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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
BONUS Escaping the Agile Doom Loop With Pete Oliver-Krueger and "Agile Mike" Dougherty
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Global Agile Summit Preview: How to Escape the Agile Doom Loop with Pete Oliver-Krueger and "Agile Mike" Dougherty In this BONUS , we explore the concept of the "Agile Doom Loop" with Pete Oliver-Krueger and Michael "Agile Mike" Dougherty,...
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- [00:07]
Jasko
Have you ever wondered what it really takes to make Agile work well? At the Global Agile Summit, we're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action. Whether you're a leader, a product innovator, a developer, you'll hear practical insights from those who've done it. They'll be telling their own stories from the stage. I'll tell you more about this at the end of this episode. So stay back and listen to the full detailed description of what we have in store for you at the Global Agile Summit. But if you can't wait, you can go right now to globalagilesummit.com and check out our full schedule. For now, on to the episode. But I'll see you at the end of this episode with more details on the Global Agile Summit. Talk to you soon. Hello everybody. Welcome to this very special episode. In this very special week we have with us for today's episode, Pete Oliver Kruger and Michael Daugherty. Hey there. Welcome to the show.
- [01:19]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Thanks for having us, Jasko. We're excited.
- [01:23]
Jasko
Absolutely. So let me tell you a little bit about Pete and Michael. So Pete is an executive coach with the Library of Agile and also the co author of the book Shift from Product to People, a novel that tells the complex story of how leading people first is required to solve tomorrow's biggest problems, and some would argue, perhaps even today's biggest problems. But onwards we must go, because we also have with us Michael, also known as Agile Mike. He has over 30 years of experience with solution development and product leadership, working in nearly every IT role that exists and literally hundreds of companies during his career. And if you're a lot younger than Michael, you're probably not going to be able to do that because many of the roles that existed before don't exist anymore, although the work is still done, of course. Michael has taught multiple Agile courses to over 1000 people, spoken at multiple events and podcasts, written dozens of blogs, and he's been recently serving in the US Government. He's also the co author of Shift From Product to People. So why do we have Pete and Michael here? So while this week is the Global Agile Summit week, where we interview, track hosts and speakers about their own journey to become pragmatic innovators, which is really fitting for today's conversation with Pete and Michael because they will be talking about how to escape the dreaded Agile Doom loop. And I don't mean the Doom game, I mean the, you know, being sad and such. So let's start with you, Michael. Now, many practitioners, I bet, know what that agile doom feels like. But from your experience, how does it look like when someone is really trapped in that agile doom loop?
- [03:16]
Michael Daugherty
Well, there's a lot of clear indicators and one is you feel like you're stuck in a rut wherever you're at. And that is where the status quo is, the always quo. It just keeps going and going and going. And we as pragmatic innovators always are looking to change. And when change doesn't happen and there is nothing that seems to go anywhere, that's when you know you're in that doom loop. Because we're all about improving. There's an old saying that's paraphrased from W. Edwards Deming. Change is not essential, neither is survival. Right? And so if you're not changing, if you're not improving, getting to somewhere better or finding the route there, you know, learning and failing on things to get you to a better place at the end, because what matters is the journey as much as the results, then you're in a doom loop. And that doom loop is a terrible place. It shuts yourself down. I think anyone who's been in the industry and doing agile type roles for a while has seen that happen. And it's often called career limiting too, that if you stick your head out and try to change it, you might lose your job. I have seen that happen too many times, including with me. I have been fired for doing that more than once.
- [04:50]
Jasko
I know of people who've gone through that. How about you Pete, from the storyteller's perspective, what would a story of an agile doom loop?
- [05:01]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Well, it definitely would be first person, you know, not the game, Pete.
- [05:06]
Jasko
Not the game.
