WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.900
If our listeners take something away from this is, again, look beyond your immediate scope, right?
00:00:04.969 --> 00:00:22.850
If you just try to improve engineering or just try to improve product, or you let teams do their own, like, retros and continuous improvement and whatnot, you run the risk of things not really sticking, the changes don't stick, or you get unintended consequences, or you just get too much business risk.
00:00:23.454 --> 00:00:30.565
You want to understand the boundaries, you want to have this coalition of leaders who care about the system and want to improve it.
00:00:30.945 --> 00:00:41.145
Gardener just released their market guide, showing that software engineering intelligence platforms, help engineering leaders significantly improve both team productivity and value delivery.
00:00:41.924 --> 00:00:47.865
Through Gardner's in-depth analysis on the critical features of sci platforms and how they can be used to drive engineering excellence.
00:00:48.145 --> 00:00:50.454
Linear B was named as a representative vendor.
00:00:50.875 --> 00:00:55.240
And therefore we're giving away a complimentary copy of Gartner's sci market guide.
00:00:55.436 --> 00:01:04.167
Head to the link in the show notes to download your complimentary copy and learn how you can unlock the transformative potential of software engineering intelligence for your team.
00:01:04.862 --> 00:01:06.203
Hey, what's up everyone?
00:01:06.212 --> 00:01:08.052
Welcome to Dev Interrupted.
00:01:08.313 --> 00:01:13.962
I'm your host, Dan Lines, LinearB COO and co founder.
00:01:14.022 --> 00:01:21.703
And today I'm joined by Gil Broza, author of the book, Deliver Better Results.
00:01:21.992 --> 00:01:23.733
Welcome to the show, Gil.
00:01:24.192 --> 00:01:25.772
Thank you so much for having me here.
00:01:26.138 --> 00:01:27.448
It's really cool having you on.
00:01:27.519 --> 00:01:31.634
And we were just chatting be Before the show you're in Toronto.
00:01:31.674 --> 00:01:33.194
I'm in Rochester, New York.
00:01:33.334 --> 00:01:35.233
We're actually pretty close to each other.
00:01:35.804 --> 00:01:41.343
Not too far away, which is awesome Usually I can't say that for people that are coming on the show.
00:01:41.343 --> 00:01:48.713
But I have seen actually a lot of good stuff happening in Toronto some startup companies that type of thing, which is really cool.
00:01:48.993 --> 00:01:50.864
So awesome to have you on.
00:01:51.274 --> 00:01:52.884
Could we start out?
00:01:52.884 --> 00:01:54.774
We know that you wrote this incredible book.
00:01:54.804 --> 00:01:56.054
We're gonna get into the book.
00:01:56.284 --> 00:02:05.343
But, can we hear a little bit about you, your background, what you're all about, your career, and then we'll dive into the book.
00:02:05.850 --> 00:02:14.790
I have been specializing for the past 20 years in helping software leaders deliver better results, hence the name for the book.
00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:19.140
And they do that by upgrading their organization's way of working.
00:02:19.610 --> 00:02:25.140
And they achieve sustainable upgrades to their way of working because we work on the three pillars.
00:02:25.950 --> 00:02:31.531
Product development, thinking in systems, putting people first, and being intentional about mindset.
00:02:32.070 --> 00:02:36.471
Uh, like I said, it's been about 20 years, um, I'm pretty well known in the Agile space.
00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:41.381
I've worked with about 100 clients since starting my independent practice 15 years ago.
00:02:42.346 --> 00:02:46.135
And, um, I work primarily with, you know, U.
00:02:46.135 --> 00:02:50.936
S., Canada, and Europe, but I want to help the entire world.
00:02:51.582 --> 00:02:58.682
So 15 years ago you started, you said like independent practice, but like your own, your own business.
00:02:58.812 --> 00:03:06.383
Yes, which is intentionally unaffiliated, non certifying, giving my clients the best that they deserve.
00:03:07.087 --> 00:03:08.957
And not just somebody else's ideas.
00:03:10.228 --> 00:03:10.807
Very cool.
00:03:10.837 --> 00:03:13.828
And what did you do before that?
00:03:13.828 --> 00:03:18.038
Previous to the 15 years ago, you start your end of independent business.
00:03:18.038 --> 00:03:19.177
What happened before that?
00:03:19.717 --> 00:03:22.298
Pretty common engineering track.
00:03:22.298 --> 00:03:26.217
I started as a developer, senior developer, team lead, R& D manager.
00:03:26.877 --> 00:03:30.258
And it was around that time that I discovered agile methods.
00:03:30.288 --> 00:03:30.707
I was.
00:03:31.733 --> 00:03:34.203
So we're talking about like 2000, 2001.
00:03:34.622 --> 00:03:38.052
I was able to apply them in a couple of companies.
00:03:38.453 --> 00:03:44.842
And it's then when I realized, you know, I want to help more and more companies rather than stay within the confines of one.
00:03:45.842 --> 00:03:46.372
Gotcha.
00:03:46.532 --> 00:03:46.983
Yeah.
00:03:46.992 --> 00:03:52.883
So, you know, early, early two thousands, lots of companies, I think.
00:03:53.117 --> 00:04:03.117
Maybe thinking, well, I mean, that, that may be, may be even the timeframe where it's like, Agile is a little newer, like, how do I do this?
00:04:03.117 --> 00:04:04.377
And then, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:04:04.807 --> 00:04:13.152
And so you kind of said, okay, let me go and make this, you know, a career for myself, but I can, I can help many, many people.
00:04:13.193 --> 00:04:14.423
That's what it sounds like.
00:04:14.423 --> 00:04:14.842
Yes,
00:04:14.862 --> 00:04:18.362
because the realization was that how we work matters.
00:04:18.452 --> 00:04:21.913
And for the longest time, we had just one way of getting work done, right?
00:04:21.913 --> 00:04:25.182
The traditional kind of project management approach.
00:04:25.533 --> 00:04:34.653
And, you know, I sort of happened upon this alternate reality where teams can be collaborative and cross functional and planning frequently.
00:04:34.903 --> 00:04:36.802
And managers don't have to be bossy.
00:04:36.812 --> 00:04:40.622
And I realized, you know, There is a lot here, and I want to help others.
00:04:41.612 --> 00:04:45.552
Yeah, that's a ton, and we're going to have to unpack all of this stuff.
00:04:45.632 --> 00:04:46.192
Exactly.
00:04:46.192 --> 00:04:48.913
As much as we can in this podcast.
00:04:49.552 --> 00:04:51.072
So let's start with this.
00:04:51.072 --> 00:04:54.752
So your book, Deliver Better Results.
00:04:54.882 --> 00:04:57.103
Who is your intended audience?
00:04:57.173 --> 00:04:58.552
Who should read this book?
00:04:59.463 --> 00:05:05.853
It is for leaders in software development who need their teams and orgs to work more effectively and efficiently.
00:05:07.103 --> 00:05:10.942
I've written it so that it's readable and applicable by managers at all levels.
00:05:11.463 --> 00:05:16.252
Okay, so it is written also for the very busy CTOs and VP engineering.
00:05:16.882 --> 00:05:22.262
Although I do expect that we'll have all, all roles and seniorities read it.
00:05:22.483 --> 00:05:23.182
Okay, cool.
00:05:23.572 --> 00:05:32.083
And can you give us a little bit, I guess, an overview of the book or, you know, some of the fallout, like, what am I going to find there in this book?
00:05:32.173 --> 00:05:32.552
Okay.
00:05:32.583 --> 00:05:34.103
So what you're going to find there.
00:05:34.382 --> 00:05:39.572
is a focus on something that actually very, very little literature focuses on.
00:05:39.812 --> 00:05:42.663
And it's what I call the value delivery system.
00:05:42.932 --> 00:05:53.283
It's this part of the company, both contributors and managers, and how they work, all the way from idea to delivery, to make technology that benefits the customers.
00:05:53.642 --> 00:05:57.362
Okay, so it is bigger than a team or a set of teams, and it's smaller than the company.
00:05:57.663 --> 00:05:59.802
And bigger companies have more than one.
00:06:00.093 --> 00:06:20.538
The premise is that if you want such a system to deliver better results, basically make a bigger difference to your customers and your business, you have to improve the system, not Improve locally, like, you know, a team, an agile team, engineering, product, design, test, but rather improve holistically.
00:06:21.067 --> 00:06:27.798
And the book provides something that's been missing in our industry, which is a roadmap to improving and optimizing that system.
00:06:29.098 --> 00:06:30.458
Ah, that sounds cool.
00:06:30.658 --> 00:06:35.298
Yeah, because the industry has offered a bunch of target states, like, you know, Scrum or Safe, right?
00:06:35.588 --> 00:06:39.418
Without actually saying how you get there, and they may not be right for you.
00:06:39.963 --> 00:06:40.213
Right?
00:06:40.452 --> 00:06:45.142
Uh, the industry has offered practices that you should copy because some big player uses them.
00:06:45.673 --> 00:06:47.702
But of course the big players use different things.
00:06:47.802 --> 00:06:48.012
Right?
00:06:48.012 --> 00:06:48.932
So which one should you take?
00:06:49.153 --> 00:06:56.262
It has offered leadership models, it's offered continuous improvement, retrospectives, but not a roadmap to holistic improvement.
00:06:56.572 --> 00:06:59.382
So what I offer there is really two kinds of things.
00:06:59.382 --> 00:07:08.523
One is, um, how do leaders behave and speak and enable and support in order to make improvement possible and sustainable?
00:07:08.523 --> 00:07:08.562
Right?
00:07:08.913 --> 00:07:14.202
And the second thing is a set of 10 strategies, sequential and incremental, to get there.
00:07:15.033 --> 00:07:15.692
That's awesome.
00:07:16.423 --> 00:07:27.023
And in terms of the audience again, is there a certain size company or size product engineering team that would benefit most from the book?
00:07:27.892 --> 00:07:28.343
No.
00:07:28.492 --> 00:07:31.502
It's actually useful for all sizes.
00:07:31.562 --> 00:07:38.077
And the reason is that even the very big, right, they have Several of those systems in there.
00:07:38.307 --> 00:07:43.077
They might be a product line, they might be, uh, some form of vertical, a program.
00:07:43.338 --> 00:07:47.637
Uh, they're organized in such a way that they already manage their scale.
00:07:48.098 --> 00:07:53.528
The thing is, within that, what do you focus your improvements on?
00:07:53.548 --> 00:08:01.338
So, for instance, you can go to the head of engineering and try to improve all of engineering, even though it crosses multiple systems, and sometimes you get some problems with that.
00:08:02.038 --> 00:08:04.437
So the book is, you know, one system at a time.
00:08:04.872 --> 00:08:09.552
For most companies, that's anywhere between 10 people and like a couple of hundred.
00:08:10.403 --> 00:08:16.512
But if you have, I don't know, a thousand people for sure, you're going to have several of those value delivery systems for sure.
00:08:16.726 --> 00:08:17.156
Gotcha.
00:08:17.357 --> 00:08:23.036
So it sounds like when you've done this and what the book prescribes, you also said you've done this at a few companies.
00:08:23.877 --> 00:08:29.326
It seems like you do maybe like small chunks of teams or like system by system.
00:08:29.336 --> 00:08:33.177
Is that the way to, to go through the change management process?
00:08:33.236 --> 00:08:34.277
Yes, it is.
00:08:34.317 --> 00:08:40.576
So the first thing you need to do is actually understand where the boundaries go and one really easy way to think about this.
00:08:40.917 --> 00:08:48.932
Um, and again, for all of our listeners, everybody is working in one specific system, think of your product or solution.
00:08:49.293 --> 00:08:56.263
Uh, as if it were a movie and think to the end where the credit role is and say, well, who contributes to this movie?
00:08:56.472 --> 00:08:57.513
Who makes decisions?
00:08:57.513 --> 00:08:59.932
Who enables this whole list of people?
00:09:00.592 --> 00:09:02.153
That is the scope you're working with.
00:09:02.222 --> 00:09:04.212
So it's both ACs and their managers.
00:09:04.363 --> 00:09:06.932
It's not going to correspond neatly to the org chart.
00:09:07.403 --> 00:09:09.773
Uh, people will report to different managers.
00:09:09.802 --> 00:09:10.523
That's okay.
00:09:10.923 --> 00:09:15.102
But everybody's decisions affect other people's decisions.
00:09:15.327 --> 00:09:19.967
That's a system, and therefore you have to improve things holistically.
00:09:20.057 --> 00:09:24.748
And by the way, chances are, a lot of our audience uses the term value stream.
00:09:25.038 --> 00:09:27.298
That is the closest thing to this.
00:09:28.097 --> 00:09:35.018
My concerns with this term, just based on what I've seen, is that it connotes that work flows only one way.
00:09:35.748 --> 00:09:37.197
Kind of like it did in Waterfall.
00:09:37.758 --> 00:09:45.168
But then, realistically, when you think about, Stuff happening in the system, which is again, all, it all boils down to decision making.
00:09:45.508 --> 00:09:49.357
Decisions have ramifications throughout the system and not just in a linear fashion.
00:09:49.988 --> 00:09:56.587
So there is a stream here in that work keeps coming in and we keep delivering, but what happens inside is more like a network.
00:09:57.918 --> 00:10:00.427
That's really interesting.
00:10:00.467 --> 00:10:02.057
I definitely agree.
00:10:02.337 --> 00:10:05.258
When I think of stream, I think one way, right?
00:10:05.278 --> 00:10:06.038
Value stream.
00:10:06.038 --> 00:10:07.097
I'm creating something.
00:10:07.097 --> 00:10:08.138
I'm just sending it out.
00:10:08.138 --> 00:10:08.648
It's done.
00:10:10.238 --> 00:10:11.927
Much more complicated than that.
00:10:12.278 --> 00:10:14.528
Uh, or some would say even complex, right?
00:10:14.567 --> 00:10:17.697
Because it's really hard to predict all the results of actions.
00:10:17.998 --> 00:10:30.957
And so, the book really, um, encourages, um, The reader is to take a system thinking approach, not in the sense that everybody should be able to draw, you know, all sorts of causal loop diagrams and this and that.
00:10:31.107 --> 00:10:35.118
No, just think, you know, beyond your immediate scope.
00:10:35.764 --> 00:10:40.134
If you decide X or you decide Y, what might be the ramifications?
00:10:40.345 --> 00:10:46.664
How might things in the system, people's behaviors, choices, whatever, compound your change or fight it?
00:10:47.294 --> 00:10:49.014
That's basic system thinking, right?
00:10:49.014 --> 00:10:51.004
So there's reinforcing, right?
00:10:51.264 --> 00:10:52.254
And there's balancing.
00:10:52.455 --> 00:10:58.284
Or in other words, you might get vicious loops, vicious cycles, all sorts of things that can hamper your efforts.
00:10:58.625 --> 00:10:59.504
So just think about that.
00:10:59.534 --> 00:11:00.075
Okay.
00:11:00.774 --> 00:11:11.085
So, before we dive in more, I do want to let the audience know, Gil, you're offering our listeners the book's first chapter.
00:11:11.235 --> 00:11:11.565
Yes.
00:11:11.825 --> 00:11:12.465
For free.
00:11:12.495 --> 00:11:12.654
Yes.
