Alignment, Adaptability, and Politics: The Secrets of Successful LPM Coaching

“If you want to coach senior leaders, you need to start by understanding what’s important to them—even if it has nothing to do with Lean Portfolio Management.” - Mark Richards.

In this lively and thought-provoking episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore the unique challenges and opportunities of coaching in the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) space. With engaging stories and practical insights, the team highlights how coaching at this level requires stepping into "big shoes" and mastering new complexities.

Key Takeaways:

• The Role of Growth: Niko emphasizes that becoming a coach in the LPM space is not instantaneous—it's a journey of growth that requires learning the language and culture of portfolio leadership while staying grounded in Lean principles.
• Understanding the Portfolio Context: Stephan describes the portfolio as an orchestra, where strategic alignment is the conductor, ensuring all "instruments" play harmoniously. Mark notes the need for adaptability, highlighting how portfolios must pivot based on evolving market conditions.
• Coaching Senior Leaders: The discussion illuminates the challenges of coaching time-pressed senior leaders. Mark explains that effective coaching often occurs during unconventional moments, such as commutes, and success requires aligning with the leaders’ priorities.
• The Power of Alignment: All three hosts agree that achieving alignment—whether through strategic themes, value stream mapping, or effective communication—is critical for unlocking the true potential of LPM.
• Lessons from Experience: The episode is filled with real-world anecdotes, such as Niko's story of taking board-level classes to understand better leadership challenges and the necessity of empathy and political awareness when coaching at higher organizational levels.

This episode provides practical tips and thought-provoking ideas for SPCs looking to grow their impact in Lean Portfolio Management. It’s a must-listen for Agile leaders and coaches alike, covering topics from aligning strategy to navigating politics.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPC's Unleashed, a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague Safe Summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPCTs, Stefan, Nick and Nico Kantansas, Dutch SPCT Ali Hajoo 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 Framework's 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 SPC's Unleashed. We are on episode five of our second season, and I get to use one of my favorite words. It is the penultimate episode before Christmas, and a few weeks ago, we chatted about coaching. And there's a truth that says we could just run an entire podcast that never ends about coaching. And we just felt like we scratched the surface. And so Nico is like, let's go back. Let's just delve specifically into coaching in the portfolio space. So, Nico, why don't you take us away?

Niko Kaintantzis: 1:08

Yeah, I would love to. I would love to. So why LPM coaching? Why this important? We will hear many stories of my colleagues and myself, and it's really something different because it's the ability to bring the whole enterprise forward. It's a different space you are working in, and that's why I think it's a really important thing. So, yeah, LPM and coaching. LPM is the strategy meets execution. And the big question would be, how can you, as a coach, as an spc, or as a portfolio coach, provide or slash support these whole things there? And that's why. Yeah, that's what the show is about. And I would like to start immediately with your true passion, your surprises, your challenges. And I would like to go with Stefan first.

Stephan Neck: 1:58

Thank you, Nico. I would say how to fill big shoes. Right. Lean Portfolio management. It's really big shoes. And I just went through an album of old photographs of mine and my brother sitting in front of our veranda, having the army boots on of my father. And it looks. It looks really ridiculous. Big shoes, two little men, how to fill those shoes. So, yeah, I grew into it and now I have my own big shoes. Sometimes they're still too big, and for me, it's. The passion is learning from others and their steps and learning fast, but also staying true to your path. Right. Not copy paste mode, but really finding your way, your path. And that's my true passion when it comes to coaching on an LPM level.

Niko Kaintantzis: 2:52

Great. Plus one for my side. It's really a role you have to grow in, and it's also a language, a culture you have to grow in. I remember in the last episode I talked about the smell of the state of the. Oh, stable. No, stolen.

Mark Richards: 3:09

The spell of the stable is the barn. The spell of the barn is the way my German friends always translate it.

Niko Kaintantzis: 3:16

Oh, great. Exactly. So you really have to grow in. It's not just learning a vocabulary or reading smart books. It's really grow. As Stefan said, it's really about a role you have to grow in and topics you have to grow in, like budgeting, like strategy, visioning, prioritization. It's really different up there. And you cannot just wear a suit and say, oh, I'm now like management or leadership. I have now a suit, a tie, I blend in. It's more, it's. Yeah, you have to grow in, Mark.

Mark Richards: 3:46

Look, for me, if I think about what I love most about the kind of portfolio side of life, you've got to start by understanding business strategy. You know, everywhere else you play with agile and agile delivery, it's like, oh, we got to think about business value, we've got to be customer centric, we've got to think about products. And you can get away with it being to some extent conceptual and help without necessarily understanding the particular product, customer or area you're helping. If you want to be relevant in a portfolio conversation, you've got to understand what the business strategy is and you've got to anchor every conversation in the business strategy and it forces a huge change in your awareness. On that front.

Niko Kaintantzis: 4:31

Just give me the idea for the next pet podcast episode. Strategy and coaching. Okay, that sounds really great, gentlemen, but I would like to learn about more about your own experience. And for me, it's interesting. What was for you the most important moment in your development in the LPM area, in your first step in these big shoes. So what was the most important moment for you?

