Category: General

I spoke at Lean Kanban France, the ancestor of Flowcon, ten years ago. A big thank you to the organizers who invited me to speak again at the celebratory edition. I first said no to avoid another travel, and then finally accepted as I was pitching for Red Hat at a public sector event in Paris the next day.

I also want to thank the Agile Tour Bordeaux organizers, who invited me to deliver a keynote address the following week.

I planned to discuss change and, more specifically, how to change on both occasions.

Can we change?

To build on the shoulder of giants, I chose to use Robert Kegan‘s model of adult development. I also used learnings from his book, Immunity to Change.

As George Box said, all models are wrong, but some are useful. Kegan’s model is helpful for two reasons.

The first one is that too many people still envision development as happening from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence and that once we reach adulthood, it is all downhill.

The second one is how we go from one stage to the next. From subject to object. For example, we start being the subject of our perceptions, and then in the next stage, perceptions are objects we can reflect upon and use. We have perceptions.

At each stage of our development, we can handle more complexity. We improve our ability to make meaning of the world.

All models are wrong, but some are useful

George Box

Once we established that we could still change and develop ourselves, we discussed the question of what to change or how to support our introspections with the help of others.

What to change?

We have to seek the perspectives of those close to us, managers, peers, teammates, and life partners, to narrow down on what is the one thing to change.

We can send a 360 feedback survey to our peers and teammates to learn what we could start, stop, or continue to increase your impact.

Of course, those are only biased opinions, and we will still need to decide what to change. Check with someone close to us that our choice makes sense to them. Always surprising to realize they already knew something you were not.

What prevents us from changing?

It is not about willpower. We know what to change. We commit, and still, it seems impossible.

Robert Kegan explains that we develop a sort of immunity to change. Our immunity to change takes the form of hidden commitments that prevail on our newly made commitments.

Until we reveal those hidden commitments, change is impossible.

How to reveal the hidden commitments?

First, it is about listing all our behaviors and circumstances going against our goal. Let’s use a simple example: smoking or not smoking. A behavior could be picking a cigarette. The circumstances are critical: when I am alone and bored, I want to focus, I am relaxed, I enter or exit a place, I am with people, and so on.

Once you have the behaviors and circumstances, you can reflect on how you would feel if you were not doing those things in those circumstances. What are your fears? Or what is the advantage of not changing?

One of my former managers always added his two cents in all conversations. I tried to explain how it was demoralizing to people that he did not even listen to what they had to present before sharing his opinion or making a decision. It had close to no effect.

I tried the approach of inquiring about his fears. It fits in a sentence, but the process took quite some time. His answer: “If I am not adding value, people will think I am useless.”

By revealing that fear, it gave us the opportunity for a fantastic conversation. I was even surprised that he nearly stopped that behavior entirely after that.

How to change?

The next thing is to define tactics for all the behaviors and circumstances. As our behaviors are hardwired to triggers and events, we need to be ready with a tactic when something pops up.

With our tactics ready, we can reflect daily on what happens, by ourselves or with an accountability partner. Benjamin Franklin picked one virtue to work on at the beginning of each 4-week cycle and then moved to the next one. In doing so, he could work four weeks a year on each of the 13 virtues.

• Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
• Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
• Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
• Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
• Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
• Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
• Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
• Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
• Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
• Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
• Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
• Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

At the end of each day, he would reflect on how he did and mark his progress on the chart.

I wish you great and continued development. Please support the development of people around you so that together, we tackle humanity’s critical challenges today!

The Coaching Habit is a book by Michael Bungay Stanier (aka MBS). In telling you about the book, I feel I am giving away many of my secrets. But, yeap, they are not mine.

The subtitle is: “Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever.” It is just perfectly telling everything.

The book is for leaders. Leaders who are in a manager or an individual contributor role.

In seven questions, the author can cover everything that matters. Here they are:

1- The Kickstart Question: What’s on your mind?
2- The AWE Question: And what else?
3- The Focus Question: What’s the real challenge here for you?
4- The Foundation Question: What do you want?
5- The Lazy Question: How can I help?
6- The Strategic Question: If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
7- The Learning Question: What was most useful for you?

And that’s all!

Of course, that is not really all. It is just a summary, valuable only because I read the book and experimented with the power of the questions.

