The Agilist's Guidebook
PURPOSE: Share the research I am carrying out with all so that they can reuse a few of my conclusions and workout the Challenges. VISION: Build up a body of knowledge (BoK), KNOWLEDGE TREE - GUIDEBOOKS, For all Agilist’s. MISSION: Pursue building all the discoveries on a periodic basis to focus on the Business Transformation challenges and disseminate knowledge with Agilist’s.
Saturday, 15 October 2022
Saturday, 1 October 2022
The Product Owner Guidebook
To all my well-wishers, connection, readers and followers!!
You have been upholding me so far in all my endeavors. Without all of your input, recommendations, and guidance, it would be difficult to achieve book writing work.
I am able to compile my fifth book; this book will launch in December. To feed our observation to the publisher, please recommend which book cover expresses remarkably attractive & appealing.
</> Please choose A or B or C
Many thanks for your kind guidance and support
Wednesday, 2 February 2022
EGO trapped
Coaching & Mentoring tips:
Saturday, 11 December 2021
Why I am not enthusiastic to support you?
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” — H.E. Luccock
What we have learn why people do not collaborate in initiatives?
When the team is performing in the higher unknown unknown area, the only means we have is to deal with the unknown factors, which is through collaboration and experimentation. We co-create the solution with many teams.
This is one of the dominant issues in most of the teams in today’s organization, specifically in legacy enterprise.
Why so?
From what we have witnessed, there are a few top issues
Tribe leader Anurag is a passionate leader who has been holding this position for a long time. This tribe is one of the essential for the banking application stacks team that is managing. He wants to succeed in this role. He has grown in the last few years on the corporate ladder.
Missing compelling purpose: In his tribe, 15 squads are working on diverse projects and products. The conflict among these squads is very high. Many coaches are engaged with this tribe to improve the ways of working. Customer complaints are high. Anurag is not amenable to dealing with the reality. He is not comfortable facing it. He is a bold leader but not equipped for collaborative ways of working.
Our coaches were helping Anurag and his product owners to do a workshop with a different setup to ensure collaboration elements become norms in this tribe. They tried such attempts for more than 6 months to make this habit norms. It worked to convey a unified message to all the teams consistently. There are fallbacks but right persuasion the unified message came back to routine.
One major point, we realize, is that an obvious, compelling purpose for the transformation is one of the major causes we bring out from our many conversations with many team members. Team members were not finding any reason to collaborate.
The Leadership team is excessively busy with their meetings, so no time to connect with the Squad members. There is no common platform or any cadence to talk about progress. Open communication with all the team members was a significant issue.
Though Scrum events are going on like rituals, there is something missing. Team members are not able to connect to all the different releases and their actual benefits. The demos are not connected among teams as a result, team members do not feel why they should be part of the tribe! Most of the leadership teams are showing emotional outbursts as the pressure to delivery is there. The shared purpose is that one of the items is pending for a long.
One size fitting was another issue! Other tribes are doing certain practices, so “cut and paste” those practices is a failed attempt. Team members are not owning, as it is not their solution. It does not resonate with the team members. The leadership team is asking why there is no result coming as the new approach has been tried! Everything has been injected as per text but not showing the outcome. Product owners, with the support of Coaches, began building a working agreement; when do we say we are successful and what we can do together to accomplish this. We will all commit to this agreement. It did work!
With the help of coaches, constant reinforcement has been provided to abide by the agreement.
The products teams are working hard; it is also new AI and data analytics work area. Most of the time, team members are struggling to solve such problems. There is no moral boost to try something new in the team. That is one of the tough parts, leaders are only saying we have to do this, do that, but not understanding many real challenges. Many consultants are hired to solve this problem, but cost parameters are increasing. Leaders are also concerned about this. There is a blame game that is high when things are not working on such an assignment.
