Leadership in Change: From one stable state to the next (#6)

“Show up. Keep up. Shut up.” (Change agent’s creed, borrowed from golf pro caddy creed) - Stephan Neck

Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, and Niko Kaintantzis join Stephan Neck in this ‘reprise’ episode with Leading Change from the Lean-Agile Leadership competency.

We start by sharing our passions: Mark’s thoughts about the beauty and perils of change roadmaps, Ali’s explanation of why checklists are a good treat for anxious people, and Niko’s emphasis on necessary visions as a base for new behavior for change success.

In the first part, we reflect on how change agents/leaders apply the Implementation roadmap. The pros of a “checklist” of a logical sequential set of steps help overcome change anxiety, but it also has its perils, forgetting that the transformation is an iterative journey. A transformation vision helps as a crystallization point to stay focused.

The second part sparked a discussion around “leading the transformation rather than just supporting it”—significant change requires engagement and high interest by senior management as early adopters to generate change in the early and late majority of the people in the respective context. Our goal: building networks of influence.

The final part dealt with the attitude of SPCs/change agents: Make other people successful - we should leverage our change knowledge to support and enhance the effectiveness of leaders in leading the change.

Cast:

Stephan Neck(Moderator)

Niko Kaintantzis

Ali Hajou

Mark Richards

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPCs unleashed a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague safe summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPC, T Stephan Nick and Niko kaintances, Dutch, spct, ali hajou and Aussie safe fellow, Mark Richards. We're committed to helping SPCs grow their impact and move beyond the foundations. Taught during implementing safe each week, we explore a dimension from the frameworks competencies. We share stories about our journeys, the secrets we found and the lessons we've learned the hard way. And welcome to another episode of SPCs unleashed today. We finish our series of doing reprises of our early episodes, we are talking about leading change, and we are hosted by Stephan. So over to you, Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 0:48

thank you very much. Mark today, hooray. Ali is back, and in this show, he will explain us why checklists are a good treat, not only for anxious people, and how personal agendas will influence change. Mark will exchange thoughts about the beauty and the perils of change road maps and how to build networks of influence. And Niko will emphasize why a vision is necessary, and I think so too, it's necessary and why we should anchor new behavior for change success. Before I'm asking my mates what their passion is about this dimension, let's quickly dive into the core competency of lean, agile leadership. We already covered mindset, values and principles we covered two weeks ago, leading by example, which is also tied to this dimension, leading change. And if we summarize leading change, perhaps in one sentence, it states, successful organizational change requires leaders who will lead the transformation rather than just support it. And with that, I'm handing over the talking stick to Niko. What's your passion when it comes to leading change? Yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 2:13

I remember the first episode. We've done several of the old one, and we had discussion, a pre, pre discussion about what is about is the boring one. It's not a boring one. And my passion comes really from the old cotter book. I bought it when I was a software developer, and I really loved it, and somehow it influenced me, and my passion is really with the leading change book. Why? Because there is already new books, new papers. So let's accelerate out. Why do I still stick with the old book? Because I'm old. No, because of the vocabulary. So I like, I like the focus, the weight on vision. Work on the vision, communicate the vision, which, in my opinion, is not done too often or too much. And the other point, Ali. The other point is I like the number eight, which goes in direction of anchor, the approach. So building in in the DNA of the organization, that's what I understand under anchor, the approach. And I like this old vocabulary better than the new one in the accelerate book. That's why my perspective, my passion, is with the old book, Leading Change with culture passion.

Stephan Neck: 3:26

That's good listening to Niko, I hear the eight steps of Kotter and now handing over the talking stick to mark your passion, your surprise or challenge when it comes to leading change. So

Mark Richards: 3:37

to be honest, my passion isn't cutters eight steps and and I know that's been safe basis for a very long time, but I am a huge fan of Chip and Dan Heath and their work on change, particularly the book switch, and their whole metaphor around, you know, the elephant the rider and The path and that notion that you've got to appeal to people's emotions, you've got to appeal to their intellect, and then you've got to make it easy for them to make new choices. And that's the heart of my thinking about change and leading change always. I

Stephan Neck: 4:15

can see some interesting discussions ahead in this hour, handing over to Ali, he was upset when he was listening to mark, yeah. So like,

Ali Hajou: 4:24

how is that possible? I mean, I've tried to so with a couple of my the laces that I work with, or transformation teams that I work with, to even challenge ourselves to change the order of the eight step approach from culture and whether that makes sense. And we've tried that a couple of times, and it's a, you know, it's a typical fun conversation, you know, during a beer or two. But up until now, we haven't, we haven't found a way, no luck, and I'm very much a fan. Fan of just like Niko of the original eight steps somehow, indeed, that language just resonates a little bit better. Not really, sure. Maybe that's me, just me, but so I'm really much a fan of the eight step, the original eight step approach of John Connor,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 5:21

I'm so happy you're here.

