HENRIK KNIBERG | Confessions of a Change Agent | Agile Rock Conference 2018
Agile Rock Conference 2018 · 57 min
Vídeo: https://youtu.be/c1W6U2duXdI
Transcrição automática do YouTube (inglês, legenda gerada automaticamente). Timestamps em [mm:ss]. Erros de reconhecimento de fala não foram corrigidos.

[0:08] alright last thing of the conference you guys you guys still awake yeah that's
[0:16] cool great so you're we're gonna have some fun I'm gonna I'm gonna talk a little bit about I'm gonna tell stories
[0:23] most actually how many of you here get called agile coaches yeah people tend to
[0:32] accuse me of being that sometimes - yeah I started about maybe I don't know 12
[0:37] years ago people started saying you're an agile coach I'm like what is that I'm still not sure it's hard to describe to
[0:45] someone at a bar like what what do I do like oh I'm an agile coach what no can I
[0:50] forget that I help companies improve like well what does that mean ID bug and
[0:55] refactor and and optimize companies what our management consultant whatever I don't know it it's hard so finally I
[1:03] concluded that maybe change agent is the closest description to of what I do and
[1:10] maybe what many of you guys do as well so I'm gonna be talking a little bit about what I've learned so far in this
[1:15] role as change agents and and also what I what I mean by it right so to me be a
[1:25] being a change agent is it's not a role that you have it's it's more an attitude
[1:35] I'm gonna do this complicate I'm gonna use both that and this I'm probably gonna get out of sync at some point I don't know but what what I mean by that
[1:44] is change agent is to me a person who cannot help but to improve things always
[1:50] looking for ways to improve things it's almost like an addiction or or a habit some people look at the world and all
[1:57] they see is problems and then they complain about it right just complain complain complain I look at the world
[2:02] all I see is problems but they're not try not to complain about it I just try to help improve things it's fun
[2:08] sometimes even you know unimportant things like all I want to get the perfect design of this castle in
[2:13] Minecraft it's not even important or learn how to play a blues in a weird
[2:20] keys see sharp like how that do that that's really tricky I have to learn to do that it's not important but it's fun
[2:26] to improve so how many of you share that kind of habit that you just want to
[2:31] improve things you can't help yourself a hand up it would usually be quite a number of people right so the rest of
[2:37] you you can go back to you know your email or your games or whatever I'm primarily addressing other people who
[2:43] share this this itch right I always want to improve things okay so the golden
[2:51] question is how do you change an organization right so what everyone is asking and I have a short answer and a
[2:59] long answer okay the short answer is is you you can't
[3:05] sorry do we still have more time how
[3:11] much was it an hour maybe we have time for questions all right well thank you very much anyway else great so I assume
[3:22] you're still here because you kind of want the long answer it's a really long answer it's gonna go on for like 50 minutes are you sure right okay so that
[3:31] that longer answer is a little bit contradictory the short answer is you can't
[3:37] the longer the the the other short answer is it's easy and I'm gonna
[3:42] demonstrate it using a little exercise all right go ahead and change yourself
[3:48] right now somehow took classes upside down or cross your arms other way just
[3:54] everybody change something on yourself and I can see everybody saw nobody's getting away right change something
[4:02] something simple or something radical right let's see look around you see
[4:09] change happening here and there right yeah you moved your hair to that side very bold move I'm impressed that's it that's cool yeah
[4:18] that wasn't so hard was it wasn't terribly hard of course the tricky bit
[4:24] is changing other people so go ahead and change someone else
[4:30] they'll be shy you know you're among friends go ahead and change someone else right yeah come on you can do it a bit
[4:50] trickier right a little bit you know a little awkward you're all laughing because it's it's kind of this awkward laughter like no right it's a we just
[5:02] witnessed three changes now three forms of change right one change thing that
[5:08] happened was you changed yourself the second thing that also happened was you changed someone else what was the third
[5:14] thing that would type of change that we also saw right now I changed everybody got you right
[5:23] change Vodou right okay so change is easy the tricky part isn't
[5:30] making change happen the tricky part is making it stick so how many of you have
[5:36] already reverted back look around you've all reverted back all right you couldn't
[5:43] even keep it for one minute right so the change is pretty easy about making it stick is it's kind of hard I find that
[5:53] change is also fairly easy if people want it right in fact that's so important I'm even going to put up a
[5:59] card about that so change is change is easy if people want it and here's a that
[6:04] version right and if people don't want the change it'll be a lot harder right what if I told you all take off all your
[6:11] clothes I'm not gonna stop you but the
[6:21] thing is if people don't want to change they won't generally speaking unless they are under threat or something right
[6:27] plan to change will definitely not stick so yeah how do we change people well
[6:34] basically you don't change people you can inspire them to change themselves that makes sense
[6:42] can inspire people and maybe maybe they'll they'll change themselves all
[6:52] right now I'm sure you've seen this happen you you're at a company and then as a coach
[6:59] or whatever you help them introduce lots of cool stuff and then you leave and then everything goes right back to where
[7:05] it was hand up if you've seen that right well that's very very common yeah I
[7:10] think of it as organizations have a muscle memory kind of and they gravitate
[7:16] towards status quo because it's just you know there's a reason why the structure they had was there for historical
