Develop a Learning Organization with SAFe Measure and Grow Assessments with Agile Rising’s Kristine O’Connor, SPC and Tim Schwamb, SPC in this On-Demand Webinar.
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Today we have Tim swam, and Christine O’connor, both Spc’s with agile rising, presenting today.
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So I’ll go ahead and hand it over to Tim and Christine.
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Hey! Good morning, everyone. So I’m Christine. I’m actually gonna kick us off today with our conversation.
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We’re gonna be talking about how you can develop a learning organization, leveraging, savings measure and grow assessments.
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Now, not only am I and Spc. With agile rising, I’m also a graduate student here in Phoenix, at Arizona State University, and I’m studying organizational leadership, and it turns out we have to write this thing called a research paper.
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Every single class. And I recently wrote a research paper which was studying the research paper every single class. And I recently wrote a research paper which was studying the effectiveness of these safe measure and growth on developing a learning organization, a learning culture and really supporting and driving business agility so i’m gonna share a
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little bit about that paper with you first, before we jump into exploring a use case where we actually tested the hypothesis of my paper.
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So what are we talking about? Well, we’re talking about the requirements for long term survival of organizations.
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The current average lifespan of today’s fortune.
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500 companies. It stands at just 18 years. So transforming organizations to be competitive in today’s market, it’s required for sustainability organizations.
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They’re made up of vast amounts of information and being able to harness this knowledge.
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It’s key for that long, longevity end for the customers that they serve so intentionally growing.
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This knowledge, informing our shared intelligence, and emerging as a learning organization.
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It’s critical, so we must act with urgency and focus on this organizational need.
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And the leadership theories of today. They highlight the leader as somebody who works on the followers, Psyche, to unleash their potential.
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This really paints a picture of the responsibilities that leaders have to create.
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The conditions that people need to do their best work, which, according to Daniel Pink in his book drive, it’s a requirement for unlocking our inner potential.
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So provisioning this space and provision the tools for self-assessment, and that strategic retrospection.
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It becomes a leadership, imperative Margaret Wheatley.
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She’s an organizational scientist, and she defines 2 competencies which are required for organizational, long-term sustainability and survival.
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And that’s the ability to generate new knowledge and the ability to help it be freely shared.
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So this is saying that leadership is required to show up as an active participant to help deliver on these 2 competencies.
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And what that means is they have to show up in the sense that they provide that dedicated time, that space so that teams can learn and grow.
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The knowledge about how they practice, and what they’re behaving as individuals and as a team the leader must also make sure that feedback loops are in place so that we’re informing the organization of what this newly acquired and learned knowledge is and remember the scaled agile framework that
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in and of itself mentions that these cycles of learning they don’t happen organically.
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Specific time and space. It must be intentionally provided to ensure the continuity of this practice or organizations are going to face decline, and ultimately extinction.
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So. Personally, I’ve been a part of organizations where to focus on the tyranny of the urgent.
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If you will preventing that cycle of continuous learning and informing Tim, you have a background in the military.
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Have you? Has that ever happened to you and your experience?
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You know so I spent 21 years in the Air Force, and I can tell you that the Tierney of the Urgent is the way the military moves.
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I mean almost every job that I was in is, hey? We’re fighting the fires today rather than you know, keeping our heads above the fray to focus on what we’d really like to focus on and that’s that’s sad.
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But that’s that’s the way that the most government organizations operate.
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Yeah, and a lot of private organizations, too. You know, they run into that challenge.
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So you know, when we think about improving, when we think about, you know creating that space for our teams and the people in our organization, I think first, we should really define what a learning organization is.
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And booster wall in his book, The Lean machine defines a learning organization as one that’s multifaceted.
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It’s a adaptive. It engages in generative learning which enhances the ability of the organization to create and a learning organization it’s comprised of 2 dimensions, organizational knowledge and organizational intelligence.
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So we have organizational, a learning organization informs the organizational intelligence which builds the organizational knowledge.
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And it’s a complete cycle of learning that gets created.
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So let’s first talk about the first dimension of a learning organization which is organizational knowledge.
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And this can really be summarized as a shared awareness on why we do what we do, and tactically, how we do it.
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And this is a key. This is a key input for understanding how we approach our work together with an understanding of the practices which we have in our tool belt to employ.
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And we use this knowledge as a guide to help us in delivering value to our customers.
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Similarly having that compelling vision of where we’re going.
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Our role in the journey, and an understanding of successful expectations in achieving these goals.
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It’s imperative. So these the dimension of a learning organization, this organizational knowledge.
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When we engage in these practices, we build on the knowledge of the whole, ensuring that each person is aware of how they will deliver on the most strategic imperatives of the organization.
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So not only do we require the vision or the what the clarity, or the where of the where we have to optate and function, both within a team and as well as within that larger organization, so we have to have that knowledge, and understanding, we must also know how we operate and deliver value, to our
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customers, and what our customer journey looks like, and finally, organizational knowledge requires us to reflect, to gather feedback and adjust our behaviors, practices, vision, and goals.