- [05:07]
Pete Oliver Kruger
No, not the game. Okay. Not like going around the cue balls. Sorry, that might be giving other different images. No, we are talking about really being wrapped into the doing of the agile and it not going anywhere. So the way the doom loop shows up in some of the organizations that I've worked with is teams have been going through and been doing agile for sometimes years or at least for multiple different months. And they've learned the basics, they've taken the training classes, actually I'd say they've evolved and they said, oh, we're doing agile, we're doing agile. And then the leadership comes in and says not good enough. And then like, okay, we'll switch it up and we're continuous improvement. Now we're going to do this and we're going to do this. Leadership comes in and Says not good enough. So they're like, well, here's all of our impediments. Here's the things that are standing in the way. And they're doing all the agile things you're supposed to do. And the leadership is, we can't do anything about these impediments. Figure it out on your own. And so they feel like they're just marching in this doom loop. And it's a loop because they're in agile. And every sprint it's the same message. And every sprint the metrics don't get better. And every sprint nothing really changes. And they just keep getting beat down upon by leadership and they don't get necessarily help from leadership. And that is that dreaded feeling of doom.
- [06:32]
Jasko
So I've, I've definitely seen that happen to teams that I've worked with. Kind of, they, they, they lose hope. But before that happens, what's your, like, what are the things that you're looking for to assess whether a team is kind of maybe just slightly dropping into that doom loop as you guys describe it? What are the things that tell you that maybe now it's time for an intervention?
- [07:02]
Pete Oliver Kruger
I have some questions that I will ask that will give me some of that information. One question will be that I will ask the teams, so what does leadership want? And probably more than half the teams can't give me an answer. They're like, oh, we just have to get the product done or we have to deliver by this particular date. Then this follow up question is, okay, so you just introduced these changes and you've been doing this kind of stuff. What's your evidence? What did that do for you? How did you make an improvement on it? And they're like, I mean, we can go look at the JIRA reports, but they don't have an answer. They haven't been tracking it. They haven't really been paying attention to whether or not they're solving both their own problems and leadership problems. And half of the time it's because they don't even know what leadership's problems are.
- [07:58]
Jasko
So they're kind of just stuck in this continuous Deliver more stories. Deliver more stories. We need to deliver more stories. And they're not really looking at, you know, why are these stories here? What is preventing us from delivering more stories? Are we even going in the right direction? Is that what you mean?
- [08:16]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Yeah, essentially that is what. Yeah, that is where that comes from. They don't know that they have some choice or sometimes they don't feel like they have a choice. They're just being handed stuff and it's their job to go execute and get it done. And the only time that you get a space to be able to push back if you need to is when you can say, hey, if we do this differently, you're going to get this problem solved, leadership that you want done. You're saying we need to deliver on X, Y and Z. So if you want X we got to do this and if you want Y we got to do this. But then you got to be able to follow up on it. So we have nothing to push back on.
- [08:57]
Jasko
So we see the teams kind of just in this continuous. We want to deliver, we, we need to deliver more kind of thinking. But how does the agile doom loop surface in us? Right? Like because the, the teams are not there alone, right? Often we are there with them. Whether we are leaders or coaches or product owners, we are there with them. So Michael, when was the first time you noticed this pattern in you, right, like that you were maybe being absorbed into that partner pattern yourself?
- [09:28]
Michael Daugherty
Oh, that's so many years ago. We'd have to go back to one of the dinosaur ages. But, but I will say going down the path when I find myself just being a cog in the machine like that old saying goes that I'm just going through the motions like Pete was mentioning without even realizing it. Sometimes you just end up feeling like a frog in the frying pan that you just start getting into there. And all the things you do, people look at you as either you're the enemy, you're the auditor coming in to judge them and so therefore they are going to find ways to resist because it's career limiting and the psychological safety is not there. Nobody feels comfortable speaking out loud. And I've had that before a couple cases. One example would be, I remember that this is Covid time. So it's more recent where nobody had their camera on for any of our meetings. And I purposely had my camera on and would encourage others to do it and they said no, they're not doing it or they would turn on for a little bit and when things progressed the camera would go off again within like 5, 10 minutes. And part of it was that people didn't want to stick out, they didn't want to be seen because they were worried that if they did and they did something wrong then they would get judged and lose their job. Eventually it was a downward spiral. And so that's one indicator. The other indicator would be that the teams themselves, anytime you bring up ideas, they tend to Squash them, anything that's new or different, unless it came from a manager. And to get back to this whole feeling, it's usually about disconnects. I mean, sure, you can try things like OKRs, but they often don't work unless you've got the right amount of communication going on to allow teams to be self empowered to take care of what they need to do and also allow leadership to give the guide rails that close the middle management down to them. And oftentimes it's that darn telephone game. It's only a couple points, but it still becomes a telephone game where one example I won't name the government agency where they have fantastic goals and overall strategic themes and a mission. And then when it comes down the team, they lost it, got lost in the shuffle down in them. And they don't even look at it until like a year later because they tend to do the annual reviews. Now they're starting to look at it quarterly, but it's still where things are very disconnected. So they'll be at the end like oh, we didn't meet it well. And you know, government tends to blame, blame the contractors. So you got to be careful with that too. So those are a lot of the warning signs where you feel helpless and you're in that doom loop and how can you get.
