How to onboard remote employees

by Krishna Chodipilli | Oct 3, 2022 | Leadership And Management

Tips for making the Transition go smoothly

Onboarding new remote team members can be difficult, but it’s even more challenging when you’re remote hiring. If you’re unsure how to make the smooth transition, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. This blog post will discuss some tips for the smooth onboarding of remote employees. By following these tips, you’ll be able to improve the virtual onboarding process, minimize the stress of starting a new job and ensure that your new remote employees feel comfortable and connected to your company from day one.

What is remote onboarding?

Remote onboarding can be defined as orienting and integrating new remote team members into the company culture and workflows without them having to be physically present in an office space from their start date or even before that. While this may seem daunting, implementing a remote onboarding process has several benefits. First, it allows you to reach a wider pool of talent, as you are no longer limited to those who live near your office. Second, it reduces costs associated with traditional onboarding processes or onboarding programs, such as travel and lodging expenses for new team members. And finally, it allows you to ease new employees into their roles at their own pace, without the pressure of performing in front of their colleagues on their first day. With all these benefits, it’s no wonder that more companies are looking for a remote onboarding experience to streamline their new hire integration process from day one and bring them up to speed.

Benefits of Remote Onboarding process

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased in the remote workforce and has become increasingly popular in recent years, but many companies are hesitant to onboard employees remotely. However, there are several benefits to remote employee onboarding that make it worth considering for any business.

Remote employees are more productive.

According to a Stanford University study, remote workers are 13% more productive than those who work in an office.  Working from home allowed them to work “a genuine full-shift rather than being late to the office or departing early several times a week,” which resulted in them taking “shorter breaks, taking less time off and having fewer sick days.” Remote employees also tend to be less stressed, increasing productivity. This is because they have more control over their work environment and aren’t distracted by noise and other people in the office.

Remote employees are more engaged.

According to a study by Gallup, employees who work from home are 4% more engaged than those who work in an office. They also found that “the optimal engagement boost occurs when employees spend three to four days working off-site.” This is likely since remote employees feel more in control of their work, feel welcome in the team, be part of the team even though they are not in-person or face to face a times and are also able to balance better their work and personal lives, which leads to increased job satisfaction.

Remote employees are more loyal.

Employees who work from home are less likely to leave their jobs, according to a study by FlexJobs. This is because they feel happier and more engaged with their work and appreciate the flexible working arrangements offered by their companies. Remote employees also tend to be more productive, stay with their companies longer than office employees, and improve employee retention rates. Therefore, whether working from home is viable is less important than how to make it work for you.

Now that you know some of the benefits of remote onboarding let’s discuss how to do it successfully. Here are some practical remote onboarding checklists:

Remote onboarding basics:

Ensure you have an effective onboarding plan that ensures the new remote worker has all the tools and resources needed to do their job effectively. This includes a good internet connection, a reliable phone or computer, and adequate office space so they can hit the ground running from the first week or day one.

Assigning a Remote Onboarding Mentor:

Assign a mentor or buddy to the new employee who can help them acclimate to the company culture and values and answer any questions they have. Hiring managers can also enable remote employees to stay organized with one-on-one meetings and on track with their work goals.

Preparing the Remote Employee:

Remote employees should be prepared for a certain level of autonomy and responsibility. They should also be comfortable working independently without constant supervision. Before they start working remotely, ensure they are familiar with the company’s policies, employee handbook, and procedures and have the necessary tools and resources to do their job effectively.

Remote Onboarding Tools and Resources:

Remote employees should access company resources such as online training modules, policies, procedures manuals, and training sessions using platforms like LinkedIn Learning and similar tools. This will help them immediately familiarize themselves with your company’s culture and expectations.

Create a communication plan:

Remote employees must be provided with a communication plan that outlines how often the remote employee should check in with their manager and what type of communication is acceptable using company-approved communication tools (email, video chat, phone call, etc.). This will help ensure clear communication between the manager and employee and that neither one feels overwhelmed or ignored.

Microlearning

Microlearning is a fantastic technique to give training in brief, repeatable spurts. This strategy is ideal if you want learners interested but not overloaded with knowledge all at once. It provides learners control by allowing them to set particular objectives for each session.

While the information provided during onboarding is crucial, long presentations and a steady stream of new information can exhaust anyone. You can make your onboarding session more engaging for employees and help them remember the material by gamifying certain parts of it with quizzes and other games.

