Why you need to evaluate Group Dynamics in your group coaching?

I am certain as a coach, you might be working out many groups coaching on numerous topics.

One of the fundamental is to figure out the group dynamics to drive such a coaching session. In my coaching journal, I am capturing these factors. If you are a leader of the Group, you need to take care all these aspects.

If you are coaching a few Feature teams, Squads, you will be able to find these group dynamics easily and handle easily when you understand this.

Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist, and change management expert is credited with coining the term “group dynamics” in the early 1940s. He indicated that people generally pick up on unique roles and behaviors when they work in a group.

“Group dynamics” specifies the effects of these roles and behaviors on other group members and on the group as a whole.

Group dynamics deal with the attitudes and behavioral patterns of a group. Group dynamics concern how groups are formed, what is their structure and which processes are adhered to in their functioning. Thus, it is concerned with the interactions and forces running between groups.

A group has certain common objectives & goals. Because of which members are tied up together with specific values and culture.

Group members form alliances within the group and the group itself adopts accepted behavior norms. If there is a positive dynamic, they will accomplish their goals, even if those are simply to play cards.

The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goal.

Working agreement among team members:

Working agreement is common standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the members of the group. Working agreement describe the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They are normally designed in order to facilitate group survival, make behavior more predictable, avoid uncomfortable conditions, and express the values of the group. Each group will establish its own set of norms that might determine anything from the appropriate dress to how many comments to make in a meeting. Groups exert pressure on members to force them to conform to the group’s standards. The norms often reflect the level of commitment, motivation, and performance of the group.

Group Cohesiveness:

Cohesiveness refers to the bonding of group members and their desire to remain part of the group. Many factors influence the amount of group cohesiveness. More difficult it is to obtain group membership, the more cohesive the group. Groups also tend to become cohesive when they are in intense competition with other groups or face a serious external threat to survival. Smaller groups and those who spend considerable time together also tend to be more cohesive.

Few examination which help to understand the group dynamics better:

• What roles are numerous individuals performing in the group?
• Who is pacifying whom?
• Who has the authority in the group?
• How do decisions get established in the group?
• Who gets time and how is that negotiated among members?
• Other than the leader’s direction, how is it determined who talks and what is examined?
• Which coalitions have developed? Who is associated with whom?
• Which alliances have formed temporarily and permanently?
• Which members are in conflict with one another?
• Are the boundaries within a group open sufficient to grant fresh information to arrive the group?
• Who gets into your group? What are the entry or exit criteria?
• How do members communicate with one another? Are the lines of communication clear and direct?
• Where do members direct their attention when leaders speak?
• Do group interactions tend to move in patterns that move toward preserving the structure reliable?
• What norms have established in the group that governs behavior?
• Which rules were confirmed by the leader versus which ones emerged covertly by members?
• How is information exchanged among group members?
• How did people share what they know with one another? Who was eliminated or avoided?
• Which factors were accepted and rejected? What significant message was rejected? How was the information synthesized?
• Did change in a group occur via the use of positive and negative feedback?
• How are conflicts dealt with? Who doesn’t like whom? What are the means that members try to disrupt or undermine one another or the leader? How do members demonstrate their discord with what is going on? So who works to establish things better? Who oppress the conflict? Who tries to create interruption?
• What was the total outcome of the group so far?

If you as a coach does your home work better, it will help you to pass your message clear over a period of time.

“Archer’s Paradox”, What can we know from this?

Why team members need to learn about the “archer’s paradox”?

I invariably choose to explain several occasions about this information,

The term was first used by E.J. Rendtroff in 1913,[1] but specific descriptions of the phenomenon appear in archery literature as early as Horace A. Ford’s 1859 text “Archery: Its Theory and Practice”

In order to be accurate, an arrow must have the correct stiffness, or “dynamic spine”, to flex out of the way of the bow and return to the correct path as it leaves the bow. Incorrect dynamic spine results in unpredictable contact between the arrow and the bow, therefore unpredictable forces on the arrow as it leaves the bow, and therefore reduced accuracy.

What is THE ARCHER’S PARADOX?

To shoot the target, aim dead-on? Not necessarily. Archery provides us an excellent lesson of why initial misses can be vital. Arrows flex, and this means their trajectory curves in mid-air. Archers have to factor in the stiffness of the arrow’s shaft in order to judge how far its flight will deviate. This is the “archer’s paradox”: for a perfect shot, you have to aim slightly away from the bulls-eye.

Occasionally the particular way to get an understanding for things is to fire some arrows and understand how they fly. Consider of your mistakes as test shots: study at where your efforts land, and that can tell you how to correct your aim next time.