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As needed. So developing that shared awareness on why we do what we do, how we do it, and creating the vision of where we’re going as a team.
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It’s a key output of the safe measure and Bro assessment. And that strategic retrospective process.
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So that second dimension of a learning organization is organizational intelligence.
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And this is been defined as the mental capacity and ability to perform a task or important activities.
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And it’s made up of these set components that you see here on the screen.
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It’s also been referenced to as seeking to adopt courses of action that lead them over the long run to outcomes that occur over time.
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So I for today, I think we can summarize organizational intelligence as the collective human machine and process knowledge that allows an organization to perform tasks and important activities that deliver on business outcomes.
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Allowing for the analysis and understanding of these practices, these behaviors and beliefs really allows us, as an organization to align and address those gaps that we have in our shared understandings.
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So the different components of organizational intelligence there achieved in different ways strategic visions and shared faiths.
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There are the responsibility of leadership to clearly define and share, as these are inputs into creating that urgency for change that’s necessary for individuals to see how their role fits into that larger value.
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Delivery picture, and how the organization will both share on the success or failure of aving its goals.
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So the desire to change heart, the desire to change heart alignment.
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How we apply our knowledge and that performance pressure, their internal drivers, which we propose engaging in these assessments specifically target.
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So, Tim. I don’t know about you, but when I think about organizational knowledge and the components of organizational intelligence, it really sounds like the safe framework itself.
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Really addresses a lot of these, these key behaviors and and a lot of these key behaviors and practices. What do you think?
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Well, it definitely does. I mean, when you think about the foundations of a continuous learning culture, I mean, that’s on the foundation now of the 6 dot O frame framework.
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And you start thinking about the principles. Many of those principles get after that about build incrementally with fast integrated learning cycles and decentralizing decision-making unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers and then these concepts of customer
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centricity and design, thinking, where, you know, we’re having to learn about the customer and get feedback on that, and then think about that and apply it to the product that we’re developing and how we’re going to improve that.
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And what new things we need to incorporate that, and what new things we need to incorporate in that. You’re right, Christine.
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It’s just laced all over the framework.
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Yeah. And what I love is as part of this paper. This research I had to do was to not only understand how we define a learning organization and the components that make up a learning or organization.
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But specifically, how do we target intentionally changing the disciplines that we follow that we have to master so that we can truly transform and you know, create those feedback loops that are necessary?
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So what we found is that a learning organization is comprised of 5 key disciplines and Uster Wall, again, in his book, The Lean Machine.
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He says that mastery of these disciplines is what distinguishes learning organizations from ordinary organizations, and it requires transcending the internal politics and gamesmanship that dominate traditional organs targeting these disciplines specifically it’s critical for that
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transformation. Because this is what helps us shift our mindset from that fixed mindset.
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To what safe calls that growth mindset. I also call it green light thinking.
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So again we see those 5 disciplines here on our screen systems, thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building a shared vision and collective team learning.
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So we’re gonna talk about each of these individually.
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So let’s start with the first discipline of systems, thinking, this is what’s really been identified as the cornerstone for organizational thinking.
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How organizational, think together. It enabls us to look outwards at that bigger, longer term picture.
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It helps us, as we search, to really understand a more holistic view of the organization and the systems that function within it.
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So this information it allows us to consider like, where there are opportunities for improvement, how we can understand what those changes are, whether they’re working.
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And as a team, how we can identify and consider any unintended impacts with the change that we’re proposing.
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So next we look at personal mastery, which is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal understanding of the world, and exchanging openly our understanding of those unseen systems in which we operate, and we do that through better collaboration with others and if personal mastery
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is defined as that desired to get better and better at something that matters which Daniel Pink talks about and drive.
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Then it can be argued that the personal understanding of the world which an individual functions within an organization well, that’s really important.
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And sharing this information openly in that strategic, retrospective conversation.
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It builds both organizational intelligence and informs the organizational learning because we’re sharing how we believe we function in this system.
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The third discipline is mental models, and these are the assumptions, those generalizations, and the deeply held beliefs that influence.
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How we understand the world around us. These are protected by protective barriers, and they require us to share how and why we think the way that we do so.
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It requires us to look inwards and look at our own practice, our own beliefs and our own values.
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So this type of generative learning happens as we align on the true practices and behaviors of the team that we work with in during the safe assessments, and it really builds that understanding of it breaks those preconceived understandings or beliefs that we may have about how
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we practice and engage in our work together as a team. That fourth discipline is building a shared vision, and that has the power to inspire to motivate, to encourage experimentsation and innovation, and to also encourage thoughtful risk taking it’s also required so that we can build that
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longer term vision about what the future could be. It’s a critical part of that strategic retrospective process, because during that process teams are developing their shared understanding on how they work together and thinking about future ways of working better together and finally, that last discipline is collective team
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learning. And that starts with open cost conversations, lowering our judgment.
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Removing our assumptions, and engaging in that free flow of ideas.
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Opening, the team to forming and forming new understandings of how we work together and building on our shared intelligence.