Stephan Neck: 5:22

Ali, perfect, yeah, I like it. Ali is back. So controversial discussions, so quick highlight from my side, sometimes you lead from the front, sometimes you lead indirectly. And I think this tension as a change agent. It's probably worth being discussed as well today. So let's move into a interesting discussion. And let me start with the obvious one already mentioned by you guys, the implementation roadmap, which is based on cortus, eight steps. So Niko, you told us your heart is where there is a vision. Could you lead us into this important topic when it comes to implementing change? Yeah, if

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 6:14

take the perspective of the roadmap, it's really a way to go, and where do you know where to go if you don't have a North Star, a vision, a lighthouse, whatever. So you need something far away, blinking that you know, with all the fog, there is my way to go, where I have to explore my way. And it's the same with transformations. I remember when I was a young developer, and maybe some of our audience young SPCs have a same strange feeling. I always thought this developer, if you have visions, you stop smoking pot. I don't need the vision. I just need work and I go, but yeah, imagine you do a walk with a family, or a hike, and you don't know what is your goal. Then you will get lost. So via this importance of vision, I just learned it during my journey, during my journey as a developer, and late as architect, and now as as coach, is that it's really an important one, and not only having it so I remember many, many mandates I asked, I asked the people who hired me, Okay, what's your vision? Oh, let me check it is somewhere we have one. I'm sure just we have one, oh, I don't find it, but we have a vision. Yeah, okay, next step. So nobody knows exactly what the vision is, and I will say it later, another story, but let's say it now. I really love when people have a system demo, a review, or whatever, when you're looking back what we achieved, and they connect with the vision and proudly say, hey, with this piece of feature, software, hardware, whatever, we can go one step closer to that vision we have, and then quote that, and they quote the vision, and that's really what I love. So making a transformation from being a developer and saying, What the heck is this vision workshops? I want to work in code. What the heck are we wasting time to it's a really, really important piece of step, step of peace, no, whatever important part.

Stephan Neck: 8:07

Okay, so it starts with a vision. If you have a big picture, if you are on a change journey and to, to pick up the thread from you. Niko, former chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, he always said, whoever has a vision, go to the doctor. But that's not that vision, right? We talk about a vision that brings us into the future. So I would like to hand over to Mark implementation, road map, big picture, lots of stuff to consider. What are your thoughts about road maps? I'm

Mark Richards: 8:43

going to distract us for a second. Niko, if the change road map was an animal, what animal would it be?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 8:49

An elephant?

Stephan Neck: 8:54

Elephant in the Room.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 8:57

If I go to Mark's passion, it's exactly what we need. We need to also convince the elephant, the inner motivation to move. And with the vision, you are able to to lack the carrot stick for the elephant. So you need the vision that the elephant moves. So if the if the roadmap was an animal, it would be an elephant.

Stephan Neck: 9:19

But like disruption, I like this disruption. Mark, so handing back to you now you have to pick up the thread, road maps. What about road maps?

Mark Richards: 9:28

All right, so I'm gonna just riff on Niko is vision for a minute. Because one of the places where I think I struggle a little bit with the way that cos change model is often interpreted is it feels like you're trying to install a change. And for me, I want an organization to become good at changing, which is a very different thing. I don't want to introduce a change and go now it's been successfully introduced. I want to improve our ability to change. But. Yeah, having said that, the other challenge that I think I have, and that I've seen people fall into, is when you think about what's your vision, and you look at the implementation roadmap, there's a temptation to go, my vision is to successfully implement safe and and if that's your vision, it's the wrong vision, because you should be contexting how you implement safe in terms of how it's going to help you with your real vision. Now, on a more positive note, when the roadmap came out right, we had years where safe change guidance was basically train, everyone launch trains, and then dean wrote this series of blog articles, and we got the implementation roadmap. I think it was back in about, say, 4.5 and what was good at the time was it was like, here's a real playbook. Fundamentally, it was, if dean or the sai crew got involved in implementation, this was the playbook they followed, and it gave this nice set of steps, right? Do this, then do that, then do that. Run this training at this time, follow this sequence, and the world will be good. And in terms of people's intellect, right? And in the switch model, we'd be appealing, of course, to the rider, not the elephant, having what looks like a very logical and recognizable path to follow is very comforting. If I follow the next 20 steps and tick off the next 20 things on the checklist, I will succeed. And that can be confidence inspiring. That's the power. The peril is that they aren't always the next 20 steps. And in fact, if you think about an organization's journey, when you look at the roadmap, there's a temptation to go this is a linear path. You know, you start at the beginning and you get to the end. The truth is, it would be more accurate if you installed a whole bunch of pictures of snakes and ladders on it, because your true journey is iterative, right? There's one part of the roadmap that's that that is linear. It's launching a train, right? There is a pretty standard recipe most of us who've done it for a while follow, but everything else is what? What's the next thing to do is the next thing to do? To launch a train? Is it to launch a portfolio? Is it to you know what is truly next and and I think that skill you need to have of sensing to go, where are we and what's the next thing we should do, as opposed to going, I can look at a picture and I'll tell me. The next thing to do that for me is where it's really important. Yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 12:27