00:11:12.705 --> 00:11:14.284
It's called The Big Picture.
00:11:14.445 --> 00:11:14.705
Right.
00:11:14.705 --> 00:11:14.845
Yes.
00:11:15.455 --> 00:11:17.455
And I just have a little blurb on it.
00:11:17.914 --> 00:11:22.965
It sounds like it's a concise presentation of the main ideas and advice in the book.
00:11:22.965 --> 00:11:31.504
For our listeners, and I'm sure we'll include this in our links to receive that chapter, go to heardonpodcast.
00:11:31.524 --> 00:11:32.154
deliver.
00:11:32.154 --> 00:11:32.205
com.
00:11:33.605 --> 00:11:33.815
BetterResultsBook.
00:11:33.845 --> 00:11:34.195
com.
00:11:34.215 --> 00:11:36.294
Of course, we'll, we'll include that information.
00:11:36.835 --> 00:11:47.605
Um, did what we just cover here outline kind of that first chapter you know, is there anything else to say kind of about that big picture to start there?
00:11:47.615 --> 00:11:47.894
Yes.
00:11:47.904 --> 00:11:56.355
So that chapter actually has more things it's written in such a way that like if you want to hand the book to your boss and you want your boss to read this, the boss says, I don't have time.
00:11:57.235 --> 00:12:00.945
Because just read chapter one, it's 20 minutes, you'll know the main things.
00:12:00.985 --> 00:12:10.034
So for instance, one of those things is that when we want to deliver better results, what we're really targeting is for the system to work better.
00:12:10.904 --> 00:12:15.605
And what we're hoping to increase is the system's fitness for purpose.
00:12:16.414 --> 00:12:19.754
How well does it help the company achieve its mission and objectives?
00:12:19.754 --> 00:12:23.804
Uh, and it turns out that there are five levels that systems go through.
00:12:23.875 --> 00:12:27.294
In real life, this is not some academic theory, this is based on observations.
00:12:28.059 --> 00:12:34.769
And that in order to, you know, choose which strategies to apply, you need to know what your current level of fitness is.
00:12:34.769 --> 00:12:41.539
And that chapter has a quick assessment, intentionally designed to take 10 minutes or less, so busy people do it.
00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:46.700
It doesn't require metrics, or big surveys, or big consulting, or anything like that.
00:12:47.330 --> 00:12:50.519
And it's also not really gameable, usefully.
00:12:51.190 --> 00:12:54.840
And so you assess your current level, and that shows you which strategies to employ.
00:12:55.399 --> 00:12:56.909
And you're off to the races.
00:12:57.299 --> 00:13:03.169
The rest of the book digs into that and gives the specifics and ideas and whatnot without prescribing anything.
00:13:03.726 --> 00:13:15.706
That's really cool, actually, because what was on my mind is, you know, we talked about the system, we talked it's a network, we talked maybe it's a little complex, like, how do I identify, like, my current state?
00:13:15.726 --> 00:13:19.596
Do you have a process that I can go through to even, like, think about that?
00:13:19.606 --> 00:13:26.417
Absolutely, and I I've really taken pains to explain this in the simplest language possible, right?
00:13:26.476 --> 00:13:40.956
Uh, because I'll tell you this, almost every treatment of system thinking that I have, that I have come across, uh, it got really technical and jargon heavy, and, and it felt like a lot, very quickly.
00:13:40.956 --> 00:13:48.797
You know, if our listeners take something away from this is, again, look beyond your immediate scope, right?
00:13:48.866 --> 00:14:06.746
If you just try to improve engineering or just try to improve product, or you let teams do their own, like, retros and continuous improvement and whatnot, you run the risk of things not really sticking, the changes don't stick, or you get unintended consequences, or you just get too much business risk.
00:14:07.871 --> 00:14:16.621
Okay, so, you want to understand the boundaries, you want to have this coalition of leaders who care about the system and want to improve it.
00:14:17.001 --> 00:14:23.361
Okay, so like in a smaller environment it might be VP Engine, VP Product, in others it might be a bunch of directors, it varies.
00:14:24.302 --> 00:14:29.042
And for them to kind of work from a model, and the book presents a model that they can follow.
00:14:29.292 --> 00:14:32.802
As opposed to saying, hey, I heard Scrum's awesome, we should do Scrum.
00:14:32.831 --> 00:14:36.101
Or, in my previous company, we did Safe, we should do Safe.
00:14:36.557 --> 00:14:46.876
No, this is, this does not prescribe anything, but it gives you ideas and explains why things kind of go the way they do and what might improve them.
00:14:48.267 --> 00:14:48.966
That's really cool.
00:14:48.966 --> 00:14:58.147
One of the things that I always think about our listeners, so the people listening to our podcast is, I have my career on my mind.
00:14:59.086 --> 00:15:01.277
You know, how will this help my career?
00:15:01.817 --> 00:15:03.307
Is this for me?
00:15:04.711 --> 00:15:09.902
You know, everyone wants to have a great career journey, you know, and it's wonderful to do that.
00:15:10.802 --> 00:15:15.121
How do you think this book relates to someone that's interested in improving their career?
00:15:16.371 --> 00:15:21.522
Okay, so I treat every reader of the book as what I call their an improvement leader.
00:15:22.081 --> 00:15:46.706
And what this is, it really goes back to one Responsibility that leaders have and by leader I it can be really anyone from team lead or scrum master or coach all the way to C level and you know you're already supposed to manage people, objectives, budgets, planning, execution, whatnot, but something that we don't talk about enough is to improve how work gets done Right?
00:15:46.736 --> 00:15:50.136
So that you achieve more for the company given what you have.
00:15:50.177 --> 00:15:53.667
And sometimes that is in the blind spot due to inertia.
00:15:54.017 --> 00:15:57.567
Sometimes it's just kind of narrowly defined as, you know, look for efficiencies.
00:15:59.216 --> 00:16:02.466
Which is not the best lens in which to view product development anyway.
00:16:03.336 --> 00:16:05.756
Sometimes we look for automation or AI or whatever.
00:16:05.956 --> 00:16:12.447
But this will give you the language and the models and the advice to carry out that responsibility.
00:16:13.951 --> 00:16:21.282
And this will help your career because, uh, your company will get more from you.
00:16:21.611 --> 00:16:29.032
You will be a lot more valuable for your employer, for your client, in the sense that you're able to achieve more.
00:16:29.621 --> 00:16:35.312
Without compromising, you know, the team's health or your future delivery, things like that.
00:16:37.461 --> 00:16:38.662
Yeah, that's really nice.
00:16:38.662 --> 00:16:47.292
And I think also if it sounds like to me, if you're interested in improving your career, you're reading this book, you know, it's taking this holistic look at your system.
00:16:47.292 --> 00:16:54.412
I mean, even going through that assessment can probably give you a little bit of an understanding, I assume.
00:16:54.687 --> 00:17:08.936
What, you know, what's working, maybe what's not working, that, that type of thing, um, which I always find, find is like a great exercise, you know, regardless of any leadership position that you're in, probably going to help you out a little bit.
00:17:09.027 --> 00:17:09.356
Yes.
00:17:09.396 --> 00:17:18.146
And once, one super important thing is that we want to manage the whole, but usually when we work, you know, work never stops, there's always more to do.
00:17:18.156 --> 00:17:20.106
Always more planning, always more this than that.
00:17:20.817 --> 00:17:23.146
It's very easy to lose sight of some things.
00:17:23.146 --> 00:17:24.646
So for instance, we might be.
00:17:25.261 --> 00:17:31.392
Uh, I don't know, leading an engineering team and really taking a lot of interest in our delivery metrics.
00:17:32.612 --> 00:17:35.021
Nothing wrong with that, but it's only one part of the picture.
00:17:35.402 --> 00:17:38.761
What about, are our deliveries making a difference to people?
00:17:39.352 --> 00:17:40.632
Or to what extent do they do that?
00:17:40.682 --> 00:17:43.251
Now, you might say, well, that's not my responsibility, that's product.
00:17:43.352 --> 00:17:47.336
Well, But product, product needs you to succeed and you need product to succeed.
00:17:47.336 --> 00:17:51.676
So maybe you should talk to them and come up with something that matters to both of you.
00:17:52.406 --> 00:17:55.696
And that's really the angle this, this book, this book takes.
00:17:56.419 --> 00:17:57.419
That's really interesting.
00:17:57.419 --> 00:17:58.568
I want to dive in there.
00:17:58.578 --> 00:18:01.439
So we're talking about engineering and product relationship.
00:18:02.334 --> 00:18:06.144
One of the most, I think, also complex relationships.
00:18:06.824 --> 00:18:16.263
What have you seen there, some of the pitfalls, like you've worked with companies, what are the common issues you see with that communication?
00:18:16.463 --> 00:18:19.523
Right, so those relationships are all over the place, right?
00:18:19.874 --> 00:18:25.614
The relationship I see most commonly is the order taking relationship.
00:18:26.324 --> 00:18:28.064
Engineering does what product wants them to do.
00:18:29.253 --> 00:18:33.324
Another relationship I see a lot is kind of being afraid to raise issues.
00:18:34.273 --> 00:18:36.054
Not wanting to be seen as a troublemaker.
00:18:37.473 --> 00:18:40.993
Um, another one is really kind of let specialists do their thing.
00:18:40.993 --> 00:18:45.213
So let products do their product thing and let engineers do their engineering thing.
00:18:45.713 --> 00:18:52.413
And without realizing that nobody's choices are entirely context free.
00:18:53.604 --> 00:18:56.094
Or ramification free, right?
00:18:56.094 --> 00:18:57.273
Again, system.
00:18:57.923 --> 00:19:01.314
So I can tell you where I've been working.
00:19:01.864 --> 00:19:03.844
Results were really, really great.
00:19:04.443 --> 00:19:06.064
There are some things the leaders did.
00:19:06.913 --> 00:19:19.064
One of them is that the engineering leaders and the product leads, they took shared responsibility, not just for what will we deliver, but how will we get better at doing it?
00:19:20.983 --> 00:19:23.153
They spoke to each other frequently.
00:19:23.173 --> 00:19:24.993
They, they had trust.
00:19:25.884 --> 00:19:27.844
They collaborated to, to some extent.
00:19:28.554 --> 00:19:30.144
They made it possible.
00:19:30.584 --> 00:19:35.240
for everyone in their respective groups to, to own things.
00:19:35.471 --> 00:19:37.961
Not just in theory, but actually own things.
00:19:38.300 --> 00:19:43.421
And also made it possible for them to speak with other people in the system who were dependent on that.
00:19:44.570 --> 00:19:44.921
Okay?
00:19:45.161 --> 00:19:53.040
Uh, you know, a counter example to that is from way back before I started, uh, you know, kind of coaching, uh, in Agile, uh, contexts.
00:19:53.566 --> 00:20:00.965
I was, uh, leading a server development team and my manager was awesome in terms of, you know, empowering me to do things.
00:20:00.965 --> 00:20:07.486
I mean, this goes back a long time, but if I needed anything from the front end team, I had to go through the channels.
00:20:07.486 --> 00:20:08.685
I had to go up the hierarchy.
00:20:09.086 --> 00:20:12.486
He would talk to his counterpart and he would talk to his people.
00:20:12.516 --> 00:20:15.336
And like, seriously, these people are sitting across the hallway from me.
00:20:15.895 --> 00:20:16.826
That makes no sense.
00:20:17.286 --> 00:20:19.691
And product, nobody even talked to them.
00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:21.830
They just gave us documents, right?
00:20:22.250 --> 00:20:28.590
Now this is, of course, old school, but I see the same dynamic continue to play out these days, still.
00:20:28.921 --> 00:20:31.441
And part of it is the pressure that everybody's under.
00:20:31.461 --> 00:20:33.931
The race to be dominant has not relented.
00:20:34.280 --> 00:20:35.421
Uh, we get more things.
00:20:35.421 --> 00:20:36.711
Hey, AI now, right?
00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:39.431
But the race just got harder, okay?
00:20:39.461 --> 00:20:48.036
And so, we still need to remember that what our customers care about is That's not how we divide work internally.
00:20:49.046 --> 00:20:50.185
They don't care who does what.
00:20:50.286 --> 00:20:51.806
They don't care who reports to whom.
00:20:52.006 --> 00:20:58.355
They care that the thing works and does the job it's meant to do and that doesn't upset them and all of that stuff.
00:20:58.846 --> 00:21:03.665
And those are not just product management calls and UX calls and engineering calls.
00:21:03.826 --> 00:21:04.885
It's everybody's calls.
00:21:05.576 --> 00:21:08.756
Including the VP who deprioritized something.
00:21:08.838 --> 00:21:09.199
Yeah.
00:21:09.318 --> 00:21:17.429
The way that you describe it, there definitely has me thinking about the system, how every decision and how it impacts.
00:21:17.429 --> 00:21:23.689
And, you know, if the decision making is only one directional product tells engineering everything to do.
00:21:24.209 --> 00:21:29.659
Obviously that's not a great situation to be in because engineering has a ton of context of their own.
00:21:30.308 --> 00:21:33.509
Uh, and that, yeah, I, I can see that, you know.
00:21:34.098 --> 00:21:35.388
I've experienced that before.
00:21:35.388 --> 00:21:36.648
I've seen that happen as well.
00:21:37.148 --> 00:21:44.229
I wanted to ask you a little bit more of like some of these other, I guess, pitfalls or like what not to do.
00:21:44.788 --> 00:21:50.909
What do you see, uh, maybe most often leaders are getting wrong?
00:21:52.778 --> 00:21:55.709
Like in terms of, you know, unlocking organizational potential?
00:21:56.338 --> 00:21:57.388
Yeah, exactly.
00:21:57.388 --> 00:21:57.628
Yeah.
00:21:57.689 --> 00:22:00.419
Okay, so I'm gonna start with my pet peeve.
00:22:01.128 --> 00:22:01.459
Okay.
00:22:01.489 --> 00:22:02.898
Something I've written about plenty.
00:22:03.078 --> 00:22:07.528
I think it's in every one of my four books, and that is people are not resources.
00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:10.419
Repeat after me.
00:22:10.479 --> 00:22:12.189
Do not call people resources.
00:22:12.798 --> 00:22:15.409
Now, I know a lot of people say, what's the big deal?
00:22:15.439 --> 00:22:17.078
I mean, we know they're people, right?
00:22:17.078 --> 00:22:20.469
It's just a word, but it's not a word because it reflects how we think.
00:22:20.679 --> 00:22:23.558
So when we talk about, Hey, I got five devs, you've got three.
00:22:23.558 --> 00:22:24.278
Can we trade?
00:22:24.919 --> 00:22:26.118
We're not thinking of them as people.
00:22:26.118 --> 00:22:27.679
We're thinking of them as units of labor.
00:22:28.959 --> 00:22:38.538
And when you know, by extension the entire company works this way, then you, you're really looking for, you know, labor for results as opposed to.
00:22:39.439 --> 00:22:52.209
Basically our last remaining You know, um, advantage over the AI we're building, which is we can think and reason and generalize and collaborate and come up with new things.
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:56.269
So it's not just about, you know, turning requirements into deliveries.
00:22:56.759 --> 00:22:58.588
There's something greater going on here.