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This is what happens throughout the safe, measuring bro assessment process, as teams really explore how they work together, learn what they don’t know about each other, and open themselves to that thinking about the art of the possible.
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So what my paper, my research paper is saying is that if we want to grow into a learning organization and be multifaceted, adaptive, engage in generative, learn, generative learning, and enhancing our ability to create and be innovative, then we have to address those 5 disciplines, we just talked about the systems.
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thinking, the personal mastery, addressing our mental models, building that shared vision as a team, and engaging in collective team learning.
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So, Tim, I don’t know about you, but to me, the more I reach, the more I wrote on my paper, the clearer it seemed that this self, the safe measure and grow assessment they really do seem to target these key disciplines, what do you think.
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Well, I think that’s certainly what they say, you know, but I know we’ll talk about this more as we go along.
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But you know we wondered in the organization for our use case.
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Would that really play out or not? And so you know, it’s gonna be interesting as we look at that use case as you know what what happens in an organization, or they gonna be able to change their mind like they’re mindset from the way that they’ve always done it to begin to
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incorporate some of these concepts that you were talking about in your paper.
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Yeah, absolutely. And so let let me stop talking.
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So I can turn it over to you to share, and are used.
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Case, but before I do, let me just let me just share what my hypothesis was in my paper, so my hypothesis was that the safe measure and grow assessments, and that strategic retrospective process those conversations that they impact not only those 5 disciplines of
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a learning organizations. But those 2 competencies that Margaret Wheatley shared are required for long-term survival, so that if they help to grow organizational knowledge and freely share that information growing organizational intelligence, and we recently tested that hypothesis as tim mentioned at a use case
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at a large government aerospace agency, and Tim is gonna take it over from here and start to share those details.
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Thanks, Christine. So you know. Christine presented a lot of the theory here, and we were really interested, as I mentioned, to see how would this actually play out with a real organization?
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And if you spent any time in the government, you realize that they anytime in the government, you realize that they they can really be their inertia can get in their way of progress, and so we wanted to see well, if we introduce this concept of a measuring grow
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assessment, and taking a strategic look at themselves. What would that do to them?
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Would it spark any change in the way that they were approaching their solution?
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Development. So let me talk to you a bit about our use case.
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First of all, we ran this use case with a large government aerospace organization.
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The people in that organization. There are about couple of 100 folks give or take that were part of our agile or organization, and many of them had been a part of the organization for a long time.
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Both civil servants and contractors, and when I say a long time there’s a significant percentage of folks that had been there over 10 years.
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Some of them 20 to 30 years, and so they had seen changes come and go, and this is just the latest change.
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And how would that you know? How is this going to impact the way that I do my job? You know?
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Is it really gonna make a difference? So our goals, as we went through this was first of all to implement the agility.
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Health platform. We used a gility, health, and their platform to run.
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This assessment with the organization, the safe measuring grow assessments are native to the adjustment.
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Health platform, and so it gave us a great way to to run the assessments, and then also to do some analysis on those as well.
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Secondly, to identify a roadmap for implementing the safe measure and grow assessments.
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We didn’t want this to be a one and done thing.
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We wanted this to really become part of their culture. And so we wanted to develop a roadmap of what that would look like going forward.
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And then finally, we wanted to measure the impact on innovation and business agility.
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And this is where the rubber meets the road right so first of all did the estimate actually drive more innovation.
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The fact that we actually went through this did this change the way that they approached the way that they did their job.
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And you know we wanted to see as Daniel Pink said.
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You know, we’re leaders creating the conditions for people to do their best work for those workers that are down in their in the trenches as Margaret Wheatley said, where they, generating new knowledge, and so that it could be freely shared right and then going back to the safe foundation
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and principles, you know. Were they beginning to inculcate those those tenets of relentless improvement and innovation into the way that they approach their work?
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So we used the safe team and tech agility assessment.
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We started to team level and we ran this with about 23 teams there, and the reason that we started at the team level, even though there are 7 other assessments that we could have run.
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We started at the team level, because, first of all, that’s where we expected the greatest amount of maturity.
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But even more important than that, you could make a clear case, for if we weren’t seeing any type of agility or change of mindset at all at the team level, we certainly weren’t going to see it in any of the other safe competencies, so we wanted to start at the team level and see what
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was happening down there in, then move on from there and then, finally, how we facilitated these assessment was we set up an individual session with each of those 23 teams.
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We use the agility health platform, as I mentioned, and we set aside 3 h with each team.
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That first hour was to run through the assessment with the team.
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We weren’t going question by question, but everybody was taking it at the same time, and this allowed us to make sure that we had a shared understanding, as they were going through there. Hey?
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Does this question even apply to what we’re doing, or I don’t understand what this term means.
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And then we can have that discussion in everybody would then have that shared understanding and we’d eliminate some of the spottinginess in the data that we might have gotten if we hadn’t done that.
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And then after that. Then we went through the analysis, and we just kinda talked through what we saw with the analysis of the agility health platform provided.
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Hey! What are you seeing that looks good? What doesn’t look quite as good as what you hoped it would?
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You know what are some? What do you think is helping?
