Career Kaizen #2 - Your Story Matters - Storyline

Monday - Where do You Want to Go?

Everyone is on a path. Paths take us somewhere.
Is yours taking you somewhere that you want to go?

Some say that if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter where you are. What are your goals? Where do you want to be, and what do you want to be doing in 6 months, a year, 5 years?

The ScrumMaster role opens up many opportunities. I've seen people thrust in this leadership role suddenly realize that they have leadership in them. I've seen people fall in love with the coaching aspect, and others grab onto the educator and trainer pieces.

Homework: Ask three people if they have, or have had, any goals. What are or were they?

Tuesday - Your Strengths, ScrumMaster Roles, and Goals

The ScrumMaster job has many roles: Servant Leader, Impediment Remover, Coach, Educator, Organizational Change Agent, Evangelist, Chief Mechanic, Shepherd and Guardian of the Process, Facilitator.

Some of these might leap out at you, or perhaps are what you're already doing and especially love.

Your strengths might shed some light on why that is. Perhaps you love coaching because you're someone who loves building deep relationships or like watching and helping people develop and grow. Or perhaps you love the mechanic role or trying out some experiment and seeing what happens because you love making things great (just being average bugs you). Or you might love being the impediment remover because it's always a clear checklist that means you've had a good day when all those things are checked-off.

When you combine the insights and fuel of your natural strengths and passions coupled with goals that move you forward and motivate you, you'll have a powerful catalyst for change and growth. Not just for you, but a better you to serve and help the team.

Homework: On a sheet of paper, list your strengths in a column on the left, and on a column on the right, list at least five roles of the ScrumMaster, preferably the ones that appeal to you. Draw a line from each of the strengths to a role to which it relates, is a part of, or might help. You might have a strength that relates to several roles, and a role that is related to more than one strength.
Pick one of these roles, or the ScrumMaster job as a whole, and use it to help determine some goals. Extend one goal for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and 18 months.

Wednesday - What's Your Story?

We, as humans, are story-driven. We love movies because they tell stories of someone who wants something and overcomes some conflict to get it. We learn best as our brains web new information much stronger via stories.

You already have part of your story - you want something. You have a goal. Now, the reality is that life can be difficult. What challenge, opposition, conflict can you anticipate that might get in the way of you achieving that goal? Is it finding the time? Getting the money? Getting approval from someone? Keep in mind that overcoming these challenges is part of what makes it all worthwhile - you come out better for it, and it makes it a better story to tell others (perhaps even inspiring). Sometimes it takes practicing on overcoming smaller challenges as part of smaller goals.

Leverage inciting incidents as a tool to move forward. These are decisions or actions that catapult you forward, partly because there's no way back. It's the signing up for the 5K race, the email to the boss asking for approval for training, submitting a proposal to speak at a conference, showing up at that local code camp or user group, emailing that famous expert to ask for advice. Not sure what happens next, but something will, and it will be different from all the nothing that happened the weeks and months before.

Homework: Create a Storyline account on mySubPlot.com and enter your goal and whatever other information you can. Take a look at some of the other goals in the community.

Thursday - Make Your Goal and Progress Big and Visible

Just like agile, make your goal a priority
and the progress towards it big, prominent, and visible.

Well, you now have a goal. Perhaps you've had some before, as well. Many people have. New Year's Resolutions are very common. Approximately half of Americans make them. But less than 10% succeed. Why is that, and what can you do about that?

One of the best things that you can do to help yourself is to tell others about your goals, preferably people that you're close to and care about their opinions. Next, just like agile, make these priorities and the progress towards them big, prominent, and visible.

Movement on some goals needs to become part of your daily routine, a habit, and therefore also have a low effort or barriers to see and update them. You might use post-its or index cards on a wall, a goal or habit tracker app on your phone or computer, scheduled reminders or appointments with yourself, or a chart that you print out and pin to the wall.

Homework: Choose at least one way that you add working on your goal as part of your daily or weekly routine. Choose a way to make the goal and progress big and visible. You could add yours as a comment on this post as one step.

Friday - You're One of the Few...

Congratulations - you're one of the few that has a goal that's known by others, has clear next steps, and has built-in support via schedule and visibility.

This is very significant, not just for you and these goals, but in other ways, too. At the meta level, you're dealing with how to change, how to improve, clarity on goals, the value of making progress. These all relate to your team and the business. And, in addition, as a servant leader, you're being a model to others on how to improve, how to grow, dealing with challenges, ambiguity, inertia, and perhaps bad history.

Well done.

Video Fridays: Watch the Storyline video by Don Miller

Weekend Warrior: Take a look at some of the posts on the Storyline blog. If this has really resonated with you, take a look at the books and audiobooks on the topic, such as the Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business , Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, and The Dream Giver (a little corny, but simple and powerful metaphor), and grab one.

