Gil Broza

 TRANSCRIPT: 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:32

What are your thoughts on the current state of, you know, prescriptive approaches? Is that going to stick around?

Speaker: Gil Broza  00:40

Well, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna stick around. I mean, history has shown that approaches get standardized and there is a lot of value to standardization, depending on context, and depending how far you take it. Okay? You know, I’ll give you an example. You know, if you take a plane, when we go back to flying, right, I want my pilots to follow procedures, I want them following their checklists, no matter how awesome they are. I want them to be good. They are particularly good when they’re able to handle situations that the protocols never gave them answers for. Okay? But before regular operations, it’s okay to follow procedure. Now, we are in knowledge work. Knowledge work has lots more parameters, there’s vocab, there’s so much. Yeah, right. So there is variability, you deal with human beings, work gets created in the brain, you know, through keyboards, but still in the brain. And we’re not also looking for similarity and homogeneity, right? We want the more creative, we want the special, we want the thing that will distinguish us in the marketplace. And so when that is the case, you can only standardize so much. Now we have frameworks all over the place and they all focus on somewhat different things. And they also go to different lengths in terms of how much they tell you and what they tell you to put in place. But even the frameworks evolve, right? If you look, you know, 5, 10 years ago, Scrum says more and Safe said less. So who’s right? Were they wrong back then? Are they more right now? I don’t know.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:36

That’s a really good point.

Speaker: Gil Broza  02:37

Yeah, and you know, the scrum guide always said don’t mess with Scrum. But the scrum guide actually changes every two, three years. And if you look at the version now, it is rather different from 10 and 15 years ago. Okay? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:51

And then what do you say about the Agile Manifesto where some people have said, you know, change it, update it, and they left it as it is? And you know…

Speaker: Gil Broza  03:01

So if you look at my books for instance, you will see that I have actually taken it further. Basically, what I described like in my mindset book is what I believe the consensus in the Agile community is. It is congruent with the manifesto. So the manifesto said very little, it said very little or not at all about safety. Right? There were additional matters that it never spoke about. It was software specific, but we can carry the spirit. Right? Now, should we carry the spirit? I think the results show that it’s a good idea. Okay? Now, do we have to stay absolutely true to the words? That would probably make it religion. Now, that’s not, you know, that’s neither here nor there but if we are in the business of adaptation, then maybe it’s also okay to adapt our value systems and our belief systems.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  04:05

So maybe let’s explore those. You talk in your book a lot about, you know, values, beliefs, principles. And a lot of times, like, you know, when I talked to people, and I covered these, and I tried to, especially in the leadership classes, advanced classes, most people don’t fully understand that. So could you maybe just, from your perspective, describe, well, maybe you can start with a purpose and like, the way they you kind of structure in your book in the diagram that you share with me and I’ve looked at where you have purpose and objectives, mindset, and then tactics specifically?

Speaker: Gil Broza  04:41

Yes. So the idea is that there is a straight line of thinking between the purpose of the work we do which we might capture as objectives and the tactics by which we carry out the work. Tactics being processes, tools, practices, methods, roles, artifacts, and so on. And that straight line of thinking, the intermediate step is that of mindset. Mindset is fundamentally how we approach the work. It’s what gives, you know, color to those tactics. For instance, one of the principles in Agile is collaboration, this idea that, you know, two minds are better than one, that’s actually a belief. But the principle of collaboration is you have something to do? Get more than one person to own the result. Okay? Not to just be, you know, friendly and helpful and sharing information, but to actually take ownership for the result however they divide up to work. So that’s an abstract notion. It helps us make choices. I have work to do, should I collaborate, should I not? That’s a principle. But the higher level, higher conceptual level, the higher abstraction in mindset are values and beliefs, and those are the squishier bits, the even less visible, the more subjective, the more abstract. So beliefs are basically our narrative, they are how we see the world, how we see our customers, how we see ourselves, how we see people, how we engage with humans, and so on.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:12

What we believe is true, right? It’s what we describe it but a lot of people have described it too. Which is pretty interesting. So we have beliefs and then what about values? Because I want to ask you about this too.

