Wrestling With Chaos

In this episode Urko Wood, with Reveal Growth Consultants, discusses how business-to-business (B2B) companies can grow in a predictable manner using a method — Jobs-To-Be-Done — which also sustains value and profitability. The process is described in the seminal book, Jobs to be Done: From Theory to Practice, by Anthony W. Ulwick. Urko also has a free white paper, 3 Steps to Consistently Fill Your New Product Pipeline with Only Good Ideas, you may find quite beneficial for developing new products. The discussion opens with the reality one can’t just prepare to do Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) via a major in college. His initial contact with the method was with improving existing products and services. At the time it was not necessarily good at discovering new products and services that could be offered in new markets because the method was limited to existing products and services. Eventually he read an article in the Harvard Business Review and connected with Ulwick, the CEO and founder of Strategyn and became a part of his team from 2005 to 2012. From there Urko founded Reveal Growth Consultants, working mostly with small to midsize B2B companies. The conversation switched to VOC (the Voice of the Customer). The problem with that approach is it tends to focus on products that are already in place. With JTBD the opportunities lie with unmet needs. And in line with that it is important to separate the need from the solution, per Theodore Levitt, because “customers don’t want to buy a drill, they want to buy a hole.” A laser may do a better job than a drill. The customer wants to get the job done! The key is shifting from what we know how to do to what it takes to get the customer’s job done. The #1 reason for product failure is not understanding the customer’s needs. With JTBD the first goal is to discover the customer’s unmet needs. In line with this Urko approaches the customer defining 7 key terms: 1. Innovation 2. Customer need 3. Customer unmet needs 4. Opportunity 5. A Market 6. A Market segment 7. Creativity All terms need to be defined with the customer for innovation to occur. The client team must have a consistent definition of these terms. Innovation is first discovering the customers unaddressed needs and then integrating ideas to address them. THE SEQUENCE IS CRITICAL! The need must be defined separate from any possible solutions. This increases the odds of achieving a breakthrough. Failure to put solutions first can create real problems. The example was given of the cell phone industry switching from analog to digital and being disrupted due to analog leaders focusing on solutions first. This also occurred in the image industry with the switch from film to digital. The flow then is to first discover the customer’s unmet needs then evaluate those needs with the client’s team using concepts such as strategic fit, time to market, relative advantage, etc., in order to win in the market place. Innovation always comes before products in order to avoid being tied to existing products/services, e.g., an accounting consulting firm purchasing a digital security firm since most of their clients had that need. Most growth comes from discovering unmet needs, eliminate phantom needs, and then matching solutions with the important unsatisfied needs. The challenges of product management and innovation are often reflected in the company’s internal politics, diluting the focus on relevancy for the customer. In such situations it’s key to have an objective metric against which one can make good decisions. In other words, use the JTBD approach. JTBD uses market statistics to determine a prioritized list of needs, increasing the odds of success in terms of product development. The discussion may take some time and massaging the metrics give a good starting point rather than, say, the CEO’s pet idea. To get this information the conversation turned to methodology. A simple place to begin is asking customers what they are trying to accomplish...

In this episode Kent Johnson, CEO of Highlights for Children, a family-owned business with a majority of independent Board members, discusses a series of topics ranging from his sudden take-over of the CEO position at age 36 due to the death of the incumbent to how the company started to the different avenues of childhood development Highlights pursues. To compound the situation he actually did not want the position since he was working successfully in biotech. Kent refers to the great mentorship he received from the Board of Directors which helped insure assuming the CEO position would be successful. A real plus was governance in terms of having sat with the Board for 2 years prior. The challenge of juggling a wide range of stakeholder populations was achieved by first focusing on the employee population since they were the main determinants of whether or not Kent would succeed, a key determinant of any leader’s success. As to general traits of being a good CEO Kent felt working hard and a willingness to listen are two key character traits. Kent’s father’s work as a scientist and his mother’s work as a politician working in the community contributed immensely to the foundation needed to succeed as CEO. It provided key lessons in diversity and its value in succeeding in meeting everyone’s needs. Humility is key. Fortunately, people are focused on the mission and avoid major, internal political struggles. To support this Kent will tell people, especially when asking a detailed questions, he just needs to know. His scientific training can creep in because he was trained to question everything…details, details. His training does help growth since promoting experiments is key to finding opportunities. Risk Management! In terms of income, Highlights for Children, is not their major source of income. Zaner-Bloser, professional development for teachers, etc. help create an environment where the organization can succeed especially by marketing to government agencies in order to gain sponsorship for their children. Chaos- and complexity theory come into play because there is a constant balancing act required to keep the company balanced, fresh, and appropriate for the markets they serve. Financially, grounding work in risk management is essential because a sunk-cost frame of mind is needed to determine whether or not continued investment in diversification strategies is essential. In turn, these efforts are grounded in a belief of what they can do for kids that will help them flourish. Consequently, a balance is struck in deciding when it is best to stop a highly-desirable project that is failing to show the necessary return potential. This is especially true as the world moves faster and faster. In line with this speed of business the criticality of maintaining balance in a constantly-changing environment is critical. In other words, Kent has to focus on, “How do we need to change in order to stay relevant?” As a middle-market company managers are expected to help in terms of looking at the outside world and how it is changing along with keeping existing workflows moving forward. This includes managing conflict through rules of engagement, e.g., assume a positive intent when there is conflict, work to provide solutions, examine assumptions, examine clarity of rules, examine possible consequences. This leads to clarity and alignment of goals from the Board to the employee. Managers must “translate” from one level of the organization to another. This alignment is critical especially when working with outside partners. Motivation can be a major task encouraging employees to work on change, stay focused on the problem-at-hand, and maintain respect for each other, i.e., an egoless team — hammer the idea, respect the people. Trust is critical. Debate in a trustworthy manner rather than attack resulting in interpersonal conflict. Conflict and fear crush innovation. Trust and discipline lead to thriving. Inclusion is vital since different...