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Learn from Project (and Life) Mistakes Using the 5 Whys

You don't have to be using Scrum to have regular lessons-learned sessions on your project. I think these meetings, called Retrospectives in Scrum, are more helpful when you've gone through the entire  Define-Build-Test-Acceptance cycle, but they were all too infrequent when at the end of my traditional projects.

When journaling this morning, I found myself doing the 5 Whys for root cause analysis on something that happened yesterday, and I thought it might make a good (although somewhat painful and embarrassing) example.

Problem: I went the wrong way on Interstate 10 yesterday and it changed my 1.5 hr drive (left early) to 3.5 hours. Why?

1. I didn't put the map directions on my phone to navigation mode. Why?
     A. I didn’t because the battery was too low. Why?
          1) It was low because I didn’t charge it at the client. Why?
               a. I didn’t charge it at the client because I didn’t have a charger in my backpack. Why?
                    I. I didn’t have one in my backpack because we don’t have a spare at home.

Solution: Buy one and keep it in the backpack for client use only.

How would this look on your project? Here's another real example.

Problem: Requirements keep changing (sorry if none of you can relate...). Why?

1. The team makes assumptions that are later found to be wrong. Why?

     A. The Product Owner doesn't put in enough detail. Why?

        1) He doesn't have much time since he's on the road visiting clients. 

Solution: Long term - Find another Product Owner who can dedicate more time. Short term - have a Business Analyst flag and clarify the product backlog item requirements that are thin. 

Although great for projects, these are also great for life (and when's the last time you took time out to work on your life?) Here's some for you to try:

1. I, or significant others, feel like my work-life balance is way out of balance.
2. I'm not motivated, much less inspired, with my current job and workplace.
3. My job/this project is too chaotic.
4. I don't feel like my team is close or acts like a real team (unity, group decisions, comfortable with each other, clear purpose). 
5. I/we keep repeating the same mistakes.
6. I don't feel that I'm growing in my career and/or personally.
7. I don't feel I've done anything significant (worth mentioning in my Christmas letter) this last year, and next year looks like it will be no different.

If some of those resonate with you, try the 5 Whys on them, and look at resources such as the Storyline conference, The War of Art, Drive, The Leadership Summit, Love Does, or your personality and strengths with Myers-Briggs (free), StrengthsFinder or Action & Influence. 

If you're a ScrumMaster and wanting to grow, I'll be having a something out soon that provides small, actionable steps, day by day. Reach out to me and stay posted. 

The 3 Steps of a Change Agent

From July 2005 - 

------------
Welcoming Reality - The Furious Indifference to Our Cause

For all my talk, I weekly come back to the question "So how do we put this into effect here where I work?" It is not uncommon for those in IT to rarely see the ideal solution, method or process actually put into practice.

Recently I've seen the confluence of, at first glance, unrelated items. When seen holistically, though, these items point to what I feel is at the heart of leading change in the workplace.

You Need to Fight, but Fight Right

"A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine." - G.K. Chesterton

In business terms, a leader is surrounded by all the reasons things don't change in their workplace. If he is to succeed in making a difference, he needs to combine a strong desire to keep his job and favor with his boss and colleagues with a strange carelessness about being fired. He must not merely worry about keeping his job and what those in influential positions think of him, for then he will be a coward, fearful, and he will not make a difference. He must not merely wait to be fired - saying things and taking actions that communicate not caring about being fired or about what his boss or those in influential positions think of him, for then he will be fired and he will not make a difference. He must seek to make a difference in a spirit of furious indifference to whether he actually succeeds in creating change.

First, we must decide that we're going to fight to make a difference. This is the "strong desire for living." Making a difference takes effort, commitment, determination, and often much more physically and emotionally exhausting than just accepting a substandard environment.

Second, we realize and accept that making a difference is a desire, not a goal. Desires are what we strive for, goals are what we can actually achieve. Often, people and circumstances get in the way of what we hope to achieve. If they get in the way of goals, we can become frustrated, angry, resentful. With desires, it is easier to accept failing to attain the end result in its entirety - not getting closure. This helps one to keep from reacting. Instead, they respond. The focus is on the action(s) or logical argument(s) in question positions being discussed, not the people themselves having the dialog.

Third, we find a way to put ourselves second to the cause and the possible consequences of advocating the cause. This is the "strange carelessness about dying." We stop looking out for "#1" - ourselves, as paramount. I haven't found a way to be effective in making a difference when I am thinking of myself first because I keep getting in the way. That is, while trying to convince someone of my point, fear and doubt keep me thinking in the back of my mind, "What if they think this is a truly bad idea? If they did, would they communicate that to my boss? What then would he think of me?" At times, I become competitive. I approach discussions where a decision outcome will occur as a zero-sum game where if I don't win, I'll lose. In these cases, I must win because if I don't, I'll appear weak, foolish, less-than, that my ideas aren't sound. This emotional reaction can be especially strong in a public forum, such as meeting or an email thread with many recipients.