Because users listen or watch while studying specific videos or reading texts within predetermined time limitations, micro-lectures offer a setting where individuals will learn more quickly – exactly like how we currently consume web content.   Use an internal learning software that will help cover all the fundamentals if you’re beginning with remote work or want to take your staff somewhere on-site or off-site for training on this issue or for happy hour (and what company doesn’t?).

Employ video conferencing tools

The most efficient way to record and transmit detailed information is through video. Since videos can be watched quickly, it has more of the essential visual signals that activate 250 milliseconds after they appear on the screen (and more than 50% faster than text). In addition, people utilize videos to learn new skills for hobbies like cooking and music composition; 87% of people use YouTube for this purpose, according to a 2021 report from The Office of Communications in the UK.

Organizations must ensure that all remote workers have access to video conferencing software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams and the ability to make video calls for team meetings or any meetings.

A study was done by Ctrip, a Chinese travel operator with 16,000 employees, in which certain employees were randomly allocated to work from home. After nine months, they discovered that telecommuters had higher performance ratings (13%) and lower turnover rates than workers who worked in offices; also, they had more than $1000 in rent savings per person! Despite these successes, 49% of respondents said they would prefer not to continue working remotely, primarily due to loneliness. Let’s combat this by giving remote workers access to human contact via technologies like hangouts, Zoom, Skype, and other video-conference tools, which can help offset feelings of isolation when working for extended periods.

Common challenges with remote onboarding employees

One of the most common challenges with remote onboarding is that people don’t know how to manage and communicate with their remote employees properly. This can lead to misunderstandings, miscommunication, and even resentment from the employee.

It’s essential to set clear expectations for the remote employee regarding communication, deadlines, and goals. You should also ensure they have all the necessary tools and resources to do their job effectively. And lastly, be sure to check in with them regularly to ensure they are still feeling comfortable and connected to your company.

Tips for Employees to make the Transition Smoothly

If this is the first time your workforce is all working remotely and for an indefinite period, you might be worried about how productive everyone will be. You might also be concerned about how people feel if they’re lonely or their creativity decreases.

Avoid being distracted

When we work in our homes, which is associated with leisure time, it can be difficult to draw boundaries between what is considered “work” and regular life. The temptation may come along when you’re out of sight or mind; turning on the TV or trying a new recipe could happen quickly without thinking about how these activities will affect future deadlines, for example.

But there’s hope! Dedicate specific hours every day (or week) as working sessions punctuated by breaks just like at your office job–rescheduling meetings if necessary so that focusing solely gets done over several sessions instead perpetual multitasking does less justice.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time-management technique that suggests you create checklists and work solidly for 25 minutes before taking short breaks to clock in new tasks. Several apps allow blocking websites or only viewing one window at a time to boost productivity by minimizing distractions from outside sources such as interruptions, which consume 28% of an employee’s average day, according to a 2017 Robert Half Talent Solutions study and OfficeTeam.

The best way to maintain balance is by simply helping employees know their limits and respecting them. It would be best if you also tried not to overextend yourself during regular hours or beyond. This will cause burnout which leads to feelings of depression & anxiety, costing $1 trillion globally every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), due in part to a lack of productivity by demanding work environments.

Create a Template (Structure, Routine, and Ergonomics)

If you are always working from home, it is essential to have a routine, structure, and daily plan keeping in mind the different time zones one works in.

If you wake up at 9 am and start working from your bed, you will not be very productive. Working from home does not mean you can work less complicatedly. If you do this, you might lose your motivation. The clothes you wear in bed can help you relax and switch off, instead of working. If you want to get ready for work, like when you are going to the office, set the alarm for the same time as if you were going to commute and exercise or take a walk first. Shower and change into clean clothes first.

Try to create a comfortable remote environment that helps you be efficient when you work. It would be best if you tried to make your work environment as similar as possible to when you are working. This is called ergonomics. Ergonomics is the study of how the working environment affects employee efficiency. For example, a study found that productivity increased by 15% when people worked in an environment with plants. Future Workplace, a research firm, found that the number one perk employees want is access to natural light and views of the outdoors.