In this episode I talk with Jim Bruner who works in child development and who draws on his long history of mentorship to develop diversity, specifically combining the arts with technology. We started with Jim introducing the importance of diversity - turning STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math). He and his husband bought a farm and with is half Jim dedicated it to gardening and technology. He realized without diversity technology is a destructive component causing isolation and destruction. With diversity technology can be unifying. He works with anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers to apply diversity to “gardens” of people! This helps with his search for diversity of skill and talent among his students, working to elevate the individual while promoting team spirit and behavior. A big breakthrough occurred when he realized there was benefit to be gained when the mentoring went outside a focused purpose - the children are unique “gardens,” themselves! Children need to be in an environment where they can thrive and grow, realizing for themselves what they can and can’t accomplish. Ask about their dreams, look at their art, etc., and let them talk about it. This helps children understand they don’t need permission to be who they are. The conversation moved into STEM vs STEAM. The arts are critical to every stage of technology because without a sense of wonder and beauty there is no technology. Art is needed to move technology forward. THERE ARE NO SOFT SKILLS - technology moving forward is about people interacting based on mutual respect. It is grounded in creativity. With STEAM children are challenged to push their own limits to solve problems. This turns creativity on, which is art. Learning to do this within a group and build mutual respect is key. With the “A” for Art, STEAM turns STEM into creativity. It’s teaching children to lean through empathy and understanding. One problem mentioned was the movement from “natural philosophy” to “science.” “Natural philosophy” is a frame of mind about connection across all areas of human endeavor which encourages art to be connected to technology - STEAM. On the other hand, removal of art in order to have STEM (as was done in the industrial revolution) risks dehumanizing and fragmenting the individual thus creating problems for and within children. Jim, himself, lives a diverse life, from his farm, Mezzacello (https://mezzacello.org/) where children study food, technology, and learning, to the PAST foundation (https://www.pastfoundation.org/ ) which partners anthropology with science and technology. “We don’t need more kids to work in factories. We need factories that can work with passion and creativity to reach new horizons.” Maurice Sendak in his book, “I don’t care, Pierre,” discusses how a STEM frame of mind leads to demotivation - absence of love. Technology flows from creativity which is forged in art, history, poetry, literature, love, laughter, and tears. People are the beautiful strange attractors that create chaos leading to invention and technology. But what about kids who don’t care? Kids who are outliers? They need mentorship both from adults but also peer-to-peer. They need to be empowered by learning to trust themselves and others. It has to do with vulnerability and dealing with the associated challenges. We discussed how Apollo 13 reflects what is being spoken. (https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo13.html, 13 Factors that Saved Apollo 13) To reflect all this Jim teaches algorithms to children via Tai Chi - 11 movements tied together by a story. He can teach the algorithm to children in 3 weeks! The problem with algorithms arise when they are dedicated to a single purpose, e.g., profits. People then become devises meant only to achieve the goal - their humanity is subtracted. People are multi-dimensional and for children to thrive they need to learn how to explore...

This episode is the first in a series on preparing for the next recession, “Recession Preparation - Processes and Employees.” The entire teamCMC contributes their expertise: • Gary Monti: change management, business analysis/planning, people & politics, project management • John Riley, Agility expert • Jeffrey Cochran, Human Resource expert The conversation was based on a point-counterpoint approach, i.e., which is more significant during a recession, a bad process or a bad employee? For this argument the definition of “recession” provided was, “A shrinkage of sales.” John started the conversation by saying organizations frequently want to cut employees were cut products in preparation for recession. He stressed what is important is to look at the efficiency of your processes and the value to the customer of your products. Consequently, the best place to start in terms of recession is to look at the value stream of your product. Jeffrey responded by starting with the observation that separate from a recession the bad employee is affecting your bottom line. A better employee typically has a compounding effect on the organization by influencing a drop in morale, productivity, and added stress for fellow employees. In line with this, Gary referenced an excellent book, “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,” By Robert Sutton. Jeffrey went on to point out one of the biggest problems with difficult employees is failing to show up for work. The discussion proceeded to talk about the impact absenteeism has on the workplace. The big point regarding this is how organizations will adapt the dysfunction in an effort to keep products or processes moving forward to sustain cash flow. An example was given of how Detroit's Big Three, back in the ’70s when production quality was terrible, argued that Toyota would never catch on in terms of significant sales numbers. The rule at the time was, "you never want to buy a car was manufactured on a Friday or a Monday." The reason being absenteeism was so high. John picked up on that and turn the conversation back towards its impact on processes. He emphasized that with process execution one of most important aspect is retrospectives throughout the product delivery process. During those retrospectives the quality of performance by the team is one of the key elements to be addressed. And one of the key elements in addressing quality is individual team member performance with this issue being addressed directly by fellow team members rather than senior management. The function of senior management is to set the goals and to support the team during execution. The team should be empowered to address whatever it takes to deliver the value to the customer. In other words, the team being very direct with regards to retrospectives conducted on a routine basis is critical for survival during a recession. Vulnerability, then, becomes a key issue because senior management needs to risk turning power over to the team in addition to shouldering responsibility for determining what direction the organization should take. Jeffrey asked an excellent question with regards to owner stepping in and modifying the process in an attempt to adapt to the dysfunction in its present. There is general agreement that this is the case now the company is put it greater risk of failure because senior management is now pulling back ownership of the process by dictating how the team should adapt to the dysfunction. Gary proceeded to point out how power then shifts from senior management to the dysfunctional employee who becomes the tail that's wagging the dog. Once this inappropriate shift of power occurs the company is destabilized to some extent in the risk of failure during the recession goes up accordingly. An example is given of an employee who was guaranteed employment as a condition of her former company being bought out. Feeling bulletproof, the employee took advantage of the...

In this episode I review “Influence People: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade That Are Lasting and Ethical,” written by Brian Ahearn. In addition to influencing people in general, information is provided for those who need to improve their sales cycle. His approach is very practical, laying out key principles and associated acronyms that can be used to practice sharpening you ability to influence people. His overall tone is about helping the read as an entire person, not just one aspect. The work is based on solid research. He boils the information down to 7 key shortcuts which basically are sound principles. They include: 1. Reciprocity - behave in a way that encourages others to relate to you 2. Liking - people want to do business with their friends or people they like 3. Authority - experienced or knowledgable - use it 4. Consensus - when no authority use how groups are moving in a given direction 5. Consistency - channel a person’s consistent behavior in a desirable direction. Be consistent yourself to develop trust. 6. Scarcity - people respond more to what they might lose than they do to what they might gain 7. Unity - people like to relate with people with whom they have a sense of belonging and with whom they may have common experiences Additional tools are presented: ▪ Compare and contrast - set the stage to make it easy for the other person to go in the direction you want, e.g., “This normally is $799 but since you are here I can give it to you at $599.” Another example is given with wine lists. When the wines are listed in decreasing price people buy more because they feel they are being practical by buying a good bottle but one not so expensive. When listed from lowest price to highest people buy substantially lower priced products because they are only seeing an increase in price rather than an opportunity to “save” ▪ Consistency vs authority. Consistency is driven by client history in terms of thoughts, feelings, and actions traditionally going in a specific direction. Authority is used when your expertise legitimately points the person being persuaded in the desired direction. This especially helps when the client is uncertain. ▪ Conformational bias. Present information that is ethical and honest but plays in the direction the other person wants to go. ▪ “Because I said so.” The word “because” allows people to be gracious and help. This works especially well when put in the form of a question, e.g., “Would you please get your report to me by Monday because I have to roll it into a larger report?” If they say “no” you can have a backup position of Wednesday. “How about Wednesday?” Usually people don’t want to say “no” twice in a row so with this approach you increase the odds of getting their report when you actually need it. They have a sense of reciprocity. Decision making and rationality are the next topics he presents. Most decision-making is essentially irrational, with some researchers believing >90% of our decision-making is driving by the unconscious. What you are exposed to and the order in which you are exposed sets the stage for how the decisions will flow. This gets back to the reality people respond more to concern about what they might lose compared to what they might gain. Several examples are given. Brian goes on to give about 15 tips for improving your bottom line. Case studies are then provided, some of which are fascinating and make it worth purchasing the book. This includes: - How Kodak went from having almost 100% of the image market to almost nothing - JCPenny losing 40% of it’s stock value by making changes that failed to take the customer’s wishes into consideration - How Bernie Madoff used the principles in this book unethically to swindle $65 billion - Why Starbucks is so pervasive even though they don’t advertise. What’s their secret? The etiquette for using social media is discussed. Use it to network and connect…don’t start selling right away! The book closes out with...

