Find the Balance between Sugar and Sustainability with Agile Portfolio Operations (#20)

“Without consistency and standards none of this works. With too much consistency nothing changes. You have to steer and constantly sense and course-correct.” - Mark Richards

Mark Richards and Niko Kaintantzis join Stephan Neck in this episode with Agile Portfolio Operations from Lean Portfolio Management.

We kick off by sharing our passions: Mark’s thoughts about finding the balance between consistency and standards so that it works, but not too much of it so that nothing changes; Niko’s emphasis on avoiding large solutions by mastering this dimension correctly.

In the first part, we reflect on how to ensure that decentralized ART execution is effectively coordinated across various teams and value streams to maintain alignment with the overall business objectives.
Mark elaborates on the minimum viable level of centralization and finding the value stream with the biggest contribution to an Epic so they can take ownership and lead an effective collaboration. Niko mentions “coordination” as an important element to avoid “false” large solutions, which needs facilitation by an RTE organizing a Pre-Plan meeting.

The second part sparked a discussion about emphasizing “Lean thinking principles” to foster operational excellence and innovation speed. Stephan initiated this part by stating that the speed of innovation is dependent on flow, which requires discipline for sustainable speed and space for innovation.  Mark reminds us that "Without standards, there can be no kaizen"—portfolio members have to establish and agree on shared standards. Niko adds that testing business hypotheses with MVPs is crucial for innovation.  Mark and Niko mention the human element - working with people and connecting people to find “pockets of excellence.”

The final part dealt with engaging and empowering the LPM function, VMO, LACE, and RTEs to actively support and enhance the value streams. The portfolio's power is to see patterns—it’s necessary to do the chores (in a disciplined way, involving senior management): get data flowing, and pre-work done by small groups of people enables informed insights and incisive actions.

The closing “just one sentence” highlights “When it comes to change, find the balance between sugar and sustainability”, “The portfolio deserves dedicated people” and “Excellence is a quality that people really appreciate because it is so hard to find”.

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 SPCTs Stephan Neck and Niko Kaintantzis, 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. G'day and welcome to Episode 20 of SPCs unleashed today. We are down to the three of us. Ali is off on yet another holiday, so I guess that means we all get to speak lots more, because there's no long stories from Ali. But we are finishing off the Lean portfolio management competency with a look at agile portfolio operations, and we are in the capable sporting slash military hands of Stephan, take us away.

Stephan Neck: 1:06

Thank you very much, Mark. So in this episode, we will talk and discuss keywords like coordination, support, enablement, theory and the like. So as Mark mentioned, the last dimension in this core competency of Lean portfolio management is talking about the coordination and the support of decentralized art execution. Someone has to do the work, and someone is doing the work. And the other one is, how do you enable operational excellence? That means we probably will talk about the active engagement of like vmos, the Value Management Office lace, the RTEs as process authorities on the trains, and also those enablers like Scrum Masters and team coaches. So looking to my mates, what is your passion that let you get up this morning or still being up like Mark in aussieland when it comes to this dimension Niko,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 2:14

the case is the whole coordination excellence thing. So my passion is avoiding large solutions by mastering this dimension we're having here,

Stephan Neck: 2:25

sounds like a huge task. Okay, over to you, Mark,

Mark Richards: 2:30

absolutely, I loved so much when I saw your special passion in the prep nights Deco. Mine is finding balance without consistency and standards. None of this stuff works at the portfolio level, but with too much consistency, nothing changes. So finding a way to steer and constantly sense and course correct to go. Have we got enough freedom for people to innovate and evolve, but have we got enough consistency for it all to work together? That

Stephan Neck: 2:59

sounds interesting. And to round it up, my passion is I like a good performance. What a type it is. So let's dive into this dimension. One of the purposes of this dimension is decentralized art execution. So let's open the discussion. Do you have any stories? Do you have any any ideas? What's your experience when it comes to decentralized or decentralized art execution? Because yeah, we want to see good performance. We want to see good people at work, and not only everyone doing individual work, but really showing a good collaboration. And let's start with Niko. I saw some interesting notes.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 3:49

Yeah. So when, in my case, when I need a huge collaboration, it's always about dependencies. And for some people, dependencies is the negative word, but the dependencies can also be something good, because if you have dependencies that have a value so you have strong, nice words for them. And in my case, it's the question, we have bigger value streams, or we have two, three value streams, who are coordinating? How can you master this? And then you end up on the portfolio level. So coordinating, working together with, with with those is really an important skill. And in my case, I save the customers. When they want to have a large solution, they need my signature that they can move to large solutions. Otherwise, I don't allow it, and they just, what the heck? So you have no mandate for that. You're external. What are you doing? But it facilitates a discussion about, how much do we coordinate, how much do we decentralized? Do we need this large solution? What can we do on the portfolio level? And I think. All the last years, I did say, if I had only one real large solutions and the other, I was able to either convince them not doing that, or they went to large solution when I left, and now they're returning back away from the large solution. So this whole decentralizing, this whole coordination thing, it's for me, coupled with large solutions. Yes or no, so again, you need, you need this coordination. In my case, I have a separate, dedicated coach on the portfolio level looking for all these issues, because you don't have a solution train engineer. You don't have a solution manager. You need somebody taking care of this, because portfolio is already under the water, they're already working too much. So these are a little bit my stories. What are you interested more? Or what resonates with you?