These three points are simple, but not easy. Making a change to the way things are done involves other people. We are interdependent in all but the smallest IT organizations. And it is our interactions and relationships with these people (and their attitudes, beliefs, understanding, motives, agendas) that are principally the challenge.

If You Want a Queen, You Have to Be a King

There's a saying in courtship that if you want a Queen, you have to be a King. This means that if we want a certain reality, we have to be the type of person deserving of that reality. We have to be a person of character if we are to expect a working environment where there is good, healthy interdependence and commonality.

Creating the unity necessary to run an effective business... Requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for the lack of nobility or personal character in developing relationships.
In addition, we can see on an even deeper level that effective interdependence can only be achieved by truly independent people. It is impossible to achieve Public Victory with popular "Win/Win negotiation" techniques or "reflective listening" techniques or "creative problem-solving" techniques that focus on personality and truncate the vital character base. - pp 202, 203; The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey

The combination of these two quotes from recent reading and my concerns on how to truly create change in our IT department occurred as I reviewed a document this week. It was a going-away present for a coworker. This coworker is widely viewed as an exceptional and very well respected senior level developer in our organization. The gift was a list comprised of individual submissions from his colleagues of the positive traits they saw in him. For all his wealth of technical and intellectual talent, by far the most common items in the list were "patience", "persistence", "friendly", "helpful", "giving." After working alongside him for a year, I had been mistaking the dominant reason he was so effective. It was because of his character, who he is. He was a great worker because he was a great person.

To be change agents, we need to commit to the cause, let ourselves be second, hold on to what we want with open hands, and have the kind of character which nourishes good relationships (and effectiveness) with our coworkers.

What Happened When I Spoke Out

My recent post about being a change agent reminded me of one of my personal favorite posts I wrote back in July 2005 titled "Welcoming Reality - The Furious Indifference to Our Cause."

I was writing about a time when I was in the midst of a bad work situation, but at the same time was inspired by a great worker and some great change agents (several of whom didn't last). Specifically, I was wrestling with "Do I save my skin and compromise my values, or do I step out and speak my mind, and whatever happens happens." The risk was real. Over the previous year and a half, I had kept a tally of 17 people in our group who had been let go for various or mysterious reasons. As a manager, I tracked this and other turnover in our department. We were something like 300% over the average of the rest of the IT world.

Well, I chose to speak out.

And I was let go as part of a second round of layoffs couple months later. Terrible? Yes, and no. I'm writing this now to let you know:

1. I lived, and 
2. I'm better off

When I talk about courage in my ScrumMaster classes, I look at students in my class and I think of this valley in my life. I know that these situations can be scary for many of them.

But these tests and trials develop something inside us that you can't buy or get from a book. It's only from experience. And your people will respect you for your courage and selflessness (can't buy that, either). These tests develop perseverance, and that gives you genuine character, which leads to hope. Hope is a core leadership trait per Jim Collins and Gallup (see The Stockdale Paradox and What Followers Want from Leaders). Personally, since that time I've gone on to speak my mind more often (and learned to position, influence and build support much better - great skills for a change agent) and live a life where I don't dread coming in to work, no matter what the situation.

I'll re-post it soon, so keep an eye out, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it -

ScrumMasters, I Hope You're Being Criticized!

This recent post, The Catch 22 of Criticism, was great. Here's why it matters to you.

ScrumMasters, one of the most powerful aspects of your role is that of Organizational Change Agent.

Whomever started your large company, he or she surely didn't say to themselves at the beginning, "You know, I'd really love to create a large, slow bureaucracy. That'd be awesome!"

Yet, the company grows. And adds dev, QA, and business analyst silos. And grows. And adds management layers. And grows. And adds project management layers. And grows. And suddenly management is wondering why it takes so long to get anything done.

As the change agent, you're giving constant, prompt feedback to what is keeping your product-focussed team from being super productive. And I've seen again and again pushback from those in the middle who are fearful, or resistant to change, or have other motives, or have something to "lose." But...

Don’t let it change what you’re doing entirely or who you are. You must understand the type of criticism, the story line, and the intentions. Don’t be reactive, simply sit back, enjoy the show.
The catch 22 is that if you’re being successful at pushing boundaries, you’ll get criticism. If you aren’t getting criticism, you’re not pushing hard enough or actually making change. So look at criticism as a gift, or a sign that you’re doing something right. 

By the way, I love the storyline mention. That's the topic of a session I proposed (and was accepted) at Agile 2013. More on that to come...

You Already Chose Failure (or Success)

Ever wonder if it's going to work? Is this role right for you? Can you successfully lead this team? Will the project be a success?