- [12:18]
Jasko
And of course many of our listeners, and I've certainly seen some of those patterns myself and of course at the summit we're talking about solutions from real life stories as the vision goes. Pete, you guys are going to talk about a framework you call pages like P A G E S. Can you give us an overview of what those letters mean and why you guys came up with that concept?
- [12:45]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Sure. It is what we do in the book. It's one of the. And we get to, I think it's about chapter eight. We walk teams through showing them what it means to be able to make some meaningful change and to break out of this doom loop and be able to move forward. We don't actually use the acronym in the book itself, but all the elements are there. We're looking at what are the problems we're trying to leave behind, what are the actions we're taking to get to our goals and what evidence are we collecting in order to get there. And you can rewrite what you guys are trying to do inside of your organization by following these patterns. And the pattern is structured, targeted towards the leadership. I'm the type of person, nature of my job. I got to do these QBRs, these quarterly business reviews or Monthly reports or these different summary things. And we basically took what we have to put in these things and communicate to leadership and said, teams, this is how you're being represented at the organizational level. So you should participate in this.
- [13:52]
Jasko
It's also a neat way to show what the team is doing in a way that. In a language that leadership will understand.
- [13:59]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Exactly. Yes, you're talking leadership language. So we spell out how leadership thinks about the teams so the teams can actually speak to leadership in the way that they want to be heard.
- [14:12]
Jasko
So it's almost a little bit like kind of a boost to improve the communication because we're bringing like the stuff we're doing on a day to day with the teams, but we're bringing it in a format that helps leadership ask the right questions instead of focusing on more, more, more.
- [14:32]
Pete Oliver Kruger
I don't know that leadership has the time at least. Most of the organizations I've been in, leadership doesn't have the time to ask the right questions. And so as a coach, especially at the enterprise level, it's listening to all the things that they keep saying and it's like, well, let's teach the teams how to talk, leadership talk. And they lay out all that stuff. So leadership just has to look at it and they're like, okay, yeah, you're good, okay, you know, or we need to change. We need this request to be processed. This is why. This is the problem we're trying to solve. This is what we're trying to do. This is how it's going to help you leadership people. And here's how we're going to collect the evidence to show you that the change is worth the amount and the time and the money and everything that goes into it. And that's the language that leadership speaks that they don't actually hear from the teams very often.
- [15:12]
Jasko
So it's almost like our own private Babelfish. Right? Like a translator between the teams. And. And there it is. So Michael, how have you guys used this framework to, you know, focus on the teams, energize, motivate them. And besides creating that, let's call it translation layer, right, like to bring the team's reality to the leadership language. How else have you used this framework to energize and motivate the team to work with.
- [15:40]
Michael Daugherty
Well, the framework, I mean, with pages which as Pete mentioned, it's in the book, but it's not in the book. We're always evolving, we're always improving. In book two, it's going to be.
- [15:49]
Jasko
The second volume, I hear.