00:22:58.939 --> 00:22:59.628
So that's one thing.
00:23:00.209 --> 00:23:00.929
That's a great one.
00:23:01.078 --> 00:23:01.378
Yes.
00:23:01.378 --> 00:23:10.138
And, and also by the way, as, as long as people are resources, then the whole thing that we say about, you know, collaboration or trust or safety, it, it, it doesn't matter.
00:23:11.028 --> 00:23:11.709
It doesn't matter.
00:23:11.709 --> 00:23:12.878
Yeah, it's dehumanizing.
00:23:12.888 --> 00:23:15.378
Yes, and everybody sees through that.
00:23:15.528 --> 00:23:23.368
And, you know, the whole concept of psychological safety entered the, you know, the discourse 10, 15 years ago.
00:23:23.788 --> 00:23:27.269
It's still not entirely there, but everybody has always felt it.
00:23:27.923 --> 00:23:28.273
Okay.
00:23:28.294 --> 00:23:32.784
And, and nowadays I think things are a little better, but not enough.
00:23:32.913 --> 00:23:34.263
So, okay.
00:23:34.284 --> 00:23:39.903
Another thing is, uh, and that goes back to work I did a few years ago on mindset.
00:23:39.903 --> 00:23:46.344
And I know a lot of people kind of either see it as a vague thing, or they look at it as, you know, it's just psychobabble.
00:23:46.923 --> 00:23:50.334
But the way I explain mindset is it's your choice making.
00:23:50.584 --> 00:23:58.324
So when you do something, there are certain principles and guidelines in the back of your mind that guide how you approach the work.
00:23:58.739 --> 00:23:59.038
Right?
00:23:59.048 --> 00:24:01.858
So for instance, you, let's say you need to produce a spec.
00:24:02.189 --> 00:24:06.558
You can do this collaboratively, or you can do this totally on your own.
00:24:06.739 --> 00:24:08.519
You can be perfectionist about it.
00:24:08.788 --> 00:24:10.558
You can take your time.
00:24:10.699 --> 00:24:14.249
Whatever it is, all those are principles that guide you.
00:24:14.808 --> 00:24:24.229
And what happens in organizations, for the most part, is that they, they don't have an explicit and intentional mindset choice making.
00:24:25.874 --> 00:24:42.473
They do stuff and they have processes and procedures and tactics, but they don't articulate clearly enough how they want people approaching them, so that they act harmoniously and not work at cross purposes, and that they get the results that they want.
00:24:42.953 --> 00:24:48.923
So, for instance, as a senior leader, I can say, Look, I think we will be more successful if we're more collaborative.
00:24:49.828 --> 00:25:00.659
That's a mindset type of setting statement, but I also want to act on it in terms of assigning work and Checking progress and metrics and a whole bunch of stuff.
00:25:01.528 --> 00:25:09.689
Okay, and so if you want to deliver better One very basic thing you need to do is is basically define How do we want to be around here?
00:25:10.608 --> 00:25:14.479
Not at the level of psychobabble, but at the level of what are we optimizing for?
00:25:14.479 --> 00:25:16.778
Are we optimizing for innovation or prediction?
00:25:17.338 --> 00:25:19.638
You got to choose You Right?
00:25:19.769 --> 00:25:26.519
And a lot of companies say, yeah, yeah, well, of course, we need innovation, but then you look at how they actually plan and what they actually do and how they actually talk.
00:25:26.679 --> 00:25:28.108
No, they're optimizing for prediction.
00:25:30.598 --> 00:25:31.618
Yeah, that's interesting.
00:25:32.068 --> 00:25:33.749
Because it's cool to say, yeah, we're innovating.
00:25:33.778 --> 00:25:34.009
Has
00:25:34.009 --> 00:25:34.338
to be.
00:25:34.469 --> 00:25:35.519
We're all, we're all innovating.
00:25:35.759 --> 00:25:36.798
Or we're collaborative.
00:25:36.798 --> 00:25:39.229
If you're, if you're not innovative, you're looked down upon.
00:25:39.239 --> 00:25:39.538
Or,
00:25:39.588 --> 00:25:43.328
you know, you wouldn't say, no, we want silos here.
00:25:43.818 --> 00:25:48.568
We want to utilize people 150%, we want everybody busy.
00:25:48.949 --> 00:25:51.608
No, the cool thing to say is, no, we collaborate.
00:25:51.659 --> 00:25:53.328
We tap into everybody's wisdom.
00:25:53.568 --> 00:25:55.999
But what matters is what you actually do.
00:25:56.219 --> 00:26:03.459
And then from this you can infer or reverse engineer the principles and values that guide all of those behaviors and choices.
00:26:04.189 --> 00:26:07.439
And then you can say, no, you're actually favoring individual work.
00:26:07.489 --> 00:26:09.019
That will get you some things, of course.
00:26:09.659 --> 00:26:13.409
It will not get you the effects of collaboration if that's what you're after.
00:26:14.409 --> 00:26:21.098
I think the, the mindset thing is always, like you brothered up, it's a tough one because it sounds very soft.
00:26:21.229 --> 00:26:21.499
Yeah.
00:26:21.913 --> 00:26:49.483
Or maybe out there, but also what we're saying is it leads to a lot of, depending on what the organization's mindset is, we're making decisions every single, I don't know, hour, minute, second, and you know, you brought, I think this was your second pitfall, like either, maybe it's not having a harmonious mindset or not everyone in the same, uh, direction of mindsets.
00:26:50.544 --> 00:26:52.933
And I do want to ask you about.
00:26:53.463 --> 00:27:03.723
Other pitfalls, but if we just stay on this for one more minute, I always think it's, it's one of the hardest things to get everyone thinking the same way.
00:27:03.763 --> 00:27:08.923
And I'm just wondering if there's any, about anything, software development, anything, really.
00:27:09.844 --> 00:27:20.969
Do you have any tips between a product engineering company organization that helps, With that, once you have the mindset that you want, like, do I actually roll that out?
00:27:20.999 --> 00:27:24.229
Yeah, well, it's actually what I do for a living, right?
00:27:24.259 --> 00:27:26.929
I mean, that's a lot of what I do for clients.
00:27:27.288 --> 00:27:30.719
It's actually not that hard, but it's something that has been in the blind spot.
00:27:32.324 --> 00:27:35.374
It's something that gets lost because we're always busy executing.
00:27:35.663 --> 00:27:47.483
It gets lost because we really have this mentality of copying what other people did that was successful, or copying what we did with our previous employer, and we go for best practices and whatnot.
00:27:47.483 --> 00:27:56.824
And we forget context, and we forget that copying things superficially doesn't tell us how they were executed.
00:27:57.419 --> 00:27:57.769
Okay.
00:27:58.318 --> 00:28:04.669
Uh, so in terms of making this happen, yeah, so you start by making everything explicit.
00:28:04.719 --> 00:28:06.078
Hopefully you involve your team.
00:28:06.078 --> 00:28:07.138
It's not just top down.
00:28:07.489 --> 00:28:15.459
And the second thing is you keep looking at what you say and don't say, what you do and don't do, what you reward and punish.
00:28:15.969 --> 00:28:19.673
Um, What messages you're sending people through all of this?
00:28:19.733 --> 00:28:22.743
And you say, does this support what I want to accomplish?
00:28:22.973 --> 00:28:35.483
For instance, if one of our choices is we want to be collaborative, look at how you engage in team meetings and one on ones, um, how you put plans together and say, well, are we collaborating here?
00:28:35.513 --> 00:28:37.354
Are we collaborating enough for now?
00:28:37.614 --> 00:28:41.364
Or are we really just going, you know, person by person?
00:28:42.403 --> 00:28:44.173
And that will give you the feedback you need.
00:28:44.173 --> 00:28:47.503
And so you can basically start building good habits.
00:28:47.939 --> 00:28:51.048
around acting on what you want there to be.
00:28:52.844 --> 00:28:57.364
But it starts with being explicit and in a lot of companies, they don't have that.
00:28:58.094 --> 00:29:04.243
I'm going to go through this assessment in your book and understand my system and my network a bit.
00:29:04.253 --> 00:29:04.624
Right.
00:29:05.294 --> 00:29:10.144
And then eventually I'm going to need to go take action and make a change, right?
00:29:10.144 --> 00:29:14.683
I'll probably understand my system is not perfect and I want to do something about it.
00:29:15.324 --> 00:29:24.134
Have you found that, Like an engineering leader or product leader or whoever's kind of taking this initiative is, can do this on their own?
00:29:24.203 --> 00:29:29.364
Or does it require bringing in like outside resources to help with this change management?
00:29:29.854 --> 00:29:31.604
Like what, what have you, what have you seen?
00:29:31.604 --> 00:29:31.784
Well,
00:29:31.844 --> 00:29:36.263
look, obviously I am biased because I am the outsider, right?
00:29:36.604 --> 00:29:37.804
I'm, I'm the external one.
00:29:38.153 --> 00:29:44.193
What I find is that yes, many, many leaders can do this on their own.
00:29:44.364 --> 00:29:47.584
However, first they're really busy.
00:29:48.019 --> 00:29:53.769
Second, they're missing a model by which to do this, as opposed to, again, just here's a target state.
00:29:53.828 --> 00:29:54.648
Take Scrum, do it.
00:29:54.788 --> 00:29:55.078
Right?
00:29:56.078 --> 00:30:01.493
And third, and that's really one of the Value propositions of having a coach or a consultant.
00:30:01.844 --> 00:30:08.074
It's pointing out to you all the stuff that you have missed, the stuff that you already know, the stuff that is in you, you know, to do that.
00:30:08.074 --> 00:30:11.134
And you know, it's good, but you have missed it.
00:30:11.144 --> 00:30:19.263
You have let it lapse or something like that so that you accomplish what you need to accomplish, right?
00:30:19.284 --> 00:30:21.804
I have had wonderful clients.
00:30:21.973 --> 00:30:23.153
Some of them are like the best.
00:30:23.403 --> 00:30:29.723
Best enabling leaders I know, and even they have their occasional missteps or they don't quite know what to do.
00:30:30.064 --> 00:30:32.584
And that's where somebody from the outside really helps.
00:30:32.973 --> 00:30:37.413
You can do this with internal staff, like internal coaches and whatnot.
00:30:38.114 --> 00:30:51.723
And what I keep hearing from many companies is, yeah, but, and the but is because I'm internal, they don't, they don't pay enough attention to what I say, or they think I'm biased.
00:30:52.086 --> 00:30:54.717
Yeah, I think that's a good like, uh, thank you for sharing that.
00:30:54.717 --> 00:30:57.027
I think that's like a really honest assessment.
00:30:57.047 --> 00:31:16.451
What I would, I would say what caught me the most is it's hard to make change when you don't, you feel like you don't have time and there's so much going on and you're trying to deliver in product engineering and you have timelines, but then you're also supposed to Get mental space to say, let me look at my system and make this change.
00:31:16.511 --> 00:31:25.612
That's where I think bringing in someone from the outside that can kind of accelerate that thinking for you to say, Hey, I've already done this a bunch of times, let me like jump you.
00:31:25.821 --> 00:31:26.011
Absolutely.
00:31:26.122 --> 00:31:29.592
And that's exactly the value proposition I go in with.
00:31:29.672 --> 00:31:33.961
And that's why I charge what I charge, because I can help you accelerate and reduce the risk.
00:31:34.432 --> 00:31:37.011
And so for instance, you know, there is a case study in the book.
00:31:37.291 --> 00:31:52.981
At the end, in one of the appendices of how I helped a company go from like a really troubled value delivery system, it was a product company, 40, 50 people, all the way to like really good, really, really good in 10 months.
00:31:54.372 --> 00:31:57.061
Typically in the industry, you would need a couple of years easy.
00:31:57.632 --> 00:32:00.382
And it wasn't because of my awesomeness.
00:32:00.412 --> 00:32:03.602
It was particularly because we did things in a certain sequence.
00:32:03.902 --> 00:32:09.842
And when they had questions, they got answers, as opposed to just relying on what they already knew.
00:32:10.071 --> 00:32:13.642
And calling them out on behaviors and issues.
00:32:14.162 --> 00:32:28.926
Um, and the other thing that happened there, which was particularly lovely, is that management was so thirsty for learning, and just, you know, They basically, they, okay, they didn't entirely say it this way, but it was like, tell us what to do and we'll do it.
00:32:29.656 --> 00:32:32.457
And I'm not of the telling kind.
00:32:32.517 --> 00:32:35.906
I don't want to prescribe what's right for you because you're going to have to live with it, not me.
00:32:37.186 --> 00:32:44.596
But you know, through a bunch of, you know, coaching techniques and whatnot, I, we came up with suggestions and they just went ahead and did them.
00:32:45.896 --> 00:32:52.096
And so when you have this type of willingness and when they care enough about the thing, you can move really fast.
00:32:52.257 --> 00:32:55.977
So then what remains is that you actually work from a model that gives you a good roadmap.
00:32:56.586 --> 00:33:02.477
As opposed to kind of meandering, like, you know, let's just do a whole lot of team retrospectives and eventually we'll be great.
00:33:02.547 --> 00:33:03.346
No, you won't.
00:33:04.586 --> 00:33:06.037
It will be locally optimized.
00:33:06.330 --> 00:33:07.090
That's really cool.
00:33:07.090 --> 00:33:22.101
I, well, I like what you said is there's almost like a, a step by step to go through instead of kind of like, okay, everyone do a retro, keep doing these retros, eventually it will work out like for the better, that's the point of a retro, we get better after, after it.
00:33:22.770 --> 00:33:24.361
Yeah, I've seen, I've seen it work.
00:33:24.980 --> 00:33:31.371
Over maybe a long period of time or if you have incredible, incredible leaders at every single team, which is really hard to do.
00:33:31.790 --> 00:33:36.351
It sounds like in the book or with your, your coaching, we get more of this step-by-step.
00:33:36.351 --> 00:33:37.846
Is that the 10 strategies Yes.
00:33:37.846 --> 00:33:39.320
Processes that you 10 strategies.
00:33:39.320 --> 00:33:39.441
Yeah.
00:33:39.711 --> 00:33:41.901
But so, so they are kinda stepwise.
00:33:41.901 --> 00:33:49.280
Yes, but they are high level enough, so, so I don't actually prescribe to you what you should be doing or what that would look like.
00:33:49.550 --> 00:33:53.901
So to just, just to give you an example, if you assess your system as a level two.
00:33:54.451 --> 00:33:55.750
There are two things to do there.
00:33:56.290 --> 00:33:59.980
One of them is you want to plug holes in decision making.
00:34:00.500 --> 00:34:11.210
A system whose fitness is at level 2, uh, you know, some decisions are kind of hazy or easily reversed or things like that, and they just need clarity on who makes them and when.
00:34:11.960 --> 00:34:17.931
The bigger strategy at level 2 is to stabilize the system so, you know, it has demand and it has supply.
00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:20.650
The demand is like your roadmap and the supply is what you deliver.
00:34:21.201 --> 00:34:24.070
And at level two, the relationship is kind of erratic.
00:34:24.090 --> 00:34:27.050
You can't really tell when stuff would come out and in what shape.
00:34:27.871 --> 00:34:29.920
Uh, like with reasonable confidence.
