Easy Agile Podcast Ep.25 The Agile Manifesto with Jon Kern
"Thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jon, he shared some great perspectives on the impact of the Agile manifesto" - Amaar Iftikhar
Amaar Iftikhar, Product Manager at Easy Agile is joined by Jon Kern, Co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and a senior transformation consultant at Adaptavist.
Amaar and Jon took some time to speak about the Agile Manifesto. Covering everything from the early days, ideation, process, and first reactions, right through to what it means for the world of agile working today.
They touch on the ideal state of an agile team, and what the manifesto means for distributed, hybrid and co-located teams.
We hope you enjoy the episode!
Transcript
Amaar Iftikhar:
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Amaar Iftikhar. I'm a product manager here at Easy Agile. And before we begin, Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Dharawal speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. And extend that same respect to all Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and First Nations peoples joining us today.
Today, we have on the podcast Jon Kern, who is the co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and an Agile consultant. If you're wondering, you're correct. I did mention the Agile Manifesto for Software Development. The Agile Manifesto. So Jon, welcome for being here and thank you for joining us.
Jon Kern:
Oh, my pleasure, Amaar. Thank you.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, very excited to have you on. Let's just get started with the absolute basic. Tell the audience about, what is the Agile manifesto?
Jon Kern:
Well, it's something that if you weren't around, and I know you're young, so you weren't around 21 years ago, I guess now, to maybe understand the landscape of what software development process and tooling and what most of us were facing back then, it might seem like a really obvious set of really simple values. Who could think that there's anything wrong with what we put into the manifesto? But back in the day, there were, what I practiced under as a... I'm an aerospace engineer, so I was in defense department work doing things like fighter simulation, F-14 flat spins and working with a centrifuge and cool stuff like that. And subject to a mill standard specification, which makes sense for probably weapons systems, and aircraft manufacturing, and all sorts of other things. But they had one, lo and behold, for software development. And so there was a very large, what I would call heavy handedness around software development process. We call it heavyweight process. Waterfall was the common term back then, and probably still used today.
And there were plenty of, I would say the marketing juggernaut of the day, IBM and Rational unified process, these large, very much like Safe. Where it's a really large body of work, awesome amount of information in it, but very heavy process even though everything would, say you tailor it, it could be whatever you wanted. I mapped my own lightweight process into REP for example. Sure. But the reality was we were facing kind of the marketplace leader being heavyweight process that was just soul crushing, and from my perspective, wasting taxpayers' money. That was kind of my angle was, well, I'm a taxpayer, I'm not going to just do this stupid process for process sake. That has to have some value, has to be pragmatic. So lo and behold, there were a handful of us, 17 that ended up there, but there are a handful of us that practiced more lightweight methods. So the manifesto was really an opportunity for coming together and discovering some of the, what you might think of as the commonality between many different lightweight practices. There was the XP contingent. I first learned about Scrum there, for example. Arie van Bennekum, a good friend, he taught us about DSDM. I don't even remember what it stands for anymore. It was a European thing.
Alistair and Jim Highsmith, they had, I forget, like crystal methodologies. So there was a fair amount of other processes that did not have the marketing arm that erupted, or didn't have the mill standard. So it was really all about what could we find amongst ourselves that was some sort of common theme about all these lightweight processes. So it was all about discovering that, really.
Amaar Iftikhar:
You all get together, the principles kind of come to fruition, and let's fast forward a little bit. What was the initial reaction to the original manifesto?
Jon Kern:
Yeah, it was even kind of funny that the four values, the four bullets is as simple as it was. The principles came a bit later. I want to say we collaborated over awards wiki, but the original... If you go to Agile uprising, you can see I uploaded some artifacts, because apparently I'm a pack rat. And I had the original documents that Alistair probably printed out, because he was the one... He and Jim lived there near Salt Lake City. So it was like, "Hey, let's come here." And we like to go skiing, so let's do it here. So he arranged the room and everything. And so there's some funny artifacts that you can find. And the way that it actually came about was an initial introduction of each of us about our methods. And really I think a key, we left our egos at the door. I mean I was a younger one. Uncle Bob, some of these, he was at Luminar, I know I have magazines still in the barn that he was either the editor of, or authors of for people who don't remember what magazines are. Small little booklets that came out. So Uncle Bob was like, Ooh, wow, this is pretty cool.
And I wasn't shy because I had a lot of experience with heavyweight methods. So I really wanted to weigh in on... Because I had published my own lightweight method a few years earlier. So I had a lot of opinions on how to avoid the challenges of big heavyweight process. So the culmination as we were going out the door and after we had come up with the four values was I think Ward said, "Sir, want me to put this on the web?" And again, this is 2001 so dot com and the web's still kind of new so to speak. And we're all like, yeah, sure, why not? What the hell, can't hurt. We got something, might as well publish it. I don't think to a person, anybody said, "Oh yeah, this is going to set the world on fire because we're so awesome." And we were going to anoint the world with all of this wonderful wisdom. So I don't think anybody was thinking that that much would happen.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah. So what were you thinking at that time? So how would the principles that you had come up with together, was that maybe just for the team to take away? Everyone who was there? What was the plan at that time?
Jon Kern:
I think it was a common practice. Like I said, there were other groups that would often meet and have little consortiums or little gatherings and then publish something. So I think it was just, oh yeah, that's a normal thing to do is you spent some time together and you wrote things down, you might as well publish it. So I think it wasn't any deeper than that other than Bob, I think Bob might say that he wanted to come up with some kind of a manifesto of sorts or some kind of a document because that's I think what those sort of... I was never at one of those gatherings, but you know, you could see that they did publish things. I have a feeling it was just something as innocent as, well we talked, wrote some things down, might as well share it.
And then the principles, there were a lot of different practices in the room. So some of what I would say the beauty of even the values page is the humility at the top is it's still active voice. We are uncovering not, hey all peasants, we figured it all out. No, we're still uncovering it. And the other thing is by doing it, because I'm still an active coder. And plus we value this more on the left, more than on the right. Some people might say it's a little ambiguous or a little fuzzy, but that's also a sign of humility and that it's not A or B. And it really is fuzzy, and you need to understand your context enough to apply these things. So from a defense department contracting point of view, certainly three of the four bullets were really important to me because I learned... Sure, we did defense department contracting. But it's way more important to develop a rapport with the customer than it is... Because by the time you get to the contract you've already lost, which goes along with developing a rapport with the customer, the individual.
And one of Peter Codes, when we worked with customers and whatnot, one of our mantras was frequent tangible working results, AKA working software. You can draw a lot and you can do use cases for nine months, but if you don't have anything running, it's pretty, I would guess risky that you don't have anything, no working software yet. So it really was I think an opportunity to share the fact that some people thought two weeks and other people thought a month. Even some of the print principles had a pretty good wide ranging flexibility so to speak. That I think is really important to note.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it makes sense. Did you or anyone else in the room at that time ever imagine what the impact downstream would be of the work that was being done there?
Jon Kern:
Not that I'm aware of. I certainly did not. I remember a couple times in my career walking in and seeing some diagrams when I worked with the company Together Soft, and we'd build some cool stuff and I'd see people having some of the... Oh yeah, there's a diagram I remember making on their wall. That's kind of cool. But nothing near how humbling and sort of satisfying it is. Especially I would say when I'm in India or Columbia or Greece, it almost seems maybe they're more willing to be emotional about it. But people are, it's almost like they were freed by this document. And in some sense this is a really, really tiny saying it with the most humility possible. A little bit like the Declaration of Independence, and the fact that a handful of people... And the constitution of the United States. A handful of people met in a moment of time, never to be repeated again and created something that was dropped on the world so to speak, that unleashed, unleashed a tremendous amount of individual freedom and confidence to do things. And I think in a very small, similar fashion, that's what the manifesto did.
Amaar Iftikhar:
As you mentioned, there was a point in time when the manifesto was developed and that was almost over 20 years ago. So now the way of working, and the world of working has drastically changed. So what are your thoughts on that? Do you see another version coming? Do you think there are certain updates that need to be made? Do you think it's kind of a timeless document? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Jon Kern:
Yeah, that's a good question. I personally think it's timeless and I welcome other people to create different documents. And they have. Alistair has The Heart of Agile, Josh Kerievsky's got Modern Agile.
There's a few variations of a theme and different things to reflect upon, which I think is great. Because I do believe, unlike the US Constitution, which built in a mechanism to amend itself, we didn't need that. And I believe it captured the essence of how humans work together to produce something of value. Mostly software, because that's what we came to practice from, is the software experience. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to replace the word software with product or something like that and still apply much of the values that are there with very, very minor maybe adjustments because frequent tangible working results.
There might have to be models, because you're not going to build a skyscraper and tear it down and say, "Oh, that wasn't quite right," and build it again. But nonetheless, there are variations of how you can show some frequent results. So I think by and large it's timeless. And I would challenge anybody. What's wrong with it? Point out something that's somehow not true 20 years later. And I think that's the genius behind it was we stumbled on... And probably because most of us were object modelers, that's one of the things we're really good at, is distilling the essence of a system into the most critical pieces. That's kind of what modeling is all about. And so I think somehow innately, we got down to the core bits that make up what it is to produce software with people, process and tools. And we wrote it down. That's why I think it's timeless.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, no absolutely. I think that was a really good explanation about why it's timeless. I think one of the principles that comes to mind in a kind of modern hybrid or flexible working arrangement is one of the principles talks about the importance of face to face conversations. And in a world now where a lot of conversations aren't happening physically face to face, they might be happening on Zoom. Do you think that still applies?
Jon Kern:
Yeah, I think what we're finding out with... Remote was literally remote, so to speak, back 20 years ago. I was working with a team of developers in Russia and we had established enough trust and physical... I would travel there every month. So kind of established enough of a team, and enough trust in the communication that we could do ultimately some asynchronous work because different time zones. And me being in the east coast. 7:00 AM in the US was maybe 3:00 PM in Russia if I recall. St. Petersburg. So we were able to overcome the distance, but it's hard to beat real life. And I would often sometimes even spar a little bit with Ron Jeffries that on the one hand you could say the best that you can do is in person. But on the other hand, I could argue a little bit of some of the remoteness makes things... You have to be a little more verbose, possibly a little more precise, but also a little more verbose. A little more relaxed with... You might take a couple of passes to get something just because, I mean there are two time zones passing in the night. But that was based off of some often initial face to face meetings, and then you could go remote and still be successful and highly effective.
So I think it's important that teams don't just say that they can still do everything. And zoom is way better than 20 years ago, admittedly. Zoom gets, at least you can see a face. But nothing replaces the human contact. And I think also for wellbeing, I think human contact is important. So I would still say that the interaction aspect in the manifesto is still best served with a healthy dose of in-person. And that's kind of the key about most things in Agile. It's to me it's about pragmatism, and not just being dogmatic but rather, what might work better for us? And even experimenting with try something a little bit and see how that works. So even how you treat the manifesto, you should treat it in an Agile manner so to speak.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, no absolutely. That's a great point. On that note, as an Agile consultant or the Agile guy, what have you seen are the best practices or what works, what doesn't work for distributed teams?
Jon Kern:
Well I think the things that are most challenging that I've run across big companies and even smaller ones is that... I don't know if it's natural, God forbid if it's natural, but tendencies that I've seen in some companies to set up silos where you're the quality control, you're the UX, you're the front end, you're the back end, makes my headwater explode. Because that's building in a lag and building in communication roadblocks and building in cooperation which is handed offs from silo to silo, versus collaboration. So I've seen more of that. And I get it, you might want to have a specialty, but customer doesn't care. Customer wants something out the door. If I showed up and I'm going to pull a feature off the stack, what do you mean I can only do part of it? I don't get that. And yeah, I know I'm not an expert in everything but we probably have an expert that we can figure out what the pattern is. So I find that sort of trend, I don't know if it's a trend, but I find that's a step backwards in my opinion. And it's better to try to be more cross-functional, collaborative, everybody trying to work to get the feature out the door, not just trying to do your little part.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, a hundred percent. I think knocking on silos is a big part of being agile, or even being digital for that matter. And often the remedies for it too are there at hand, but it's a lot harder to actually be practical with it, to actually implement it in an organization, a living, breathing business where there's real people and there's dynamics to deal with, and there's policies and processes to follow. So I guess as generic as you can be, what is your thought as an Agile consultant to a business that's kind of facing that issue?
Jon Kern:
One of the things that... Adaptive is what my colleague John Turley has really opened my eyes to. I tend to call it the secret sauce, or the missing piece to my practice. And it has to do with individual's mindset and what we call vertical development. So it might sound like weird wishy-washy fluffy stuff, but it's actually super critical. And I've always said people, process, and tools for, I want to say since late nineties probably, I mean a long time. And the first I've been able to realize why sometimes I would have just spectacular super high performing teams and other times it'd be just really, really well performing but not always that spark and sometimes kind of like, eh, that was a little meh. And a lot of it comes down to where people lie on in terms of how they make their meaning and what their motivational orientation is, command and control versus autonomy.
So what we do is we've learned that we can help people first off recognize this exists, and help people with what we call developmental practices. Something that, even the phrase, you probably heard it, like safe experiments. Failure, or trying something and failing. Well if you chop someone's head off for it, guess what? They're just going to probably stay pretty still and only do what they're told, not try to... I have a super high dose of autonomy in me, so I've long lived by the, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and always felt as long as I'm trying to do the right thing to succeed and do the best for the company, they probably won't fire me if I make a mistake. But not everybody has that amount of freedom in the way they work. So you have to help establish that as management, and that's a big thing that we work with, with teams.
