are all finally done.” (Implication is that the person was last and they were holding things up)

Status raising response: ‘Great, we can only succeed as a team.” (Implication is that everyone is important).

I need to learn more about this. Here is one reference for more details.

Solution Focus

The principle of solution focus is that it is often more valuable to focus on the solution than on the problem. This principle is counter intuitive and is contradictory to other approaches such as root cause analysis and Diagram of effects. I think about the latter tools as useful for analysis, while solution focus is useful for generating solutions.

Solution focus is deceptively simple:

1. Image that you are in the future and have already solved your problem.
2. Think about how it was that you got there.

This perspective is useful in unlocking the series of steps that need to be accomplished to achieve the goal.

Solution Focus is very similar to the approach used in the InnovationGame® Remember the Future for defining what a product should do.

As I was reading more, I discovered that this comes from solution focussed brief therapy. Reminds me of my NLP tools and training. I am wondering how to share them.

Transactional Analysis

The work of Virginia Satir on family dynamics can be used to understand how we communicate with others. With this model we choose one of three roles when communicating: Parent, Adult, or Child. The example illustrated in pink is that if we communicate as parent to child then we will elicit a child to parent response.

The idea here is that by changing our response, we can change the dynamic of the conversation to get the result that we want. I think I need to learn more and play with this to get a better sense of this technique. Maybe I will just observe life and take notes from this perspective.

Please see WikiPedia for more on Transactional Analysis.

Slides and further reading

You can see slides and further reading/links on Pierluigi’s blog.

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What I have in today’s post is a series of mind-maps that cherry-pick the best bits. I include a lot of quotations from the book together with page numbers, so these may be used as a reading guide. (I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s actually for me to be able to look up the good bits quickly).

Consider your attitude as a Coach or Consultant

Client Relationship is Built on Trust

Understand You Client

Change is Harder than you Think

Coach the System and Beware the Fate of Consultants

Reality Check to Avoid Problems

Give away your Best Ideas and How to Price your Services

Hidden Agenda Game

Ironically, the one item that didn’t fit with any of the others is the Hidden Agenda Game (p.116). It is a simulation that helps people start seeing other people’s behaviours and intentions.

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Here are my notes containing the juicy bits:

One problem Agile suffers from is Semantic Diffusion where the meaning of Agile is getting diluted. As we grow, there is increased miscommunication and less understanding. I see this struggle on mailing lists where well-intentioned people sometimes mis-explain things.

Martin then made the case that Agile requires Evolutionary Design. It goes like this: requirements change, so you need adaptive planning and hence evolutionary design. Play the Marshmallow Challenge to experience how this can work.

The next topic (middle of diagram) was about people. He touched on Taylor’s anti-pattern of process-centric view where people are replaceable parts and contrasted this with the research of Alistair Cockburn who classified people as non-linear and variable. Martin suggests that each team must own it’s process and evolution. Not sure how he reconciles this with the enterprise view.

The final topic was on code branching strategies and how continuous integration is the best of all strategies. Heed his call or suffer the despair of code decay in your feature branches.

If you want to get a more in-depth report, check out John Tobin’s blog post or Piergiuliano Bossi’s very detailed post.

Slides? Not sure. If we do get them, the will be linked from the conference website.

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The contents of this post are my summary of THE BOOK on this subject: Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor and lead – by John Shook. Available via Lean Enterprise Institute and Ocapt (in Canada).

Why A3?

Over the last year, I have used A3 to solve serious problems myself as well as with clients that I am coaching. I am blown away by how effective it is. I think of it as the howitzer (big gun) of problem solving and use it for complex problems.

Root cause analysis tools are very helpful, however, do not provided a context for resolving problems. A3 is a complete process. If you are not familiar with root cause analysis, see my related blog post.

What is an A3 anyway?

As shown in the middle of the diagram below, A3 is the name for a large sheet of paper (17″ x 11″). With the A3 technique, it is filled up with useful information. Space is intentionally limited to make sure only the most relevant information is shared. At Toyota, the A3 report is used to drive company decisions from shop floor to senior management.