This episode is an interview with Dr. Katherine Barteck, PsyD, about the differences between counseling and coaching. She starts with definitions of therapy and coaching. Counseling, or therapy, is about taking an in-depth look at what is creating the current problems. The person can benefit from psychotherapy without necessarily having a diagnosis. Simply having the desire to explore one's past is efficient to gain benefits from psychotherapy. Also, the person who lacks a specific diagnosis may be going through a stressful period and needs help in sorting things out. The therapeutic process can be used to directly impact behaviors and business. This can be, at times, an essential component of change management. Gary describes, in line with that, the client he worked with who'd been chronically abused as a child. It's critical when doing this work for the coach to understand when it's time to bring a therapist in. On the flipside, work may be required to perform the basic act, e.g., negotiating with others, which a therapist can help with but where there really is no underlying pathology. Dr. Bartek points out coaching is not a protected medical privilege. If subpoenaed, a coach can be required to reveal details of the relationship in court. The coach can benefit by having discussions within the therapist's office, where privilege does apply. The coach can maintain privilege by generating a list of action items, to do lists, or behaviors that need changed in taking those lists with the client out into the business world where they can be discussed and worked on without referencing the therapeutic process. In the end, what needs to be considered is whether or not the client needs a therapist, a coach, or both along with where the boundaries lie between the client and these professionals. The conversation switch to the differences between how therapy and coaching are framed. In therapy the client is in a protected space where they can open up fully and flesh out their entire frame of mind and associated feelings in order to work on improving. In other words, it is a safe space. The client can safely choose what they want to take to the outside world which is where they would work with the coach. The client can then explore in the outside world and bring the results back to the safety of the therapist office. Coaching, on the other hand, can be more open and more diverse and application because the working assumption is the coaches working with the healthy components of the client. Consequently, a psychotherapist has to be careful when they are coaching to avoid going back into a therapeutic session during the actual coaching engagement. It is important to maintain the distinction between the two. The issue of shame and seeking counseling was brought up. An article, "The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching," by Steven Berglas was discussed. He talks about how important it is to avoid downplaying psychological issues when coaching powerful people. Specifically, there can be prestige associated with an executive having a coach which can enhance his or her sense of grandiosity. Berglas goes on to distinguish between a "problem executive" versus and "executive with a problem." The former is able to be trained to function effectively while the latter is best helped by psychotherapy. Coaching may also be viewed as a way to get simple answers with quick results while therapy typically is more involved and takes a longer period of time to show results. It is important to set expectations accordingly. Gary provided an example where inability to follow through thoroughly with therapy led to hampering of the client's company's performance leading to the eventual sale of the organization. Dr. Bartek went on to talk about two cautions critical for coaches to pay attention to. The first one being the overplaying of behavioral techniques in order to gain quick responses when therapy is more appropriate, and the second being the avoidance...

This episode is an interview with Brittany Dixon of Process for Profit. and continues our look at the relationship between fear and bad habits (see the previous article, Fear and Bad Habits - Give Yourself A Break and/or listen to the previous podcast of the same title) . Specifically, we dive into addressing obstacles fear creates which leads to wasting time, lowered efficiency, and an aimlessness in terms of moving one’s business forward. Brittany is an Operations/Efficiency expert. Brittany went from event organizer to home organizer to business organizer. She found she loved organizing everything "behind the curtain." When she went out on her own she started with a side hustle organizing cluttered homes. Over time, this evolved into helping people organize their businesses. She found that clients strayed from their "zone of genius" and were getting distracted by all the aspects of their business about which they lack familiarity. Brittany emphasizes that simply relying on hustle is insufficient to grow business. Organization is critical. The conversation switched to dealing with resistance and its relationship to Fear and Bad Habits by walking through the 5 basic fears and addressing how Brittany deals with them: 1. Fear of uncertainty in one's world could fall apart leading to rigidity. Brittany addresses this by providing case studies to show the benefits of moving away from the old behaviors. Goals, goals, goals; 2. Fear of being consumed leading to people-pleasing to cover vulnerability. Saying “no” is critical if one is to grow their business. It’s important to be one’s own gate-keeper; 3. Fear of being isolating leading to wanting to do everything and be everything for everyone. Without narrowing down to a specific niche growth is almost impossible. Boundaries are critical; 4. Being riddled with self-doubt leading to way too much busy work and over-explaining instead of believing in themselves and making simple decisions. Working through the fear of success and moving forward is critical; 5. Fear of being clueless leading to just falling apart and being unable to see the big picture. Here is where Brittany works with the client on developing strategic goals…thinking a year out and then choosing tactics that will get to those goals. These individuals need to take a more proactive position rather than reacting to everything. This behavior may be influenced by the jobs they had before going out on their own, i.e., being a hero at work by picking up and reacting to every problem. Working with Brittany will require changing one’s sense of significance and how that is derived. Hustle is not sustainable. Also, being organized helps in determining how best to form relationships that are in your best interest instead of just trying to get relief and engaging in dysfunctional relationships. Organization helps with generating a clear plan along with associated strategies and tactics. We closed out the conversation by Brittany talking about how she has to apply to herself the principles she uses with her clients. To find out more about Brittany and her work helping clients increase pr ofitability through process improvement listen to her podcast, The Process for Profit Show, or go to her website, Process For Profit. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Instagram. She also has a membership site, Hustle To Flow. Need help dealing with complex situations? You can download CMC’s free e-book MINDSET – 5 SIMPLE WAYS TO LOOK AT COMPLEX PROBLEMS and learn how to find a simple vantage point from which you can resolve challenges. Your feedback is important. Choose from the following options: • place a review in iTunes, • click on “leave a comment” below, • send any comments along with your name and the show number to support@ctrchg.com Listen to future episodes for our reply.