And then we also start with the class. If you've ever watched office space, and if you haven't you should, but the, what is it that you do here? So there's a great, the consultants Bob and Bob coming in, the efficiency consultants, "So Amaar, what is it that you do here?" But literally that's something, whether we're helping teams build a new product, is okay, what's the purpose? What's the business purpose of this product? What is it that you do here? What do you want to do with this product? What value does it provide? Same thing with anything you're working with as a team. And that's why whether it's software, producing some feature that has an outcome that provides value to the customer, or some product. But the point is if you don't understand that, now it's making, the team is going to have a real hard time being able to make decisions which are helping us move forward.
So if you help everybody understand what it is we're here to do, and then try to get the folks that might reflect all the different silos if you're siloed, but all the different elements. How do we go from an idea to cash, so to speak, or idea to value in the customer's hand? And have a good look at that. Because there are so many things that just sort of... Technical data often creeps into software code bases. And the same thing, we sort of say the organizational debt, the same thing can happen. Your process debt. You can just end up with, all right, we want the development team to go faster, John and company, can you come in and help coach us? We want to go agile. Sure, okay yeah. All right. We roll up our sleeves, we look around and after an initial kind of value stream look, like, wait I'm sorry but there's a little tiny wedge, it's about 15%, that's the development. And then you spent the 85% thinking about it.
Let's pretend we could double the speed of development. Which was initially the... Yeah, we need the developers to code faster or something. That's a classic. And no you don't, you need to stop doing all this bullshit up front that's just crazy ass big waterfall project-y stuff with multiple sign-offs. And matter of fact, one of the sign-offs, oh my gosh it only meets once a week, and then if you have a typo in it, you get rejected. You don't come back for another... Are you insane? You spent eight months deciding to do eight weeks worth of work. Sorry, it's not the eight weeks. So things like that, what I recommend anybody self inspect is try to... If you're worried about your team, how you can do better is just start trying to write down what does your process step look like and what is a typical time frame?
How much time are you putting value into the... Because a lot of times people batch things up in sprints. That's a batch, why are you putting things in a batch? Or they have giant issues. Well that's the big batch. So there's lots of often low hanging fruit. But to your point, it's often encrusted in, this is the way we work and nobody feels the ability to change or even to stop and look to see how are we working. So I think that's where we usually start is let's see how you actually work today. And then while we're doing that you can spill your guts, you can tell us all the things that hurt and that are painful and then we'll try to design a better way that we can move towards, in terms of working more effectively. Because our goal is to help teams be able to develop ways to do more meaningful and joyous work, really. Because it's a lot of fun when it's clicking and when you're on a good team and you're putting smiles on the customers' faces, it's hard to almost stay away from work because it's so much fun. But if it's not that, if it's drudgery and you're just a cog in the machine and stuff takes months to get out the door, it's a job. It's not that much fun.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah. A lot of the points that you mentioned there strongly resonated with me, and the common pain points. It sounds like you've kind of seen it all. And by the way if you haven't seen office space, definitely need to watch it. It's a really good one. You've mentioned now a lot about of the element of the challenges that a distributed team faces. Now I want to flip it over and ask you what does the perfect distributed team look like today that lives and breathes agile values?
Jon Kern:
Yeah. I don't know if you can ever have such a thing, a perfect of any kind of team. So I would say harking back to the types of distributed teams that I've worked with, and this goes back to the late nineties. So I've been doing this for a long, long time. Only really done remote, whether it was with developers in Russia or down in North Carolina, or places like that. And I think that the secret was having a combination of in-person... If you want to go somewhere as a group, there are things you can do to break the ice, to establish some, what you might call team building type activities.
And not just, hey let's go do a high ropes course and be scared out of our wits together. But rather also things that are regarding why are we here, what are we trying to achieve? And let's talk about whether it's the product we're trying to build, and take that as an opportunity to coalesce around something and get enough meat on the bone, enough skeletons of what it might look like. Because there's good ways to start up and have a good foundation. And that's part of what I've been practicing for decades. If you get things set up properly with understanding that just enough requirements, understanding... And I do a lot of domain modeling with UML and things like that, just understanding what the problem domain is that we're trying to solve to achieve the goals we're looking for, have a sense of the architecture that we want. So all those things are collaborative efforts.
And so if you have enough of a starting point where you've worked together, you come in and, let's say you even had to go rent someplace, because nobody lived near office, so you all flew somewhere. I mean that's money well spent in my opinion. Because that starts the foundation. If you've broken bread so to speak, or drank some beers, or coded together and did stuff, and then you go back to your remote offices to take the next steps and then realize when you might need to meet again. So that's really important to understand that the value of establishing those relationships early on so that you can talk bluntly. And I have some good folks that I run a production app for firefighters since like 2006.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, very cool.
Jon Kern:
And that friend that I've worked with, we are so tight that we can... It makes our conversations, we don't have to beat around the bush, we don't have to worry about offending any, we just, boom, cut to the chase. Because we know we're not calling each other's kids ugly. We're just trying to get something done fast.
And building that kind of rapport takes time and effort and working together. And that's what I think a good successful distributed team, you need to come together every so often and build those relationships and know when you might need to come together again if something is a problem. But that I think is a key to success is it shortens the time. Because you may have heard of things like the group forms, if this is performance on the Y axis they form and they're at some performance level, then they need to storm before they get back to normal, and before they start high performing. So it's this form, storm. You get worse when you're storming. And storming means really understanding where we're at. When we argue about, I don't think that should be inheritance, Amaar. And then you're like, "Oh bull crap, it really..."
And again, we're not personal, but we're learning each other's sort of perspectives and we're learning how to have respectful debates and have some arguments, so to speak, to get to the better place. And I've worked in some companies that are afraid to storm, and it feels like you're never high performing.
Everyone's too polite. It's like, come on. And I love when I worked with my Russian colleagues. They didn't give a crap if I was one of the founders. And I'm glad, because I don't want any privilege, I don't want anything like that. No let's duke it out. May the best ideas win. That's where you want to get to. And if you can't get there because you don't have enough of a relationship, and you tend not to say the things that needed to be said because you're being polite, well it's going to take you really long to succeed. And that's a lot of money, and that's a lot of success, and people might leave.
So I think the important thing is if you're remote, that's okay, but sheer remote is a real challenge. And you have to somehow figure out, if you can't get together to learn how to form and storm, and build those bonds face to face, then you need to figure out how to do it over Zoom. Because you need to do it, because if you don't, if you never have words, then trust me, you're still not high performing.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, I kind of feel like being fully remote now is being offered as almost a competitive advantage to candidates in the marketplace now, because it's a fight for talent. But if I'm understanding correctly, what you are saying is that in-person element is so important to truly be high performing and those ideas kind of contradict each other, I feel.
Jon Kern:
Yeah. And again, having been remote since the late nineties, I've been doing this a long time. And commuting to Russia is the longest commute I ever did, for three years. I mean that's a hell of a long flight to commute there over seven times, or whatever the hell it was. Anyway, I used to say that that being remote is not for everyone, because it really isn't. I mean you have to know how to work without anybody around, and work. I mean it has its own challenges. And yeah, it might be a perk, but I think what you need to do is look at potentially what the perks are and figure out too, can I fold them into... It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And I think that can be a easy mistake to make maybe is to, all right cool, we don't have to have office space. That's a lot of savings for the company. Yeah, but maybe that means you need to have some remote workspaces for occasional gatherings, or figure it out.
But yeah, I think even... And certain businesses might work differently. In the beginning of building a product, I want to have heavy collaboration and I want to get to a point where it's almost, I feel like the product goes like this where once you get things rolling and you kind of get up, get some momentum going, now the hardest thing to do is be in front of an agile team, whether they're in-person or remote. Once things are rolling and rocking and kicking and it's like everything's clicking, you can just bang out features left, like boom, boom, boom. Yeah, okay then we probably need to be...
Unless we've got ways that we're pairing or things like that. I will say when we're together, mobbing is easier. I'm sure there's ways to do it remote, but being in a room, I don't know, it's a lot easier than coordinating over Zoom. You just, hey there's this problem, let's all hang out here after standup because we're just going to mob on this. So it doesn't take a whole lot versus anything remote, there's a little extra, okay, we've got to coordinate, and even different times zones, gets even worse. So yeah, don't get carried away with remote being the end all be all. Because I have a feeling there's going to be a... I would wager there will be a backlash.
Amaar Iftikhar:
And I'll take that back coming from the Agile, the person who does this day to day who helps teams become agile, I'll definitely kind of take your word for it. Plus with my experience too, I've seen nothing really beats a good white-boarding session. That is really hard to replicate online. I mean we have these amazing tools, but nothing quite mimics the real life experience of just having a plain whiteboard and a marker in your hand. That communication is so powerful.
Jon Kern:
Great point. You're so, right, because I had just with the one company that I was with for five years, we were doing high level engineered to order pump manufacturing sales type tool for... So it was my favorite world because it blended my fluid dynamics as an aerospace engineer, plus my love for building SaaS products, and building new software and things like that. And even having a young, we would interview at Lehigh University and we'd have some young graduates that would be working with us, and being able to bring them into the fold, and there was a room behind where my treadmill was and we'd go in there, we'd have jam sessions on modeling and building out new features. And man, you're right. Just that visceral three dimensional experience. Yeah, Miro's great. Or any other kind of tool, but yeah, it's not the same. You're absolutely right. That's a great point. You're almost making me pine for the good old days. [inaudible 00:42:04]
Amaar Iftikhar:
I think the good old days very much still exist. I think even now, it's kind of been a refreshing time for me to be with Easy Agile. I've only been here for just under two months now. And there's a strong in-person dynamic. And again, it's optional, where if people are remote or they're hybrid or they need to commute once in a while, it's a very understanding environment. But once you're in the office or you're in person, you kind of feel the effect you were describing, you're motivated to deliver for the end customer. You just want to come back. It's an addictive feeling of, I want to be back in person and I want to collaborate in real time in person.
Jon Kern:
That's beautifully said, because that's... One of the companies that we're beginning to engage with in South Africa, they're at this very crossroad of struggling with, everybody's been remote, but boy, the couple times we were together, got so much done. And you're describing the flame of, the warmth of delivering and let the moths come to the flame. I mean nurture it and then fan the flames of the good and let people opt in and enjoy it. And still sometimes, yeah, I got to say home, I got the kids or the dog, that's okay too. But giving the option I think is where we're going to head. And I believe the companies that are able to build that hybrid culture of accepting both, and neither mandating one nor the other, but building such a high performing team that basically encourages people to opt into the things that make the most sense at that time. And I think that those companies will rule the day, so to speak.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah, absolutely. It's been so nice to chat with you John, and I've really enjoyed this. I want to leave the audience off with one piece of advice for distributed agile teams from you. We've talked a lot about the importance of in-person collaboration. We've talked about the principles of the agile manifesto. Now, what would the one piece of advice be when you're thinking of both? When you want the agile manifestos to be something that's living and breathing in distributed agile teams, what one piece of advice can you give businesses today right now who are going through the common struggles? What can you tell them as that last piece of advice?
Jon Kern:
Well, I think kind of a one phrase that I like to use to capture the manifesto is, "Mind the gap." In my sort of play on words, what I mean is the gap in time between taking an action and getting a response. Whether it's what do we do about the office, what do we do about remote, what do we do about this feature, what do we do about this line of code? The gap in time is, it's sort of a metaphor about being humble enough to treat things as a hypothesis. So don't be so damn sure of yourself one way or the other about the office or remote or distributed. But instead, treat things as a hypothesis. Be curious and experiment safely with different ways and see what works. And don't be afraid of change. It's not a life sentence to, you got to run your business or your project or your team one way for the rest of your life. No. Don't tell the boss, but work is subsidized learning. I never understood people who just keep doing the same thing because they weren't given permission. Just try it. So that's what my departing phrase would be regarding making those decisions. Mind the gap and really be humble about making assumptions, and test your hypotheses, and shorten the gap in time between taking actions and seeing a reaction.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. I really wish we could let the tape roll and just keep talking about this for a couple more hours, but we'll end it right there on that really good piece of advice that you've left the audience off with. Jon, thank you again for being on the podcast. And we've really, really enjoyed hearing you and learning from your experiences.
Jon Kern:
Oh, my pleasure. Any time. Happy to talk another couple hours, but maybe after some beers.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah.
Jon Kern:
Except it's your morning, my evening. I'm going to have to work on that.
Amaar Iftikhar:
Yeah.
Jon Kern:
My pleasure, Amaar.
Related Episodes
PodcastEasy Agile Podcast Ep.10 Kate Brodie, Director of Digital AI and CCAI Program at Optus
"It was great chat about Kate's experience working in an agile environment, and learning what artificial intelligence looks like at Optus"
Kate shares her experience of an agile transformation at Optus and the incredible impact it has had on the company. Delivering faster & enabling a sense of ownership & accountability amongst teams.
Kate also shares some great advice from embracing hybrid roles throughout her career, a gentle reminder to never put limits on yourself and adopting a “no risk no return” mentality.Be sure to subscribe, enjoy the episode 🎧
Transcript
Hayley Rodd:
Well, thank you for joining us here on the Easy Agile Podcast. Here in Wollongong things are a little different from when we last had a chat. We've since been put into lockdown as part of the Greater Sydney region, but I'm delighted to bring you this podcast from here in Wollongong. And also it maybe helps ease some of those lockdown blues that you might be suffering if you're in the same part of the world as I am today or if you're in another part of the world that is maybe in the same predicament that we find ourselves here in Wollongong in. So, I'd like to introduce myself. So my name is Hayley Rodd and I am the product marketing manager or one of the product marketing managers here at Easy Agile. And I have a great guest today, an old friend of mine but before we kick off with the podcast, I'd like to say any acknowledgement of country.