00:34:29.920 --> 00:34:33.010
And, and the strategy is to stabilize it, right?
00:34:33.010 --> 00:34:34.860
To get to a good balance between the two.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:40.331
And I give lots of techniques and tips that have worked from Kanban, from Agile, from whatnot.
00:34:40.831 --> 00:34:42.990
Um, but it's up to you to choose which ones.
00:34:43.501 --> 00:34:49.880
And you may find that three of them are enough for you and that two of them, they will just never fly and that's okay.
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:49.940
Okay.
00:34:53.221 --> 00:34:56.440
Sounds like those, there will never be a one size fits all.
00:34:56.451 --> 00:34:57.351
How can there be?
00:34:57.581 --> 00:34:57.891
Right?
00:34:57.960 --> 00:34:59.851
Our business context is different.
00:34:59.871 --> 00:35:01.021
Our people are different.
00:35:01.291 --> 00:35:02.581
The competition is different.
00:35:02.590 --> 00:35:03.751
Our legacy is different.
00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:08.311
Everything is different, which is why we're not also resources, right?
00:35:08.547 --> 00:35:09.317
Absolutely.
00:35:09.507 --> 00:35:14.126
Let's go back and I think we'll have time for one more.
00:35:14.128 --> 00:35:14.956
I like the pitfalls.
00:35:16.206 --> 00:35:18.097
Do you have another pitfall?
00:35:18.264 --> 00:35:18.733
Talk to us about that.
00:35:18.733 --> 00:35:19.693
Okay, this is a juicy one.
00:35:20.804 --> 00:35:24.384
Let's say you have some performance issues in your team.
00:35:25.514 --> 00:35:29.103
Let's say you have some behavior issues in your team, or maybe some faults.
00:35:29.224 --> 00:35:30.833
Somebody brought out down production.
00:35:31.753 --> 00:35:32.664
How do you think of that?
00:35:33.534 --> 00:35:38.773
The pitfall is, and this is on us as humans, not just as managers or leads.
00:35:39.074 --> 00:35:44.903
The pitfall is we look for somebody to kind of pin the cause on.
00:35:45.204 --> 00:35:50.994
I mean, sometimes we go as far as outright blaming, but even if we don't, we, we want to know like, who did this?
00:35:51.768 --> 00:35:52.128
Right?
00:35:53.228 --> 00:35:54.289
And why did they do it?
00:35:54.449 --> 00:35:55.168
And all of that.
00:35:55.219 --> 00:36:06.248
And system thinking will tell you that well north of 95, of 90 percent of what happens in your system is because of the system, not the individuals.
00:36:07.688 --> 00:36:13.048
So let's say you have somebody on your team who's just being nasty to their colleagues, let's say.
00:36:13.548 --> 00:36:13.969
Okay?
00:36:14.478 --> 00:36:19.068
It's so easy to just say, well that's their personality, they're a difficult person, whatever.
00:36:19.429 --> 00:36:22.574
Or maybe, um, I don't know.
00:36:22.693 --> 00:36:23.844
They didn't get the training.
00:36:24.534 --> 00:36:24.873
Okay.
00:36:26.313 --> 00:36:40.333
If we take a system thinking approach, we might say, well, what is it about the system they, systems that they inhabit, which are their team, their functional group, um, their family, their community, their neighborhood, their city.
00:36:40.523 --> 00:36:43.793
Those are things we don't know much about, but they are there.
00:36:44.563 --> 00:36:46.364
How are they affecting their behavior?
00:36:49.148 --> 00:36:58.688
So without even getting, you know, to, you know, psychological stuff, like, you know, what did, what happened to them as kids and how, you know, what were their parents like?
00:36:58.739 --> 00:36:59.768
We're not even going there.
00:36:59.998 --> 00:37:04.858
But what we're saying is how is that person responding to something that's happening around them?
00:37:06.139 --> 00:37:24.143
And maybe what's happening around them is that they get tasks that they find boring and basic, whereas somebody else, um, gets the really juicy and interesting ones, and that someone else is gonna get the bonus, the promotion, the treatment, the whatnot.
00:37:25.143 --> 00:37:33.733
And so the person who's being nasty is trying to kind of look, I don't know, more important, or more impactful.
00:37:35.103 --> 00:37:38.844
Because they can't do this through the tasks they're working on.
00:37:39.884 --> 00:37:41.324
So it's not a matter of personality.
00:37:41.324 --> 00:37:46.264
If, if they ended up in the right position, maybe instead of being a developer, they need to be a test engineer.
00:37:46.313 --> 00:37:46.833
I don't know.
00:37:48.643 --> 00:37:51.353
There are contexts in which they would shine.
00:37:52.708 --> 00:37:54.309
So it's not like they're inherently broken.
00:37:54.739 --> 00:38:02.498
So, so the, the takeaway here is attribute to the system before attributing to the individual.
00:38:03.648 --> 00:38:04.148
Got it.
00:38:04.809 --> 00:38:11.048
Now it makes perfect sense why we need to start with the assessment of the system and chapter one.
00:38:11.059 --> 00:38:12.309
No, that's actually really cool.
00:38:12.318 --> 00:38:14.798
Cause that is like a, I think a pretty juicy.
00:38:15.693 --> 00:38:19.204
It's easy to say, well, that person, that's a, they're just a jerk.
00:38:19.623 --> 00:38:24.384
No, it's, you know, they're just, uh, they've never been easy to get along with.
00:38:24.384 --> 00:38:24.534
Yeah.
00:38:24.534 --> 00:38:34.043
Usually I think like human behavior, you have all these environmental factors coming on to you and it creates like an output, whatever it is, whatever that good, it could be a good output.
00:38:34.043 --> 00:38:34.903
It could be a bad output.
00:38:34.903 --> 00:38:35.614
And it's not even
00:38:35.614 --> 00:38:38.594
just the people, even stuff that happens within your process.
00:38:38.594 --> 00:38:40.664
Let's say a lot of defects escape to production.
00:38:40.673 --> 00:38:49.943
You might say, well, Um, Let's look at how many defects are by developer A, and how many defects are by developer B, and maybe we have a weak link there.
00:38:50.153 --> 00:38:51.068
Now, that might be true.
00:38:51.509 --> 00:38:56.469
Not arguing that, but it could also be that defects escape to production because of other things that you do.
00:38:56.918 --> 00:38:59.099
It could also be the technology you're using.
00:38:59.119 --> 00:39:00.869
It could be the tests that you write.
00:39:00.878 --> 00:39:05.619
It could be the go, go, go pressure, so we never actually finish things properly.
00:39:05.998 --> 00:39:13.699
So we might have really good developers who would otherwise do really good work, but in a hamstrung.
00:39:14.829 --> 00:39:16.208
Yeah, totally makes sense.
00:39:16.838 --> 00:39:18.929
All right, Gil I think we have time.
00:39:19.134 --> 00:39:24.614
If you have another one for one more pitfall, and then we're going to, you know, start wrapping up.
00:39:24.784 --> 00:39:25.063
Okay.
00:39:25.063 --> 00:39:29.434
So I would also say it's really the whole thing about managing in silos, right?
00:39:29.434 --> 00:39:31.123
So I'm an engineering manager.
00:39:31.123 --> 00:39:32.724
I manage in my engineering team.
00:39:32.724 --> 00:39:33.793
I'm an engineering director.
00:39:33.793 --> 00:39:37.454
I do the same for my set of teams and same goes for product and whatnot.
00:39:37.833 --> 00:39:40.634
And yes, that's kind of how the organization is built up.
00:39:40.704 --> 00:39:41.324
And I get that.
00:39:42.074 --> 00:39:47.574
But what happens is that people end up, they kind of default to optimizing for themselves.
00:39:48.023 --> 00:39:48.344
Right?
00:39:48.594 --> 00:39:56.474
Uh, we have seen the same behavior with Scrum Masters and Agile coaches who, who basically say, you know, the organization's not going to go Agile, but I'm going to do the best for my team.
00:39:56.534 --> 00:39:59.164
I'm going to remove all the impediments so my team can be great.
00:39:59.454 --> 00:40:01.844
And by implication, I will have done my work.
00:40:02.514 --> 00:40:07.364
And this is well intended, but it's not helping us holistically.
00:40:09.304 --> 00:40:09.463
Right?
00:40:09.494 --> 00:40:27.164
Because you may be optimizing for your one team by, let's say, forging great relationships with people outside the team who you need sometimes, like your staff engineer, or your, I don't know, somebody who kind of helps you kind of move things on occasion.
00:40:27.164 --> 00:40:31.393
And instead of, you know, getting in line and asking for their time, you kind of get them on the side.
00:40:32.184 --> 00:40:34.824
But then you're hampering the progress of other teams.
00:40:34.824 --> 00:40:38.733
And it could be that in the aggregate, You're setting your system back.
00:40:39.534 --> 00:40:42.233
You mean well, but it's the outcome.
00:40:43.054 --> 00:41:02.797
And so even though people will continue to have local responsibilities and accountabilities, you want to be really mindful of are you managing, measuring, incentivizing in the local scope, rather than the system scope.
00:41:04.036 --> 00:41:04.447
Got it.
00:41:04.516 --> 00:41:05.137
That's a good one.
00:41:05.594 --> 00:41:31.063
The last question that I want to ask you, so we talked, you know, we talked about your book, we talked about, hey, you can get this first chapter for free, we talked about a bunch of pitfalls, now let's say that I've done my system analysis, I decided that I need to make a change, I brought in Gil, Gil came in, 10 months later, things are, have improved.
00:41:31.643 --> 00:41:37.943
How do you think about sustainability the next 10 months after that, or the next year after that?
00:41:37.954 --> 00:41:39.704
How do I not like fall backwards?
00:41:39.724 --> 00:41:50.094
So if I have done my job properly, and I like to think I do, then what happens is that your understanding of what to pay attention to is better.
00:41:50.829 --> 00:41:51.119
Right?
00:41:51.148 --> 00:41:53.219
You pay more attention to the system.
00:41:53.228 --> 00:41:58.039
You, you do the assessment frequently, because at that point it really takes you five minutes every time you do it.
00:41:58.759 --> 00:42:00.679
So you can see if there's any backsliding.
00:42:01.369 --> 00:42:11.668
You have your ears and eyes open, so that you know, um, you can watch for signs, right, and signals.
00:42:12.248 --> 00:42:19.039
You have also, because you've gotten your system to like a really good level of fitness, you have also distributed control.
00:42:19.398 --> 00:42:20.789
We call this empowerment, right?
00:42:20.798 --> 00:42:25.469
But you've basically enabled more people to take responsibility and behave and act.
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:30.518
And together with them, you're all kind of looking at this thing.
00:42:31.478 --> 00:42:31.889
Okay.
00:42:33.358 --> 00:42:37.289
You know, an analogy I can think for this is family, right?
00:42:38.128 --> 00:42:46.349
It's not the same when you've had your firstborn and the kid's a month old, or you're, you have several kids and there are now in their teens, right?
00:42:46.409 --> 00:42:48.239
You're in a different spot as a parent.
00:42:48.829 --> 00:42:52.719
At this point, you kind of know about the warning signs and you know what to look for.
00:42:53.648 --> 00:42:55.018
That's really the big deal.
00:42:55.528 --> 00:43:03.028
Okay, I definitely don't want to create dependence on me as a, you know, as a consultant coach, but not, um, that would not be ethical.
00:43:06.858 --> 00:43:07.548
Awesome, Gail.
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:15.978
So, is there anything else that we should know about, anything that you want to say about your, your book or any, you know, final advice before we sign off here?
00:43:15.978 --> 00:43:16.298
Okay, so
00:43:16.298 --> 00:43:20.849
you asked me about, you know, basically how I, I help companies.
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:35.224
Because I come from the Agile space, there is something that has become A bit of an expectation in this field, and that is that if you need help improving things, you're going to get somebody to kind of live with your team, like embedded coaching or something like that.
00:43:35.563 --> 00:43:43.193
That if you need help, somebody comes in and spends months with your team, several days a week, maybe occasionally talks to senior management.
00:43:43.454 --> 00:43:45.003
That's an expensive proposition.
00:43:46.023 --> 00:43:46.384
Okay.
00:43:46.824 --> 00:43:48.673
Uh, I, I have a different model.
00:43:49.244 --> 00:44:00.954
My model is you spread your budget over a long, much longer period of time so you can have access to me for months, but you only see me, you know, once every two weeks, once a month.
00:44:01.668 --> 00:44:05.849
You know, it kind of, uh, gets, uh, more spread out as things get better.
00:44:07.128 --> 00:44:11.398
And that is, it's a different model than what's normal in, in the space.
00:44:11.929 --> 00:44:25.039
And I would especially love it in our day and age when, you know, budgets are scarce, that people realize that it's not like either they pay six figures for something, or they do nothing at all and they stay with their inertia.
00:44:25.679 --> 00:44:26.909
No, there is a middle ground.
00:44:27.298 --> 00:44:31.259
And the middle ground is super affordable and it makes a big difference.
00:44:32.918 --> 00:44:35.409
It's like I have a leadership advisory service, stuff like that.
00:44:36.018 --> 00:44:36.938
That's really cool.
00:44:37.128 --> 00:44:40.228
And thanks for, you know, sharing that model.
00:44:40.228 --> 00:44:45.719
It's definitely a different style model than I'm used to and it's a, it's a little bit, uh, refreshing.
00:44:45.719 --> 00:44:46.844
Yeah, you know, you
00:44:46.844 --> 00:44:50.608
just, I know I mentioned the example with that company went from, you know, troubled to really great.
00:44:51.009 --> 00:44:57.768
I spent a total of 30 half days with them, with the entire company over practically a year.
00:44:57.768 --> 00:44:57.784
Yeah.
00:44:58.543 --> 00:45:03.943
30 half days because we work online, you know, after doing some initial training and an initial assessment.
00:45:03.974 --> 00:45:07.373
And that was it because I work mostly with leaders.
00:45:07.373 --> 00:45:10.514
And so, you know, things don't move on a daily basis at that level.
00:45:11.253 --> 00:45:33.014
Yeah, I love that you have the, uh, cost in mind, the long term efficiency in mind, and Gil, you know, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing all of, you know, some of the, I know we only got to like some of it, but some of the knowledge that you have, and I highly recommend that everyone goes and checks out Gil's, book.
00:45:33.313 --> 00:45:35.293
Uh, where can listeners find your book?
00:45:35.293 --> 00:45:35.304
Uh,
00:45:35.304 --> 00:45:39.304
so it's sold pretty much everywhere, both electronically and in print.
00:45:39.353 --> 00:45:43.333
For people who are not keen on paying Amazon, there's Barnes Noble.
00:45:43.733 --> 00:45:45.844
Uh, the digital formats are everywhere.
00:45:46.313 --> 00:45:48.284
Uh, you can get them on my website,
00:45:48.333 --> 00:45:48.873
Excellent.
00:45:49.244 --> 00:46:00.784
And listeners, if you haven't yet, consider checking out our Dev Interrupted YouTube channel to watch this episode and tons of behind the scenes content.
00:46:01.134 --> 00:46:04.923
Thank you everyone for listening and Gil again, thanks for coming on the pod.
