Being Agile vs. Doing Agile w/ Jessie Shternshus and Paul Hammond

In this podcast, Jessie Shternshus , Paul Hammond and I take a shot at addressing the question of whether organizations have become so focused by the need to “do” Agile that they may have lost the ability to actually “be” Agile. During the conversation we touch on a number of the key challenges organizations are facing and how these challenges are impacting individuals at the team level.

Show Notes 

00:45 Introduction to Jessie and Paul

02:00 The Topic(s): Do we need to return to a more simple version of it so that people can better understand/internalize the fundamental intent behind it and not simply get lost in dogma and going thru the motions? How do we help “them” figure out the “why”?

06:30 Does leadership need to deeply understand Agile to help support transition to Agile or can the organization succeed if they just want to “do Agile”?

08:48 Changing the conversation to help people approach Agile with a more open mindset?

10:48 Mapping organizational values to Agile Manifesto values

11:30 How to create hope (that things can improve) at an organization?

14:20 Taking the option to “Make a choice”

16:37 Advice for getting “Buy In”

18:03 How do we unfreeze the frozen middle?

20:08 Should leadership demonstrate vulnerability when trying to transition to Agile? (crickets)

20:46 How do I help my company become a place innovative, agile people will want to work?

22:47 You can’t put a band-aid on culture

23:56 What id you hire for the culture you want, and disappoint the new folks with what you have?

26:15 Has anyone’s Agile transformation ever gone fast enough? What is the pace of transition that you need?

27:17 Remember to acknowledge the positives

28:00 Advice for Senior Mgmt. on adopting Agile

32:36 Advice for Team Members who feel like Mgmt. doesn’t get it yet

36:30 How to reach Jessie and Paul

38:29 Close

Contacting Jessie and Paul

Jessie is the founder of The ImprovEffect. You can reach her at her site here: http://www.improveffect.com or via Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheImprovEffect. She also has a number of upcoming events which can be found here: http://www.improveffect.com/events/

Paul Hammond is is the Director European Product Development at eBay and can be reached via his website: http://phammond.com or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/phammond. Paul is also on the Board of the Agile Alliance. You can find more about the upcoming Agile Alliance Technical Conference here: https://www.agilealliance.org/agile-alliance-technical-conference-2017/