Speaker: Gil Broza  06:24

Right. So both of them are voluntary, we actually choose our beliefs, and we choose our values, but their significance is different. So beliefs give context and validity to our values. And value is what’s important to me. I can think of it as what I optimize for, what’s my North Star, what’s non-negotiable. For instance, when we’re being agile, one of our values is to be adaptive. Right? It is so important, it is at the highest level of significance, just below purpose. And what’s the idea? The idea is that if we are being adaptive, we’re more likely to achieve our objective. Now, do we know this for a fact? Actually, we don’t. And that’s where the beliefs come in. So if you look at the manifesto for instance, and you don’t even need to go that far, I mean, every agiler says that, change is good for you. But that’s a belief, you cannot prove that. Now, you can say well change will happen. Well, okay, that’s pretty close to fact, but is it good for you? Should you adapt to it? Is it good for business to adapt to it? And when that’s the case, how should we go about it? So I might say adapting to change is good for business, therefore, I value adaptation. And to act on it, how we will make decisions, I will choose such principles as frequent planning, collaboration, continuous learning, continuous improvement, feedback, right? All those. And so my beliefs and values kind of hold together, they’re really a mental view of what’s happening around me and how I engage with that. And from that, I derive and choose principles that make it so. Okay, for instance, you know, we value you know, the freedom of the individual in our country, one of the principles is we reelect who governs us every so often. Okay? The tactics, how you set up elections, how you count, that’s tactical, right? Is it paper? Is it electronic? That’s not the question. The question is that you have elections because you value self-representation.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  08:39

And so do you think, you know, and I have a certain perspective, and I want to get your thoughts on this. But so like, for instance, would you consider respect of value?

Speaker: Gil Broza  08:53

I’m going to guess you took this from one of scrums values, right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  08:56

No, no, no, no, no, it’s just like, the reason that I say, this is where I’m going with this. So if we consider which I think, you know, you could put respect as a value, right? But our belief around respect could be differ, right? Like for instance, I might say, you know, you get respect by earning it, right. And you might say, Hey, you know, you get respect this way, right? So we bought my value respect but our belief around respect could be different.

Speaker: Gil Broza  09:31

Right. And that will translate to which principles we choose. So for instance, if you believe that you get respect by earning it, as opposed to, you know, it’s just given to you out of the blue or credentials, then one of your principles could be, be respectful in every communication. Okay? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  09:52

Exactly. So I want to ask you this then, do you think when we look at organizations and we all might have similar values, do you think when we have conflict in organizations, is it at the belief level, mostly principal level or value?

Speaker: Gil Broza  10:14

Usually beliefs and values. Usually. Now here’s something else; all of those things that we said we valued, we just use nouns. We need to define them. So when you say respect, what does that mean? We have to define it. Right? Can I respect people and still refer to them as resources? Right? I mean, that’s a legitimate question. So if I hear, let’s say, a senior leader, that’s mostly who I work with, and if they say, I respect our people, I want to empower them. So what does it mean? So what do you mean, when you use the word resource in reference to those people? What does that mean to you? And sometimes people catch themselves and they realize that their values and beliefs are misaligned with how they act, misaligned with their principles. So we always have some set of values, some set of beliefs and some principles.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:13

But we also say that those are not really values, you’re just sugarcoating your behavior, because your values and beliefs are really the reflection of your behaviors, right? 

Speaker: Gil Broza  11:23

They are, Yes. So there’s a way [cross talking 11:26]

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:27

Same way I could say, I’m not racist, right? And then you know, my values based on what, you know, could be totally different. And there’s that usually an organization that misalignment of what’s accepted in society, what I need to say, and maybe possibly do versus what my underlying core values and beliefs might be. Right?