00:46:04.934 --> 00:46:05.684
Thank you so much.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.900
If our listeners take something away from this is, again, look beyond your immediate scope, right?
00:00:04.969 --> 00:00:22.850
If you just try to improve engineering or just try to improve product, or you let teams do their own, like, retros and continuous improvement and whatnot, you run the risk of things not really sticking, the changes don't stick, or you get unintended consequences, or you just get too much business risk.
00:00:23.454 --> 00:00:30.565
You want to understand the boundaries, you want to have this coalition of leaders who care about the system and want to improve it.
00:00:30.945 --> 00:00:41.145
Gardener just released their market guide, showing that software engineering intelligence platforms, help engineering leaders significantly improve both team productivity and value delivery.
00:00:41.924 --> 00:00:47.865
Through Gardner's in-depth analysis on the critical features of sci platforms and how they can be used to drive engineering excellence.
00:00:48.145 --> 00:00:50.454
Linear B was named as a representative vendor.
00:00:50.875 --> 00:00:55.240
And therefore we're giving away a complimentary copy of Gartner's sci market guide.
00:00:55.436 --> 00:01:04.167
Head to the link in the show notes to download your complimentary copy and learn how you can unlock the transformative potential of software engineering intelligence for your team.
00:01:04.862 --> 00:01:06.203
Hey, what's up everyone?
00:01:06.212 --> 00:01:08.052
Welcome to Dev Interrupted.
00:01:08.313 --> 00:01:13.962
I'm your host, Dan Lines, LinearB COO and co founder.
00:01:14.022 --> 00:01:21.703
And today I'm joined by Gil Broza, author of the book, Deliver Better Results.
00:01:21.992 --> 00:01:23.733
Welcome to the show, Gil.
00:01:24.192 --> 00:01:25.772
Thank you so much for having me here.
00:01:26.138 --> 00:01:27.448
It's really cool having you on.
00:01:27.519 --> 00:01:31.634
And we were just chatting be Before the show you're in Toronto.
00:01:31.674 --> 00:01:33.194
I'm in Rochester, New York.
00:01:33.334 --> 00:01:35.233
We're actually pretty close to each other.
00:01:35.804 --> 00:01:41.343
Not too far away, which is awesome Usually I can't say that for people that are coming on the show.
00:01:41.343 --> 00:01:48.713
But I have seen actually a lot of good stuff happening in Toronto some startup companies that type of thing, which is really cool.
00:01:48.993 --> 00:01:50.864
So awesome to have you on.
00:01:51.274 --> 00:01:52.884
Could we start out?
00:01:52.884 --> 00:01:54.774
We know that you wrote this incredible book.
00:01:54.804 --> 00:01:56.054
We're gonna get into the book.
00:01:56.284 --> 00:02:05.343
But, can we hear a little bit about you, your background, what you're all about, your career, and then we'll dive into the book.
00:02:05.850 --> 00:02:14.790
I have been specializing for the past 20 years in helping software leaders deliver better results, hence the name for the book.
00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:19.140
And they do that by upgrading their organization's way of working.
00:02:19.610 --> 00:02:25.140
And they achieve sustainable upgrades to their way of working because we work on the three pillars.
00:02:25.950 --> 00:02:31.531
Product development, thinking in systems, putting people first, and being intentional about mindset.
00:02:32.070 --> 00:02:36.471
Uh, like I said, it's been about 20 years, um, I'm pretty well known in the Agile space.
00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:41.381
I've worked with about 100 clients since starting my independent practice 15 years ago.
00:02:42.346 --> 00:02:46.135
And, um, I work primarily with, you know, U.
00:02:46.135 --> 00:02:50.936
S., Canada, and Europe, but I want to help the entire world.
00:02:51.582 --> 00:02:58.682
So 15 years ago you started, you said like independent practice, but like your own, your own business.
00:02:58.812 --> 00:03:06.383
Yes, which is intentionally unaffiliated, non certifying, giving my clients the best that they deserve.
00:03:07.087 --> 00:03:08.957
And not just somebody else's ideas.
00:03:10.228 --> 00:03:10.807
Very cool.
00:03:10.837 --> 00:03:13.828
And what did you do before that?
00:03:13.828 --> 00:03:18.038
Previous to the 15 years ago, you start your end of independent business.
00:03:18.038 --> 00:03:19.177
What happened before that?
00:03:19.717 --> 00:03:22.298
Pretty common engineering track.
00:03:22.298 --> 00:03:26.217
I started as a developer, senior developer, team lead, R& D manager.
00:03:26.877 --> 00:03:30.258
And it was around that time that I discovered agile methods.
00:03:30.288 --> 00:03:30.707
I was.
00:03:31.733 --> 00:03:34.203
So we're talking about like 2000, 2001.
00:03:34.622 --> 00:03:38.052
I was able to apply them in a couple of companies.
00:03:38.453 --> 00:03:44.842
And it's then when I realized, you know, I want to help more and more companies rather than stay within the confines of one.
00:03:45.842 --> 00:03:46.372
Gotcha.
00:03:46.532 --> 00:03:46.983
Yeah.
00:03:46.992 --> 00:03:52.883
So, you know, early, early two thousands, lots of companies, I think.
00:03:53.117 --> 00:04:03.117
Maybe thinking, well, I mean, that, that may be, may be even the timeframe where it's like, Agile is a little newer, like, how do I do this?
00:04:03.117 --> 00:04:04.377
And then, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:04:04.807 --> 00:04:13.152
And so you kind of said, okay, let me go and make this, you know, a career for myself, but I can, I can help many, many people.
00:04:13.193 --> 00:04:14.423
That's what it sounds like.
00:04:14.423 --> 00:04:14.842
Yes,
00:04:14.862 --> 00:04:18.362
because the realization was that how we work matters.
00:04:18.452 --> 00:04:21.913
And for the longest time, we had just one way of getting work done, right?
00:04:21.913 --> 00:04:25.182
The traditional kind of project management approach.
00:04:25.533 --> 00:04:34.653
And, you know, I sort of happened upon this alternate reality where teams can be collaborative and cross functional and planning frequently.
00:04:34.903 --> 00:04:36.802
And managers don't have to be bossy.
00:04:36.812 --> 00:04:40.622
And I realized, you know, There is a lot here, and I want to help others.
00:04:41.612 --> 00:04:45.552
Yeah, that's a ton, and we're going to have to unpack all of this stuff.
00:04:45.632 --> 00:04:46.192
Exactly.
00:04:46.192 --> 00:04:48.913
As much as we can in this podcast.
00:04:49.552 --> 00:04:51.072
So let's start with this.
00:04:51.072 --> 00:04:54.752
So your book, Deliver Better Results.
00:04:54.882 --> 00:04:57.103
Who is your intended audience?
00:04:57.173 --> 00:04:58.552
Who should read this book?
00:04:59.463 --> 00:05:05.853
It is for leaders in software development who need their teams and orgs to work more effectively and efficiently.
00:05:07.103 --> 00:05:10.942
I've written it so that it's readable and applicable by managers at all levels.
00:05:11.463 --> 00:05:16.252
Okay, so it is written also for the very busy CTOs and VP engineering.
00:05:16.882 --> 00:05:22.262
Although I do expect that we'll have all, all roles and seniorities read it.
00:05:22.483 --> 00:05:23.182
Okay, cool.
00:05:23.572 --> 00:05:32.083
And can you give us a little bit, I guess, an overview of the book or, you know, some of the fallout, like, what am I going to find there in this book?
00:05:32.173 --> 00:05:32.552
Okay.
00:05:32.583 --> 00:05:34.103
So what you're going to find there.
00:05:34.382 --> 00:05:39.572
is a focus on something that actually very, very little literature focuses on.
00:05:39.812 --> 00:05:42.663
And it's what I call the value delivery system.
00:05:42.932 --> 00:05:53.283
It's this part of the company, both contributors and managers, and how they work, all the way from idea to delivery, to make technology that benefits the customers.
00:05:53.642 --> 00:05:57.362
Okay, so it is bigger than a team or a set of teams, and it's smaller than the company.
00:05:57.663 --> 00:05:59.802
And bigger companies have more than one.
00:06:00.093 --> 00:06:20.538
The premise is that if you want such a system to deliver better results, basically make a bigger difference to your customers and your business, you have to improve the system, not Improve locally, like, you know, a team, an agile team, engineering, product, design, test, but rather improve holistically.
00:06:21.067 --> 00:06:27.798
And the book provides something that's been missing in our industry, which is a roadmap to improving and optimizing that system.
00:06:29.098 --> 00:06:30.458
Ah, that sounds cool.
00:06:30.658 --> 00:06:35.298
Yeah, because the industry has offered a bunch of target states, like, you know, Scrum or Safe, right?
00:06:35.588 --> 00:06:39.418
Without actually saying how you get there, and they may not be right for you.
00:06:39.963 --> 00:06:40.213
Right?
00:06:40.452 --> 00:06:45.142
Uh, the industry has offered practices that you should copy because some big player uses them.
00:06:45.673 --> 00:06:47.702
But of course the big players use different things.
00:06:47.802 --> 00:06:48.012
Right?
00:06:48.012 --> 00:06:48.932
So which one should you take?
00:06:49.153 --> 00:06:56.262
It has offered leadership models, it's offered continuous improvement, retrospectives, but not a roadmap to holistic improvement.
00:06:56.572 --> 00:06:59.382
So what I offer there is really two kinds of things.
00:06:59.382 --> 00:07:08.523
One is, um, how do leaders behave and speak and enable and support in order to make improvement possible and sustainable?
00:07:08.523 --> 00:07:08.562
Right?
00:07:08.913 --> 00:07:14.202
And the second thing is a set of 10 strategies, sequential and incremental, to get there.
00:07:15.033 --> 00:07:15.692
That's awesome.
00:07:16.423 --> 00:07:27.023
And in terms of the audience again, is there a certain size company or size product engineering team that would benefit most from the book?
00:07:27.892 --> 00:07:28.343
No.
00:07:28.492 --> 00:07:31.502
It's actually useful for all sizes.
00:07:31.562 --> 00:07:38.077
And the reason is that even the very big, right, they have Several of those systems in there.
00:07:38.307 --> 00:07:43.077
They might be a product line, they might be, uh, some form of vertical, a program.
00:07:43.338 --> 00:07:47.637
Uh, they're organized in such a way that they already manage their scale.
00:07:48.098 --> 00:07:53.528
The thing is, within that, what do you focus your improvements on?
00:07:53.548 --> 00:08:01.338
So, for instance, you can go to the head of engineering and try to improve all of engineering, even though it crosses multiple systems, and sometimes you get some problems with that.
00:08:02.038 --> 00:08:04.437
So the book is, you know, one system at a time.
00:08:04.872 --> 00:08:09.552
For most companies, that's anywhere between 10 people and like a couple of hundred.
00:08:10.403 --> 00:08:16.512
But if you have, I don't know, a thousand people for sure, you're going to have several of those value delivery systems for sure.
00:08:16.726 --> 00:08:17.156
Gotcha.
00:08:17.357 --> 00:08:23.036
So it sounds like when you've done this and what the book prescribes, you also said you've done this at a few companies.
00:08:23.877 --> 00:08:29.326
It seems like you do maybe like small chunks of teams or like system by system.
00:08:29.336 --> 00:08:33.177
Is that the way to, to go through the change management process?
00:08:33.236 --> 00:08:34.277
Yes, it is.
00:08:34.317 --> 00:08:40.576
So the first thing you need to do is actually understand where the boundaries go and one really easy way to think about this.
00:08:40.917 --> 00:08:48.932
Um, and again, for all of our listeners, everybody is working in one specific system, think of your product or solution.
00:08:49.293 --> 00:08:56.263
Uh, as if it were a movie and think to the end where the credit role is and say, well, who contributes to this movie?
00:08:56.472 --> 00:08:57.513
Who makes decisions?
00:08:57.513 --> 00:08:59.932
Who enables this whole list of people?
00:09:00.592 --> 00:09:02.153
That is the scope you're working with.
00:09:02.222 --> 00:09:04.212
So it's both ACs and their managers.
00:09:04.363 --> 00:09:06.932
It's not going to correspond neatly to the org chart.
00:09:07.403 --> 00:09:09.773
Uh, people will report to different managers.
00:09:09.802 --> 00:09:10.523
That's okay.
00:09:10.923 --> 00:09:15.102
But everybody's decisions affect other people's decisions.
00:09:15.327 --> 00:09:19.967
That's a system, and therefore you have to improve things holistically.
00:09:20.057 --> 00:09:24.748
And by the way, chances are, a lot of our audience uses the term value stream.
00:09:25.038 --> 00:09:27.298
That is the closest thing to this.
00:09:28.097 --> 00:09:35.018
My concerns with this term, just based on what I've seen, is that it connotes that work flows only one way.
00:09:35.748 --> 00:09:37.197
Kind of like it did in Waterfall.
00:09:37.758 --> 00:09:45.168
But then, realistically, when you think about, Stuff happening in the system, which is again, all, it all boils down to decision making.
00:09:45.508 --> 00:09:49.357
Decisions have ramifications throughout the system and not just in a linear fashion.
00:09:49.988 --> 00:09:56.587
So there is a stream here in that work keeps coming in and we keep delivering, but what happens inside is more like a network.
00:09:57.918 --> 00:10:00.427
That's really interesting.
00:10:00.467 --> 00:10:02.057
I definitely agree.
00:10:02.337 --> 00:10:05.258
When I think of stream, I think one way, right?
00:10:05.278 --> 00:10:06.038
Value stream.
00:10:06.038 --> 00:10:07.097
I'm creating something.
00:10:07.097 --> 00:10:08.138
I'm just sending it out.
00:10:08.138 --> 00:10:08.648
It's done.
00:10:10.238 --> 00:10:11.927
Much more complicated than that.
00:10:12.278 --> 00:10:14.528
Uh, or some would say even complex, right?
00:10:14.567 --> 00:10:17.697
Because it's really hard to predict all the results of actions.
00:10:17.998 --> 00:10:30.957
And so, the book really, um, encourages, um, The reader is to take a system thinking approach, not in the sense that everybody should be able to draw, you know, all sorts of causal loop diagrams and this and that.
00:10:31.107 --> 00:10:35.118
No, just think, you know, beyond your immediate scope.
00:10:35.764 --> 00:10:40.134
If you decide X or you decide Y, what might be the ramifications?
00:10:40.345 --> 00:10:46.664
How might things in the system, people's behaviors, choices, whatever, compound your change or fight it?
00:10:47.294 --> 00:10:49.014
That's basic system thinking, right?
00:10:49.014 --> 00:10:51.004
So there's reinforcing, right?
00:10:51.264 --> 00:10:52.254
And there's balancing.
00:10:52.455 --> 00:10:58.284
Or in other words, you might get vicious loops, vicious cycles, all sorts of things that can hamper your efforts.
00:10:58.625 --> 00:10:59.504
So just think about that.
00:10:59.534 --> 00:11:00.075
Okay.
00:11:00.774 --> 00:11:11.085
So, before we dive in more, I do want to let the audience know, Gil, you're offering our listeners the book's first chapter.
00:11:11.235 --> 00:11:11.565
Yes.
00:11:11.825 --> 00:11:12.465
For free.
00:11:12.495 --> 00:11:12.654
Yes.