[7:23] reasons and they've built up all kinds of roles and processes in fact their current way of working was probably fine
[7:29] at some point in the past and then why change it right so coming in as an
[7:34] outsider or even an insider causing change to happen it's hard because organizations just just tend to want to
[7:39] go back so what what can you actually do about that well sometimes companies are forced sometimes it's like we're fine we
[7:48] work the way we usually do you know we don't need to change here we can't change here we're too big company until
[7:55] the day this little startup shows up and that little startup is stealing your business they are running circles around
[8:01] you now this big companies panicking and suddenly they make radical change really
[8:07] impressive sometimes seeing that happen I worked a lot at at Lego and they had this thing that happened 12 years ago
[8:13] where they completely shifted the company could they didn't change product but there shifted the way they worked because they were running out of money
[8:19] they were getting too spread thin and that was an existential crisis if they did not change they would have
[8:25] disappeared there would be no more Lego so that triggered change now the best leaders don't wait for that
[8:32] moment right so companies that are really good at what they do I find they
[8:37] have change agents all over the place in fact leaders are expected to be change agents and they're consistently
[8:44] challenging each other and their teams to be changing even you know way before there is any kind of crisis and not only
[8:50] that they're also inspiring others to become change agents so it's really a mindset that an
[8:57] attitude that needs to be cultivated all
[9:03] right so what do you do them I mean if you want to create this inspiration you also need to create the practical
[9:08] environment to enable change to happen and I'm gonna illustrate that using a
[9:13] little exercise I'm really not sure how it's gonna pan out but we'll give it a shot all right as part of that I want to talk
[9:21] a little bit about comfort zones right so how many of you here are okay with
[9:27] stepping out of your comfort zone sometimes hand up all right that's cool
[9:32] that's just about everybody that's great now keep your hand up keep your hand up right now take your hand down if you
[9:40] have no problem getting up on stage in front of a big audience keep your hand
[9:47] up if you find that a little bit uncomfortable to thought of getting up on stage in front of a big audience all right cool and I guess you know what
[9:53] I'm gonna say next right so I would like ten of those of you with hands up to get
[9:59] right up here on stage and the rest of you prefer prepare to give them a Rock
[10:05] Stadium applause okay okay okay this is
[10:17] good enough Jesus okay I was planning for this
[10:23] exercise for ten people but you know what the heck we'll be agile about it right yeah this is this is gonna be this
[10:28] is gonna be a challenge no I'm out of my comfort zone thank you very much okay
[10:34] you're gonna need to turn so you can see this right because this is your challenge okay I'm gonna give you a
[10:41] challenge ready Oh before I give you the challenge I need to give them a job to
[10:46] do your job is gonna be you're gonna be the stopwatch you're gonna be counting seconds and to make it fun you're gonna
[10:52] be counting in your own home language so when I go ready set go you start counting seconds in your own home
[10:59] language let's practice ready set go
[11:06] m6 whoo okay cool get my hand there pretty good right yeah great yeah okay so here's your challenge
[11:17] get the brick to everyone on the team that's you in alphabetical order by
[11:22] first name and let me get the brick for you so you gotta pass this brick around
[11:27] everybody here got to get it right in alphabetical order by first name is that clear start counting ready set go
[11:46] [Music]
[11:55] and [Music]
[12:27] Oh sixty okay 60 seconds this is so team
[12:43] you think you can improve this result okay ready set go count okay done
[13:04] command what still alphabetical order
[13:11] though right it's how many seconds seventeen they improved their speed by a
[13:17] factor three and more right pretty impressive okay go ahead do a little retrospective get in a ring talk
[13:23] about how you can do this faster next time just go ahead get in a ring talk to each other right
[13:29] give us some time you guys can talk to
[13:34] your neighbors about something you learn from the conference [Music]
[14:05] getting very creative here cool this is
[14:17] why we want small teams in agile right it gets tricky yeah okay
[14:39] [Music]
[15:15] okay it's an experiment right everything is an experiment all right tell me when
[15:23] are you ready all right tell me when are you ready
[15:34] not telling
[15:40] okay wait wait we forgot the timer okay
[15:45] okay ready set go two seconds
[15:53] thank you very much you can never seen again amazing [Applause]
[16:11] thank you my Blago that's great
[16:17] all right talk about improvement right these people get up and they're they
[16:23] hate getting up on stage they get up and they do this thing and they do a retrospective and they improve by a factor thirty right okay what were the
[16:32] conditions that were put in place to enable that to happen communication they
[16:41] were given time to talk right a shared goal a clear shared goal in this case
[16:47] highly motivated why would they be highly motivated to pass a brick around
[16:53] is that intrinsically motivating I don't know scream commitment
[17:02] why were they committed you know what it's fun passing bricks around in the
[17:07] circle is fun I don't know if that was the key thing you know but there's a
[17:14] number of things right there's a number of things and commitments right yes they
[17:20] were committed because they were on stage so that doesn't mean something a clear goal the ability to retry right
[17:29] they were given multiple chances and it was a safe environment it wasn't like they be punished for being slow as like
[17:35] hey try again you know how to retrospective so all these things are
[17:40] things you can do as a change agent you can put the conditions in place to enable improvement to happen it's not
[17:46] always gonna work but you can maximize the odds but for that to work you need
