← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
BONUS: Unlocking Language and Agility With Victor Pena and Michelle Pauk
00:52:10
BONUS: A Coaching Masterclass - How Our Language Affects Our Leadership Style, And The Culture We Create, With Michelle Pauk and Victor Pena In this BONUS episode, Victor Pena and dive deep into the power of language in shaping our work as...
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- [00:04]
Vasco Duarte
Hey, how are you doing? I'm Vasco Duarte, your host on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. And I've got some exciting news. So right now, as I record this, I'm holding in my hand the signed contract for our very first Global Agile Summit. We're all in and I couldn't wait to share this news with you. So mark your calendars. May 18th, 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. We're gonna have a transformative experience. We're putting together an event that is all about real life Agile. It's not theory or buzzwords. It's practitioners sharing what's working, what's making an impact, and how they've overcome challenges that you too will have to face, or maybe even facing. Right now, we're bringing together the best stories in Agile. From product leaders to engineering wizards to business visionaries, these will be stories that will inspire you to action. This isn't just another conference. It's a chance to connect with the people that are shaping the future of Agile. And here's the best part. Right now, we're in our super early bird phase. And that means you can grab tickets at just 25% of the final price. Look, that's not just half off, it's half off of the half off. It's an incredible deal for our dedicated community members, just like you listening to this right now. So at the summit, day one will be all about hands on workshops. And days two and three, we'll dive into leadership, product strategy, coding, testing, and everything that makes Agile thrive in organizations. Right now remember, these are all first person, real life stories. Now whether you're a leader, a developer, or part of a consulting company, this event is built to take your Agile game to the next level. So don't wait. Go to globalagilesummit.com and grab your ticket. Today, let's all make 2025 the year agile truly transforms your teams, your business and our industry. I'll see you all in Tallinn. And Remember, go to globalagilesummit.com and get your super early bird ticket right now. It only be available until the agenda is announced, so don't wait. Grab it right now. Right now that that's out of the way, onto the episode. Hello, everybody. Welcome to a very special bonus episode. We have two guests here today to talk about a topic that doesn't very often come up in, let's say, LinkedIn discussions about agile. You'll be the judge of that. First, I'll introduce the guests. The guests are Michelle Pock and Victor Pena. Hey, Michelle and Victor, welcome to the show.
- [03:04]
Michelle Pock
Hi Vasco. Great to be here.
- [03:06]
Victor Pena
Hey Vasco. Absolutely great to be here.
- [03:09]
Vasco Duarte
So Michelle, who's been on the podcast before, so check the link in the show notes, is the founder of Streamside Coaching, where she helps leaders and organizations thrive with change. She has over 15 years experience working in diverse agile environments as product owner, Scrum Master, Project Manager. Just quite an amazing story of her role as Project Manager in that previous episode, so be sure to check it out. And of course, Agile Coach. She's a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, or ICF for short, and has a Master's in Leadership and Organizational Development in the other side of the ring. No, this isn't a fight, don't worry. Victor is an Agile coach dedicated to helping organizations achieve business agility. He focuses on implementing effective ways of working that deliver great customer value while engaging and motivating employees. He's passionate about fostering innovation and collaboration. And Victor transforms practices to ensure long term success in a changing landscape. And we'll dive into what all of those things mean. But in today's episode we're going to take a very specific perspective and we're going to touch on a similar topic to what Michel and I discussed in that previous episode. We're going to talk about philosophy back then. In that previous episode we talk about Foucault's Discipline and Punish. And that was kind of the basis for a discussion on understanding how the corporate world works. And surprisingly or not so much, there's a lot of things we can learn from reading that book about the corporate world. But today we're going to take another step and at this thought that we can learn a lot from philosophy to help us do a better job as a Scrum Master. All right, Victor and Michel, we'll start by exploring a very simple, potentially not very easy to answer, but very simple question. Michel, let's start with you. In what ways does language influence your effectiveness as a coach and Scrum Master?
- [05:19]
Michelle Pock
I love this question so much because it brings so many different angles to look at it. And one that jumps to mind for me right away is that language is a carrier of culture. So the language we use reflects our beliefs, assumptions, kind of underlying ideas about the world. And one of the things that I've noticed in my own experience as a Scrum Master and Agile coach and also mentoring other Agile coaches and Scrum Masters is the language that we use in our industry reflects a way of thinking about the world and how things should be. Very often that Runs counter to dominant business culture. And we might see alignment or might be easier to gain alignment with the teams that we're serving because we're focused primarily on the same kinds of concerns. We're looking at, you know, building, building technology or we're concerned about people. When we get to working with executives, they have a different set of concerns which are existential in nature in terms of the organization, like is the business going to survive? A lot of those come back to a financial perspective. And so I, you know, I see a common scenario where agile coaches will talk about benefits of agile and they focus on the human aspects or quality and they get frustrated when an executive returns with well, what's the ROI on that? Or something, something about like when am I going to see money back for this? And, and I think sometimes those, those conversations become overly fraught because we, we interpret them with an assumption, an assumption that if you're focused on the money that that must mean you don't care about people or you're like somehow evil or black hearted. And they aren't. All of those perspectives are necessary for an organization to function effectively. But I think that language can be a culture carrier without us even realizing it. And when we're frustrated, we can't see another person's perspective. I think that's often a sign that we're engaging in dialogue with someone who has a different cultural perspective than maybe the one that we share.