00:11:12.705 --> 00:11:14.284
It's called The Big Picture.
00:11:14.445 --> 00:11:14.705
Right.
00:11:14.705 --> 00:11:14.845
Yes.
00:11:15.455 --> 00:11:17.455
And I just have a little blurb on it.
00:11:17.914 --> 00:11:22.965
It sounds like it's a concise presentation of the main ideas and advice in the book.
00:11:22.965 --> 00:11:31.504
For our listeners, and I'm sure we'll include this in our links to receive that chapter, go to heardonpodcast.
00:11:31.524 --> 00:11:32.154
deliver.
00:11:32.154 --> 00:11:32.205
com.
00:11:33.605 --> 00:11:33.815
BetterResultsBook.
00:11:33.845 --> 00:11:34.195
com.
00:11:34.215 --> 00:11:36.294
Of course, we'll, we'll include that information.
00:11:36.835 --> 00:11:47.605
Um, did what we just cover here outline kind of that first chapter you know, is there anything else to say kind of about that big picture to start there?
00:11:47.615 --> 00:11:47.894
Yes.
00:11:47.904 --> 00:11:56.355
So that chapter actually has more things it's written in such a way that like if you want to hand the book to your boss and you want your boss to read this, the boss says, I don't have time.
00:11:57.235 --> 00:12:00.945
Because just read chapter one, it's 20 minutes, you'll know the main things.
00:12:00.985 --> 00:12:10.034
So for instance, one of those things is that when we want to deliver better results, what we're really targeting is for the system to work better.
00:12:10.904 --> 00:12:15.605
And what we're hoping to increase is the system's fitness for purpose.
00:12:16.414 --> 00:12:19.754
How well does it help the company achieve its mission and objectives?
00:12:19.754 --> 00:12:23.804
Uh, and it turns out that there are five levels that systems go through.
00:12:23.875 --> 00:12:27.294
In real life, this is not some academic theory, this is based on observations.
00:12:28.059 --> 00:12:34.769
And that in order to, you know, choose which strategies to apply, you need to know what your current level of fitness is.
00:12:34.769 --> 00:12:41.539
And that chapter has a quick assessment, intentionally designed to take 10 minutes or less, so busy people do it.
00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:46.700
It doesn't require metrics, or big surveys, or big consulting, or anything like that.
00:12:47.330 --> 00:12:50.519
And it's also not really gameable, usefully.
00:12:51.190 --> 00:12:54.840
And so you assess your current level, and that shows you which strategies to employ.
00:12:55.399 --> 00:12:56.909
And you're off to the races.
00:12:57.299 --> 00:13:03.169
The rest of the book digs into that and gives the specifics and ideas and whatnot without prescribing anything.
00:13:03.726 --> 00:13:15.706
That's really cool, actually, because what was on my mind is, you know, we talked about the system, we talked it's a network, we talked maybe it's a little complex, like, how do I identify, like, my current state?
00:13:15.726 --> 00:13:19.596
Do you have a process that I can go through to even, like, think about that?
00:13:19.606 --> 00:13:26.417
Absolutely, and I I've really taken pains to explain this in the simplest language possible, right?
00:13:26.476 --> 00:13:40.956
Uh, because I'll tell you this, almost every treatment of system thinking that I have, that I have come across, uh, it got really technical and jargon heavy, and, and it felt like a lot, very quickly.
00:13:40.956 --> 00:13:48.797
You know, if our listeners take something away from this is, again, look beyond your immediate scope, right?
00:13:48.866 --> 00:14:06.746
If you just try to improve engineering or just try to improve product, or you let teams do their own, like, retros and continuous improvement and whatnot, you run the risk of things not really sticking, the changes don't stick, or you get unintended consequences, or you just get too much business risk.
00:14:07.871 --> 00:14:16.621
Okay, so, you want to understand the boundaries, you want to have this coalition of leaders who care about the system and want to improve it.
00:14:17.001 --> 00:14:23.361
Okay, so like in a smaller environment it might be VP Engine, VP Product, in others it might be a bunch of directors, it varies.
00:14:24.302 --> 00:14:29.042
And for them to kind of work from a model, and the book presents a model that they can follow.
00:14:29.292 --> 00:14:32.802
As opposed to saying, hey, I heard Scrum's awesome, we should do Scrum.
00:14:32.831 --> 00:14:36.101
Or, in my previous company, we did Safe, we should do Safe.
00:14:36.557 --> 00:14:46.876
No, this is, this does not prescribe anything, but it gives you ideas and explains why things kind of go the way they do and what might improve them.
00:14:48.267 --> 00:14:48.966
That's really cool.
00:14:48.966 --> 00:14:58.147
One of the things that I always think about our listeners, so the people listening to our podcast is, I have my career on my mind.
00:14:59.086 --> 00:15:01.277
You know, how will this help my career?
00:15:01.817 --> 00:15:03.307
Is this for me?
00:15:04.711 --> 00:15:09.902
You know, everyone wants to have a great career journey, you know, and it's wonderful to do that.
00:15:10.802 --> 00:15:15.121
How do you think this book relates to someone that's interested in improving their career?
00:15:16.371 --> 00:15:21.522
Okay, so I treat every reader of the book as what I call their an improvement leader.
00:15:22.081 --> 00:15:46.706
And what this is, it really goes back to one Responsibility that leaders have and by leader I it can be really anyone from team lead or scrum master or coach all the way to C level and you know you're already supposed to manage people, objectives, budgets, planning, execution, whatnot, but something that we don't talk about enough is to improve how work gets done Right?
00:15:46.736 --> 00:15:50.136
So that you achieve more for the company given what you have.
00:15:50.177 --> 00:15:53.667
And sometimes that is in the blind spot due to inertia.
00:15:54.017 --> 00:15:57.567
Sometimes it's just kind of narrowly defined as, you know, look for efficiencies.
00:15:59.216 --> 00:16:02.466
Which is not the best lens in which to view product development anyway.
00:16:03.336 --> 00:16:05.756
Sometimes we look for automation or AI or whatever.
00:16:05.956 --> 00:16:12.447
But this will give you the language and the models and the advice to carry out that responsibility.
00:16:13.951 --> 00:16:21.282
And this will help your career because, uh, your company will get more from you.
00:16:21.611 --> 00:16:29.032
You will be a lot more valuable for your employer, for your client, in the sense that you're able to achieve more.
00:16:29.621 --> 00:16:35.312
Without compromising, you know, the team's health or your future delivery, things like that.
00:16:37.461 --> 00:16:38.662
Yeah, that's really nice.
00:16:38.662 --> 00:16:47.292
And I think also if it sounds like to me, if you're interested in improving your career, you're reading this book, you know, it's taking this holistic look at your system.
00:16:47.292 --> 00:16:54.412
I mean, even going through that assessment can probably give you a little bit of an understanding, I assume.
00:16:54.687 --> 00:17:08.936
What, you know, what's working, maybe what's not working, that, that type of thing, um, which I always find, find is like a great exercise, you know, regardless of any leadership position that you're in, probably going to help you out a little bit.
00:17:09.027 --> 00:17:09.356
Yes.
00:17:09.396 --> 00:17:18.146
And once, one super important thing is that we want to manage the whole, but usually when we work, you know, work never stops, there's always more to do.
00:17:18.156 --> 00:17:20.106
Always more planning, always more this than that.
00:17:20.817 --> 00:17:23.146
It's very easy to lose sight of some things.
00:17:23.146 --> 00:17:24.646
So for instance, we might be.
00:17:25.261 --> 00:17:31.392
Uh, I don't know, leading an engineering team and really taking a lot of interest in our delivery metrics.
00:17:32.612 --> 00:17:35.021
Nothing wrong with that, but it's only one part of the picture.
00:17:35.402 --> 00:17:38.761
What about, are our deliveries making a difference to people?
00:17:39.352 --> 00:17:40.632
Or to what extent do they do that?
00:17:40.682 --> 00:17:43.251
Now, you might say, well, that's not my responsibility, that's product.
00:17:43.352 --> 00:17:47.336
Well, But product, product needs you to succeed and you need product to succeed.
00:17:47.336 --> 00:17:51.676
So maybe you should talk to them and come up with something that matters to both of you.
00:17:52.406 --> 00:17:55.696
And that's really the angle this, this book, this book takes.
00:17:56.419 --> 00:17:57.419
That's really interesting.
00:17:57.419 --> 00:17:58.568
I want to dive in there.
00:17:58.578 --> 00:18:01.439
So we're talking about engineering and product relationship.
00:18:02.334 --> 00:18:06.144
One of the most, I think, also complex relationships.
00:18:06.824 --> 00:18:16.263
What have you seen there, some of the pitfalls, like you've worked with companies, what are the common issues you see with that communication?
00:18:16.463 --> 00:18:19.523
Right, so those relationships are all over the place, right?
00:18:19.874 --> 00:18:25.614
The relationship I see most commonly is the order taking relationship.
00:18:26.324 --> 00:18:28.064
Engineering does what product wants them to do.
00:18:29.253 --> 00:18:33.324
Another relationship I see a lot is kind of being afraid to raise issues.
00:18:34.273 --> 00:18:36.054
Not wanting to be seen as a troublemaker.
00:18:37.473 --> 00:18:40.993
Um, another one is really kind of let specialists do their thing.
00:18:40.993 --> 00:18:45.213
So let products do their product thing and let engineers do their engineering thing.
00:18:45.713 --> 00:18:52.413
And without realizing that nobody's choices are entirely context free.
00:18:53.604 --> 00:18:56.094
Or ramification free, right?
00:18:56.094 --> 00:18:57.273
Again, system.
00:18:57.923 --> 00:19:01.314
So I can tell you where I've been working.
00:19:01.864 --> 00:19:03.844
Results were really, really great.
00:19:04.443 --> 00:19:06.064
There are some things the leaders did.
00:19:06.913 --> 00:19:19.064
One of them is that the engineering leaders and the product leads, they took shared responsibility, not just for what will we deliver, but how will we get better at doing it?
00:19:20.983 --> 00:19:23.153
They spoke to each other frequently.
00:19:23.173 --> 00:19:24.993
They, they had trust.
00:19:25.884 --> 00:19:27.844
They collaborated to, to some extent.
00:19:28.554 --> 00:19:30.144
They made it possible.
00:19:30.584 --> 00:19:35.240
for everyone in their respective groups to, to own things.
00:19:35.471 --> 00:19:37.961
Not just in theory, but actually own things.
00:19:38.300 --> 00:19:43.421
And also made it possible for them to speak with other people in the system who were dependent on that.
00:19:44.570 --> 00:19:44.921
Okay?
00:19:45.161 --> 00:19:53.040
Uh, you know, a counter example to that is from way back before I started, uh, you know, kind of coaching, uh, in Agile, uh, contexts.
00:19:53.566 --> 00:20:00.965
I was, uh, leading a server development team and my manager was awesome in terms of, you know, empowering me to do things.
00:20:00.965 --> 00:20:07.486
I mean, this goes back a long time, but if I needed anything from the front end team, I had to go through the channels.
00:20:07.486 --> 00:20:08.685
I had to go up the hierarchy.
00:20:09.086 --> 00:20:12.486
He would talk to his counterpart and he would talk to his people.
00:20:12.516 --> 00:20:15.336
And like, seriously, these people are sitting across the hallway from me.
00:20:15.895 --> 00:20:16.826
That makes no sense.
00:20:17.286 --> 00:20:19.691
And product, nobody even talked to them.
00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:21.830
They just gave us documents, right?
00:20:22.250 --> 00:20:28.590
Now this is, of course, old school, but I see the same dynamic continue to play out these days, still.
00:20:28.921 --> 00:20:31.441
And part of it is the pressure that everybody's under.
00:20:31.461 --> 00:20:33.931
The race to be dominant has not relented.
00:20:34.280 --> 00:20:35.421
Uh, we get more things.
00:20:35.421 --> 00:20:36.711
Hey, AI now, right?
00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:39.431
But the race just got harder, okay?
00:20:39.461 --> 00:20:48.036
And so, we still need to remember that what our customers care about is That's not how we divide work internally.
00:20:49.046 --> 00:20:50.185
They don't care who does what.
00:20:50.286 --> 00:20:51.806
They don't care who reports to whom.
00:20:52.006 --> 00:20:58.355
They care that the thing works and does the job it's meant to do and that doesn't upset them and all of that stuff.
00:20:58.846 --> 00:21:03.665
And those are not just product management calls and UX calls and engineering calls.
00:21:03.826 --> 00:21:04.885
It's everybody's calls.
00:21:05.576 --> 00:21:08.756
Including the VP who deprioritized something.
00:21:08.838 --> 00:21:09.199
Yeah.
00:21:09.318 --> 00:21:17.429
The way that you describe it, there definitely has me thinking about the system, how every decision and how it impacts.
00:21:17.429 --> 00:21:23.689
And, you know, if the decision making is only one directional product tells engineering everything to do.
00:21:24.209 --> 00:21:29.659
Obviously that's not a great situation to be in because engineering has a ton of context of their own.
00:21:30.308 --> 00:21:33.509
Uh, and that, yeah, I, I can see that, you know.
00:21:34.098 --> 00:21:35.388
I've experienced that before.
00:21:35.388 --> 00:21:36.648
I've seen that happen as well.
00:21:37.148 --> 00:21:44.229
I wanted to ask you a little bit more of like some of these other, I guess, pitfalls or like what not to do.
00:21:44.788 --> 00:21:50.909
What do you see, uh, maybe most often leaders are getting wrong?
00:21:52.778 --> 00:21:55.709
Like in terms of, you know, unlocking organizational potential?
00:21:56.338 --> 00:21:57.388
Yeah, exactly.
00:21:57.388 --> 00:21:57.628
Yeah.
00:21:57.689 --> 00:22:00.419
Okay, so I'm gonna start with my pet peeve.
00:22:01.128 --> 00:22:01.459
Okay.
00:22:01.489 --> 00:22:02.898
Something I've written about plenty.
00:22:03.078 --> 00:22:07.528
I think it's in every one of my four books, and that is people are not resources.
00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:10.419
Repeat after me.
00:22:10.479 --> 00:22:12.189
Do not call people resources.
00:22:12.798 --> 00:22:15.409
Now, I know a lot of people say, what's the big deal?
00:22:15.439 --> 00:22:17.078
I mean, we know they're people, right?
00:22:17.078 --> 00:22:20.469
It's just a word, but it's not a word because it reflects how we think.
00:22:20.679 --> 00:22:23.558
So when we talk about, Hey, I got five devs, you've got three.
00:22:23.558 --> 00:22:24.278
Can we trade?
00:22:24.919 --> 00:22:26.118
We're not thinking of them as people.
00:22:26.118 --> 00:22:27.679
We're thinking of them as units of labor.
00:22:28.959 --> 00:22:38.538
And when you know, by extension the entire company works this way, then you, you're really looking for, you know, labor for results as opposed to.
00:22:39.439 --> 00:22:52.209
Basically our last remaining You know, um, advantage over the AI we're building, which is we can think and reason and generalize and collaborate and come up with new things.
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:56.269
So it's not just about, you know, turning requirements into deliveries.
00:22:56.759 --> 00:22:58.588
There's something greater going on here.