In this episode the relationship between fear and bad habits and the importance of going easy on yourself are covered. You may notice that when trying to break a bad habit resolution fades and suddenly you're back to the bad habit maybe even more so than before the resolution. There's a good reason for that in this podcast is going to cover that issue. We will look at the chain of events that goes into the creation of a bad habit with a special focus on how bad habits interlock and are mutually reinforcing, making it difficult to shift to healthier, more constructive behaviors. Bad habits originate in one of five fears which, specifically, are: - fear of instability - fear of vulnerability and being consumed - fear of isolation - fear of not being good enough and getting destroyed - fear of being nothing With the fear of instability the belief that everything in one's world is going to fall apart. This leads to rigid behaviors which in turn leads to a sense of being trapped by the very things one’s trying to save. With the fear of vulnerability and being consume leads to trying to get along with everyone which, when taken to extreme leads to just freezing in place. With the fear of isolation one tries to do everything for everyone in order to dominate the situation to ensure sense of significance and not being left in isolation. One is left feeling burned out from trying to do everything in order to ensure constant recognition. With the fear of not being good enough rather than simply standing up for oneself the urge sets in to give endless explanations, create white papers, and slide into workaholic behavior rather than simply standing up for oneself due to fear of getting destroyed if a stance is taken. With this fear one is ultimately torn apart by trying to do more and more busywork. With the fear of being nothing a blankness can set in which leads to a fragmentation of one's worldview and not being able to see the overall picture. In other words, a sense of cluelessness is present. Ultimately, with this fear a sense of dissolving into nothingness develops. So these fears the result from reacting to situations lead to the creation of projective emotions, more commonly called projections. These comprise: - rage - greed - instinct - desire - jealousy - pride With rage there is the urge to tear people and situations apart, to destroy. With greed there is the urge to consume everything, never getting satisfied, and only wanting more after something has been gained. With instinct a reptilian type of behavior sets in it is a moral and simply focuses on having urges satisfied. Desire is a little more subtle and can be reflected in concerns about societal position, e.g., wanting to live in the right neighborhood, have the right job, have the children go to the right schools, worrying about one's image, seeing one's children as simply as an extension of themselves, etc. Jealousy is a projection of feelings of inadequacy. The individual is always wanting what others have and can harbor a deep resentment when the issue is actually all about not taking care of oneself in a healthy way. Pride comprises the projection of a sense of superiority over all others, treating them like objects to be manipulated on a chessboard. A tremendous insensitivity is present which, when combined with greed, becomes hugely destructive. So far, everything that is been described from the initial fears to the reactive emotions is inwardly focused. This negative energy, though, ends up being thrown into the outside world through the creation of negative, or karmic, behaviors. Karma, is commonly misunderstood as "what goes around comes around." This is not necessarily true. Many evil people die without experiencing the repercussions of their behaviors. The better way to view karma is as a negative behavior put out into the world the takes on a life of its own in an unpredictable manner. Karma comprises four elements: - actualization - execution -...

This podcast covers Chapter 12, “Small Steps To An Agile Strategy” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. The authors start the chapter by stating a good Flow workplace is one that challenges the idea of big strategy and grand plans. The new method is to build strategy from small steps. How to achieve that will be covered in this chapter. The first problem pointed out is that the core elements that people focus on in strategy and planning are necessary but nowhere near sufficient for success. This necessary-but-not-sufficient problem is typical of the digital world. Many intangible factors, often intangible, have a significant influence but are difficult for traditional strategist to grasp. An old style of marketing is used, e.g., "Build the platform and market the hell out of it." The key problem is the platform is seen as a technology stack rather than a relationship nexus. So why are the issues associated with platforms so interesting to the Flow frame-of-mind? First, platforms invented modern agility, providing the ability to roam into any space choosen with a lot of activity taking place on the network along with having the ability to update with high-frequency and low-cost. Also, products are digital, which means there is no conventional supply chain to manage. Second platforms are almost impossible to plan and this is really critical because execution needs a huge amount of iteration and a commitment to real-time executive direction. For example nobody can say what it will cost to be successful at developing the ecosystem of third-party actors. Consequently, platforms force designers to take small steps. These hundreds of incremental steps requires Flow. Business often gives the impression that there is one big solution, e.g., a new platform, or a single answer to complex problems. This is just wrong. Success in High-Performance Teams In delivery terms, the economy is shifting towards small. Good leaders recognize this and see the critical gains lie in the margins, in the detail. That's why in Flow, work units are only ever a maximum of two days long. These are the micro-units where you can get 1% gains to scale up into something significant. Interestingly enough, incremental changes that scale can apply to strategy as well as to delivery. The short cycle times of two days or less force people to interact more which is good for both productivity and quality. The authors feel this is superior to long planning cycles which can drift away from providing the value required to meet the customer's needs. Small Steps to a Big Platform One problem with setting digital strategy is that many people get the core ideas of agility and scale wrong. With the digital transformation the dominates the agile world companies seek network effects where there is little disruption caused by the platform. The stability or lack of disruption by the platforms is supposedly created through: - open APIs - two-sided or multisided markets - network effects - cloud infrastructure The authors view this is flawed because: 1. Great platforms exist without having an open API 2. The idea of two-sided and multisided markets feel superfluous 3. Network effects are powerful but rare, e.g., Facebook 4. There's nothing special about Cloud services, all companies have access to Cloud infrastructure The real power of platforms lies in the ecosystems that grow around the successful ones. This is a real nightmare for traditional strategists because success lies at the other end of intangible investments in relationships, promotion, content, and likability. Services with no allegiance to the platform can exist on that platform thrive and do well and benefit the platform service at the same time, for example book arbitrage on Amazon services. Customers may pay more after successful in finding what they need. The successful companies are...

This podcast covers Chapter 11, “Broadening Your Personal Development Goals” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. I would have to say if I had a favorite chapter so far this might be it! To quote from the authors, "Flow stands for empowerment. Real empowerment puts responsibilities onto your shoulders. It gives you more liberty, more uncertainty and more need to challenge yourself to grow. You are in charge of more than you realized." The authors feel that Flow is in stark contrast to collaborative platforms that they feel distort people's views of assets and values, e.g., Atlassian's Jira and Confluence. They tend to respectively be perfect fits for obsessive project managers who want to keep order or want to bury information so nobody has to look at it again. Essentially they are document silos. A better approach is the use of Walls with Post-Its so Flow can flourish with Kanban. They promote personal development and real growth for three reasons: 1. The development of strong, personal boundaries in emergent situations because while it's important to be open one must know their limits; 2. The developments of emotional resilience in uncertain environments, a trait critical for shaping boundaries; 3. Mastering the ability to be a quick study, learning new rules fast along with people's strengths and weaknesses in doing all this while maintaining a compassionate frame of mind. This is far more important than learning how to do brain dumps of documents. In order to improve value you need to focus on the personal development goals of the people whose role is to create it. As Fin and Hayden discussed the importance of personal goals they are talking essentially about how to thrive in a complex environment that's bordering on chaos. This essentially means learning how to seek and implement value when in the state of some level of uncertainty and incomplete information. Doubt becomes important because it promotes inquiry. Simply put, Flow is caught not taught. It's all about capturing what you can from social interaction in a good workplace. With everyone having personal growth goals in behaving this way collective intelligence grows and becomes more powerful. The remainder of the chapter the authors relate the above-mentioned principles to five issues: 1. How your organization, wrongly, expects you to learn; 2. How to develop your personal learning objectives: 3. Thinking about your learning style; 4. How roles are changing in work; 5. Developing a personal learning journal. Let's flesh these out in a little more detail. 1. Against Traditional Organizational Learning The authors talk about an organizational contradiction that is best captured in a statement made by one of their colleagues, Dan Pontefract, "All your school-life you are taught the value of thinking freely. Then you go to work!" Some conformity is essential but over regulating behavior is counterproductive. The key to learning is always having a focus on increasing value in order to increase Flow. Organizations hurt themselves by focusing on placing people within functions having process-driven frameworks. This fits with a Agile approach where there is a focus on process objectives and their metrics. 2. Developing Your Personal Learning Objectives The goal here is the development of emotional resilience so that healthy, flexible boundaries can be established when in the state of uncertainty. This is critical if one is to keep the focus on adding customer-centric value. In complex environments there is a constant learning -related pressure because one never knows everything, and never will. Consequently, it's important to develop learning objectives centered around putting the uncertainty to work in terms of growth, inventiveness, and being smarter. This is where doubts can really help by provoking thinking in terms of seeking out...