People with a lot of natural light in their environment report less eyestrain, headaches, and drowsiness. If you need to use a monitor at work, try to take it home with you so you can use it in the best environment. Your preferences may be different from other people’s. You may work better in complete silence or with some background noise. You may also prefer to stand up rather than sit down. Ensure you don’t take advantage of your colleagues’ inability to see what you’re doing when they’re not around.

Focus on moving and eating nutritiously.

Exercising is good for your physical and mental health. It is shown that walking can improve creativity by 81% and helps you relieve stress, be more creative and productive, and be a better learner. Exercising also makes you happy because it releases endorphins, but according to the National Health Service in the UK, 80 percent of adults don’t adhere to the recommendations for aerobic and muscle-building exercises. If you have to stay at home because of quarantine, don’t worry! You can still move around.

We need a consistent food supply because our brains need glucose to function. Amazon offers resistance mats for standing desks to reduce strain on your heels and knees at a reasonable price. YouTube also has free fitness instruction videos. Ensure you take frequent breaks for cooking, eating, and snacking (healthily). Regular eating is essential for the routine establishment and affects engagement and productivity. Finding a balance between taking frequent breaks and eating healthy foods may be difficult because it can be tempting to skip meals altogether or to eat junk food.

Our brains don’t function as well if we eat unhealthily prepared foods, so the quality of the food we eat is crucial. According to a study, those who consumed more fruits and vegetables were also more curious, interested, and motivated. This makes sense, given that various vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetable aid in the production of dopamine. Dopamine is crucial for motivation, engagement, and learning. As a result, make an effort to eat well.

Keeping lines of communication open and active

Building a good team requires open and constant communication. The ability to communicate remotely has never been more straightforward, thanks to technology!

Ensure everything stays on track without any gaps in communication that could lead down an undesirable path (such as forgetting about deadlines). Set daily goals and hold frequent check-ins at each stage of the process using tools like Slack channels or Microsoft Teams that enable real-time collaboration with your coworkers throughout the day.

Proper communication is crucial for the team and business to perform more efficiently. There are solutions to these problems, but if you leave work after lunch without unmuting your notifications, over time, this could breed mistrust among coworkers who might start to think their concerns weren’t significant enough or weren’t heard by management due to a lack of attention from certain people on shift at any given time. According to McKinsey Global Institute, companies employing social technology had 20% higher productivity, which suggests that they are probably using message boards of some sort.

Conclusion

The company’s mission is to have happy employees and better productivity. The content will serve as both inspiration AND a reminder of why we do things like work remotely: because our teams can. You can do all of this and more with Leadership Tribe.

Systems Coaching: Coaching teams to maximum efficiency, or is there a better way?

by Krishna Chodipilli | Sep 20, 2022 | Leadership Tribe

You are an Enterprise Change Agent, Agile Coach, or a leader looking to improve your ability to work with complex adaptive systems. You have heard that systems coaching can be a valuable tool, but you are unsure what it is or how it can help you. This article will explain what systems coaching is and how it can help coaches and leaders improve their potential to work with complex problems and investigate if there are even better leadership styles or approaches.

Systems are everywhere—for example – the automobile as a system.

No single car part can take you from point A to point B by itself. The wheel, axle, seat, and motor must work together for the car to move.

This is also true for a company. An organization is not just the sum of its parts. It’s the product of their interactions. But unlike a car, your organization is a complex system of people and relationships. And unlike the elements of a vehicle, people have their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They make organizations not just complex but also dynamic, adaptive, and unpredictable. Today’s organizations operate in a more interconnected world than ever before. So how do you make decisions, solve problems and manage change in this complex environment?

Systems Theory

System theory was developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a biologist who wanted to find a way to explain complex systems in terms of their parts. He believed you couldn’t understand a system by looking at it in isolation. You had to look at the whole system and how its parts interact.

To understand things like communication within an organization, we must look at it from a systemic perspective. It means considering the sender, the message, the receiver, and the context in which it all takes place. It also means understanding how all these elements interact with each other.

Communication is not just about sending and receiving messages. It’s also about creating shared meaning between two or more people.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a way of looking at the world that considers the interconnectedness of everything. You have to look at the whole system and how its parts interact. But you also need to understand people’s motivations so you can design things that will make them act in a certain way. We often abstractly look at systems, making us lose sight of people’s experiences. Or we focus only on people and miss the more significant dynamics at play. The key is to zoom in and out between these different perspectives to get a complete view of our systems.

