Evolve Agility

07/13/2023

Giving and receiving feedback is crucial for growth. And how you frame your feedback matters.

Imagine someone from your team asking, “How are we doing?” or “Do you have feedback?” How will you respond?
One of the ways you can communicate is by using the “Gifts and Greats” technique.

a Great is something specific that the team is doing well.

For example, you can share a particular instance where you observed how the team worked through their disagreements constructively by discussing options and arrived at a win-win solution. Or you may share that the team has improved in their Daily Scrum because people come prepared to synchronize with their teammates.

Don’t hold back. Share as many Greats as you see fit. Be specific.

When people know what is great about their work, then they can reflect on how best to do more or improve on what they already know how to do. Growing talent is about amplifying strengths.

a Gift is free from obligations. The receiver can choose to reflect on your idea and implement it or ignore it.

For example, you could share that sometimes team meetings get sidetracked, and using the parking lot will help the team stay focused on the topic. Or you may share that team members start many more items than they can finish, and minimizing work-in-progress would help improve throughput.

These Gifts are neutral offerings, with no obligation for the team to act on your feedback. Permitting people to choose ensures they have agency in their practices.

A critical aspect of giving and receiving feedback is to accept the team’s autonomy over its processes.

11/11/2022

Leaders need to be able to recognize when teaching, mentoring, and consulting are better alternatives to coaching.��

Leaders influence problem-solving abilities of others by teaching, mentoring, consulting, and coaching.

02/02/2022

Expressing your authentic voice, saying what is trying to come out is a satisfying human experience.

Leaders put in the effort to create an organization climate where the conversations that might not otherwise happen get drawn out and get freely discussed.

They listen to non-verbals that speak louder than words. Leaders connect deeply with the situation at whole, they:

+ Develop empathy by suspending their personal biases and actively seek to feel what it is like to ‘walk in your shoes’

+ Can effortlessly tune into the flow of emotions, energy, and actions but not get carried away

+ Care for the persons and not just their contributions.

+ Actively encourage diversity in viewpoints by creating space for you to contribute

Leadership communicates through actions.

How do you lead when the elephant in the room is not talked about?

01/26/2022

Sometimes we’re so enamored with our plan we become blind to the results.

Comment below with ways you think leaders still misunderstand agile strategy?

01/18/2022

“We were able to try some more advanced cross-team experimentation to see if we could iterate on problems quicker. My team wanted to continue to grow and take it even further. They were excited and wanted to keep going.” - Find out how we energize transformations from within:

https://www.evolveagility.com/library/download-outdoor-retailer-casestudy-evolve-agility/

“We were able to bring in examples, develop internal competencies, and coach leadership for the change to be much stickier for those teams. And we did it in a way that supported the unique cultural values of the company.”

01/12/2022

It’s easy to look at organization systems as fumbling and inefficient -- but they’re performing exactly as they are designed.

Smart agile leaders know they can’t bend these systems to their will, so instead they pay close attention, actively participate, and respond to feedback. They dance with them!

What’s your best example of “dancing with the system”?

01/05/2022

Great Product leaders actively look for information that disproves their hypothesis and brings their fundamental assumptions to test. They are never satisfied with status-quo and are not shy to disrupt, even themselves.

They believe in planning, and do not waste energy romanticizing future plans. Product leaders know that in dynamic situations being adaptive is essential.

But they cannot do it alone. Some of the best product leaders that I have worked with are supported by teams that do not take things for granted as well. They innovate hand in glove with the product manager.

Strength of relationships within the product team helps generate options. Enabling the teams to benefit from disorder at least as much as it does when outcomes are delivering value as expected.

What do you do to actively invalidate your feature hypothesis?

Here’s some common traits of the best product leaders I’ve known:
+ They’re never satisfied with the status quo.
+ They’re not scared of disruption -- even for themselves.
+ They know their success depends on support from their team.
+ They innovate hand in glove with product managers.
+ They strive to invalidate their feature hypothesis

What else do you think great product leaders have in common?

12/27/2021

Wishing you all a jargon and acronym free week :)

12/22/2021

Expectations are managed by setting goals and then tracking progress via measures. For example, You may have a goal to “walk 10,000 steps/day” or your team may have a velocity/sprint target.

When you focus on goals and measures, you are watching the scoreboard not the game.

The game is the systems (or processes), and when you focus on the system, the results take care of itself. The results are never the problem, they are the symptom. You will keep chasing the same outcomes, if you do not change the system behind it.

Under honest circumstances, when you lag behind your goal you will summon up your will power and work harder to achieve your goal. Your team may work overtime to meet velocity expectations, or you may walk just to “get my steps in”.

Is there a better way? - Yes, work smarter not harder.

In one of my past agile teams, we had regular walk-and-talk sessions that came to replace boring meetings. As a team we would walk through the woods behind our office building and discuss life, products, technologies, practices, etc. We got our steps in, improved our team interactions and developed products that our customers loved.

In what ways does your team work smarter?

12/15/2021

Audacious goals (like changing the world) feel unattainable. That’s why so many great ideas take time to...evolve.

Never be afraid to conspire with others to change the world.

Subscribe to our newsletter for tips to help accelerate your ideas.
https://signup.evolveagility.com/sign-me-up

12/08/2021

Should we do this or should we do that? What if we do this and then that happens?

Leadership is not about making the right or wrong decision. You do not control the future, so every decision you make will involve trade-offs.

In one agile team we were endlessly debating a technical architectural choice. I suspect we would still be continuing the debate had we not agreed to settle the issue by trying experiments.

With help of the architect, who was a full time team member, both camps in the team planned to implement a spike with their choice of technology. And then we tested both implementations against performance benchmarks to select a way forward and settle the debate.

It had puzzled me that the architect had not expressed a preference during the debate. Later, in private, I asked him why. And he said that in production environment both technical choices would have performed well, but he wanted the team to own the decision so he encouraged experimentation.

The architect perceived both options as right, whereas the team members were viewing each option as right vs. wrong. So by trying an experiment the architect helped the whole team to make a decision in a manner that ensured buy-in from the whole team.

How have you turned right-wrong into right-right options?

12/01/2021

Customers have a hard enough time overcoming their challenges. They don’t have the time to review your product manuals, or reinvent the way they do their business functions to use your product. Fact of the matter is that they simply won’t.

If you have been in the software industry long enough, then you have encountered following dynamic:

The users are using much older version of the product, and refuse to upgrade to the latest & greatest version of the product. As a result, many years of development effort is waiting in the pre-production environment.

Meanwhile the product development team continually releases patches & bug fixes on the older version to the users. This is very frustrating for the product development team, because only if the users upgraded to the latest version all known issues would be fixed and the users would also get cool new features.

But the users simply refuse to upgrade. As a result, years of development efforts build up in the pre-production environment.

How did it come to be this way? - The hard truth is that somewhere along the way, the product team lost their connection with the customer problems and got distracted by combinations of organization politics, hubris, and indifference.

How have you overcome this challenge?