A long title, so let me try and unpack. One of the noticeable differences in an agile delivery culture is how the people inside that system interact and the word that describes this is collaboration. One of the ways to generate collaboration is through the processes that are implemented. When we focus on flow and dependencies, visible backlogs,  bottlenecks and daily allowing our backlogs to reflect the highest value work, then we create a system that is more collaboration friendly. So why is collaboration often not the end result ? One of the key values/ attributes I often use when creat ..read more

I am fascinated with one question, what does it take to create exceptional performance ? What makes one team, one individual succeed in this and another not ? Having held the Guinness World Record for the Deepest dive by a Woman on Scuba for 16 odd years and knowing that I wasn’t borne with the skills to be the deepest, I had to learn them has cultivated this curiosity – in my mind if this is something I can learn then it is something anyone could learn (not necessarily to break a world record, that is a one off event, but imagine living a life where you knew, just knew that you can lean into ..read more

We speak about collaboration and bemoan the fact that our teams aren’t using it, but do we actually want collaboration ? Without it we can’t get work to flow inside or across teams … but what does it actually take ? I got this idea from a truly Agile servant leader, Jaimie Moodley, during one of my Leading Agile for Flow using Servant Leadership workshops. We are practicing the behaviors that create flow and to do that, we practice scenarios. The one scenario is that each party needs to get 80% of the budget. Sound familiar ? One of the most common outcomes is to both lose with a 50:50 solutio ..read more

Over the years I have been looking for the ‘thing’ that makes some coaches stand out from others. The more I look, the more I find a couple of things that seem to be consistently present. The first I have talked about in the Coaching levers – exceptional coaches use what they know in a very different way, they make their knowledge accessible and practical. It isn’t what you know, it’s how you use it that makes all the difference. The second is something that I have only recently started to name – the Coaches sense of their own brand. I have never used that label before, brand, to describe what ..read more

This is the first part in a series of blogs that revolve around one of the strongest and most damaging anti-patterns for Agile, Agile Coaches and Agile Leadership. It is also a key element in the Coaching Levers – Lever 1: Activate the Coach, Activate Coaching. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 It all starts with how we engage with each other. What our conversations sound like and most importantly, the impact we have on others in those conversations. For the sake of what are we speaking ? What is the actual outcome you are trying to achieve ? Turns out, it isn’t so much about solving the problem a ..read more

I have been playing with some patterns and anti-patterns to support leaders who are shifting into a way of leading that leverages the delivery potential of an agile transformation. Because like it or not, one of the most significant limitations to how successful an agile transformation is are the leaders and how they lead. There are the obvious anti-patterns (shift from telling to co-creating), the not so obvious (leaders go last not first) and then the really subtle (the definition of success is how the team is doing and the ease of delivery and alignment to outcomes rather than the how of de ..read more

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This is an attempt at capturing a conversation with a fellow agilist who I admire greatly. It is a conversation we find ourselves in regularly as we both try and find a way to avoid our jerk side which we both know just gets in the way of exceptional performance. I am afraid it isn’t a short blog, so feel free to scan it or even abandon it wherever  makes sense for you. I do hope you read to the end as I would love to hear about what you think on my thoughts ? What is it you have experienced that is similar or different ? How are you solving this ? I call it every coaches existential cris ..read more

As a leader the thing that I am finally starting to get is simply this… exceptional performance isn’t a repeatable recipe! Exceptional performance happens only when uniqueness is expressed with abandon! It happens only when individuals have the freedoms to explore who they are and what greatness looks like for them. Not what exceptional performance looks like for Spotify or Joe Blogs, but for them! Exceptional performance is about exploiting the differences that we use to separate ourselves and use these to bring it all together into a single, evolving master piece…. like an orchestra. Wh ..read more

Have you had this experience ? You are working with experienced agilists and are asking questions around why they are doing things the way they are ? What is the value it is adding ? What is the problem that is being solved ? And the answer you get it, “We have to do it this way because we are in the Shu phase and that means we repeat the process exactly!” And that is the end of that! Or is it ? It doesn’t sit well with me! It feels tighter than it should! It feels like a Shu box (get it ? Shoe Box ? I know, everyone else grimaces as well, only I couldn’t resist). If we are trying to get to a ..read more