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Things are going well. What? What is helping those things to go?
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Well, what are some areas you think we ought to improve on?
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And then that naturally led us into the last part, where we developed some of those growth items that we had hoped the teams would take forward to actually make some improvements into the way that they’re doing business there.
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Now all of that Hi, to actually make that happen was going to take an awful lot of preparation on the front end.
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And so I’m gonna turn it back over to Christine for just a second, and she’s gonna tell you a about what we did on the front end to help set us up for success.
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Going through this experiment.
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Yeah, as Tim said, you know, this implementation of the agility health platform, it’s took a lot of planning considerations.
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We wanted to make sure that we were successful in our approach, that we we’re successful in our approach, that we really were considering ahead of time any considerations, potential delays, or even roadblocks, that we might encounter along the way.
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So one of the things that we really thought about ahead of time was, what is the support that is needed by our business owner?
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How do we best support our rtes? And what do they need to help support the scrum?
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Master and the teams as they’re engaging, not just in the assessment itself, but also making sure we’re providing the rights vision and the right guidance.
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During their planning the Pi planning event. Right? We had to make sure that we were discussing that this is going to be an impactful event, that they’re going to engage in and what to expect for that process that they’re going to engage in and what to expect for that process so we really partnered with our business
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owner and leverage them to engage in, and what to expect for that process. So we really partnered with our business owner and leverage them to help us remove any impediments that we came across.
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As we were really laying that right foundation with the we also considered how we were using the agility health platform, making sure that we were entering in the right data for the teams.
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The team members, because, as Tim mentioned, the agility health platform, it allowed us to get different views and slices on the responses of the data that was collected.
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So we wanted to make sure that the data we were going to be using as part of our analysis with the team that it really was coming with the from the right data sources.
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So understanding how we used agility, health, as well as how these growth items, that to mention how those growth items ended up getting entered into Jira.
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So what was that? The tool that they used for their for their alm tool?
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So we had to make sure that we were collecting the right information during those retrospective process.
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Conversations, to support the easy flow into Jira, and that the teams would easily have line of sight to that work.
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We also partnered with agility, health. We wanted to make sure that as this large Government’s aerospace agency implemented this platform, that it was really a positive event for our customers, so given that we had a shared customer and we had similar outcomes that we were working towards
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partnering together, seem like a logical approach, partnering together seem like a logical approach, and we were able to really streamline some of the activities that were going around going on around single sign on with the tool so that vendor alignment and that vendor partnership was really critical as we
00:32:18.000 –> 00:32:30.000
were moving the value from towards rolling out the tool, and Tim and I also recognize the need to make sure we achieved and obtained our agility.
00:32:30.000 –> 00:32:31.000
Health facilitator certification. So that’s a certification.
00:32:31.000 –> 00:32:37.000
So that’s a certification that agility health offers.
00:32:37.000 –> 00:32:38.000
And this was important because we wanted to make sure that we were.
00:32:38.000 –> 00:32:57.000
Using the tool in the right way. We were helping to guide the conversations in the right path forward, so that we achieved the objectives of the assessment and really leverage that platform in a robust way.
00:32:57.000 –> 00:33:00.000
So, as we were thinking about that pathway forward we wanted to make sure that we as coaches as Pcs.
00:33:00.000 –> 00:33:15.000
That we had all the right tools in our tool belt to be successful in in our facilitation efforts.
00:33:15.000 –> 00:33:16.000
So that.
00:33:16.000 –> 00:33:23.000
Okay, so we we wanted this to be an interactive kind of webinar with a little bit of dialogue.
00:33:23.000 –> 00:33:35.000
And so if you have questions along the way, please post those in the in the Q&A piece here, but part of that dialogue, we wanted to start off with a poll and and see about your experiences as well.
00:33:35.000 –> 00:33:40.000
And so the first question that we have for you today is, who’s taken or facilitated one of these.
00:33:40.000 –> 00:34:01.000
Soe measure and grow assessments. Have you? Have you done that? Yes or no?
00:34:01.000 –> 00:34:11.000
So, Julia, if you’ll give that about a minute, then we’ll see what our results are.
00:34:11.000 –> 00:34:20.000
I’m interested to see how widespread these measure and grow assessments are.
00:34:20.000 –> 00:34:22.000
I had some background music.
00:34:22.000 –> 00:34:31.000
Right. We need jeopardy or something like that.
00:34:31.000 –> 00:34:39.000
Alright! So we’ve we’ve got about a one, third, 2 third rough split.
00:34:39.000 –> 00:34:43.000
There were about a third of you have said, you’ve you’ve taken or facilitated one of these, and about 2 thirds said, No.
00:34:43.000 –> 00:34:57.000
So for those that haven’t taken one of these, then, yeah, I’m interested to hear what your thoughts are.
00:34:57.000 –> 00:35:03.000
Why, you haven’t taken one of these, if you just not taking one.
00:35:03.000 –> 00:35:06.000
Or has there been some? Hasn’t seen in that?
00:35:06.000 –> 00:35:19.000
And so as we go on and talk about what we actually observe as we go on and talk about what we actually observe as we began these assessments with the teams, Christine, go on to the the the first thing was some hesitancy there.
