Motivate Others Instead of Bossing Them

Motivation is Powerful

The biggest challenge for a coach or leader is motivating others.  If anyone could do it, the world would be a different place.  Problems like hunger, climate change, and a properly fitting pair of slacks would quickly happen because people would want to address those problems.  In reality, we struggle with these challenges because it is hard to motivate others, and there is an entire group of people who want to discourage people from thinking there are solutions to these issues.  Motivation is getting people to swim against the current of conventional wisdom. 

 

Motivating others is a full-time job.  It requires the application of soft techniques of persuasion and other times the blunt force of human resources.  People want to feel useful and challenged, but often they settle for security and routine.  A leader needs to work with these messy people and give them a chance to rise to their circumstances.  I struggle with this because I come from a command and control environment.  I would discover later in my career; this approach does not work with technical or creative professionals. 

 

The global economy has shifted from building things to creating experiences, services, and ideas.  It is a complicated process, and it requires more than following orders.  It requires looking at things from different perspectives.  The creative process requires a sense of craft.  Finally, it demands that people look at problems and question established answers.  People who excel at these skills are rarely the type to follow orders.  

Because we rely on information and creativity more than ever, leaders need to convince people why things need to happen instead of what needs to happen.  Give a problem to a bunch of creative people and tell them why it needs solving; you will be surprised by the effort they will put into solving it.  Telling people why something is essential creates a common cause with the team.  Explaining the urgency and necessity gives importance to work.  People with purpose are better than those with a plan.

So as a leader, you need to show others where you want them to be rather than telling them. Act as an example by listening to others and avoid asking someone to do something you would not do yourself.  Support others as they struggle to come up with solutions and listen to what others have to say.   It is surprising what you will learn.  

I do not have a magic recipe for motivating others.  Each day, I do my best to explain why certain things should happen.  The team should be concerned with how it should happen.  Finally, try to be an example for others to emulate.  Motivating others is not an easy process, but if you can do it right, the results are deeply satisfying.  

Until next time. 

Be a Kind Scrum Master

The lonely life of a great scrum master.

It is hard to talk about being an agile coach or scrum master.  It is both an art and science.  The science understands computer programming and technical systems.  The art is listening to others and coaching them to address their challenges.  The profession is easy to learn, and it is a hard one to master.   Many of the aspects of being a good coach or scrum master appear to be touchy-feely skills and that is because the difference between a good and great scrum master and coach are those skills.

When I became a scrum master, I thought I understood the skills, and I would become a raging success.  My first few sprints squashed those delusions.  Teams have conflict, they confront deadline pressure, and individuals inside the group have messy emotional lives.  It is up to a scrum master to deal with all of these issues and more.  In the words of Kim Scott, “It is management and it is your job.”

It is a job that requires listening and empathy.  It means not only talking about agile but living the values of agile daily.  It is about courageousness when you are tired or scared.  It is about being focused when you are in your worst moments.  You respect others and their different perspectives when you want to tell them to take a flying leap — openness to the secrets and vulnerability of others and to try out new ideas.  Finally, a good coach or scrum master must show commitment to the shipping product and the people doing the work.  The values are hard to do which makes them more necessary to the performance of each team.

The business world has plenty of damaged, neurotic, and mean people.  These individuals were not born that way; the dysfunctional cultures of many businesses created them. Companies promote the mean because they appear to get work done.  Years of unrealistic deadline pressure, lean budgets, and lack of advancement opportunities created the neurotic.  For the agile community, this is what we face.

To counter the sickness which resides in the corporate office, the agile coach or scrum master walks a lonely road.  It is choosing to be kind over being snarky.  When they see exploitation, a coach needs to point it out.  Finally, it is doing the right thing when other people are not watching.  It was not easy which is why so few people are good at it.

If you are looking for an opportunity to create “healthy ownership” in an organization, a scrum master or agile coach needs to practice the values of scrum, they need to listen, to show empathy, practice kindness and do the right thing.  I continue to walk this path and I hope you join me.

Until next time.

Food Trucks and the Theory of Constraints.

The food truck can teach us about theory of constraints

In the global economy, events are moving at the speed of light.  An order placed in Singapore triggers a cascade of events in Tokyo and then at the corporate headquarters in Chicago.  Technology makes this kind of speed and accuracy possible.  To many people who use this technology, it is like magic.  To people who build and maintain these systems, it is hard work.  So the biggest challenge of our time is how to balance the desires of people who think technology is magic with the reality of innovation being hard work.  This week an introduction to the theory of constraints and what it means to a scrum master.

I have been reading a book entitled, “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement,” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.  It puts the reader in the shoes of a plant manager of a failing company.  His wife is unhappy with all the responsibilities he has which keep him away from his family.  His boss threatens to shut down his plant in 90 days.  He is also dealing with his children and his aging parents.  It is a trifecta of stress which would grind down any person. 

The main character has to juggle these competing demands on his time and energy while confronted with the collapse of his marriage and loss of his job.  He decides to concentrate on saving his job to provide for his wife and family.  Over the course of the book, the protagonist learns about the theory of constraints and how to use it to save his plant.  I will let you find out for yourselves if his marriage survives. 