Hayley Rodd:
So here at Easy Agile, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we work and we live. We celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal people and their ongoing cultures and connections to the land and waters of New South Wales. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their contribution to the development of this tool. And now, to our guest, Kate Brodie. Kate is an old friend of mine from here in The Ngong or Wollongong if you're not from this region. And has been very successful in her pursuit of a career in technology. So a little bit about Kate. Katie is the director of digital AI and CCAI programs at Optus. Kate is now based in Sydney, Australia and is a leader in AI, digital and new emerging technology. Katie is responsible for Optus's AI, digital, portfolio and chapter working in an agile environment every day today.
Hayley Rodd:
Kate leads the development of new products to take to market and scale routines in an agile environment advocating for build, measure, learn culture. Most recently, Kate has been in charge of leading an enterprise first to market API consulting chatbox in Australia, compatible with Google Home. So obviously Kate is an extremely impressive person and I wanted to chat to her today about her career and also her role in the Agile team. But beyond that, I wanted to touch on women in technology and leadership, something that Kate has spoken about recently with Vogue Australia. So, thanks so much to Kate for joining us today. And I can't wait to share some of the advice from the lessons that Kate has learned through her career. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kate. It's really wonderful to see you. So could you tell me a bit about, I guess what your day-to-day looks like when you're at the office?
Kate Brodie:
Yeah, thank you for having me. My day-to-day is quite varied. I would say that in my role, I'm very lucky to work with lots of different people, engineers, designers, business people, marketers and more recently a lot of different partners including Google. So, a lot of my day is working between different groups, strategically thinking about how we're going to continue to create a particular vision and future together for our customers. And then parts of it are related more to the technology and how we're ensuring that we've got our teams performing at a level that will allow us to meet those goals. And yeah, day-to-day, I'm talking to a lot of different.
Hayley Rodd:
So, when we were chatting just before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about your start in marketing and now you've moved over to technology, can you tell me a little bit about how you don't want people to feel pigeonholed, I guess in their careers or in their career path?Kate Brodie:
Yeah, absolutely. I really believe that anyone can get into anything if they put the effort behind it. And so I really think that no one should ever put limits on themselves. For me, it was partly because I was surrounded by really great people who supported me in trying lots of different things. And I think the way in which you build your confidence and start to move between different disciplines is by getting your hands dirty and just having a crack. So, I think it's important particularly and in this day and age for people to be open and not really put strong defined titles on themselves so that they do have a sense of freedom to kind of move around and try different roles because ultimately what is available today is probably going to look very different in 30 years time so... Yeah.
Hayley Rodd:
And do you still consider yourself a marketer or are you something, hybrid? What are you now?
Kate Brodie:
I would say that I am a technologist. I think that it requires the ability to have a bit of a marketing brain because you need to know how you're going to apply it in order to make a real impact, whether that's for customers, employees or commercially. But definitely with a strong kind of technology digital focus now, I wouldn't say that I would be purely seen as a marketer these days, but definitely it's about having that broad skill set and I think marketing's critical to being able to create great products.
Hayley Rodd:
Perfect. So, when I think of AI, I think of self-driving cars, someone who is very new to the technology industry myself. Could you unpack, I guess what AI means for Optus?
Kate Brodie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think that what you've just said is shared by many. Artificial intelligence is just such a broad concept and it really is related to creating intelligent machines that can ultimately perform tasks or imitate behavior that we might consider human life. And so that can range from really narrow experiences like reading a brochure in a different language using AI to kind of rate it in the language that you can understand to kind of these macro experiences like you've just described with self-driving cars and completely changing the way that we travel. So, I think that AI is such a broad term where it will mean different things for different groups. At Optus, it's about creating lasting customer relationships with people and allowing them to connect with others. And so where we use AI in a variety of different places, it can be in our products themselves.
Kate Brodie:
So for instance, we just recently launched a really amazing product called Call Translate. And that's where in the call you can actually interact with people in different languages on that same phone call so breaking down those communication barriers that have existed before. So that's super exciting. And then there's other places where we're using it, for instance in our sales and service functions that we can more easily automate the simple tasks and give more time to our people to grow and create those types of relationships with our customers. So, we're using artificial intelligence in many different ways, but I think it's really exciting in everything that we do, it's more driven towards how can we create a better customer experience. It's not about the technology in of itself, which is what I really like about it.
Hayley Rodd:
Yeah. Nice. And it sounds like that that call translation would just... Could have so many applications and have... I'm even just thinking about in this COVID circumstance we... You're trying to get a message across to people to stay home and all those sorts of things like... Wow. Okay.
Kate Brodie:
Yeah. And there are some beautiful stories of people who are not able to go home with their young kids, travel home to their countries where their families are. And so they can have the grandkids talking to the grandparents more easily as they are learning different languages. So, it's really cool.
Hayley Rodd:
Wow. That's beautiful. So, in your title, there is, I, maybe assume it's an abbreviation, but it's somebody that says CCAI. Could you tell me what that is?
Kate Brodie:
CCAI stands for Contact Center Artificial Intelligence and it's actually a program of work that is used increasingly by different industries and refers to a particular product that Google is working with companies on. And so it's about re-imagining your contact center. So traditionally today banks, telecommunications companies, big organizations with lots of customers have a lot of customers that contact us regularly. And so this is a way of actually, how do we use AI to increasingly get to a point where you don't need to reach out to us but instead we're reaching out to you to better optimize your experiences with us. So, that's a little bit more of a program piece that's attached to my title at the moment.
Hayley Rodd:
Wonderful. So, prior to your current role, we're just going to get into the Agile space, which I know you seem extremely excited about at Optus and it's had some, I guess will be changes in the... Or it has some... Helped some massive changes at Optus. Before your current role what was your experience with that job?
Kate Brodie:
My current role and my experience with Agile has evolved. So, a couple of years ago, we rolled out Agile at a very large scale across our enterprise. So previously we had been using Agile in our IT teams for software development, but we actually started to roll out agile for product development. And I originally started as a product owner. So I was given a goal around creating a chatbot from scratch that would be supporting our teams. And with that, our Agile transformation involved breaking down the silos of divisions. So functional divisions. We started to merge into cross-functional squads and our squad was given the autonomy and the ownership to take on a particular initiative, and in my case, it was chatbot. And so I've actually experienced multiple roles within Agile including as a product owner and as a chapter lead, which was where I looked after a particular craft of people who run across multiple squads in Agile.
Kate Brodie:
And now more recently, I've got squads that are working within my area to produce these products and these outcomes for us. My experience with Agile has been brilliant. The amount of impact that it's had on our company is incredible. So, over the last couple of years, and this is pre COVID, we had a big target around moving towards a really digital led experience. And so we've seen our customers who used to choose digital around six...
Kate Brodie:
Around 65% of our customers would choose digital a couple of years ago and now it's more like 85%. So these big swings have come as a result of, I think, breaking down those silos and working in a more Agile way. Just on that I think what I like about Agile is that it's not about showcases and stand ups, it's actually about the culture that Agile allows for. So I think it allows for a lot more ideas and innovation because you have this mix of people who didn't traditionally sit with one another being together. And then also you can just deliver faster because you can cut through a lot of noise by working together. And the last piece I think is definitely that ownership and accountability for driving an outcome as opposed to delivering a piece of the puzzle, I think, yeah, Agile's been massive for us.
Hayley Rodd:
So, and you said that it was a big roll out across the organization. So does that mean that everyone within Optus works within an Agile framework or is there still sections that I guess don't employ Agile.
Kate Brodie:
There are areas of the business that aren't completely agile at this point in time. And I think they are areas of the business that makes sense. So sometimes in research and the like, you need to have a bit more freedom to sit back and ideate, although they would adopt principles of Agile so that they time box ideas and the like. From a delivery perspective, most of the organization has transformed into Agile delivery.
Hayley Rodd:
Wow. So it sounds like your customers would be seeing a lot of value from the organization transforming to Agile. You said before that there was a lot of people in your life who allowed you to do things you felt confident in your ability because I guess they helped you get there. So, has there been a mentor that I guess you look back on in your career or even now that has had an impact on where you are?
Kate Brodie:
I think that I've had a lot of different people who have been my mentor at different stages and who I would call upon now. So, I like to probably not have one mentor, but sort of look at the variety of people and their different skills and take a little bit of this, take a little bit of that, learn from this person on a particular area. There have definitely been some people who stand out. And so, early on one of the things that was really useful for me was being supported by a particular general manager who basically sort of pushed me into digital and technology and sort of, I was just very fortunate that he believed in me and said, "Now, you can run this area." I had never really been exposed to it. This is 10 years ago when digital was still sort of seen as more of a complimentary area as opposed to core, to a business.
Kate Brodie:
And by him supporting me in having a go at everything that's been... That's actually one of the most pivotal moments I would say in my career very early on that that's really led the way for me to increasingly get into the area that I'm in today. And along the way, obviously, there's been many people who have made a huge contribution to where I'm at and they're both in my career, but also outside. So, people that you play sport with people that you just have, that you share different stories with, I think that often you take a little bit from everyone and hopefully you give back something to those people too.
Hayley Rodd:
Yeah, I'm sure you do. So, is there any... Looking back on all those people that you've had throughout your life who have helped you get to where you are, is there a piece of advice that might have stuck with you that you could share with us?
Kate Brodie:
There's lots of different advice. I think one of them is, no risk no return. I really do think that you have to have a crack, you have to put yourself out there. The things that always been the most satisfying experiences have been by having a go at something that I hadn't done before. So I think no risk no return is something that I definitely subscribe to. And then in terms of some practical advice, particularly as a female, I think in your career, something called the assumptive close, which is a sales technique, around almost not asking if someone would like something but sort of implying that they would. I actually would say that I use that technique not to necessarily directly sell to someone, but in everything that I do and I would really encourage most people to use it. It was some early feedback in my career and it's been quite useful along the way.
Hayley Rodd:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:18:51] after working in real estate for a little while, I think a lot of real estate agents also assume the sale. So, and it just it... I think it can help with the confidence and going in there and I guess almost putting yourself in a position of power in the conversation when you assume you've got this in the bag. So yeah, it probably comes naturally to some people more than others, myself included, but I would struggle with that, but that's a really good piece of advice. So yeah, I'm sure that it will be helpful for a lot of people who are listening to the podcast now. So what about... What's your proudest moment as a leader there at Optus so far? I know that you're in Vogue recently. That's an amazing moment. And as a person who's known you for a really long time, that was a proud moment for me to see someone that I'd known do that, but for you, what's the proud moment?
Kate Brodie:
[inaudible 00:19:58] I think probably my proudest moment is when I've launched something large. So recently we launched a large piece of technology that will change the experience for our customers, but it wasn't as much the launch as it was looking around me and seeing the people that are there with me doing it. And there are quite a few amazing people that I get to work with. And having sort of started with a few of them in the early days, a few years ago, where we were sort of spitballing ideas and we had no products to now having large products that make a real impact to Australian consumers and to our business. It's those moments where it's actually the team around you that it... I'm most proud of. It's just the high engagement and the drive and the culture that we've created where people want to work in this area and we all enjoy creating these experiences together. So I think definitely I'm most proud of the team culture and environment that we've set.
Hayley Rodd:
Yeah. Sounds amazing. We're lucky enough here at Easy Agile to have, I guess the same... A culture that you can be proud of as well, so, I can understand how it can be something that makes a huge impact every day. So, we're getting close to the end of our time together, but again, I guess I wanted to touch on a bit of gender diversity. So how does gender diversity benefit technology companies? What do you think?
Kate Brodie:
I think diversity in general is going to benefit any business and particularly technology businesses, because it's imperative that you have a representation of the population and the people that will use your technology and the experiences that you're trying to create. So I think that it's only by ensuring that we are tapping into the entire talent pool, that we can represent people and represent customers, but also we're going to get the best ideas. And so that's gender diversity but also culturally and in every sort of facet, the more that we can tap into the entire talent pool, the more we'll create better experiences, better technology, solve more of the world's problems and capture more opportunities.
Hayley Rodd:
Mm. Fantastic. And last question, what advice would you give a young woman hoping to enter the technology industry or a technology company?
Kate Brodie:
I would say go for it. I would say don't ever put limits on yourself and speak up, learn as much as you can and get your hands dirty because it's through that kind of confidence... Oh, sorry. It's through working with lots of different people and creating things with people from scratch that you'll gain your confidence as well. And always ask, don't sit there waiting for someone to sort of tap you on the shoulder, ask for that new opportunity, ask for the salary increase, ask, it won't hurt. I promise.
Hayley Rodd:
That's a good advice. What's the worst they could say?
Kate Brodie:
No, exactly.
Hayley Rodd:
No, yeah.
Kate Brodie:
Yeah. And that's why.
Hayley Rodd:Or they might say yes. And then that's awesome too. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Kate, for your time. That was really wonderful. It was wonderful to catch up, but it was also wonderful to hear from someone who's so young in their career, has... But has also done so much and who has reached some amazing goals, has a team behind them. And I think that there's so many people who will watch this, myself included, who will learn a lot from you. So I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
PodcastEasy Agile Podcast Ep.4 Em Campbell-Pretty, CEO & Managing Director at Pretty Agile
"We spoke in detail about scaling agile, being a SAFe fellow, discipline, the traits of effective leaders and how to trust your people."
