I am re-inventing myself both from a personal and work perspective; in this post I share my vision for working with clients and partners.

Personal and Organizational Transformation

My main goal is to work as a change agent in the world at large to support people and organizations in transformation.

On the left of the photo we have individuals undertaking the hard work of personal transformation: learning and growing; shedding the baggage of our pasts. This is very hard and rewarding work. I have been getting more involved in this as evolve as a coach. Stay tuned for upcoming posts on the work of Brene Brown to learn more.

The core of the photo shows the daunting challenge of organizational change. It is like attacking the ramparts of a castle: climbing up the ladders to effect organizational change is not for the faint of heart. The rewards – of liberating people and companies – is commensurate with the challenge. My purpose is to add safety and capability to this challenge.

It is my belief and understanding that personal transformation precedes organizational transformation. Leadership by example is required for success.

Consulting to be 10% Better?

In Gerry Weinberg’s Secrets of Consulting, a good consultant never promises more than a 10% improvement since it would imply that the management of the organization doesn’t know what they are doing. A kinder view that I adopt is that many organizations are not ready for personal and organizational transformation. In these cases, I am happy to help them get a 10% improvement and support curiousity about larger improvements. Siraj Sirajuddin’s approach of Supplication is about appreciating each person, client, organization for where they are at now.

In the photo at left, one can see the consultant applying tools to help the machine. The large monkey is the 800 pound gorilla of organizational inertia that is to be respected.

Organizational Structure to Support Vision

The rather intricate model in the photo (left) depicts my future state organizational structure to support the vision outlined above. It has two main parts: the people and the culture.

In the foreground, we see that success is enhanced by a core group that works closely with each other. Of course the number follows Luke Hohmann’s rule, “More than 8, no collaborate.” Everyone is wearing red to denote alignment to a compelling shared vision. Like a cross-functional Scrum team, skills and talents will vary. Beyond this group is a wider circle (heads on ground) to support this group.

At the back, we have the tree of culture. At it’s highest, we see that there is balance between individuals in the organization. I see this along the lines of WorldBlu (democracy for the workplace) or culture guides such as Valve that are about self-accountability. Other elements:

• Red flower is for compassion and caring
• Net is for safety
• Wand is for passion and purpose
• Monkey is for me – helping the world connect with play
• The lion is for courage to do the right thing

Alternatives to create Organizational Structure

An open question for me is how to realize my future state organizational structure. The diagram above shows three possible ways for me to achieve this.

I can continue to work as an independent but invest time and energy into building a close network of partners who share my vision. (Shown on left)

I can build a regional consultancy with others. (bottom)

The third option is to join an existing organization that is compatible with my vision. Some candidates are Agile42 and NuFocus. (on right)

What’s Left?

Lots. My goal for the next six months is to explore relationships and do some safe-to-fail experiments to test out these alternate structures.

Here is my Games Landscape Infographic and slides from my Agile Games 2012 keynote presentation.

Overview

Play is a powerful tool for achieving business results. A common question is, how can I do this in my current work environment? The purpose of this talk is to orient you to a variety of different ways that you can introduce play to solve real-world problems. Whether you are a leader, coach, and even individual contributor, there are ways to amplify the workplace with play.

Welcome to a guided tour of the play landscape. This guided tour will help you navigate the different techniques with the space of games and play in order to see how they can help you. We will start our journey with ways to harness the power of play through games to do valuable work. Next stop is about using games for accelerated, deep learning. At the peak of the tour we visit the ways we can develop our play skills. The final stop on our tour is how to embedded play into our work contexts.

At the end of the tour you will have a map for exploring play and perhaps even a burning curiousity about some newly discovered places.

Play and Games landscape

For the infographic on Stuart Brown’s book on Play, please refer to The Science of Play.

Presentation Slides

Scott Edinger talks about how to conduct an informal 360° review for yourself: ask the people around you these four questions:

1. What are my strengths?
2. What are my fatal flaws?
3. What strengths work best for the company?
4. What strengths work best for you?

Consider Johari Window

Another great approach that is more general is the Johari Window technique. Again you are going to want to get input from others, but this time with an eye towards discovering who you are by sharing hidden perspectives.

Want a high performance team? Then have the whole team do this exercise together. And of course  Strategic Play® with Lego® SERIOUS PLAY® is a great way to explore a topic such as interpersonal perspectives.

Play is critical for creativity and innovation. It is something we cultivate in high-performance teams.

Stuart Brown literally wrote the book on it – Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and invigorates the Soul. It is the tale of a medical doctor who could not ignore the importance of play in the lives of people and the tragedies that result from a lack of play.

Consider the visual note below that captures features of the book that helped me better understand the science of play.   The characteristics of play are that it is voluntary, fun, and results in a flow state of mind.

Play is the foundation of Creativity and Innovation. Our ability to take risks and learn from mistakes are key to innovation. To do this we must be able to play in safety.

Play is innate to animals and humans. Brown shares the science around play being a driving force for learning. Animals (in particular, mammals) use play when young to develop cognitive and social skills. Humans are special in that they play through life. In part this allows us to continue to learn through life. Neoteny describes our trait of retaining youthful characteristics.