00:35:19.000 –> 00:35:35.000
I had one team that says, You know, Tim, you seem like a really nice guy, but we have brought up these issues several times before and they just haven’t gone anywhere.
00:35:35.000 –> 00:35:51.000
So you know, there was this hesitancy, and in this lack of trust that anything was gonna come of these growth items, if they took the time to bring them up.
00:35:51.000 –> 00:35:59.000
But you know we work through that a little bit, and I said, Hey, let’s just try this, and let’s go with it in the teams.
00:35:59.000 –> 00:36:06.000
Did they embraced it so their began to be some transparency, showing the reality of their current situation, and what they were wanting to achieve.
00:36:06.000 –> 00:36:14.000
Many of the the teams were, you know, Christine, and I thought, I don’t know if this is going to work. You know.
00:36:14.000 –> 00:36:21.000
Maybe too many of these folks are just hardened in their ways.
00:36:21.000 –> 00:36:46.000
And, you know, not willing to change what actually, what we found was that many of the teams understood the the principles of safe in a general in a general way, but they hadn’t been able to actually see the fruits of that come out of that for various reasons and so they began to express what they really wanted
00:36:46.000 –> 00:36:55.000
to see, but hadn’t hadn’t been able to see those that yet, and so hadn’t hadn’t been able to see those that yet.
00:36:55.000 –> 00:37:05.000
And so they began to then put their trust in us as coaches, because we told them, Hey, we will be your advocate with leadership to help make this happen.
00:37:05.000 –> 00:37:20.000
The leadership was already expressed. A desire to make this a part of our culture, and so, collectively, we all want to jump in on this and be a part of this solution.
00:37:20.000 –> 00:37:33.000
And so if you will, if you will be a part of this, and jump on board with us, we will be your advocate with leadership to help make sure that you’re given the time and the space to work through some of these these growth items.
00:37:33.000 –> 00:37:35.000
Here, Christine, you want to talk about the other 2.
00:37:35.000 –> 00:37:49.000
Yeah, yeah, one of the things that we hadn’t touched on yet was really related to one of the competencies that we talked about for long-term survival.
00:37:49.000 –> 00:38:12.000
The freely sharing of the free sharing of this newly gained information, and part of this this process is that after we ex executed the assessment with all of the teams, we did an art level readout to the art leadership and stakeholders and then we had a rolled up bigger
00:38:12.000 –> 00:38:13.000
leadership, role readout with all of leadership from that space.
00:38:13.000 –> 00:38:17.000
In the organization, and we didn’t share any of the individuals.
00:38:17.000 –> 00:38:39.000
Team specific results. Those were all competential. But what we did share were the theme of the individual team specific results. Those were all confidential, but what we did share were the themes that we observed from those facilitated assessments as well as a list of growth items that the
00:38:39.000 –> 00:38:40.000
teams identified that they needed help from leadership on.
00:38:40.000 –> 00:38:51.000
So these may have been roll blocks to deploy you know, implementing automation software to needing training.
00:38:51.000 –> 00:38:54.000
These were things outside of the team’s reach, and what we found is when we shared these readout these things with leadership.
00:38:54.000 –> 00:39:06.000
We observed a sense of servant leadership that we hadn’t yet had an opportunity to see.
00:39:06.000 –> 00:39:25.000
We were giving the leadership of the art specific things that the teams needed action on, and they were all willing and excited to jump in to better understand the problem and the impact and to prioritize getting resolutions to those challenges.
00:39:25.000 –> 00:39:43.000
So from that perspective as a coach, we not only saw change in the behavior of the team members, but we saw a level of excitement and servant leadership with leaders that we hadn’t yet seen in that much of a strength and that much force.
00:39:43.000 –> 00:39:49.000
So that actually brings us to our second question of our webinar.
00:39:49.000 –> 00:39:58.000
You know Tim and I already shared. We were somewhat surprised by some of the reactions and the responses that we observed.
00:39:58.000 –> 00:40:13.000
So do any of these themes surprise. You want to hear a little bit more about your thoughts.
00:40:13.000 –> 00:40:19.000
So we’ll give about another minute for this poll as well.
00:40:19.000 –> 00:40:23.000
And it’s your turn to sing to him.
00:40:23.000 –> 00:40:24.000
Yeah.
00:40:24.000 –> 00:40:26.000
What’s my turn to see? Happy birthday to you?
00:40:26.000 –> 00:40:31.000
Happy birthday to you.
00:40:31.000 –> 00:40:35.000
Oh, wait! Christine, you didn’t actually expect me to sing!
00:40:35.000 –> 00:40:40.000
Sorry.
00:40:40.000 –> 00:40:46.000
I will say that’s probably better than I could have done.
00:40:46.000 –> 00:40:50.000
And you thought Tom was just a Spc. Rt. Natural Coach.
00:40:50.000 –> 00:40:53.000
Oh no!
00:40:53.000 –> 00:40:54.000
Agile coach by day, nightclub, singer, B.