[17:52] to be willing to slow down slow down to speed up because what if this team was
[17:58] so stressed that they did not have time for a retrospective right what if we just said you have to deliver all the
[18:03] time right they'd be sitting there passing the brick like crazy and it would be but it would be really slow so
[18:09] really important thing as a change agent is to teach your organization you've got to make the space so people can sit down
[18:16] and actually talk make the space to to try new ideas even if you don't know
[18:21] they're going to work and if they fail well what the hell that's just a price of innovation right we try something else so yeah great
[18:28] safety so as change agent as I think I
[18:35] already mentioned you work at two levels you are both causing change to happen you are putting these conditions in
[18:41] place but you are also infecting other people with the same disease that you have because if you don't then it
[18:49] doesn't scale right if you come in you're all enthusiastic causing change to happen then you leave well who's
[18:56] what's gonna happen now right so you better make sure that this is attitude this change attitude needs nice nice is
[19:03] spread and the best way I know to make that happen is is by by pairing so
[19:10] basically never work alone always work together with someone else in one way or another and then indirectly you will be
[19:16] teaching the change agent mindset but also some of the practical tools things like you know retrospectives etc okay so
[19:25] let's see yeah there is there is a a problem with the change agent mindset
[19:33] you want to fix everything right you want to improve everything the problem
[19:38] is there's only one you right and there and the list of potential problems to
[19:44] fix is infinite so infinite backlog of problems in a finite u equals stress
[19:53] sometimes right I don't know how many of you recognize this feeling but sometimes
[20:00] it's sometimes people like us that work as change agents struggle with with depression and burnout and stress
[20:07] anybody recognize that feeling we want to fix everything right come on we want
[20:12] to fix everything and of course the list never ends so that's one of those things where we need to work with their own minds right
[20:19] to just accept that you know what there's gonna be tons of problems that don't get fixed today and guess what that's perfectly fine I'm gonna sleep
[20:26] well anyway so to me it's really about not owning the problem if I'm helping a
[20:32] team or a client or anybody I'm not gonna own their problem it may get fixed or it might not
[20:37] I'm not gonna get it let it into my heart right I used to do that in the past I used to be more like really
[20:44] engaged in the problem at hand which meant that whenever I fail which course happens right then then that became
[20:49] really really hard to kind of accept no it's much easier for me because I just yeah I help out I do what I can if it
[20:56] didn't work well it didn't work then we just try the next thing right so and this is also something you need to
[21:02] spread to the team it's a good way to tackle like complaints right say we have
[21:08] a team we asked them what are the biggest impediments for you right what's in your way that may be a list of 20
[21:14] things right okay let's vote which which three of these things are most in your way and most important to solve they
[21:21] vote vote or something quick analysis and you decide on these are the top three impediments okay out
[21:28] of these top three impediments which one are we going to try to solve right now you pick one if you don't know how to
[21:33] pick it bring up a dice it doesn't matter just pick one and what do you do with the rest ignore write ignore the
[21:44] rest fix it or accept it write that
[21:50] those are the problems later or maybe never it's a very useful mindset to have
[21:56] and also to spread to tell everybody that yes we have a problem with our crappy build server and you know what we're gonna do nothing about all right
[22:01] now we're just gonna live with it so don't worry don't bother complaining and the reason why we're not solving that problem is because we're solving this
[22:07] problem which is bigger and more important all right very powerful way of looking at things
[22:14] okay sometimes when you're trying to help solve some kind of a problem you
[22:20] just keep working and keep struggling and you never get anywhere I think
[22:25] you're kind of like I think it kind of like a wall with strings this is a very
[22:33] silly metaphor right think of a wall with strings right you can pull the strings each string is a problem that you want to help solve you don't know
[22:41] what's gonna happen when you pull the string right is it gonna come right out you solve the problem immediately it was really simple like for example I've seen
[22:48] cases where you know the root cause of the problem the team is spread in different rooms we put them in the same room and tada
[22:55] like magic half of their problems just disappear sounds like one of those simple little strings
[23:00] other times you're like try to pull the string and you're just standing there all the time trying to fix it and
[23:06] nothing happens and it can feel kind of like you're beating a dead horse right
[23:15] so don't do that notice when that's happening and then
[23:21] and then stop and that doesn't mean you should just give up as soon as you get resistance but at some point notice be
[23:28] self-aware enough to realize that you know what this problem does not want to be solved right now apparently for some
[23:34] reason maybe it's not the most important problem after all or maybe it's too tough a problem right now maybe the timing is wrong I don't
[23:40] know but yeah move on right put that problem on the other list and it's a
[23:48] little bit scary cuz those strings right you're pulling these strings sometimes you pull one and out comes a dragon and goes boom what tries to eat you so yeah
[23:56] it's very it's so I think of it as a change agent you're just trying these strings to see what happens which one were where can I make a big difference
[24:03] no I noticed something especially when I
[24:08] spent a lot of time it's modified that after many years that I would often have some main problem on trying to solve