Mark Richards: 4:54

Go for it, Stefan. I can see you're eager.

Stephan Neck: 4:59

Yeah. Thinking back when I started as a consultant, as a young one, I always had this picture of the different abstraction layers. There's strategy, there's portfolio, there's execution, layers, there's some layers in between. And my big aha moment was when I really understood the portfolio is connecting strategy to execution, which implies that you could have two disconnects between strategy and the portfolio and the execution. So learning that. And you mentioned that, Mark, as well, learning what the business really needs so that you have the right Stuff in your portfolio, guiding, then the execution. I think that was my biggest aha moment. And since then, I'm still learning. Like yesterday, I had a discussion with a team where we deviated away to structural elements and tangible stuff, and we forgot there's a strategy. Right. And the strategy will ring fence where you are or where you should be in the future. And, yeah, I think understanding that and closing those disconnects over the time or understanding what the disconnect is really helpful for me.

Mark Richards: 6:18

So for me, it was almost a meta moment as a coach. And, you know, I'd been a delivery guy in one role or another. I'd been a delivery guy for 20 years. I had developed software, I led teams. I'd been an architect. I'd been a project manager briefly. You know, I'd sat in a lot of shoes, and always those shoes were, let's get something over the line. And portfolio. And the people associated with portfolio had always been them, Right? For me, they're the people who make my life hard. They're the people who just don't understand. They get in the way. They slow us down. Them, them, them. And I had this moment, I think I shared it one of the unleashed episodes last season where I was being coached myself. And the coaching was about what's my biggest problem or the biggest problem I'd love to solve. And the biggest problem I would have loved to have solved happened to be the executive who looked after the portfolio were a part of. And it was like, if somebody could just fix him, all these amazing things could happen. And the coaching of me took me down this path of going, actually, the problem was me, and it was me not being confident that I could coach this person to generate change and that I had to find the courage to lean in. And it was like, well, that was kind of weird, right? Because I didn't know. I didn't understand anything about that world except that it seemed designed to make my life hard. And I had years and years of anything were trying to coach somebody in doing. It's like, yeah, I remember when I used to do that as a real person and I could lean on that. And all of a sudden, stepping into portfolios like, well, I can't lean on it. There's all these things that I've never had to do before I don't know anything about. And it forces you into a very different place in the way you apply your coaching skills.

Niko Kaintantzis: 8:10

I can connect very well to that question. This year, I took a Sabbatical. And one of the parts and this learning sabbatical was getting education, becoming a board member. Because it was something similar that Mark said, why the hell are those people so risk averse? Why are they not so easy to handle? Why are my executives always complaining about them? So let's understand what they are doing. And that's why I took the whole class as a learn their language, learn their problems, to be able to coach the people below because I'm doing also one one coaching with leaders. And before that it was really important to be also in this role for myself at least as you both told you need some kind of experience. Being able to coach on this level and being myself on this role and leading around 12 people with hundred thousands of Swiss francs in this company was an important step to realize, okay, it's not just forget some cost or just say yes or no. It's really a lot of things around there. It's really also about people that are, that if you decide something, they're affected by this decision. So this was really part of my journey and the question was, what was the most first important moment? And it was when my boss told me, oh, you feel not respected by management? Because it was something when I was younger, I told them I really have problems going there to leadership, to portfolio leadership and talk with them, there are some kind of difference. And they told me, yeah, to be respected or to connect with them, you have to learn their language. And so he told me, okay, you have to start taking management classes. And that was my beginning to my career coaching leaders on C level, just taking classes, they are taking too. And that somehow this little small sentence, you have to learn the language brought to me, okay, I'm going to classes which are made for them and discuss with them and connect with them, empathize with them. And this was for me my first big moment to starting filling this big shoes.

Stephan Neck: 10:33

Stefan mentioned before, I think we really have a nice thread here, right. Like you said, Mark, doing the stuff we are used to doing, to do. And you came up with this analogy of learn the language. Okay, If I look at my kids who are now grown, how fast they learn German, when they came from New Zealand to Switzerland, within weeks and months, they learned the language, but still they could talk nonsense. And Mark, as you said, okay, you're a delivery guy. I'm a delivery guy too. I try most of the time to take me out of the game at the beginning. I literally step back two or three steps, listening, observing. And I learned that from Eric as Well, observing is for me the key word. Right. Because I might know the language, but if I don't observe, I might talk nonsense and it doesn't help the team.

Niko Kaintantzis: 11:34

Great. Let's go to the next question. I thought Mark wants to say something, but let's go to the next question about obstacles. So what are typical obstacles when you are in this area of coaching?

