‘To have great poets, there must be great audiences.’ – Walt Whitman

Whitman’s quote made me think. What if we were to re-write his quote in an Agile Coaching context? It would probably read something like this: ‘To have great coaches, there must be great teams.’ Where are these great teams? More importantly, where are these great coaches? As an Apprentice Agile Coach, I’m looking because I want to learn from them.

What does Agile mean to you?

Almost everyone I meet these days say they’re agile. Increasingly often, such folks also introduce themselves as Senior Agile Coaches or Agile Experts.

For me being agile is aspirational. That’s because Agile is all about Continuous Improvement. A true Agilista is always learning. And so while I try to be agile every day, I don’t always succeed. For me, the term ‘expert’ and ‘guru’ are the antitheses to being agile. That’s because those two words imply someone who knows everything there is to know about a topic.

In my experience, the danger with being an expert or guru in something is that this usually means you’ve stopped learning. If you have to have all the right answers, you can’t be wrong. If you can’t be wrong, you don’t make mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes, you limit your learning.

Teams Beware!

Someone who is truly agile cares more about learning than they do about being right. Beware of coaches who claim they are agile, yet have to ‘win’ arguments by effectively saying ‘My way or the highway.’ That way lies a long and lonely road. Do you care enough to be a lifelong apprentice?

What better way to begin the new year than with a new team? I met my new team for the first time last week. And so we started our 6-week journey together with Iteration 0, jampacked with a flurry of team building activities and Agile training.

Agile: The Full Mind and Body Workout

Beginning with an Iteration 0 is always a strong way to start. Most important of all, it’s always a good idea to warm up if we’re serious about having fun.

We began with a team ice breaker exercise as folks introduced themselves to one another, first by sharing a pet love and pet hate and then by exchanging three interesting facts about themselves. Next we moved onto creating and laying down the foundation stones to any high-performance team: a team manifesto created by the team for the team.

And of course no Agile training is complete without an Agile Games Day, made up of the ubiquitous Agile Game (also known as The XP Game) and The Business Value Game. In my experience, the best way to learn Agile is by doing. The doing in turn triggers a lot of useful thinking and talking.

‘Agile makes you think. It questions everything you do,’ says one of the developers. ‘The best thing of all is, it makes you deliver value bit by bit over time instead of waiting until the last minute,’ quipped another wide-eyed team member.

What Agile means to me

One way I measure the progress of a team learning to be agile is by using the Agile Values. It’s also a great way of gauging my own agility.

• Communication – Does the team question everything? Does the team flock?
• Simplicity – Does the team do what’s needed to satisfy acceptance criteria, no more, no less?
• Feedback – Am I learning from how different people respond to the way I work? Do I adapt myself to become more effective?
• Courage – Can I accept that I’ve much to learn? Do I help create an environment where others can be courageous, too?
• Respect – Do I believe that everyone brings value to the team?

Agile Values++

• Trust – Do I have an open mind? Do I believe in the team’s wisdom?
• Transparency – Do I share, share and share: from what I know to what I don’t know and the joy and growing pains of becoming a team?

One thing’s certain: we’re learning. Fast. Are you?

Question and Answer

(At a conference in Paris back in 2008)

G.: You understand that Agile is about people and change.
P.: Go on.
G.: There’s a film called ‘Clean‘ in which a character played by Nick Nolte says, “People change. When they don’t have a choice, they do change.” What do you think of that?

In my experience, there are two reasons why people change. One, because they want to. Two, because they have to. Think about the two kinds of reasons as an equation of sorts. Let’s imagine the Individual as the subject of change and Change as a force operating on the subject.

Type One Change: Because I want to

When you want to change, and I mean really want to change, you are committed to making it happen. That commitment is characterised by determination and perseverance.

You know there’ll be blood, sweat and tears, but it’ll be worth it. You are 100% aware of the benefits the change brings and then some. You actively look for ways to inject an element of fun into everything you do. You do this because you know having fun makes you want to do something more and doing something more makes you better and better at what you do which, in turn, accelerates the change process, taking you closer to your goal sooner.

And whenever the going gets tough, you don’t give up. Instead, you summon up the vision of what life would be like after the change and you double up your effort. You run at a steady pace. You feel empowered to determine your destiny. Change feels good.

Type Two Change: Because I have to

You are uncertain about the change happening around you. You’ve probably glimpsed your Wall and are dragging your feet. You wake up in the morning feeling glum about your work and life in general. And you’ve every right to feel the way you do. You find yourself always playing catchup and all you can think about is what happens when you get left behind. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Type Two Change is always the more stressful of the two precisely because it feeds on negative thinking.