- [15:52]
Michael Daugherty
Yeah, It's a book that Pete really wants to write. So the first book was awesome book, but we didn't get to everything we wanted to. And we'll probably have a third one too. Well, we'll see how the second book goes. But in any event, Pages is something that's evolved from writing the book and from our personal experiences. And with that, an example would be that I tend to start with a quote like think globally, act locally. Meaning that I tend to try to start with one team. If I'm seeing that one group I'm working with has 500 people with it and they've all got different levels of maturity and self empowerment or not self empowerment and where they're going. You can't boil the ocean. 500 people. It's hard to change all at once. What we've done is we started with one team and that team was the catalyst. And we started talking in a way that the leadership wanted to hear, but we talked to them in a way where we weren't having meetings with the leadership. We did that with metrics, right? We had this nice page. We started building it out and then we would get it to a place where we thought leadership wanted based on all hands meetings and what other communication was coming in down from leadership. And then we would have one big meeting, say, here's what we got for you. What do you think? Couple changes here or there and they got another one. And leadership was like, that's good, I don't need to worry about you anymore. And they would just check on their own because it was always run in real time. Anytime they could see how things were going with the overall mindsets of those that were going through. And we had this whole program where we're doing agile coaching for teams going out there. This is a group of coaches and we are evaluating it. They could see the results of it. Everything is getting stored in the system of record. We can see the progress that's going on. And leadership just backed off.
- [17:46]
Jasko
It was a little bit like almost doing a demo for the process and process adoption and transformation.
- [17:54]
Michael Daugherty
That's correct. That's correct. It was a demo of how we were doing the process. And I didn't think about it as being pages at that time, but pages is really the approach that we used for. Wasn't just me, right? It was a whole team of coaches together with a lot of technical folks to put together in everyone's favorite. Pete mentioned it, Jira and Confluence. And it worked like magic because it's advanced to the point where now we're getting awards for what we've done there because the end clients, the users are noticing the difference. It's like before, they would have to wait for delay after delay after delay for certain functions. Now they're getting delivered on time or they're being reset sequence. So things that really should be pushed out later are getting pushed out later. So the most important things get done first, as the customers tell us they should be.
- [18:47]
Jasko
So if people want to know more, of course they can read the book that shift from product to people, or they can come in and see your talk at the Global Agile Summit and have a few beers or ice cream or whatever you prefer and talk to Pete and Michael. But of course you will need to go there in order to know all about the framework, plus a lot more examples than what we've shared today. But we want to give you a tip, something actionable. So let's start with you pit. What's one tip that we could give the people listening to us so that they could start right away, even if it's only about that transfer, sorry, translation layer. Right. Like kind of coming up with a way to talk to leadership that leadership understands. But it could be, that could be something else. What's one tip that we could start with immediately while we wait to find out about the whole framework at the Global Agile Summit?
- [19:39]
Pete Oliver Kruger
My first tip would be to go problems first. So think about what problem do you want to see go away and don't introduce anything unless it's going to directly affect that problem. Make it go away and prioritize. You might be trying to solve multiple problems at once. Put them in one list and prioritize them so that you are solving multiple problems at the same time. But know your problem so that you can know when that problem disappears if you've done it right.
- [20:07]
Jasko
How do you define problem? Like you know it's not a complaint. Right. Like that would be too high level.
- [20:15]
Pete Oliver Kruger
I have at times used the phrase epic problem. That it's not just like a small little thing of like, oh, this thing didn't come in, you know, or we haven't heard back from our vendor yet that it's more of a long term thing of like we never hear back from this vendor or it always takes us a long time to get these types of things out.
- [20:37]
Jasko
It's kind of a repeating pattern that is preventing us from achieving our goal.
- [20:42]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Yes.
- [20:44]
Jasko
So that implies that maybe in order to define a problem, we also need to be clear about what is the goal that is affected by the existence of that problem. Right.
- [20:53]
Pete Oliver Kruger
I do it in the opposite direction. I define what the problem is and actually build the metrics around the problem so that we know how to see if the problem goes away and then pick a goal that's going to make that problem go away. If you start with a goal without focusing on the problems, oftentimes we can be. I think that actually creates a lot of the doom loops because we get focused on doing a goal and achieving a goal and getting to a place and we never check back to see if that goal that we chose actually solves a problem that the leadership cares about. And that's why they get at us, because we're not solving the problems, but we give them goal after goal after goal. They give us a goal.