During sprint planning meeting the conversation comes out about the rework reduction and the strategy to minimize rework. Through this rework, as a team, we explore many things. We stabilize an abundance of ways of working, we reach our mastery level.

In a popular TED Talk, art historian Sarah Lewis describes watching archers practice over and over again to master the “archer’s paradox” whereby to hit a target, you have to aim slightly askew. This, she argues, is the difference between success and mastery: it’s a success to hit the target, and mastery to be able to hit it more than once—but to reach that point, you have to miss many times.

Many great artists, Lewis adds, didn’t much care for some of their artworks that others value greatly: the “near win” that doesn’t please its maker is a part of learning. Being able to judge your work negatively should be taken as a sign of increasing mastery, as it means you are developing expertise.

Initial several sprints will be part of the Forming and Storming process for team discovery plus the technological discovery phase. It is a journey in which we keep maturing ourselves.

Will you share similar topics to alter the mindset of the Leaders?

Good Leader's Character

I want to be a good leader.

All of us are leaders, at home and at office. 

All of us need to exhibit leadership skills at every juncture in life. 

Are we working to mature these skills? 

Leadership character is the core initial step to reflect and intensify

“Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That’s because leadership has two sides—what a person is (character) and what a person does (competence).”—Stephen Covey

What should I practice on a daily basis? I do not want to fallback from all these.

Let us learn and coach other to learn....

The Agilist's Guidebook- 1000 copies

Happy message to share with you all!!! Please continue reading and sharing it with all. Help me to reach as many readers as possible and encourage me to make this Made in India book successful.

Why do startups need more agile ways of working?

The startup needs innovation to survive in the ecosystem if the innovation flow dries, the business dies!

Innovation is no more individual’s work, it has grown into more Teamwork.

A startup survives based on the innovative ideas brought into the table and validated those hypotheses with the legitimate consumer by moving to market as quickly as they can.

Though many technology companies believe they know more about customer needs because they influence the customer to buy technological products and solutions. As Henri Ford said, if I ask my customers, they would say, they need the fastest horse! perhaps true, perhaps not in today's context.

As we know, solutions developed into a better product based on the three aspects, feasibility, viability and desirability. When all these elements meet its sweet spot, we build world-class products and solutions which customers buy.

We may build an extraordinarily valuable technical solution, but if it does not sell, organizations would not last long. It is the conjunction with the market and sense, where we are heading, will set the team for success.

To achieve this sweet solution and scale up to get millions of $, we require to strongly hold each other as a team and create a culture of innovation.

It is a journey of forming to the performing stage. Innovation is a precondition into the DNA of the teams, and teams need to collaborate and co-create the technical solution with end-users.

Individual EGO plays an integral role in such an environment. The big corporation recognizes the advantage of a small team and startup culture. Large enterprises are breaking themselves into a small startup team and implanting an entrepreneurial mindset into the team to rapidly build innovating product and solutions.

Why Agile?

Agile culture is all about collaboration culture. People collaboration and developing the appropriate solution together. Agile culture does not encourage heroism in a team.

When we are together, we are more innovative.

How agile ways of working will create more innovation?

Innovation must come from multiple sources, both internally and externally. When individuals and their diverse points of view and experiences converge, they discover the types of innovations that individuals could not have done or found alone.

Innovation requires tearing down the primitive rules of understanding and establishing fresh ones. This means each member of the team must become more transparent than ever before. As such, each member of the team must trust themselves enough to trust each other.

Collaboration is not just about working intimately together, but also about taking leaps of faith together to discover new ways of thinking and create greater outcomes.

Communication play a key role in team innovation, Communication means a lot, the way in which we communicate sets the style and propels thinking in a variety of directions that contribute to fresh innovations.

Team members must challenge each other to think more critically and think through a lens of continuous improvement. Looking through this lens requires the mindset of a “Bold, strong enabler” – one who takes charge and embraces the role of a change agent in the encouragement of constructive disruption that finally makes things work better and enhances performance.

Google led a two-year research project with 280 teams. They discovered only one distinction between innovative and non-innovative teams—psychological safety. Teams have psychological safety when their members feel they have approval to candidly share ideas and try new things without fear of negative effects. This is completely true given the attempt to create such safety does contribute a team to engage in overly consensual discussions where every idea that emerges is a valuable one.

Innovation requires the capacity to see how something that exists could be better. For this, one requires to associate with the world,with the customers and step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and identify problems that may exist from their perspectives. Through empathy, one can understand what people “Do”, “Think”, and “Feel”, and, in turn, open themselves up to new creative possibilities that lead them to innovate.