Transcript
Nick Muldoon:
Good day, folks. Thanks for joining us for another Easy Agile Podcast. This morning, I'm joined by Em Campbell-Pretty of Pretty Agile. Em is one of 22 SAFe fellows globally and she's been doing agile transformations at scale for over a decade now. She's also the author of two books, The Art of Avoiding a Train Wreck and Tribal Unity. So, all about culture and psychological safety here, and all about obviously scaling agile release trains, tips and tricks.
Nick Muldoon:
My key takeaways that I was really jazzed about, the traits of effective leaders for scaling agile transformations and being an effective organization, trust, as in trusting their people, an openness to learning and a willingness to learn, the ability to experiment and treat things as failures if they are failures, and discipline. Em and I talked a bit about discipline today as a trait of leaders. It's a really great episode and I took a lot from it, and you'll hear my takeaways at the end and what I need to go and learn after some time with Em this morning. So, let's get started. How many weeks a year are you typically on the road?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
How many weeks a year am I typically on the road? A lot, most. It would be unusual for me to spend four weeks without going somewhere. That would be unusual. I don't travel every week, but I travel most weeks, and I travel in big blocks. Right? So, I'll go and do ... Like I said, just before the lockdown, we did three weeks in Auckland, so that was in February-March.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
We went to Auckland, we had a client in Auckland, we just stayed there. So, three weeks in Auckland, came back here, and did not return to Auckland. Returned to support that client virtually over Teams and Zoom was how that one went. But yeah. Normally between running around Australia, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, the US, New Zealand, yeah, not home that often, normally. This has been truly bizarre.
Nick Muldoon:
So, this is a very unusual year for someone like yourself that's flying around visiting clients all over the world.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's been a very strange year. It's an interesting difference on energy as well. Not flying all the time I think is good for my body. I feel the difference. I also feel the difference sitting in a chair all the time. So, I was traveling a lot, but I was on my feet most days when I was working. Now if I'm working, I'm sitting a lot.
Nick Muldoon:
You're sitting down. Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, that's interesting. But I don't miss the jet lag at all. I don't miss the amount of time the travel consumes at all. In fact, it's been nice. I've had a little bit of head space. I've probably blogged more this year than I have in a few years because I've just had some head space and being able to think. But I don't get to see the world either, and all my holidays got canceled. So, nevermind work. I had trips to Europe. Four weeks from now, I was supposed to be in Canada seeing polar bears.
Nick Muldoon:
Aw.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Tell me about it!
Nick Muldoon:
I would love to see polar bears. They look so cuddly on TV. I'm not sure that that would actually be the circumstance if I was to try to approach one and give one a cuddle.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. I don't think cuddling was involved. I was told I could bring a camera and a tripod, which means obviously I'm going to stand some distance away from this polar bear and take photos. But that will not be happening either. So, no holidays and no travel for work, and of course, being in Melbourne, not even any, let's just go to [crosstalk 00:04:15].
Nick Muldoon:
Coffee or anything like that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Just nothing.
Nick Muldoon:
Nothing.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Nothing.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, because you've been on legit lockdown.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yep.
Nick Muldoon:
So, tell me then about the shift over the last 10 or 15 years in these scaled, agile transformations. Obviously today, like you described with this client in Auckland, everything's got to be remote. Presumably, not as effective. But I'd love to get a sense of what the evolution is from the transformations 10 years ago, banking, telcos, that sort of environment to the clients that you're working with today. Describe what it was like 10 years ago.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, 10 years ago, and it's so interesting to reflect on this now, I read Scaling Software Agility, which is a book that Dean published in 2007. Then I discovered that wasn't the latest book, so then I read Agile Software Requirements. This was 2011. I'm this crazy, angry business sponsor with this program of work I'd been sponsoring for five years that's never delivered anything, and in this cra-
Nick Muldoon:
You were the crazy, angry business sponsor?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was the crazy [inaudible 00:05:26]. I was very angry. You would be angry too if you were me. I refer to it now as the money fire. So, basically, here's my job. Right? Go to the CFO, ask for money. Give the money to IT. IT lights a match, sets it on fire. Comes back, asks me for money. I get to go back to the CFO and say I need more money. Five years. Five years. That's all I did. Ask for money and try to explain where the other money went.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Anyway, in the strangest restructure ever, I end up the technology GM for the same group I had been the business sponsor of for the past five years. Apparently, they couldn't find anybody appropriately qualified. So, you can do it, Em. Sure. So, I'm a bit of a geek, so I read books, and I'm reading these books by Leffingwell because I'd been doing some agile ... So, I'd been doing something I'd been calling agile. Let's just go with that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
It was interesting to me because I could see little rays of light. But it still wasn't really making anything happen, so hence the reading. These books talk about this agile release train [inaudible 00:06:46] that sounds cool. We should so do this thing. So, I set about launching this train at a Telstra in early 2012. It wasn't called SAFe, right? It was just the books and these things called an agile release train.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Now, to look back 10 years ago, it wasn't called SAFe. People weren't running around doing this. I was not actually really qualified for the job I was in. Well, I wasn't a technology leader by any stretch of the imagination, and I decide that I'm just going to launch an agile release train. So, there were rare and unusual beasts, and I'm not sure I really understood that when I went down the path of doing it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I'm big on the, I read it in a book, I read it in a blog, I heard it at a conference, I'll just try it. That's very much always been my mental model. So, I read it in a book and I just tried it. Then we discover that actually, literally nobody is doing this, so it becomes Australia's first agile release train and Australia's first SAFe implementation. Oh, boy, have I learned a lot since then.
Nick Muldoon:
Well, yeah. I was reflecting on that because I dug out The Art of Avoiding a Train Wreck, right? This is one of the ones that you signed for Tegan. But obviously, you've learned a ton since then because you've managed to put together a tome of tips and tricks and things to avoid as you are pursuing these transformations. As an industry, though, well, as an industry, I guess this spans many industries, but as a practice these days, are we actually getting better at these transformations? Are there companies out there today, Em, that are still taking piles of money and setting it on fire?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, I think I meet people every day who hear my story and go, "Oh, my god. You used to work here?" So, I think there's still many, many organizations that have an experience that is like the experience I had back in 2010 and what have you. So, it seems to be something that really resonates with people. I guess so many of the businesses we go into now either are not agile at all or, I guess like my world was, doing something they call agile. What we find is the something that they call agile, I wouldn't say it's not agile. But it leaves a lot to be desired.
Nick Muldoon:
They're on a journey, right?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess so because they end up having a conversation with us. So, they understand that what they're doing is not enough. They understand that what they're doing isn't getting them the results that they want. I don't know that they understand why. It's interesting to me sometimes that they look to SAFe because you asked me about how's the client base changed? One of the things that's really interesting in Australia is we get far more of the small to medium sized companies now than the big ones.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, they're companies that consider themselves agile. But what we're calling them, the startups that are no longer startups, right? These are organizations that they're generally old 10, 20 year old startups and they're scaling and they see their problem as a scaling problem. So, that's what leads them to a conversation around the scaled agile framework.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
When we look at them through a SAFe lens, we go, "Gee, you're tiny. But okay. I can see that you can have an agile release train and it won't do you any harm. In fact, it would probably help you a lot in terms of mid-range planning," because mid-range planning just seems to be nonexistent for a lot of these organizations. Prioritization. A lot of these small organizations, very knee-jerky in terms of how they prioritize, bouncing from one thing to the other.
Nick Muldoon:
Are they reacting to the market, or are they reacting to the leaders, maybe the lack of discipline in the leadership?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
You know what? They would say they're reacting to the market. I would say they've got a discipline issue.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:11:23].
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, I read, obviously, big reader, last summer, obviously Australian summer, US winter, I read Melissa Perry's The Build Trap. Interesting book and your well respected thought leader in product management. Not a big fan of SAFe. Probably not a big fan of agile either was the takeaway I had from her book. But the thing that she does talk about that I really thought was valuable was the lunacy in chasing your competitors. So, building features because your competitors-
Nick Muldoon:
Your competitors [crosstalk 00:12:06].
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... build them, or building features to land a contract or retain a customer. So, I thought she sees all of that as lunacy, and I tend to agree. So, that was my ... I think that's quite interesting. Her perspective is you don't know if the competitor's actually having any luck with that thing that they've built. So, if you build it because they built it, you don't know. You have no idea. So, don't just build it because they've built it. It might not be doing them any favors either.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Of course, once you start just doing random stuff for this big customer or this big client, you start to lose your way as an organization. People end up with completely different versions of their products, branches that they can't integrate anymore. It's interesting. So, when I look at that, I go, "I feel like there's a discipline issue in some of these organizations at the leadership level."
Em Campbell-Pretty:
What is it we're trying to do? What is our vision? What is our mission? What is our market? What are we doing to test and learn in that market, as opposed to just get a gun, let's do everything, grab everything? Oh, my goodness. They were doing that over there. Stop this, start this, stop this. Of course, if you're stopping and starting all the time, you're not delivering anything, and that seems to be something that we see a lot with these organizations. They're not delivering.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I'm not saying their delivery mechanism is perfect. There's challenges there too. But some part of the problem is the inability to stay a course. Pick a course and stay a course. I'm not saying don't pivot, because that's stupid too. But being more deliberate in your choices to pivot, perhaps. Yeah.
Nick Muldoon:
Do you get a sense, Em, that there are leadership teams in various geographic regions that are more effective at this and more effective at that longterm planning and having that discipline and that methodical approach to delivery over an extended time period?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I think regions and cultures and nationalities certainly play a role in the leadership, I don't know, persona, personality. I don't know that I could say when I've worked in this country or this part of the world that their leaders are better at forethought. I think some cultures lend themselves to lean and agile more than others. Hierarchical cultures are really, really challenging.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
That can be both a geographic thing, but it can also just be an industry thing, right? So, government can be very hierarchical. The banks can be very hierarchical. Some of the Asian cultures are very hierarchical. But some companies are just very hierarchical as well. So, who owns the company, who leads the company, all of that can play a big role in what's acceptable because so much of success in this scaled agile journey comes down to a leadership that is willing to trust the teams, a leadership that is willing to learn, a leadership that's willing to experiment, and a leadership that's prepared to be disciplined.
Nick Muldoon:
So, leadership with trusting the teams, willing to learn, willing to experiment, and with discipline. They're those four things that you-
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yep.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, okay. I'll make a note of those, Em. I'll come back to those. Trust, learn, experiment, and discipline. I'm interested, I guess, this year being a very interesting, a very unique year for doing remote transformation work and coaching and consulting, 10 years ago, what was the percentage of remote team members distributed teams? Now, you've basically, I think the big banks in Australia aren't even going back to the office until 2021. Atlassian is not going back to the office until 2021. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, my old CEO, said, "Work from home forever," sort of thing. What's the takeaway for this year and what do you expect for 2021 and beyond?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, look. This year has been eyeopening, and look, some things are, as I would have anticipated, some things have been different. So, obviously, we're seeing entire organizations going online. We're seeing the teams are online, the PI planning's online, everything's online. That's actually in some ways opened up opportunity. So, where we've had clients who have had the most odd setups in terms of distribution, and you can make a train work where you've got teams across two locations. But we're big fans of the entire team is in Sydney or the entire team is in India. We don't have half the team in Sydney and half the team in India.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
But organizations really struggle with that because perhaps all the testers are in India and then you want a tester on every team and now you've got a problem. How do you create a complete team and not cross the time zones? So, the opportunity becomes if I can find teams that are not physically co-located but time zone friendly, I have a little bit more option. So, I can have a train that operates between, I don't know, Sydney and India. Or I can find a four hour overlap in their day, and I can insist that that team works 100% online.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, the big thing that we'd advise against is I don't want that team hybrid. Right? I don't want three people sitting in the office in Sydney and three people sitting in their homes in India. I want everybody online. I want an even playing field, and I think we can do that now in a way that is more acceptable than before. Because the same advice I was giving, gee, back when I wrote Tribal Unity, same advice. Right?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, 2016, everybody, equal playing field. If you're going to be distributed, everyone has to be online, as opposed to some people online and some people in a room. So, that's a more acceptable answer now than it was prior to this year. So, that's good. I think that's good.
Nick Muldoon:
In 2021, then, Em, you mean this is just going to play forward. I guess there's going to be a reversion of some of these companies back to the office because they've got huge real estate and workplace infrastructure already.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. So, look. We're seeing clients closing offices the same way that you see some of the companies in the US doing that. We're also seeing parts of Australia and New Zealand with no particular COVID impact at this point actually going back into the office, and having created that example of teams that are crossing time zones, and then going back into the office and going back to that hybrid space. So, that's interesting and [crosstalk 00:20:08].
Nick Muldoon:
So, where you're back into that environment where you might have some people working together in an office that can get a cup of coffee together and then some that are stuck still at home. I guess there's not just even regional differences, right? If you've got a team member that's got a particular health situation, they're not going to feel comfortable necessarily coming back into the office, regardless of the situation, until there's a vaccine or something.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Absolutely.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, okay.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, yeah. Look, I think it's going to be interesting. I would strongly advocate that organizations have teams that are either in person teams or online teams, and the team just either operates 100% online or the team operates 100%-
Nick Muldoon:
In the office.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... in person and in the office, and if you have a train that has both in any train level ceremony, everybody goes to a desk and-
Nick Muldoon:
And do it online.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... a video camera and we do it that way. I think the thing that seems to be most sticky about the physical environment and SAFe is PI planning. Nobody needs to beat. Right? That was cool. Nobody needs to beat, no one's PI planning slipped, everybody just went. They were all online. So, we'll just PI plan online. It'll be fine. We saw people use whatever infrastructure they had available to them.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:21:30].