what I really love here is that it's not a checklist that we force the people or we force the elephant through. So we have to do this, this, this, this. For me, it's an inspiration to say these are offers I can make, because some people said this is a logical next step, but maybe for your environment, something else, like the leather the snake, you said, is the next step to go, to switch quadrant or to switch steps. So this, I think, important for for for good SPCs, you're not the master of the Beast by doing step by step by step is how can you motivate the elephant walking the next and giving offers? And that's the idea of the roadmap. Not a you're not the oh, we are. We are on tape. Let's not use, not use this word. Let's choose another one. You're not somebody who's forcing the two things. You are somebody who's offering listening

Stephan Neck: 13:21

to you guys. Let me quickly summarize what I heard so far. We're not looking for the snake oil, right? We're not looking for the perfect road map. We're not implementing safe which would have upset me seven or eight years ago if I would have heard that, but it's, I think it's important to understand. But nevertheless, if you only have a vision, if you don't get into action, you're probably doomed to do nothing, right? And I'm looking, I'm peeking over to Ali. What's probably needed in that context of a roadmap, sensing what comes next and helping people to go into action. What would you say is important? What should we consider?

Ali Hajou: 14:06

Okay, let me, I think let me be a little bit controversial here, because I tend to slightly disagree with respect to the implementation roadmap, not necessarily the implementation roadmap, per se, but what it tries to do, whenever any transformation or change is required, of course, there's a there's a pain somewhere in the organization that need, that we would like to somehow fix, and that needs, indeed efficient. It needs to, you know, you need to understand where you want to go to, and that needs to be extremely contextual, so that people really feel it, and that everybody's basically saying the same thing, which is of thinking about what Niko just said, a vision of stop smoking pot, saying. I'd also to a Dutch person, typically, that generates a vision, maybe. But the thing is, I'm, I'm very much, I'm very much a fan of checklists, knowing fully well that checklists can completely be misused, and as Mark very well mentioned, can provide discomfort of Okay, nice. I now see the future. I see that there are 10 steps to success. Hence, if I just follow those 10 steps, magic will happen, and all will be good. And then we're done with the change. Well, then you know that's the risk. That's the risk with those checklists. Checklists indeed need to have Snakes and Ladders installed in it, because life is way more volatile than just a 10 step checklist to success. However, you know, these transformations are not done by or not led by a single person. There's a huge amount of people that are typically involved that are going to become extremely anxious, if they're, you know, if we're going to say, You know what, we're going to change. And we have a strong and beautiful vision that is really understandable by everyone, but we have no idea what the next step is. Just trust me. And that's a very difficult place to be in, because just trust me in a transformation that might have impact on hundreds or eventually 1000s of people is a very difficult, let's say, statement to make. There should be some sort of phases that you propose with the asterisks or the disclaimer that those phases will change during while we're going through each step, while we're trying to figure out what is the next thing that we need to do, but we need to be able to sort of provide a little bit of, you know, clarity on the path forward, so that and knowing also fully well that along the way we might choose a different path, which is fine, but then we're done, we're going to create A little bit of more clarity on the alternate path. But I think having having some steps in place with indeed, that disclaimer, I think it just it alleviates the tension, or the, I don't know, I called it anxiety that people might have in these big changes.

Stephan Neck: 17:41

I like the way you guys laid out your thoughts. And in trainings and workshops, I sometimes use an analogy that Mike Tyson came up with. He said, You can have a fight plan. You go into the ring, what happens to your fight plan. It changes immediately. If the opponent hits you, smack that in the face, right? So punches you in the face? Yes, yeah, it does. So summarizing what I've heard so far, a road map is a guidance. And within those different steps, you sometimes you need clear guidance. What are the parts in those steps? How can we use really good, helpful checklists, not to reinvent the wheel every time, but we need to sense what is due to do on that journey, right? And with that, I would like to move away a little bit from the road map, which, as we've heard, the parallel could be. It's too mechanical. It's kind of a sequence you go through and hey, we're there. We implemented safe. Let's talk about people right. Leading Change means we have people behind change. And for me, there are two aspects, those who lead, and what's our job as a change agent, as an SPC in that area of leadership when it comes to change, and I assume there are a few very valuable thoughts in Mark's head when it comes to that dimension people leading, rather than just supporting the change.