Let’s walk through the sections:

1. Problem – What is the problem that is causing problems? Also, give attention to the title as the summary.
2. Background – How did you decide to work on this problem? What is business problem?
3. Current Conditions – Describe the current conditions with visuals and numerical data that you have analyzed.
4. Goals/Targets – What is the desired target state? This is the place to use SMART goals.
5. Root Cause Analysis – What are the underlying causes? Use ask why five times and fishbone diagram.
6. Countermeasures – How will you reach goal state? What activities can be identified that will address root causes and how were the best ones selected?
7. Plan – What is the plan for getting there? When will the countermeasures be implemented?
8. Followup – What were the results of deploying the countermeasures? Now that there is new information, it is time to revisit the A3.

You may have noticed that this is an elaborated version of PDCA – Plan Do Check Act. This is the heartbeat of a learning organization.

It takes time and effort to complete an A3. Weeks not days. Use when appropriate.

Tips: Experts strongly recommend using real paper. Yes, you will need to re-write; editing is a good thing. A wiki is great for details, but not for thinking and summarizing.

A3 to gain agreement, mentor and lead

In this section, I want to share how the A3 technique is a powerful management tool.  Consider the following diagram:

A3 is about people working together to solve problems. The Japanese word Nemawashi is about going to the roots to reach consensus and alignment in a deep way. An A3 changes the way we work and communicate with each other. When meetings start by reviewing the parts of the A3 that have been completed, there is great focus on the remaining work. I have also seen new project participants brought up to speed very rapidly.

At Toyota, the A3 is used to do work. It is used to solve problems, make (set-based) decisions and execute plans.

Lean is famous for using pull to deliver the right part at the right time at the right place. With A3, the person driving the change effort can pull authority by working with other people and demonstrating leadership. It is chilling to see this work. I was coaching a junior analyst to put together an A3 on a production problem. When the issue escalated, the VP recognized the analyst as the expert and asked him to tell people what to do to fix the problem even though he had no formal or informal leadership role.

Finally, the A3 can be used to build a learning organization. One key aspect is to celebrate mistakes. This is also common with building an innovation culture through Improv or theatre techniques. At Toyota, it is used to develop people by helping them think for themselves to solve problems. A manager’s job is to build people and mentoring people on the A3 is a great way to do it. (Like a self-organizing team, but on an individual scale.)

I wish I had a real A3 to share, but the better ones I have are client confidential.

If you want to learn more, I urge you to buy the book or check out webinar on Managing to Learn.

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Constellation – Understanding each other through motion

I love this exercise. It provides the team members as well as the coach important information about everyone on the team. It is called constellation since everyone arranges themselves around an object on the floor (in our case a roll of tape) depending how they feel about a statement such as “I like getting results”.  People align their bodies with the statement: standing beside the object signifies strong agreement while standing far away to signifies strong disagreement. It is very powerful since people are engaging their whole bodies. To learn more, there is a full write-up on Lyssa’s blog.

Timeline – sharing our pasts

In timeline, each participant draws a timeline of their life with peaks, valleys and major life events. In turn, each person describes their timeline to the team. Team members listen and note skills or talents (on sticky notes) that stand out. These are then posted at the bottom of the timeline and reviewed as a team. This approach is about figuring out who the person is and what special perspectives they bring to move the project forward. When we did this, it helped the demo subject feel more positive about their talents. Nice.

Marketplace – sharing our talents

In marketplace we pretend we are a vendor in an open-air market place and decide what wares we have to sell. What are our special skills and talents that pertain to this project? We even get to create a banner to attract people. Under the table are things that are true for us, but may not directly relate to the project. The debrief is the same as timeline. Usually a coach will use one or the other (in the training session half of us did marketplace and half did timeline).

Below is my marketplace as an Agile coach.

(This is part of a series on DeepAgile 2010 Games Weekend).

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