Stephan Neck: 5:51

It's interesting listening to you. I think, okay, if I would hire Niko. That sounds like conflict, because, yeah, do some coordination. And now these guys tells us, don't do this large solution thingy, because there we would have all the elements. We would have some some events and stuff like that. And now you tell us otherwise. And I I'm not sure if I can read faces, but Mark, you took some breath.

Mark Richards: 6:24

Look, I'm with Niko. Is what's the fewest number of layers you can have and interesting? You know, I think a lot of people, they stick a large solution in there, and it's just another layer. But if you go a little bit further into looking at this, think one of the places to start is if you think about turn the ship around, and that video that we love to play in leading safe, and I always love introducing that video, because it's like, you know, decentralized decision making. It's hard, right? And everybody looks and goes, Yeah, it's really hard at our place. And you say, well, just imagine figuring out how to do it on nuclear submarine. And then you play the video, and it starts a good conversation. But I think there's a really important thing that comes through in his messaging, which is the fact that in order to get it to work, you need clarity and competence. And what's the role of the portfolio? Well, how do we get clarity when we've got all potential conflicts and coordination challenges between our arts as often as thought, that's like, whose priority wins. I need something from you. You need something from me. It all gets difficult. So part of the key puzzle piece here is, can the portfolio give that overarching clarity that enables people down at the train level, at the base train level, to go. Let's look at the bigger picture. While we're trying to figure out how to work together on this, we've got something to roll it back up to. We've got the organizational clarity to know how to resolve it ourselves without having to bring somebody else in. And then the flip side of that is the competent side is, have we got the tools and the skills to work it out ourselves? Now, if you come back out of books and theory lands and also just get a little bit more practical with it all, you can take patterns, and if I just go straight to teams for a second, one of the things that I will spray so to any scrum master who's new learning keen to grow is don't be the coordinator. Your job is not to connect people and coordinate them. Your job is to create connections. And whether that's creating connections between your own team members, don't be a go between. If you figure out one team member really should be talking to another team member, start the conversation and walk away. Don't be the bottleneck between your team and another team. It shouldn't be you who's driving the way your team collaborates with another team on the art you should be forming a way for your team members to collaborate with the team members of the other team. And then then life's not stuck going through you. And when you come up to the role of the portfolio and coordination, you know, it's that same principle applying is, how do you create the connections between people? You know, the number of times as a coach, particularly back in the old days, when we actually got to walk around the floor, that I would talk to somebody who was telling me all about a problem, and I would go, follow me, and we go, and I'd know exactly who they really should be talking to, and I would stand there for three minutes and get the conversation moving that they really should have been having, and then I'd walk away and leave them to it, because I just started the conversation. I knew they could sort it out between themselves, and there's a very different level of ownership when that happens. So you know, much like Niko strategy, how do you find ways to get the members of your value streams, members of your arts establishing peer to peer protocols? What do you put in place to enable those peer to peer protocols for that effective cross value stream coordination? Right? And knowing that more clarity you've got at the portfolio level, the more effectively a lot of those going to work. And then all you've got to do is add an escape valve when it really is too tough for you to resolve between yourselves. We've got a way to easily have someone step in. From a broader view,

Stephan Neck: 10:15

I'm listening with a lot of interest. Yeah. Niko Nico, come on. Come in. Sorry.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 10:21

Please stop me if you do a detour. What I would like to know from you both is when I listen to mark or when you listen to mark, you realize how important these skills are, but they don't come from free and those people on the portfolio have enough else things to do. And in my experience, this dimension is the one people just not ignore, but just yeah, it will come by its own. But I think it's not possible. So I would like to know from both of you, how do you master this challenge? Do you have extra people there, or is it just the Lay's team doing this work too? Or are your clients so smart that they realize they have to be coaches? So how you master this kind of work? I can tell you after mine, but I really want to know first from