In the book, you will learn the rationale behind using the questions and develop your ability to be curious, which is the real secret.

Curiosity is everything.

During my #67daysofleadership challenge, on Day 47, I shared about Three Trillion Dollar Coach. I mentioned that I want to use with my team a peer-to-peer feedback survey inspired by one used at Google and described in the book.

To give some context, my team is the one leading all engineering at Red Hat.

🤔 What are your thoughts about the adaptation?

For the past 3 months, using a 0 to 10 scale, to what extent do you disagree (0) / agree (10) that each person :

– Displayed extraordinary in-role performance.

– Exemplified world-class leadership.

– Achieved outcomes that were in the best interest of both Red Hat as a whole and his/her organization.

– Expanded the boundaries of what is possible for Red Hat through innovation and/or application of best practices.

– Collaborated effectively with peers (for example, worked well together, resolved barriers/issues with others) and championed the same in his/her team.

– Contributed effectively during team meetings (for example, was prepared, participated actively, listened well, was open and respectful to others, disagreed constructively).

Please, provide your best feedback using the text areas for the last two questions:

– What differentiates each team member and makes him/her effective today?

– What advice would you give each team member to be more effective and/or have a greater impact?

Last question for you, the reader of the post, would you favor an anonymous survey?

by Alexis Monville and Jérôme Bourgeon.

When old innovations depreciate quickly, and new ones become a standard in a short time, how to facilitate your organization’s resiliency, agility, and responsiveness to an ever-changing ecosystem? How to attract and retain talents? How to keep them focused, motivated, and engaged in our ever more challenging new hybrid world?

Some companies seemed to evolve organically to fit their economic and sociologic context, no matter their sizes. How are they accomplishing that wonder?

No magic formulas are available on the market. You would have already applied it to your organization.

Igniting the change in your organization requires the development of three capabilities. In developing those capabilities, you will uncover the magic formula for your organization and shift its culture.

This article provides you with the questions to assess where you stand in developing the three capabilities and suggest tools you can use to push the development further.

Superior Strategic Focus

An organization can achieve extraordinary results when all people row in the same direction. We love to start here because everyone smoothly agrees that a clear purpose, vision, and strategic objectives are fundamental to success.

One approach to facilitate the shared understanding is engaging the organization, starting with the leadership team, in drawing an impact map. The impact map represents a shared understanding of the assumptions about the future and pushes all people in the same direction.

Questions to reflect on:

• Why do we exist, and what do we do? How would people in your organization answer those questions? Are they in agreement?
• How does your organization define performance?
• Which of your business assumptions is at risk of being invalidated?

The Organization is a Product

Building the organization like a product is our mantra. An organization that provides an incredible experience to employees in a hybrid world. An organization that enables them to do their best work, providing a fantastic experience to partners and customers.

The “way we do things here” has some time to be protected. Some traditions and rituals are essential pieces of the culture. Sometimes they have to go or evolve to let the organization move to higher levels of development.

Applying the Impact Map to the organization is a way to do that. Explore how to create working agreements. Explore how new rituals fit the new hybrid world: company roulette and culture on a plate (ask us if you want to know more about those).

Questions to reflect on:

• What is the last story you heard in your organization that moved you?
• What is the next feature your organization needs to provide to generate more value?

Curiosity about Perpetual Change

As humans, we crave stability. It does not exist. Ourselves and our environment change constantly. Being curious about change and accepting the reality of perpetual change is dawting individuals and organizations. Building positive reinforcement loops facilitates acceptance.

Observe the organization in place and compare it to the original design. Observe the connection between the organization and the product and services of the organization (Conway). Explore how to develop Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to foster positive reinforcement loops.

Questions to reflect on:

• What could be the next capability your organization needs to create?
• What have you changed your mind about recently?
• Which of your beliefs have you let go lastly?

Starting the three capabilities development journey shifts the culture, and brings meaning and purpose to your organization. The first steps reveal obstacles and constraints to remove to achieve more sustainability and higher impact. Motivation and engagement grow with a higher focus, a better organization, and a freshness of curiosity.

In the long run, the development of the three capabilities creates the condition for your organization to evolve organically, enabling your business to develop and pivot when needed.