This podcast covers Chapter 10, “The Customer Feedback Wall” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. The Flow Customer Feedback Wall is an additional powerful tool for bringing different parts of the business together in search of customer success. It is a venue for everybody to observe customer opinions and to participate in discussions about what has value for them. That helps focus on the personalized approach of "market-of-one." THREE ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS OF CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY authenticity is critical inappropriately representing the customer voice. This can be achieved through the use of: - Customer labs; - The Hack Box (for internal entrepreneurs); - Awareness of SaaS (Software as a Service) developments, especially their metrics. Customer labs literary comprise an area where customers can work and experiment with the design team to generate new products, features, and product ideas. The Hack Box is all about inviting individuals and teams to experiment on how best to bring a new product idea forward and test in iterate demonstrably value-adding features for customers. The SaaS metrics are founded on the basic proposition that any customer-centric platform will improve the potential of the customer to succeed in some way. It turns pain points into strengths. One area in which there is a heavy focus is "churn.Turnover metrics are monitored to look for red flags. An example is measuring the growth of inbound inquiries. THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK WALL the big advantage of the customer feedback wall is it brings customers closer to the business. It can be used to direct customer feelings to any department or team and/or to unite teams around life customer concerns. An example is given on page 222. There are nine columns comprising the following: 1. Identifying the pain points; 2. Prioritizing the backlog of work; 3. Sizing, evaluation and valuation; 4. No change required; 5. Assigned to digital team; 6. Assigned to core team; 7. Assigned to process change; 8. Back to the portfolio wall; 9. Informing customers. The way this works is the team would first identify customer pain points and then prioritize the backlog of work based on the intensity of that pain and the frequency with which it occurs. The sizing, evaluation and valuation wall serves two purposes. The first is evaluating the impact of the customer pain point while the second is, if possible assign a valuation for that pain point. The no change required column addresses pain points about which the team cannot handled in it needs to be sent to senior management for evaluation. The assigned to digital team refers to pain points that can be fixed by the team managing the company's online presence and sales channels. When there needs to be a change to the platform in order to address a particular pain point this is where it is assigned to the core team. When the pain point highlights the fundamental flaw in the work processes then that pain point is the sign to whomever is responsible for process changes. The back to the portfolio wall addresses issues that erroneously have been made in strategic thinking and that particular pain point needs to go back to executives. The informing customers column addresses just that, i.e., keeping the customer informed of any and all progress being made and doing that on a frequent, routine basis. Here are the link for previous chapter reviews: episode 0037 of Wrestling with Chaos. the Introduction, The Value Seeking Enterprise, and Chapter 1, Talking About Business Agility: episode 0042 of Wrestling With Chaos. For Chapter 2, The Customer In The Agile Business. episode 0043 of Wrestling With Chaos. For Chapter 3, Disrupting The Cadence of Work episode 0045 of Wrestling With Chaos. For Chapter 4, Taking Advantage of Visible Work episode 0046 of Wrestling With Chaos, For Chapter 5, Anti-Project Thinking and...

In this podcast I give my reflections on attending my first Women in Agile Meetup - one of two men to attend. The podcast is divided into two broad categories: - what I will call the human condition, and; - gender differences First off, it was a very valuable experience. The presentation was good and the experience, overall, was positive. I am glad I attended. The presentation was on emotional intelligence and team safety which the speaker felt was not complete unless vulnerability was included. It got my attention because vulnerability is one of the number one topic that I have to address in change management. In line with that, one of the elements that struck me was talking about Brene Brown and her work on shame. What was interesting about this was how the topic was treated as if it was relatively new in terms of developing an understanding of how shame influences our lives and creates problems as well as what we need to do in order to be healthier. The energy was definitely positive around this part of the presentation. I found this quite refreshing. For me, though, the concern that I have is that while people are willing to talk about vulnerability when it comes down to risking being in that state when at work and when doing Agility it can get challenging. Frankly, my experience is most people actually do not want to be vulnerable. Consequently, the leader has to risk being the first to display vulnerability in order to set an example to encourage others to do the same. While being able to talk about vulnerability in public at work, in my experience, it's so tempting to just want to hide and pretend everything is okay. The positive expressions when the speaker encouraged being frank about vulnerability and shared some of her own experiences led to an increase in the energy level in the room. What I thought when seeing this is that these women could put together a really good team! So why is this so important? Agility is the child of chaos and complexity theory. In those situations rules have fallen apart and the only thing that allows for moving forward is the team making commitments, locking arms, and risking formulating the best way to move forward to solve the customers problems. Willingness to be vulnerable is that the core of success when it comes to agility. From my perspective, though, the Agile community is a bit naïve in terms of understanding the need to work with people in developing an understanding that working from a position of vulnerability does not mean weakness or submission. Rather, it simply means being fully available to work with your teammates. It takes time to shift the culture so the people feel safe being vulnerable. I now want to move my attention to what I view as differences based on gender. Again, these are simply observations and are not meant to be judgmental of either males or females. The first thing that stood out was a difference between meetings where in terms of numbers males dominated versus this meeting were females dominated. I found I sat back and listened, which was appropriate for this being my first attendance at this meet up. However, there was something deeper which was simply being outnumbered in terms of gender. I found myself feeling comfortable being quiet and I reflected on it. What I saw was simply being out numbered gender -wise created some discomfort and encourage me to just stay quiet. The thought that came to mind, then, was "Is this what women experience when in meetings where they are outnumbered by the number of men present?" But then I had another thought with regards to why women would be quiet in male-dominated meetings - gender inequality. It is probably best represented by the fact that for every dollar a man makes a woman only makes $0.87. When that difference is viewed as normal from my perspective that's when a prejudice sets in that intrinsically puts women down. For myself, if I were in that situation for a prolonged period of time I would be at risk...