[24:14] right some number one issue I'm trying to help fix sometimes making progress but sometimes really not because the
[24:21] reason why I picked the problem is because it's important and sometimes rather complex cut across organizational
[24:26] boundaries so we're working on it and obviously never alone you normally really can't do much at all as a change
[24:31] agent if you work alone so working with other people trying to inspire them right creating this based experiment but
[24:39] yet we kept week not really making progress so real life example I had that
[24:46] situation I don't remember what problem I was trying to help solve but then at some point I was just walking by the coffee machine and I happened to talk to
[24:52] somebody they're a tribe leader and he's like you know Henrick in our tribe we
[24:58] have a challenge our teams structure isn't really working anymore because we've outgrown it so can you
[25:04] like a good team structure we talked a little bit and finally I suggested hey you know how about the idea of of the
[25:09] team's self organize their team structure based on the work at hand and you could redo that on a regular basis
[25:16] you get kind of dynamic team structure and he's like that's interesting do you have any examples so I sent him an article I think um and that was just a
[25:23] 10-minute conversation but then he went ahead and tried it and it worked really well so then it spread to other tribes
[25:29] as well and apparently that was the right solution at that time to that problem I had no idea so i spending week
[25:35] trying to solve problem a and i spent ten minutes not even trying to solve problem b and that liked me it made a
[25:41] huge difference so in the beginning I was kind of feeling bad about that I'm like wow I'm not I'm not in control of
[25:47] things until one day I realized that ah yeah that that's it I'm not in control of things it was like
[25:55] realizing that and I don't need to be in control of things because that kind of control is an illusion so now I think of
[26:02] it more like as a change agent it's good to be focused it's good to pick a few problems to focus on but don't get over
[26:09] focused I think of it as planting seeds right throw seeds around randomly or
[26:15] every time how you interact with somebody you're planting a seed if you send a link to an article planting a seed running a workshop is planting a
[26:20] seed and all these are kind of at I think of them as kind of like agile seed so you don't know which which ones are
[26:25] gonna sprout right some what some are gonna work out some not some might work out nicely and then they die after a
[26:31] year it's it's out of my hands it's about I just keep planting sometimes I
[26:36] get surprised by what I see so that's also one of those good anti stress mechanisms right plant the seeds and
[26:43] then see what happens sometimes you need to add some water or some light right
[26:51] okay and that kind of bakes the question okay if I'm just this weird guy going
[26:57] around planting seeds how do I know if I'm adding any value right how many
[27:03] you've gotten that question like how do you know that you are adding value right any any answers
[27:13] analysis so suppose I'm ionic I'm a coach type person and I and I gotta go to a team and I let's say I ain't reduce
[27:20] scrum I help them get going with scrum and then after I leave we look at the
[27:25] results the team is happier they're delivering faster and they're delivering better quality objectively measured
[27:31] would you say that that was a successful engagement for me as a coach yeah you
[27:40] have no idea maybe they would have done even better if I wasn't there you have no idea right or maybe they would have
[27:47] done the same if I if I wasn't there so the only way you could know is if you can somehow create this parallel universe where you didn't interact with
[27:54] the team and then do an a/b test and compare you can't so you really don't know so or maybe I came into the team
[28:02] and then everything went south right just crashed they might have crashed anyway maybe they would have crashed
[28:08] even worse if I wasn't there so at the end of the day you don't know you can guess you can get a sense so I've just
[28:14] given up on that it's not important to me anymore to measure to know exactly was this my contribution or not right
[28:20] I'm planting seeds and I'm watering but guess what lots of other people are also planting seeds and watering and stuff so
[28:27] when we look at the result was that because of me or was it despite me I don't know and don't really care but
[28:36] what I do care about is are people happy to have me around so so I think the closest equivalent to you know knowing
[28:42] if you're adding value is to people want to have you around are they happy to have you there in that case you're probably doing something right however
[28:50] maybe they don't want you around maybe they're saying you know what we don't need help right now we're fine what does
[28:56] that mean but it could mean that you're just an annoying person who doesn't help the team or it could mean that you are
[29:03] awesome but they don't need your help right now again can't really tell the difference so give up on measuring
[29:09] exactly what your contribution is and in fact I would recommend this this
[29:14] attitude right it's a team game it's a number of people involved the whole idea
[29:20] with a cross-functional team is we kind of mix the roles up a little bit right it's no longer obvious exactly
[29:25] whose code was that or whose decision was this or we don't really know we we we look at the team results not
[29:31] individual results so that goes for you as well as a change agent okay
[29:40] funny story at Lego after about a year and a half going there frequently I was
[29:48] gonna my contract was gonna get extended and I wanted some feedback so I got so I met a bunch of people and I just showed
[29:54] them a list this is a type of stuff I've been doing here and running workshops doing inspirational talks standing in
[30:02] front of a whiteboard doing problem solving asking stupid questions I just made this list of stuff and I
[30:08] asked people what's most valuable do you think what should I be doing more in the future do you think so I always got the