Speaker: Gil Broza  11:53

Right. So what you’re describing is that there is a misalignment between those conceptual levels, that misalignment is the very definition of dysfunction. Now, we might sugarcoat it, we might say that’s the politically right thing to do, we might say that is self-preserving behavior. We can explain it many different ways but the result is that when we are misaligned, a few things happen. First off, we act according to our real values and our real beliefs, we confuse people who thought one thing would happen and another day. And the third is, we actually lose a foundation of trust. Right? We lose a foundation of trust and that is, by the way a key matter when it comes to agile implementations and agile transformations where you have management bringing in some type of Agile framework or not and they start acting on it and following the rules and going through the motions and so on. But then people say, but they don’t really mean it. Now, how do people know that? They know that because of what actually is valued such as be ready on the deadline, on time and on budget, make your predictions and stick to your predictions, standardize everything you do, right, predictability gets right the first time. So even if those leaders don’t expressly use those words, it comes across in communications, in conversations, in follow ups, in accountability, and so on. And then people say, okay, so we kind of seem to be doing the Agile thing but we’re not really being agile. So what people are noticing instinctively is the value is mismatch.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  13:43

So what do you do in that instance? 

Speaker: Gil Broza  13:45

Yeah. And that’s why most of my work with clients is not, you know, here’s how you do Scrum right or anything like that. It is helping the leaders make the mental shifts so that their behaviors are different, but the behaviors are not make believe, the behaviors are real. And that takes lots of forms, usually not found under the umbrella of Agile coaching. Right, yeah. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:16

It’s more like professional coaching and that’s also like more like cognitive growth, because in order for you to shift your values, you have to change your perspectives and believes right, you kind of have to transcend what your current way of the world is. Right?

Speaker: Gil Broza  14:31

Yes, yes. Everybody has this model of the world and we need to make it explicit. And you know, a lot of coaching starts with that. Right? Okay, you want to go there? What do you think now? Right? What’s the gap? So yeah, a fair bit of it does come across in coaching, but it comes across in just plain old conversations, it comes across in teachable moments, it comes across in talks, in Oh, I just picked something up from a book, whatever it is, but it’s not about showing people, here’s what the process is like, you know, take it and ye shall become agile.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  15:06

Exactly. And that’s the whole side, you know, and I think that’s why I really love how you explain the mindset, because that’s really what it is and most of the work, this is the hard part. Like if you’re going to organization, right, and you have somebody with very strong values and beliefs around, like, I need certainty, I need to be able to control stuff, and they have a lot of authority, then there’s so much that you can do there, right?

Speaker: Gil Broza  15:37

So what I like to do is see where their need for certainty comes from. Now, some of it is in their personality, right, because we all have, you know, it deep seated value system that does change with time as we mature and collect life experiences, and so on, but it changes slowly. But the other perspective, and this is something that, you know, I have really brought to my, you know, practice in the last, I’m gonna say for 10 years, it’s this perspective that people’s behaviors are also modulated by pressures from the system. Right? So I’ll give you an example. I’m working with a marketing team right now. One of the directors, I love working with her. She’s curious, she studies everything. Between our conversations, she just went ahead and read my book, stuff like that. I mean, she really invests herself into this. Her boss who was the VP of Marketing thinks of her as a control freak. Now, is she really a control freak? Well, she likes to be in control, yes. But from my conversations with her, what’s really going on there is we just don’t have the capacity, not enough people enough knowledge, skill, and such, to turn out really good work because we’ve grown fast and there’s million other reasons and if I don’t do this, nobody else would. Now to some people, that would put them in a victim mentality. To her, it’s a responsibility mentality. So you see, it’s different mentality. I mean, mindset and mentality very similar. You know, same superficial behavior but what’s going on in the back of their minds is different. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  17:27

And that’s really like, you know, when I talked to other agile coaches, or coaches like, understanding just exactly what you said, and being able to contextualize your approach, like if it’s one on one coaching or if you’re working with a leader, and not having like one size fits all, but really trying to in a way understand, you know, this is where kind of empathy comes in, right? Where you truly try to suspend your beliefs and your values and try to look through somebody else’s head and try to truly hear what they hear and see what they’re saying, then you can start really seeing what you can do to help that person. 