This podcast covers Chapter 9, “Reinventing Roles” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. Flow is based on a belief in multidisciplinary people, not just multidisciplinary teams. This is critical when practicing business agility in order to avoid the confusion associated with the approach of one person-one discipline. By having multidisciplinary people the boundaries (maybe the walls) that exist within an organization can be dissolved to some degree. Critical to the process of developing multidisciplinary people is removal of the gap between product managers (market-oriented) and product owners (IT-based). This is critical because if a digital transformation is to be effective people need to transform how they see themselves at work and how they performed. A good example of what I am trying to say comprises people that work in social media. Those individuals need to be effective across many disciplines. Limiting them to only social media effectively is under using their capabilities. Simply put, role rigidity and refusing to let people develop fungibility decreases value-seeking behavior. The authors walk through the traditional waterfall approach for the creation of a product, starting with requirements being generated under the product manager, movement through business analysis, and then the creation of an IT project. This leads to poor integration because each group tends to have its own frame of mind which is not coordinated with the other frames of mind. Also, there's the issue of rigidity in terms of how each department sees its function. What is really needed in an enterprise is for business goals to be adaptive and iterative so that IT can deliver products consistent with the previous chapters we've seen in this book. The key to accomplishing this is working in small units as mentioned in chapter 8. Essentially there is constant iterative experimentation with development-testing, development-testing, rolling out many deliverables on an almost continual basis. An example is provided of creating a customer survey to understand customer needs and specific segments to help shape feature design. Gamification with the social media tools such as Twitter can speed up the process of developing the survey in a rapid, iterative manner that stimulates insights and innovation. Working this way and releasing updates frequently shifts the goal from "understanding customer needs and specific segments" to "a snapshot of customer commentary to key product design fresh." This behavior requires a balancing act weighing the benefits of speed against comprehensiveness and depth. So, the question is would you prefer to secure value after a few days or week and build on that through multiple iterations or would you rather wait a long period of time before releasing the finished survey. The allowance for the development of adaptive business goals the flex throughout the creation process is superior to holding off the release of value for weeks if not months. The key to all this is having a product owner who champions flexibility which is substantially different than traditional product management roles. The traditional approach may be difficult for the product owners to have a clear idea as to exactly what value is needed. This is true in Scrum as well as in Waterfall approaches. Traditionally the product owner sits at the IT-Business divide and focuses on the generation of personas while having very little insight into marketing in the customer. So, while the use of Scrum may unblock some of the old Waterfall methods problems are still present. In going to the other extreme and using MVPs (minimum viable product) can create more suspicion because it can encourage minimal commitment to deliver a minimum viable product. The goal is to have developers who understand the business and can work with the changing...

This podcast covers Chapter 8, “Value, The Anti-Plan and Testing” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. The chapter opens with obstacles to the creation of value: 1. Searching to save costs rather than creating value; 2. Failing to truly understand value until we fully understand what customers will buy, enjoy, and share; 3. Planning too much and not testing enough. The authors turned their focus to the issues associated with planning, where planning is inappropriately used as a quality control tool. In the end this can create too much rigidity and planning can be viewed as taking too much time. Testing is then used to take up the slack which, consequently, puts testing in a poor light is a compensation for value-based activities. What works better is the socialization of the whole process where a iteration and testing culture can keep the work flowing in a very public way. This is a basic underpinning of business agility. Something is needed beyond the waste reduction associated with Lean and Agile. Those approaches focus on efficiency rather than value. With Lean it's the straight out reduction of cost and waste while with Agile situation is vague because there are no clear directions as to how to actually increase value. The important point here is that efficiency should not be confused with value creation. Said differently, throughput is not the same as value. Value-seeking behaviors based solely on the creation of features and functions that create a better customer experience. Visualization of processes fosters social interaction which increases the probability of success. In order to be flexible, and move quickly unit testing is a key component of Flow. This pushes the approach of constantly testing at as low-level as possible in order to increase the frequency with which features are delivered. This is in contrast to having a big plan with big tests at the end of development. What is critical is for the entire organization to understand their state in the creation of quality product rather than viewing it as some activity left for the IT department. The shorter the timeframe between testing events the better, e.g., being able to test product every 12 hours in response to micro trends. The authors propose taking this frame of mind to other areas of the company such as marketing and distribution. A good example of this is same-day delivery for products ordered online. Some costs associated with this are incurred because of the speed with which changes being implemented, e.g., friction between team members and stakeholders as they redefine their roles and personal boundaries as well as the IT department working with other areas of the organization. This could be applied marketing by furthering the process of segmentation which would, for example, allow for faster, more specific A/B testing. Also, there is the need for interdisciplinary training for the team members. One aspect of workflow that can inhibit this process is the use of traditional waterfall project management where projects are planned for and approved many months or years prior to implementation. This frustrates the approach of using small unit testing to quickly adjust the teams approach in order to meet the customer's needs. The authors provide a 12 point summary of their conversation with Alan Murphy regarding quality, testing, and value: 1. Traditional testing suites bite off more than they can chew; 2. Code often gets put into production too early; 3. Difficulties associated with the word "done;” 4. Small unit testing brings IT closer to other areas of the business to the benefit of the customer; 5. Unit testing can be coupled to just-in-time acceptance tests; 6. Unit testing is really what makes DevOps work; 7. Units of work should always be the smallest breakdown possible; 8. Good practice involves a broad coverage of...

This podcast covers Chapter 7, “The Agile C-Suite” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. If you follow my podcast you'll know this is one of my favorite chapters because I'm all about whether or not senior management aligns with what it takes for the team to get the work done by practicing servant-leadership with the team, turning power and resources over to the team so they can get the job done. This is critical because in complex situations, which essentially is what Flow is about, the typical organizational pyramid gets turned on its head because it's the people in the trenches that are actually executing. They are the ones closest to the customer and closest to the work. So in terms of solving problems as effectively and efficiently as possible power needs to be turned over to the team so that they can make on the spot decisions and keep on moving forward with the solution. The authors referenced a recent study showing that lack of executive accountability was one of the big corporate risk factors. Specifically they list four awful consequences of bad executive decisions: 1. Wasted resources; 2. More pressure on people to perform under constraint because resources are being wasted; 3. People disengaging because they know their work has no value, and; 4. Trouble innovating because there are too few resources and the feeling that, “Well, we tried new things in the past and they never went anywhere.” A way to remedy these problems is to have an Executive Portfolio Wall. It’s a wall where the executives use Post-It notes to show their frame of mind, what they are thinking, how they want to move forward, etc. This has three benefits associated with it: 1. The team can compare what executives are putting up on the Executive Portfolio Wall with the other walls associated with Flow. They can see how many resources are getting wasted and they can change course. They can put things right and specifically this leads into; 2. Seeing the imbalance of resource allocation. They can course correct the organization ensuring that work flows into the right goals, and; 3. As they get close to the teams they get to see emerging areas of activity that are covered by their goals. They can see areas where mavericks have introduced innovation in an attempt to create change. This is referred to as gold dust. I would tend to agree although I would say you have to be careful because you can get cowboys and cowgirls who just want to do things only because they're different, which could end up being a distraction. Frankly, there has to be a commitment to some experimentation if innovation is going to occur. The next section in Chapter 7 is titled Unfreezing Middle-Management, which is a really good term. In my change management, and program and project management experience middle-management has one of the most difficult positions because they can just get frozen in a position where those above are not releasing sufficient resources and power as well as not listening while those below can take advantage of the disorientation their middle managers are experiencing. By having the Executive Portfolio Wall middle managers get a chance to comment on the relative importance of the executive goals as well as the adequacy of what they're willing to allocate in order to achieve those goals. In other words, it allows for a shift in dialogue that makes the conversation between executives and middle managers more robust. Senior managers also get to see how what they put on the Executive Portfolio Wall is the fountainhead for the beginning of Flow. The entire hierarchy can see the connectivity between what the executive portfolios comprise and how that rolls down to the specific goals that they are addressing. By having the Executive Portfolio Wall there are five benefits: 1. Listing the executives’ main enterprise goals; 2. Listing...