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, I'm sure a number of people called you folks and said, "We need a tool." But some just went, "We have Google Suite, we have Microsoft whatever it is, we have this, we have that. We're just going to make it work," and no matter what they used, they made it work and they ran the events and their events were effective and they got the outcomes. The big thing that is missing is that energy. You can't get the energy of 100, 200 people in a room from an online event. But mechanically-
Nick Muldoon:
We can achieve it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... we can achieve it. So, we hear everybody wants to go back to PI planning in person because of the social, because of the energy, which I think is awesome. I absolutely think that is awesome, and I can see this world in which people do a lot more work from home, work remote, whatever that looks like, and then the PI planning events are the things that we do to bring ourselves together and reconnect on that eight, 10, 12 week basis. That's my feeling. Could be wrong.
Nick Muldoon:
I guess I'll be really interested to see how it plays out, and I think we should return to this conversation in 12 months, Em.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Oh, no.
Nick Muldoon:
I'm just thinking, what's going through my mind is one of our customers in New York, financial services company, and for one of their arts, it was 150,000 US exercised to bring their people together once a quarter.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Wow.
Nick Muldoon:
I'm now going, I'm like, "Okay, yes, they're doing it digitally now." That's fine. They're going to miss out on things. But if they lose the budget, do they have to fight to get the budget back? Or does the budget sit there? There's these other unknown ramifications of this shift over the course of 2020 that we're yet to see play out, I guess.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I think you're right, and I think it would be particularly interesting for the trains that have been launched remotely. So, if the train has been launched remotely, do you ev-
Nick Muldoon:
So, not existing trains that have been working together for six to 12, 18 months. But you want to get a brand new train started. Have you done that remotely this year with some of your clients?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Oh, we're in the process of doing it now.
Nick Muldoon:
Cool. Tell me.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
We had one, though, literally just before the lockdown. So, they did their first PI planning face to face and then immediately moved to remote working and, yeah, now working on remotely launching a train. For us, we have a playbook. It's a bunch of workshops. It's a bunch of classes. We just use online collaboration tools. We've found things that replicate the sort of tools that we would have in a physical room, and the joy of being able to read people's Post-it notes, right? This has been the absolute highlight for me, the joy of being able to read people's Post-it notes.
Nick Muldoon:
No more hieroglyphics.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Nick Muldoon:
What is that that you wrote, Sally? Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Everyone can say everything at once, right? So, you think about the classroom and the workshop where there's a group of people huddled around Post-its and a flip chart paper and they're still huddled in a way in their virtual huddle, but everybody can read, right? It's not that I'm not close enough, I can't read, I can't read your handwriting. There's this great equalizer is the online world. So, I think that's great. I think the challenge for the trains launched remotely is going to be do you ever get the face to face experience?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Because if I go back over the years, one of the things we know is your first PI planning event sets the standard. So, people get this imprint in their heads of what is possible. For example, if you skip something in your first PI planning event, you just decide to, I don't know, skip the confidence vote or something weird like that, you don't do the roam of the risks or you just skip something, you never do it because you're successful without it.
Nick Muldoon:
It never gets picked up. Yeah, okay.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
You're successful without it. So, every compromise you make, and you make a series of compromises, and then you're successful despite those compromises, and that becomes a false positive feasibility. It tells you, yes, I was right. I was right.
Nick Muldoon:
I don't need to do that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I didn't need to do those things because I was awesomely successful and I didn't do these things. So, it's the learning [crosstalk 00:26:15]-
Nick Muldoon:
That's confirmation bias, is it?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah, that's it. That's the one. Confirmation bias. That's exactly it. Yep. Yeah, and I think there's going to be a bunch of confirmation bias in these remotely launched trains, and unless they're inside organizations where there's enough knowledge of SAFe and the physical PI planning to know that there's going to be value in bringing them together, but I can see that being a real challenge. I think trains that are launched online may never go into a physical PI planning event because of that confirmation bias.
Nick Muldoon:
All right.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
That makes me really sad.
Nick Muldoon:
I want to come back to something you said before about the leaders, and you mentioned the trust, the openness to learning and experimentation, and the discipline. I was going back over your SAFe Global 2018 talk about the seven traits of highly effective servant leaders.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yep.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yep.
Nick Muldoon:
I guess I had some questions about this, and obviously, these are four of the traits. What are the other three traits that I'm missing? Then I've got a followup question about some of the actual things that you talked about that you picked up in your trip.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
[inaudible 00:27:29] one of those four on the list I had in 2018.
Nick Muldoon:
I'll quiz you on it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
How awkward. So, in 2018, the answer was people first, a respect for people, that sort of lens, lean thinking, manager, teacher, learner. So, we had that one. Yeah. Learner. [inaudible 00:28:00] crazy. What else did I have? [inaudible 00:28:10].
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. Okay. I wanted to talk about that one, actually. I made a note about that. What is that, and are there examples of that in the West?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
A lot of people talk about true north.
Nick Muldoon:
[inaudible 00:28:28]. True north.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. True north. The translation I got, which I got from Mr. [inaudible 00:28:39], who partnered with Katie Anderson for the lean study tour I did in, I don't know, '18, '17, '18, 2018, I think, so the translation he gave was direction and management sort of things. So, it's mission, right? It's strategic mission. It's that sort of thing.
Nick Muldoon:
So, just a sidebar here for anyone that hasn't seen Em's talk on this, there's a woman by the name of Katie Anderson. She runs an annual, I think, I guess not this year, but she runs an annual-
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No, not this year. She did not go this year.
Nick Muldoon:
... not this year, runs an annual lean, Kanban, kaizen study tour to Japan and visits ... Who did you visit, Em? You visited with Katie. How many were in the crew that you went over there with?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, I think it was a group of about 20 from memory. Katie lived in Japan for two years and then went back to the US. She lives in San Francisco, I think. While she was there, she really liked the idea of putting together these lean study tours. She was already a lean practitioner more in the healthcare side of things. So, she got the opportunity to ... We actually were on a test run tour.
Nick Muldoon:
Oh, cool.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, this was her experiment. She had a relationship with Ohio State University and they brought some people to the table and she brought some people to the table and they made it happen. She also had an existing relationship with Mr. [inaudible 00:30:24], who was John [inaudible 00:30:26] first manager at Toyota. So, he's a 40 year Toyota veteran.
Nick Muldoon:
Veteran.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
He came with us for the week. So, we of course went to Toyota, but we went to a bunch of Toyota suppliers as well. Isuzu, [inaudible 00:30:43]. Then we also went to Japan Post, which was fascinating. We went to a city which name escapes me right now, but they called it 5S City because all the companies in that city practice the 5S, the manufacturing 5S.
Nick Muldoon:
Tell me about it. It's not coming to mind. I don't feel comfortable or familiar.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
You don't feel good about 5S?
Nick Muldoon:
No.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No. That's not good. So, how would I ... The 5S is five Japanese words, which I'm going to go ... Yeah. My Japanese, nothing. But it's about standardized work. So, for example, when you go into the 5S factories, you'll see the floors marked up where you need to stand to do a particular job.
Nick Muldoon:
[crosstalk 00:31:41] This is what Paul Aikas picked up for his-
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Oh, no.
Nick Muldoon:
I feel like I've seen Paul Aikas' videos of their manufacturing in the US that everything's marked up.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah.
Nick Muldoon:
Okay.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Probably. That would be my guess. We should ask Teddy.
Nick Muldoon:
We can ask Paul, and we can ask all these people. There's time.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Well, yeah.
Nick Muldoon:
Okay.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Okay.
Nick Muldoon:
So, that lean tour, the Japan study tour, that was a super effective and motivating thing for you?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. For me, it was very reinforcing. So, I had I guess my own lens on what lean leadership meant, and I found that particular tour to be very reinforcing around the value set that I believe is part of that. Katie [inaudible 00:32:43] created [inaudible 00:32:44] that is designed to show you that. So, she's often very clear that says this is not Japan, right? This is not a reorganization into Japan. This is not every leader in Japan.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
This is, I've hand picked a series of lean leaders to show you it being practiced. But it was certainly very reinforcing for me. So, very similar messages I picked up in terms of how I like to head, how I coach others to lead was built into the messages that she delivered. So, it was very cool. It was very cool. Some of those leaders, just so inspiring, particular kaizen. I think the thing that just really hits you in the face as you're talking to these folks is kaizen, this drive to get better.
Nick Muldoon:
All the time.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
All the time. Absolutely. It's these folks looking for, they're looking for the one second, right?
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
The one second improvements. There's a video that floats around. Have you seen the Formula 1 video-
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... where they do, yeah, the changeover in 63 and it takes them over a minute and they do the changeover in 90-something in Melbourne and it takes them six seconds or whatever it is. It's like that, right? It's that how do I find one more second, half a second? They're just so driven. If I can remove a step that someone has to take, can I move something closer to somebody?
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. There was some comment in the presentation that you gave. There was some comment about if I have to take another five steps, that's an extra 10 seconds. Then that's an extra 10 seconds every time I do this activity every day, and that all adds up. So, how do we shave these seconds off and be more effective and deliberate about how we do this?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
That was just huge, right? I called it kaizen crazy in the presentation. I'm just so, so driven to improve, and just tiny, small improvements every day.
Nick Muldoon:
So, one of the other practices that I didn't grok out of that talk was about the Bus Stop. What was the Bus Stop about?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Was that in that talk? Really?
Nick Muldoon:
I'm forcing you to stretch your mind [crosstalk 00:34:57].
Em Campbell-Pretty:
You are. You are. You are. You are quite right. It really was [inaudible 00:35:01]. Okay. Oh, you're awful.
Nick Muldoon:
Yes.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yes. Yes, you are. Okay. So, effective leaders are human was the tagline on that one. It was really about leaders being down to Earth and being one with the teams. So, things I saw in Japan, this factory run by a woman, [inaudible 00:35:42], I think it was, so very unusual. Not a lot of women leaders in Japan. Her husband took her name because [inaudible 00:35:52]. It's a really interesting character.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
But her company has a bunch of morning rituals. You always say good morning and thank you and how they talk every day and everybody talks and everyone interacts. Then one of the other places we went to, they all had their uniforms they wore in the factory. But everybody wore the uniform, right? The CEO, the office workers, and everybody wore the uniform. Everyone was one.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Then I was thinking about my experience leading teams, and a lifetime ago, I was working with a team that decided to enter a corporate competition. This competition was about showing your colors and showing the corporate values, which were things like better together and courage, and then [inaudible 00:36:49] a rainbow thing. So, this team decides what they're going to do, is it an address up in the rainbow colors, and they're going to be better together and show their courage and they're going to do the Macarena and they're going to video it and that's going to be how they're going to win this competition.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I did not participate in this Macarena because someone has to take photos and stuff, right? How else are they going to enter the competition? So, had to do my bit. Anyway, we also had this ritual, which was about teams bringing challenges to leadership to resolve, and they did at the end of every spring. So, they do this Macarena and they film it and they enter the competition and at the end of the spring, they bring their challenges to leadership.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Their challenge is Em did not do the Macarena. You are our leader, you did not do the Macarena. We are feeling very challenged by that, and we're bringing this to you to resolve. So, I went and spoke to the team that raised and said, "Look. I got to tell you. I don't know the Macarena. So, sorry." I still remember this so clearly. One of the guys said to me, "I read this blog about the importance of leaders being vulnerable." You know who wrote that blog post, don't you?
Nick Muldoon:
Oh, Em. Oh. You have it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, we negotiated. I said, "Look. I think I can manage the Bus Stop." For those not from Australia, we grow up doing this in high school dances. In my part of the world, anyway. So, I grabbed my leadership team and we did do the Bus Stop and it was part of proving that we too were the same as everybody else and doing our bit and responding to the team's feedback. So, yes. That is where the Bus Stop fits in. Thanks so much for that, Nick.
Nick Muldoon:
Okay. No, I appreciate that. Now, I'm glad that I got that context. I try and do similar things. Typically, it's a karaoke or something, or that we haven't done that in a while. Yeah, okay. So, I guess the thrust of that talk was really about to leaders to serve, and it was all about being in service of. It sounds like what you took from the Japan study tour was these leaders there were very much in service of their people.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Absolutely.
Nick Muldoon:
Do you see that as a trait that is prevalent in the best performing companies that you deal with, and how likely are they over a five, 10 year horizon, whatever that happens to be, to outperform their competitors or to be more successful in their market? Or I guess however they define success?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I certainly see a correlation between leaders that like to serve and/or choose to serve and success with scaled agile, and business, because I guess we have seen over, it's close to 10 years, is those who practice together, your framework with discipline get results, and they get significant results. They improve their ability to deliver products and services, their cost base goes down, their quality goes up, their people are happier, their attrition goes down. We see it every single time.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
What we also see is when the leaders don't walk the talk, when the leaders are paying lip service to the transformation, it doesn't stick. They don't get the results. People don't find it a better place to work. People aren't bought into the change. So, there is definitely a correlation there. You can get pockets of wonderfulness inside an organization.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
We often observe that the organization that's transformation is as successful is the most bought in leader. Most senior bought in leader. So, if you're the leader of a train and you show the right behaviors, your train will be really great.
Nick Muldoon:
Successful.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
But that means nothing for the broader organization, solution train, the business unit, what have you. You see this thing that goes from the leader. If the leader's showing the right behaviors, you get within that space, you get the behaviors, you get the change, you get the results. But leaders who say one thing and do another, people don't buy it, right?