Change your tune to make change happen

Here’s what I do when I find myself stuck in the Type Two Change frame of mind:

• Hang out with folks who are into Type One Change: Quiz them about your concerns. Don’t worry about dampening their spirits, they’re committed to change and will appreciate your thoughts on how the change is going. Find out what keeps them going.
• Listen with an open mind: Quieten down the little voice in your head that begins every sentence with “Yes but, No but”. Challenge everything you think. Take notes so that you can replay conversations and meetings. Take time to reflect and absorb your conversations and experiences.
• Work at a sustainable pace: Going through the toughest change for me is like training for a half-marathon, it’s likely to be something entirely different for you. Find the hardest thing you can imagine doing and use that for comparison whenever the going gets tough to help put things into perspective. Remember to keep moving as well as take regular breaks. The best time to take a break is just before you need it. Avoid running on empty.

Committing to Change

It’s always better to lead yourself from the front rather than from behind. No one can make you change. Only you can change yourself. Once you think: ‘I do!’ you do.

One of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read on management is ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There‘ by Marshall Goldsmith. This book has helped me make sense of my experience as a manager long after I stopped being one. Most importantly, it has helped me come to terms with what Continuous Improvement really means.

What got you here won’t get you there

Marshall is an executive coach who helps people change for the better. He helps people change by making visible the impact those people have on their colleagues. He believes that most of us can be cured of our bad habits by making small changes.

One of the key tools he uses is Feedback. First he points out our bad habits. Then he highlights the impact our bad habits have on our colleagues. Finally, he demonstrates how, with the slightest of ‘behavioural tweaks’, we could make everyone’s work lives so much more pleasant. 

The Success Delusion

According to Marshall, the more successful you believe you are, the harder it is for you to change. His recommendation is for us to put down our ToDo list and focus instead on our STOP DOING list. Look around you at work. Can you identify the top 3 bad habits of your most irksome colleague? And what about you? Can you recognise your top 3 bad habits?

Sticks and Stones

(During a peer coaching session)

P.: I would like some feedback. Do I come across as patronising?
Agile Coach: Not at all. Why’s that?
P.: Occasionally, certain individuals say they find my sessions patronising.
C.: (Pause) I don’t think it’s got anything to do with you.
P.: But there’s clearly an issue. I ask them for suggestions, but we seem to always be short of ideas.
C.: It’s up to me to decide whether or not you come across as patronising.
P.: (Silence)
C.: Another example is when people feel insulted. I can’t remember the last time I felt insulted. I always assume that people are trying to help me. If they give me information I already know, they’re just being helpful. People decide for themselves how and what they think.
P.: Thanks for your feedback.

Walking the Walk

For me, calling myself an Agile Coach is like painting a target on my back. It forces me to be better than I was yesterday, every day. And that can be exhausting. I push the question about patronising sessions onto the stack of Puzzles I carry around in my head for safekeeping.

I know that I’ll probably have to walk around for days, carrying the question in my head, in the hope of finding ways to improve the way I come across during sessions. I’m confident an answer will manifest itself so long as I’m open to changing myself for the better.

It’s 6 am. I leap out of bed and scurry down to the gym for a run on the treadmill. When I arrive, the gym is pitch black from the outside. I swing open the door thinking, ‘Great! I’ve got the gym all to myself!’ Instead, what do I find?

Surprise! There’s a large man huffing and puffing on the treadmill, listening to his MP3 player, in the chilly dark.

‘I looked all over the place for the light switch,’ he says by way of an explanation for what must be a serious breach of health and safety – his health, his safety. ‘The heating’s not working either’, he adds as a matter-of-fact.

I give the room a quick scan, find nothing, then remember there’s a house phone by the gym entrance. Within 5 minutes, the large man is gone, an engineer’s been and I’m running in the light and warmth.

Old Habits Die Hard

Many of us adapt quicky. Too quickly. The problem comes when accommodating inconveniences becomes a habitual way of being. The most insidious thing of all is when such habits crystallise into a de facto way of living. Just think.

Chocolate anyone?

(Before the graffiti)

P.: What do you think of that poster?
Pascal: It’s reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.
P.: It doesn’t make me want to eat chocolate.
TJ: It’s just a bit of fun.