Speaker: Gil Broza  18:07

Exactly. Now, I came into this. And here’s another thing about our beliefs, right? If you believe that people mean well, that they, you know, work from positive intent, that they genuinely want to help, then you will act differently. So for instance, in this case, I first met that Director of Marketing a month ago, or something like that. Now, I already work with the rest of the company but I hadn’t known them. I did a little bit of a, you know, assessment, and I talked to everybody. So I came in with an understanding of the company, but very little knowledge of the people in marketing and I wanted to assume the best and that’s what I saw there. And so now, I look forward to working with that director. And not only that, I recommended to the VP, you know, you do need somebody to kind of help lead the journey, right? Because agile is totally new for marketing, although uses boards and they don’t even use the right. And I offered that director would be a good choice. And the VP looked at me on zoom, right, and she looked at me and said really? I said yes, because her heart’s in the right place and she spends the time, she you know, she takes those steps forward. And if there is a little bit of control, we’ll work with it. But I can tell you that the VP would have never considered her for that role because she had already in her mind kind of painted her… Yes, right, right. And it’s not even a matter of you know, stereotyping; it’s just you know, I’ve worked with you long enough, I kind of think I know you. But it’s all mind reading. And it’s all mind reading. And not only that, it doesn’t take into account again, the context.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  20:00

Well, it’s also the human side. So I was talking the last week with James Priests and we had similar characters because like this really interests me, this human side of things, because I think the tactic side is a lot easier than the human side. And he was, you know, saying, like, in the sense and I actually didn’t think about it, you know, before, but like, you know, how we tend to judge, right? And either positive or negative, and like, you know, just being a little bit more aware of how we’re judging other people and not making those conclusions in judging too early is so important when it comes to that awareness and being aware of just what’s going on in your head.

Speaker: Gil Broza  20:48

Which is why I really like this mantra of how do I know? So maybe I have an opinion about something or, I don’t know, I heard that somebody is doing something and already I, you know, jump to some sort of conclusion or judgment. And the thing is not just the judgment of, you know, this is good or bad. It’s like, the person is stupid, the person didn’t think it through, they didn’t ask enough people, they’re only looking out for themselves. And then the question I like to remind myself to ask is, well, how do I know that really? Is truly just conjecture? Maybe it’s right but is it just conjecture or is there actually facts here? I might be aware of or not.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:36

So what got you… just maybe and then we can shift gears but I’m interested just like what got you into this? You’ve written books on, you know, the human side, the mindset, like what was the thing that triggered you to kind of explore this human side of things? I’m curious, like, do you remember when it happened or it was always…?

Speaker: Gil Broza  21:57

You know, all of these things are a lifetime in the making, right? So when I wrote the human side of agile, so 2011 I wrote it, that was looking back on how I was helping people with agile, and I noticed that most of what I was doing was actually on the soft side. Yes, there was process, and I was teaching developers how to, you know, do test driven development and how to write clean code. And, like, all the technical stuff too. But I noticed that, you know, my biggest successes came from talking with people about how they embrace this new set of ideas. And I noticed that I was pretty consistently successful with that, you know, to the extent an outsider can change a company culture. And I figured, okay, there is something here. And that was around the time when process became a big deal, and everybody was getting certified and how you do x. And to me, this was like you know, you can’t just talk about the process. Right? You just can’t. And I remember when I came up with the title, some people told me, you know, that’s the Forgotten side. And other people were actually kind of surprised. You know, what do you mean human side? It’s a process right? So no, I mean, if you treat it as a process, you won’t get far okay.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  23:50

But it’s also that side is hard to measure in a sense, you know, than the process sides. So a lot of times we focus on what we can measure but how do you measure you know, the mindset? How do you measure behavior? Maybe in some ways you can, behavior specifically, you can but mind may be a little bit.

Speaker: Gil Broza  24:11

No, no, no, look, I do measure it. It’s something I do for my clients. I do give them a snapshot of really how agile they’re being, you know, how much and how well but the thing is, for most of my interactions with clients, whether again, it’s leaders or team members or anyone, the measurements are actually not the issue so much. The issue is what do we need to improve, what do we need to fix? Where’s stuff stuck? And again, I think this is also part of my question or slash rebel background and that, you know, look, I’ve been in this for 20 plus years, people have always talked about measuring. And I kept asking myself, what the hell for? Why do you need to measure everything? Clearly there’s stuff you want to measure. Yes. Okay. If bugs escaped to production? Yeah, we want to know our trends. Okay? If our turnover is high, we want to know how high and is that even normal? Okay, maybe high is normal. But you don’t have to measure everything just for the sake of measuring. I mean, you want to improve it, you have to have an idea of where things are at and a set of numbers is not necessarily how you will get that information.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  25:40

It gets us nice looking charts, you know, with a lot of data, and then we show.