Mark Richards: 11:47

I'll jump in on that one. Right. And obviously the first obstacle is getting past yourself. And I think that's what we've all just talked about. But the second obstacle is time. So when you think about lean portfolio management, there's really, there's two sides to lean portfolio management. There's the side where you're really worried about strategy. You know, how is strategy formed, how is strategy deployed, how do you frame an investment strategy? And there's the side which is, you know, governance, planning and coordination. And when you go on training for LPM or when you think about what excites you generally, it's all about the you're going to change the way people do their investment strategy. If you're going to change the way people do their investment strategy, you've got to get access to some very senior people and you've got to build a trust relationship over time with some very senior people to begin to move anything investment strategy. What most of them think they want and who they're going to point you at working with is most of them want governance and controls cleaned up. And it's not necessarily the people you're excited to talk to because, you know, it's governance and controls and agile people often don't like governance and controls. Right. And the people you're going to work with there aren't the decision makers who can change the investment strategy. And you know, recognizing that, you've got to earn your stripes. And you know, we talk about that all the time. But also when you do get those moments of getting access to the senior people who can really start to move the needle, recognizing that the way their time pressure works is so different to perhaps other people you've been coaching. It can be very easy as an agile coach to go. The answer to everything is pulling people together into big workshops. If you want to pull 10, 15 executives together into a big workshop, you're spending a lot of capital. It's not something you do lightly. And you can talk about them coming to the Gemba all you like, but you've got to recognize you are coaching into and trying to help people who are incredibly time poor. And you've got to think very differently about the way that you work with them on that basis.

Stephan Neck: 13:59

It's an interesting thought, Mark. And that's one of my obstacles. I observed and experienced as well. Maybe from my perspective, the missing leadership attention, but it was not well perceived by me. It's not missing leadership attention, it's me not understanding what leadership really wants. Right. And you brought in the financial aspect. And I remember Ali stating that in one of our episodes, money allocated is not money spent. Sometimes there's a huge gap between what we think the budget tells us and what we really do. So leadership, yes, very crucial. It's a different world. You have to grow into it. I had to learn it the hard way. Sometimes again, using the wrong language or not understanding what people are talking about. And the other one is thinking, oh, the budget is done on a yearly basis, let's go for it. Right? It will change anyway. The world changes, the context might change. Even senior management might have a hidden agenda. And you were not aware of this hidden agenda when we talked business strategy, budget allocation, even value streams if they're already on the implementation roadmap. So again, having sensors ready to grasp the situation and bringing in, bringing it into the context again. And I would say obstacles are good. It forces you to think, can I jump over it or can I go around and how do I do that? And that's exactly what a coach is there for. Seeing the obstacles and creating this environment where the people can deal with the obstacles. But as you say, Mark, obstacles I see might not be obstacles for the people or senior management. So let's be clear about that one, right?

Niko Kaintantzis: 16:10

You opened so you triggered so many new questions and new stories from my side. I want to share one story. Spontaneous. A good colleague of mine, a brilliant mind, really brilliant, had this missing of the missing notion of politics. So he wasn't able to feel politics and that's why he failed on portfolio level. So really the ability to try to connect to people and try to understand, okay, they're sometimes saying something different. They are really meaning. And that's why it was so hard for him on portfolio level. Not because it's easy on other levels, but if you really are such a poor character and not able to knowing that there are politics but not feeling them early enough was really one of his biggest mistake on a portfolio level. That's why he failed on this challenge. But this was just a story I want to share. I have a new question for you guys. When I listen to Mark about time, poorness of leadership how do you handle that? You have to coach those people and they have time.

Mark Richards: 17:13

I'm going to run with this kind of multi faceted aspect to this. For me, the first one is when I'm coaching portfolio executives, I would say a good 50% of my coaching conversations with them happen out of hours, right? They happen while they're in the car on the way home. They happen before they have breakfast, they happen after they've got home and put the kids to bed. But when they get some breathing moments, so finding the rhythm and recognizing that, you know, any senior leader has some part of the day which is their best thinking time. And if you can be connecting with them or them choosing you during that thinking time, that's where the biggest things will start to shift, which is probably where I go with. The second thing is, and you know, we'll beat this drum forever. I think I might have beaten it in the AMA the other night. It's not about the problems you want to solve, it's about the problems they want to solve. When you get time with them, figure out what's important for them in that moment. It might have absolutely nothing to do with lean portfolio management, but if you're a good coach, you'll help them think through it. So, you know, don't try and set the agenda, let them set the agenda. And then, sorry, go, no.

Niko Kaintantzis: 18:32

And then you're back in. One of my biggest tips for coaching in general, it's not about what you want, it's about what the client needs and he she wants. So it's really the important part. You are there for the structure, but you're not there to push your own agenda, your own politics. Sorry, Mark.

Mark Richards: 18:48

Yeah, so the other hint that I'd throw in is, you know, finding a good portfolio analyst or somebody in the portfolio operations team who can do sleuthing and build pictures and build maps and collect data and actually bringing them into the coaching loop is worth its weight in gold. Because a lot of time you'll have that moment, you'll have a conversation, oh, that might be an interesting thing to explore. But to explore it, you've got to go and pull a whole bunch of data from a whole bunch of sensitive systems and you've got to put them together. And the leader is going to be two time poor to do that. And if you're a coach, it's probably not what you should be doing, but if you can get, and I've had this a few times now where we've just had an amazing portfolio Analyst who's been part of the relationship and they go away and they pull together and they model data in between sessions and you wind up coaching them in how to model and interpret the data at the same time as you're creating the coaching conversation about what the data shows. But actually then being able to pick those when you get a little bit of time, particularly when you get a bit time for a few execs at once, having real data that you've put the legwork into supporting a great conversation is huge. So get friendly with portfolio analysts and you know, bring data to the table. That's going to stimulate conversation in a limited time box.