Although we may have the skills and experience to be successful, much more is determined by the intangibles - passion and drive, collaboration skills and empathy, work ethic, vision and values.

We all have roles, and those roles are our decision filters on how we behave, and therefore our success. We are acting out of those roles whether we realize it our not, and often it's not the roles we want to be in, but default or roles not appropriate for the situation.

I might know a lot about parenting, but if my primary role when I come home is (still) business, then my actions are based on that, and I fail. I'll be trying to get one more email done. I'll be thinking about upcoming meetings and not listening to my family. I won't be present emotionally, even if there physically. And I certainly won't be leading my family to a vision of what we can be, something they get excited about and get behind.

The roles of the ScrumMaster include Servant Leader, Impediment Remover, Coach, Educator and Evangelist, Organizational Change Agent, Chief Mechanic and Shepherd an Guardian of the Process.
Our roles act as a decision filter. When you're at work, try consciously wearing one of these hats. That way, we take initiative in stopping our default responses or reactions and start acting from who we want to be.

For example, if I'm late to work, my default role of employee or reports-to-someone pulls me towards trying to sneak in unnoticed. Now, my teammates or those I lead will notice this. I've not only missed a coaching or learning opportunity with them, but I've actually modeled just the behavior that I don't want  them to have.

Instead, if I am late to work, but I'm wearing the role of servant leader, I'm thinking of my team first. I transparently check in with them, letting them know that since I was late, I might have missed something they needed (or worse, the daily stand-up). I might model vulnerability about how I'm wrestling with my own inspect-and-adapt cycle on how to solve this on-time problem.

ScrumMasters, Be Different from the Inside Out

Reading up on Design Thinking, I came across this part of the process and was dumbfounded.

"Set aside emotion and ownership of ideas."

Oh, really? Is it that simple?

Personally, I've practiced self-awareness, servant leadership, and been coaching teams and individuals for years, and I struggle with setting aside emotion and ownership of ideas. What about people who don't even understand others, much less themselves?

And here's where I think Scrum and Agile struggle. We can teach the framework and values, but it doesn't equip us for

• the people issues, 
• the resistance to change, 
• the turf wars and politics, 
• and the fear, uncertainty and doubt that these newly minted ScrumMasters will face back at their organizations.

Besides the classic resources I would recommend, I can honestly say that I think the ScrumMaster or agile servant leader needs to be a different person from most of the people in the workplace, different inside than 95% of the people around them.

1. They need to be hopeful and believe they will prevail, regardless of the circumstances. And when bad things happen, they need to believe that good will come out of it.
2. They need to be patient, continuing to work and work towards the goals. Not patient in terms of days or weeks of not seeing results, but sometimes months or years.
3. They need to look for the good in people, while having firm and respectful boundaries that cordon off the bad.
4. They need to know the worst of humanity that impacts our efforts in the workplace - ego, selfishness, inability to admit mistakes or lack of knowledge, revenge, fear, control, but not react to these when they come out. 

Not should they not be naive about these negative aspects of the workplace we navigate. In fact, they will have even greater impact if they have been the victim of some of these abuses and not only come through it, but have no resentments. They dealt with the emotional baggage, have forgiven the person or people, and let it go. These are people that no how the game is played, don't get angry about that reality, and are still effective in getting immediate results with that environment, while slowly helping to change it and make it less dysfunctional. When South Africa began to deal with all the residue from apartheid, Desmond Tutu actually asked for just these sort of people to lead the cultural change.

Finally, they need to have a source of fulfillment that doesn't depend on their results - personally or with their projects, because these results may or may not come, not fully in this person's control. Yet they should still be a leader in that they always have something to give others, and they can if their personal tanks are full. This could come from their own personal growth, or how they've helped others grow.

We want these leaders in our workplace, but they are rare gems indeed. Be the change you want to see. Don't try to act like someone amazing, that will run out. But start becoming someone amazing, and then the actions just become natural.

Find a guide to help you grow:

• The Road Less Travelled - A classic text on personal growth
• Storyline - a new workbook to trackback the events in your life and how they are telling a story of your purpose here
• How People Grow - Thorough book by well known psychologist
• The Search for Significance - Another workbook that is a guide for finding significance over success

and be inspired - find some heros:

• Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World - A fun read by a surprisingly unconventional, almost wacky attorney who founded Restore International, a nonprofit human rights organization operating in Uganda and India.
• The Hiding Place - The riveting story of how a middle-aged Dutch watchmaker became a heroine of the Resistance and a survivor of Hitler's death camps.
• Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption - An 18 year old leaves everything in American to start an orphanage in Uganda.
• Pranitha Timothy - Has lead dozens of rescue missions to free slaves.
• Freedom Writers - A movie about the teacher in the inner city who changed lives.
• Amazing Grace - The movie of William Wilberforce who began the movement to end slavery in Britain.