Learning Agile Principles From “Groundhog Day”

by Krishna Chodipilli | Dec 9, 2020 | Agile Coaching

I happened to watch an American comedy film “Groundhog Day” the other day, which was a success on release in 1993 and received many positive reviews. Whilst I was watching the film, something start to resonate and it began to dawn on me that it is the principles of Agile!

The story is about a cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors finds himself reliving the same day over and over again when he goes to a small town of Punxsutawney to film a report about their annual Groundhog Day. His predicament drives him to distraction until he discovers a way of turning the situation to his advantage.

I have summarized the Agile principles that I can draw on from the film below:

Continuous Improvement

In the movie, the TV weatherman Phil uses his knowledge of the day’s events to better himself and the lives of others. He implements some sorts of improvements the next day and repeats the incremental changes each day until he enthusiastically reports the #GroundhogDay festivities and impresses Rita, whom he has feelings for, with his apparent overnight transformation.

Imagine this is a one-day sprint, Phil completes it and conducts a retrospective at the end to understand how he can improve it, he then comes up with actions and implements them incrementally in the next sprint to deliver better results. Continuous improvement and Retrospective are key elements in Agile, driving high customer service standards and reducing waste.

Setting Priority

Phil ensures he handles the day better by implementing a few changes each day to make him and the other involved parties happy. He changes the priority of the day as he knows exactly what would happen if he follows the same pattern.

Similarly, Agilists want to ensure their deliverables are of high-quality and high-value, and prioritizing requirement is critical to help them deliver the most valued deliverables as a priority to maximize stakeholder ROI.

Identify Risks and Manage Them by Retrospective

As Phil become more experienced with the events on the same day, he learns to understand the upcoming risks and comes up with mitigation plans to optimize the experience and make the day better.

In Agile environments, the team shares responsibility for identifying risks that might affect a sprint or the project. The Retrospective is a useful forum to enable transparency and trust among team members, discover risks and problems early, and follow up with required actions to manage and mitigate risks.

Follow the Ceremonies

Phil accepts the Groundhog Day repeating itself and follows the daily events such as waking to the same announcement from radio, having breakfast on time and conducting weather report as a fixed schedule without fail.

“Ceremonies” or meetings are an essential demonstration of an iterative, time-boxed approach in implementing Agile. Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up, Iteration Review, and Retrospective are some of the main meetings that help to empower the team and drive the development of Agile practices.

Release Readiness

After Phil implements constant and incremental changes, he escapes the time loop in the end, not only succeeding in his TV reporting for the Groundhog Day festivities but also finding his love of life.

In an Agile work environment, a review on Release Readiness provides the final management checkpoint and approval before deploying a release, in which key attributes and operability of the release are assessed. Following the release, further changes will move to the change review process.

If you like this article about Agile Principles, you may be interested in my other blog article on the SAFe Principles. Should you have any queries or want to find out about our Agile Training, contact us at [email protected]/uk/in for more information.

Top Seven Steps for Effective Corporate Leadership Development

by Krishna Chodipilli | Dec 9, 2020 | Agile Coaching, Leadership And Management

WHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIVE LEADER?

Corporate environments thrive on the bedrock of human behaviour. The total of the behaviour exhibited by the leaders while interacting with customers, communities, suppliers, employees and financers, defines the prevailing culture and disposition of the organisation. Leaders operate within this inner circle with an intent to create value and channelise such effort towards the organisational outcomes. This entails operating in a dynamic and unpredictable landscape of human relationships and at times blurred business outcomes. An essential function of corporate leadership is to shape, nurture and direct people towards a chosen shared purpose to achieve the objectives of the business in a manner that balances the scorecard.

The seven essential attributes for developing leadership traits that fulfil this function are:

Feet on Ground

Often, corporate culture creates an illusion of rank specialists and role superiority. Groups get formed based on specialisations and designated roles. An inherent hierarchy gets created within such groups thereby forming various rank and file structures. This rank and file become siloed into self-managing teams which work independently of each other. A leader should be aware of such eventualities and prevent himself from identifying within any of such groups. He should always have his feet firm on the ground and endeavour to integrate self-performing teams into a greater whole. The more ‘grounded’ a leader is, the greater the clarity in deciphering where teams are getting into autonomous self-fulfilling modes.