Illustration by Jérôme Bourgeon

Changing Your Team From The Inside chapters end with an activity for the readers to try. The exercise suggested at the end of the first chapter, titled Be The Change, is the Best Possible Self. When you follow the last link, you can learn how to do the activity and why you should absolutely try it.

Thanks to the newsletter from the Greater Good Science Center of the University of Berkeley, I was reminded of the activity. A newsletter you may want to subscribe to. You may even want to follow their flagship course on The Science of Happiness.

When you have a more optimistic vision of the future, you are more likely to take the necessary steps to get there, which means installing new habits in your days.

Last year, in the new year post for this blog, I talked a little about willpower, bringing back the previous new year post, mentioning Kelly McGonigal’s book The Willpower Instinct. Let me do it once again. Being harsh when you miss a day or a commitment, especially when you want to take on a good habit or quit a bad one, triggers guilt, which pushes you to seek comfort. Comfort you may want to find in the very thing you are trying to stop doing. In short: be kind with others and with yourself.

Speaking of habits, maybe you want to make a new habit of listening to exciting podcast episodes? What about you start listening to Creatures of Habit, another great episode of Hidden Brain, a podcast by Shankar Vedantam.

Whatever you pick as a new habit, I wish it will serve you well, and that you will achieve your best possible self in 2022.

All the best!

PS: I would love to take some time to have a chat with you. Ping me on LinkedIn to make it happen 🙂

Le Podcast – Season Two

• 
  Playful Leadership: Helping Others Be Their Best
• 
  Blessed, Grateful, and Human
• 
  Build the Right Product, with Gojko Adzic
• 
  Hiring and Diversity Without Dropping the Bar
• 
  Leadership and Teamwork in a Crisis
• 
  Chief of Staff: The Role, the Craft, the Community
• 
  Belonging, Identity, and Better Hiring,
• 
  What Software Teams Can Learn from Sporting Teams
• 
  Agile and Open Innovation: Building the Bridge Between Tech and Business
• 
  Radical Focus: OKRs, Cadence, and the “Seduction of the Task”
• 
  Human-Centric Agility Coaching: The Expert Paradox and the Ideology Paradox
• 
  The Job of an Open Leader: Context, Trust, and Growing Others

Le Podcast – Season One

• 
  Growing as a Software Engineer: Learning, Sharing, and Impact
• 
  Thirteen Rules for Building Strong Teams
• 
  OKRs in Practice: Learning, Focus, and Common Pitfalls
• 
  The Myth of 10x Engineers: Growing Beyond Technical Skills
• 
  The Anatomy of Peace: Leadership Starts With Who You Are
• 
  Psychological Safety: Creating Teams Where People Can Speak Up
• 
  Leading Distributed Teams: Collaboration Across Time Zones
• 
  Changing Your Team from the Inside: A Practitioner’s View on Leadership
• 
  Why Shared Language Matters: How Terms Shape Collaboration
• 
  How (Not) to Give Feedback: Responsibility, Ego, and Relationships
• 
  Rock Stars and Superstars: Supporting Growth Without Losing Stability
• 
  Do Cultural Differences Really Block Agile Adoption?
• 
  How to Create Great Goals: Using OKRs to Focus on Impact
• 
  Making Change from the Inside: Leadership Beyond Management Roles
• 
  How to Form a Cross-Functional Team That Actually Works

Day One: Coming Together

For some leaders from different organizations that will merge into one in the upcoming weeks, the face-to-face meeting is the first opportunity to meet in person with each other and their new manager. Even if the three facilitators made sure to greet everyone as they entered the room, the tension was palpable over the friendly chit-chat.

The organizational structure has been announced over the last week, but not all leaders have been appointed yet. The departure of some leaders has already been communicated, and the others intuitively feel we are not done yet with those kinds of announcements.

The oversized room feels comfortable. The tables are in a U-shape facing two giant screens on which we can already see the faces of the four people who were not able or willing to travel. Participants are used to the social distancing rules and leave one empty seat between them, spreading across the room.

We are together for two and a half days to establish, define, and align the mission and the organization’s strategic objectives.