[30:15] same answer what do you think the answer was an answer wasn't whatever it was one
[30:21] of those items I listed for you it was actually the fourth item there he was
[30:26] asking stupid questions yeah they all told me that yeah all this other stuff you do is valuable too but you know
[30:32] asking stupid questions that's that's the most valuable like whoa okay so that's that's very interesting
[30:38] you know things like we're sitting here arguing about quality but what do we
[30:43] mean by quality how will we know when we have it like hmm or why we organized
[30:48] this way what led us to that what what are we optimizing for when we're organized in this way this kind of
[30:55] questions that are easier to ask when you come from that outside a not part of the system right but even if you're embedded inside an organization as a no
[31:03] matter what your official role is right again eh agent is an attitude not a role just asking those rather naive stupid
[31:09] questions don't be shy they're usually very valuable even if they can feel a little bit embarrassing but again if you
[31:16] skip the Eagle part it gets a lot easier to ask those stupid questions I almost I
[31:21] was really kind of worried therefore when I just came to that engagement my first day at Lego I did something that I thought would get me kicked out I was in
[31:29] I went to I had just interviewed a bunch of teams to learn about what they're doing and what their challenges are and then I ended up in a war room where a
[31:37] bunch of managers we're discussing the state of things so there was one of those status boards with red and green and
[31:42] yellow flags and they went through all the different projects and it was mostly green I just interviewed the teams I
[31:49] knew the real story so after as they finished a meeting they asked me the new guy like hey so any
[31:55] what do you think you know any thoughts around this meeting and before I could stop myself I said this thing you call
[32:01] the project board sounds to me more like a board no like did I just
[32:07] say that and they totally burst out laughing they're like you know that was
[32:13] the elephant in the room this is a board this is just a ceremony let's talk about the real problems so
[32:18] yeah sometimes it takes this kind of naive the child like a change agent to come in and like hey what's going on
[32:23] here okay so you're probably wondering about the stupid toaster so let's let's
[32:29] let's get it over with I'm gonna talk about a pitfall which we often fall into
[32:39] the pitfall is solving symptoms rather than solving problems can I Ellis trait
[32:45] that using an example so let's say we have a team right and their job is to
[32:51] make toast okay it's a very silly metaphor but you know bear with me right their job is to make toast and the
[32:58] problem is their toast looks like that right burnt toast so they release this
[33:07] and then their product is not very appreciated by their customers so and the sales are going down and it's a
[33:14] problem so finally our manager shows up and says you know we need to do
[33:20] something about this so he brings in a consultant of course because that's what you do when you have a problem right organic consultant and the consultant
[33:27] comes in and says hmm I know I know what
[33:33] it is you guys have a quality problem the managers like yes and and the reason
[33:43] why you have a quality problem is because you don't have quality control how could you get quality if you don't
[33:49] have quality control sounds pretty sensible doesn't it right so we need to introduce quality control
[33:55] all right quality control this is
[34:01] quality control team right they receive this product from that team they test it
[34:11] not good not good but better ship it no
[34:38] [Music] this happens right this happens we have
[34:44] teams that do this we have organizations that work this way and technically Jesus wait whose stupid
[34:54] idea was this technically we fixed a
[35:00] problem though right it's a better product the customers are not going to complain as much about this anymore
[35:05] right so we could say yeah a great consultant he introduced quality control quality went up great happy story but
[35:13] guess what you just solved the symptom right you solved the symptom burnt toast you didn't fix the root cause so now
[35:19] you've made the problem permanent right now we have a longer cycle time it's got
[35:25] to go through this team this team is not incentivized to care about quality at all because look here we have people
[35:31] that fix it maybe they hand it back to the team they have to do the scraping but it's the same story and then of
[35:38] course this team is paid to scrape toes so they're not incentivized to get better toast right they want this burnt
[35:44] toast or else they lose their job so now you've really created a problem so rewind how what would we prefer how
[35:51] we fix the root cause of the problem without quality control what does this
[35:59] team need to do let me give you a hint
[36:06] what the team should be doing they should eat toast every day right they
[36:14] should be or maybe it's a product that they don't consume maybe it's a product that let's say they're building and
[36:21] expert system for doctors right they're not the user so they release the doctors
[36:26] but the team should go out and watch users using their product right watch the doctor cry and scream at your
[36:34] software all right watch the customer cry eating your toast right and then of
[36:39] course now the team is incentivized to make better toasts and they're gonna start exploring that and they might learn something interesting the customer
[36:46] would like to have something on the toast maybe some jams and butter right so they start exploring that and now
[36:52] suddenly you're building a better product so I'm not saying we shouldn't have testers just that the tester would be on the team of course helping them
[36:59] make better toast not just scraping right so yeah that's an example of a pitfall avoid being a toaster scraper
[37:08] don't be a toe scraper okay
[37:19] so again how do you make change happen here's another good trick that I learned from a guy named Jerry Weinberg who I
[37:27] consider a mentor he died just a few weeks ago which is very sad I would say about half of everything I'm talking
