John Inge Sjøvaag Hervik - Sensemaking

Speaker A: Welcome back to another episode of Agile Way podcast where we explore challenges organizations face on their Agile journey. How to become great SCRUM Master, how to change your leadership style, or how to embrace agility at the organizational level. I'm Suzie Shikova, Agile Coach, certified Scrum trainer and author of the great SCRUM Master book and Agile Leader Book, and I am your host for this podcast. I'm passionate about business agility, organizational culture and agile leadership. And that was the reason why I decided to start this podcast to share with you my experiences and stories from my Agile journey. Hello everyone. Uh, let me invite John here today. And um, John, what are you currently passionate about in Agile space?

Speaker B: Hi Suzy. Nice of you to have me here. Um, currently my main topics I think is making things practical from all of what we've been Talking about the 20 past year, really getting into how can we make sense of it and start using it in our everyday. So the topics then start moving towards adult development, sense making and even philosophy at the time. But it's really about how can we start really getting into what this means in our everyday instead of what we should have been doing.

Speaker A: So what does it mean in our everyday life?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. So for me, uh, being agile or working in an agile, uh, way is having those conversations of what are we trying to do today, what are we trying to do this month or what are we trying to do together? And also having conversations about and how would we like to be when we do that? And you could say this is many of organizations and leadership's uh, ways of working towards this is purpose, it's strategy, but it's also the stand up of uh, okay, so what do we need to do today and who's helping me with that and how should we do that? Should we do it separately or pair programming or another way? So it's really getting into the, to doing what we constantly say all of the time and pulling in, in, um, yeah, different topics, uh, that we can use to, to enhance this for us. Yeah.

Speaker A: Then what's the prerequisite of that culture? Because I think it needs a bit of, uh, trust or openness. So, uh, how would you make that happen?

Speaker B: So, uh, the first prerequisite is I think, um, knowing even what we would like to have happen. So and a lot of organizations and the teams, even individuals that we don't really think about these things. So I think that the prerequisite is to start talking about what would I like today, what do I want tomorrow in this, um, uh, yeah, this month or this year even so, so having that desire for it, um, I think that coaching for instance helps really well with that. But there's other tools we can use as well to just formulate and um, structure what does it really mean to pull it down. Um, just had a workshop with impact mapping for instance to say so we're doing all of this. Let's reverse it into what is actually the change going to be inside of people or the change that people will be doing so that we go get our goals and what are even our goals. So, so having uh, so I think tools is necessary but it's really that drive to understand what do we need. And um, yeah my approach is coaching as an agile coach as well. Um, so I think maybe also leadership, uh, clearer leadership is something that we need to evolve. That is also why I'm going into more concrete adult development and leadership development because uh, we have for a long time and we still do a lot of this. We have leaders who set direction, they decide what we should do and that might work. But also it really more needs to be looking at what is out there, what do we need to fulfill as an organization, what is our purpose, find it and then holding it and sharing it with the organization around so it makes sense to them. And yeah I'm probably going to go back to making sense of things for people a lot because especially when things are happening so quickly as they are now, we need to support sense making at all levels. So leadership it m needs to be make sense to them. It needs to make sense to the people of doing it. Um if not we're not going to adapt quick enough for whatever it says tomorrow. Yeah.

Speaker A: Now um, can you share some like real um, life example of this approach, how it helped at some situations?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So, so um, one of the uh, sense making ways we worked with was actually uh a really interesting example is a product owner we worked with. Um, well actually we worked with the organizations but, but the agile, global Agile coaches came and said well this part, this Nordic part, we really need to get this product owner to, to start using agility. They need to get with the program, all of that. So, so there was a really a push on how can we now change other people's way of working. And um, when, when I was brought in we started just asking what are you trying to do? What are actually your goals at the moment? And they had a big project, they were also delivering to the same managers trying to push through this agility thing. And um, it was like this is really important for us and you're getting in the way. So then we thought, okay, so if we are getting in the way, how can we support you? Is there anything that might be interesting towards that goal? Not the goal we have of being agility, but, but the things that are driving your energy towards this. And the first thing she mentioned was, well, I've seen stand up in the other parts of the organization that seems to work because you're now getting conversations across countries so that we know more of what's going on, uh, around us and then they can collaborate even better. So we started facilitating, uh, standups and then they use that increased way of working together. So how are we working today towards our goals to then free more time up and to actually. But stop doing parallel work or things that is necessary to do in parallel in two places at the same time. But also seeing how they could support each other. So by freeing up time in that way, they were also able to start getting the head over the water and start adding other stuff. So again, asking them, what are you trying to achieve? And then see, how can we use technology like stand up or other things to really enhance how you are working and delivery towards your outcomes. So sometimes I feel like what we do is really, really simple, but it's also really, really hard because it's really about these core principles, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, very cool. Very cool. So what's the most difficult when you have those type of conversations in, uh, working environments? Uh, what are your biggest challenges?