00:40:54.000 –> 00:40:58.000
Night.
00:40:58.000 –> 00:41:21.000
Alright, so what we’re seeing here is that almost everybody, said that these themes didn’t surprise them at all, that if you guys went into one of these assessments as a facilitator, that or an organization to do one of these assessments, that you pretty much would expect to see
00:41:21.000 –> 00:41:44.000
these same themes, the the hesitancy in, you know, hopefully, some of the the other more positive things that we began to see as well, that groups would really open up and begin to trust the facilitator that they would help the organization move through some of these issues so no the moment you’ve all been
00:41:44.000 –> 00:41:50.000
waiting for. Let’s talk about what we actually saw after the fact.
00:41:50.000 –> 00:41:59.000
What’s changed since our existence, you know. Did our hypothesis prove true or not?
00:41:59.000 –> 00:42:08.000
Well, first thing we saw was the beginning of a sea change in looking for ways to include innovation.
00:42:08.000 –> 00:42:16.000
You know. Before the groups were very much focused on their task of the day, the tranny of the urgent.
00:42:16.000 –> 00:42:19.000
We don’t have time to include any of this innovation stuff.
00:42:19.000 –> 00:42:20.000
Sure we’d like to do that, but we don’t have any time for that.
00:42:20.000 –> 00:42:34.000
Well what we began to see was that teams were beginning to actually take on these growth items that we had crafted for them as part of their agility, health assessments.
00:42:34.000 –> 00:43:03.000
There, and some of the teams, in fact, had actually completed their growth items before the end of the Pi, and pretty much every team had included at least one growth item into their pi plan for the next pi and some of those teams that had finished growth items already were generating new growth.
00:43:03.000 –> 00:43:10.000
Items for the next pi. That was something that we had never seen before.
00:43:10.000 –> 00:43:15.000
They were starting to take responsibility for their their own process. Improvement.
00:43:15.000 –> 00:43:23.000
There. The second thing that we had was that the Demos began to improve.
00:43:23.000 –> 00:43:39.000
You know, I’m sure many of you have seen in organizations, especially early on in their transformation, where the Demos just aren’t what you as a coach, might hope that they would be right.
00:43:39.000 –> 00:43:49.000
Well, you know, we worked on this and this, and we applied some patches that they would be right. Well, you know, we worked on this and this, and we applied some patches and stood up this server and fix this defect.
00:43:49.000 –> 00:43:53.000
And you know, there just wasn’t a whole lot there.
00:43:53.000 –> 00:44:18.000
Well what we began to see was that they were actually showcasing some of these growth items that they had worked on, and they were also beginning to take metrics and then show their improvement in from point A to point B and where these metrics had taken them where they could actually have
00:44:18.000 –> 00:44:24.000
data to show how they were doing and whether they were making a difference or not.
00:44:24.000 –> 00:44:34.000
And then finally, with the growth mindset itself, we actually began to see this growth mindset begin to take root.
00:44:34.000 –> 00:44:40.000
Now I’m gonna tell you that it didn’t look anything like this guy right here, right?
00:44:40.000 –> 00:44:42.000
It looked a little bit more like baby grew in guardians of the galaxy.
00:44:42.000 –> 00:44:49.000
2, and probably with a little bit of his attitude as well.
00:44:49.000 –> 00:45:04.000
But the fact of the matter is is that growth mindset did begin to take root to where they were beginning to take on and their own growth items.
00:45:04.000 –> 00:45:13.000
Some of them were generating a list of every time they came across something that that could have been fixed.
00:45:13.000 –> 00:45:20.000
They were creating the list and then reprioritizing that list and figuring out well, which of these do we wanna take on next?
00:45:20.000 –> 00:45:34.000
They were, they were also oh, well, shoot! And of course I I forgot the other thing that I was gonna mention as part of their their growth mindset.
00:45:34.000 –> 00:45:42.000
But Sophica to say that they were beginning to think for themselves.
00:45:42.000 –> 00:45:43.000
What are some things that we as a team can do from?
00:45:43.000 –> 00:46:06.000
I remember what it was they were going from eye shape skills where everybody was very much a subject matter expert to, hey, we need to share our skills in case, you know, we wind up losing a team member for some period of time, or they go on vacation or whatever how are we going to be able to handle
00:46:06.000 –> 00:46:18.000
the work. When that happens, and they began to take on for themselves work that would begin to take on for themselves work that would begin to develop those T-shaped skills across the teams.
00:46:18.000 –> 00:46:33.000
And they did that themselves. And so now I’ll turn it back over to Christine to close this out and to sum up our experiment, based on the research that she initially laid out.
00:46:33.000 –> 00:46:42.000
Well, so did the safe measure and grow assessment. Did you know our hypotheses?
00:46:42.000 –> 00:46:49.000
Is that this assessment, the strategic retrospective process that they really drive the 2 components required for a long-term, organizational sustainability, right?
00:46:49.000 –> 00:47:06.000
The generation of knowledge and the free sharing of it. And if we want to support those 2 competencies, right?