Nick Muldoon:
I guess this is true of any organizational change, isn't it?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah.
Nick Muldoon:
You hit the boundaries of your pocket, as you said, within the organization and then you meet the real world, the rest of the organization. People, maybe they don't have enough energy or they don't feel that they can influence and change that, and so they just live within their bubble because they don't feel that they can exert the pressure outside of that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Look. I've certainly, I've seen successful bubble influence organizations. Successful bubbles can become interesting. Chip and Dan Heath's book, which one was it, Switch.
Nick Muldoon:
Oh, yeah. Switch. Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
[inaudible 00:42:02]. Shine a light on bright spot or something like that. So, bright spots inspire, and if you can create a bubble in an organization that outperforms the rest of the organization, or even if it performs better than it has previously, then everybody looks. Right? How did the organization that goes from poor delivery to great deliveries is what is going on here? That inspires others to get interested. One of the really interesting things we've seen in Australia, we can trace pretty much every SAFe implementation in Australia back to the one at Telstra.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, right. They all spun off from that, from the people that were part of it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Well, no. People who came and saw it. People who were inspired by it.
Nick Muldoon:
They're not necessarily directly involved in it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No. People came and got inspired by it, and then they went, did their thing, and then they inspired someone else. I haven't tried to do it recently, but there was a point in time we just could web together all of them because we could count them when we could see them. But we can web together most of them still. It says you saw someone who saw someone who saw someone who actually was someone who went to visit us at Telstra back in 2012, 2013 and got inspired.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, that bright spot can be really, really powerful, and that's what it takes, right? You get to add a little bit of noise, a little bit of difference, and people start to ask what's going on. I wouldn't say it's foolproof. I think it still requires, so someone's got to come, they've got to see, and then they've got to have the courage to do it for their part of the organization.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
That's the hard bit, right? I can come, I can see, I can get inspired. But am I prepared to put myself out there? There's a lot to be said for leaders who are prepared to take risks. That was one of the-
Nick Muldoon:
This was your lesson about the Bus Stop, right? You have to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. This was actually, I was thinking, was the thing I was talking about at last year's SAFe Summit was be safe or be SAFe.
Nick Muldoon:
Be safe or be SAFe. Tell me about that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, be safe, don't take a risk, or be SAFe, as in the scaled agile framework, and take that leap of faith. It comes back to, we started talking today about when I did this at Telstra, I didn't really understand that this wasn't a normal everyday, this is what everybody did sort of thing. It was a very new thing. So, I took a risk from a perspective that I was a business leader in a technology space and I really felt I had nothing to lose.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
So, I look back and that and go, "What on Earth possessed me?" And I go, "Well, I'm this business person leading this technology team. I wasn't supposed to succeed anyway."
Nick Muldoon:
Put it all on the line, right?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
I found out later they actually had a plan for when I did not succeed. I was supposed to fail.
Nick Muldoon:
Wait. How much waste is that? Why did they plan for something before it was ... Okay.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Organizational policies. What can I tell you? Anyway, I did not fail. I did succeed, and because I took some crazy, calculated risks, and I've seen it time and time again, right? So many of these leaders in these companies that make this change are taking a leap of faith. I'm always saying I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen. I don't know whether you're going to get 10% cost out or 50% cost out. I don't know if your people are going to be 10% happier or 50% happier. I don't know that.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
What I do know is if you listen to what we're telling you and you follow the guidance and you behave in line with those lean and agile values, you will get results. You'll get results every single time. But you've got to be brave enough to buy in and take it on holistically and not do this thing where you manage to customize your way out of actually doing the thing-
Nick Muldoon:
Doing anything.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
... that you wanted to do.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. Okay. Em, this was awesome. Before we finish up, I want to take two minutes. You've mentioned books a lot today and you reminded me of this quote, Verne Harnish, "Those who read and don't are only marginally better off than those who can't." So, today so far, you've mentioned Chip and Dan Heath with Switch, you've mentioned the Leffingwell series from the late noughties. There might have been a few others. But tell me, what are you reading today? You've been in lockdown. What are the two or three top books that you've read since you've been in lockdown in Melbourne?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Oh, my goodness. It's very awkward. Every time someone asks me, "What did you just read?" I go, "I don't know."
Nick Muldoon:
I don't think I remember.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Can't remember. It's terrible. What am I reading? I need to open my Kindle. I don't know what I'm reading. Geoffrey Moore, Zone to Win.
Nick Muldoon:
Zone to Win.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Zone to Win. I think that's what it's called. It's a newer book. I know this year, because obviously, I've read The Build Trap this year-
Nick Muldoon:
Yep. Melissa Perry. You mentioned that one. Yeah.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yep. I've read the Project to Product, Mik Kersten.
Nick Muldoon:
What was that one, Project to Product?
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Yeah. Project to Product, Mik Kersten. One of the IT Revolution press books. So, released just over a year ago. Very tied up in the SAFe 5.0 [crosstalk 00:48:21]. The other book tied up in the SAFe 5.0 release is John Kotter's Accelerate. So, I picked that back up. I read it a number of years ago when it first came out. But I like to revisit stuff when SAFe puts it front and center. Seems to make some sense to do that at that point in time.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, okay. It's interesting that, thinking about Verne Harnish, the scaling up framework, no relation to-
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No.
Nick Muldoon:
... scaled agile, for anyone that's not familiar. But so much of the scaling up framework about scaling businesses, they draw on so much content from existing offers, existing tomes, points of reference and experience, and it's super valuable, and I guess SAFe is no different, right? It draws on this wisdom of the collective wisdom.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
Absolutely. Absolutely. [inaudible 00:49:14] It was very fun to say in the early days, we stand on the shoulders of giants, a quote from somebody else whose name escapes me.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah, okay. Well, Em, look. I wanted to thank you so much for your time this morning. This has been fantastic.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No worries. It's great to catch up with you.
Nick Muldoon:
Yeah. I guess my takeaways from this, I like the be safe or be SAFe, like either be safe and don't take any risks, or be SAFe and actually put yourself out there and step into scaled agile. I definitely have to go and do a bit of research on the five S's as well and learn a bit more about that. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Em Campbell-Pretty:
No worries, Nick. Great to see you.
PodcastEasy Agile Podcast Ep.19 Combining Ikigai and OKRs to help agile teams achieve great results
In this episode, I was joined by Leandro Barreto - Lead Software Engineer at Miro.
Leandro is responsible for helping engineering and product teams to be more productive through metrics and KPIs with a focus on increasing their operational efficiency. Before moving to Europe, Leandro worked for an Atlassian partner company in Brazil as Head of Technical Sales.
In this episode, we spoke about;
- Ikigai - what is it and how do you achieve it?
- The benefits of OKRs
- How can we combine agile, Ikigai and OKRs?
- How Ikigai can help agile teams achieve great results and stay motivated
I hope you enjoy today's episode as much as I did recording it.
Transcript
Robert O’Farrell:
Welcome, everyone, to the Easy Agile Podcast. We have an episode today with Leandro Barreto who is a lead software engineer at Miro. I'm your host for today, Robert O'Farrel. I'm the Growth tech lead at Easy Agile. Before we kick off this podcast, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Duruwa-speaking country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging and extend the same respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Islander, and First Nations people joining us today on the podcast.
Robert O’Farrell:
Leandro currently works as a lead software engineer at Miro where his responsibility is to help engineering and product teams to be more productive through metrics and KPIs with a focus on increasing their operational efficiency. Before moving to Europe, he worked for an Atlassian partner company in Brazil and acted as a head of technical sales with the mission to increase the service offers in Latin America. Welcome, Leandro. It's great to have you here today.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Thanks, Rob. Thanks also for the Easy Agile for the invite. It's a pleasure to be here today.
Robert O’Farrell:
Fantastic. You're here to talk about Ikigai, objectives and key results or OKRs in Agile, so let's kick it off. Ikigai, what is it? Can you give us a brief or a long explanation of what it is?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, of course, of course. So, Ikigai I use it to say is a philosophy of life that means like a reason for being or the meaning of life. So, the world Ikigai originates from a village in Southern Japan, where the average life expectancy of people is over 100 years old. So, Ikigai is basically divided in four components. The first, things you love. Second, something that you are good at, then something that pays you well. And finally, something that the worlds need. So, when you put it all together, then you have the Ikigai, but this is not easy. So, let me explain a little bit of each of these companies.
Leandro Barreto:
So, the first thing is something that you love, something that makes you be present, something that you must ask yourself what do you really enjoy in doing? What makes you happy? What holds your intention that makes you lose time and forget about time? So, for example, reading, dancing, singing, painting, learning, teaching, et cetera. So, maybe it's a little bit difficult to answer right now, but understanding and seeking what you love must is fundamental so that you can have a healthy balance between learning, putting it in practice, testing, failing, trying again, and keep the circle repeating itself.
Leandro Barreto:
So, an example that I can give you is, for example, I had a jujitsu teacher that no matter the day, he was always training. And one day, I remember I got my arm hurt. And in the next day, I had a message from him like 6:00 in the morning, he was asking if I was okay. And I was waking up and he was texting me like, "Hey, are you okay? Are you going to be able to train today?" And I was like, "Whoa, take it easy, man." This is very funny because our class is 6:00 p.m. And he was punctually at the tatami or dojo. I don't know the English word for that.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah, dojo. We have dojo. Yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
Dojo. Awesome. Yeah. And he was always punctual. And after the classes, he always said that he wants to get home earlier after the classes because he has private classes. So, from morning to night, he always keeps training and you can see the passion in his eyes when he talks about jujitsu. "It's a passion for me". A little bit exaggerated.
Robert O’Farrell:
Something that definitely got him up in the morning and kept him going throughout the day to the late evening, by the sounds of it.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly. Yes. And then, you have the second component, which is something that you are good at. Something that you can always improve with yourself. So, for example, what you are really good at. It's quite hard to answer, but what the people say is that I'm do... something correct or what they say something positive that what I do. So, for example, I remember the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that says that usually, you have to spend 10,000 hours in something practicing to be good at.
Leandro Barreto:
So, don't take it as an obstacle but as a motivation to keep going, and understand this part of what you are good at. It's a good way to improve. And the third part is what pays you well? So, money is what... Some people say that "Hey, money don't bring... It's not... how can I say that?
Robert O’Farrell:
Money doesn't bring happiness?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, exactly. But it puts a roof in your head. It makes you provide a good life for your family. It makes you travel. It makes you have a hobby. So, according to Maslow, for example, one of the bases of human beings is to start thinking about security. So, we have to have this security in order we can improve as a person. So, money helps you to achieve it. Yeah. So, find something that makes your life as comfortable as you desire to, as you wish to. So, otherwise, you'll always be looking for something that you never had. So, for example, time.
Leandro Barreto:
So, you will spend so much time thinking how can you have more money? And here's the glitch, you will never be paid because you will be stuck on your daily basis thinking on how to get money instead of how to improve your skills to get money. Right? And then, you have the what the world needs. So, here, the idea is to find a proposal for what do you do and what is value to the society, your proposal. And sometimes it's quite difficult to find precisely because of the plurality of positions and responsibilities that we have nowadays. And even more today with the full expansion of technology that every month we have new positions to be filled by companies that needs different type of skills, soft skills and hard skills.
Leandro Barreto:
And here, the keyword is to serve. So, I will give a personal example. For example, one of the things that I missed most when I was a young teenager was having someone who could help me to explore the technology so I can get a job. So, it was in the early 2000 and it was quite hard.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yes, very much so.
Leandro Barreto:
The internet is starting, everything is new.
Robert O’Farrell:
People on dial-up, internet was slow.
Leandro Barreto:
Do you remember that sound like prshh?
Robert O’Farrell:
Oh, yeah. It comes to me in my dreams I think. I heard it so many times in that era.
Leandro Barreto:
My family and my friends, they wasn't in the IT field. So, there is no one to help me that. So, I had to learn it by myself. Seems impossible. But it took me time to learn it and enter in a company with a good position let's say that gives me money and the possibility to learn much more faster. So, since 2013, I dedicate part of my time to teach young people, acting as a mentor to help them enter in this market so they can learn new skills. I can open paths for them, put in contact with the right people, people which is going to be important for them, and all aiming to accelerate their dev development and giving them the opportunity.
Leandro Barreto:
And this for me is very meaningful because I'm helping those who don't have any references also, and sometimes don't have a chance. And the more I serve them, the more I earn and I grow with them. So, I came across like when I was introduced to Ikigai for example, another personal example.
Robert O’Farrell:
Sorry. Before we get to that, just reiterating. So, the four components, so there's something that you really lose time in doing, something that you get into the flow of doing very easily. And then, the second component is the thing that you are very confident in doing, something that you do quite well. The third one, being something that pays you well, and the fourth one, being something where there's a need for it. So, just reiterating that. That's correct?
Leandro Barreto:
Correct. Correct.
Robert O’Farrell:
So, I guess getting to that, our second question that like for yourself, you can apply obviously in a business sense, but in a personal sense, what's been your journey there, and do you believe you've achieved Ikigai, I guess, would be my next question?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Well, actually personally, I have some things that's very clear in my life. I'm still not there, but let's say that I'm in the process.
Robert O’Farrell:
Work in progress
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly. Work in progress. So, I have clear goals and I have clear in my mind where I want to go in a few years, so I don't get disencouraged if the weather is cold or warm, if the stock market goes up or down. And the only thing that I focus is to be 1% better than I was yesterday. And this provides me a security that prevents me to wasting time and things that doesn't make any sense or simply doesn't matter for me in the future. So, I take my career very, and also my personal life very serious on that point. So, yeah, let's say that work in progress.