Team members must allow themselves to ask stupid questions and propose stupid ideas. For that, we undoubtedly have to trust that others won’t make fun of you and, even worse–share your stupid ideas and questions outside the team and the meeting. 

Most of us like the traditional way of managing things. We do not have to leap over a learning curve, nor do we have to try new ways of doing things. New ideas often receive indifferent reactions at best and hostile responses at worst. We need to change the way of thinking as a team(From doing something to being new-thing).

“I see true innovation to be made up of three ‘creativities’ – creativity in technology, product planning, and marketing.” ~ Akio Morita

What kind of leadership support do we expect? 

Since primitive days, individuals have flocked closely in tribes to pursue security in an ecosystem of plenty of trouble, life threats, and challenges. Those tribes were not detached, but they had both conflicting and friendly relations with other tribes. However, it was in this environment where individual beings set up innovating with things like the wheel, weapons, construction, or transport, driven by the desire for survival. This kind of innovation would not have been feasible by isolated individuals; Hence, it is meaningful to recognize that innovation is not about sole genius but about collaborative genius.

For generations, mankind has been noticing and rewarding creative individuals, but the truth is that innovation seldom takes place without cooperation and collaboration.

Thus, it sounds straightforward to understand key elements of innovation is the collaboration. 

Therefore, in this case(Tribal Leadership stages), stages 1 and 2 represent a situation with no teamwork and collaboration.

Stage 3 shows a typical organization where there is very limited teamwork and management approach is command and control.

Stage 4 is a stage where teamwork happens, and high-performing teams can definitely be represented here.

Stage 5 for us represents collaboration communities where different nodes connect each other to work together.

In this context, innovation happens within organization in a very limited amount in stage 3 (i.e., military environment); however, within organizations, innovation is strongly happening in stage 4 (i.e., 3M, Google, Microsoft, etc.).

Maximization of innovation can only happen in stage 5 where collaborative economy, exchange of ideas, shared trust, open frameworks, and creative environments are the norm (i.e., Silicon Valley). 

This type of leaders is also mentioned by Collins where he identified organization with higher performance than similar companies during 15 years in a row. These companies were led by 41 CEOs labeled by their employees as quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings, and so on. He mentions that these successful leaders put their ego away, focusing in the “we” more than in the “I.” 

Essentially, leaders in stages 4 and 5 set up a tone in the organization where purpose, shared values, and rules allow to create the conditions for the ideal behaviors and thinking process to come up.

Those leaders are masters managing the inevitable tensions that arise between the individual and the group, and they do it by clearly setting purpose, defining clear values, setting example, and being able to manage the group behavior and psychology.

Research shows that teams functioning within strict environments with definite processes and protocols are less likely to obtain their goals and generate new ideas.

Give your teams the freedom to think differently, using the tools they need, the way they want to. More uncertain the environment is , more we need to give freedom, trust has to be high.Then team will come up with innovating solution.

With the help of each other we create a learning organization and grow fast.

Robert F. Brands, author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation II,” says that it’s important to first understand that individuals and organizations may be their own worst enemies when it comes to creativity and often set up their own innovation roadblocks.

Look at your own setup and see what can be done better to create an innovative startup mindset and get into the Being agile.

Agile Budgeting for my Products

This is a version of my product portfolio management and how I am safeguarding funding in all the products and products pipeline.

I am employing the Agile Budgeting approach to invest in these products.

I have 2 books which I am considering my products in the market and another one is in construction.

The Agilist Guidebook, which is in the market from 2018.

The Scrum Master Guidebook, which is the market from 2019.

The question is, as I can not afford for annual budgeting for these products, how can I continue to invest resources into these flow?

What I am experimenting with and trying to improve is below 

Each product I have multiple EPICs to push to the productions.

Each book takes 1-year cycle time to reach production and after production promotional exercises.

Every product will go through is product development life-cycle before it progresses to its natural death.

I have practically 4 EPICs, each considering three months cycle time to accomplish.

The Agilist Guidebook has 4 EPICs. Each EPIC has a benefit hypothesis mentioned and connected Lean Business Case hooked up to the EPIC. Before books go to the market incrementally, I am spending time and money to each EPIC and validating my learning.

I have a portfolio backlog, which has all these EPICs now.

I have the 3 Value streamline, One for The Agilist Guidebook, One for The Scrum Master Guidebook and Another One for The Guidebook for Personal Leadership & Self coaching.

Each EPIC reflects the Lean startup model.