Mark Richards: 19:27

So I think one of the things that's really important in my experience is to know that when you're thinking about change and ambition and opportunity, the change you can attempt is shaped by the leader that's interested in making it, and whatever level of seniority and influence they have will put a boundary on the next step you can take, and it needs to be their change, and not your change. If you're an SBC and you think it's your change. Change, then you're doomed to fail. And so you're looking for those leaders who are hungry. And I know for a long time an organization would come to me and say, Hey, we want to do safe. I'd say, fantastic. I need your CIO and 20 of your key executives in a room for two days for letting safe, and they go, Well, that's not possible. They're very busy and important people. I'd say, well, there's no way you can succeed with safe. And they go, Well, you know, we just want the easy way. I'd say, fantastic. Here's the number of a consultant who will be happy to help you, help sell you some services. But I want you to have a chance of succeeding. And if you can't get your leaders to spend that time to understand the path they're about to embark on, it's not going to happen. And you'd get into that room, and there would be people who were basically prisoners. There were people there who were learning so they could figure out how to make sure it didn't go forward. But you could always see some people in the room going, Oh, this is going to help with my problems. And that was like my scanning environment to go, these are the people, right. You can see them in that room that the two or three people who are deep in the discussions. You can see their peers paying attention to what they say. It's like, oh, they're the ones, right. How do we go and figure out how to help them? And, you know, that's for me, it's the beginning. It's ALi engaged. Do have influence, whatever it is, right? It could be. The reality is, the only excited leader you can get, only looks after a team or two, fantastic. That'll be the place to start. There's no point starting somewhere where you haven't got an engaged leader, but then it's really important to not ignore everybody else. And there's a temptation, I've seen a lot of coaches and SBCs fall into it, to go there are the enemies of agile, and we're entering a war, and we want the supporters of Agile to win and the enemies of Agile to lose. And that's a way to guarantee that you're eventually going to hit a brick wall. You've got to be building relationship and listening to the perspective of those other leaders who perhaps aren't your early targets, but in terms of sustainable, long term success, it's going to be absolutely critical for them to join the journey and become leaders themselves.

Stephan Neck: 22:21

Hitting a brick wall hurts. What could we avoid hitting the brick wall? Ali or Niko, who's first,

Ali Hajou: 22:29

Eeny meeny, miny moe because my, yeah, I know Mark said exactly what I what I wanted to say. Have the my I'm very biased to just anyone who is extra involved. So the people that are that feel the pay that really would like to spend the time i I've really tried too much, too often, to spend time to onboard people with influence, but not much interest, and that's just waste a waste of time. It's just a waste of time. I much rather have people that have way less influence, but really are willing to spend the time and to, you know, make the change efforts theirs, and to be involved and to be proud on whatever is being created, and to reach out and to, you know, make it part of their career. Not so much because it is just good for their career, no, but because they care to much rather work with these kind of stakeholders or leaders, because I think they maintain momentum, and that's what you need. I

Stephan Neck: 23:44

don't know how you experienced transformations or being in a change area. Sometimes I see teams. They are willing to do something, but they don't have the influence, or they have the right power to create the short term wins, or even to start a change initiative that really, that really is fruitful. So any experience in that domain? Niko, yeah, yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 24:16

absolutely. Let's go to two steps back. What the audience doesn't see is in our preparation, we have a Miro board, and there are sometimes visual elements in it. And I'm a visual person, that triggers a lot to me. So what we worked in preparation is a metrics you maybe know from, from the RT toolkit or lace toolkit, where you try to find out where are my stakeholders, based on the on the on the level of interest, this from left to right, and the level of power, or influence, from top to bottom. And then we have quadrants. And what we heard about now in this episode is how important is to have people who have an interest and also an angle, a power influence, to do the change. And in my experience, a. But some people forgot that this tool exists, which, by the way, it's really an old one. So an anecdote once I introduced it to do the stakeholder management and find out where are our supporters. Do we have forgot somebody, and at the end of the workshop, somebody told me, Wow, this agile stuff is cool. I thought to myself, Oh, that's black and white. This slide, it's so old, I had to find it from the museum. So sometimes we forgot about what we have done in the past. But going back to victory questions, experience about about how to handle those people, I think one important thing is also to realize that the supporters of the interest level and the influence level is also dynamic. It's not something you do in the beginning of your mandate or transformation, and then you see, oh, that's Peter and John. And those people have an influence as the right level of interest. Let's start with them continually. We have to monitor what's happening. One of my stories, what happened to me is we started with a with a art level, with a level of value streams, designing these value streams, finding them, mapping them, whatever. And then after some time, we switched the portfolio level. And I think we've been there for a year or longer, and somehow we start forget becoming part of the system and going to portfolio, we didn't ask ourselves, who are now our supporters, who are our enemies, or whatever? And we did just continue with the same people, with the same guiding coalition. And then we nearly failed. We realized we have the wrong people on board. We have people supporters. We just forgot they are there, yeah. And we we really forgot that this freaking metrics is, is dynamically. So what I want to say with this long monolog is it's a dynamic thing. Just see where your supporters are, see who have, who has influence, who has the interest in helping you, in working with you, and have these people on board. And this can change interest, can change influence. Can change. You can promote. You can What's the opposite of promote, the other way around. So just care that you can demote. Oh, okay, let's put it on my demote. Thank you. So yeah, it's really part of your job. Otherwise it will not work. As Mark said, you need the people who are with you and can change things and can, can bring the whole and then refer, was this the question originally, Ali, you asked,