Robert O’Farrell:
I love that word security that you use there. It draws a parallel, I think, to a word that we also use when it comes to that plan that we have, which is that focus element, making sure that we do the things that matter. Do you think that it's also given you a sense of focus too on what you take on and what you say yes to and what you say no to with regards to your personal and professional development?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When you know where you want to go, it's more easy to say yes or no to something that came up to you. Another personal example that I remember was something like 12 years ago, 12 to 13 years ago, my focus was to learn Java, for example, Java programming. Because I know in the midterm, I would like to be a Java architect. So, I have to improve my skills on that programming language.
Leandro Barreto:
So, during that time, the company that I was working was making some changes and then they asked me, "Hey, I know you are good at Java. You are learning, but we need you to start learning this another language, Ruby on Rails during that time. But you have to at least for the moment, forget Java." And then, I was like, "Mm-mm. No, no."
Robert O’Farrell:
It's not what I want to do.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly. I totally understand that was a company's decision. But during that point, it begins to separate my focus on what I want to achieve from the company's purpose. So, it doesn't make any sense to continue on that company. I asked to leave. And again, best decision ever, because then I entered in another company that I learned so much. And then, in three years I became a Java architect.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. That's a fantastic example of that focus. I'm quite curious out of those four components that you mentioned before, what have you found quite easy, I guess, to achieve or to at least get clarity around personally? And what have you found more challenging?
Leandro Barreto:
Good question. Good question. Yeah. So, learning something that you don't know, it's always a challenge but when you have a desire or a clear focus where you want to go in a few years, things start to be clarified for you. For example, in 2014, I did extension of my MBA in United States to learn about entrepreneurship and things that for me was really, really important. But totally new field, I have no idea what to expect but it provides me the vision to... I always had the idea to have my own company in other words. So, I know that in short term, not in short term, but in midterm at least five years to four years, during that period of time, I would like to have my company.
Leandro Barreto:
So, after I did this MBA, I came back to Brazil, and then I started to put myself in situations that makes me learn these new things. And in 2016, I open up our restaurant in Brazil. So, when you have an objective, things, and it's quite funny because the universe starts to help you.
Robert O’Farrell:
You make your own luck in a lot of regards too, I think.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah.
Robert O’Farrell:
So, if you had somebody who was looking to learn about Ikigai and came to you for some, for your experience and your advice in how to apply it to their lives, what do you think your advice to someone would be who doesn't know much about it?
Leandro Barreto:
Good question. Great question. So, one tip that I, or advice that I can give is, and I think that this is fantastic and I apply it in my daily basis. Don't waste time in small decisions on a daily basis because every day we have thousands of decisions to make and our brain capacity is limited daily, at least daily. So, there are some times that we feel like mentally exhausted after, for example, you have six meetings in a row in a day. In the end of the day, you were totally tired. Right? And I once read that the greatest minds don't waste time thinking on small things, for example, Steve Jobs always wore the same jeans and t-shirt every day. And he didn't need to think to use it. He just took it and reuse it.
Leandro Barreto:
So, during that time, what I did in 2018, more or less when I was presented to Ikigai. So, what I did, I lived alone in an apartment in Brazil. So, I decided to change it, my life. What I did, I donated my entire wardrobe of clothes with things that I almost never used. And I was only wear eight t-shirts and two jeans.
Robert O’Farrell:
Quite a collection.
Leandro Barreto:
So, I avoid making those small decisions, especially in the morning, because in the morning, you have a clear mind and you don't have to spend those in small things, because if you think on small things, probably it'll grow during the day. So, for example, another thing that helped me a lot is plan the week. So, Google Calendar exists to be used, right?
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. Yes.
Leandro Barreto:
So, everything that is very important for you, events or plans that need to be done, put on the calendar. And also, talking about the clothes, separate your clothes a day earlier before you go into bed. So, you wake up more calmly, you drink your coffee calmly, and you focus your efforts on what really matters. And once you have freed your mind from thinking about these small things, you can focus your time and energy on learning new things or getting things done the way it should be. And whether it's learning a new language or a new skill, or you can also read a book in the morning because you have free time, let's say. You can focus on what matters to you exactly.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. I'm quite curious about this aspect of finding something that you really get consumed by. And I think in this digital age, we have so many things that distract us. Our phone has a lot of notifications where we have a lot of information at our beck and call and sometimes it can be overwhelming to know what we should focus on, and I guess what we can really get passionate about. I'm curious, do you have any insight into that as to how people can find that thing that they just lose themselves in and that they're super passionate about?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Another thing that worked very well for me is to turn off all the notifications.
Robert O’Farrell:
Get a dumb phone just so you don't have that level of notifications coming through. Yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Because I read... I don't remember where exactly, but your brain took something like 15 minutes to focus on something. So, if you don't spend 15 minutes of your time, focus on what needs to be done. You cannot focus at all. So, what I usually do, I turn off all of the notifications from my phone. So, the principal one, I just took it off and I don't care about notifications. Also, one thing that I noticed is that when I, for example, when I had Apple Watch. In the Apple Watch, even if you turn the notifications on or off, the iPhone, it keeps doing on the phone. Oh, my God. So, this is one simple device that I can say, because otherwise, you will enter in a black hole in a community and social media and news, and then you'll lose yourself.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. I found that personally with the Apple Watch, having something on your wrist that vibrates is incredibly distracting. And I was always very big champion of technology, but that was one area where I just moved away from it, went back to a mechanical watch, just didn't want that level of interruption when I was trying to focus on things. So, I think it's a really key insight to focus.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. In addition to that, when you, for example, when you are in a meeting with someone and you are actually expecting a message for, I don't know, maybe your family, and then it pops up on your phone and you are in a meeting, and then you take a look into the watch and the people notice that you are not paying attention because you are looking into watch. No matter why you are looking, if it's a message or et cetera, you do provide a psychology... How can I say that in English? Oh, my God. Psychology interference. Let's say it.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yep. Psychological interference.
Leandro Barreto:
Interference. Yeah. Thank you. That will provide a negative influence to other people. So, yeah, that's why you made the right choice to move into the-
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. I've heard some people that will actually ask people to leave their phones outside when they go into meetings or leave their laptop outside so that you're present and that you are engaged in the conversation. Because I think even the mere fact that you have your phone near you is a distraction. Even if there's no notifications, its presence is enough to ensure that you're not 100% present in the conversation, which I think is quite interesting from how we focus and our dependency on that rush that we get or that endorphin rush of getting that ping on the phone or that notification.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly.
Robert O’Farrell:
I thought we could move on to talk about objective and key results. Or for those people that may not have come across this term before, OKRs are collaborative goal-setting methodology and used by teams and individuals to set challenging and ambitious goals with measurable results. So, to break that down further, the objective part of the OKR is simply what is to be achieved and the KR part of it, which is key results, benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. So, getting to the heart of setting successful OKR is establishing it clear and compelling why. Is there a secret formula to creating a powerful why to get everyone on board?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Great question. So, OKRs, it's all about action and execution. And I think the secret formula, let's say it's having a well-defined proposal and also everyone engaged in seeking the result as the main objective. So, companies in my opinion are made of living ecosystem called human beings. And every human being has its own desires, proposals, goals. And en suite, unite all of the objectives of both the companies and all the people together. That's when we can achieve best results. And that's why some companies are focused on the cultural fit.
Leandro Barreto:
And this is one thing that I see growing a lot in the HR area, companies and persons that must, which the cultural fit must match. It basically means that the person has the same values and desires to achieve results as most of the people in the company or what the company understand as their force that they need to keep growing as a company. And I have seen many technically good people failing in selection, in process selection, simply because they don't adhere to cultural fit. And this is much more than a psychological issue because you don't know how to say like people that cannot work as a group.
Leandro Barreto:
So, it's better for the company to hire someone who can play as a team instead of someone who is like the lonely wolf that keeps working alone. And the results is for only him and not for the entire company. So, yeah, this is the classic example that I can see. And also, one thing that is good for that is nowadays, our fault tolerance is quite good because today at least serious companies don't punish failures. So, they even encourage you to learn.
Leandro Barreto:
And the Spotify models, I remember they say like, "Fail fast and learn fast." So, that was the fail wall was born. So, where everyone shared their failures and they can learn as a team, as a clan, guild. And this is quite beautiful because you can create such an environment where everyone can learn and grow together because humans can fail. And this is normal.
Robert O’Farrell:
Do you think that-
Leandro Barreto:
And-
Robert O’Farrell:
Sorry, I'm just curious. Do you think that companies are more focused around the why these days, or that why has become more important in their measure of success? And you mentioned cultural fit and I love this idea that more companies are much more sensitive to what is their company culture and how does this person work within, or are they going to fit into this company culture? Because the existing people in that company are aligned around their why. And if someone is coming in and doesn't align with that, they understand the impact on their success. So, do you think that company's becoming more and more aware of this and more sensitive to this?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes. I think they are. So, as far as they have the right people in the right environment with the right proposal, no matter the why they will find it blindly, let's say. I think it's like a sense of behavior for the people. Because if you see someone from, as your peer, let's say, that's running to an objective that was defined by the company. And you are aligned with your values and goals. You will follow it.
Leandro Barreto:
So, this is good for both persons as human beings and also for the company because they show the proposal, they show what is the why we must be, for example, the first selling company for our product in the market, why, and then people who is working on it, they will take it as a personal objective. And this is when you make the connection between the company's objective and the people's objective because when the company grows with this why, with this north star, the people will grow together with you.
Robert O’Farrell:
I completely agree. I'm quite curious too from the opposite point of view. Do you think that employees are becoming more aware of understanding the company's why before they join the company? Because we've seen with the pandemic that a lot of companies are now moving to this remote recruitment. And so, the possibilities for employees to work for a much broader range of companies now have increased. And do you think that employees are now finding better wire alignment when they're looking for new jobs because they do have a broader pool to play in per se?
Leandro Barreto:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's why Glassdoor is so popular. So, when you are invited for a meeting or for an interview, you can see everything from the company. Like from salary to feedbacks from the people who works there or is not working anymore. And then, you can see if there's a match. And this is quite funny because like 10 years ago, which is not so popular, we are blindly thinking to work, let's say, in a position like software development. So, I have to be a software developer. I have to be a...
Leandro Barreto:
So, it was more focused on the position instead of the purpose. And now we are seeing the opposite. Now, the people are looking for the purpose, what the company can help me achieve. And it's more like a win-win-
Robert O’Farrell:
Situation.
Leandro Barreto:
... situation let's say, situation. Exactly.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think also a lot of people are really focused on how the company takes care of them as a person. They're very sensitive to the fact that they are committing their time to that company. So, there has to be that alignment around professional goals and personal goals. And I think that it's a great shift to see, to come back to the OKR side of things. I'm curious about what benefits do setting OKRs within an organization give or provide?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. I think OKRs, they are very, very simple. They do not require a specific knowledge to implement it. So, when you have the people committed and engaged to the goal and the why they want to achieve, then the implementation and using of OKRs became naturally. So, company can benefit because he's straight to the point. He's like, "Objective, it's the direction. And the key results are yes or no." So, keep it simple. That's the main benefit of the companies.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. I love that. The fact that there's no gray area. You either succeed or you don't, and there's a lot of clarity around that as well.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly.
Robert O’Farrell:
I think that with that aspect of OKRs, in your experience, have you seen OKRs set that tend to stretch the team further than they normally would be stretched in terms of what they attempt to achieve than companies that don't set OKRs from your experience?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes, but I think it matters on what the company, what's the culture of the company, because I have seen companies that is setting OKRS in the good way, but I have seen companies that is setting OKRS because it's fancy. When it's fancy, you don't have a clear objective. You don't have a clear vision. You don't have the right people. And then, it's very tricky and you will never achieve what you are proposing.
Robert O’Farrell:
I'm curious to dig into that a bit more to get your insight on that. Because as somebody who would come into a company that might be setting OKRs, how would you determine that the OKRs are probably not as clearly defined or that they're implementing a process that don't necessarily have the depth or the belief in doing? So, how would somebody come in and determine that?
Leandro Barreto:
Good question. Good question. So, the idea to have a objective is like to have something that can be... How can I say that, can provide you like a, not a fear, but it's going to be like, provides you a direction for, but the people who sees it, they think like, "Hey, this is quite hard to achieve I think." So, one example for Google, for example. So, Google in 2008, they tend to launch the Google Chrome. And as I remember, the first year was like, "Hey, this is the objective." Like, "Hey, we want to launch the best browser in the world." And the key result is the number of users because the users will tell you if the browser is good or not.
Leandro Barreto:
In the first year, they didn't achieve the key result. But the second year, they rise at the bar again, like, "Hey, now we are much than double the objective." And the second year, they still didn't achieve it. But it was very, very close to it. And the third year, they pass it. So, keep in mind that the objectives must be something that seems like a challenge, a huge challenge, but at the same time, it's very inspirational.
Robert O’Farrell:
Inspirational.
Leandro Barreto:
Inspirational. Thank you so much. For those who are working on it. So, I think this is most of the point.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yes. And what do you see as some of the pitfalls when setting OKRs for an organization?
Leandro Barreto:
Awesome. Awesome. So, the pitfalls from my perspective, there are some common mistakes when implementing OKR. So, for example, as I said, not having a clear vision of the goal, so people cannot engage. And especially when you have senior engineers because they don't want to work in something that don't bring purpose for them. Right? So, this is the first one, for example. The second one could be like a system that supports the monitoring of the results. So, you cannot follow up, which is quite important to keep following it if you are, we are close to achieve it. Yes or no? So, a good point.