Habit Formation

Effective leaders understand the primary habits that generate people to act. He should instil habits that fulfil the purpose for which people work in the company. Habits create routine and routines enable clarity of purpose. For example, when an employee is made to imbibe a habit of giving candid feedback, he or she will get to know the purpose of shared communication and interpersonal relationships from the context of the work they perform. A leader should allow habits to emanate from the employees themselves to achieve ownership and participation in its existence.

Foster Candour

Candour is the quality of being honest and straightforward in attitude and speech. Leaders are not insecure about themselves or the people they interact with. High self-awareness results in high relationship management. Healthy relationships are irrigated by allowing candour and free self-expression. People should be given avenues and opportunities to speak up and express freely. Adequate space should be created at various levels of hierarchy to allow generation of free speech without repercussion or blowback. Candour also enables trust formation and a deep sense of respect for another point of view.

Be Curious

Corporate governance involves a continuous loop of learning and unlearning. Things happen frequently and impact the business without warning. Effective leaders should always have red flags to monitor prevailing perceptions and be ever curious to know the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of things happening around them. They should thirst for knowing where gaps exist and how they can be filled up. A good leader is always wanting to know more and should never be satisfied with just one single answer or solution. Effective corporate leaders can never stay in a zone of comfort, this would mean slipping into the toxic cesspools of ‘status quo’.

Understand the Human Being

Leaders should clearly understand the distinction between a human and a human being. The former is an entity, the latter is a personality. The ‘being’ is the persona. Each person is unique in his way of ‘being’ concerning expression, habit thought and conduct. Leaders should be mindful of this essential human trait and approach each human as a person, not a resource. A person with distinct capabilities and capacities. A person with an identity and sets of ideals and beliefs. Respecting and understanding the way of ‘being’ enables a leader to connect with the people he influences in a more empowered emotional context.

Explore and Discover

The corporate arena is a place to explore and discover. Leaders should uncover new ways of doing things and inspire people in this journey of exploration and new learning. Effective leaders are always in a mode of discovery and should share their experiences. One of the most essential attributes of an outstanding leader is one who is bold enough to take on new challenges and explore avenues seldom visited. Facets of courage, resilience and determination get moulded when a leader immerses himself in a life of self-discovery and exploration. A leader who is not eager to sail beyond the visible horizon is doomed to perish in the sea of inertia.

Cultivate Empathy

The most important and overriding step towards effective leadership is to cultivate a sustained and credible sense of empathy. A leader should be aware that he is not stepping on other’s toes while having an intent of stepping into their shoes! Respect, trust, commitment and loyalty emanate from deep-rooted empathy. Allowing the other to be what they are, how they are and why they are creating a zone of acceptance. An acceptance that is set in an emotional context and strengthens the relationship. Leaders need to empathize with another’s the view and remain steadfast with little or no bias, judgement or coloured consideration. He who accepts the other without conditions is the one who gets access into that person’s world. Leaders are not islands of excellence. They derive their leadership identity from the followers, the teams they lead and the new leaders they develop. The measure of the effectiveness of a leader is directly proportional to the degree of acceptance they enjoy from their leaders they develop. Hence, a leader is people dependent.

LEADERS JOURNEY STARTS WITH SELF AWARENESS

We at Leadership-Tribe have designed all our structures around the vital construct of ‘People Connect’. We believe it is all about the human context. Join us in our meetups and courses to delve deeper into these fundamentals and get to know more of how you can relate more with your own self and others, and in the process, develop the leader that resides in you.

Why Is Agile Marketing the Talk of The Town for Start-ups?

by Krishna Chodipilli | Dec 9, 2020 | Agile Coaching

5 REASONS WHY STARTUPS NEED TO EMBRACE ‘DESIGN THINKING, LEAN MINDSET AND AGILE’ – AGILE MARKETING

Startups are created from actions borne from an idea and can encounter challenges and uncertainties that can seldom be mapped or predicted. Have you been through this journey yourself or know someone who has? Do you think Agile Marketing is the way forward? The essence of the survivability of a startup and its endurance is up to its maturity. This depends on a host of factors which need to be factored in right at the stage of the inception of the enterprise, and this vital function is facilitated by following the simple engineering practices Example – Scrum or Kanban or Agile Marketing or.