Stephan Neck: 11:06

you. Let me pick up the thread. Yeah, Mark, just brought in the human element, right? One might think this agile portfolio operations is about practices and methods and and listening to both of you is, is like what we should try to find is, is there a united way of thinking, talking, discussing and then behaving? And that's all along the people who do the work, no matter what they do at the moment, how they do it, and how do we lead them into a more critical, unified way by bringing in practices or good approaches. But as Mark said, Don't go in between and try to connect stuff that's already there. You might you might rather surface it or ask the right question that people sitting next to each other really start talking. I just finished a prpm scrum master courses series. Interesting. We had joint sessions during the days of those two roles, and one would think normally they talk to each other. No, they don't. And now they're in a room, and they have to talk to each other, and they have to establish something like an information coherence I know something that the other guy doesn't know. How do I convey this information? And actually, we're talking about human beings, about people, and we're not talking about maybe the structural elements of what is agile portfolio operations, because we said the key word is coordination. Or how do you establish some support? What do you think? Mark,

Mark Richards: 12:55

I think I'm going to add a little bit of flavor to that, because, I mean, I so agree with the human side of it. But also there's a secret sometimes that says you put something into place as a practice or a process that triggers and enables those conversations. So the thing that always comes straight to mud here is what I have forever referred to as the handshake Kanban, and it was a portfolio that probably had about 6000 people in it. The way that they were structured, there was an incredible level of interdependency between them, and every quarter the craziness of dependency agreements and priority conflicts that went on was just insane, and they tried all kinds of mechanisms to sort it out, and we went, you know what? There are some decisions where we need a lot of very senior leaders to make a call, but there are a lot of decisions where we don't so how do we get something moving that enables us to filter out all the decisions that can be resolved locally, and then have a pretty short, sharp, you know, resolution at the end. So we created this thing we called the handshake Kanban. And the handshake Kanban was anybody who needed somebody, something from another area, would create a ticket, which was, this is what I need. I need this. This is why I need it. This is what it's a part of. This is what it feels like in terms of the expectation. And it could be as simple as, I need two of your subject matter experts to turn up twice a week to a meeting, or it could be, I need a big bit of work. And the kind of states in the Kanban were actually states as the agreement progressed. It was a request. The request was being processed. There were clarifications being sought, and obviously getting towards the end of the Kanban was we've agreed, and everything's locked in. And it was actually my portfolio team, who you. Facilitated this. Kanban set it up and evolved it. And we got to a process where was over about a two week period. The beginning of the two weeks, the senior executives of the portfolio would stand up and say, here are our clear priorities for the quarter. And they were using OKRs. So they published, these are the OKRs. These are the top rocks we're trying to move. The handshake process would happen, and there would be hundreds of tickets flowing through this Kanban and negotiations backwards and forwards, and before long, probably 95% of them were just being resolved peer to peer. And then we'd have a resolution session where we'd get back together with the executives and say, What was the stuff we couldn't resolve? What are the outstanding tickets that were were stuck in the handshake campaign, and we'd make calls because they were those would be the kind of hard, conflicting priority calls. Having that tool and that process in place to trigger the conversations was a really important bit of it. And, you know, in the beginning it was, you know, two weeks a quarter, and the people started to go, why do we have to wait? And we started to move to that being just a continuous Kanban for helping people interrelate with each other. So there's very much a human and a relational aspect, but it's also and if you go back to switch right, you got to shape the path. How do you make it easy for people to have these conversations? So

Stephan Neck: 16:21

I heard from you mark this peer conversation, or bringing the right people together based on what they know, on starting creating this this information coherence allows this alignment, right? Yeah, and then tying it to, as you said, what's the biggest rocks we can move and where we can't do it, let's find a better way where we then might add more people to our peer group, and find out what is really alignment, and how do we move forward, right? So you heard two answers, Niko, are you happy? Because you are. I'm

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 16:57

happy with that. I'm happy with that. And thank you for allowing this teacher was very valuable. Thank you very much.

Stephan Neck: 17:03

Anyway, it's called a discussion and not following a script, right? So some of the keywords, like coordination, we already covered that a little bit. Let me throw in another aspect of agile portfolio excellence, one of my topics I really like is, what is innovation? And when you talk about the innovation, what is the speed of innovation? And innovation could be small steps, small improvements on a daily basis, on a cadence basis, but there are the big leaps. And in this dimension, there is a lot of guidance regarding what type of Lean Thinking principles you could use. And again, from your experience, where would you start focusing to leverage this excellence on a portfolio level? And I would like to hand the talking stick again to mark, because I'm, I'm fascinated when you talk about Lean portfolio management.