Laughter is better than medicine

I return a week later and what do I find? It appears the local youths have been busy exercising their right to free speech. Granted, I’ve never been a funny, Ha-Ha funny, kind of person. What I do instead is compensate with what I call Gentle Humour, humour that is at times amusing and always good-natured. How often do you laugh with your team?

2008: A Personal Retrospective

Things I’m most grateful for:

1. My first Agile deathmarch with a casualty of 1. Me. Lesson Learnt: Always agree on Acceptance Criteria before doing anything.
2. Learning from a diverse bunch of people: my fellow Exxies (folks from Exoftware), my client teams and especially Agilistas such as TJ, Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, Vera Peeters, Duncan Pierce, David Peterson and Simon Baker. Lesson Re-learnt: You’re only as good as the people you work with.
3. Doing 3/3: coaching, consulting and training. Lesson Learnt: Each type of activity acts as a check and balance to the other two. It’s a great way of getting a fresh perspective as well as maintaining objectivity on what you do, how you do it and, most importantly, why you do it.
4. Meeting more Social Science Heroes: Seeing Malcolm Gladwell present at the London Business Forum, hearing James Surowiecki present as keynote speaker at Agile 2008, seeing Jerry Weinberg demonstrate his consulting toolkit at AYE. Lesson Learnt: Seeing the speakers in action is one way of verifying the authenticity of what they espouse. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
5. Scoring 5/5: The chance to present The Bottleneck Game with Pascal at the same conference as Eli Goldratt and Neil Armstrong in Paris. Lesson Learnt: The biggest things that come true often start with the smallest wish.
6. Hearing Isabel Allende talk about magic realism in person as though it were real. Lesson learnt: Turning what you love into your job won’t make it a chore if you genuinely love what you do.
7. All of you for reading because it keeps me writing. A special ‘Thank You’ to Pascal, David and TJ for their candid feedback. Lesson Learnt: Things that have value must meet a need.

2009: My Wishes

• I wish to learn more in 2009 than I did 2008.
• I wish to meet Seth Godin, Tom De Marco and Dale Chihuly. I also wish to meet Eli Goldratt again.
• I wish to present the Snow White and Seven Dwarves Agile Fairytale in French in Paris.
• I wish to create a third Agile Fairytale.
• I wish to try out Agile Fairytales beyond the IT industry.
• I wish to learn more about Lean and use it more explicitly as part of my Agile Coach Toolkit.
• I wish to collaborate with Agilistas such as Pascal and Vera to create A-W-E-S-O-M-E Agile games that help us all become a bit more agile every day.
• I wish to create more Agile teams that endure long after the coach is gone.
• I wish to receive requests from you, the Reader, on questions you want answers to and the reasons why you need an answer. Think Selfish Programming: The Radio Request Blog.
• I wish you a Happy 2009 – may it bring you all that you deserve!

Begin as you intend to go on

As an Agile Coach, I always start with a Personal Agility Rating exercise whenever I work with a new Agile team. By ‘new Agile team’, I mean a team with whom I’m working for the first time, regardless of their Agile experience. I do this for two reasons: 1) to set precedence for the kind of Agile we’ll be adopting going forward; 2) to create a common understanding of what being agile really means.

The Personal Agility Rating Exercise (Duration: 10 – 15 minutes)

1. Pass around a deck 4″ x 5″ index cards and a pot of coloured felt tips and ask everyone to take one of each.

2. Ask them to write their full name in the top righthand corner on one side of the card.

3. Ask them to write ‘Agile Values’ as a heading on the card.

4. Tell them that there are 5 Agile Values, also known as the XP Values by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres.

5. Name Communication as the first Agile Value and ask the crowd what it means to them. Write down the value on a flip chart so everyone can see.

6. Summarise the definition of the value in concrete terms and, where possible, reiterate using the descriptions provided by the team.

7. Ask each person to rate themselves for the given value between 0 – 5, where 5 is ‘I’m the world’s best [communicator]!’ and 0 is ‘Needs a lot more work!’.

8. Tell them that the Agile Ratings will remain confidential between each individual and you (the coach) and will be used as a topic for conversation during 1-2-1 Agile Coaching.

9. Repeat steps 5 – 8 for each of the other 4 remaining values (Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect).

10. Collect the cards immediately after the exercise and continue with the rest of your team building/coaching activities.