Stephan Neck: 20:10

Really interesting hints. Mark and mine are similar. Like I hear quite often Agile is dead. Or some colleagues say, oh, we can't sell our coaching abilities. I think it's because we don't fit into the context. Right. Misperception of a context. And it's interesting. Sometimes you experience situations like there's a workshop with senior management with a cio and before that was lunch break. And we dropped the hint to the CIO that we are going for lunch. We, the workshop team and the coaches and they said oh, could I join? And guess what, Mark, like you said, the biggest discussion was before the workshop. Setting the tone. We didn't need an agenda or any entry point to the workshop. It started at lunchtime. So networking and I learned from a good mentor. There's certain groups or Personas in an enterprise you really have to treat well. Receptionists, they know everyone. Facility management, they know where the stuff is. And personal assistants, oh yeah, right. They know the agendas, they know what's going on, they know it's sometimes it's really easy. But we miss the obvious when it comes to networking, when it comes to people management. And we think, okay, we are introducing Agile practices and methods and Scrum and Kanban. No we're not. That's the end of the tale. Right? But get it right. And as I said as a safe summit, don't wag the dog. Right. If the tail is wagging the dog, something's wrong. Get it the other way around. So I would throw that one in to how do you. How do you handle is probably the wrong word. Nico. Just be clever as a coach, be clever as an SPC and yeah, bring it in.

Niko Kaintantzis: 22:13

I would like to add one person's group to your friend list. That's the canteen people. So where people go and for a snack, for a coffee or for lunch. That's why I'm so heavy. No, it's also get to learn about how these people work outside to have the right spot to talk with them. My tip is how do we handle this poorness this time? Poorness is like Mark, find the moment where we can talk with them, but they will only take the moment if you show that you are effective. What we are doing, and that's my next question for you. How does an LPM coach ensures, again, ensures that his work brings benefit or measurable benefit? That's my problem. How do I measure my benefits? So how do I make people connect in this time they are productive with me? How do I show that time with me brings the results? What is your experience, Stefan?

Stephan Neck: 23:13

I think there's a fine line. How do you measure your impact or your contribution towards, as we discussed so far, what does the strategy tell us? What does the context tell us? What does senior leadership have on their plate to solve? Right. So for me, going back to the new big picture in safe is this product innovation, business agility summarized as time to market? How fast can we seize an opportunity and bring innovation into existing products, creating new product solutions and be really competitive? Right. So if they are happy, they will be happy with my contribution. Although sometimes networking. How do you measure networking? That's hard to do, right? That's Also applicable for RTEs and scrum masters and team coaches. I hear quite often, what do these guys do? It's a valuable job, right? It's a lot of investment. Sometimes you can't measure it to the dot, but if it's tied to the overall success of the enterprise or the business unit or the context you're in it, you're probably on the safe side.

Mark Richards: 24:38

I'm with you, Stefan. It's like as a coach, whatever you're coaching, you've got to measure your impact based on the performance of the thing you're coaching. And if it's not working better, it doesn't matter how good a coach you are, you're obviously not a great coach or you're not the right coach for that situation. And I held for a long time that if only my clients were better at measuring business benefits and, you know, quantifying them. I would have loved to not sell, you know, dollars per course or dollars per day or dollars per workshop. I would have loved to sell. I'll do it for you for free, But I'll take 1% of the productivity improvement you get because you think about, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year being spent and you go, it's pretty easy to get 10% productivity improvement there. But. But the challenge to it is, of course, you know, how many clients are actually really good at that level of discipline around, you know, capital, efficiency, benefit realization. That's part of what we're there to try and help them achieve. But, you know, if a portfolio is working better, everybody knows the rest of the organization starts to talk about this portfolio suddenly seeming to have its act together and be telling a better story and making better decisions and being more focused and creating more results. What I will generally tell my portfolio leadership team is you'll know this is working when you start to have very different conversations, when you find yourself with value at the center of your conversations and your decisions and your actions, and when you feel like you're making business decisions every time you make a decision as a portfolio, that's when this is working.

Stephan Neck: 26:24

And probably to add to that one, Mark, I really like it. It's your marketing tool as a coach is word of mouth, right? You'll feel it, you'll see it, you will hear it, right? You don't have to advertise what are your abilities. You grow into them. And as you grow, you deliver and you will be asked for, right? They call you in and that's the best springboard you can have in any coaching area, even in the lpm, right? But sometimes you. Using this analogy, your springboard is on 1 meter. The LPM is on 10 meters, right? And it's not a springboard, it's a tower. You have to climb up there, and the first time you jump 10 meters, it's really scary, right? So, yeah, word of mouth. It's probably one thing I would like to add to this one.