00:47:06.000 –> 00:47:11.000
That’s organizational knowledge and organizational intelligence.
00:47:11.000 –> 00:47:17.000
It’s critical that we influence those key disciplines of that learning organization.
00:47:17.000 –> 00:47:29.000
We talked about earlier. Right? That’s systems. Thinking personal mastery, mental models, building that shared vision and collected team learning.
00:47:29.000 –> 00:47:32.000
Now as part of my research, I did prove my hypothesis true.
00:47:32.000 –> 00:48:02.000
I do believe that practicing safe and engaging in not just the assessments, but again, those conversations, the alignment that generation of shared understanding it really does build a growth mindset and the feedback loop back to leadership enhances the entire system and really builds on that
00:48:04.000 –> 00:48:12.000
organizational knowledge. So I’ll leave you guys to really come up with your own thoughts and assumptions about whether you feel that it does have this impact.
00:48:12.000 –> 00:48:22.000
But in my paper I did prove my I proved myself right.
00:48:22.000 –> 00:48:30.000
So Christine, I’ll jump back in here for a second before we jump to, and just say, you know, I mentioned that I was skeptical of housing.
00:48:30.000 –> 00:48:41.000
This was going to be when we first went through this, but we did see success.
00:48:41.000 –> 00:49:07.000
In fact, and you know, I believe that this would work in almost any organization, although one of the keys was, we did have some pretty good leadership support when we started this, but the fact that we were able to show that the teams were were self aware of the problems were self aware of the problems, throughout
00:49:07.000 –> 00:49:16.000
the organization, the same problems that were being discussed at the leadership level as well, really kind of help to feed this to.
00:49:16.000 –> 00:49:39.000
And so I think that this could be done in pretty much any organization, and you would begin to see some benefits as long as there’s the time and the space to begin to insert some of these growth items into the backlog for work.
00:49:39.000 –> 00:49:47.000
Yeah. Tim, one thing that you didn’t touch on when you were sharing the the start of our use case right?
00:49:47.000 –> 00:49:51.000
Setting that stage is, I know we started with the same team and safe team and technical agility assessment.
00:49:51.000 –> 00:50:00.000
Does your longer term strategy include incorporating others?
00:50:00.000 –> 00:50:01.000
It does, and I mentioned that briefly, but I wasn’t explicit right.
00:50:01.000 –> 00:50:04.000
We said we wanted to create a roadmap for the future, that we didn’t want this to be one and done.
00:50:04.000 –> 00:50:28.000
And so what we came up with was that we wanted to create a roadmap for the future, that we didn’t want this to be one and done. And so what we came up with was that every so often, and our plan going in was that we would do that about every 6 months but then we would also begin
00:50:28.000 –> 00:50:50.000
to incorporate some of the other assessments, as well like the business agility, assessment, the one that gives kind of an overview across all 7 of the safe competencies, like the devops, assessment that would give some idea of the flow of value throughout the organization there and
00:50:50.000 –> 00:51:06.000
then eventually some of the other. The key there is that we would lay out a plan and track, not only for those assessments that we started with, were we actually improving?
00:51:06.000 –> 00:51:22.000
That’s why we wanted to do them over and over again at a periodic basis, but also to begin to take the data that was being given to us by the the assessments themselves that help us target where might we be weak and what assessments might we want to look at in the future.
00:51:22.000 –> 00:51:39.000
That would help us take a look at those with, you know, under a greater microscope, if you will.
00:51:39.000 –> 00:51:43.000
Yeah, that’s excellent. Right? Keep that cycle of continuous learning going.
00:51:43.000 –> 00:51:53.000
Exactly, and allow us to allow us to make those adjustments based on what we’re learning.
00:51:53.000 –> 00:51:56.000
So we did have a couple of questions in the here.
00:51:56.000 –> 00:52:17.000
We’ve got about 7 min left, and if you’ve got any questions in there, they’ve thought of as we’ve gone through year.
00:52:17.000 –> 00:52:18.000
Sure!
00:52:18.000 –> 00:52:22.000
Then then please go ahead and put those in the but I’ll I’ll take the this first question here, Christine, and then if you wanna handle the second one, and then we’ll figure out if there are any others after that there was a question about whether the agility
00:52:22.000 –> 00:52:34.000
health platform costs, and it does. Our client did let a contract to incorporate that agility, health platform into what we were doing.
00:52:34.000 –> 00:52:36.000
But I would say that to run these measure and grow assessments, you don’t have to use the agility, health platform.
00:52:36.000 –> 00:52:52.000
You can still get some basic analytics using just the spreadsheet version that you can download off the skilled, agile framework. There.
00:52:52.000 –> 00:52:56.000
So there’s some benefits to using the agility health platform.
00:52:56.000 –> 00:52:57.000
You do get some more in depth, analytics.
00:52:57.000 –> 00:53:11.000
But I would say that you would get at least a good portion of benefit from just having access to the the assessment.
00:53:11.000 –> 00:53:14.000
Questions themselves.
00:53:14.000 –> 00:53:23.000
And with the right excel skills, I think you could even add in some calculations, if you’re that smart, I don’t know.