Stephan Neck: 27:25

yeah, that's you threw a curve ball. Niko, and you brought in this perspective of the people doing change or being in this change. It's a dynamic situation. It depends on the context, right? And I'm picky. I'm going back to the dimension that stipulates where we need people who can lead, not just support. Okay, your experiences with people only supporting or delegating change away to change leaders, change people, SPCs, whatever you call them, and those who really step in and say, Okay, I'm a leader, or even people that surface becoming a leader. And I would like to start with Ali, your experience.

Ali Hajou: 28:20

Let me give you a super short extra executive summary of a huge transformation which went on for more than five years, which actually started with Well, let me just call it some internal consultants to be the momentum makers for the change. Of course, the change, this was a, you know, a huge Agile transformation. Use the scale to agile framework as much as possible. In some areas, it was, it was just Scrum. Some areas, it was something else. But the momentum makers over there were sort of internal consultants. Those were the SPC, some coaches, some people that became RTEs, and sometimes I was a manager, line management, or whatsoever, who was really involved in launching the first train and the second, then the third and so forth. That was okay for, let's say, starting up the first couple of trains just to gain momentum. It was all exciting, completely new, and these big pi plannings. What the hell is happening here? However, eventually, is theater. The theater sort of is not really required anymore. People have seen, you know, those initial big things and, you know, really maintaining a change key, you know, how do you call it, making it stick, anchoring the change. It really requires a different mindset and a different buy in of everyone. Do. So a couple of years into the transformation, we figured out that there were quite some teams and quite some trains that were just, you know, just following some routines, but not really changing. You know, yes, there was a PI planning, and then before you knew it, you got these state statements that everyone have heard before, like, Hey, can we make the PI plan just one day? Oh, as a matter of fact, we've done some preparation already before. So, yeah, actually, we can maybe skip the PI plan. Maybe, maybe you can just send our product owners to it. That's it. You know, it just so it became theatrics. It became sort of a not zombie Scrum, but it became a zombie safe, referring to a book from Barbara and Casey A Fauves, a fantastic book called Zombie Scrum. Anyways, so it had to change. It really had to change. The transformation approach had to change. And what it became is a leader, led transformation, and I like that a lot. What does that mean if there's a department, if there is a certain business process, something that is an operational value stream that's just extremely struggling, then there is pain, and there needs to be a senior leader who will initiate the change and will hold on to it, and has very clear responsibilities. So it's, it's something that, like what we've created, is something that actually looks a little bit like a Stage Gate process with certain phases of a transformation that you know, early on in your transformation, you need to have your change story written down, communicated, and your people should communicate that as well. To communicate that further, that is like a checklist, a check mark. All right, so you've done something that is your responsibility, dear senior leader, and I'm talking about VP and EVP level, and we had a couple of these things. So all of a sudden we had senior leadership who, for instance, was not involved, and therefore did not do anything with the transformation. No consultants or SPCs or whatever were involved, because there was no leader there to really pull, pulls at this thing. But on the other hand, there were also environments where trains were started with people that were extremely engaged and with with senior leadership that really owned the transformation. Why? Because the transformation, I mean, let me rephrase that senior leader wouldn't get any support from any late member if the person didn't have, I don't know, a succession plan for various different roles, such as having a good story about, if you want to become a product owner, what does that mean for your career? Rather than, you know, then, then it is a leap of faith. So all kind of, all kind of small little, I don't know how to call it, wasn't really a checklist. Was also not a blocker, but almost a prerequisite for a leader to really be engaged. And those leaders and the transformations related to them, they they are really successful. The people in there are really constantly changing, evolving and finding new tricks and ways to communicate and connect and to bring value. I found that very inspiring.

Stephan Neck: 33:41

I like your story, Ali, because it shows there's a change of attitude of those who are in the change, right? So further stories from the trenches. Niko, attitude changing. How do leaders behave in such an such an environment, exactly.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 34:02