HERE ARE FIVE REASONS WHY STARTUPS NEED TO EMBRACE AGILE MARKETING

Reason #1: Understanding Customer Needs

Agile Marketing is all about the mindset. It considers human interactions as a prime driver for the conduct of business. This people-centric approach creates avenues for understanding customer needs and wants. Using empathy mapping techniques (Design Thinking), strategies are constructed which include customer-centric requirements during the design phase of the product or service. Keeping the customer as the focal point in all facets of the business is the essence.

Reason #2: Map your ‘Persona’s futuristic state’

It is essential to have a compelling ‘North Star’ for your project and map your persona’s futuristic state. This gives you the direction towards which all actions get generated. Affixing a clearly defined value, success criteria to the business and how the same needs to be evolved into actionable outcomes is one of the key benefits of using Agile. The Agile Marketing mindset enables the in-depth articulation of the value of the goods or services offered, in a designed timeline. It also clearly defines measurable outputs

Reason #3: Responding to Change

Unlike the waterfall technique, one of the Agile principles emphasises on ‘iterative process’. The processes are lightweight and flexible where one can listen, learn and course-correct depending on the value delivered from each Sprint (time-boxed). Creating space for additions and subtractions in the workflow at pre-designated checkpoints allows for value addition and process modification, which are critical realities in a startup ecosystem.

Reason#4: Measure what matters

Having a Lean mindset helps in assigning clear, specific and considered metrics of measurements for each process output and it’s corresponding value outcomes. Does one need to ask themselves if these metrics matter? Agile, to a large extent, facilitates objectivity in all process-driven actions. The room for subjectivity is kept at a minimal. The availability of tangible performance indicators enables the business to set measure which matters for the organisation. Similarly, since success can be measured, the startup is constantly present to its position in the designated trajectory.

Reason#5: Open Communication

A startup operates in a highly nebulous and opaque business environment. Since perceptions are still not cemented into the declared culture, there will be communication bottlenecks and challenges. Using Agile practices (Standups, Retrospective), in its inherent design, creates multiple communication channels across the full spectrum of human expression. It allows for migration of thoughts, generation of ideas, fully self-expressed opinions and moderated candour. These simple Agile practices facilitate unhindered communication flow on all three dimensions of human interface in an organisation structure ie, vertical, horizontal and diagonal. It also identifies and opens up communication bottlenecks and creates access avenues and echoes chambers, aspects which are supercritical in maintaining the health of the startup.

Agile Marketing is all about the human element, embracing a lean mindset and being customer-centric (design thinking). I am Colonel Ranjeev K Babu, VSM served Indian Army in various roles and currently helping single person startup’s to multinationals, globally. Startups and Organisations whom Leadership Tribe is helping are growing so fast, they are looking for new talent, people who can move Mountains.

ALLOW ME TO SUMMARISE MY LEARNINGS AND OBSERVATIONS

Compelling North Star

One should be able to answer why the organisation/project exists in the first place.

Innovative Minds

Create psychological safe environments where people can experiment without fear of persecution.

Business Courage

Take risks and embrace failure. Yes! things might go wrong, retrospectively adapt and champion change.

The Sense of Urgency

Ability to adapt, move fast and always stay alert.

Have Fun

If you are not enjoying what you are doing then one needs to revisit the North Star.

CREATE A REVOLUTION AND MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

Leadership Tribe has created a program for ‘Agile Marketing’, lessons harvested whilst working with various SME’s, organisations globally and of course with some awesome Agile Marketing Coaches. Do you want to be part of the new learning experience for free? Just reach out to us directly at [email protected]

Types of Coaching Assignments

by Krishna Chodipilli | Dec 9, 2020 | Agile Coaching

Coaching assignments can vary depending on the engagement. To have a common understanding, can we all agree that a Coach has to ask the correct questions and the Mentor has to give the correct advice? From this what stems out is the feeling that Mentor has to have in-depth knowledge on the business, whereas the coach need not have and will extract the information from the person being coached by asking the correct questions and get the individual to commit to a plan and follow through the plan.

Coaching assignment could be of two kinds,

1. An individual feels he needs help and seeks the help of a coach
2. An organization feels a need for change and seeks the help of a coach.

The first one is typically Executive Coaching and the latter assignments are the ones which get classified into Agile Coaching, Transformation coaching, scale-up coaching. The big difference between the two assignments is that in the first one the individual is deciding for himself and in the latter, the decision-maker is deciding for others.