I am personally surprised that I did not get exposed to this idea sooner in my career.  In layman’s terms, the theory of constraints posits that a system can only operate at the speed of its slowest sub-unit.  For instance, if you have a food truck, you have someone taking orders, someone doing food preparation, and someone plating finished products and delivering them to customers.  I realize that this example features a crowded food truck but stay with me.  The cashier can take an order every two minutes.  The owner can prep food for about 10 minutes per items on the menu.  Plating and delivering food takes five minutes. 

In this simple example, it is clear the slowest part of the process is preparing the food.  If there are ten items on the menu, it takes 100 minutes or almost two hours.  If done in a just in time fashion, then it takes 10 minutes.  So, a busy developer visiting the food truck outside of the office has to wait almost 20 minutes to get a meal.  This kind of service would put the food truck out of business.  The bottleneck is food prep.  Most food trucks avoid this issue by doing food prep in advance.  It reduces meal time from 20 minutes to seven. It is a major improvement, and it might keep the food truck in business. 

As a scrum master, it is important you recognize the bottlenecks which slow down the flow of value through the organization.  Are product owners not writing stories?  Are developers not doing test-driven development?  Maybe the release process is taking too long.  A good scrum master will figure this out and try to smooth worth through the system. 

The theory of constraints contains plenty of mathematics and ways to measure flow through the system, but the general idea is to find the slowest part of the system and maximize it to find the slowest part of the system and maximize its output while preventing work from stacking up before the bottleneck and slack gathering behind it.  Like many discoveries in science, engineering, and project management it is pretty simple once we understand it. 

Until next time. 

Feeling All American!!

America may not look good but we have a lot to offer.

The United States is commemorating its Independence Day.  It is a time to look back at the nation’s history, celebrate the present and look to the future.  I am a business person and agilest.  I am also American which means I view the world with a, particularly American perspective.  This week, I want to talk about my American perspective and how it shapes my agile practice.

My European and Canadian friend tease me with the stereotype of the “Ugly American.”  To them, the stereotype posits that we American’s are uncouth interlopers with lots of money but no manners, style, culture or ideas which have value to the rest of the world.  I disagree with them politely and let the facts speak for themselves.  America for better or worse helped create the global economy in the aftermath of the second world war; we take for granted today.  America is why you can purchase a Coca-Cola in any nation in the world. 

We are not a perfect nation.  Our politics are deeply divided, and we are currently involved in on-going wars in the Middle East.  In spite of those challenges, American’s for the last century have stood up to totalitarianism, communism, and terrorism.  When asked, we have come to the aid of our allies and attempted to act as an example for the rest of the world to follow.  That said, I think our three biggest exports to the world are philosophical. Two of these concepts come from the nineteenth century; Transcendentalism and Pragmatism.  The other is from the present day – the agile reformation.  All three of these diverse ideas influence me and my agile practice.

Transcendentalism seems very high brow and something out of a high school American literature course, but we see its influence around us.  The focus on individualism and finding a spiritual connection with the divine links it with the current new age movement.  Thoreau’s ideas of civil disobedience are part of every social justice movement.  Finally, the desire to embrace nature and simplicity is the central framework of modern environmentalism.  I see the concentration on the individual and desire to make the most of one’s time on earth outlined in transcendentalism to be revealing.  Life is too short to be working on poorly run projects and being involved in drudgery.  Work must not only provide material comfort, but it must give people purpose.  I thank transcendentalism for that perspective.  

Pragmatism was a significant movement in American thinking.  Its central idea is, “…the practical application of ideas by acting on them to test them in human experience.”  In other words, a pragmatist does not worry about grand theories of how the world works.  They are concerned about what ideas “work” in the world.  It is responding to change over following a plan.  To pragmatists, an idea or action is only useful based on its practical application in the world.  Pragmatism is why all cities in the United States have water treatment.  Thanks to Pragmatists we set aside our notions of free markets and individual liberty to charge everyone taxes to make sure water is safe to drink.  To reduce the spread of cholera and dysentery in our nation, we sacrificed some individual liberty.  This a classic example of pragmatism.  For a scrum master or agile coach, it means you need to reject ideological rigidity if you want the team to be more successful; in other words, respond to change.

Finally, we have to discuss the agile movement and how it went from an American idea to a global reformation.  The Scrum Alliance has gatherings in Dublin and Singapore this year.  The Scaled Agile Alliance is spreading knowledge around the world.  Finally, business from Korea to Canada attempting to take the Agile manifesto and make it work for their companies.  The reason why we have this broad acceptance of the new way of doing business is that it delivers improved results.  We are turning out software better and faster thanks to the agile reformation than any time in the history of the industry.  It seems pragmatism encourages these new ways of doing things in the business world.

So, this “Ugly American,” takes pride in transcendentalism, pragmatism and agile.  They are uniquely American ideas which are making the business community and the world a better place.