Niko Kaintantzis: 27:19

That's great. I would like to give the word to Mark because he has one talent. I have not is reading in English and summarizing because we have a big question or a big statement from. From LinkedIn questions. And because it's too much for me thinking, moderating, and handling you guys. I just give it to Mark because he's very good in summarizing.

Mark Richards: 27:42

I did have a chance to. I saw it come up on the chat and I went, oh, my goodness, that's huge. I better find it on LinkedIn. So the observation, and it's from Benjamin Mueller. Thank you. Benjamin is thinking about the way in which you can apply practices from one level at a different level and recognizing that there's more than one way to connect your portfolio and your other tools. He was asking whether you could perhaps do PI planning at the art level rather. I mean, Sorry. At the LPM level as well as just at the art level. And what would that look like? And I've got a really easy answer for you, Benjamin, which is our colleague Yuval Yedit did a presentation at the Safe summit in D.C. On constructing portfolio level PI planning. You should be able to find the video on your Safe studio. And I know I sat through it as a great presentation and you'll appreciate some of his fractal animations. But yeah, have a go there. He provided some templates and it can be very powerful to take that collaboration concept and apply it everywhere.

Niko Kaintantzis: 28:53

I will put it on LinkedIn, the name of the session, so you can easily find it after the recording. I will put it on the LinkedIn where you find the resource. Thank you very much. I would like to go in a different direction with your brains going to our nice jiggles part this time I thought, let's do something. Something crazy. And it was fun to see because I asked this question also in our chat and many other people who are not here started answering this. The question was, imagine you are a wizard and you have one spell that is able to improve all the lean portfolio problems in the universe. Which one spell will it be, though? So the name of the spell and what does it exactly?

Mark Richards: 29:41

I reckon we've got to start with. We're going to start with Rebecca's.

Stephan Neck: 29:44

Yeah.

Mark Richards: 29:45

So Rebecca, of course, at this time of day, is very fast asleep, but she joins our chats and she jumps straight on it. And Rebecca said that she would have a magic tail wag spell where if anyone's about to let the tail wag the dog, a cute dog appears, wags its tail, and if happens again on the same item, the dog growls and if it starts being implemented, the dog bites. So I think she was channeling Stefan there as soon as we started talking about tails wagging.

Stephan Neck: 30:16

Yeah, a bit, yeah.

Mark Richards: 30:19

How about you?

Stephan Neck: 30:23

Okay. Magic wand. I really like that. So before I say what the spell is, what would the magic wand really deliver? All on the portfolio level, instantly understand their role and achieving portfolio goals. So no more discussions. What's my role? What's the goals? Everything's clear. I would like to have a portfolio that's auto optimized for maximum business value. Just touch it, boom, it's there. Right. And funding. That is really dynamic. So my spell will be Align Prioritare Floreat.

Niko Kaintantzis: 31:03

That's cool. I'm so happy you found one because in our preparation, it was too funny. You were too funny. And I said, yeah, some Spells are not allowed. This one is a good one. That's. It's a loud one. It's not on the black list of spells.

Stephan Neck: 31:16

I thought I used this one instead of the other one.

Niko Kaintantzis: 31:20

Oh, perfect.

Mark Richards: 31:22

So I've got to throw in Eric Willicky's contribution as well. And Eric is also fast asleep at this particular time of day. But it was such a beautiful spell name and you know, jiggles should be controversial. It was certainly controversial. So Eric had Eric's epic eradication evocation and he didn't give a description for it, but I read it and I know Eric very well and I know that he and I both love this spell. It's the get rid of epic spell.

Stephan Neck: 31:53

Yeah.

Mark Richards: 31:54

A wonderful advanced super magical portfolio doesn't actually use epics anymore. They're just in a continuous flow of product features.

Stephan Neck: 32:04

That's a radical one.

Niko Kaintantzis: 32:06

It will solve many problems.

Mark Richards: 32:09

Yep.

Niko Kaintantzis: 32:10

Oh, that's cool. In my case, I had two ideas. One is I remembered once Mark said he cheats always and asks chatgpt. So I have one that ChatGPT told me and one that I did without ChatGPT before. So let's take first the one I just came up by myself and it was Habibum Courage. So sounds a little Latin, sounds a little bit mystical. And why this one? It's maybe a difficult one. What it makes is give you courage to forget a little bit your old life and say no and be more in the startup thinking. Why is it dangerous saying this way? It doesn't mean that your old life doesn't count because you as a portfolio leader, you grew up the company or as a leader, company leader. It's your company, you grow it, you are successful with it. So all the things you had in your backbone system worked well for you. But sometimes I miss the courage saying, okay, let's try this new thing out. Let's doing more lean startup thinking. Let's say more no, don't see everywhere. I need the whole business case. I need every information at once. I know it's difficult because for the people that's what you make you successful until now. But the world has changed. All the things you learned in your system is not always valid. And so I would like to have this spell to make those people more courage, having more courage to. To go in the new world and not always go back to the old. And yeah, that's why it's dangerous because yeah, it's your personality, it's your success recipes from before. But yeah, I would like to have you more also in this way. Mark yours.