Some MVP hypotheses I add into each EPIC and this cycle goes on.

I include leading indicators to conclude if I should scale up or pivot.

Most of the KPIs are the number of books sold, Reader satisfaction information I collect.

Mostly the Traction data of these books guide me to organize my resource( Time and Money).

I have a portfolio Kanban board to oversee the product development FLOW.

How am I spending? 

I am applying Agile Budgeting for these books. I cannot afford the annual budget cycle. I have to extremely conscientious about my money and time(both are restricted for everybody).

Some money I kept for The Agilist Guidebook (10% of my time and money)

Some money I kept for The Scrum Master Guidebook (30%-40% of my time and money)

Some money I kept for the new book which is coming, The Guidebook for Personal Leadership & Self coaching., (50%-60% of my time and money). This is a research project for me. The EPIC Hypothesis and Lean Business Model instruct me to invest on EPIC or Pivot some of the hypotheses.

Based on the decision Go-No Go cycle, I can organize my resources to another value stream if traction is good.

Every quarter I have analyzed with a few team members, how I am proceeding against these hypotheses. A few of my colleagues helped me to validate those with data and judgments.

Though I do not have many individuals to handle all these, it is my publisher and a few of my trusted companions to drive the whole show.

Do you find these similar in which we work out the same in Organization esp in SAFe Lean Portfolio Management is all about these? Mine one is a very modest product portfolio.

Business Value calculation for Digital Transformation Initiatives

My Friend is preparing for an Interview in one of the finest digital Company, Some of the questions they inquire related to how do you measure the success of Digital Initiatives?? a Retrospect on that query.

Digital transformation — the adoption of technology to radically improve performance or ability of enterprises. It helps maximize productivity and enhance the customer experience.

Digital transformation should produce something unique.

As Forester suggests, genuine transformation is a journey, not a destination.

Digital transformation include Transforming Operations, Transforming the Customer Experience, Transforming Processes, Transforming Business Models

According to Forbes, 70% of all digital transformation initiatives fail.

Recent reports by Gartner back this up: they explain that approximately 50% of CEOs have no metric for digital business transformation.

Digital transformation involves using digital technologies to transform a process to become more efficient or effective.

Digital transformation can comprise many diverse technologies, but the hottest topics right now are cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data, Blockcahin, Computing power, Machine Learning and artificial intelligence.

Digital transformations require cultural and behavioral modifications such as a measured risk-taking, increased collaboration, and customer-centricity.

A true digital transformation project involves fundamentally rethinking business models and processes.

The business value is the standard value measure used in business valuation.

PMBOK® defines business value as the entire value of the business; the total sum of all tangible and intangible elements.

Business value consists of :

• Increase revenue
• Decrease cost
• Improve productivity
• Differentiate the company
• Improve client satisfaction

How would we characterize the progress achieved in becoming a digital business?

Most marketing KPIs are “vanity metrics,” said Jen Grant, CMO of business intelligence software maker, in an interview with CMO.com. They “feel good but don’t really give you a good view of whether your business is healthy or in trouble.”

According to Gartner, the best metrics:

• Have a clearly defined and defensible causal relationship to a business outcome
• Work as a leading, not lagging, indicator
• Address a specific, defined audience
• Can be understood by a non-IT audience
• Drive action when they change from green to yellow to red.

Business leaders must rely on fresh KPIs for effective IT measurement.

Traditional IT measurement, with its long-term focus on efficiency metrics for the managing infrastructure, applications, and components, is no longer acceptable.

Is there a clear cause and effect relationship between the change and the resulting gain that can be quantified and measured on the income statement ?

• Key elements of digital transformation include focusing on the digital experiences of both customers and employees.
• The number of licenses department purchased to the number of employees who are actually utilizing the software.
• How department digital tools are being used will give you a clearer picture of how effectively your employees have adopted the tools and actually achieve meaningful benefits.
• Change in customer behavior over time across channels
• Number of customer touch points addressed to improve customer experience positively
• Reduction in time to market new products to customers
• Number of innovative ideas reach concept to implementation
• Percentage of revenue from new products/services introduced
• Percentage of the profit from new ideas implemented
• New on boarding to the platform , new user are using this platform, they are growing or stagnant
• How new Digital platform is enabling customer/user KPI 
• Survey user satisfaction
• Responsiveness of the user 
• Data Volume(TB), Variety(Types of data source), velocity( Data generated/analyzed per time period) , What is the cost savings due to this easy data usages?

Leading indicators measure change. They deal with immediate progress and show the likelihood that you will achieve your goals.