By understanding the system-wide influences on single-person behaviors and the many relationships between individuals, it may be possible to fully understand how and why the individual created these actions at the time.

What is Systems coaching?

Systems coaching is a relatively new field that is growing in popularity. Systems coaches help overcome the challenges associated with working with these systems and help clients achieve their desired results. They serve as a liaison for the district leadership teams and, if required, school leaders (professional coaching programs, mentoring, training methodologies, facilitating) for leadership development or any organization to guide systems intervention and sustainable organizational behaviour change.

To be successful, systems coaches need to have several skills, including the ability to:

• Understand complex adaptive systems and particular relationship systems
• See the organization as a whole new world and facilitate change for better decisions

It can be challenging to be productive when you feel like you’re constantly swimming against the current. You try to get organized, but your thoughts and ideas keep escaping. You start to work on one task but get interrupted and can’t seem to pick up where you left off. Before you know it, hours have gone by, and you haven’t accomplished anything. The good news is that you can take steps to overcome them.

Complex Adaptive System (CAS)

A CAS is a system of numerous agents interacting to produce the observed behavior. CAS are systems composed of multiple agents that interact with each other to create the observed behavior. The agents can be human beings, things, or ideas. The system can be as small as a family or as large as an organization.

Elaborating on these three properties of CAS shows how they benefit the systems coaching approach.

• Self-organization is the ability of a system to create its structure and order.
• Emergence is the process by which something new arises from the agents’ interactions in a system.
• Adaptation is the ability of a system to change its behavior in response to feedback from its environment.

All three of these properties are essential in system coaching. Self-organization allows coaches to work with teams to create their structure and order. Emergence will enable coaches to help teams develop and build relationship systems; coaching focuses on nurturing new ways of working and adapting to change. Adaptation allows coaches to help crews respond to feedback from their environment.

Organization Relationship Systems Coaching and The Third Entity

ORSC is an operating system that helps to manage and understand relationships between people. Relationship systems coaching focuses on your whole client and allows you to look at the bigger picture at play. It is a more effective strategy that considers all the different parts of your client and how they interact with one another. It happens without any planning and is an example of emotional intelligence and social intelligence in the workplace.

This is an example of The Third Entity, a term that refers to the group of people in a relationship system, such as family system dynamics, work team, or couple. Jungian scholars coined the term also called collective consciousness. Systems Coaches can benefit from ORSC principles, which are based on Systems Theory, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Professional Coaching, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Co-Active Coaching, and more. Relationship Systems Intelligence is the focus of this approach. It helps create sustainable and resilient teams, organizations, and families.

As a systems designer, I’ve learned that we must think about people and their mental models when solving complex problems. To do this, we must embrace a human-centered approach to systems thinking. It means having a mindset and methodology that focus on people first.  Peter Senge, the author of The Fifth Discipline, describes it as a way of seeing the structures behind complex situations.

Human-centered system thinking

When it comes to problem-solving, we tend to focus on what we can see. But in a complex system, this can lead us only to treat the symptoms of a problem, not the source.

In a relationship system, everything is connected. We can’t solve problems without considering the whole picture and surfacing the root of the problem. We use the iceberg model to help us map out the layers of a problem. Step one, start with what you can see; events and behaviors are the tips of the iceberg. Zoom in on what’s happening, then zoom out to discover if there’s a relationship between events. Has the event occurred before? Has anything changed? And for most of us, this is as deep as we go when we want to solve a problem.

The system’s structure is the next layer of the iceberg for a systems coach. These structures are the tangible things you can design and redesign to influence your system. It can include policies, procedures, guidelines, processes, and more. Structures are often the cause of the events you’ve identified. Ask yourself, why aren’t events happening? Then think about the robust coaching model-based structure.

Systems Coaches

Systems Coaches work with all organization stakeholders to help them understand how they fit into the larger picture and how their work affects the rest of the organization.

They also help to identify systemic issues and design solutions that address those issues and mental models. System Coaches can also serve as a liaison for the district leadership teams and, if required – school leaders (professional coaching, mentoring, training methodologies, emotional intelligence, particular relationship system, facilitating) or any organization to guide systems change, intervention, and sustainable organizational change.

Benefits of Systems Coaching

There are numerous benefits to using systems coaching, including helping organizations and individuals overcome the challenges associated with working with these relationship systems.