Mutual respect is one of the keys in such a condition as subjects are complex. Several times in the meeting, it has been observed that individuals are not adhering to this. It is complicating the situation. There are several social events conducted to address this issue, but things have not improved. Whatever little progress individuals are getting, they want to grab that! As a result of that, teams are not helping each other. Individuals are cautious about snatching credit. Anurag did of office workshop on this with the leadership team. Many cultural issues came out in the organization.
Grabbing each other’s credit is another issue! An action plan was taken with the director of the unit. HR was also involved in this situation to address this competition culture which spoils the whole collaboration ambient. Things have started showing slight improvement as HR and leaders are actively addressing this situation.
There was a separate recognition construed as a best “collective intelligence” team, where many data points were collected to demonstrate the collaboration. The Squad “data sync” has got first this award as the team members demonstrated many such traits of collaboration thought which they solve many complex problems. They shared their stories with many team members.
For Anurag and his team, it is a continuous journey of several years to bring about some kind of collaboration among all his squads. Many communities were established to ensure the recommended mindset grows into the tribe; individuals can visualize the happening across so that they can look at the walk the talk by all team members.
There are a few key takeaways:
- Invest time for collaboration, it takes time to identify the unknown, be patient, and keep discovering the unknown with your team.
- Successful collaboration involves a cooperative spirit and mutual respect. Let us guard down a little and extend a little bit of vulnerability. Acknowledge that our ideas may not be the finest ones
- Give credit to all the team members when it is deserved.
- Be an efficient facilitator and facilitate various collaborative conversations
- Identify team impediments and fix those hurdles with the support of team members
- Build a working agreement with many parties and ensure team members follow those.
- Ensures that we continue to build a relationship with other departments and teams, covering our team. Enables our team members to associate with many teams and team members
- Help the team to diminish conflict. Good conflict resolution skills, such as empathy, negotiation, and settlement enable teams to minimize team conflicts.
- A belief that collective intelligence is the strongest. A collaborative mindset team’s recognizes that the finest ideas and solutions come from an array of sources.
- Let us build a community of individuals who learns from each other by sharing many things, including challenges.
You will discover more such knowledge in my fourth book on “A Guidebook of Coaching High-performance Team” which is showing up in January 2022!
Sunday, 5 December 2021
Friday, 26 November 2021
A story share with....
One of my architect friends told me a remarkable story. He was working for a medical software company. His software was going into the ultrasound machine. He was seeking growth and hikes, but he was not getting the same in his current assignment! He was frustrated for a couple of years at his work. Once his wife got sick and she had to be taken to the hospital, and surprisingly, the ultrasound machine used in the hospital, it was the same product that he worked on a few years back! To his astonishment, he knows the work he did for the product was not producing the ultimate result!If he was knowing that one day the same machine would be used by his own people, he would have done a better job, which would have produced an awesome outcome!Moral of the story: It is the attitude towards the life we demonstrate. Every day is a unique opportunity to make the world a bit better place to live. Today will never come back! Live a life that is worth remembering afterward proudly.
Thursday, 18 November 2021
Friday, 5 November 2021
What is our Marketing Strategy to illustrate our product to our end users?
Saturday, 30 October 2021
Sunday, 24 October 2021
Saturday, 28 August 2021
Coaching Book which has helped me a lot?
I have been reading a book for the last few days. The name of the book is
The Tao of Coaching: Boost Your Effectiveness at Work by Inspiring and Developing Those Around You by Max Landsberg
This best-selling classic was originally published by HarperCollins in 1996, and is practical, pragmatic, and - like most perfect ideas - seems to be presenting the obvious.
This book is written like a short story and aimed at managers who choose to develop themselves as coaches and mentors.
It gives brief and precise information about the coaching process, the motivation of employees, earning trust as a coach, and mentoring.
It is an incredibly short read, we can finish the book in a couple of hours.
The reader observes the progress of a young manager, Alex, as he strolls his progress through an organization, learning valuable coaching lessons along the way.
Each chapter focuses on a specific area of coaching, which is then summarized in a textbook format at the end of the chapter.