00:22:58.939 --> 00:22:59.628
So that's one thing.
00:23:00.209 --> 00:23:00.929
That's a great one.
00:23:01.078 --> 00:23:01.378
Yes.
00:23:01.378 --> 00:23:10.138
And, and also by the way, as, as long as people are resources, then the whole thing that we say about, you know, collaboration or trust or safety, it, it, it doesn't matter.
00:23:11.028 --> 00:23:11.709
It doesn't matter.
00:23:11.709 --> 00:23:12.878
Yeah, it's dehumanizing.
00:23:12.888 --> 00:23:15.378
Yes, and everybody sees through that.
00:23:15.528 --> 00:23:23.368
And, you know, the whole concept of psychological safety entered the, you know, the discourse 10, 15 years ago.
00:23:23.788 --> 00:23:27.269
It's still not entirely there, but everybody has always felt it.
00:23:27.923 --> 00:23:28.273
Okay.
00:23:28.294 --> 00:23:32.784
And, and nowadays I think things are a little better, but not enough.
00:23:32.913 --> 00:23:34.263
So, okay.
00:23:34.284 --> 00:23:39.903
Another thing is, uh, and that goes back to work I did a few years ago on mindset.
00:23:39.903 --> 00:23:46.344
And I know a lot of people kind of either see it as a vague thing, or they look at it as, you know, it's just psychobabble.
00:23:46.923 --> 00:23:50.334
But the way I explain mindset is it's your choice making.
00:23:50.584 --> 00:23:58.324
So when you do something, there are certain principles and guidelines in the back of your mind that guide how you approach the work.
00:23:58.739 --> 00:23:59.038
Right?
00:23:59.048 --> 00:24:01.858
So for instance, you, let's say you need to produce a spec.
00:24:02.189 --> 00:24:06.558
You can do this collaboratively, or you can do this totally on your own.
00:24:06.739 --> 00:24:08.519
You can be perfectionist about it.
00:24:08.788 --> 00:24:10.558
You can take your time.
00:24:10.699 --> 00:24:14.249
Whatever it is, all those are principles that guide you.
00:24:14.808 --> 00:24:24.229
And what happens in organizations, for the most part, is that they, they don't have an explicit and intentional mindset choice making.
00:24:25.874 --> 00:24:42.473
They do stuff and they have processes and procedures and tactics, but they don't articulate clearly enough how they want people approaching them, so that they act harmoniously and not work at cross purposes, and that they get the results that they want.
00:24:42.953 --> 00:24:48.923
So, for instance, as a senior leader, I can say, Look, I think we will be more successful if we're more collaborative.
00:24:49.828 --> 00:25:00.659
That's a mindset type of setting statement, but I also want to act on it in terms of assigning work and Checking progress and metrics and a whole bunch of stuff.
00:25:01.528 --> 00:25:09.689
Okay, and so if you want to deliver better One very basic thing you need to do is is basically define How do we want to be around here?
00:25:10.608 --> 00:25:14.479
Not at the level of psychobabble, but at the level of what are we optimizing for?
00:25:14.479 --> 00:25:16.778
Are we optimizing for innovation or prediction?
00:25:17.338 --> 00:25:19.638
You got to choose You Right?
00:25:19.769 --> 00:25:26.519
And a lot of companies say, yeah, yeah, well, of course, we need innovation, but then you look at how they actually plan and what they actually do and how they actually talk.
00:25:26.679 --> 00:25:28.108
No, they're optimizing for prediction.
00:25:30.598 --> 00:25:31.618
Yeah, that's interesting.
00:25:32.068 --> 00:25:33.749
Because it's cool to say, yeah, we're innovating.
00:25:33.778 --> 00:25:34.009
Has
00:25:34.009 --> 00:25:34.338
to be.
00:25:34.469 --> 00:25:35.519
We're all, we're all innovating.
00:25:35.759 --> 00:25:36.798
Or we're collaborative.
00:25:36.798 --> 00:25:39.229
If you're, if you're not innovative, you're looked down upon.
00:25:39.239 --> 00:25:39.538
Or,
00:25:39.588 --> 00:25:43.328
you know, you wouldn't say, no, we want silos here.
00:25:43.818 --> 00:25:48.568
We want to utilize people 150%, we want everybody busy.
00:25:48.949 --> 00:25:51.608
No, the cool thing to say is, no, we collaborate.
00:25:51.659 --> 00:25:53.328
We tap into everybody's wisdom.
00:25:53.568 --> 00:25:55.999
But what matters is what you actually do.
00:25:56.219 --> 00:26:03.459
And then from this you can infer or reverse engineer the principles and values that guide all of those behaviors and choices.
00:26:04.189 --> 00:26:07.439
And then you can say, no, you're actually favoring individual work.
00:26:07.489 --> 00:26:09.019
That will get you some things, of course.
00:26:09.659 --> 00:26:13.409
It will not get you the effects of collaboration if that's what you're after.
00:26:14.409 --> 00:26:21.098
I think the, the mindset thing is always, like you brothered up, it's a tough one because it sounds very soft.
00:26:21.229 --> 00:26:21.499
Yeah.
00:26:21.913 --> 00:26:49.483
Or maybe out there, but also what we're saying is it leads to a lot of, depending on what the organization's mindset is, we're making decisions every single, I don't know, hour, minute, second, and you know, you brought, I think this was your second pitfall, like either, maybe it's not having a harmonious mindset or not everyone in the same, uh, direction of mindsets.
00:26:50.544 --> 00:26:52.933
And I do want to ask you about.
00:26:53.463 --> 00:27:03.723
Other pitfalls, but if we just stay on this for one more minute, I always think it's, it's one of the hardest things to get everyone thinking the same way.
00:27:03.763 --> 00:27:08.923
And I'm just wondering if there's any, about anything, software development, anything, really.
00:27:09.844 --> 00:27:20.969
Do you have any tips between a product engineering company organization that helps, With that, once you have the mindset that you want, like, do I actually roll that out?
00:27:20.999 --> 00:27:24.229
Yeah, well, it's actually what I do for a living, right?
00:27:24.259 --> 00:27:26.929
I mean, that's a lot of what I do for clients.
00:27:27.288 --> 00:27:30.719
It's actually not that hard, but it's something that has been in the blind spot.
00:27:32.324 --> 00:27:35.374
It's something that gets lost because we're always busy executing.
00:27:35.663 --> 00:27:47.483
It gets lost because we really have this mentality of copying what other people did that was successful, or copying what we did with our previous employer, and we go for best practices and whatnot.
00:27:47.483 --> 00:27:56.824
And we forget context, and we forget that copying things superficially doesn't tell us how they were executed.
00:27:57.419 --> 00:27:57.769
Okay.
00:27:58.318 --> 00:28:04.669
Uh, so in terms of making this happen, yeah, so you start by making everything explicit.
00:28:04.719 --> 00:28:06.078
Hopefully you involve your team.
00:28:06.078 --> 00:28:07.138
It's not just top down.
00:28:07.489 --> 00:28:15.459
And the second thing is you keep looking at what you say and don't say, what you do and don't do, what you reward and punish.
00:28:15.969 --> 00:28:19.673
Um, What messages you're sending people through all of this?
00:28:19.733 --> 00:28:22.743
And you say, does this support what I want to accomplish?
00:28:22.973 --> 00:28:35.483
For instance, if one of our choices is we want to be collaborative, look at how you engage in team meetings and one on ones, um, how you put plans together and say, well, are we collaborating here?
00:28:35.513 --> 00:28:37.354
Are we collaborating enough for now?
00:28:37.614 --> 00:28:41.364
Or are we really just going, you know, person by person?
00:28:42.403 --> 00:28:44.173
And that will give you the feedback you need.
00:28:44.173 --> 00:28:47.503
And so you can basically start building good habits.
00:28:47.939 --> 00:28:51.048
around acting on what you want there to be.
00:28:52.844 --> 00:28:57.364
But it starts with being explicit and in a lot of companies, they don't have that.
00:28:58.094 --> 00:29:04.243
I'm going to go through this assessment in your book and understand my system and my network a bit.
00:29:04.253 --> 00:29:04.624
Right.
00:29:05.294 --> 00:29:10.144
And then eventually I'm going to need to go take action and make a change, right?
00:29:10.144 --> 00:29:14.683
I'll probably understand my system is not perfect and I want to do something about it.
00:29:15.324 --> 00:29:24.134
Have you found that, Like an engineering leader or product leader or whoever's kind of taking this initiative is, can do this on their own?
00:29:24.203 --> 00:29:29.364
Or does it require bringing in like outside resources to help with this change management?
00:29:29.854 --> 00:29:31.604
Like what, what have you, what have you seen?
00:29:31.604 --> 00:29:31.784
Well,
00:29:31.844 --> 00:29:36.263
look, obviously I am biased because I am the outsider, right?
00:29:36.604 --> 00:29:37.804
I'm, I'm the external one.
00:29:38.153 --> 00:29:44.193
What I find is that yes, many, many leaders can do this on their own.
00:29:44.364 --> 00:29:47.584
However, first they're really busy.
00:29:48.019 --> 00:29:53.769
Second, they're missing a model by which to do this, as opposed to, again, just here's a target state.
00:29:53.828 --> 00:29:54.648
Take Scrum, do it.
00:29:54.788 --> 00:29:55.078
Right?
00:29:56.078 --> 00:30:01.493
And third, and that's really one of the Value propositions of having a coach or a consultant.
00:30:01.844 --> 00:30:08.074
It's pointing out to you all the stuff that you have missed, the stuff that you already know, the stuff that is in you, you know, to do that.
00:30:08.074 --> 00:30:11.134
And you know, it's good, but you have missed it.
00:30:11.144 --> 00:30:19.263
You have let it lapse or something like that so that you accomplish what you need to accomplish, right?
00:30:19.284 --> 00:30:21.804
I have had wonderful clients.
00:30:21.973 --> 00:30:23.153
Some of them are like the best.
00:30:23.403 --> 00:30:29.723
Best enabling leaders I know, and even they have their occasional missteps or they don't quite know what to do.
00:30:30.064 --> 00:30:32.584
And that's where somebody from the outside really helps.
00:30:32.973 --> 00:30:37.413
You can do this with internal staff, like internal coaches and whatnot.
00:30:38.114 --> 00:30:51.723
And what I keep hearing from many companies is, yeah, but, and the but is because I'm internal, they don't, they don't pay enough attention to what I say, or they think I'm biased.
00:30:52.086 --> 00:30:54.717
Yeah, I think that's a good like, uh, thank you for sharing that.
00:30:54.717 --> 00:30:57.027
I think that's like a really honest assessment.
00:30:57.047 --> 00:31:16.451
What I would, I would say what caught me the most is it's hard to make change when you don't, you feel like you don't have time and there's so much going on and you're trying to deliver in product engineering and you have timelines, but then you're also supposed to Get mental space to say, let me look at my system and make this change.
00:31:16.511 --> 00:31:25.612
That's where I think bringing in someone from the outside that can kind of accelerate that thinking for you to say, Hey, I've already done this a bunch of times, let me like jump you.
00:31:25.821 --> 00:31:26.011
Absolutely.
00:31:26.122 --> 00:31:29.592
And that's exactly the value proposition I go in with.
00:31:29.672 --> 00:31:33.961
And that's why I charge what I charge, because I can help you accelerate and reduce the risk.
00:31:34.432 --> 00:31:37.011
And so for instance, you know, there is a case study in the book.
00:31:37.291 --> 00:31:52.981
At the end, in one of the appendices of how I helped a company go from like a really troubled value delivery system, it was a product company, 40, 50 people, all the way to like really good, really, really good in 10 months.
00:31:54.372 --> 00:31:57.061
Typically in the industry, you would need a couple of years easy.
00:31:57.632 --> 00:32:00.382
And it wasn't because of my awesomeness.
00:32:00.412 --> 00:32:03.602
It was particularly because we did things in a certain sequence.
00:32:03.902 --> 00:32:09.842
And when they had questions, they got answers, as opposed to just relying on what they already knew.
00:32:10.071 --> 00:32:13.642
And calling them out on behaviors and issues.
00:32:14.162 --> 00:32:28.926
Um, and the other thing that happened there, which was particularly lovely, is that management was so thirsty for learning, and just, you know, They basically, they, okay, they didn't entirely say it this way, but it was like, tell us what to do and we'll do it.
00:32:29.656 --> 00:32:32.457
And I'm not of the telling kind.
00:32:32.517 --> 00:32:35.906
I don't want to prescribe what's right for you because you're going to have to live with it, not me.
00:32:37.186 --> 00:32:44.596
But you know, through a bunch of, you know, coaching techniques and whatnot, I, we came up with suggestions and they just went ahead and did them.
00:32:45.896 --> 00:32:52.096
And so when you have this type of willingness and when they care enough about the thing, you can move really fast.
00:32:52.257 --> 00:32:55.977
So then what remains is that you actually work from a model that gives you a good roadmap.
00:32:56.586 --> 00:33:02.477
As opposed to kind of meandering, like, you know, let's just do a whole lot of team retrospectives and eventually we'll be great.
00:33:02.547 --> 00:33:03.346
No, you won't.
00:33:04.586 --> 00:33:06.037
It will be locally optimized.
00:33:06.330 --> 00:33:07.090
That's really cool.
00:33:07.090 --> 00:33:22.101
I, well, I like what you said is there's almost like a, a step by step to go through instead of kind of like, okay, everyone do a retro, keep doing these retros, eventually it will work out like for the better, that's the point of a retro, we get better after, after it.
00:33:22.770 --> 00:33:24.361
Yeah, I've seen, I've seen it work.
00:33:24.980 --> 00:33:31.371
Over maybe a long period of time or if you have incredible, incredible leaders at every single team, which is really hard to do.
00:33:31.790 --> 00:33:36.351
It sounds like in the book or with your, your coaching, we get more of this step-by-step.
00:33:36.351 --> 00:33:37.846
Is that the 10 strategies Yes.
00:33:37.846 --> 00:33:39.320
Processes that you 10 strategies.
00:33:39.320 --> 00:33:39.441
Yeah.
00:33:39.711 --> 00:33:41.901
But so, so they are kinda stepwise.
00:33:41.901 --> 00:33:49.280
Yes, but they are high level enough, so, so I don't actually prescribe to you what you should be doing or what that would look like.
00:33:49.550 --> 00:33:53.901
So to just, just to give you an example, if you assess your system as a level two.
00:33:54.451 --> 00:33:55.750
There are two things to do there.
00:33:56.290 --> 00:33:59.980
One of them is you want to plug holes in decision making.
00:34:00.500 --> 00:34:11.210
A system whose fitness is at level 2, uh, you know, some decisions are kind of hazy or easily reversed or things like that, and they just need clarity on who makes them and when.
00:34:11.960 --> 00:34:17.931
The bigger strategy at level 2 is to stabilize the system so, you know, it has demand and it has supply.
00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:20.650
The demand is like your roadmap and the supply is what you deliver.
00:34:21.201 --> 00:34:24.070
And at level two, the relationship is kind of erratic.
00:34:24.090 --> 00:34:27.050
You can't really tell when stuff would come out and in what shape.
00:34:27.871 --> 00:34:29.920
Uh, like with reasonable confidence.