Let us now explore more on the second type of coaching assignments. It is safe to assume that the organization is some sort of stagnation or a negative spiral. You will not find many companies to engage coaches while they are doing well to further improve themselves. In the sports arena, the coaches are a constant companion irrespective of the lean season/busy season. But it is not the same in the case of Business Organizations. This happens because; in sports, results are immediately known and the basic objective of sporting is to win. In business, this may not the case always. Now let us look at the business organization, here the results of coaching efforts are known over a long period of times and the results are attributable to multiple dimensions of the business environment. The discussion in this article pertains to coaching assignment where the organization seeking the help of a coach to overcome certain felt/perceived deficiencies/drawbacks/improvement areas.

Now let us look at what are the red flags you need to look out for when you get such assignments. It is also important to be aware of these red flags, reasons/rations behind these red flags and knowledge to overcome these red flags. I firmly believe that one should not rush into coaching assignments, although the organization could be looking for an early start to get quick results or our eagerness to grab the opportunity before some else takes it. We will deliberate on 4 aspects,

1. Get skin deep into the assignment
2. Organization routines/habit
3. Mindset
4. How patterns influence

Get Skin deep into all aspects related to your coaching assignment

When you ask a coach, you will get to understand that the individual to be coached is not very co-operative or enthusiastic. Reasons behind this could be,

1. The organization did not make the individual feel that he is the chosen one because the organization feels that he is their best bet. On the contrary, most of the time, the individual or the team feels very low when they are selected.
2. The Individual and the team feel that they know their business the best. If you are a young coach, they will form an opinion that you have no experience. If you are an elderly coach (with some grey hair), the individual or the team will feel that you do not have experience in their area.

So what should you do as a coach to overcome the above situation?

1. Do not rush into the assignment very fast: There is a popular saying ‘skin in the game’. When some one’s skin is in the game, the other members start trusting the individual. It is this trust that helps the individual to integrate into the team, understand the team, understand the requirement and deliver the best.

As a coach, you need not have your skin in the game, but you need to understand that you need to get into the skin. This will mean that you need to take time to understand the coaching assignment, understand their business, understand the business environment, and understand the competition – their strengths & their weaknesses and how the company you are going work with stacks against them.

1. You will need to get the leadership team of the company to project this assignment as the most important assignment the company is embarking. The individual or the team is selected is based on who can lead the change and rest of teams will also be following the suit soon.

Now let us look at the benefits you achieve in accomplishing the above,

• The individual or the team looks forward to taking up the assignment as they are going lead the change and not that have a been selected as they have a problem.
• When you exhibit a superior understanding of the organization the teams starts trusting you the way the team trusts someone whose skin is in the game. To further strengthen this feeling you could even make them aware that some part of the consulting fees to the success of the assignment.

Understanding the organization Routine and finding ways to change the routine

Let us briefly look at the habit loop. Every individual has a set of habits. These habits are stored at neurological tissue known as the basal ganglia. Basal Ganglia is one of the earlier most portions of the human brain evolution. These habits residing at basal ganglia are difficult to be removed/deleted from the memory, do not need the support of human memory and very needs little or no support from prefrontal cortex the logical thinking portion of the brain. These habits can act independently on their own. The important aspects we need to understand are,

• A strong motivational factor can only make changes in the habit
• Rewards can make changes inhabit

Now let us look from an organizational perspective, Organizations also have evolved their un-written habits over some time. When you take up a coaching assignment you don’t need to be told about it because it is not a written or established procedure. These habits are very difficult for you to understand as they are hidden and come to the surface only when there is a cue.

As a coach, you need to be aware of the Habits of Individuals and established routines in the organization. You need to watch out to get a hand on these habits and routines. Next, we need to understand what can make these habits and routines to change.

In the case of an individual, strong motivation can make the change. We should not be thinking of tweaking reward as we generally do in everyday life as a way of changing the habit. A reward can only temporarily alter the behaviour. Example the dog behaves better due to a stick or a biscuit. Kids start eating food when you show a cartoon film.

In the case of an organization, it is important to understand making changes in keystone habits. You need to accomplish a small win which will then set in motion forces which will result in many more small wins. These series of wins will change the well-established routines in an organization.