[37:32] about here I learned from Jerry and one one of those things is don't sell
[37:38] solutions sell problems when you talk into a team it's very tempting just want
[37:44] to you know convince them to do agile or whatever that means right start doing scrum or XP or Kanban you have the
[37:50] solution in mind and resist doing that think about well what problem I'm not
[37:56] trying to solve actually and sell the problem instead right so in this case I
[38:01] might instead of trying to convince the customer to build a bridge I might help them see that the river is is a barrier
[38:08] it's in the way and once they agree that it's a barrier then no they're motivated to talk about how might we get over the
[38:14] barrier and maybe your original idea a bridge wasn't the best solution anyway
[38:20] right what are some other ways to solve the river problem boat is already up
[38:28] there right what other ways shuttle plane right get more creative
[38:38] cannonball yeah now we're getting there yeah you dig a tunnel change the course
[38:44] of the river right why do we need to cross the river that's a good question
[38:50] too maybe there's because art because the business department is on the other side ah maybe we should all just move there
[38:57] or move them over here just you know explore the nature of the problem don't just try to push your solution because
[39:04] if you do that if you sell solutions rather than problems you'll get well it'll be easier to cause change to
[39:09] happen because now you get you know people get inspired they and they want to change but you'll also find better
[39:15] solutions right better better better solutions then maybe you thought so back
[39:20] to the ego thing you're probably not the smartest person in the room it's very unlikely especially if it's a big room
[39:27] right so help sell the problem and then unleash all these wonderful brains around you and people normally have
[39:32] really interesting solutions to things and I guess as part of that make things
[39:39] visible the more visible the better right I struggled with coming up with a
[39:46] metaphor my wife helped me with this one so basically yeah this person I've been
[39:54] trying to convince her for a long time didn't he say he needs to extinguish his hat but he was resisting I brought up a
[40:01] fire extinguisher to shoot at him and he's like to get that away from me right finally I just showed him a mirror and
[40:08] he's like bye give me the fire extinguisher so holding up the mirror making problems visible it could be for
[40:14] example doing a burn up chart in an on an existing project and you can show that in the current velocity we're never
[40:20] gonna make it right or customer satisfaction is going down or you have this wonderful product but you have a
[40:26] team that is depressed and burned out make that data visible try write whatever it is make it super visible
[40:32] sometimes you may be surprised right when I show this guy this mirror I
[40:37] expect him to go I gotta extinguish my hands but what might happen instead you
[40:45] might break the mirror stupid mirror could be yeah I like my hat this is a
[40:51] fashion statement could be right yeah or
[40:56] maybe you know this is this is a problem but I have another problem that's more important right now so let's just leave
[41:01] that thing alone so yeah make make things visible and then see what happens right super powerful but I would say
[41:07] that's probably the most powerful way to to to create the wand for change and to inspire people
[41:16] and as part of that also learn to ask it's something I don't know why it's so
[41:23] hard it took me probably seven eight years before I realized that it's a good
[41:28] idea to ask people if they want help before you actually help them why is that so hard to realize I was really
[41:34] surprised like that seems kind of obvious doesn't it yet I spent so many years not doing that so ask people if
[41:42] you're gonna work with a team or somebody and you're trying to help them just take a step back especially if you notice resistance right say do you want
[41:48] to help with this because if not I won't bother you because you know life is too short to
[41:55] waste trying to help people who don't want help so there's another Gerry Weinberg ISM
[42:01] don't inflict help on people right this
[42:07] guy was perfectly happy swimming around in the water and Here I am with a life you know what's it called lifesaver like
[42:14] mmm what problem am I trying to solve here
[42:21] my own fear he doesn't have a problem but he's happy that guy right so what
[42:27] i'm a i-i-i-i i'm pretending that i'm solving his problem but actually i'm solving my own problem which is maybe fear or lack of control or something so
[42:35] be clear about what problem am i really trying to solve now and whose problem is it because if it's only my problem
[42:41] let's not inflict that on other another people all right so it's a very simple question to ask what would you like help
[42:47] with this um okay as an external consultant somebody comes
[42:55] in from the outside we cheat and what I mean by that is when I when a client
[43:01] calls me they already want to change otherwise they wouldn't have called right so it's easier for consultants at
[43:10] least at least that person wants change maybe nobody else wants change in his organization but then it still gets tricky but if your internal then it's
[43:17] harder because maybe you weren't asked you know I'm a developer on this team and now I'm gonna cause change but
[43:24] nobody asked me to drive any change so now you have to do a lot more work you have to make the problem visible
[43:29] influence people in a whole other way so I think that's really important to acknowledge but there's another really
[43:36] weird thing how many of you are know about the out-of-town consultant syndrome it sound familiar
[43:44] an out-of-town consultant syndrome what's that yeah it only lasts for a
[43:50] while right it's when an external consultant comes in and says something like something of profound wisdom like
[43:58] how about cross-functional teams and everyone's like wow that was a really
[44:05] good idea thank you and of course people in the team were like we've been asking
