Lean Coaching Summit
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Lean Coaching Summit, an event put on by the Lean Enterprise Institute.
It was a good couple of days, with lots of information, sharing of ideas, and collaboration. I took away a number of ideas and thoughts from the various sessions. But the conference started with a Lean Coffee session. I’m a huge fan of the format of Lean Coffee, because the topics discussed come from the people participating, and are voted on by the group, so the highest priority topic gets talked about first. In a matter of moments, our table of seven people had generated over 30 topics we’d like to discuss. But after a quick vote, two topics clearly came to the top, so we started on the first one, and when done with it, moved on to the second. At the same time, all the other participants at the conference were doing the same thing, at their own tables. And at the end of an hour of discussion, folks shared what their insights were, and shared them for all to see.
As I walked around the room, looking at the insights gathered, four jumped out at me, from four different tables. And while this was a Lean summit, you’ll notice that none of the ones that really resonated with me have to do with Lean or Agile specifically. Let me touch on each of these, briefly, to explain why they resonated with me.
Leadership alignment is key…
Common language
Understanding
Current culture
Alignment is key. Having a common language allows us to communicate effectively, not just with our leaders, but with each of us. But words are not enough. We also need to have a shared understanding of what those words mean. The same word(s) can have different meanings to different people. Communication, and language, depends on both the sender and the receiver (and also the medium used to communicate – I’ve read about that somewhere…). I think most companies feel like they’ve got a lot of good stuff going on in this space. I’d encourage you to challenge that assumption, and find a way to validate it’s true. And even if you think it’s good, I suspect it’s not perfect, so where can we look at our current understanding and culture, and think about what the next improvement could be.
Are we leading with tools or leading with thinking?
One of the core principles from Agile is that we value Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. It’s important that we remember that Agile values both Individuals & Interactions AND Processes & Tools. Know how I know? It’s because that’s what’s written in the Agile Manifesto itself. So while there’s value in both, if we just blindly use a tool, we’re unlikely going to get much value from that tool. Take your daily stand-up, for example. If you’re not getting value from it, or aren’t sure why you’re doing it, you may have perfectly implemented the tool, without understanding the why. Tools are great to help support and push our thinking forward, but on their own, they can become ‘check-the-box’ activities, that don’t actually help us deliver a better solution to our customers. We need both, tools and thinking.
People try to optimize before they stabilize
Wow. This one really hit home for me. I’ve seen this time and time again, when we want to jump straight to (what we think is the) end state. Thinking back to the last point, tools or thinking, the reality is that it’s the journey we’re on that’s going to make sustainable, meaningful change. I worked with one manager who was great at getting short term results. He jumped directly to optimizing when working with a new team. The result, though, was that the team was full of disfunction, a severe lack of trust, and as a result, the inability to sustain the short-term performance gains the team produced. Effectively, they skipped all the hard work in changing the way the team & stakeholders thought about delivering value, and really, about building a team in the first place. This also ties back to the first post-it, about starting from a place with a common understanding of the current culture and understanding of where we are today, and what the next step could be. While we want to have an idea of the direction where we want to head, it’s going through the process and learning along the way that creates a sustainable culture and environment.
You cannot change individuals, you need to create the right conditions to allow them to change on their own.
What can I say about this? I can help with all of the tools and processes. I can tell you exactly what to do. But that’s not going to help on any Lean and/or Agile journey. No matter what I say, or what I do, it’s not going to change you. Only you can change you. Only I can change me. And it’s through learning what works that we make those changes. Now certainly, a Lean Change Agent, Lean Coach, or Agile Coach can hopefully bring some experience and expertise that can help accelerate, and be a guide on your journey. They can help play Devil’s Advocate, and offer alternative approaches to how things are currently being done. But ultimately, it’s up to each of us to set the conditions for ourselves, and for those around us, to change so that we can deliver more value.
If we continue doing things the way we always have, we’ll continue to get the results we always have. It takes new thinking, and new approaches to arrive at new solutions. But just as in the previous section, it’s about each of us going on that journey so that it’s sustainable. This isn’t about delivering great work in the next quarter, or next year. It’s about creating an environment where great work is inevitable.
There were lots of great ideas discussed at the conference. These are just four that resonated with me from the first breakout session of the conference! I hope you’re thinking about your own work, and what you can do to challenge how work gets done today, how you can help create an amazing environment to effortlessly get work done, and how can we propagate that information in helping create the right conditions to win as a team.