- [21:33]
Jasko
So that's the second tip, right? Like make sure you choose a problem that your leadership cares about.
- [21:39]
Pete Oliver Kruger
Yes. And no. If you want the more detailed one on that. When I first start working with a team, the most important thing is to find a problem that they care about and solve that to get them to buy in. And so I don't like, I make very clear that, like, hey, trust me, do this thing, your life will get better. And I have all these little things that I can do to deliver on that. And then the team gets bought in and they're like, okay. And then I'm like, all right, so now that I've solved one of your problems, we need to see us solve a leadership problem so that now they will help us solve our next problem. And we keep going back and forth. Solve a team problem, leadership problem, team problem, leadership problem.
- [22:15]
Jasko
That's already three tips. Pete, you're so generous today.
- [22:19]
Pete Oliver Kruger
So generous.
- [22:21]
Jasko
All right, but the rest you can get at. The rest of Pete's tips you can get at the Global Agile Summit. But now, Michael, your tip for people who want to get started right away, what should they do?
- [22:34]
Michael Daugherty
I'm sorry, Pete took all the tips, there's no more left. So problems first. That is fantastic. Yeah, go with something that's a low hanging fruit with the team to get them jazzed up because you got to build some credibility that you are going down the right path with them. There's trust involved here and trust is very, very fragile. Right. It takes a long time to build trust. It takes just one moment to lose it all. And so you got to be very careful about that. So I like to say behind picking those problems and getting a small win, have good stories to give. Bring those stories to let them know that you've seen things like this before that, you know what you're doing, that you can be successful. Those personal stories I love to give really help people get into the belief and the trust that this is going to work. And then, as Pete was mentioning, having some evidence there that shows that we're going the right direction and measuring that is so important that you want to make sure that you've got something there that's. I like to call it future winning. You've got some idea of the future. That's a big win. Okay, I'm thinking Charlie Sheen and winning, but it's not that kind of win. It's like, really, you look at the future and you go backwards. How can we get there? And so that ties to the problems of making sure it aligns with leadership, but having that measured and figuring out a way to do it. Just one, just pick one can get you to a place. Keep it small. All right, I'm thinking, if anyone knows the book Atomic Habits, I'm thinking keep it small. Start with something that the team can grab onto without it causing a lot of pain for them to create and maintain it. Because if you try to do that from the beginning, it's going to likely just fall apart and go in the background and be forgotten.
- [24:27]
Jasko
Yeah. The book on the atomic habits approach is actually quite good because we want to get the team to be kind of just naturally thinking that way as well. Right. Like, we want to give them the tools so that they can slowly start to move in that direction. Then it's no longer a doom loop. Then it is more like, you know, it's the next. What is it called? It's the next turtle you jump on. Like in Super Mario, if we're taking the game metaphor here, you just pick another one and you jump on it. Right. Like, that's the whole idea. Get that spirit. And I think it's important what both of you said, building that trust, building that buy in, because that's what drives motivation. Right. People are really motivated when they feel they have an influence over their future. Yeah.
- [25:18]
Pete Oliver Kruger
I'd say for both leadership and the teams not seeing anything change after they went through all that effort, hugely demotivating.
- [25:29]
Jasko
So more turtles, less doom. All right, everybody, thank you very much. You guys have been amazing. Mike and Peter. But I'm sure that our listeners will want to get in touch with you, send you a few LinkedIn questions, maybe ask for more tips. You know, connect with them on LinkedIn. I'm sure they'll share more tips. So, Michael, let's start with you. Where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
- [25:56]
Michael Daugherty
LinkedIn is a place I tend to go to every workday. And so my. There's a lot of Michael Dougherty's out there. And I found out there was another Michael Dougherty that's an imposter with me. I'm the real Michael Dougherty. Just all the others ones, including the one that did the movie Trick or Treat or wrote scripts for X Men and so on. He's not the real one right here. And so I'm agile Michael Dougherty on LinkedIn. You can find me that way. That'd make it easy. And so with that you could connect with me there. I'm happy to take connections and answer questions. And the book, the book is something we definitely suggest you take a look at, see if it's something that you'd be interested in. It's on Amazon. You get a hard copy version if you're old school that way. Or you could just do the Kindle version audio version, haven't gotten there yet. But if we sell like Simon Simic level or Seth Godin level of copies and we'll have an audio version out with as Brad Pitt doing.