Standard benefits:

• Increased productivity and commitment
• Creates a paradigm shift from engaging individuals to the entire group
• Creates sustainable and resilient teams, organizations, and families

Emotional benefits:

• A greater sense of accomplishment when goals are met.
• Individuals and students report great satisfaction from completing tasks and outcomes

How to implement systems coaching?

Implementing Systems Coaching requires four steps:

1. Assess the current state of your team’s system and identify areas for improvement.
2. Work with your team to create a new system that meets their needs.
3. Tweak and improve the system to create sustainable and resilient teams.
4. Hire systems coaches, train, mentor, and coach your team on how to use the new system effectively.

Many different coaching styles and approaches can be effective, depending on the needs of your team. Following the steps outlined above, you can start using systems coaching with your team today!

However, System Coaching is not the only way to build a high-performing team or an organization.

Agile Coaching

Agile coaching is a growing profession that helps teams and individuals work smarter and faster. Agile coaches usually have a background in project management, engineering, or software development. They also need to be able to work with people from all backgrounds and have strong facilitation skills. It means encouraging a culture of flexibility and innovation and working with teams to find solutions that work for them using team coaching techniques.  Agile coaching is not about telling people what to do or introducing the team to agile methods and tools but also about helping them adopt the agile mindset.

Agile System Coaching

Agile systems coaching is still being developed and refined, which combines both Systems Coaching and Agile Coaching. So what can you expect if you decide to become an agile systems coach?

It is a robust coaching model that focuses on improving the system in which people work rather than trying to fix individuals. The goal is to help teams and organizations work more effectively by improving communication, problem-solving, creativity, and productivity by building sustainable and resilient teams using evidence-based practices. In addition, agile system coaching can help your team become more self-sufficient and autonomous. This type of coaching is also a great way to build team morale and create a sense of camaraderie.

How to be an Agile System Coach?

To become an agile systems coach, you need to have training in both systems coaching and agile coaching and a solid ability to communicate with people at all levels of the organization. As an Agile Coach you also need to be familiar with the principles of agile development and understand the agile methodologies and frameworks and how they can apply to different situations. They also need to understand the feedback loops and how changes in one part of the system can affect the rest. In addition, an agile systems coach needs to facilitate collaboration and communication between teams, business units, and the organization as a whole.

Conclusion

Systems Coaching and Agile Coaching are two necessary fields that work together to create successful agile systems.

A system coach helps an organization understand how all the parts interact with each other to produce the desired behavior. They also help design solutions to systemic issues, identify emergent behaviors, and facilitate communication between teams and business units. An agile coach works with teams to help them be more effective and efficient by teaching them the principles of agile development and how they can apply them in different situations. Together, this approach is an integrated robust coaching model based on creating sustainable organizational change and a robust coaching model. Are you interested in becoming a system or agile coach? Let us know in the comments!

We hope this blog post has helped you understand systems coaching and Agile systems coaching a bit better, and you can reach out to our business consultants to help you set up a systems team for success.  Contact us for more info, plus you can also check out the upcoming webinars and ICAgile training courses.

The Dilemma of Hobbesian Trap – Coaching or Consulting

by Krishna Chodipilli | Sep 8, 2022 | Agile Coaching

What is the Hobbesian Trap?

The Hobbesian Trap is a theory named after Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a British Philosopher specialising in political science. This trap is also known as Schelling’s Dilemma (after Thomas Schelling). It explains that pre-emptive strikes occur between two groups, out of bilateral fear of an imminent attack and self-preservation. Escalation of this fear can spiral and lead to an arms race.

Thomas Hobbes elaborated on a theory initially described by Thucydides. Hobbes felt that it was human nature to quarrel. There are three main causes – competition, diffidence and glory. Game theory focuses on the third motive – glory- or why a reputation is worth fighting for.

This theory has been applied to conflicts including the First World War, the Cold War or the Cuban Missile Crisis. The latter conflict over nuclear weapons was based on mutual distrust and pre-emptive strikes between the US and USSR.

The analogy of Hobbesian Trap 

Business leaders often have the urge to hire experts when they feel something is keeping the company from reaching its full potential. They want to leverage some extra help, especially when the company is going through significant changes or experiencing substantial challenges. The leaders enrol experts such as business coaches and consultants to help them steer the ship through the rolling waves.