Happy Independence Day and Until next time.

Globalization and a Scrum Master

Cold but keeping on.

Chicago in January, is an exercise in mental toughness.  I am sitting at my desk very early in the morning and it is single digits in Fahrenheit and deep in the negative in centigrade.   In spite of these difficult conditions, the tap water is still flowing and my house thanks to central heating is warm.  I am connected to the world wide web and each week day I communicate with my development team in India who live eleven and a half hours in the future away from me.  I live in the global economy and for good or ill it shapes my life.   This week on the blog I wanted to discuss what how scrum masters like us mean to that global economy.

One of the realities of technology is that it has increase the productivity of workers by a significant margin, the margin is so significant that wages have not kept pace with these increases.  According to Manfred B. Steger, in his book “Globalization: A Brief Insight,” this has created three visions of how the world economy works.  These visions are: market globalization, justice globalization, and jihadist globalization.  Agile and the scrum belong to the justice globalization vision of this new world.

The market globalization vision is pretty familiar to many of us in the United States.  It is dominated by notions of free-trade, economic neo-liberalism, and clear winners and losers.  Jihadist globalization is a rejection of those values.  It is a longing for “the good old days” whatever those were and can be represented by groups as diverse on the political left and right as ISIS and the militia groups occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.  Justice globalization in many respects is a triangulation of these two paths.  It incorporates values from Occupy Wall Street, Amnesty international, The Agile Reformation, and the latest innovations from the social sciences.  Let me explain.

Instead of globalization having winners and losers, those into justice globalization, see beneficiaries.  From the Uber drivers picking up passengers, to the members of the corporate board room; all of them receive the benefits of the work done and a services provided.  Work is sustainable, efficient, and provides dignity.  If it seems a little Utopian it is because it is.  Not only does it require changes in how work is done on the corporate level which is what I think the Agile reformation is attempting to do but it is going to require changes in government policy and cultural perception.  It is not going to be easy and it is going to require the collaboration of many people.

So where does the scrum master come in to this world?  We are the ones enforcing the values and principles articulated in the agile manifesto.  We are the ones making sure that the work is sustainable and of a high quality.  We have to be the ones saying “no” to people in authority when they are asking nine people to make a baby in one month.  We make the phone calls when there are obstacles in the project.  Each day, a network of technology professionals exchange phone calls across the world making sure that everything is going well and keeping the wheels of commerce spinning.  We are agents of social justice and change.  We make it possible to do business in the cold nights of January and the warm month of August.  Not a bad calling, if you ask me.

So to be a scrum master is to throw your lot into the world of Justice globalization.  Not a bad place to be in the 21st century.

Until next time.

A Little Respect for the Scrum Master

I spend my days working with software developers and helping them get work done better, faster, and with higher quality than they did before.  This week,

Building software is not for the meek!

I wanted to take some time out and talk about why being a scrum master maters.  Technology is one of the hardest things in business to manage and it helps put things into perspective.

One of the key things everyone in technology needs to understand is that the ability to write code is rare skill.  For every thousand people working in accounts receivable, there may be only five able to write software which manages the accounting systems.  Because of relative scarcity of people with these skills, there is always too much work for too few people.  This makes business people testy because they are taught that customer service should be instantaneous and to be forced to wait for IT seems like a waste of time.  Often business people accuse IT departments of being lazy or non-responsive.

 Also many people outside technology think that putting together good working software code is as easy as composing a power point slide or an excel spread sheet; this is a gross misunderstanding.  So they see the eccentric people who develop software as detriment to the business.  Combined with how expensive software developers are to hire, it is no wonder that there is so much push for off-shoring.
 
The funny thing is that off-shore teams and no different than their domestic counter-parts.  A developer in India or Northern Ireland is just as rare as they are in the United States.  They are paid higher rates than their peers and make a very good living because they still very rare compared to the world population.  They are less expensive that American or European developers but they are still an expensive labor force.  They are also just as over-worked as their on-shore colleagues.

Now add to the mix a twelve or thirteen-hour time difference, child care concerns, and the cultural obstacles which obviously crop up between two nations and you have a recipe for disaster.  Fortunately, software developers being smarter than the average person have learned to deal with the obstacles and build software.  It is not pretty at times but the work gets done.

It is up to scrum masters to get development teams working together and efficiently.  We have to bridge the ocean gaps and make our off shore partners feel like they are making a difference.  It is up to us to put together a vision and then direct others to make that vision possible.

I was attempting to explain my job to others and it is hard.  Some people get offended that I work with off-shore teams because they think I am enabling the loss of jobs in the United States.  Others think that what I do is not real work because all I do is participate in conference calls.  The truth is that scrum masters who work with distributed teams are essential parts of the global economy.  We keep the projects going.  We make sure the software is delivered on time.  We keep the promises executives and sales people make to their clients each day.  It isn’t like being a nurse or a fire fighter but it is just as important.  

So if someone says they are a scrum master give them a little respect. They are the people who make sure the global economy does not collapse into a big ball of mud.

Until next time.