Speaker: Gil Broza  25:47

Look, what one good benefit of measuring is seeing improvement over time, right, as opposed to a point measure, you see trends, good. Okay? And so for instance, you know, measuring your lead time, yes, it makes sense. But it is so squishy, right. And if you change your definitions, you change your states a little bit, you change how you split your stories, already your measures are gone. So my belief and it’s been like this for, you know, well over 10 years is if you are interested in getting better business outcomes through agile, then the very first thing you have to do is put people before process. Which by the way goes to the earlier question of you know, is respect a value? So respect is a value and trust has value and so on but we normally lump them under a single one which is people before process, which in the Agile sense, also goes with safety and servant leadership. So, if you see people before process that gives you the starting point, you cannot work without it. Okay, then you want to work on, you know, value and creating products that matter, and delivering services that matter, and the whole product development around them. Okay? And that will also give you some of the adaptation.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  27:20

But that’s a huge leap though. Like, you know, and I know different people have different opinions, but like, you know, in Lalou’s work, he talks about, you know, where people value and the orange, where the values and beliefs around put the system like, you know, the company has stockholders and others before you put your employees and technically people. So in order to transcend that collective belief that it’s, you know, the company comes before people, it’s gonna take some time. And I think you know, what agile stands for is that next cognitive leap or whatever you want to call it, where we value each other and people more than processes and the company itself.

Speaker: Gil Broza  28:15

So look, there’s always going to be tension between valuing the company or valuing the people who are in it. Right? And if the company is incorporated, like pretty much everybody in our industry, then is the company the same as its people? People change over time, right? I mean, this is a philosophical question. Legally, it is different. Because right, you can have 100% turnover and it’s still the same company. Now okay, so does it have the same culture? Does it still have the same mission? And all of those questions, which we’re not going to answer today. I don’t think anybody can answer them. But then the question is, who is your duty to? And what do you think will work? So agile says or believes, it’s a belief; that if we treat people well, they will create better products and therefore that will be better for the business. So the way we help the business succeed is by making it so people can succeed; ourselves, our teams, our leaders, our stakeholders, our business units, our customers of course. And so if we create an ecosystem where they can work well together and want to work there and put their best foot forward and bring their best selves to work and all of that stuff, then we believe that our results, our deliverables, our products, and so therefore our outcomes will be better. Now, can we prove that? No. Is there a lot of evidence that shows that it works? Yes. Is it conclusive? No. So that’s where we need leadership. We need leaders who can get behind that belief and say, that’s how I want to lead around here. That’s the type of company I want to lead. And there are lots of examples in the industry nowadays. Okay? So that’s the mental leap.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  30:19

And that’s it. That’s what I’m curious. I don’t know. Are you familiar with the Kuhn cycle? Thomas Kuhns cycle, like the guy that came up with the… anyway, like, the guy that came up with the term paradigm. Thomas Kuhn. And essentially, I want to get your thoughts, but I wasn’t sure if you’re familiar, like, you know, the paradigm, you know that we’re in, where it is in that cycle. But maybe let’s switch gears. You’ve written a book on agile outside of software development. If I had to guess, not much changes, it’s still the same thing that we talked about here, right? What is different?