Mark Richards: 34:01

So I wound up thinking about two spells. The one that first grabbed my attention was probably not so much a spell to fix a portfolio, but a spell that I would love to have as a portfolio coach. And it's detect magic. And the reason why I love that one, right, is I don't know if you've played Dungeons and Dragons recently, but of course you have to think about Dungeons and Dragons when you think about spells. My son loves dungeon mastering and so I very regularly, over the last few years have had, you know, crowds of teenagers playing Dungeons and Dragons in my kitchen. And one of the things they're always careful of is traps. And you walk past and they're all going, you know, is there a trap waiting for us that we're casting detect magic? We're using our detect traps, we're doing, you know, various types of checks to see whether we can observe something waiting to bite us. And I reckon as a portfolio coach, if you had a detect magic spell, you could go, what are the traps? I want touch this thing. What are the traps? Waiting for the unwary. That'd be a wonderful spell, but it wouldn't actually fix anything. And that was your brief, Nico. So to fix something, you know, as always, a little bit of help from ChatGPT. And, you know, actually I came up with the spell without chatgpt. And then I went, I want a cool Latin sounding name like yours. So I had to get ChatGPT to turn my simple name into a cool setting. So I wanted former mutabilis. And it's a polymorph spell. And it's a polymorph spell that can take the things that are seen as reasons we can't do something and convert them into proof that we can.

Niko Kaintantzis: 35:42

Oh, great.

Stephan Neck: 35:43

Yeah, that's really a great spell because it affects your attitude, right? And in Europe, the first thing we do is it doesn't work. We have tons of checklists why it doesn't work. And it should be the other way around. And my wife, a kiwi girl, it's first the solution and then you ask was it the right way to do or did we cross some borders? So being brave, being courageous, I really like that. And I like your polymorph spell as well, Mark.

Niko Kaintantzis: 36:15

So I think at the end of the episode, everybody should say his spell and then we finish the day. But we are only at half time. Let me tell you what ChatGPT and Safe Copilot answer to this. In case of ChatGPT I just gave them many things I've published and told them please answer them as me and his spell was alignment alchemy. I thought okay, that's also an interesting thing having a spell where people are aligned on strategy, on flow, on funding, on prioritization and so on. So he told me as a summary, this spell would eliminate silos and eliminate wasteful. So I thought okay, yeah, alignment alchemy. It's also a cool one. So this was chatgpt knowing me some kind a little bit by telling me I've published this, this and this is some content of mine. And then I went to Safe Copilot who doesn't know me at all but knows safe very well and asking the same thing and Safe Copilot answer was value stream alignments as a spell. And again being able to do the value stream mapping, having the data identifying the bottlenecks, optimizing the flow. So it was a lot of was a huge sentence like the. The paper you have in medicine. So was a huge, big answer. But both went towards alignment. It seems like alignment is a problem. Your thoughts on this? What do you think alignment is?

Mark Richards: 37:44

I reckon Stefan spell started with alignment. Yeah, I think ChatGPT is just behind. Yeah.

Niko Kaintantzis: 37:52

This episode is not sponsored by OpenAI.

Stephan Neck: 37:55

We have to talk to the developers of Safe Copilot to bake it in. Yeah, I think alignment is really crucial right. As we started at the beginning and that's probably also what I see as a big challenge in portfolios. We don't have this direction. The North Star is really missing. Portfolios are perceived as it's a bunch of something products, solutions, value streams and I think we tackle it the wrong way again. The first question for me and something I like to instill in the discussion is what's the job to be done to be future proof to march or move the whole organization or part of the organization to the right direction? What's the North Star? So alignment is crucial again yesterday in a workshop a two generic strategy doesn't help us. Right. We have some objectives and if you ask, okay, how do you measure it, how do you pay into it? Missing key results. So we need strategic themes to overcome that. That's one of the things I would say. And then we already talked about the collaboration between the stakeholders and as we call it the portfolio leadership now on the new big picture and I think innovators dilemma plays into that as well. Balancing long term vision with changing market conditions. Right. You still have an operating model you have to consider that pays your salaries, that pays your wages, how do you invest mid and long term and what's the balance with that? Right. And, and with that, I would hand over the talking stick to Mark because I know he's the expert when it comes to these questions.

Niko Kaintantzis: 39:43

Let me first summarize something. It's, it's really cool because you just answered the alignment part and I thought, let's ask again, chatgpt about the three biggest challenges in, in. In writing strategic themes or in portfolio. And at the end it really comes to alignment. So you're really right. But now, yeah, Mark.