One of the facilitators kicks off the meeting with some housekeeping words and gives the freshly appointed senior vice president the floor for opening remarks. She speaks about the opportunity for the organization and the chance to start together. She thanks the participants for their hard work and acknowledges their deep experience and vast expertise.

She is able to show some vulnerability mentioning she feels tired and nervous. Easy to understand that she could feel that way, as she was appointed six weeks before to tackle the critical challenge for the organization.

She asks people to be honest, speak up, be ready to let go of the past, and consider everything as fixable. She brilliantly closes by mentioning how if we are successful, employees, partners, and customers will look at us differently.

Now we can really start, and the facilitator is back at the center of the room to establish the ground rules and make the participants express what they need. A good time for the facilitators to share their roles. One stays in the background, takes notes, monitors the chat, and shares the documents. The two others alternate being in and outside the circle. The one outside warns that she will take the liberty to reformulate straightforwardly what she heard expressed indirectly.

Alternating at the center of the circle, she asked: “Think of a person you have not good thoughts about.” It was quite amusing looking at people looking around in the room, while an image popped into my mind instantly. Are those views really personal, or are they organizational views? Do you think what you think because people are part of another org? Then, she asked to put those past thoughts in the past files and give people a chance in the present moment.

Now is the time for something big hairy, scary, stinky… Do you guess what is coming? Elephants, of course! Being open is being known, expressing what is only known by you so that others can know it. Participants are asked to express what they need and make it about themselves. The round table allows each participant to say something, building on what the others already shared. It is a nice combination of hopes and fears. Only one participant declined to say anything, revealing frustration from one facilitator who dropped: “You have three days, man.”

In her closing comments, the organization leader mentions how she feels pressured to solve all the problems mentioned. She highlights the opportunity for the leadership team to select what problems to solve first and solve them together.

If you feel it is time for that team to get to work, you are going way too fast, a leadership team needs maturity, and one cannot rush maturity. The facilitator is back in the center speaking of “pre-resilience”: the resilience you built in the past, and that is now in your “bank”.

The organization leader is now in the center to share a story of resilience that will make the whole audience shiver, close to shedding a tear. Asking people to share their stories of resilience in a large group would be too much for many of them. The participants split into groups of four and spend the next 45 minutes sharing their stories. Interesting exercise of sharing vulnerabilities, that group of Senior Directors and Vice Presidents are all human, in the end, facing their own life challenges.

Now that we have gone through the first phase of team formation let’s get to a shared understanding of what the employees in the organization and the rest of the company, the customers, and the partners think, feel, and do.

Once again the group is split into small subgroups to reflect and propose their understanding. The readout is shared after the session with the whole group. The discussion is positive and fluid. The group of remote people demonstrated excellent engagement and collaboration, providing the rest of the group with a great readout.

The last session of that first day is dedicated to defining who we want to be as a leadership team. What would we be ready to commit to? Similar things are brought in all formation discussions of teams. 

Two things I found worth sharing here:

• Someone proposed to add “assume positive intent,” which drove a lively conversation around the proposal. People approved, but it is not an excuse to be a jerk; you have to give people good reasons to assume positive intent!
• Someone proposed to add “calling out” people on their bad behaviors not respecting the shared commitment. The proposal sparked another lively discussion. I loved the resulting proposal that instead of calling people out, we should maybe consider calling them in, as they belong to the group, or calling them up to their potential.

All agreed that we would all have to invest some time in building relationships and that the face-to-face meeting was only a first step toward that goal.

It is time for a nice dinner together to close the day.

Day Two: Working Together

“Can you count to 15 as a team?” asked the facilitator as the second day started. The facilitator immediately starts saying: “one,” one participant says “two,” and three participants talk over each other, saying “three.”

We failed the first attempt, as each participant had to say one number without ever talking over another person. We are not allowed to “strategize” as the facilitator starts again immediately with “one.” We improved. We “only” failed at “five” this time.

The facilitator reminds us that we have to include the people online. Another attempt, another failure. Frustrating. I am sure that we could do it if we had the time to agree on a strategy. But it is not allowed.

Instead, the facilitator asks us to take a few deep breaths, close our eyes, and focus on our breath returning to normal. She uses a lovely “meditation” voice, and we continue to get back to the breath. We slowly emerge from that short meditation session by opening our eyes again.