Perhaps the most important point is that Work and Play go hand in hand. Play is an enabler of work, not the opposite. The opposite of play is depression. ”All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And by dull, we mean unable to support the creativity needed to accomplish challenging tasks. “When the going gets tough, the tough go play.” And I know that I use StrategicPlay® with Lego® to solve really big challenges.

If you thinking about building up your play muscles, the place to start is with your play history: think about what got you really excited when you were a kid. There are questions in book if you want to explore further.

It’s no wonder, I am such a big fan of games for learning and doing work.

Curious to learn more? You can start with the TED talk below or pick up the book.

Are you tired of mediocrity and interested in doing really great work?

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.

Barbara Fredrickson gave a great Keynote at Agile 2011 – Why care about positive emotions?

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.

I wanted to share this inspiring video on the art of possibility and how our stance in the world can change everything. Stance is very important for coaching.

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).

Play is a profoundly powerful tool for achieving business results. I think of three main ways to accomplish this: Using explicit play to do work, using play for learning, and building people’s play muscles.

Consider the following diagram:

Play for Work

The goal is here is to take difficult, boring, unproductive work  and create great results through play. In the diagram, I give a few examples of how to make work through play:

• Innovation Games® have a proven track record of using play to help companies understand their customers and build innovative products.
• Planning Poker is a well-established team based estimation technique that is now complemented by other estimation games.
• Lego® Strategic Play® is a hands-on activity for solving tough problems, team development and creating company strategy.
• The world of facilitation provides a host of engaging activities from team retrospectives to Open Space.

For more information, check out some ways I help clients with bring play to work.

Play for Learning

I have been very involved in games to assist people learning about Agile, Lean, etc. I made a helpful diagram that shows different types of games and what they can be used for. Probably the best place to go to find a game is TastyCupcakes.org – it’s a community-driven and has an ever-growing collection of games. I even volunteer my time to make it better for everyone – that’s how much I care and believe in play as a powerful dynamic.

Of course, play goes well beyond Agile through folks such as training master Thiagi and GameStorming. (Both are on my to-learn list)

Building Play Skills

What if you want to build the skills of your team or organization to harness play as part of daily work? To have play and creativity permeate everyone and everything? For this, your best bet comes from dramatic techniques such as ArtfulMaking and DramaTech. Also, strongly recommended are Improv skills. You may notice that these are not just about creativity, they are also about listening and collaboration as an added bonus.

For results, play on!

This is a guest blog post co-written with Christine Neidhardt based on a session at Play4Agile conference on coaching with photos. The session was based on an experiment with the Points of You – Coaching Game (German link) to find ways to use the photo cards with a group or team. And we did.

Here is a photo of some of the cards scattered across the floor.

The one-on-one Coaching Game

The CoachingGame is used as a creative support material for coaches and offers a variety of possibilities to work with. We started with a public one-on-one coaching session to show one practical case how to use  the CoachingGame and we were lucky that we had a person volunteering. We selected between four topics the game is offering:

• Relationships
• Winning and Loosing
• Mindfulness
• History, Present, Future

We decided for History, Present, Future. In a fishbowl arrangement, the practice client selected an important question for the session and we asked: what happened in the past, what happens now, what is the potential. The client selected three photos that represented each of the topics.

The cards do offer a photo, a word and a symbol. There is a companion book that explains each of the photos and provide stories to deepen the examination of the topic and offer additional perspectives and insights. There are five types of symbols (way, act, be, problems, opportunities) to which each of the cards belongs. Information which gives additional orientation. This together with an explanation cloth to position the cards to the questions, makes it all very comfortable to work with.

Creating Team Games

After the Coaching demo we formed two working groups to figure out how to use these cards in a group or team. This was the goal of the session and we came up with some pretty cool results in just 15 minutes.

Photo Reflection Game

One group created the photo reflection. We selected the Play4agile conference as topic and asked us, what was the past, present and what is the potential in the future. Everybody selected up to three  cards. Everybody presented his cards to the group. The foto helped to explain and gave new ideas.

Past (first column): We as Coaches who love games realized we were often hold by old habits, felt alone with our ideas and had to endure through tough times in the day to day work.

Present (second column): The conference was the place to be at least authentic and to find people with the same mindset, where there occured many oppurtunities and creativity is in full bloom.

Future (third column): Putting the new games into action was one of our goals, as well as being open to all that is possible. All could happen. Lots of people from the conference would like to see games as a usual tool being used like techniques as Scrum. Some of the people found it possible that they would find their vocation in introducing games and the results of the conference in their daily work.

If we would have had more time, we could have gone deeper, could have agreed on some cards which would be the most important or we could have made as well the second part of the shared vision game.

The Shared Vision Game

The second group used the time to focus just on the last question: the future.