Mark Richards: 40:02

So I think, and if you stay in strategic themes and if you look at lpm, in theory, strategic themes are there to give you declarative alignment. Right. We're going to the moon and this is how we'll know we got there. But it's very easy for people to read completely different things when they read the same set of words. And you know, that's where I think Stefan's comment about you've got to get to the key results because, you know, I've facilitated an awful lot of OKR setting workshops and it's amazing how often everybody goes, that's the right objective. And then as soon as you start to say, how would we know we got there and get some key results out, you realize everybody's talking about something completely different. So getting to measurability is a piece of the puzzle. But you know, for me, the other piece, and this is the truth of alignment, is I can come into alignment. To publish a set of strategic themes felt good in the room. We had a wonderful workshop. We're all proud of the words we wrote and it made a pretty poster. But I've got to live them every week. If I'm not living them every week, if they're not becoming part of my weekly conversations, then they're not going to do my job. Because the real job is not can I align for two hours and everybody walk out of the room singing Kumbaya. The real job is can we be aligned every day, every week, every month, every quarter. And so getting strategic themes and finding some way to be able to make them a part of your daily and weekly rhythms. That's the heart of strategic themes for me.

Niko Kaintantzis: 41:37

Perfect. Because yeah, the safe copilot is saying collaboration, collaborate effectively with stakeholders is important. And yeah, you second that very well. Stefan, the three biggest challenges in developing strategic teams, you already started mentioning them. You want to add something after Mark added.

Stephan Neck: 41:58

Yeah, I really, I think. And that's my experience and I'm still working on that because I'm still filling big shoes. Not there yet. You might think, oh, now we got it. We got the alignment, we got the direction. But the ability to pivot, to learn as you go is. Is also very important. Right. Having strategic themes is not the magic wand, it's just the guardrail. It's something that really helps you finding the path, finding the freedom. It. It will help clarifying what is an appropriate autonomy on team level, on. On leadership level. Because that all. All sums up on the portfolio level. Right. I sometimes call it the orchestra. Right. The portfolio is the orchestra. The different value streams are the different parts of the orchestra. If you only listen to the trumpets or if you only listen to the violins, that's not the orchestra. And strategy comes in with, okay, there are the notes, there's what we should play so that we really play the same piece. But you can play it in so many different ways. And that's the magic of a portfolio for me. Right.

Mark Richards: 43:23

Have you read the book, Maestro Stefan?

Stephan Neck: 43:25

No.

Mark Richards: 43:26

Brilliant book. It's a guy who, he's a orchestra conductor and he conducts leadership training and workshops. And what he does, he actually brings people into orchestral performances and he has them sit in different chairs and pay attention to what they're hearing, depending on where they're sitting. And. And the fact that depending on where you're sitting, you might be hearing something completely different because some instruments sound very loud to you, some you may not hear at all based on where you're sitting. But then there's a moment when you're the conductor and in the conductor, you're meant to be hearing everything in balance and to be able to communicate the things that you're hearing back to those who can't necessarily hear them because of their different perspectives. It's a really fascinating exploration of leadership through a different metaphor. When you started talking about the orchestra, I was like, oh, you're talking about Maestro.

Stephan Neck: 44:30

I have to read it now. Okay.

Niko Kaintantzis: 44:32

Oh, that's a cool one.

Stephan Neck: 44:33

Happy holidays.

Niko Kaintantzis: 44:37

Oh, great. That's really great stuff. Let's go to more enthusiasm and say your best success story you have on the portfolio level. And I would like to start with Mark. So what are. Yeah, one key success story. And what was the key factor that it was a success story for you?

Mark Richards: 44:53

Look, I think for me, I'm not going to focus on a key success story so much as to go, what's the big milestone? I look for what's the moment that tells me we've got somewhere serious with our portfolio journey. And that milestone that I'm always looking for is we're having a very different investment discussion. And whether that's we're using strategic themes, whether we're using capacity funding, right. Something radically different is taking place as we go through the annual investment planning cycle. And when you get to that moment, that's when you know amazing things are about to unlock. And partially, you know, because you've done the hard work that got you into that discussion, right? If you try and open with that discussion, you'll generally have a very short discussion. People laugh at you've got to be joking and it's over, right? You got to earn the stripes and get to that moment. But when that moment comes, it's like a symbol that a whole bunch of things are about to be set free. And you know, I can't. I was thinking when I was doing my prep, can I remember the last time I coached portfolio that we didn't wind up running capacity based funding? And I can't remember right. Every client I've ever worked with in portfolio, we've wound up changing the funding model and moving away from project based funding. We've never done it overnight. And you know, you chase the short wins and we've talked about them, right? Find the problems that they're feeling hurt from at the moment and make life better, get lots of small wins. But for me it's. You look for that moment that says we've got enough small wins and we've generated enough traction, enough sense of control in this new way of working that we're ready to start to really unpack some of the big beasts.