As a coach, you need to constantly look for understanding the individual’s habit, the team’s routine, a strong motivation which can change a habit and small wins which can set in motion a serried of subsequent wins.

Many successful leaders have realized that the best results are possible when the organizations going through a crisis and you make use of this opportunity to usher in the change. It is also true that many successful leaders have induced small dosages of crisis artificially.

Understanding the organization – Fixed Mindset/ Growth Mindset

Individuals have grown to have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Individuals with a fixed mindset want to make sure they want to succeed. People with a fixed mindset believe that their proficiencies are carved in stone and they have the urge to keep proving it to themselves and everyone around very often. It is also equally true that the individual with a fixed mindset does neither want to fail nor he wants others to feel that he has failed. They strongly look for success or failure in everything they do. They will be the first to embrace if they feel that they can succeed and also will be the first to abandon when they feel that they are going to fail. These are the individuals who excel in their comfort zone and resist any change.

Now let us look at an individual who has a growth mindset. This individual is best defined as someone who understands his strengths and weakness clearly. These set of individuals look at learning all the time. They look at failure as an opportunity to learn and they have the mindset to endure the short-term discomfit to achieve a change which will benefit in the long term.

As a coach, you need to understand the individual you are coaching falls into which category. You will have to devise your coaching strategy based on the mindset of the individual.

Now let us turn our focus to the organization’s mindset. Organizations can also have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. These mindsets in an organization are typically top-down driven. Typically the fixed mindset organizations are obsessed with the worship of talent. They would want to recruit the one who appears to have the best talent. These individuals with high talent tend to develop a fixed mindset if already not have one because they want to prove that they are the best in the organization. An organization where the leader takes all the credit for the success and blames the team for all the failure is a typical organization with a fixed mindset. These organizations have a huge resistance to any kind of change

On the contrary in an organization with a growth mindset will recruit people who can learn and these individuals may not be the top rank holders. One can also recognize that these organizations always look to giving recognition to the individual who is lower down in the hierarchy. In such organizations, they are constantly trying to improve, they look for people who squarely look at their mistakes/deficiencies and are constantly asking/acquiring the skills that the company will require in the future.

If you were to get an assignment in the growth mindset, the chances of a successful coaching assignment are very high. In case you get to work with a fixed organization mindset you need to work with the leadership team and managers to apprise them of the mindset and have them switch to a growth mindset. I believe that this will be very long drawn and as a coach, one should have the ability to endure and perseverance to convert the organization mindset. If you can make this change, the success of the coaching assignment is very high. In case you are unable to make this change, the success of the coaching assignment is very low.

Patterns

Now let us briefly look at the human evolution. From the nomadic times, the human brain has evolved through patterns. The pattern started establishing when early humans started looking at the availability of food based on the footmarks of the animals. The same was also used to determine when they are going to confront a dangerous animal. The pattern further got established when humans started settling down and growing food. The recognition of the rain pattern was responsible for establishing farming. Gazing of the sun to determine the time, gazing off the stars to establish the season and travel route maps further strengthened the patterns in our mind.

Though the human brain has evolved over some time and the Prefrontal Corte can logically think and act in the right direction, the human being even today sub-consciously looks at patterns while making a decision. The pattern recognition is situated at the earlier most evolved portion of the brain. This portion of the brain overlooks the logical reasoning of the Prefrontal Corte while taking many decisions. Many researchers go on to prove that our brain is not completely evolved to handle modern-day complexity.

We need to look at how to use this to the advantage while taking up coaching assignments. We have heard many a time the humans have a herd mentality, humans follow the successful individuals & try to emulate them, implement what was successful elsewhere. The coach has to use this to his advantage while engaging in a coaching assignment. In the course of your coaching assignment, you should look for successes which could act like a lamppost or a lighthouse. This instigates the patterns within an individual’s brain to follow a similar pattern. This will lead to individuals and teams being attracted towards the successful project with least resistance.

A coach should develop mastery over the above psychoanalytical aspects, which in turn will help in ensuring that the success of the coaching assignment.

Author: JP Shivakumaraswamy is a multifaceted personality wearing multiple hats in the field of industry, commerce, finance, and environmental conversation. An accomplished business leader and a voracious reader, his passion lies in generating continuous improvement and high performance in individuals and teams. Lately, he has taken a foray into the world of coaching and has been selflessly contributing to its cause.