In today's podcast we have a wide-ranging discussion about Women in Agile and Agility itself with Carina Silfverduk, an Agile Practice Lead at CAS. The basis being creating abundance in business through compassion, empathy, and discipline. Carina leads the local chapter of Women in Agile, working at the national level with the Executive Sponsors Natalie Warnert and Deema Dajani. Carina opened our discussion stating that men are welcome since this is a group focused on maximizing diversity in the creation of better solutions. The group is also meant to provide a safe space for women to seek support and grow with others. Women in Agile provides that support through three programs: 1. Launching New Voices: Providing mentors in learning how to speak publicly 2. Conference Allyship: Women in Agile connect with other groups sponsoring conferences 3. Seed Local Communities: this provides support in the creation of local chapters and meet ups The main concern of the group right now is promoting women in STEM careers especially since numbers have been dropping off the last four or five years. The conversation switched to diversity with regards to implied white, male privilege versus being a woman. An example was provided of a woman researcher with a PhD leading a meeting where she was the only woman present and it was assumed she would take care of the notes as well as making sure appropriate refreshments were present. There is also the issue of women appearing "ladylike" when it comes to emotional expression, e.g., when a man is forceful he is considered to be a "leader," while if a woman shows the same emotional expression she is at risk for being considered "bitchy." These implied biases can be quite damaging to an organization since they blind those doing the hiring to a pool of talent that can add to the organizations diversity which, again, can lead to better more effective problem-solving. From a risk perspective there is also the issue when failing to hire for diversity of creating a blind spot where major problems develop on projects and the team as well as senior management are caught unaware, much to the disappointment of the customer. Gender bias is one of many cognitive biases that knowingly or unknowingly contribute to failure or inability to achieve the maximum amount of success possible under the circumstances. Carina referenced Ash Coleman, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Credit Karma, when speaking with a group of interns. In a previously attended conference, Ms. Coleman spoke regarding the decrease in product performance when diversity is not taken into consideration. Examples were given of products that failed miserably, products that were created by all-white, male teams, e.g., facial recognition. Multiple, diverse frames of mind are needed when working on product creation based on market segmentation. This includes career, cultural, and life experience diversity in addition to gender diversity. Jazz was used in the conversation as a metaphor for the power of diversity when working in an agile environment when addressing problems that have not been solved before. Jazz musicians bring their various frames of mind as well as the discipline they learned working with various chordal systems. The artist's experiment with different frames of mind while they're actually performing, challenging each other to "keep up" and work in an integrated way so that the customer (audience) has a pleasant experience. Doug McCullough, the CIO for the city of Dublin, Ohio, was also mentioned because he believes if everyone in the room is in agreement then some of those individuals are probably redundant and, there's potential for missing key components associated with solving the problem. Also, there’s the need to be comfortable with discomfort when maximizing the diverse talent present on a team. Also, the need for self-doubt in order to leave room for team member’s thinking is critical when doing product development. This leads to...

This podcast covers Chapter 6, “Creating Value-Seeking Behaviour” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. This chapter answers the question, "How do we seek value is continuous activity without a spreadsheet, value proposition or a conventional ROI?" This is done by going deeper into the Flow Value Stack introduced in the Introduction. The key is weaving value into everyday activities rather than being a separate event. The importance of how a customer is viewed along with the corresponding segmentation is critical for success. Innovation alone is insufficient. The authors provide as an example the TV industry in the United States and its disappearance, losing dominance to the Japanese, who eventually lost dominance to the Koreans. This loss of dominance occurred for two reasons: 1. The Japanese were better at focusing on continuous learning in semiconductor manufacturing while the Americans focused on innovation; 2. The Americans drove for excellence in image quality which led to a high degree of breakdown while the Japanese focused on optimizing the technology they had, leaving fewer breakdowns. The lesson here is to look for optimization across a matrix of all the activities rather than driving one component to perfection. In Flow one looks to see how the matrix of all the activity involved in bringing the product to market and servicing customers can be best optimized. The approach of Value Optimization Analysis is introduced. This is a level above traditional value stream analysis. In value stream analysis the reduction of waste in a given process is assumed to increase value while in value optimization analysis one questions, “Why are we doing this process? Is this the best way to create value in a balanced way?" The authors go on to refer to tools that we introduced in Chapter 10, e.g., The Customer Feedback Wall, but for now they give a list of 16 questions that can be used over a three month period to conduct a value review by the team to see whether or not the right processes are being used in order to add value for the customer. Questions range from, "How many customer feedback issues have been dealt with and how can we classify them?" To, "Are enough of our products and features contributing to customer success?" The results from discussing questions such as these and others are placed on a Flow Value Wall where trends can be observed as to whether or not value is increasing, staying the same, or decreasing. While observing these trends can chose the value of performance in the long run what is key is to learn how to use this information to optimize value on a day-to-day basis. Remember, the goal is to maintain a continuous flow of innovation that can be tested with the customer. The authors take to task the traditional use of the phrase "value proposition." Rather than something that can be stated in one sentence or a single statement they see it as something that is much more complex and encompassing the ranges across the entire customer experience. It is open-ended and continuous. This leads asking two key questions: 1. How can I be sure that my work-in-progress and project investment are adding value to customers in a balanced or optimized way? 2. What initiatives can we develop to expand our markets as new technologies arise in new needs become evident? This chapter focuses on the first question. SEEKING VALUE WITHOUT WRITING VALUE PROPOSITIONS As mentioned in previous chapters, is not only inventing new products but also adapting to system changes necessary to innovate in a timely manner. Consequently it is quite important that collective intelligence is used to stay on target for achieving goals through a continuous flow of activities in the work units. All work is interrelated which is essential for Flow to be effective in that one is taking business...