Mark Richards: 18:06

All right, so if we're going to talk lean, I'm going to talk Tai Chi, ano, straight away, cool without standards. There can be no kaizen. And this is probably the challenge, right? And particularly if you think about when people normally start lean portfolio management, they've got arts in motion, but there's a bunch of arts, and every art has done some stuff to make it work for themselves. And no two arts will look the same. And you know, goodness knows what they are. Might be the different definitions of done. It might be different. Kanban states for their ad Kanbans, and then all of a sudden the portfolio comes in, and you're starting to try and assemble new views and to build a bigger picture, you have to introduce enough standards to be able to start to build that aggregate view. And this can be a challenging moment, because all the arts push back, and they go, Well, that's not very agile. And how you find a way to get to that where we do have shared standards so that we can have the bigger picture is a really interesting one. And if you go to, well, what's the principle that you're playing with here? Really, you're playing in the systems thinking world, and particularly you're starting to think about local optimization and global optimization, because what each of those arts has done is they have achieved a local optimization. How do we make this work best for us, in our context, with our people, for the solutions we work on? And now you've got a portfolio going. Actually, I want to optimize a different level of system. The boundary of my system is no longer the art. The boundary of my system is the portfolio. And what you know, as soon as you start to dig into systems thinking, is that sometimes to achieve global optimization, you have to do some local sub optimization. It's a little bit worse for you because it's better for everybody. And. This becomes the journey of agile portfolio operations, and the temptation is for a group of portfolio experts and a portfolio coach to go. I know a better way for everyone, but it's clear we need a shared standard about x. And so here's a new standard, everybody, please move to it. That doesn't tend to be a great way to play. A much better way to play is to go. We have a problem to solve. For example, we might have decided that blow time is going to be a significant portfolio metric, but because of the way that different people manage their Kanbans and their backlogs. There's no obvious way to consistently report on flow time. Ah, so there's our problem. We need to start to treat flow time as a first class citizen portfolio. We've got no consistent way of doing that. How do you then enlist the members in solving that problem together a shared standard that's actually co created by the people who are going to follow. It's a much more powerful shared standard. But then you follow the Toyota practice that says you put a date on it. We've got a shared standard. We agreed it today. And then, if you think about, you know, the way that a Toyota leader is trained when they walk the floor and do their GEMBA walks, they look for standards that have old dates, because a standard with an old date is an indication that no improvements been made in that area for a while. So you've got to enlist people in CO creating and then beyond that, you've got to build a reflection cycle and a continuous improvement cycle on saying, what are we learning from this standard? How are we going to evolve that standard together and recognize sometimes the evolution is to take something away.

Stephan Neck: 21:43

It's interesting. Mark You brought back this recipe for success. How to move from local optimization to global optimization, right? I really like that, not by preaching stuff, but really to facilitate. They find the way, but you still need, need alignment. And again, we started this part of the discussion with the notion of innovation, one of, one of the Lean Thinking principles, includes that you have hypotheses, and there are some really huge strategic hypotheses that you have to test somehow. So maybe your experience Niko, when it comes to this part of shifting from local optimization of an art or a team towards okay, there's a strategic intent. How do we visualize that? How do we bring that in on the portfolio level, so that we are really excellent in treating this innovative aspect

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 22:47

perfect? It's exactly what resonates, what Mark said before, the system thinking approach, and for me, much more important than the flow and the limitation of the arts. Because if you have a perfect flow, and the art is perfect working if you have garbage in, they just are perfect in delivering garbage out. And for that, you need this innovation, part this hypothesis, part in the beginning. So my last mandate, I didn't have arts underneath that are running. We really started with portfolio because they struggled with having meaningful things to do, and having a clear vision what is, what is going on. So I think the principle I worked a lot the last years was really being capable of doing MDPs, being capable of of doing hypothesis. And what helped me a lot was the whole strategizer theory movement topics they were having there. And for the SPCs, out what makes you a good SPC, it's not learning safe by heart. What makes us good SPCs is knowing more than just safe. Knowing books around safe. Books influence safe. And for me, the whole strategizer books, trainings, keynotes, videos, which has been there for as as long as safe too, is also a great inspiration. And in my case, I did a lot of testing business ideas, MVP stuff with my portfolio in this area. And that's why it's my favorite principle is the MPP and doing hypothesis

Stephan Neck: 24:24

that's really interesting today. Listening to you guys, let's stick a little bit more with this keyword of, how do you scale innovation? Because Innovation often starts at the team level or on the art level. How do we scale it up? And let's bring in again, this human element you triggered it mark right scaling, scaling what's already there to that art level and even the portfolio level, finding, maybe consensus or shaping a. Are this, this, this contribution towards alignment. So