00:53:23.000 –> 00:53:24.000
Oh, for sure. Yeah, I didn’t think about that.
00:53:24.000 –> 00:53:27.000
I struggle sometimes with math work. Okay?
00:53:27.000 –> 00:53:37.000
Excellent second question, can you share best practices in sharing the final health assessments with technology leaders?
00:53:37.000 –> 00:53:49.000
Well for us, you know a reoccurring theme as we shared throughout the assessments was, hesitancy and participating because of past change.
00:53:49.000 –> 00:54:03.000
Initiatives as well as really the need for folks to be reassured of their confidential participation, and we wanted to make sure that that was definitely a best practice that we carried through in our readouts to the leadership.
00:54:03.000 –> 00:54:27.000
So making sure that we were presenting the information as a consolidated art, sharing themes that we observed throughout all of the assessments of the different teams that we observed throughout all of the assessments of the different teams really allowing and giving the teams that space to have the
00:54:27.000 –> 00:54:41.000
vulnerability to retain that vulnerable space, to have the vulnerability to retain that vulnerable space and being open was really critical as well as making sure that the information we were sharing with leaders that it we weren’t just throwing data
00:54:41.000 –> 00:54:44.000
out just to provide data. We wanted to make sure the information that we were sharing really was actionable.
00:54:44.000 –> 00:54:53.000
So having in that that readout making sure that we had those leadership growth.
00:54:53.000 –> 00:55:04.000
Items shared as well as supporting information, so as facilitators, we weren’t just passive.
00:55:04.000 –> 00:55:12.000
Passively observing and guiding the conversation we were really working to form an understanding of.
00:55:12.000 –> 00:55:17.000
Why is this? Ask of leadership important? What problem is it causing?
00:55:17.000 –> 00:55:19.000
What’s the impact? So that we can really could really help leadership understand?
00:55:19.000 –> 00:55:33.000
Why their assistance and their servant leadership in resolving it was so critical and valuable.
00:55:33.000 –> 00:55:56.000
Yeah. Christina, I wanna go back to that very first thing you mentioned about anonymizing the the data when we briefed it up to leadership, the we were very transparent with the teams as we went through this of this is what is going to be shared with leadership this is what is
00:55:56.000 –> 00:56:00.000
not going to be shared with leadership, and basically what is not going to be shared with leadership.
00:56:00.000 –> 00:56:15.000
And basically, we told them that the conversations with leadership, and basically we told them that the conversations we have the specific attributions, we have the specific attributions of growth items for the teams what is going to be shared with leadership this is what is not going to be shared with leadership and basically, we told them
00:56:15.000 –> 00:56:28.000
that the conversations we have, the specific attributions of growth items for the teams would not be shared with leadership, but it would all be rolled up and anonymized at the art level or leadership brief out and we think that helped build that trust that we had with the teams to have those open
00:56:28.000 –> 00:56:32.000
and honest conversations with the teams, and to leaderships credit.
00:56:32.000 –> 00:56:35.000
They didn’t ask about specific teams, either. And we thought that that was really nice as well.
00:56:35.000 –> 00:56:48.000
And they took the they took the the growth items that we had passed up to them.
00:56:48.000 –> 00:56:49.000
The organizational growth items. They took it in stride and said, Yeah, this is really good.
00:56:49.000 –> 00:57:07.000
These are some things that we really want to work on, and we appreciate the teams of being willing to express those to us as well.
00:57:07.000 –> 00:57:16.000
Yeah, we all like, we all want to know how we can help others and how we can help really improve, how we work and where we work.
00:57:16.000 –> 00:57:21.000
So getting those specific things was really appreciated by leadership.
00:57:21.000 –> 00:57:27.000
Definitely.
00:57:27.000 –> 00:57:40.000
Any other questions anybody has.
00:57:40.000 –> 00:57:41.000
I’m good. With silence.
00:57:41.000 –> 00:57:47.000
Well, if you guys, yeah.
00:57:47.000 –> 00:58:08.000
Well, I was just gonna say, if anyone has questions on how you can implement the safe measure and growing assessments in your organization, if you’d like to have, if you have any conversations or questions on how to facilitate the assessment, how to engage leadership, or really want to learn more please feel free
00:58:08.000 –> 00:58:16.000
to reach out to Joel, rising, and any one of us will be happy to help guide you on your journey.
00:58:16.000 –> 00:58:24.000
Absolutely. And I also want to say just thanks for joining in today on a Friday.
00:58:24.000 –> 00:58:35.000
And hopefully, this was. This was insightful for you and for those that have not gone through a safe measure and grow assessment and not facilitated one of those.
00:58:35.000 –> 00:58:41.000
Hopefully, you’ll take the opportunity to do that. Based on the information that we’ve presented today.
00:58:41.000 –> 00:58:47.000
We found this helpful in our our own coaching journey, and so hopefully, you’ll find it helpful as well.
00:58:47.000 –> 00:58:50.000
Hope you all have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend.
00:58:50.000 –> 00:58:55.000
It’s been a pleasure being with you today.