So engagement is a really important part, but not only for their own good. So, oh, if I'm engaged, I will get a promotion, and the next time I will be C level or whatever. So maybe, maybe asking the audience now for yourself, when was the last time you really had engaged leaders and they were engaged for the company or not for themselves. Break, break, break, pose. I had many of those. I don't know why, and it was really always cool when I had this part of stories, not leaders, ordering and transformation. So like ordering five pounds of meat or meatloaf or whatever, they just part of it. They are engaged. And I have one story. I think it was 80 years ago. It was a death of transformation. Sahe was then still young in Switzerland and not so known. I was already an SPC, but I was still a developer. And we've been two consultants from two components, and both not selfish. So greetings to people. Peter was really a great in Denver, having having a competitor, not caring about, how can I smart out Niko and me not how can I smart out Peter? It was really working together. No no, no personal goals, and having managers or leaders, which really showed up. They tried not to show up, by the way, for the first meeting. But we both, Peter and I said, Okay, if you don't show up, this means it's not important this information and we will leave, because in our contract is saying we can also leave anytime you can fire us, anytime we can leave, anytime. And that was a shift in the mindset that really we were sitting there in a room without windows. I still remember it, and just looked at the watch say, okay, they will not come. Okay. How do we write our resignations? And then that appeared. And then they appeared every every Thursday was our our working session, they left their single offices. Both were a C level person. Both had departments with 300 600 people. They appeared each Thursday on the on the working day of the today, we call it lace. Then it was the information team. And they did work, normal work, engaged. They were there on demos. They were there when we created crazy ideas. So one idea was to change the door colors of every team who were successfully applying DevOps. So changing from black blue doors to red doors. Then we realized it all allowed, so we start handing over beach flags. And they really supported this stuff. So they were there recognizing success. And was really a huge thing, having people engaged. And I remember they told me in the kickoff, if you're successful with DevOps, one of us would have lead the company, leave the company because I had the head of death and had the head of ops, and I told me, If you succeed, one of us will be head of nothing, and we'll have to leave the company. And both didn't care, and it was really a great thing. But the downside, after they've been successful, and the CEO was also there, engaged, everything was great. The CEO got a promotion, a call from somewhere, some another company. He left the company. And what happened? We failed with step eight of culture anchored the change. What was is that the board hired a new CEO with the old requirements. They just hired a young CEO with no experience in DevOps, with no experience in Agile. And about, that's the new CEO. When he arrives the new company, he gets his buddy with them, and he replaced the half of the management, and we rolled back, yeah, three years. That was when I felt failed, the first time with with a step eight of culture. I thought if I was successful, nobody would think about hiring again the old CEO. They would just replace him with the new skill. And there was a downside, but Yeah, the question was, experience, about, about, about showing up, and this was the first part of the story, and was really a great thing, which I still get a goose bumps on my where really sees, it's really emotional for me, and see, wow, that was really cool stuff, with people not thinking about themselves, about the company, and we achieved so much thanks

Stephan Neck: 38:06

Niko. In life, there's always some trade offs finding the right balance when it comes to this, what's the attitude also, of change leaders and change agents. And I assume, Mark, you have some vast experience when it comes to these trade offs and balances.

Mark Richards: 38:28

I actually I'm going to take a sluts detour, because when I was doing my prep, you love this golf Caddys creed Stephan, show up. Keep up, shut up. And I've seen you use it a bunch of times. I think it's on your LinkedIn profile, and you had it there to think about leading change. And I sat and I went, how on earth does that relate to leading change? So before I tell a story, I'd like you to help me understand how in your head, show up, keep up, shut up. Relates to leading change. Thanks

Stephan Neck: 39:03

for the curveball, I think. And that's my experience in most of the change initiatives ambitions I've experienced. It's what we already heard. It's like, let's introduce safe, let's implement safe. And we always say, No, you don't want to do that, we ask the question, what's the job to be done? Why do you want to change? What's the big picture? And that all of a sudden, then brings up and surfaces the different agendas you have on the C level, or even on business unit leads, right? How do you bring that under one umbrella? And that's why I like the golf pro cat is creed, show up, keep up, shut up, right? You as a change agent, as an SBC, your first on the scene, your last to go home and eat, because you prepare the environment for the golf pros, although they know how to play, you are a. Crucial element in the game, because you probably know this golf course better than they do. You give advice you have to keep up. And keeping up is also you you carry the bag, or you pull the bag. It's not the golf pro, right? And when the Golf Pro is playing. When transformation happens, you better shut up. Make yourself obsolete. You stay in the background. And for me, true leadership is a transition from my agenda, what I think should be done, what I think as a change agent should be done. How do I transfer that through my activities, into what we heard from Ali and from you guys, that they take up the work, they create the momentum, right? And I'm happy as a change agent if I see that momentum happen and persist over the over the whole game, right from hole one to the last hole you just you do your job, and as well, like we said, with the transformation roadmap, show up. Keep up. Shut up. Is not a linear sequence. Sometimes you have to show up quite often. Sometimes you have to keep up pretty fast because you're trailing, but most of the time, I'm happy when I can shut up. And it would that will be my two cents.