Mark Richards: 25:05

if you kind of stick in that mentality that says, the best ideas don't necessarily emerge at the top. And again, this is a trap. People thinking with portfolio is they go, Ah, if we're going to solve a portfolio level problem, it's portfolio level people. And one of the books, I read it many years ago, and I've gone back to a lot of times ever since, back to niko's comment, it wasn't a safe book. It was called Scaling up excellence. And it was a wasn't even an agile book, right? It's just a business book. And there was this great quote in there, scaling hinges on discovering pockets of excellence and connecting the people who have it and their ideas and expertise to others. And when you start to think about the problems that you're trying to solve, and let's zero in on this innovation word here, because the type of innovation we're talking about is innovation our way of working together, and it's process and practice innovation dominantly that we're thinking about when it comes to the way the portfolio works through an operational excellence perspective, how do you find it looks like Stefan's had a problem with his video camera? If you can find one art in your portfolio who's just doing something amazingly, right? And maybe it's that they're using Flow metrics on the arc Kanban really well, or they're employing a scaled definition of done really well. Pick a problem that you're going to try and solve. If you can find somebody that's done something well, how do you grab hold of that and say, how do we amplify it across the portfolio? We didn't have to come up with a portfolio idea of how to solve it. We found somebody who's really solved something. We know everybody. Something we know everybody needs to solve. How do we amplify their impact? And again, this comes back to that notion of the portfolio as a connector of people. And then when you think about the amplification, again, staying in the Lean world, using tools like the improvement Carter, when you go down this path of an experiment in an evolution of an operational process, I love the improvement Carter, the other one. Back to the strategizer. The hypothesis validation Canvas is a brilliant one for that. So that's me. How about you? Niko,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 27:19

yes, exactly this. So it's a it's using these tools. And for using these tools, it's not about teaching and workshopping to be able to learn. It's really the connections you need with other people and exercising, exercising, exercising, and so in my case, but my lace teams and vmos apmos have, is that they have open door policies. So once in a week, there's an open door where the whole ace team, the VMO, are there, and you can just join and ask about, I want to be stronger in this here. This is my idea of the hypothesis. How can I improve it? Because it's a really difficult writing good stuff or bringing your idea to paper without needing too much time. And by the way, by the way, for me myself, it's still difficult if I try to do it for me. So I'm very good in coaching others and challenging others writing hypothesis. But when it comes to me writing a business case, I'm also struggling. So having connection with other people, having the possibility and the time connecting with them, it's really a cool thing. So this open door thing allows the people having a low barrier, coming, asking, showing, getting support, and if you need more support, you just get get an appointment the next day. This was really a catalyst for the whole transformation, not only trainings and workshops, but also being there for the people and helping them. So plus one, what we have said, and I try to bring some more stories in,

Stephan Neck: 28:59

let me pick up the thread from both of you, the human element. Early in my consultancy career, I learned from a very smart lady who was kind of a mentor for me. And she said, if you come into a new environment, to a company, to a transformation environment, there's two groups of people you have to get to know pretty fast, because they have valuable information for you. And could you guess what she told me? Do you have any idea question to you guys?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 29:36

So in my case, is the kitchen crew. They know everything, everything. That's why I also have a strong figure, because I like being with them. They know really everything. This will be, this will be my number one.

Stephan Neck: 29:52

Okay, Mark, who would you go to at the first day to get the most out of. What you're dealing with.

Mark Richards: 30:01

I look for people who've been there forever, and I'm most willing to tell you why everything you're talking about won't work. They're the best information. Yeah, that's interesting.

Stephan Neck: 30:11

So in my case, the lady said, If you enter the building, there's normally a reception, a welcome desk. Ask those people, they know everything, right? They've been there, as Mark said, for ages, or they, they can guide you. And the second group, she said, it's still not this, the CEO, the CIO, or whoever you will work with. It's the facility management, the people who do the cleaning, who set up the rooms, because you can be sure logistics sometimes doesn't work, and then you are if, oh, if it doesn't work, okay, well, let's, let's go back to what, what Mark said. And that's one of my experiences as well. And I can second that there are some gray eminences, people who have been there for a long time. They have seen a lot. They've experienced a lot, and you mentioned it mark, they can tell you what the elephant in the room is. Everyone knows about it, but they don't talk about it, right? And I like that. That's an awesome Springboard when it comes to okay, what, what will be my contribution, what will be my support and enabling when it comes to a transformation? So let's move on. Niko, you mentioned it, okay, your recipe for a VMO and the lace that has an open door policy. And when I started preparing this, this episode, it was really revealing. It's not only the VMO and the lace, it's also the lpm function. We might quickly talk about this, and how do you actively support and enhance the value stream? So let's start with lace and VMO as an change agent. In my early days, I applying safe. I struggled a bit with what is a VMO doing, or, in the old days, the Agile PMO, and what's a lace doing. So let's start with this idea. And Niko, I guess you have some valuable ingredients to solve that.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 32:16