Speaker: Gil Broza  30:59

What is different? Look, fundamentally, it is in fact the same. Okay? What I find is different is, how do you make it work? And where do you make this work? So here’s an example; for the longest time, you know, well-meaning agile coaches would agree with you that agile is not the best solution for everything. I mean, if you look in software development, it’s pretty useful in many parts of it, but even then, not always. Sometimes you have better approaches. Not a ton of them, but you do. Okay. When you look outside of software, work is different. Okay? We cannot lump that all work under the same umbrella as if its needs and parameters and context are all the same. Okay? So marketing a brand has a different set of parameters than running finance for a company. And it is way different than designing your new office space. And it is way different than finding the next vaccine. Okay? So you cannot expect to give them the same solutions. So not only is there no best practice, there is no single framework that will apply to everything. The problem is that people still try to apply those frameworks and they kind of go at it backwards. Here’s the framework, it should work, I need to make some changes here but I got to keep the framework. And so they run into trouble. And that’s why I think that outside of software, you have to be extra deliberate and extra intentional about designing your methods and your structures, your tactics basically, based on, again, what you value in this situation and what you believe is true in the situation.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  33:06

And that’s really also, that reminds me of in a sense, a lot of times we force transformations on people, we tell them what to do and what you just said is really getting people to put in people in the driver’s seat, right, rather than us trying to impose or drive.

Speaker: Gil Broza  33:30

Right. Now, most people I know, could care less about designing their process, they just want to do the work. So it does make sense to rely on people who specialize somewhat in process. Now, that does not mean that you have to take the same process every time. Right? It’s just like, you know, when we think about agile in software development, and you know, statistically, most of your listeners would still be in that space. How you build a, you know an app would be quite different than how you would build, you know, movie editing software and how you will do you know, airplane scheduling software, right? And how you will do computer assisted surgery. Why should you use the same process for all of them? There will be some slight overlap, okay. But you think about everything differently, about your user, about product evolution, about quality, who it is that you’re collaborating with on the way to determining the best solution. How do you handle disasters, right? The level of skill that your team has, that’s of course more situational, that technology is available to you. Why would you give them the same frame work? So when you go outside of software, it’s the exact same questions. Okay? So the marketing team I’m working with, they’re in an insurance company. They’re very different from the marketing team I worked with in the media company. Okay? And it’s not all about, you know, yeah, you put campaigns out there, you get some paid media. Okay fine. But it’s not. It’s about moving the needle. And how you move the needle in the insurance space is rather different than how you move it when you know, people watch your stuff on TV. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  35:31

Exactly. And there is a commitment difference. Usually insurance says once you get somebody you have him for a while. 

Speaker: Gil Broza  35:45

So loyalty, right, not only that, right, the stakes are higher. Right? If you get a bunch of bad clients and insurance, that can be seriously bad, right? If a million people watch your show instead of a million point 1, yeah, okay, that will somehow affect the bottom line, but not as much. So, you know, the cost of being wrong, the cost of change, they have their different scales.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  36:14

But that requires, you know, in organization, building this internal capacity and capability to be able, you know, I use analogy of cooks and chefs in the sense, like, ingredients keeps changing, we need more people in organization to understand at a chemical level, what can I throw in? And what goes well together, right?

Speaker: Gil Broza  36:40

Yes, and that’s why I was saying that it does make sense to rely on people who do have some process specialization, some cultures specialization, right? Some team dynamics specialization. Now, more and more companies have them. You have coaches on staff, you have people who lead to change from other perspectives, in the bigger organizations, you have some facilities, some guild, whatever to you know, help make this change. And these are people who don’t just, you know, build product, right? They learn from us and others what the state of the art is, when it comes to organ culture, and managing flow, and so on and so forth. So yes, we do need to build this capacity more and more, it is, in fact happening. More and more people are joining the industry who are able to provide that capacity. You know, when I started, I’m like the first generation after the manifesto authors and I think we’re now in like the third generation in terms of, you know, new coaches, new Scrum masters, new Kanban, this and that, who really help organizations with, you know, so what’s current. So it’s happening slowly.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  38:08

Well in the end, there’s more interest. You know, if you think about just the and this topic of Agile outside of software development, I’m working with a company in California called Park Pacific, and they’re using lean agile, these ways of working, including, you know, what we’re discussing around mindset in construction. So it’s really interesting and I’m actually interviewing, I think, Jim Benson next week and I want to talk to him. He’s doing, you know, he has a civil engineering background and he’s said he’s doing a lot of this stuff in construction. So I think, you know, like you said, marketing, you know, HR just this morning, spoke to Rena about, you know, HR. So I think there is a momentum, where people are realizing as our work is, you know, increasing in complexity, the needs to start figuring things out, and there’s just more people trying to figure this thing out. So it’s a good thing, I think. 