It can be the exact solution the company desires, but it is surprising that some of the leaders know little about the differences between a coach and a consultant. That’s in terms of the role, work scope, level of engagement, how they can help the company to achieve success, and so on.

The role of a coach 

In the work context, coaches are like highly experienced business partners working alongside executives and teams. They can offer invaluable benefits to the business. Depending on the different specialism of coaching, coaches may focus on working with particular groups of clients, such as Leadership, Team, and Cohort, and their practice of coaching may involve different approaches and tactics.

In general, coaches provide customized and experiential development process that empowers business leaders and teams to fully realize their potentials, enhance capability and maximize performance. The coach has great insight into and awareness of the nature of man.  They enable staff to work together collaboratively and creatively to achieve sustainable outstanding results and organizational goals.

A coach’s superpower is to use active listening and powerful questioning to help clients understand their ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ state of nature; to devise strategy and plan; support and challenge them along the journey. They help clients to think outside the box and see new perspectives and hold them accountable to keep on shifting towards the goal while maintaining clear focus and alignment to the business objectives.

It is important to note that the coaching relationship is based on mutual trust and respect, and the organization, leader, team, and coach needs to work in partnership together to achieve maximum effectiveness and impact. 

Make sure you also check my other article on coaching here.

The role of a consultant

Business consultants are subject matter experts, who are most likely to have achieved success in their professional life and can advise their clients on how to acquire the same knowledge and skills and achieve similar successful results.

Consultants share their extensive knowledge and experience in a customized and targeted manner, providing exactly what the clients need. They have the required expertise to help organizations analyzing issues, compiling findings, advising solutions, and implementing a customized plan of action. Besides, they can also assist to track and assess the effectiveness of the plan, keep challenging the project delivery, feedback and course-correct as appropriate to optimize the results delivered.

Generally speaking, consultants can bring in their expertise, fresh opinion, and a more objective perspective to the business in need. The consulting process is more linear in the sense of transferring the knowledge and skills, and may often involve some level of training.

Deploy the coach or the consultant?

Knowing the key differences between a business coach and consultant can help one to prevent the Hobbesian Trap, avoid disappointments and optimize resource usage. Coaching empowers teams to maximize their performance and consulting provides expertise and assistance to tackle the challenges head-on.

Often the lines between coaching and consulting get blurred, leading to ineffectiveness in addressing the organization’s needs. We have summarised some of the key differences between coaching and consulting below:

• Building Capacity vs. Solving Problem
• Facilitating Self-learning and Self-organisation vs. Outsourcing Existing Problem
• Internally-drive Growth vs. External Expertise
• Exploring Possibilities vs. Providing Recommendation
• Asking Questions vs. Providing Solution
• Empowerment vs. Following Instruction
• Focus on People vs. Focus on the Problem
•  “Left-brained” Growth and Evolution vs. “Right-brained” Linear Steps to Achieve Goals.

Understanding your organizational requirements and when to employ the services of a coach or a consultant is crucial for the engagement’s success. It is recommended that one needs to introspect on the critical key areas of the organization before the engagement, such as:

• The Requirement of the business
• Quality of the inherent knowledge in the business
• Robustness of the support structure and culture in the organization
• Time sensitivity required for the intended results

If you want to explore The Hobbesian Trap further, look at the citations of Steven Pinker or Sandeep Baliga or this simple overview on wikipedia. Thomas Hobbes most famous work is Leviathan.

How to Develop Mature Agile Teams

by Krishna Chodipilli | Sep 5, 2022 | Agile Coaching

Overwhelmingly those that claim to come from companies where they are ‘Agile’ or use ‘Scrum’ or call themselves Agile mature team don’t know  without knowing what ‘Agile Maturity’ looks like. These teams focus on practices without understanding the methodology and outcomes, those practices were supposed to drive and demonstrate. I would describe it as immature Agile adoption, sometimes just paying lip service to the concept. This applies to product teams, development teams, new teams and established teams. 

So many, and I mean many, seem to think that a daily stand-up for team members means they are Agile. I have had some teams describe how they are very Agile and follow Scrum closely but then tell me that the plan is made in advance, a lead engineer estimates in man-days (example 1 point = 2 days); the iteration manager individually tasks daily and that integration testing and releases occur in the following sprint. When I ask about retrospectives, I find that on average, 1 in 20 come from development teams that do not hold any retrospectives and those that do, describe quite varied experiences. Simply having a Scrum Master and Scrum Team does not mean being Agile.