So first careful is for the lace team, because they are changing the system. So when people ask, what is a VMO? What is the lace? Let's go on a meta level. As a coach, you have to find easy solution, even if it's quite wrong, but it's good enough that people can distinguish it. And the first thing I'm saying, I start with the lace, because they are changing the system. They are working on the system. Change the system, and the VMO is in the system they are performing in the system. So it's on the system or in the system, change the system, performing the system. That's my first thing. So my first explanation, and then later and later, add more things, but it helps first to find to do the first step. I start with the lace team, because I need changing the system. And there I need a dedicated person who is able to do this whole portfolio thing, connecting to people having a standing and in the last, I think not in the last, in every lpm I've done the last eight years now, nine years now, I always had a C level person being this coach, so stepping down from from from a lot of C level work they've done before, and taking this role too, and saying, I'm caring for the lace, and I'm caring for the portfolio, and it's also one style I'm coaching. I try not to do the operative stuff. So when I need a coach on a portfolio level that has to stay for a longer time, I try to find one who takes this role, and I'm the coach of this coach, and the last mandate, it was the CTO, who was the portfolio coach in the end, and so kind of the head of the lace, or the sponsor of the lease and and taking care for people developing. And this person was really great because he had the standing in the portfolio. He was great in moderating, had had or facilitating, had sometimes a step back from his opinion, because he had one, and the strong one was really cool to see how fast this implementation went forward. Having a lays team and having a C level person seeing himself as a coach, and, in my case, now as a portfolio coach, even if this role doesn't exist in safe so this was a great success for the company. So they need they need me only half a year. It was my, my fastest portfolio introduction in a half a year. They're still doing it, but without me. And then I'm proud, with proud of

Stephan Neck: 34:40

so, in my experience, when you establish new bodies of work or knowledge, or if you create something and instantiate it in your organization, like a VMO or a lace, there might be some traps as well, right? So, Mark. From your gold nuggets when it comes to engagement and empowerment of lpm, function, VM or laces. What would he say is one of the Yeah, one of the ways out not to fall into those pits.

Mark Richards: 35:16

So I think for me, the thing that I think in my head is you've got to balance sugar hits and sustainability. And you repeat that, that's an awesome sentence, right? So it's, it's balancing hits of sugar, or sugar hits and sustainability of change, perfect and and this goes back to really dovetailing with what Niko was saying, the less you do yourself as a coach, the better things are, and the more sustainable the change is, because the true sustainability of the change is their ability to take the journey themselves and what they're going to do and how fast they can get rid of you. And so when you sit in a role that says, I'm purely facilitative and every decision and all of the you know, the hard work of actually generating this change is being done by the people who have to live with the change that is truly sustainable. The challenge is that, if the change doesn't move fast enough, right, sometimes the political forces that are triggered to fight the change will outpace the momentum and the inertia that's building behind the change this team. They've got to put runs on the board. They've got to get some wins, and sometimes you've got to lean in and steer much more directly in order to get those wins, and that's what I think of as sugar hits, we've got to win, and it's not long between wins, and whoever, particularly the executive sponsor, that executive sponsor, needs to be able to stand up in front of their peers and the more senior execs and actually go look what we're achieving, And they may need you to lean in harder, or you may need them to have more coaches who are doing work as opposed to coaching work, sometimes doing the hard work to build some views, to help them to generate those quick wins. But the trouble with sugar is you get addicted to it. It's not healthy in the long run. And, you know, I, for a long time, I was like, it's all about sustainability, it's all about sustainability, it's all about sustainability. And, you know, I could do the same thing when it came to your lace members, your lace coaches, right? The amazing power when you take people from the organization and they become the coaches, is phenomenal, and the faster you get to that, the better. But that takes time, right? Takes time to grow their skills. It takes time to grow their experience, and so you're going to have to augment with some external SPCs for a period of time. What are those external SPCs? Well, they're sugar hits.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 38:02

But for now, you say, but now mark, you say you need time. And on the other side, you say, you have to move fast. So what is fast for you? That the people know which time frame? What is a good, good piece? A piece? Sorry,

Mark Richards: 38:17

look, I don't think there's any single number for that, because it's the nature of the organization, you know, what is the level of mandate sitting behind the executive who's championing the change? How long have they got? What are the forces mustering against them? That's actually one of the big questions that I'm asking. And, you know, again, if you take it back to systems thinking, Senge will say, right, the more rapidly you are successful in generating a change, the more that you will trigger a response to fight the change, right, from people who perhaps were a long way away from where it started, but they feel threatened by what they see happening and so really being sensitive to the situation, to go, I've got to, I got to figure it out, right? How often does that executive need turn up and show good news and good news it's recognizable by the organization? That's the big question.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 39:17

The reason why you asked that because I really working also with networks and young SPCs, they usually think they have to be faster, and that's why I asked this question. I don't know how your experience is. Young SPCs think it must go faster and faster. And when they explain me what they have achieved in which time frame, in which organization, I always have to say, Wow, that is already fast. So please take your time for the organization, because otherwise he overpaes And it's also not okay. That's why I'm asked this question, because in my network, people think it's low, but from my perspective, it's quite fast enough story.