- [27:01]
Jasko
And you can bring your paper copy version to Global Agile Summit and get Pit and Michael to sign it.
- [27:07]
Michael Daugherty
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
- [27:10]
Jasko
How about you, Pit? Where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
- [27:16]
Pete Oliver Kruger
You can find me also on LinkedIn. So my handle is peteok. The Oliver Kruger is always way too many letters to type and they're always in the wrong order. So just look for Pete. And that's how you can find me the easiest. You can also find both of us@shiftingpeople.com and so that's going to give you a link to the stuff on the websites and have some updates on things that we do throughout that. So go ahead and find us over there@shiftingpeople.com and at LinkedIn.
- [27:47]
Jasko
Absolutely. Pete and Michael, thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge. And I'll see you in Tallinn.
- [27:55]
Pete Oliver Kruger
See you in Thailand.
- [27:57]
Michael Daugherty
Thank you.
- [28:01]
Jasko
Hey friend. Thank you for staying here. Is all you need to know about the Global Agile Summit. If you've ever suffered or know people who are suffering from agile fatigue, this event is for you. Agile fatigue is that feeling that settles in when we can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. We get discouraged, especially when conversations revolve around the same old frameworks, the same old buzzwords and theories. We don't feel that energy anymore. Well, the Global Agile Summit is a different kind of event. We're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action and transform the way you work. The Global Agile Summit will happen in Tallinn, Estonia May 18th. That's the workshop day. Then 19th and 20th, the conference day. And Tallinn, Estonia is one of the most innovative tech hubs in Europe. The Global Agile Summit is hosted together with Latitude 59, which is kind of a citywide celebration of software startups and groundbreaking ideas. And we'll have a shared ticket for you to attend those events as well. So who will be speaking? Well, we've got an incredible lineup of thought leaders in software and agile. For example, Clinton Keith, the person who wrote, literally wrote the book on game development with Scrum and is busy bringing Agile to the world of game development. You must check his session. The very famous and well known Jurgen Apelo, author of Management 3.0, will be talking and exploring about AI's impact on leadership. We also have Goiko Adsic, who's taking an unconventional look at product growth with his Lizard Optimization keynote. Other speakers include, for example Sixven Dot Dietz, who's challenging everything we know about software development by ditching, literally ditching contracts and estimates. Can you imagine his teams deliver software before their competitors are even done with the contract negotiation? How agile is that? But there's more. We'll cover engineering practices in our developer track with talks on, for example AI assisted test driven development, developing products in minutes with a different approach to how we develop, configure, deploy platforms, and much more. We also have a product track where we cover cutting edge ideas around product discovery, delighting customers with product delight frameworks. We'll have a talk about that. And we also have an Agile business track where we will talk about, for example Open strategy, a very agile approach to managing organizations and delivering software faster to clients faster than you can even write a contract, literally. I mean, I already told you about Svendit's story is amazing. It definitely is a must see. I'm sure you'll be inspired and get a lot of ideas for your own software projects and software delivery. Now, whether you're a business leader, a product innovator or a developer, you'll definitely find value in our three focused tracks. That's Agile Business for those working with businesses and organizations, Agile Product for product managers, product owners and innovators, and Agile Developer for the builders making agile work in practice, the coders, the testers, the designers the producers, the Scrum Masters, you name it. If you join, you will meet over 200 agile professionals from all over the world. People who, just like you, want to grow, want to share, and want to learn. By challenging the ideas that don't work anymore at the Global Agile Summit, you'll get new connections, fresh ideas, and the energy to take your own Agile to the next level. And who knows, maybe even find your next career opportunity. So don't miss out. Check out the full program and grab your ticket now@globalagilesummit.com I'm really looking forward to seeing you all in Tallinn, Estonia in May. I'll see you there.
- [32:40]
Michael Daugherty
Sa.