This book has just 117 pages! an extremely simple and marvelous book for Coaching.
Awesome book about coaching others. The practices may be useful for coaching our self as well. The volume is magnificent because of several reasons:
1. It is brief. Really. 117+ pages about everything we require about coaching.
2. It is intensely practical - each chapter has tested and “hands-on” suggestions we can implement in our career.
3. It is descriptive - each chapter has an awesome before-picture which sets up the reader’s desire for the later chapter. And what is indeed more magnificent - the book is one story about a gentleman in a company and his challenges throughout his career. Good dialogues and stories will make us remember.
Take-Aways
Good coaching means enabling employees to reach at results with direction, not instructing them what to look at.
Coaching yields pay off to the coach, consisting of a better customer and client relationships, a stronger team, a better ardent following, and enhanced self-awareness.
Effective feedback sticks to specific observable facts according to the acronym “AID”: “Actions,” their “Impact” and the “Desired” outcome.
Organize your coaching session according to the GROW acronym: “Goal, Reality, Options, Wrap up.”
Tailor your coaching style to fit an employee’s “skill and will to accomplish the task.”
Determine what factor most motivates your employee and build on it.
Focus your coaching on the Organization's strategic and operational objectives.
If you are being coached, don’t ever get defensive, just express gratitude, and do what the coach says.
Take “voluntary, visible, irrevocable, and specific” steps to accomplish your goal.
When coaching higher-ups, remain positive for the initial few sessions.
20 Lessons
1. “You Can’t Be a Leader Without a Following”
2. “Ask Questions – Don’t Just Tell”
3. “Receiving Feedback Means Active Listening”
4. “Coaching Also Benefits the Coach”
5. “Guide – Don’t Judge – When Coaching”
6. “Organize Your Coaching Sessions Well – Start in the Correct Direction”
7. “Great Teams Overcome Differences in Styles of Working”
8. “Overcome Your Coaching Blocks, or You Will Never Delegate”
9. “Instant Payoff’ Coaching Can Work, Though Only If Delivered Well”
10. Evaluate “Will, Not Just Skill”
11. When an Employee Hesitates, “First Build Trust”
12. “You Can’t Motivate Others if They Can’t See You”
13. “Take Time to Anticipate Cultural Differences”
14. “Know How to Set Up Teams Well”
15. “Use the Power of Questions that Reframe”
16. “Coaches Work with Observable Facts, Not Just ‘Gut Feel’’’
17. “Providing ‘Upward’ Feedback to the Boss Can Have Its Benefits”
18. “Become Eloquent in the Language of Setting Goals”
19. “Mentor Someone and Be Mentored”
20. “The Effects of Your Coaching Can Be Even More Powerful than You Imagine”
Please add if I have missed anything. Let us follow through and create an impact in people's life.
Thursday, 22 April 2021
Sunday, 7 February 2021
Effective Feedback: Are We doing Enough?
UnCoachability!!
How to identify the individual in uncoachable?
Have you come across in your coaching engagement some individuals who are uncoachable, after several attempts those individuals will not transform a bit!
How do you identify the uncoachable aspects?
"Coaching is 90% attitude and 10% technique." - Unknown
An uncoachable individual will demonstrate below symptom
a) Coachable individuals are humble and understand the utility of seeking absolute Truths. They embrace ambiguity, uncertainty. The uncoachable individual pretense that they know everything.
b) Coachable people will be curious and willing to learn is remarkably high. The uncoachable individual always considers that they already know it! They are not susceptible to experimenting with anything fresh or eager to learn in nominal.
c) Coachable people recognize that expertise comes solely through practice, and failure is part of learning. In a process, the coachable people built resilience. Uncoachable people fear failure, fear criticism so they will not try anything new, as well they will not fail!!
d) Coachable individuals own their learning. They take accountability for their prosperity & growth but uncoachable people do not think similar. They will not seek something different, so they will not be able to pick up anything new. They will not take accountability for their advancement.