Mark Richards: 39:52

So so let me, let me answer that bit of the question whenever I'm coaching a young coach. Or young SPC, particularly at the portfolio level, I will say the number one skill you need to master is patience. Yes,

Stephan Neck: 40:09

interesting attribute, and probably a real challenge, because I've learned from you guys and from Mark. Sometimes I'm The Candy Man, sometimes I'm the coach and the trainer to create champions, right? And two of the champions in a portfolio aspects are the VMO and the lace. So let's try to wrap up this topic of, how do you engage and empower people on the portfolio level before we then move on into how do we measure and grow that we are really good? Because now Mark introduced patience. I want to see success. I want to measure right but let's wrap up this. This part of what is agile portfolio operations. Let me throw in one of the anecdotes I had at the coaching station at the safe Summit. I was talking to a guy, and he said, Oh, our lace is dissolving, but we should work on the system. And in the discussion, we found out, hey, they already have an excellent PMO that is within the system. They have all the connections, they have all the networks, they have all the metrics, they have all the good people that are in there. And they said, why don't you join this PMO to perform what you are supposed to do, no matter if your lace is dissolving. It's about people doing the work. It's about people engaging and empowering at that level. So if you dive deep into your experience again, wrapping up VMO lace, lpm function, what springs to your minds?

Mark Richards: 41:53

I'm going to go straight to a story that will always stick with me. I was working with an organization. It was probably five or six years ago, and they probably had five or six arts that were really going well. And it was true, blended business technology, it was amazing stuff. And the executive who looked after the enterprise epmo came to me and said, Mark, it's clear that this is the way that our organization needs to work, and we want to adopt it ourselves, because we're going to have to play a role leading the change as this spreads across the entire organization. So we want to use safe as an epmo. And the epmo was big enough to be a train in itself, and it was the weirdest thing I'd ever thought about, right? How do you get an epmo to work as an agile release train? But they were keen, and I went, Oh, let's run the experiment. And so we got in there, and they were really leading into changing mindset, changing the system. And every time we had backlogs about the things that would need to change to enable this to spread across the organization more sustainably. There were an endless set of good ideas, and they go to pi planning. And at pi planning, all of these change the system features would get played alongside all of their work they had to do as an enterprise, PMO. And then, like many young trains, they always over committed. And then what would happen by the end of the PI was that all of the features about generating evolution that they were excited with had had to be de prioritized to make way for the stuff that had to be done. And they got two PIs in, and they're like, we never get to do the change the system stuff, because we're way too busy with all the stuff we have to do. How do we make space? They can go hire a bunch of new people. They're like, how do we create the capacity to actually generate the change we want to change? And so they started to look inwards and go, Well, we've been fighting in all of our PI plannings that when we make trade off decisions, it's about value. What happens when we place a value lens over a lot of the processes we've been running for years. And you know, one of the first ones that they tackle was a project audit, and it was a big time tour. They had to audit every project above a certain size, and it took a lot of their capacity every quarter. And they said, Look, we very rarely find an audit issue, and so we spend all this time on it, we get very little value from it, because we don't find things if we went to a sampling based approach, as opposed to a full audit of every project. We buy all this capacity back for ourselves to generate change. And it was such an exciting coaching conversation, because it's a government enterprise. PMO, going we value, talking about value when we prioritize. And what we want to start doing is questioning some of our low value legacy so that we can work on creating a high value. And that, for me, is, how do you help an lpm How do you help that? PMO, they're incredibly. Incredibly busy people. You can throw a whole bunch of new ideas at them. They won't have time because they're super busy. And the reality is a lot of people in the arts are also super busy generating the reporting and the artifacts and attending the meetings that that PMO needs them to do. So you've got to create time for both of these groups of people to start generate change in adult portfolio operations. So for me, the first place you look is before we start to get excited about reinventing the world, what can we do to take pain out of today, to actually create some time for us to start reinventing the world, and particularly as an SPC, when you start there, you learn a lot. You learn an immense amount about about the way the world works today. It's really useful when you start trying to think about how to change it. Awesome.

Stephan Neck: 45:46

Niko, your thoughts, your maybe advice to SPCs when it comes to the empowerment and the engagement of vmos, pMOS laces, how would you summarize that? It's

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 46:00

a, it's a The one big tool a coach has always asking, what's in for them? So the reverse question not, why do I need them? What can I do for them? Just, why should they do this? And if you ask this question, then you have the ideas of, okay, let's do working session. Let's do a open door, etc, because that's what they need. They need some kind of help. And this story just came up resonating your story, from from, from the coaching station, because that similar experience somebody came to the coaching station, does I have so many difficulties the people doing this and doing that and doing that? And I tell her, I wouldn't do neither. Why should I what's in for me in this role? And I think on portfolio level, it's always a question, why should they cooperate with you, just because you're doing safe, just because you're an SPC or SPC, what's in for them? And that's the main question, the main as well. Advice, just change perspective. Why should I work with you?

Stephan Neck: 46:56

I love that. Mark introduced me as moderator with a sports and military background, we need some facts and figures, so we have to measure when it comes to coordination, support and foster operational excellence. So over to you guys who would like to start. Where did you place your sticky and why did you do that?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 47:24

For me, it was so easy. It's really about you need a dedicated group of people for the implementing Lean portfolio management, and maybe you need even more dedicated people in the beginning than a safe. Safe has roles. So in my case, is also the portfolio coach, a dedicated role, but you really need dedicated people, and that's my favorite one.