The Kit – What you need

• 4″ x 5″ index cards (you can use lined or plain – I prefer lined for writing)
• Coloured felt tips (these help to create a less formal atmosphere for the exercise)

Tips

• Wait for between 10 – 15 seconds for a response before volunteering your definition of each value to encourage team participation.
• This exercise is best done following an ice breaker exercise (especially if the group is meeting for the first time) to put everyone at ease.
• I like to tell a short story about each value to make it more memorable.
• I like to add a small drawing next to each value after it’s been discussed to make its meaning more memorable.
• Ratings should be given as whole numbers only. For instance, if someone is tempted to give themselves 3.5 for Simplicity, I recommend they round down to the nearest whole number because there’s always room for improvement. I then reiterate, however, that as it’s their rating for themselves, it’s ultimately their decision what number they write down.
• The Agile Rating exercise is a great way of entering into a conversation about what being agile really means.

The Personal Agility Rating Exercise for Individuals

I use the the same exercise during my first 1-2-1 Agile Coaching sessions with newcomers to the team.

What do I do next as coach?

Immediate Followup

• Email a picture of each Agile Rating card to the individual for their reference and include several links on recommended Agile resources.
• Stick up the Agile Values poster in a prominent place in the team space to serve as a reminder of the activity and the importance of adhering to the values if we are to become an Agile team.
• Take the poster along with you to subsequent or troublesome meetings as a portable information radiator of what Agile means. In my experience, you don’t have to talk about the poster at all, just having it present and visible is usually enough to encourage Agile behaviour.

Mid-term Followup

• Discuss the Agile Ratings with each team member as part of their first 1-2-1 Agile coaching session.

Long-term Followup

• Choose to exercise the option of asking the team member to do a re-assessment of their Agile Ratings (as required) halfway through the Agile Enablement during a 1-2-1 Agile coaching session.
• Review the Agile Ratings with each team member as part of their last 1-2-1 coaching session with you.

Lessons Learnt about the Agile Values

You can never review the Agile Values too often – if you don’t know what they are, how do you know you’re being agile? Does everyone in your team know the Agile Values? And what about your coach?

Congratulations! THE BIG DAY you’ve been training for for the past 364 days will soon by upon us. It’s time to cash in on the benefit of the thousands of Agility exercises you’ve been putting into practice at work. Let’s hope all the agile flexing of both brain and brawn pays off. 

Ho! Ho! Ho! Contenders ready?

If you think Christmas Day is a day off, you’re wrong. The 25th of December is the single day of the year when most of us will be trying our hardest to be true to who we are and what we believe in. If that’s not hard work, I don’t know what is. Welcome to Ultimate Agile (also known as Christmas Day with all the family). Are you ready for Ultimate Agile?

Why not have black swan instead of turkey this year?

The problem with Christmas with the family is this: If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll only get what you’ve always got. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future comes in the form of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, who offers us a chance to understand how we can change our fate.

‘History is opaque,’ writes Taleb, ‘You see what comes out, not the script that produces the events, the generator of history.’ Taleb identifies three ailments of the human mind whenever it comes in contact with history. He calls them the Triplet of Opacity.

The Triplet of Opacity

The Illusion of Understanding, where everyone thinks they know everything there is to know about everything when in fact they don’t

The Retrospective Distortion, how we use hindsight to explain strange and mysterious things to make-believe that we are in control

The Overvaluation of Factual Information and the Handicap of Authoritative and Learned People, how we listen to and believe in those who appear to be experts but fail to give practical answers that work beyond textbooks

Wise is she who knows she does not know

In my experience, destructive human behaviour arises out of what Taleb calls ‘agressive ignorance’, or a fear of looking stupid that is greater than the fear of being wrong. For example, being asked something to which you don’t know the right answer is the event. Agressive ignorance is the emotional response. The script invisible to the naked eye reads:

1. I know deep down that if I’m wrong, I may have to change.
2. Change requires effort which I’m not sure I can be bothered to invest.
3. The effort might go wasted if I fail.
4. If I fail to change, that makes me a failure.

So what’s the antidote?

Whenever I’m in a spot of bother, I remind myself of the Agile Values: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect. When I feel comfortable living and breathing the first five in a given situation (Think: ‘Baby Steps’ or ‘Incremental development’), I throw in an extra two: Trust and Transparency.

For instance, before a discussion becomes a deafening shouting match, I ask myself: ‘How can I be a better communicator?’ to which my brain resourcefully volunteers a myriad of options such as ‘Listen more! Talk less. The two of you have reached an impasse, ask for help or clarification.’

The only thing most people seek at family gatherings is understanding. It’s the same at work. Why not treat your work self at home to a Christmas helping of black swan?

Merry Christmas one and all!