e) Uncoachable individuals do not show gratitude. They do not appreciate it when they receive help from others. They mostly think about themselves and never think about others.
f) Uncoachable people never consider they are responsible for any outcome, they find fault in others and mostly say others, that others are responsible for the situation.
g) Uncoachable people get defensive and upset when confronted with the smallest piece of constructive criticism.
h) Uncoachable individuals are not thoroughly self-aware. They are not aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They are not enthusiastic to improve the gaps as they are not self-aware. They do not want to change or accept any feedback. They are emotionally weak.
i) Uncoachable people are not ready to become vulnerable. They will not accept that they are worthy. They feel that they will not be able to handle the situation.
j) Fear is a natural and essential part of learning and growth. Uncoachable individuals will not go out of their comfort zone. Their anxiety will be so high which will stop them to try something new.
The “un-coachable” individual is mostly a finger pointer, blaming teammates, organizational policies, weather conditions, or even the alignment of the sun, moon, and stars whenever things go awry!
Deep down, the “uncoachable” Individuals, is an emotionally wounded child.
Saturday, 6 February 2021
Sunday, 20 December 2020
Happy Holiday Sale!!
Thanks for preferring my books! My readers are buying daily one copy of my books! I am grateful to all of you to show up confidence about these products and affirming these products are offering value to your career! Thanks for spreading the products......I know many of my readers recommended to read my books to others….
Monday, 16 November 2020
Negative Emotions: How to deal with Team Coaching?
Sunday, 8 November 2020
Farmer Family Performance appraisal in a Village!
Once upon a time there was a farmer, his name was Panduraja!
He has 5 children, Jhooti, Bheema, Arjoona, Nakooola, Shooyaya!
Some of them are educated, some are only matriculation pass!
They had multiple acres of farming land. They have a large house with ponds and many domestic animals to looks after. Initially, they had a struggling life but over a period of time, they stabilized themselves.
But the Farmer Panduraja was in worry! Every year they discussed how they should share their profit. They have their own family but they reside together on the same premises. Most of the initial year they had a quarrel and tussle with the money distribution.
They had an expert professional friend who also happens to be their distant relatives and well-wisher. His name was Kris, who is a Ph.D. in Agriculture and professor HOD in a nearby college.
Every year this is a nightmare challenge for Panduraja,
How can he distribute the profit among his children so that they stay motivated and energized.
They should not break up their property and leave the premises where they reside together.
Panduraja often chats with Kris. Kris recommended using the Bell curve system to distribute wealth and profit.
Kris read that somewhere, and they tried for a few years. But it did not work out as it created a quarrel and division among his children.
All his children are working for a common goal. Their proficiency is different, and core competencies are diversified.
Nakooola was remarkably talented at selling the crops, milk, eggs, and poultry meat.
Jhooti was excellent at cultivating lands and growing crops.
Bheema takes care of distributing the cattle, goats to the city, and buying and selling those.
Shooyaya was taking care of the farming, fishing, and exporting fishery commodities.
Jhooti also was taking care of the account part with his father and track the balance sheet.
Everyone is contributing to some of the other aspects and occasionally when crops fail but other services take care of their profits.
All the five brothers do daily standup and monthly progress with the Panduraja.
They reskill themselves as the market changes, need changes. Ther wife also takes care of the textile and other handlooms, handmade items e.g. pottery, etc.
The million-dollar question is how do Panduraja distribute the prosperity which will cause everyone happy?
Kris comes out with One team approach where there will not be any bell but team outcome with impact-driven measurement. They have to increase the outcome and strengthen the bottom line. Based on the numerous feedback mechanisms from various stakeholders, the final amount will differ. Their fundamental wealth distribution calculation is more or less fixed, the % variation of wealth distribution is not substantial. There will be a special monitory award for exceptional performance.
e.g. once there was a bumper production of Mango and Nakoola could export mangoes abroad with his contact at a special price. That attempt has fetched significant profit, and he got special monetary gain. Due to crop failure one year, everyone takes the loss amount, but due to the fish & poultry market, they could all get the benefit of this.