Speaker B: The biggest challenge I think is setting aside enough time so that we, instead of trying to force ourselves into solutions, we stop and have good conversations to understand each other. I think that is the most, the hardest thing. Um, because you'll see this with teams, you'll see this with leadership. How can we get them to that is very often the question. And if we can't get them to, they are going to do whatever something problem towards us. So leadership will say, how can I get these teams to deliver this on time, for instance? Well, it's really hard to get people, but you can say that we need these things to be delivered because our customers. What do you need in order to make this happen? So then you start the conversation, then we can then have these conversations, spend a bit time on actually seeing what do we have together as leadership and team. And um, how would we like to proceed on this? So I would like to force my ideas towards you is the hardest challenge. And we think, I think that this is taking less time than actually spending a bit more time to create the shared understanding.

Speaker A: Now when we looked your journey, what was your biggest aha moment?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, my biggest aha moment is learning something called unconditional positive regard. So this is in my coaching. When I've started learning coaching I've tried all of the pushing through other agile practices and when I really, when it clicked to me because I've learned it earlier but when it clicked in for me that two elements of it and one of them was uh, not fixing people, not trying to fix them to get them to be different, have empathy instead of the perspective. But maybe the most profound was when my teacher said that um, um, if you really believe that people can think well for themselves, you won't feel the need to think for them. And I really realized that when I was like sitting on the edge of my chair and leaning forward and almost not being able to stop my own words. This is the moment when I'm trying to think for them. So just leaning a bit back and saying okay, so I have this need but in this moment that means also I'm trying to think for them. Uh, I think my thoughts are better for them than my own. And when I realized that I realized in this moment I don't want self organization because I'm trying to even think for them. I don't want them to um, come with their own ideas because I'm trying even to think for them. So how can I take a step back and be curious and start creating that shared understanding space? So I think that was the biggest thing because so many things then started to make sense when I realized oh, if I'm thinking for them a lot of these things, self organization, shared understanding, it doesn't really make any difference anymore if I'm doing all that thinking.

Speaker A: Yeah, very interesting, very interesting. So um, the, the world is changing all the time. So what do you think is the future of this whole agility? Where is it all coming?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, in this time and date it's, it is really interesting question. Maybe. So um, I, I, I do really think that we are going to move towards more networked and more self organization in companies, even in the world. I do strongly believe it there might be a uh, period that is coming where we regress a bit. So agility might be both in the agile space it might be smaller for a time. But also I think people will want more feeling of control. But I think we'll ultimately see that the complexity is rising. So we are going to need to find ways of building better relationships, building healthier uh, relationship. But Also networks. Because if we are going to adapt to all of the changes all of the time, being a global community, then I can't see another way around it. So agility, all of the practices, all the mindsets, that's going to be the norm. Uh, that is my prediction at least. Maybe not in 10 years, maybe even not in 20 years. Uh, but I'm hoping, I'm hoping

Speaker A: and I agree with you, the complexity grows, pace of changes, unpredictability. It's becoming pretty ugly. We don't know what's coming. It can bring a fear. It also can bring a hope that uh, maybe finally the pressure is high enough so companies would have to change from their traditional way of working which relies on predictability and everything fixed. Right? But who knows what is coming? We don't know that. But uh, I would like to invite everybody to our Agile Prague conference which is happening September 15, 16 and June is one of our, uh, speakers there. So can you tell us what is the one thing why people should attend your talk at Agile Prague?

Speaker B: I think the one thing is uh, making sense of what is really self organization and autonomy. So you can start using that in practice. Uh, uh, that is the main thing.

Speaker A: Well, thank you very much and looking forward to see you in September.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Agile Way podcast hosted by Zuzi Shakova, uh, author of the Great Scrum Master Book and Agile Leader Book. If you love listening to this podcast, please leave us a review. If there is any topic you are particularly interested in and would like to hear another episode on it, let me know. For more information about me and my Agile classes, Visit our website, sohoba.com S uh O C H-O-A.com thank you for listening.