• Unique visitors
• Daily active users
• Time spent on the website
• The average revenue per user

Lagging indicators measure results. This means they are the direct result or output of your organization’s activity.

• Brand recognition
• ROI
• Customer acquisition costs
• Customer renewal rate
• Churn rate

Success requires consistent monitoring and course correction based on what we find out.

We are Transformation Change agents, we need to guide the team to come out with better KPI to measure the transformation initiatives.

Building your next Curve for Growth?

Bejan developed the principle 15 years ago and has been using it to describe and predict an extensive variety of man-made and natural phenomena. The current analysis views this ubiquitous S-curve (also known as the sigmoid function) as a natural design of flow systems.

A sigmoid function is a mathematical function having a characteristic “S”-shaped curve or sigmoid curve. 

When studying at the personal growth life cycle, we can identify among 4 distinctive stages: Ferment, Takeoff, Maturity, Discontinuity.

This could be the same as the product or technology development life cycle.

Do you notice we can map this with our career growth and progress?

Where are you in the S curve?

How many S Curve so far have you introduced to remain relevant in the industry and how rapid?

Are you still providing value by coming out with a disrupting offering in the growth path?

Positioning a unique offering into the industry/new role assists professionals to figure out what is the potential of it and also determine a particular innovation strategy that will fit best for it.

The phases of the S curve: 

Era Of Ferment – This phase is at the beginning of the S-Curve pattern of innovation or growth life-cycle. It is when the individual is absolutely new into the unique offering or role. As a result, a dominant style in the job hasn’t been established yet. Usually, at this stage, most of the resources are concentrated on research and development(Discovery phase).

Takeoff – In this phase, due to the ability to overcome a major technical obstacle or the ability to satisfy a demand of the organization, the individual offering has been adopted by the early majority and managed to cross the chasm and an outstanding offering has been established already. Hence, the offering will be characterized by rapid growth in service, and the individual career/contribution will progress swiftly towards full organizational acceptance.

Maturity – Here, individual growth is adopted almost completely by the organization and is usually approaching a value limit. Due to the strong competition among the other team members in the organization which is evidently defined at this stage, most of the talents at this point are spent on improving the value offering processes and making them cheaper. Therefore, oftentimes the individual offering at this stage becomes completely standardized and the innovations at this stage are considered incremental.

Discontinuity – At this phase the innovation occurs, as a new S-Curve pattern can pick up. Since the previous individual offering/value generation reaches an era of maturity, there is an opportunity for a unique offering to appeal to the innovator’s segment in the industry and will create a unique offering/role/value generation life cycle which is generally treated as the Disruption.

My S Curves when I reflect. Wondering what will be my next S curve?

All of us are pushing additional S-Curves as the growth progresses, what is the span of the S curve?

Are you making your next S curve for disruption?

Are you introducing multiple S curve?

How good are you on your growth life cycle management?

Are we in flow state in our career? Or Relax zone? or Anxious?

Why will Lion eat Grass? Corporate Climate Change!

When a lion cannot find the flesh to feed on, it has no choice but to eat the grass.

African Proverb

Have you seen this story in real life? 

A tale to report.

Once upon a time, in Software service company the rule was to everyone should be a billable resource. There is no bench concept. In a good time, every team member was in demand and they were capable to clock 100% billing.

As an when competition increases there are a couple of more company started entering into the existence.

There was an Agile consultancy farm, they used to support Agile consultancy and training. In good old days, they managed to get 100% engagement from the client. The agile transformation was in the boom. Agile was a silver bullet!

As an Agile implementation got wildfire, there are many agile farms flourished and started providing offering service. Agile cup, agile mugs, agile dresses, etc.

Supply was more than demand, Agile coaches are not able to engage themselves. You need to wear a coat written Agile! that’s it to claim Agile coach!

When the economy becoming tightening...

Business is asking what value Coaches will bring? Sr Agile coach what Value they will bring vs entry-level coaches, there are so many junior coaches, why Sr. Coaches? at the Half price, the team was getting coaching services! why Sr Coaches? somewhere team is asking why coaches, teams are mature and can manage. 

Now, Agile coaches to remain relevant and get billing, Many Sr agile coaches are doing Scrum Master role, Few Agile coaches are playing the role of Project managers, Many agile coaches are playing the role of PMO. Few Agile coaches joined the AI machine learning course. Perhaps this will secure the future!

Whatever require to get billing, Lion has to eat grass.

Nothing awful, when the situation is rough, we have to work out everything which keeps the engine running and bring food to the table...

Have you heard such a tale!! It is just a fictitious narrative, such a condition will never appear ;-)