They watch out on a periodic basis and manifest on what they should promptly do to minimize the damage and maximize the profit.
So with the Kris guide, Panduraj could able to balance the equal distribution of wealth looking at the performance award one was doing better to expand the business outcome. Special recognition of monitory distribution happens when such spike benefits happen when the performance was done by going beyond the defined boundary.
This ownership model was working fine with the farmer family.
Now, Panduraja extended such a model with other families of the village. It motivates all the family members to put in their finest effort as they are merely gaining the profit. If they suffer a loss, it is absorbed by the other gains avenues. Now it has been one decade they are following this model.....
This Self-driven, Self-organized, shared purpose, outcome & impact, Value generation, one team-driven mindset enabling them to maximize the profit margin. Shareholders are also happy as they get their due service.
Do you think there is no conflict, no dispute, it is always there, but they are resolving all these to stay relevant in the market.
After Panduraja died, they keep Kris & their mother as their final authority to take the final call for any decision making. It was a democratic approach, but decision-making was taken by the Kris and their mother based on the data.
Sunday, 25 October 2020
Improving Remote Team Collaboration
Saturday, 24 October 2020
Giving P A U S E in your Conversation!
Sunday, 18 October 2020
Strengthening Self-Organizing Cross-Functional Scrum Team
A cross-functional team is a group of individuals with diverse functional expertise working toward a shared objective.
According to the Scrum Guide, a cross-functional team is a team that is organized around a product, a defined portion of a product, a service, or a customer value stream, and must include all competencies needed to accomplish their work without depending on others that are not part of the team.
What are the challenges of establishing such a self-organized cross-functional scrum team?
a) Silos mentality( BA, dev, test, Support )
b) Communication issue( BA, dev, test, Support )
c) Competency issue( BA, dev, test, Support )
d) Alignment issues( BA, dev, test, Support )
e) Conflicts are very high ( BA, dev, test, Support )
f) Ownership and commitment challenges( BA, dev, test, Support )
g) Mindset issue ( BA, dev, test, Support )
h) Collaboration issues ( BA, dev, test, Support )
i) Blame each other
j) Trust deficit, etc
How do we minimize these? Any structural approach we have to consider?
Look at any team and we will see a mixture of behaviors and personalities. Sometimes the individuals in a team can be complete opposites of each other and there will be conflicts; Other times there will be synergy in the team.
The ‘process’ part of the team will be very dependent on the behavior preferences that team members display.
The management psychologist Dr. Meredith Belbin was one of the first people formally to identify the different roles that people play in teams.
He recognized that in teams there are individuals who take action-oriented roles.
Some team members are more people-focused and others more cerebral.
Effective teams are made up of different types of people and they consist of different types of roles.
The mix of role types that play in a team determines their effectiveness.
These roles are
Shaper, Coordinator, Plant, Resource Investigator, Monitor Evaluator, Specialist, teamworker, Implementer, Completer Finisher
Although there are nine team roles, this doesn’t mean that a team needs nine individuals in it to be effective. Individuals will tend to have more than one preferred team role, so will generally occupy more than one role in the team.
When we look for a cross-functional self-organized high-performance scrum team, which evolves after a long cycle of the experiential exploration, we require to look at these 3 factors how effectively it has been matured.
When we recruit team members, if we can balance with these 3 factors, it would be advantageous for them to grow into a high-performance team, as the team will be apt to resolve any challenges they come across.
When I encounter the best scrum teams, I could certainly locate the traces of all these roles in a team.
I could able to trace who is Plant? who is matching the role of coordinator? etc. I start improving if these roles are missing.
When we start coaching, we also nurture these roles, based on what are the gaps, and what can be done to minimize those gaps.
This is a very good structure provided to structurally do team coaching and look for an opportunity.