Stephan Neck: 46:44

Similar approach from my side and I had to learn it the hard way. You're not just doing prioritization of epics and try to bring in the discussion. We should focus. Right? What I'm looking for is a discourse about the portfolio. What is it at this given moment, where are we heading to? And also bringing in again, what's the biggest challenges, right? Don't do the easy stuff, do the hard stuff. What's the job to be done? And that helps for the scoping and the prioritization. And I most of the time try to set up this environment before I go into a weighted shortest job first discussion or prioritization discussion. Because again, we have lots of work to do and people think, yeah, if we have the epics, if we have the standard filled out and outcome hypothesis, everything, it's probably the bigger picture that matters. First and that's what I'm looking for. And that's whenever I can bring in this environment, this type of coaching, this type of asking people, it becomes a success story. But again, magical things might happen during those discussions. I can't put it in an agenda, I can't prepare it. But be prepared to grab the magical moment and then use the structural elements on the ALPAM level.

Niko Kaintantzis: 48:11

Thank you. I'm just looking through the watch and see we don't have so much time. So I'm going to the closing question. You can put everything there in because it's a fantastic, great one. So I'm so convinced that it's the best question. No, no, let's stay serious. If you have tips, not only one tip. If you have tips for SPCs or coaches in general to grow in this LPM space, what will be your tip? Your tips?

Mark Richards: 48:35

So once you start, I'm going to start and we've already kind of alluded to them but you know, and the trigger for me when I looked at your question was you're growing into the LPM space. So there's an assumption you're an spc, you're a coach, you've been working elsewhere, perhaps down in essential safe coaching teams and arts. You're stretching into lpm. There will be a whole bunch of things that you blame the portfolio for, right? And there'll be expected behaviors. And you go, that's not agile. And maybe it's that they want a status report every week, but you're running two week iterations. Maybe it's the sign offs that are needed on something. Right? Find something you hate, timesheets and that you think is in the way of agility and then figure out how to solve for it and recognizing that solving for it is not killing it, solving for it is going, why does this thing exist? What are the things that cause it to need to happen? And what could we change in our environment to satisfy the need and hurt us less from an agile perspective, right? Because all these things that we hate. You know, I used to love complaining about different colors of money causing stupidity for agile teams until I understood why different colors of money existed. And if you can take those things and go, okay, let me help you, let's lean into that. Generally, whatever you do will make life better for your agile teams. It'll make life better for your portfolio because it will take a source of friction out of the system. It'll take manual labor out of the system. But even more importantly, you will learn something. You'll learn about the things that drive the portfolio. And so you get to ease in by solving real pain points. But in that process you get to form the relationships and ask the questions and come to the understanding of the things that drive the things behind the scenes sites.

Niko Kaintantzis: 50:33

That's great. I just changed five times my answer while listening to you. I really love that. So one thing is really there is something there and you have to respect this and you also have to respect the track record of the people being there. And so because you have to grow in this area like Stefan said in the beginning. So we are really closing the loop at the beginning is to grow there you need some role models. And my tip is go and shadow. Go with experienced people together. Don't be the first time alone. Start networking with other people, network with other LPM coaches. And the other thing is you need to gain knowledge not only on how it really works, but also in theory. And for that take advanced classes. Go to Safe Summit. I really enjoyed this time to save summit, there were so great portfolio talks. I think I was only there on leadership and portfolio. And again the discussions you have bring you forward. So to blend in you really have to take care of that. And that will be my tip. Don't expect to be it, you have to become it.

Stephan Neck: 51:42

That's interesting listening to you mates. It leads me back to my personal pocket guide. I use when it comes to the growth factors. And these are the lean thinking principles, right? Sometimes the growth factor is more on strategic alignment. Sometimes it's more talking about what kind of value streams do we really have. As you said, Mark, okay, governance, we hate it. But it's about discipline and stringence and even sometimes we kind of oppose the budgeting and the funding because yeah, it is what it is, right? Sometimes it's more about decision making and creating flow. And in general, for me, the lean thinking principles always help me to frame where am I and where am I going to? Am I deepening my knowledge in one of these principles or am I jumping from the different principles from effectiveness going to efficiency. Right? The ultimate goal and I'll never be there is being 100% efficient. But first of all, I have to create effective behaviors, effective solutions. I'm helping the organization to get there to be effective before it comes to efficiency. Lean thinking principles, that will be my pocket guide.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:06

Thank you very much, gents. So let's go to our last part of this episode. Just one takeaway before we say again our spells. No, just one takeaway. If you have only one sentence for the audience, what would it be?

Mark Richards: 53:22

Learn from the people you're coaching.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:24

Oh, cool. Learn from the people you're coaching.

Stephan Neck: 53:27

Don't try.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:28

Yeah, yeah.

Stephan Neck: 53:29

Don't try to fit into someone else's.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:31

Shoes well and be humble while learning. That sounds soft. So from my side, thank you very much. I would like to hand over to Mark again showing us what's next and taking us off the air.

Stephan Neck: 53:49

Marc.

Mark Richards: 53:50

All right, so we have one week left in the year before we go into our Christmas New Year break. And next week we are talking about change management and the implementation roadmap. So join us for what I'm sure will be quite an interesting discussion as I think there have been a lot of hot debates about the implementation roadmap over recent years. So until then, have a wonderful week and thank you for joining us. And this is the SPC's unleashed crew signing out.