[44:10] for this for years and now this idiot comes in from outside it says exactly the same thing and now all the managers
[44:16] listen right how many recognize that problem it's really common right it just
[44:22] seems to be a fact of life I can't really explain it but use it use it shamelessly right so
[44:31] sometimes when I come into an organization I go find the teams and I asked him what is it you've been trying to get these guys to do for years what
[44:38] should I say cross-functional teams right it works right and if you're the
[44:47] other guy if you're the guy in the team dump your ego somewhere and call that
[44:53] external guy and just say you know can you just pair up with me to say what I've been saying all along and they'll
[44:59] listen to you because you're an external guy that's what I mean by using a chain Leslie it's sad but what the heck we use
[45:04] whatever tools we can write okay that's a dirty trick of the day and that's
[45:11] that's also a nice example of pairing don't work alone as an external person and an internal person it's a great
[45:17] couple because the internal person knows how things work knows who to talk to
[45:22] right knows where to go knows what people are talking about but doesn't have as much credibility for being an
[45:28] insider unfortunately it's unfair but it's just fact of life right the external guy has maybe the credibility of being a new
[45:35] voice but doesn't really know the REA around the organization put these two together
[45:40] magic it's great plus then when you leave as an external person this other person locally will kind of continue so
[45:48] it's great pairing when it comes to to
[45:55] organizational change I know I noticed another dirty trick so I'm ready for a dirty trick number two people hate
[46:02] organizational change generally that seems to be the hardest sell but people
[46:07] normally don't mind experiments as much so yeah if I have this vision that these
[46:17] this team should get together and work as a cross-functional team I wouldn't go
[46:22] and say let's change the organization I would say let's try an experiment it's easier let's just move into the same
[46:28] room for a while oh no no we're not changing the organization no no we're not doing that we're just taking our chairs and going into this room here you
[46:36] still report to the same managers before etc and do that and then you may notice that oh my god this was a lot better a
[46:41] lot faster a lot more fun and then suddenly you've unleashed the inspiration and and the desire to change
[46:46] and now it's a lot easier right so in some cases I've seen major organizational change happen although I
[46:53] didn't do anything except start that experiment and then just back out and then BAM all this stuff happened that I
[46:59] never would have been able to cause otherwise that's a very nice trick and Spotify we have or used to have I'm not
[47:06] a Spotify anymore this thing called hack week which is it's everybody gets together
[47:12] for a whole week and just as hacking and that started as an experiment I would never have been able to sell that idea
[47:18] convincing the management and saying let's take all 1500 employees and do one
[47:23] week of hacking and then have a party at the end wouldn't have worked but the idea of let's try an experiment here all
[47:29] the teams are doing hacking anyway and it becomes an alignment problem if this team is having a hack day and they need
[47:35] something from them so how about we just try once to do it together just within development just within tech
[47:41] and product and let's try and if you don't like it we can go back to the way we normally do things so they're like ok
[47:47] let's give it a shot and it turned out to be really effective and lots of innovation happened and it was a good
[47:52] thing so then you know the next time we did the whole company for a week and then it this became institutionalized it became
[47:59] it became a habit but it would have been impossible to sell this from the beginning as a Hey twice per year let's
[48:05] get everybody to do a hack week wouldn't have worked so yeah definitely sell experiments and when he do that find
[48:12] volunteers right who wants to participate it's hard to force people right but if you ask hey who wants to
[48:20] try this idea of working in a cross-functional team who wants to try this idea of doing sprints or try and
[48:25] come bomb or whatever it is right portfolio level of Kanban whatever it is find volunteers and then once they've
[48:32] tried it and if it works then you've learned something and it'll probably spread if it didn't work it won't spread
[48:39] and you still learn something right okay
[48:45] there's a really useful technique another one by the way which I call get
[48:51] the right people into the room this has
[48:57] happened several times I come to an organization and they're like our biggest problem is X so then and I have
[49:05] no idea how to solve this problem but I can find out who's involved so I can find out you know who is suffering under
[49:12] this problem who is who might be able to do something about it let's say the problem is how we do how we interact
[49:20] between department a and Department B right and there's like crashes all right so
[49:26] get a few people from here get a few people from there involved into a room and then invite them just say hey let's
[49:33] talk about this problem and once you get this this group of people stakeholders into the room ask them the question like
[49:40] I hear we're having huge problems with the interaction between these two departments would you agree and that's
[49:46] really important to check because what if they say no there's no problem well guess what you need to sell the
[49:53] problem you know before we before you sell solutions right so if they don't agree that the problem is a problem then
[49:59] that's your biggest problem but normally by the time you get that far yeah they'll say yes it's a big
[50:05] problem the next question is do you want to solve it it might sound silly to ask but
[50:12] it's important because maybe they agree that it's a big problem but you know they have other problems that are more important right now or we're kind of
[50:19] busy with other stuff we're not willing to spend time on this right now check that right because again don't inflict
