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!

Blue or Red Pill or Both?

 

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.

The Agilist's Gudiebook : Comment from Rohit Joshi

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/glimpse-agilists-guidebook-reference-organizational-agile-rohit-joshi/?trackingId=RKr166mnSc2qlEXADpKoVw%3D%3D

What is our Marketing Strategy to illustrate our product to our end users?

“Nothing happens until a sale is made.” Thomas Watson, IBM

A tale to share with you all!

In my childhood in the Northeast state of India, named Tripura, where I resided in the capital Agartala, one lady always used to sell homemade Ayurvedic medicine for various pains.

Every day she managed to appoint one manual rickshaw puller, which was the sole means of transportation in the 80s in small towns!

The rickshaw puller was used to carry the medicine basket, and the announcement speaker & Mike, strolled around the different lanes and central boulevard.

I still distinctly remember those messages.

I have checked after so much advancement in our society and the same Ayurvedic medicine selling trend going on with next-generation, still carrying the same traditional business model.

She has also one small shop at the central marketplace, where she has placed a banner of “Recover from all-types pains through Ayurvedic Homemade medicine”. Nowadays we call this an Advertisement!

She was carrying a small box of medicine with the microphone on a human-pulled rickshaw puller into the numerous streets of the town, which is nowadays called Promotion!

People comment sometimes about her medicine in not-so-famous local newspaper! Nowadays we call it Publicity!

The same individuals also share about her medicine, nowadays we announce it as a Public relations. She has many such core buyers who are always benefiting from those medicines!

She does Sunday discount announcements at her shop where her family members explain various benefits of the medicine with the free sample and many families also purchase more such medicines, including my family! This is nowadays called Sales!

She is not MBA from any college in the 1980s,(she might be at that time in her 50s) all these she is working out with her wisdom and intuition!! We call it nowadays Marketing!

This became her marketing strategy to sell Ayurvedic medicine! How many bottles she will produce in Summar vs winter. How many categories of plants she has to procure that year is a marketing strategy!

Hiring one manual rickshaw puller or two, running to a significant route or narrow pathway to sell medicine, this is called Marketing Tactics in today’s dictionary.

It is nice to recall her approach and read all these aspects in Marketing Books!

I am finding at the team level where the team is forming new products and their features, they need to do an analogous type of strategy and tactics to captivate the end-users for initial feedback and enhance the product quality. Nothing will take effect automatically.

We require you to have a Market strategy and marketing tactics!

Skill Development

 

Scrum Master

 

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.

Book Comments

 

Book Comments from Balaji : 22nd April

 

Effective Feedback: Are We doing Enough?

Providing Feedback is also an art and it requires preparation to master this skill.

Feedback is central to develop a High-performance team.

Providing constructive feedback is essential for team member’s advancement.

Feedback is essential to preserve the best performance and also to correct poor performance.

How do leaders or individuals make this feedback communication ease?

“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement

accelerates.” --Thomas S Monson

Leaders have to do homework before distributing any feedback.

Feedback evolves based on the below questions

What team members are performing excellent and what team members doing poorly and need direction?

What behavioral aspects not align with the organizational mandate and call for changes?

What is the maturity of the employee and what is the expectation?

Are there any organizational barrier which blocking employee performance?

How does employee behavior influence overall team performance? How urgent such performance to deal with?

What is the consequence of exceptional performance and Substandard performance?

How should we communicate the Feedback to any employee?

Look at the brighter side of the individuals. It’s easy to convey improvement feedback when 70% of the communication says with the finest things employees are doing.

When communicating the feedback related to the employee performance Improvement, better discuss the process to be improved. It is better not to criticize the individual.

Sharing the big picture before presenting any significant feedback. An employee should be able to connect with the improvement feedback and big picture. It is crucial how we articulate improve feedback to the employee so that they receive in a constructive manner for the improvement.

Every feedback is invariably attached to the context. It is advisable to focus on the context while talking about the improvement points.

As body language also conveys the message, while giving improvement feedback it is significant to demonstrate the appropriate body language. Body language conveys genuine improvement of the employee always welcome. It is How we say is essential than what we say.

Improvement feedback communication should be always conveyed such a way that asking for employees comment, Example "this is what I feel, what do you recommend", etc.

Provide feedback from an unbiased person’s point of view. It is up to the individual if he/she is willing to enforce those changes or not.

It is essential to mentor team members after providing feedback. Discuss the option of improvement.

Once improvement feedback shared, review the action plan and timeline

The old saying, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”

Feedback preferably should be in a face to face and elaboration discussion is better. Feedback is not encouraged to be written in a document/mail transaction where the situation can not be explained in an appropriate manner.

Let us exercise those when we convey vital feedback to the employees.

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.

Scrum Master as a Servant Leader