1. Select the topic. In our case it was our future expectations of the conference. It could be for your team or project.
2. Have everyone pick a card that resonates with them.
3. Confirm that everyone is comfortable with the other cards. Some people did not understand the card I picked and after explaining what it meant for me, they were OK with it. I even changed the photo by covering up part to make our shared understanding of the meaning clearer.
4. Create a statement that incorporates all of the ideas.

Our Shared Vision Statement

We somewhat unexpectedly created a powerful shared vision of our expectations of the conference.

What Can We Still Learn?

You see, there are unlimited possibilites and maybe we have now lots of more ideas how to work with these visual tools.

Why does this work?

Michael, as an NLP practitioner, is a big believer in the power of the unconscious mind. And photos tap right into our unconscious minds so we get to what is really important.

In the book How Customers Think, there is a great technique where customers bring in a photo that they feel relates to the product. When they explain the relationship they give very rich information about what is important and why. It’s a great book full of research on brains and decision-making.

The game with photos works the same way. We allow people’s unconscious to get in the game by selecting a photo. This is much deeper than just visual expression or writing on a sticky note.

Agile requires a lot of skills. Agile Coaching demands even more.

Each individual coach has specific talents, capabilities and passions. Similarly, superheroes have their special powers, areas of strength and weaknesses.

Sure the Thing can break down a door, but Mr. Fantastic can slip his arm under and open it without damage or noise. Of course, if “It’s clobberin’ time!” then maybe the Thing is the right superhero for that situation.

Superheroes work in challenging environments and often succeed by working with a team that has complementary talents. The same is true for Agile coaches – we can achieve more in a team with other coaches.

In this post, I want to touch on the skills needed for Agile coaching and how this relates to learning and working in coaching teams.

Skills needed for Agile

The Agile Skills Project is the best reference that I know of. It breaks Agile skills into 7 competence areas: Business Value, Collaboration, Confidence, Product, Self Improvement, Supportive Culture, Technical Excellence. Each competence area has lots of definition (see MindMap). Phew! There’s a lot to know.

I just finished my self-assessment (see below) and probably the biggest challenge for me is around how to rate myself around areas for which I am an expert, however, not currently practising (in last 30 days). So if you want to be strict, just shrink the figure – shape won’t change much.

Overall, I am not 100% happy with this model. On the other hand there is not better.

Agile Skills for Coaches

Agile coaches are a mix of consultant, trainer, and coach. I do not know of a list of skills, so I’ll take a stab at it below. The astute reader will be aware that each of these is a profession in its own right.

Consultant

• Systems Thinking
• Root cause analysis
• Client relationship management
• Consultative Selling
• Organizational Change Management
• Navigating politics

Trainer

• Participatory training – including Agile Games, Training from the back of the room
• Speaking skills
• Presentation software such as PowerPoint. Including graphics/photos/diagrams
• Lesson and content preparation

Coach

• Listening
• Effective Questions
• Giving feedback
• Group collaboration

• Retrospectives
• Personality models such as Myers Briggs
• Psychology models such as NLP (NeuroLingusticProgramming)

To quote Socrates – “The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.”

Every Agile coach will have some areas of skills that they have capability and vast areas with limited skills. This is why it is best to work in teams. As well, all the usual reasons for pairing apply here too.

Coaching Circle – the Fantastic Four

Gerry Kirk created a coaching circle for some of us in Ontario to meet online weekly to share ideas, provide support, debug situations and learn together. Other participants are Declan Whelan and Jason Little (photo from Agile Coach Camp Waterloo). For me the sessions have highlighted that we come from different backgrounds and have different skills and interests. When working together, it is these very differences that add value and allow the sum to be much greater than the parts.

Gerry ran an open space workshop on this at Scrum Gathering in Orlando if you would like to learn more - Agile Coaching Circles aka How to avoid feeling isolated and unsupported as a coach [Open Space]

Post Script: Selena Delesie and Susan Davis recently joined the coaching circle. Bye bye, Fantastic Four. Hello, X-Men.

Pair Coaching and Coaching Teams

In 2009, I had the fortune of pair-training with Yves Hanoulle at Agile Tour Toronto. He introduced me to the concept of PairCoaching for which I am very grateful as it has profoundly influenced how I work. (For example, I had two pair-authored sessions at Agile 2010).

Earlier this year, I was on a coaching team with Alistair McKinnell and Jason Little. I learned a lot see different skills sets in action. Alistair is a world-class technical architect, consummate consultant and above all test-infected. Although he can do much more than this, he is a great technical coach -someone to sit with developers and testers to get in the trenches and show people how to do quality work. Although Jason knows some technical practices and has worked with Agile Management, he worked with team process (Scrum, Kanban) as well as team dynamics. Me? I love getting people to work together. On this engagement, I worked mostly at the team level and the organizational/inter-departmental level. We did a lot of pairing and the quality of our work was way higher.

I know some XP Coaches who think that all Agile coaches need to be developers in order to assist the team in technical practices. For me, it is more important that all relevant skills are manifested in a coaching team and not in a given coach.

So be a superhero and work in a coaching team. If you are a coach, work this in to your engagement model. If you are a client, ask for this and join the team as internal coach – you are welcome for sure.