[50:25] help on people if they don't want help right now don't bother so anyway question everyone do you agree this is a problem yes we do
[50:31] do do you want to solve it yes yes we do okay question number three what do you think it would take to solve it right
[50:38] okay if it's a complex problem you might want to do a little bit of root cause analysis and things like that right like
[50:44] in the toast situation but generally speaking take it to the team ask the
[50:49] people in the room what do you think it would take to fix this problem and surprisingly often they have awesome
[50:55] ideas in fact the reason why they have this problem in the first place is because they've never been together in
[51:01] this particular combination of people that's why they got the problem so your biggest job sometimes as a change agent
[51:07] is just get the right people into the room and then back out of the way let them figure out the solution
[51:12] surprisingly powerful you know this
[51:25] thing about scrum right scrum is a framework so you can use it for different types of things you can use it
[51:30] to build a product and of course you can also use it to actually run an organizational change so that's very powerful so in some cases when when I
[51:37] get a group like this together I'm like you guys are like some kind of virtual team now cuz you're all in different departments right but how
[51:43] about wheat is that we scrub this problem now right because you just came up with three possible solutions let
[51:49] that be this sprint and then every week we'll have a synchronization meeting just to check how we're doing and every
[51:56] month we'll get everyone together into the room again to check so did it work if not what are we gonna try next
[52:01] basically using a kind of scrum scrum ish approach to solve the problem itself very powerful anybody tried something
[52:07] like that scrubbing the problem itself yeah very powerful technique an interesting
[52:16] question when it comes to problems though is what is definition of dung in that case when are you done right
[52:22] let's say the problem is we have trouble collaborating with the customer okay
[52:28] well when are we done it's never gonna be perfect right so one technique I like
[52:34] to use sometimes is in the organization you get a cross-section of the company together and you vote what are the
[52:40] biggest impediments for our department for our company whatever vote identify
[52:45] the top three right now we have the top three impediments a really bad user
[52:52] stories B people hate coming to work C our offices have really bad air okay
[53:01] when are we done well I'd say definition of done enough is when the problem is no
[53:08] longer top three right so we improve our stories maybe we fix the top problem we start improving that next time we get
[53:15] together and talk about the biggest problems maybe that one's no longer top three it's down here either because we
[53:21] improved it or because something else popped up well it's done enough right we focus on something else right that way
[53:28] you don't get stuck beating a dead horse because you can always improve right in on one thing so yeah lots of little
[53:37] tricks I'm gonna start wrapping up here the ultimate trick is when you've been
[53:46] working for a long time trying to make things better and you keep failing
[53:52] there's a final trick in your back pocket and it's called the law of two
[53:57] feet how many of you know about the law of two feet often used at conferences
[54:05] law two feet says if you're not learning or contributing or having fun I added to
[54:11] having fun part if you're not learning or contributing or having fun where you stand right now use your two feet and go
[54:18] somewhere else where you can learn or contribute and have four have fun right so again life is too short to beat a
[54:25] dead horse life is too short to help people you know what help life is too short to help companies that seem to be
[54:30] hell-bent on dying get out of their way let them in peace and you know focus on companies
[54:36] that want to succeed because you know what there are plenty of those companies around right find them they will appreciate you better and you'll be a
[54:43] happier person right okay so some final
[54:49] words here I think of what would be the essence of being a good change agent and
[54:55] I would probably summarized it as be brave because if you're really scared of
[55:01] stepping on people's toes you're not gonna be a very effective change agent because no matter what you change somebody's gonna probably be a bit upset
[55:08] by it even if only temporarily and plus you don't know if your solution is gonna work right
[55:14] maybe we introduce cross-functional teams and it got worse like oh my god all these other times we introduce
[55:20] cross-functional teams and it worked like a charm because that's what the agile books say and then here it didn't
[55:25] guess what that's reality for you right you know the whole no silver bullets thing yeah that one right there's no
[55:31] silver bullets no guaranteed solutions so you don't know if what you're doing is gonna work but you need to do it anyway and that's what I mean by being
[55:38] brave right be humble again you're not the smartest person in the room and if you act as if
[55:44] you are you're not gonna be very effective so be humble realize that your past experiences are useful but they
[55:49] don't give you the absolute answer and there's gonna be other people in the room who have really great ideas you should listen to them right see be brave
[55:57] be humble realize that we're all in a learning journey and of course stay
[56:03] curious because it seems like in my case no matter how much I do this I always get surprised in some cases like oh
[56:09] that's interesting this thing worked here that never worked anywhere else hmm what can I learn from that right so
[56:16] a-plus it's it's quite fun it's a I think it's a it's a fun way to look at the world I was being curious yeah
[56:23] that's it this you know this cool book kind of a description of what a good
[56:29] talk should be like there should be just a few learning points right three or four I have a 16 for you so pick any
[56:35] ones you want pick your own three or four thank you very much