Stephan Neck: 47:46

Niko, may I be picky, I see lots of dedicated people, but they don't have the time to do that. There's a lot of dedication. How would you how would you foster that? How would you support that? That you really can measure support of alt execution.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 48:03

That's exactly the question. If I had the perfect answer, I think I would have invented the new framework. So it's really a personal thing, if you have the time. What I try to find out is, what's the currency of the person who is dedicated, what he wants to have more of it. And sometimes I can show him by behaving this way, by doing this and this, he gets more or she gets more of this currency that is important for him or her. It's not always money. They want to achieve something. So they are dedicated. And this dedication is for a currency of their own. Find this currency, and then you can can help this person move where you need them.

Stephan Neck: 48:45

Interesting aspect. Mark, you're sticky. Where did it fly to?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 48:51

I don't hear you. Mark,

Stephan Neck: 48:52

we don't hear you. Mark,

Mark Richards: 48:54

thank you. I had to cough, but I made it myself. I've got to start by arguing with Niko. But we've got unusual. We've got unusual. We've got a dedicated group. That's easy. I pick my I've got all my portfolio. People are busy. I pick my favorite consultancy and give me 10 people dedicated.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 49:16

I mean, I mean, I mean it differently. I Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. You need internal, dedicated people with power.

Mark Richards: 49:30

It's the right people, right? Yes. And to be honest, when I was trying to pick almost every measure and grow, and there's a few of them, I've just zoomed out so, so we can say them right? There's a few. Almost everyone I looked at, I went, it's not bad, but I don't like the way it's worded, yeah. And so I struggled. I will say I nearly went to where you went, Stefan, but I went, That's relentless improvement. That's a different competency. So I had to pick one. Garden and I actually picked we support arts in moving towards objective measures of progress. And for me, when it comes to operational excellence, being able to talk about outcomes and value at the center of how you're optimizing your operational effectiveness is huge because it changes the focus of the conversation. What does operational excellence mean? What means that we are making more progress on the outcomes we desire, and that, to be honest, I think for an awful lot of organizations, is really hard. Are we actually measuring outcome based progress, or output based progress. I've seen a lot of people who tell me about their pi predictability measures, and then you look at their objectives, and it's like they're not really outcome based objectives. And so that generating movement down the framing of outcomes and the steering of your operational governance towards an outcome basis. I think for me, it's just the outlook for an awful lot of other stuff.

Stephan Neck: 51:07

Mark you already pulled the carpet on carpet underneath my feet when I looked at my sticky so I'm tempted to move it, but let me, let me quickly say why I moved it to we share improvements in how we work across the portfolio. The dimension is about agile portfolio operations, which sounds like a lot of work, but it's in the end, it's about the excellence, right? And excellence is created by sharing a lot of knowledge. And you started that discussion today, Mark and Niko, you came in with the human element. I think it's really an important people business up here, bringing those people together and fostering that improvements are shared as fast as possible, and that might then probably lean towards how we become a learning organization. That was my motivation to put my sticky here.

Mark Richards: 52:03

Look perfect, being being practical. Stephan, I have to agree with you, right? I My, my vote went straight there. I reckon 80% of our stories that we shared today. Yes, we're about this. So maybe, maybe I have to give in. I am going to

Stephan Neck: 52:20

give in. Don't, don't stay picky. Okay,

Mark Richards: 52:24

I'm gonna join you. Okay, because, okay, let's face it, there might be people who watch this episode and never talk about relentless improvement.

Stephan Neck: 52:34

Okay, let's definitely wrap it up. Um, what's the just one sentence. Niko,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 52:42

I just was somewhere else. I thought, if, if, if too many framework members of scaled agile are watching the show, maybe we get a working group of redefine older measurements. But I am, because we are going to tell so much about it. So my sentence, sorry, my sentence is on portfolio level. You really deserve a dedicated coach.

Mark Richards: 53:03

Thank you, Mark. When it comes to change, find the balance between sugar and sustainability.

Stephan Neck: 53:09

That's what I learned today. I'm probably The Candy Man sometimes, so my just one sentence, excellence is equality that people really appreciate, because it's so hard to find. And with that, I would like to conclude we are just before our time frame. And that's also what some portfolio dimension when it comes to excellence, has to achieve a solution that's within the time is a better solution than a solution that is excellent, but it's after the time frame, and that's how I hand back my talking stick to mark.

Mark Richards: 53:45

Wow, that was that was quite a complicated sentence. Stefan, I was busy going, let me try to remember what next week is, and I caught the first half. I'm going to have to read the transcript. So next week we open our final competency, which of course, is organizational agility, and we will be talking about lean business operations. So join us. Then.