Speaker: Gil Broza  39:11

Yes and you know, it used to be that when companies downsize, the first to go were the coaches. I just spoke with somebody who works for a large bank today and apparently they had a pretty significant reduction, something like 20% few months ago and he actually lost 25% but that’s all he lost. They could have taken more people from his group, he has like 60 agile coaches, now he has 45. Yeah, actually, the other problem in that case is yes, he kept 45 but then he lost eight of them who said, Oh, agile is clearly not gonna work out here so we’re leaving. So yeah, which is another thing that companies do, right. When senior leadership makes all sorts of, you know, big material decisions, they don’t always consider the cultural impacts, the effect on change initiatives and so on, because they’re used to measuring. And that stuff is squishy. Right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  40:19

Well, this also goes back to like how you incentivized you know. Hey, if I know that my bonus depends on current TAs, then I’m going to look where I’m going to jump. What are some of the ways that you’ve seen companies becoming agile go wrong? You know, so that’s one. What are some of the other things that you’re seeing?

Speaker: Gil Broza  40:39

So what I normally see, and that’s the typical client that comes to me is they’ve started it, usually it’s like a year or two, three ago, they kind of have something going, usually Scrum, hardly ever Kanban. And it’s just mediocre. It’s mediocre. People are not loving it, it seems to be better than before, they’re tired of the meetings. Not just because of the zoom, right? But they’re just tired of all the ceremonies. But they’re intent on keeping doing them because their hey ceremonies and stuff like we got to do. And it’s just nothing is great. And their problem is that they don’t actually know how to fix it because they think they’re doing everything right. Right? They have the roles, all the tactics, right? They have the roles, the artifacts, the JIRA of course, and so on. But that’s it. And it’s not, the results are not quite there. And like, really, when you think you do everything right and the results are not there, well, what do you do? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  41:48

Get more consultants.

Speaker: Gil Broza  41:50

Yeah, but then the question is, which consultants? Right? One of my best clients came to me with a total misunderstanding of the ask. They were doing Scrum like really badly and they wanted the developers to do even more practices from Scrum and tell us how to do them, like really right. And I explained all my approach like I’ve been doing with you in the past hour, and they said, Oh, interesting, never occurred to us. And this clients turned into an opportunity to help at the mindset level going all the way up to CEO, not just how to do the stand ups better. Don’t waste my time was doing stand ups better. Okay? I will gladly help you become more agile however that takes.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  42:44

So maybe exactly what you just remind me of like the importance of alignment and the importance of looking at you know, essentially the hard stuff of the systems, which will be your policies, your organizational architecture. So, what are, you know, when it comes to organizational architecture, and alignment, how do you help clients, especially those in C suite understand like, the importance of them understanding how their systems or in this instance policies, architectures, both IT and business impact the people’s behaviors, as well as their, you know, journey when it comes to dealing with this complexity that they’re faced?

Speaker: Gil Broza  43:42

Well, look, it comes up in conversations all the time. When I have FaceTime with like, executives, those are some of the things I will bring to the conversation and sometimes they asked me all sorts of questions; Well you know, this or that happened, what do you think and so on, and I will sometimes take this to really a teaching moment, right? Because in most cases, the problem is just awareness. That’s it. That’s it. It’s not that, you know, they are intent on doing the opposite thing from agility. No, but they just don’t realize the effect the whole system’s thinking, right? System thinking has been around for quite some time. How many people actually understand it? Really? Okay. So it comes up with that. One thing I like to do with as many clients as I can, and it’s like, I’m gonna say more than half is to actually have training sessions with executives, where I teach them, you know, like an executives guide to the agile mindset. So at least I have dedicated time with them, where I can really paint a complete picture for them of you know, what does it mean to steer a system composed of human beings, not resources. And so when we have that starting point, that helps build some of the trust, and then I can have the later conversations with them.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  45:10

But I think you said, you know, that kind of resonated for my last week’s conversations like, you know, James Priest said like you know, because I’ve made this similar point and he’s like Miljan, I could be completely aware that I’m an asshole or an idiot or be acting that way and still do it. So it’s not necessarily just awareness, but it goes back to the values and beliefs. Once I have that awareness, how am I acting based on what I’m aware of?