We then made another attempt. A successful one! Interestingly, I was absolutely sure it was my turn to speak when I said “ten.” How did I know? I don’t know. It seemed we felt more confident and more focused after that short meditation session.

I am convinced that first success helped us for the rest of the day. We started bringing some other elephants into the room just after that. An excellent way to start the day!

In her opening remarks of the day, the organization leader starts with an outside-in view, goes through the company goals, and how critical today is in defining the purpose and objectives of the team, and not only what we will do, but how we will do it.

The framework used to work on the mission and purpose is simple and efficient. We just have to fill in the blanks.

This organization exists to…

We will do this by…

So that…

We decide as a group to focus only on the first and last “blanks”: This organization exists to […] so that […]. Building on the team formation work that was accomplished the first day, that quite a large group of people emerges after 45 minutes with a sentence. A sentence that we are all ready to consider as the sentence representing the purpose of the organization.

Now is the time to fill in the middle blank with 3 to 5 strategic objectives, and for that, we are back in small groups, that the facilitators designed to be slightly different from the previous ones.

We are back in the large room, and I am a bit anxious that the other groups will not align at all with each other. The readout starts, and I am happily surprised that the first group has strategic objectives that are nearly 100% aligned with what we have. The wording is different, by this is quite close.

We discussed the rationale behind the wording of each proposal as a team. It progressively becomes clear that we can converge the four groups into one proposal.

The facilitators will close the day saying that they will craft a converged proposal.

We then applied the same framework to craft the leadership team mission providing clarity and driving consistency.

And we call it a day! Another dinner is ready for us, and people start to get closer to each other.

Day Three: Coming out with one Leadership Voice

The last day will be a half-day, and I feel it is enough! The idea is to be able to express all that we discuss with one voice—being able to deliver the message to the different audiences we will address.

We have 20 minutes to prepare a 2-3 minutes pitch to the audience of our choice.

Before getting each of us to deliver our pitch, the facilitators propose to warm us up with a Leadership Karaoke. What are the rules of the game? Simple: each of us will go on the stage in turn, and say: “What you always want to know about…” which will prompt the facilitators to go to the next slide. Then, we will have to speak for 2 minutes… Of course, the slides are kind of random, from a picture of a hot dog, Hannibal Lecter from the Silence of the Lambs, an electrical telegraph device, or a slide mentioning “company values”… We had a lot of fun and debriefed as a team on the best way to engage the audience.

After the next break, we all went back on stage to deliver our 2-3 minute pitch. After each pitch, the facilitators encouraged us to send a direct message to the person who just presented mentioning one thing we liked, one thing to consider to upgrade the pitch.

A very energizing session in which we confirmed our alignment. We also learned a few things to refine our understanding or increase our impact.

Of course, the last person to go on stage is the organization leader. The address also serves as closing remarks and farewell as some are already traveling back home while the others will stay a bit more to prepare the next day Townhall.

The Next Day

I am sitting at the airport lounge when I join the virtual Townhall gathering all the people who will be part of the new organization. I witnessed an impressive leadership team delivering a clear and consistent message. Furthermore, the way they complemented each other when answering the question was very impressive.

This is just the beginning for that newly formed Leadership Team, but this is a very promising one!

A few weeks back, I joined yet another online meeting, and something felt instantly different. Smooth music was playing in the background while the host welcomed me to the meeting.

The host was Michael Doyle, and that was the first time I was exposed to that approach of welcoming people in online meetings. I tried to think about what felt different, and it is tough for me to describe—something like a cool down, calm and relaxed atmosphere. The meeting then went very well, and I was delighted with the outcome.

Was it only chance? Was it only about the people involved? I needed to test that in other settings.

I picked a team and a meeting that would be much more challenging, and I played smooth, positive jazz music to open the meeting.

People were surprised. They made a few comments about the music and what it reminded them. If we were not in the middle of a pandemic, the meeting would have probably been in-person, and we would have been in a hotel, so I guess that is why the first thing they mentioned was the elevator, the hotel lobby, and the breakfast lounge. The chit-chat went very smoothly and relaxed. I felt the meeting went very well.

As a result, I decided to play the music again during the breaks. I will do that again!

What about you try that too?

Do you know any research on the topic? I would love to read some!