Mark Richards: 41:30

I'm glad I threw you that curveball. That was a beautiful explanation, and I'm going to add to it, because it very much resonates for me as an SPC, thinking about letting change. You're the caddy, not the golfer. And it's very tempting to go, you know, I want people to know that I did a good job. Blah, blah, blah, but if you are really laser focused on right you found that right later. We've already talked about finding that right later, and then you silently and invisibly make them successful. And there might be a whispered conversation, if you're a caddy, it's a whispered conversation to go, you know which club is next, but you're constantly sitting there going, how do I put them on the stage and make them successful and bring them home winning? Because the other aspect is, when you lead into change, you're taking risks, particularly those early change leaders, they are taking risks, because if the change goes wrong, they're going to be the people who wear it. But if they're successful, then other people are going to go, and other leaders and their peers are going to go, oh, I want some of that. So really lasers, focus yourself on when you found that great change leader, how do you amplify their success and make them somebody that other people want to emulate? And you know, there's a mantra for me, which is great change leaders, create other great change leaders. And part of that for you as an SPC is you're supporting the leaders you've found and becoming great change leaders. But it can't stop with those first leaders, because they can't carry the world on their backs. You've got to help them find and pass on that greatness and recognize that as you expand that that change leadership, it's often nothing to do with influence. And you know, I my, one of my favorite leadership quotes on this is, is Jerry Weinberg, I'm sure I've said it in other episodes. A leader is somebody people will choose to follow, right? Find those people that people will choose to follow and support them in creating new world.

Stephan Neck: 43:44

Thanks. Mark. Change is an opportunity for what Ali, what is change as an opportunity? What would you say one or two steps change

Ali Hajou: 43:57

is an opportunity to retain talent, because if things are not working, talent will fly away, and it's going to be your fault. That would be my two cents.

Stephan Neck: 44:09

Thanks. Mark. Change is an opportunity for so

Mark Richards: 44:13

I'm going to say it's an opportunity to tap into the change management skills already in your organization. And again, here, there's probably a clue as an SPC, you don't necessarily have deep change skills. You know, if you're Niko, you've probably gone on a course and got a diploma in change management, because he does that for anything he cares about. But for a lot of us, we're not necessarily experts in change management, but most organizations have them. And you know, there's an aspect of change, which is, you know, a leader showing up and a leader being present. But there's another aspect, which is, there's an awful lot of work in terms of producing good communications, crafting messages, so much work involved and tap into change management folks. And that was the. Focus of a guidance article I put out last year for safe on sort of leaning into changing communications competency. Don't ignore them. You've already got them there. It might be a new kind of change, but tap into the skills that you got

Stephan Neck: 45:14

and your opportunities. You see Niko, when it comes to change is

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 45:18

the time for reflection. What is my goal? Is the right product I'm having is that the right environment? Do my people have the right skills? It's a time for reflection. Stop breathe. Reflect, cool, not stop breathe. Stop breathe. Reflect, sorry,

Stephan Neck: 45:36

that would be good. Inhaling, exhaling. Okay, just one sentence in no particular order. Who would like to start?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 45:48

I love always starting from the end, so wherever I land, how my demo will be. And in this case, where is my North Star? And then think backward. Oh,

Ali Hajou: 45:59

nice. Like reverse engineer,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 46:02

nice on the change level, I have a, yeah,

Ali Hajou: 46:05

reverse engineer, the change. Oh, that's nice. I think I'm going to steal that one from you, Niko. Because Why mine was inspire me with the list, and I will inspire you with my choice, reflecting that, yes, I'm a still, yeah, I love those lists. But lists are not the only thing you are. Checklists here you might be able to deviate. Okay, I'll shut up

Stephan Neck: 46:29

and I'll stick with show up, keep up, shut up, and over to you. Mark,

Mark Richards: 46:34

um. I'll close this out with cultivate change agents,

Stephan Neck: 46:38

yep. Which leads us to, how do you measure and grow for maximal impact? And this time, we have an interesting picture. It's 123, or three to one. Niko, you have chosen a specific measure and grow area. Why is that? Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 46:58

so Niko, explain yourself.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 47:02

You're still boring. It's maybe just because of my personal backpack I'm carrying with me, with me. For me, it's a sign if a leader expressed the vision. It's the sign of kind of I'm involved. I'm saying something. I insist in this, and with that, I inspire people. I inspire people to work and make them succeed, and I'm part of that. So the whole leaders expressing the vision for change. It's, for me, an important thing, because many, many things come afterwards, like the thing you have chosen, but it's a really important thing in the beginning, and it's maybe my backpack. That's why I was there. And Mark insisted this time that have only one posted, and it's my one post. It not my, my whole journey on the Miro board. But why have you chosen yours? Please. I want to get it because it sounds so boring,

Ali Hajou: 48:00

Mark, now you will have to explain yourself, because Mark very sneakily changed, moved it posted to another metric.