All the challenges listed initially will slowly resolve when we have all these 9 roles developed and depicted with the scrum team.
We mostly look for a Scrum Master who is having a mixture of all these roles
[ A ‘teamworker’ is generally co-operative, easy to get along with, perceptive, and diplomatic. They are good listeners and are able to smooth over areas of friction within the team. They help keep the team together, particularly during times of stress or pressure.
A ‘shaper’ likes to challenge and drive things forward, enjoying the pressure and the reward of overcoming obstacles. They are able to identify patterns in discussions and in work undertaken and use this to push for change.
A ‘resource investigator’ is likely to be enthusiastic and charismatic, communicating well with others. They are able to explore opportunities, develop contacts, and instigate relationships.
The ‘implementer’ is reliable and well-disciplined, often conservative, and efficient at getting the job done. The implementer is able to reliably turn ideas into practical actions, and strategies into defined and manageable tasks.
People who fulfill the co-ordinator role are generally confident and responsible. They functionwell as a chairperson, helping to clarify goals and establish priorities. They encourage others to make decisions by delegating appropriately. ]
Saturday, 17 October 2020
Measuring the High-Performance team?
Friday, 2 October 2020
How do I Improve my Emotional Maturity?
This is one of the core competencies as a coach everyone is looking for - Emotional Maturity.
As a coach, we should have better emotional control.
Research at the National Institute of Mental Health by Candace Pert has demonstrated that emotions are particularly intimately related with neuropeptides, long-chain protein molecules that circulate throughout the organs of the body and act like “messenger molecules,” conveying information about what is happening in one part of the body throughout the entire system.
In her book, Molecules of Emotion (1997), Pert considers emotions to be a transformative link between mind and body, the mysterious quantum mechanical interface where information turns into matter and our bodies synthesize the chemicals of consciousness.
Emotional states such as anger, sorrow, depression, and joy can be influenced and even directed by us. Controlling the same is not easy. They do not work like switch! On or off!
In 1972, psychologist Paul Eckman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness.
In the 1980s, Robert Plutchik introduced another emotion classification system known as the “wheel of emotions.” This model demonstrated how different emotions can be combined or mixed together, much the way an artist mixes primary colors to create other colors.
In 1999, Eckman expanded his list to include a number of other basic emotions, including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement.
As a coach, we have to have better control of our Emotion.
What should we do to control our emotions better way? Same we can share with team members when we find the need improvement in emotional control.
For news of the heart, ask the face. -West African saying
Some of the things that I ampursuingg to control my emotions.
a) Avoid the trigger: Iinvariablys write down andobservee what triggers the emotional hijack. I actively watch out for all these trigger points. I consciously visualize later that how well I have to perform to avoid such triggers.
b) Express the emotion to someone: I have a few trusted companions whom I express my emotional expression whatever it is. After that, I feel Great. I have to vent out all these emotions, I do not bottle those up.
c) I tried not to react but this is something I am practicing to respond. Sometimes situations trigger me to react to others. I am practicing hard consciously to improve.
d) When I felt I am not able to control my emotions, I tried to think something else, keep quiet for some time! even in the middle of the discussion. I change the thoughts, think something different esp ocean, cute animals, etc.
e) Write a note about my emotional experience: A good retrospect on a notebook about an emotional journey help me to discover the emotional strengthening exercise.
f) Breathing, I do deep breathing exercises during the emotional high or low state,. It helps to divert attention to the breathing and control the emotions.
g) I am a believer in supernatural power. Sometimes it helps me as I have faith in place there. I ask for support, and I get the same.
h) Few quick physical exercises to change of blood flow in body! Exercise helps to better emotion control.
As all of us know it is not so easy, it is a life long endeavor to mature our emotional state. People say we will be happier when we have better emotional control.
“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” - Oscar Wilde (1992, 88)
-
According to psychologist Barbara Markway, ‘there’s simply no better way to learn about your thought processes than to write them d...