Leandro Barreto:
And one thing that seems quite strange, but it's very, very common in the market is that your product is not finished yet. One personal example that I faced not quite recently, but do you play video games?
Robert O’Farrell:
When I get the time. I have two young boys, so I get very little time to do that these days. But yeah, I do.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. I love doing, I don't have also time, but when I have a litle bit of time, I can spend. So, this little time I try to spend in the best game that I found in the market. And here is the point because some years ago, there was a game that was released and before released, there was several gaming platforms, new sites, and et cetera, that was telling us that, "Here is the game challen... no, the game changing for the gaming market, because it's going to be very good. The marketing for this game was really, really good. And the game was like highest expectations for that. It was always in the top. "Hey, you have to play this because it's going to be very great. You are going to be having a great experience on that."
Leandro Barreto:
And the funny thing is that after they launch it, a few hours later, I notice some YouTubers who start testing the game. They began to post videos about so much bugs that they are facing. And within a week, the game had to stop selling because that was a disaster.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
And... Yeah.
Robert O’Farrell:
I was just going to say, I can think of a few games that come to mind that fit that criteria.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Probably we are thinking the same, but I can say it, so.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that people get OKRs and KPIs confused within an organization? Or have you ever come across any examples of that, where people misunderstand the purpose of between the two of them?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes. One thing that came up to my mind is the key result is a simple measure to understand if you are going in the right direction to your objective or not, but KPIs is it's more a performance index for performing for your team. For example, if they are performing in a good way, if we have the right resources for delivering something. And so, I think this is mainly the difference is the KPI, it's a measure for you to, maybe to bonus, to create a bonus for your team or et cetera. And the KR must be not linked to bonus or salary, et cetera. Must be like a direction. Something that, yes, we are achieving it or not. Or if not, what we have to do to correct the direction.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. Fantastic. So, coming around to Agile, I'm curious about this marrying of the two, of OKRs and Agile together. How can we combine Agile and OKRs in your experience and your understanding to achieve results that drive high performance?
Leandro Barreto:
Awesome. So, as the Agile manifesto says, "People over process," so I believe whenever you maintain a fail-safe environment along with a good leadership, you can get the most of your team. So, connecting what I said earlier regarding the Ikigai and when you have a good leader, for example, in a safe environment and colleagues or peers who shares the same values and goals as you, then you can extract maximum efficiency because high-efficiency teams are teams that are focused and committed with the company results, and that will achieve great business results. Sorry.
Robert O’Farrell:
I also love that aspect with the OKRs, with that clear definition, too, that Agile, that processes is that sprint by sprint activity where you're going back and you're looping around and looking at the results of that sprint and going back to the customer and getting customer feedback and that real alignment around what you're trying to achieve as well, to give you that clarity of focus that when you are going through that sprint process, you're coming back and saying, "Okay, are we acting on the initiatives that have come out of these key results that contribute to that OKR?"
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly. And also, adding to that, that's why we have the goal for the sprint, right? So, we have the direction for the sprint. So, every sprint you can measure if you are achieving this goal or not.
Robert O’Farrell:
And I love it as a mechanism, too, to link back to that, that why piece to really give a clarity around why, which I think a lot of software development sometimes doesn't focus as much as they can on. So, I'm curious, so how can Ikigai mix into this? So, we've talked about that at the start and we talked about the components of it and it was a great framework about understanding a purpose, but how can we use that to achieve better results and stay motivated as a team?
Leandro Barreto:
Great question and also quite difficult. But yeah, I believe there are two thin lines that eventually met in the future. For example, the first one is like the individual as a person. So, how he seems himself in, within the organization and how can benefit, how this relationship can benefit from this win-win relationship. And also, the second one is like the individual as a professional. So, based on the skills that he already has. How can he help the company achieve the results more efficiently?
Leandro Barreto:
So, in a given timeline, these two lines will cross and then you will be able to extract excellent results because you will have a person with excellent internal knowledge, internal as a person, and also engaged with the companies is seeking as a greater objective, as a north star, and also helping your peers to grow all together.
Leandro Barreto:
And I think this is quite like a smile. When you smile at someone unconsciously, you make the other people smile too. So, when you have someone who is genuinely working with a proposal, that person will contaminate other in a good way. And then, you have a continuous string of people delivering consistent results. And I think this is the most important.
Robert O’Farrell:
Have you experienced that yourself where you see someone working with purpose and contaminate or infect how you... infect is again, not a great word, but inspired is probably the best word there, inspired the people around them to work in a similar fashion. Has that something that you've witnessed yourself?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes, yes. I remember back in the company that I was working in Brazil, that was my first day. I was like, "Hmm, there's something strange here," because everyone is so passionate on delivering their best results for their customer, that this thought influenced me in a positive way to start being like hungry for good results, not only for the company but for me as an individual, as someone who have to learn and teach others. And nowadays, I see these companies, it's achieving a great results with a great leader because even if we have a good team, we have to get someone who is a servant leader, who you can follow and maybe follow blindly in a good way. But yeah, I experience it.
Robert O’Farrell:
That's fantastic. But I'm interested, is there anything that you wanted to talk about personally with regards to either of those three topics or even outside of that, that has been inspirational, I think, in your professional development, in your personal life?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think Leandro five years ago was totally different person. And when I started looking, not only by myself inside me, but also outside and the opportunities that the world can give me and how can I serve back this, or how can I provide this back to the world? This is very funny because good things start to happen. For example, I never imagined to be working here in Amsterdam. And now, I'm here in Amsterdam, working in a great company with great people, delivering such great results, which is giving me a lot of knowledge to keep learning and keep the wheel turning on, keep the cycle.
Leandro Barreto:
And I think today, like performing the best Leandro's version ever, maybe tomorrow, a little bit more, and I can provide this knowledge to other person and I can also learn from other persons, from other people. And that's very exciting. I think that's what motivates me to wake up in the morning, do my sport things like running and jujitsu, and then let's do the work.
Robert O’Farrell:
That's fantastic. I love that, that reflection on the past five years, how far you've come. It sounds like you've had a lot of inspiration from a number of different sources, but is there something in there that you think was key to that? Or was it just a general progression over that time?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I tried to focus on people who have positive influence on others. So, I try to be more not equal because if you are equal, so you are the same person, so it doesn't provide value to the others, but try to be quite different in your own way. So, yeah, basically, that's what motivates me to get different sources of references and trying to be the best version of myself.
Robert O’Farrell:
That's fantastic. I love this mix of the philosophical, which is for me, the Ikigai, and the concrete, well, not concrete, but the workflow aspect of the Agile side of things coming together. Have you traditionally worked in Agile methodologies or did you transition between that may be starting, because if you're from the 2000s, so you probably touched on Waterfall at some point in the past and then came into Agile. Was that your professional progression over that time?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I worked a lot with the Waterfall methodology in 2008, when I was introduced to the Agile methodology with Scrum... no, actually 2009, then I saw. "Hey, this is very, very interesting." Let's learn more about it. And then, during this time, I keep working both with the Waterfall methodology and the Agile methodology. And the more I work it with the Waterfall, the more value I saw in the [inaudible 00:54:24]-
Robert O’Farrell:
In Agile. Yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. And that was quite fantastic because then I also learn about SAFe and how to scale it, and yeah.
Robert O’Farrell:
I'm quite curious, like because we had a similar path in that regard and I reflect on where we are with OKRs and Agile, and it's interesting that Agile brought us closer to our customer and we speak to our customer on a more regular basis, which I thought was a massive win over Waterfall where you might have months and months of development, and you've got a requirement that you're trying to put into code, and then suddenly, you have this big delivery and that's when you talk to the customer. And usually, the customer comes back and says, "We want all these things changed." And it's a real pain.
Robert O’Farrell:
Agile was instrumental in that, but then going up from there and putting that layer of why on top of that, which I think is, again, one of those big fundamental shifts on how we focus on what we are doing. Do you see anything emerging from your experience, your professional experience that is tackling another key challenge with regards to, I guess, how we work and how we deliver value?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes. And for example, the customer, they want to see value on what is going to be delivered. They don't want to spend six months to wait something to be delivered. So, I think that's why cloud start being so popular, like SaaS companies, because when you are working on something that is on cloud, for example, you always have the last version. And no matter the day or the hour of the day, there will come new features. And usually, it's transparent for you. And internally from the engineering perspective, the more you deliver, the more quickly you can correct and the more you can understand the market.
Leandro Barreto:
And also, that's why some strategies, some release strategies came up so popular like Canary release. So, you deliver a few things to a particular person, and then you can test it. And if they provides you good or bad feedback, you have time to correct it. So, that's why it became so popular. So, I think during this time from now on, we must see a lot of SaaS companies starting to growing because things are in real life now, real time now, so I think it's natural.
Leandro Barreto:
By the way, there's a good strategy that was implemented by Spot 5 if I'm not mistaken that was like, but this is more for engineering perspective. They have some robots that keeps doing bad things to the servers.
Robert O’Farrell:
Oh, that's the Chaos Monkey.
Leandro Barreto:
The Chaos Monkey.
Robert O’Farrell:
That was Netflix. Yeah. Yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
Netflix, yeah.
Robert O’Farrell:
Netflix. And it would take down bits of their infrastructure and break things. Yeah, yeah.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly. It's quite hard to see in some companies, but I think this has become to be more popular during the next couple of months or years, because it will teach the engineers how to deal with that because no one wants to stay working in the weekend. You stay with your family.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. I completely agree. I remember when I first heard about the idea of the Chaos Monkey, that it shocked me that someone would inflict that upon their business and upon, I guess, their systems, but then it only takes a production incident to realize that if you had something like that, that you would've built in some provision should that eventuate. And I think that there's a lot of wisdom to it. And so, I absolutely love the idea. I love this, what you were saying about real-time delivery of value to customers.
Robert O’Farrell:
And I think back to how Agile has really been fundamental in pioneering that, well, not pioneering it per se, but with the release cadence that you get from one to two-week sprints, you're putting yourself in a position where you are delivering more often. And you mentioned Canary deploys, I think within that. Is there any other deployment strategies that you've come across that also support, I guess, that immediate delivery of value to customers?
Leandro Barreto:
Yes. There is another strategy which is called the Blue-Green release, but the difference between it is like the Canary release, you deliver something in the small portions, but the Blue-Green, you, like a switch that you turn on and off.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yes. Yes. Right.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, you can test it. You can deliver new version of your environment or your tool, and then everyone can use it. And if something goes failed, then you have the plan B, where you can just turn on and off, and then you can rearrange the traffic to your tool. But this is very technical.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. Very interesting to me, but we might lose a few of our podcast listeners. One last question from me, just within your current professional engagement, were they implementing OKRs before you joined the company? Or was that something that you've seen introduced over that period of time?
Leandro Barreto:
From my current company, they are currently working with OKRs, so I didn't participate and implemented it. So, I'm just more focused on helping the teams in implementing the KRs. There were some companies that I worked in the PEs that I helped to build it, and also to build not only the objective but also the KRs. And the objective, it's you spend so much time because you have to understand where the company wants to be in the future.
Leandro Barreto:
So, you have to know inside what we have, what we can improve, where we can improve, and then we can base it on that, base it on the objective. We can build up to four key results to be more precise in achieving this. Yeah. But it's quite challenging, but at the same time, very exciting.
Robert O’Farrell:
I think that was going to be my question in your experience in seeing a company go from not doing that to then implementing it, what were the real challenges in doing that? And how long did you see that process take before they really got good at doing that? Because it is not only setting the meaningful objectives and obviously measurable key results but also then getting the alignment from the teams around that. What were the big challenges there and how long did you see that process take?
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah. I think it depends from company to company. I remember back in Brazil, I had to work with companies that spent months on deciding, but at the same time, I remember my own company took three months to start implementing it. So, I think it depends on the commitment of the people who is responsible for this objective. So, yeah, depends on the maturity also of the company, the people who is working, and yeah. Because the OKRs are quite old, but at the same time are quite new for people, for the companies. Right? So, this is like very challenging. And how do you balance it?
Leandro Barreto:
There are some people who doesn't know how to set the correct objective. And then, we came up with the same thing that we are discussing earlier. Like if you don't know where you're going to go, if the objective is not clear enough, no matter if you have good people or bad people, the people will not see value on that.
Robert O’Farrell:
Yeah. And you won't get your alignment because people don't either understand or don't believe in the objective.
Leandro Barreto:
Exactly.
Robert O’Farrell:
That's fantastic insight, Leandro. And I really appreciate your time today. Again, is there anything that you'd like to chat about before we wrap it up? I'm just conscious that we have been chatting for about an hour now and gone off script a little bit too.
Leandro Barreto:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, actually I'd like to thank you, Rob. Thank you, Agile team, everyone. I don't want to spend much time talking also. It was a pleasure and thanks for invite again. And I hope we can think good things in the future. Like, "Hey, I hope I can provide good insights on this."
Robert O’Farrell:
That's fantastic. You certainly have. I've learned a fair bit today as well. So, I'll be going back to revisit some of the talking points from this chat. So, thank you very much again for your time, Leandro. I really appreciate it. And, yes, have a great day. It's kicking off for you and it's ending for us. So, yeah, really appreciate it, mate.
Leandro Barreto:
Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it too. Thanks again. See you. Have a great day.
Robert O’Farrell:
You too. Cheers.
Leandro Barreto:
Cheers.