Mark Richards: 48:10

It felt so wrong just joining the pack. I fought it while I was picking and then I listened to Niko, and I went, Yeah, I've got to tear away. So obviously, Niko, you went for expressing the vision for change. And I got to tell you, I've heard lots of amazing vision speeches that had no follow through. So I saw your option. I went, No, I'm rejecting that, because it's easy to make a great vision speech. It's about hey sharp afterwards. And then I got tempted to join the herd and talk about cross domain guiding coalitions, but at the last second, I've switched away to leaders create a safe environment for change that supports risk taking without fear of consequences to self esteem, status or career. And the reason why I switched there, and I know I was torn when I was placing my vote before the show, and now I've decided to go this way, coming back to switch and and their notion of shaping the path, what they fundamentally said is, you're encouraging people to make new choices, right? That's the heart of any change. Is you want people to make good choices. And you know, you've appealed to the rider by appealing to their logical mind. You've appealed to the elephant by motivating their emotions. But what they're talking about when you shape the path is you want to make it easy for them to make new choices. How do you make it easier for them to move in the direction that you'd like them to move? And it's where I think it just comes back to the psychological safety. Is that notion of creating a safe environment is shaking the path. You can make a new choice. It's safe to make a new choice. So that's what hit me there.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 49:54

But if I can go back to mine, there's also a second sentence, maybe you have to finish reading it. Mark, I. It says that by having this vision, you engage in power employees to make the change succeed. So it's not only blah blah blah blah management and the nice PowerPoints, it's also with that you engage them to do the right things. So

Mark Richards: 50:15

maybe I'm with you. Maybe I'm battle scarred Niko, because I must have been 2223 and the owners of the company that I was working with at the time was the one of the two times in my life I've actually had a full time job, and I was leading their product development space. And they said, Read this bookmark. This is the way we want to take the company, and it was a book by a guy called Ricardo Semler who ran her Oh, nice company with Brazilian yep, that's the one yes. And this company just had an amazing Simcoe, amazing employee engagement and ability for the employees to shape the future of the company, and I've read that book. I was like, Oh, I'm so excited about this, and that's how they gave me their vision. And then we chatted a little bit more about it. I was like, oh. And I started to act on the future that that book described. I need to discover that many of the things that were most appealing to me about that vision and most inspiring and created the most engagement in me weren't actually things that they had any intention to follow through on.

Stephan Neck: 51:26

Which leads leaves us. Ali, with leaders form cross domain, guiding coalitions and empower them to plan and guide the change. Did you choose this one? Ali, I'll second you. I think,

Ali Hajou: 51:41

I think out of the list of metrics you know, that I would like to focus on, I was trying to search for the one that showed leaders to act most, rather than the blah blah blah to be much more, you know, acting. So, hearing Niko, hearing mark, my interpretation was that the metric leaders from form cross domain, guiding coalitions and empower them to plan and guide the change. I thought that was a very, I don't know, sort of inspired momentum, making type of active, type of metric, but I think I misread that. I don't know, but, so that's the reason why I chose it same for you. Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 52:28

yeah, it's the same for me, um, because I think the one that Mark has chosen just before the presentation is similar to one we had in leading by example, right? And we see it's leading by example and lead change. Leading Change is tied together. Maybe some stuff is missing. So to conclude this session, let's start with uh Ali. What's missing in measure and grow, or what would you add? Or what would you change? So

Ali Hajou: 53:00

what I wrote down was that leaders visibly, comma, silently, comma and constantly perform actions required to form, communicate, install, support and evaluate change last one for Mark

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 53:17

plus mark plus two.

Stephan Neck: 53:19

So leaves us, Niko and me. Niko, anything

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 53:24

in my case, when I go through the list, it's so much the sender of the communication. So I need the leader that doing this. I need a leader for an environment. I lead them for the vision I need. I need leader does, does, does, and then miss the other part of the communication, the receiver part. So I would like to have things like, how many people are able to state the vision in their own words? Or, Yeah, so like, like the receiver part is, for me missing, and this are the people able using their own words and or State Division without thinking. So it's not only sending, it's also receiving, and this part somehow was missed, or I haven't read it in the in the sub context,

Mark Richards: 54:07

I had a comms team a couple of years ago who chased exactly that Niko. They had this big campaign around getting to the point where and that their OKRs were set around this, getting to the point where you could talk to anybody and they could tell you their why it was a very powerful exercise. Yeah,

Stephan Neck: 54:26

I would like to see a measurement, or something like a ratio, that shows me people transitioning from supporting, yeah, change is good, but I'm just standing on the side of the ski slope to hey, I'm leading. I'm on the ski slope. I'm with you guys, and I'm leading, no matter if I'm leading from the front or from the back or, as you said, Ali, visibly but silently and constantly supporting change. And with that, I'm handing back the talking stick to Mark.

Mark Richards: 55:00

All right. So that brings us to the end of this episode, and, in fact, the end of this series. So if we think about the way we started the year, we started the year, we went, Okay, our end of year retrospective last year said it's time to do something dramatically different, and we made some big changes. We ran some episodes with the new changes. We went, This feels much better. We had feedback from people who are listening to go, that's much better. I actually want to listen now, as opposed to I listen because I feel obliged to so.