Simply focusing and training on running agile practices, being measured by doing these practices will make great lip service teams for agile and this is a superficial agile marker. We should start with investigating and ask ourselves ‘what values are we missing from these teams?’ What would we want more of – Commitment, Respect, Openness, Focus and Courage? These are scrum values and scrum is a popular agile methodology and built on these 5 values. The beauty of working within Agile is that it is all based on values.

As a coach/leader one needs to learn from the teams, investigate what ‘values’ are missing, which values we want more of in every meeting/agile practise they run and find out what makes their heart sing as a team. Work with the leaders to ensure a Psychological safe environment is created where the teams/members taking risks should feel safe and not persecuted for doing so. This is the secret ingredient to nurture a mature agile team.

How mature is your Scrum Team?

To transition your team through the maturity stages, effective communication and collaboration are vital. A mature agile team will be good communicators and collaborators, as well as being confident to work autonomously and take ownership. They become high performing teams. At the other end of the scale, immature teams will work in silos, focussing on individual needs rather than group outcomes.

Communication isn’t confined to vocalising points in Scrum meetings. It can be articulation to stakeholders on platforms like Jira. It could be aiding decision-making with visual lean management systems like Kanban. This is a particularly popular tool for software devops and product management teams.

The cycle of continuous improvement

Teams using Agile practices, by its very nature, are on a constant journey of inspection and adaptation. It’s a lifecycle of product development. But there comes a time when it’s a good idea for an Agile team (mature or not) to take a step back to review and relearn the foundation principles and question why we do these project management practices (Stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, writing stories, estimating etc.). In other words, have a team “reset”. Resetting teams, whilst emphasising the importance of values around these practices and everything we do brings rise to high-performance teams, outstanding outcomes and improved metrics.

Self-organising teams versus being organised by people’s roles or titles.

Empowered to make decisions and they do not wait around to figure out how to make decisions. They will just start making decisions and they will figure out the boundaries.

Believe by being together, that team can do anything and they want any new challenge thrown at them. This will be an outcome of teamwork and  success even more than individual success.

Motivated by trust versus by being motivated by anger or fear.

They own their decisions and commitment. They take ownership of the decisions and commitments they make.

Census driven – They listen to a wide divergence of all ideas from everyone within the team before they decide and act upon one.

There will be ‘Constant constructive disagreement‘ – Teams will constantly talk to one to another and they will argue. As long as it is constructive and striving for continuous improvement this is great.

We are going for mediocre results faster, even though Agile Methods are good for that, what we as Agile coaches need to aim, is better than these. When we focus on Agile Team on these values, these yields to better deliverables and success criteria.

These can be translated to:

Faster results

This sometimes translates into mediocre results faster. If this is better than where we are to start with, then this is okay. But is this enough?

Right results

As teams want to stop themselves from going down blind alleys, this will change mindset to focus on outcomes over outputs. We want to be delivering value and an optimal user experience to our clients and customers.

Astonishing results

This is what agile methodology is built for. When team members look at each other and say ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ or stakeholders say to one to another ‘We could never have thought of that’. Teams will be seen as a ‘hub for delivering organisational value’.

Room for individual and team growth

We should be seeing evidence of a team maturity model. Teams grow together and individual grows during the lifecycle of the project. Professional and personal growth, the whole nine yards. The aforementioned is the bottom-up flow. We will need top-down flow too, where the up-line managers, FLM’s, IM’s, BA’s form a chapter to discussing the challenges, share the blockers and issues and start working together as a chapter to solve them with teamwork. IM’s/anyone can be driving these management chapters where issue backlog can be discussed and hold each other accountable.

Finally, this creates a sense of a ‘Team who can do anything‘: Teams which have this agile mindset will learn entire new domains, skills set, tools and they will evolve into a new team. They’ll work through maturity stages and the product team evolves as does the product lifecycle.

Personally, I have seen organisations who have embraced Agile values, leaving teams in place over a longer period and pump the highest business value initiatives to these teams. Helping the teams to change their mindset is the key. One can be doing practices perfectly and not paying attention to the values, deliverables or outcomes & success criteria.