00:34:29.920 --> 00:34:33.010
And, and the strategy is to stabilize it, right?
00:34:33.010 --> 00:34:34.860
To get to a good balance between the two.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:40.331
And I give lots of techniques and tips that have worked from Kanban, from Agile, from whatnot.
00:34:40.831 --> 00:34:42.990
Um, but it's up to you to choose which ones.
00:34:43.501 --> 00:34:49.880
And you may find that three of them are enough for you and that two of them, they will just never fly and that's okay.
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:49.940
Okay.
00:34:53.221 --> 00:34:56.440
Sounds like those, there will never be a one size fits all.
00:34:56.451 --> 00:34:57.351
How can there be?
00:34:57.581 --> 00:34:57.891
Right?
00:34:57.960 --> 00:34:59.851
Our business context is different.
00:34:59.871 --> 00:35:01.021
Our people are different.
00:35:01.291 --> 00:35:02.581
The competition is different.
00:35:02.590 --> 00:35:03.751
Our legacy is different.
00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:08.311
Everything is different, which is why we're not also resources, right?
00:35:08.547 --> 00:35:09.317
Absolutely.
00:35:09.507 --> 00:35:14.126
Let's go back and I think we'll have time for one more.
00:35:14.128 --> 00:35:14.956
I like the pitfalls.
00:35:16.206 --> 00:35:18.097
Do you have another pitfall?
00:35:18.264 --> 00:35:18.733
Talk to us about that.
00:35:18.733 --> 00:35:19.693
Okay, this is a juicy one.
00:35:20.804 --> 00:35:24.384
Let's say you have some performance issues in your team.
00:35:25.514 --> 00:35:29.103
Let's say you have some behavior issues in your team, or maybe some faults.
00:35:29.224 --> 00:35:30.833
Somebody brought out down production.
00:35:31.753 --> 00:35:32.664
How do you think of that?
00:35:33.534 --> 00:35:38.773
The pitfall is, and this is on us as humans, not just as managers or leads.
00:35:39.074 --> 00:35:44.903
The pitfall is we look for somebody to kind of pin the cause on.
00:35:45.204 --> 00:35:50.994
I mean, sometimes we go as far as outright blaming, but even if we don't, we, we want to know like, who did this?
00:35:51.768 --> 00:35:52.128
Right?
00:35:53.228 --> 00:35:54.289
And why did they do it?
00:35:54.449 --> 00:35:55.168
And all of that.
00:35:55.219 --> 00:36:06.248
And system thinking will tell you that well north of 95, of 90 percent of what happens in your system is because of the system, not the individuals.
00:36:07.688 --> 00:36:13.048
So let's say you have somebody on your team who's just being nasty to their colleagues, let's say.
00:36:13.548 --> 00:36:13.969
Okay?
00:36:14.478 --> 00:36:19.068
It's so easy to just say, well that's their personality, they're a difficult person, whatever.
00:36:19.429 --> 00:36:22.574
Or maybe, um, I don't know.
00:36:22.693 --> 00:36:23.844
They didn't get the training.
00:36:24.534 --> 00:36:24.873
Okay.
00:36:26.313 --> 00:36:40.333
If we take a system thinking approach, we might say, well, what is it about the system they, systems that they inhabit, which are their team, their functional group, um, their family, their community, their neighborhood, their city.
00:36:40.523 --> 00:36:43.793
Those are things we don't know much about, but they are there.
00:36:44.563 --> 00:36:46.364
How are they affecting their behavior?
00:36:49.148 --> 00:36:58.688
So without even getting, you know, to, you know, psychological stuff, like, you know, what did, what happened to them as kids and how, you know, what were their parents like?
00:36:58.739 --> 00:36:59.768
We're not even going there.
00:36:59.998 --> 00:37:04.858
But what we're saying is how is that person responding to something that's happening around them?
00:37:06.139 --> 00:37:24.143
And maybe what's happening around them is that they get tasks that they find boring and basic, whereas somebody else, um, gets the really juicy and interesting ones, and that someone else is gonna get the bonus, the promotion, the treatment, the whatnot.
00:37:25.143 --> 00:37:33.733
And so the person who's being nasty is trying to kind of look, I don't know, more important, or more impactful.
00:37:35.103 --> 00:37:38.844
Because they can't do this through the tasks they're working on.
00:37:39.884 --> 00:37:41.324
So it's not a matter of personality.
00:37:41.324 --> 00:37:46.264
If, if they ended up in the right position, maybe instead of being a developer, they need to be a test engineer.
00:37:46.313 --> 00:37:46.833
I don't know.
00:37:48.643 --> 00:37:51.353
There are contexts in which they would shine.
00:37:52.708 --> 00:37:54.309
So it's not like they're inherently broken.
00:37:54.739 --> 00:38:02.498
So, so the, the takeaway here is attribute to the system before attributing to the individual.
00:38:03.648 --> 00:38:04.148
Got it.
00:38:04.809 --> 00:38:11.048
Now it makes perfect sense why we need to start with the assessment of the system and chapter one.
00:38:11.059 --> 00:38:12.309
No, that's actually really cool.
00:38:12.318 --> 00:38:14.798
Cause that is like a, I think a pretty juicy.
00:38:15.693 --> 00:38:19.204
It's easy to say, well, that person, that's a, they're just a jerk.
00:38:19.623 --> 00:38:24.384
No, it's, you know, they're just, uh, they've never been easy to get along with.
00:38:24.384 --> 00:38:24.534
Yeah.
00:38:24.534 --> 00:38:34.043
Usually I think like human behavior, you have all these environmental factors coming on to you and it creates like an output, whatever it is, whatever that good, it could be a good output.
00:38:34.043 --> 00:38:34.903
It could be a bad output.
00:38:34.903 --> 00:38:35.614
And it's not even
00:38:35.614 --> 00:38:38.594
just the people, even stuff that happens within your process.
00:38:38.594 --> 00:38:40.664
Let's say a lot of defects escape to production.
00:38:40.673 --> 00:38:49.943
You might say, well, Um, Let's look at how many defects are by developer A, and how many defects are by developer B, and maybe we have a weak link there.
00:38:50.153 --> 00:38:51.068
Now, that might be true.
00:38:51.509 --> 00:38:56.469
Not arguing that, but it could also be that defects escape to production because of other things that you do.
00:38:56.918 --> 00:38:59.099
It could also be the technology you're using.
00:38:59.119 --> 00:39:00.869
It could be the tests that you write.
00:39:00.878 --> 00:39:05.619
It could be the go, go, go pressure, so we never actually finish things properly.
00:39:05.998 --> 00:39:13.699
So we might have really good developers who would otherwise do really good work, but in a hamstrung.
00:39:14.829 --> 00:39:16.208
Yeah, totally makes sense.
00:39:16.838 --> 00:39:18.929
All right, Gil I think we have time.
00:39:19.134 --> 00:39:24.614
If you have another one for one more pitfall, and then we're going to, you know, start wrapping up.
00:39:24.784 --> 00:39:25.063
Okay.
00:39:25.063 --> 00:39:29.434
So I would also say it's really the whole thing about managing in silos, right?
00:39:29.434 --> 00:39:31.123
So I'm an engineering manager.
00:39:31.123 --> 00:39:32.724
I manage in my engineering team.
00:39:32.724 --> 00:39:33.793
I'm an engineering director.
00:39:33.793 --> 00:39:37.454
I do the same for my set of teams and same goes for product and whatnot.
00:39:37.833 --> 00:39:40.634
And yes, that's kind of how the organization is built up.
00:39:40.704 --> 00:39:41.324
And I get that.
00:39:42.074 --> 00:39:47.574
But what happens is that people end up, they kind of default to optimizing for themselves.
00:39:48.023 --> 00:39:48.344
Right?
00:39:48.594 --> 00:39:56.474
Uh, we have seen the same behavior with Scrum Masters and Agile coaches who, who basically say, you know, the organization's not going to go Agile, but I'm going to do the best for my team.
00:39:56.534 --> 00:39:59.164
I'm going to remove all the impediments so my team can be great.
00:39:59.454 --> 00:40:01.844
And by implication, I will have done my work.
00:40:02.514 --> 00:40:07.364
And this is well intended, but it's not helping us holistically.
00:40:09.304 --> 00:40:09.463
Right?
00:40:09.494 --> 00:40:27.164
Because you may be optimizing for your one team by, let's say, forging great relationships with people outside the team who you need sometimes, like your staff engineer, or your, I don't know, somebody who kind of helps you kind of move things on occasion.
00:40:27.164 --> 00:40:31.393
And instead of, you know, getting in line and asking for their time, you kind of get them on the side.
00:40:32.184 --> 00:40:34.824
But then you're hampering the progress of other teams.
00:40:34.824 --> 00:40:38.733
And it could be that in the aggregate, You're setting your system back.
00:40:39.534 --> 00:40:42.233
You mean well, but it's the outcome.
00:40:43.054 --> 00:41:02.797
And so even though people will continue to have local responsibilities and accountabilities, you want to be really mindful of are you managing, measuring, incentivizing in the local scope, rather than the system scope.
00:41:04.036 --> 00:41:04.447
Got it.
00:41:04.516 --> 00:41:05.137
That's a good one.
00:41:05.594 --> 00:41:31.063
The last question that I want to ask you, so we talked, you know, we talked about your book, we talked about, hey, you can get this first chapter for free, we talked about a bunch of pitfalls, now let's say that I've done my system analysis, I decided that I need to make a change, I brought in Gil, Gil came in, 10 months later, things are, have improved.
00:41:31.643 --> 00:41:37.943
How do you think about sustainability the next 10 months after that, or the next year after that?
00:41:37.954 --> 00:41:39.704
How do I not like fall backwards?
00:41:39.724 --> 00:41:50.094
So if I have done my job properly, and I like to think I do, then what happens is that your understanding of what to pay attention to is better.
00:41:50.829 --> 00:41:51.119
Right?
00:41:51.148 --> 00:41:53.219
You pay more attention to the system.
00:41:53.228 --> 00:41:58.039
You, you do the assessment frequently, because at that point it really takes you five minutes every time you do it.
00:41:58.759 --> 00:42:00.679
So you can see if there's any backsliding.
00:42:01.369 --> 00:42:11.668
You have your ears and eyes open, so that you know, um, you can watch for signs, right, and signals.
00:42:12.248 --> 00:42:19.039
You have also, because you've gotten your system to like a really good level of fitness, you have also distributed control.
00:42:19.398 --> 00:42:20.789
We call this empowerment, right?
00:42:20.798 --> 00:42:25.469
But you've basically enabled more people to take responsibility and behave and act.
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:30.518
And together with them, you're all kind of looking at this thing.
00:42:31.478 --> 00:42:31.889
Okay.
00:42:33.358 --> 00:42:37.289
You know, an analogy I can think for this is family, right?
00:42:38.128 --> 00:42:46.349
It's not the same when you've had your firstborn and the kid's a month old, or you're, you have several kids and there are now in their teens, right?
00:42:46.409 --> 00:42:48.239
You're in a different spot as a parent.
00:42:48.829 --> 00:42:52.719
At this point, you kind of know about the warning signs and you know what to look for.
00:42:53.648 --> 00:42:55.018
That's really the big deal.
00:42:55.528 --> 00:43:03.028
Okay, I definitely don't want to create dependence on me as a, you know, as a consultant coach, but not, um, that would not be ethical.
00:43:06.858 --> 00:43:07.548
Awesome, Gail.
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:15.978
So, is there anything else that we should know about, anything that you want to say about your, your book or any, you know, final advice before we sign off here?
00:43:15.978 --> 00:43:16.298
Okay, so
00:43:16.298 --> 00:43:20.849
you asked me about, you know, basically how I, I help companies.
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:35.224
Because I come from the Agile space, there is something that has become A bit of an expectation in this field, and that is that if you need help improving things, you're going to get somebody to kind of live with your team, like embedded coaching or something like that.
00:43:35.563 --> 00:43:43.193
That if you need help, somebody comes in and spends months with your team, several days a week, maybe occasionally talks to senior management.
00:43:43.454 --> 00:43:45.003
That's an expensive proposition.
00:43:46.023 --> 00:43:46.384
Okay.
00:43:46.824 --> 00:43:48.673
Uh, I, I have a different model.
00:43:49.244 --> 00:44:00.954
My model is you spread your budget over a long, much longer period of time so you can have access to me for months, but you only see me, you know, once every two weeks, once a month.
00:44:01.668 --> 00:44:05.849
You know, it kind of, uh, gets, uh, more spread out as things get better.
00:44:07.128 --> 00:44:11.398
And that is, it's a different model than what's normal in, in the space.
00:44:11.929 --> 00:44:25.039
And I would especially love it in our day and age when, you know, budgets are scarce, that people realize that it's not like either they pay six figures for something, or they do nothing at all and they stay with their inertia.
00:44:25.679 --> 00:44:26.909
No, there is a middle ground.
00:44:27.298 --> 00:44:31.259
And the middle ground is super affordable and it makes a big difference.
00:44:32.918 --> 00:44:35.409
It's like I have a leadership advisory service, stuff like that.
00:44:36.018 --> 00:44:36.938
That's really cool.
00:44:37.128 --> 00:44:40.228
And thanks for, you know, sharing that model.
00:44:40.228 --> 00:44:45.719
It's definitely a different style model than I'm used to and it's a, it's a little bit, uh, refreshing.
00:44:45.719 --> 00:44:46.844
Yeah, you know, you
00:44:46.844 --> 00:44:50.608
just, I know I mentioned the example with that company went from, you know, troubled to really great.
00:44:51.009 --> 00:44:57.768
I spent a total of 30 half days with them, with the entire company over practically a year.
00:44:57.768 --> 00:44:57.784
Yeah.
00:44:58.543 --> 00:45:03.943
30 half days because we work online, you know, after doing some initial training and an initial assessment.
00:45:03.974 --> 00:45:07.373
And that was it because I work mostly with leaders.
00:45:07.373 --> 00:45:10.514
And so, you know, things don't move on a daily basis at that level.
00:45:11.253 --> 00:45:33.014
Yeah, I love that you have the, uh, cost in mind, the long term efficiency in mind, and Gil, you know, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing all of, you know, some of the, I know we only got to like some of it, but some of the knowledge that you have, and I highly recommend that everyone goes and checks out Gil's, book.
00:45:33.313 --> 00:45:35.293
Uh, where can listeners find your book?
00:45:35.293 --> 00:45:35.304
Uh,
00:45:35.304 --> 00:45:39.304
so it's sold pretty much everywhere, both electronically and in print.
00:45:39.353 --> 00:45:43.333
For people who are not keen on paying Amazon, there's Barnes Noble.
00:45:43.733 --> 00:45:45.844
Uh, the digital formats are everywhere.
00:45:46.313 --> 00:45:48.284
Uh, you can get them on my website,
00:45:48.333 --> 00:45:48.873
Excellent.
00:45:49.244 --> 00:46:00.784
And listeners, if you haven't yet, consider checking out our Dev Interrupted YouTube channel to watch this episode and tons of behind the scenes content.
00:46:01.134 --> 00:46:04.923
Thank you everyone for listening and Gil again, thanks for coming on the pod.
00:46:04.934 --> 00:46:05.684
Thank you so much.