This podcast covers Chapter 5, “Anti-Project Thinking and Business Agility” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. This chapter argues that Agile techniques could be improved by moving away from Epics and User stories to Flexible Business Goals, Areas of Work, and Units of Work. The reason for this is workplaces change with regards to technology and market dynamics. The situation is highly complex with multiple intangible assets such as relationships with customers. There also is the vast array of digital assets that come into play along with multiple interfaces presenting different messages or incentives. This means a vast amounts of data come from various sources. To compound the situation companies are faced with the prospect of doing multiple new things all the time which the authors refer to as "atomization", which fragments old value chains into hundreds of interrelated units of work that make up matrix innovation. Traditional and agile ways of work cannot cope with this level of novelty because they are built on replicability, i.e., doing the same task multiple times. This is where Flow comes into play. An example is provided using Patty Power Betfair, a gambling institution in Dublin, Ireland. The deals with more than 3.5 billion API requests every day and handles up to 30 million transactions daily. This is a circumstance where the flow philosophy is superior to project management. For success, it is critical to prioritize goals over Epics and User Stories. Goals are defined as flexible statements of what a good outcome of work should look like. These goals are broken down into areas of work and then units of work each of which have their own specific goals. Working in this manner and monitoring performance allows for quick adjustments early in order to continue producing value. This approach epitomizes the Business Agile mindset. By atomizing the work the mystery is removed from dealing with such monolithic endeavors as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. The atomization of work into small work packages allows for maximum flexibility in terms of necessary changes based on immediate performance feedback. Working in this manner is the antithesis of traditional project management with its work breakdown structure (WBS). This essentially is the Waterfall method. The Agile approach provided some improvement with the Epics and Stories, but these Epics and Stories are delivered in Sprints that come together in periodic Scrums which are supervised by Scrum Master. Sprints have their own problems because work progresses for a period of time before determining whether or not it integrates with the work that other individuals are doing. Reworked and delays occur which encourages people to go off and work on other tasks causing a subsequent collapse of the culture which leads to more problems. Epics and Stories have their own problem, i.e., the product owner becomes a stand-in for the customers. Flow goes beyond this by having a different cultural perspective centered on interaction and collective intelligence. The authors do note the formal project management techniques are appropriate when physical materials and multiple parties are involved, e.g., construction. With intangible products the situation is different because a consistent flow of innovations may be required to provide services and products that are unique to various customers. Because the work is not constrained is in a physical situation, e.g., construction, codesign of work is possible. Value seeking behavior is prioritized in an environment where goals and work codesign rule. A key aspect of Flow is keeping work fluid so that battles do not break out, the kind of battles that occur when a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is being defined in a large organization. With Flow there is a focus on fluidity...

This podcast covers Chapter 4, “Taking Advantage of Visible Work” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. This chapter deals with introducing visible, observable, work. This is the cornerstone for new organizational culture. It provides a framework for collective intelligence and matrix innovation which requires many granular decisions which everyone can see. By having a wall with Post-Its everyone can see the decision points and play a key role based on their know-how. A key component of Flow is social interactions shape knowledge and support decisions. Doing the work visually supports these interactions and addresses the complexity of projects in a threefold manner: - first off, likes complex anyway and there is no way of getting around - complexity is more easily managed when an approach is used that allows for collective intelligence rather than hierarchies and plans - this can be accomplished using walls and Post-It’s. An example is provided as to how Samsung one about creating the Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) screen. Two major goals of no backlight and better color saturation were broken down into 50 major problem areas. In turn, these problem areas were broken down into hundreds of problem statements which ended up producing thousands of smaller problems which were essentially viewed as goals which needed to be achieved. This example was used as an analogy for how Flow works, i.e., instead of problem statements goal statements are used to direct the construction of areas of work and units of work. Addressing these problems visually is superior to creating a grand plan. Visualization and social interaction helps keep everyone on board. Visualization and smaller units of work are effective tools for mastering complexity. The team is free to develop its own culture and interactions that are appropriate for solving the problems. An interesting point that is made is that many people have emotional intelligence but they lack emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is the ability to stand up for ideas one believes in. Visualization helps people develop emotional resilience. The reason is people can actually see how the work is progressing, or not, which helps them look at the situation in a straightforward manner and develop a collective intelligence. The Walls with the Post-It's create venues where discussions can occur that promote the resilience. With this approach risk and issues receive greater exposure. These walls essentially become a visual documentation of the organizations learning. The authors point out that by having visual manifestation of work it's easy for everyone to observe the work-in-progress to get an idea of how well the project is moving forward. This is especially important when a lot of the work is being performed is brand-new. It is important to have a wall for the various frames-of-mind appropriate for the project, e.g., the customer innovation wall, and appreciation wall, an executive portfolio, the customer feedback wall, etc. This is referred to as extreme visualization. The chapter concludes with the steps required to implement extreme visualization are: 1. Sufficient wall space. The corridor that everyone uses is a great space. 2. Anticipate resistance. Coaxing executives to participate can be one of the most difficult aspects of the work. Regardless, it is good start with a customer wall and an executive portfolio wall. 3. Adaptation. See if you can find a pressing project that can serve as a focal point to begin practicing extreme visualization. This will encourage maximum involvement. 4. Research. Customer walls, for example, may require social media research or examination of existing files in order to populate the wall. Likewise, for an executive portfolio wall data from all projects needs to be...

In this podcast I interviewed James Rores, founder of the Floriss Group and who is a consultant who specializes as a growth multiplier by practicing and teaching sales as a leadership competency - essentially sales transformation. We discuss Sales, business growth, and dealing with recessions. He started his career working with venture-backed groups, learning how to sell items people didn't know existed for problems they did not know they had. What became transformational was his realization is inside life had to match his outside life. He set out on a path of personal transformation. Learning to live with vulnerability while pushing forward to be successful was a key lesson learned if he was to achieve his goal of creating change. The conversation shifted to a very key question, “When do people buy?" Answer, "When they are willing to change." So, instead of focusing on the transaction good salesperson focuses on determining where the prospect "is" with regards to willingness to make the change. Is their willingness to change large enough and does it align with the product or service the salesperson is bringing to the table. This context James believes everyone has something to sell, e.g., apparent convincing a child to wear a bike helmet when it isn't cool. It is similar to an IT unit selling their ideas/products internally. The challenge is creating a conversation which supports exploring whether or not the product or service is valuable for the prospective client. If the opportunity is not present then the salesperson needs to have the courage to move on. In order to be fully present to see if that conversation can be created is critical to move away from thinking about what one can do (this is especially important for organizations overall) to thinking about the "why" that is driving the buyer to consider a purchase. Selling the "what" (the specific product) is a misdirection. It’s determining what the "want" is that is motivating the buyer which needs to be determined and connected with. The challenge can be present when objections get in the way of making the connection, e.g., having the child see for themselves it's best to wear the bike helmet when they initially don't feel it's very cool, e.g., showing them that if they have a concussion they won't be able to engage in all the other activities they enjoy. It all revolves around the question, "Why change?" Essentially, this means an authoritative approach will fail. In other words, it's better for a manager to work with the employee to show how it's in their best interest to make the needed change rather than use the weight of their authority to force it on the employee. James presses home the important point that leadership is earned if effective change is to be brought out through the sales process. The conversation shifted to the next recession and how to maintain a growth frame of mind. A delicate balancing act is required between the growth and preserving what's already in place. James responded by saying it's important to always maintain a curiosity even during difficult times. This is the path to change. He goes on to say that there are two ways we can change: - have it forced upon us due to complacency and have decisions forced upon us while in crisis, or; - walk the path of curiosity so the decisions can be made with clarity. This is the path to growth. Making decisions based on curiosity even when times are difficult is the key to growth. Market leaders have cultures built around innovation which is based on curiosity. This led to a discussion focusing on culture and its relationship to recessions. This included the mission statement (the customer and their problem that needs solved) and the vision statement (our internal goals and how we plan to reach them). Leaders must have the ability to see what's on the horizon and plan accordingly. This means finding a balance between having an abundance-oriented frame of mind while being...