Speaker: Gil Broza  45:42

Okay, so I was being generous. And because again, I like to assume before knowing otherwise that you do in fact mean well. Now, these people are hiring me, right, they’re paying my bills. So they’re trying to get something. Now, I would not sign the contract with them if I can see that what they’re trying to get to, is just not at all what I agree with. Right? If the contract is fundamentally about how do I make my people work harder, I don’t want you for clients. If the contract is about, how do we come more productive here, and I can hear that you’re really a slave driver, you only care about productivity, you don’t care about the people on the other side of productivity, I won’t take you on. But I do give quite the benefit of the doubt. I’ve recently worked with a CEO who is very much about productivity. I had like two hour long conversations with him, the VP of engineering was in attendance and I helped him think differently. Has it changed overnight? No. But he is a smart cookie. A CEO at age 27 and a unicorn. He is working differently now. Has he changed everything? No, it will take more time. Right? But the conversation started earlier around how do we actually have a better culture around here?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  47:14

Nice. So maybe and we don’t have time to talk about culture, and I don’t want to dive into it, you know, but maybe, you know, you’ve written three books. I don’t know if you planning to write a next book. But if you were, what would it be? 

Speaker: Gil Broza  47:35

I really don’t know. Seriously, I don’t.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  47:43

No, I was wondering, because a lot of times, you know, you might be thinking and I wanted to see if that’s gonna, you know, shed any light on what’s currently on your mind but in the sense of like, what’s going on and I think this whole space of Agile also software is on my mind by want to see you know, if there was something else. So maybe as a last question, then and I sometimes ask this is, you know, you and I’ve only spoken once before, and I don’t know you that well so you know, I know I missed some questions and what is the question maybe that I missed or I didn’t know to ask that you would say, Miljan, I wish you asked this?

Speaker: Gil Broza  48:33

Well, you already asked lots of questions I wanted be asked so it’s harder to answer. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:47

So maybe Okay, that’s good. At least I tried to do a little bit of my homework and understand kinda like, you know, your perspective. What is the message maybe that you would leave the listeners with when it comes to agile, and specifically, maybe agile leadership? What’s important about agile leadership and maybe something on that note?

Speaker: Gil Broza  49:16

I think the most important thing around agile leadership is to see people for people, warts and all, our imperfect humanity. In fact, just this morning, I posted on LinkedIn about the amazing parallels between modern leadership and modern parenting. My twins just finished high school. And you know, they were born around the time I started coaching, consulting. And knowing agile helped me become a better parent. Not that we have product owners and stand ups and boards. No, it’s the thinking behind agile. It’s the leadership thinking here. It’s the serving the outcome, responsibility, taking all of the things. You might have listeners who have kids all the way from zero to 20 years old. Anything you learn in agile and you apply at home will probably make you a better parent. And a lot of the stuff that you realize about parenting that works carries over to leading adults. And something that is common to both is you have so much in your blind spots. We all have blind spots. We think we know, we mind raids, we believe that we’ve communicated clearly, we believe that we’ve expressed the need clearly, we believe that we are being supportive, we believe that we’re being fair and No, we’re not. Most of the time, we’re not. We’re totally self-deceived, that’s a throwback to the book leadership and self-deception which everybody should read. But the thing is, there is a blind spot, work on reducing it. Can I actually plug something here? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  51:10

Please, yeah. 

Speaker: Gil Broza  51:11

Okay. So if you go to my website @3pvantage.com/blindspots, there is just a little mini program done by over email, calling attention to common blind spots that leaders have. There’s like, there’s a top seven there that somehow seem to be trouble for almost everybody. And you know, just noticing those blind spots and doing something about them, this program comes with, you know, advice, that alone will move you forward a lot more than you know, insisting on more structure and best practices.