- [07:47]
Vasco Duarte
And how about you, Victor? The same question. So we've heard Michel's perspective and we'll dive into that in more detail in a second. But your perspective, in what ways does language influence your effectiveness as an Agile coach or Scrum master?
- [08:03]
Victor Pena
It's a fantastic question and I love Michelle's answer because she's looking at it really in the large, right. Like how does that just use of language in general and how that could, that could. That's contextual, right? Based on your audience. I think an example that just comes to mind perhaps is a more specific example and I may be getting ahead of the conversation here, but a specific example of how, of a particular word or a concept and how your use of that phrase could be different between different audiences. And I use the example of the term servant leader. Right? The idea of the term servant leader and how that was very prominent in Scrum and it was in the Scrum Guide up until the 2020 edition. And I actually fascinated by the concept and I actually went and I read all of Robert Greenleaf's work and what was striking to me was that the Understanding of servant leader. If we accept the idea that the term servant leader was coined by this gentleman, Robert Greenleaf, and so that is the authoritative source for the meaning of the word. If we accept that and moving forward, then what was interesting to me was that the common understanding of the word servant leader was not, in fact, what Greenleaf intended. And so what I saw was there was this strange disconnect between the actual interpretation of what people understood a servant leader to be and what it was supposed to be. And the example I give is. And this is how I internalize it or just try to explain it to others. If I say to you, Vasco, so you've never heard of the word basketball. You're not a basketball fan. You know, you don't even know what it is. And if I say to you, you know, what is a basketball? What is basketball? You would think, and I actually have a picture of this, which I show in conversations. It's a ball made out of basket. It's like a wicker ball. Because you would say, well, I know the meaning of the word basket, and I know the meaning of the word ball. So clearly what he's referring to is a ball made out of basketball. Basketball. Well, actually, no, that's not what it means at all. It's an entirely different concept. And so, Greenleaf, and where I'm going with all this is that in terms of the way you see servant leadership practice, like this idea that servant leadership, it's identifying people's highest priority needs. So your role as a scrum master is not. Hey, I'm going to bring you coffee. Michelle, would you like cream in your coffee? Do you want tea? I mean, that's nice, but that's not the point, right? There's no positive, substantive behavioral change that's going to result as a, you know, as a result of me bringing coffee as opposed to me thinking as a scrum master. Well, my team, what are their highest priority needs and are they growing through my interaction with them? It's a fundamentally different concept, right, of the word. So I guess to. To. To give a more specific example is your. Your understanding of language and specifically words are necessary. It's like a fork in the road, right? So that's just an example of, I think, the importance of having a clarity around language and what words actually mean.
- [11:08]
Vasco Duarte
So we'll talk about clarity in a minute, because there's a lot just on that concept of the clarity of language. But I want to explore more this idea, like, if you didn't know about basketball, you might Think that basketball refers to a ball made out of basketball, which is brilliant, because of course, if you just use a little bit of imagination, it's not even that hard to imagine a ball made out of a basket. Okay? And one of the things that came to me when I was thinking about this question is an example that just came out yesterday in an interview I had with Marshall Goldsmith where he was talking about a concept he uses in his coaching. So Marshall Goldsmith is a very popular and very famous coach and author when it comes to leadership. And he has this concept that he uses which he calls feed forward, right? Every scrum master in the world will have heard of feedback, right? And then the question is, okay, but what does that mean? And feedback is, as the name states already is about something that happened back in time or basically a criticism. Now it can be a very well intentioned criticism and it can also be a praise, but it's about the past. And what he talks about is the past is beyond our control. What we control is the future, right? Like we can shape a narrative about the past, but we can't change it. It's done, it's gone. But we can change the future. So in his coaching, he talks to leaders about using the concept of feed forward, right? Which in his own words, as he described it was, you listen to somebody, you thank them for their contribution and then you think about, what can I do with this? And sometimes the answer may be nothing. For scrum masters, this is very important because very often we get stuck in this who did it type of conversation and feedback leads us to that. Because let's imagine that the feedback is not intended as criticism, but it's perceived as criticism. Immediately everybody in the room will start to think, okay, but who did it right? Who needs to change? Obviously you need to change, not me. And that creates conflict. Just because of that belief, which we all have, because we are scrum masters and agile coaches, that feedback is important. And that example of going from feedback to feed forward can completely change the perspective of how to start the conversation with somebody on the team. And when I think about how language affects my effectiveness as a coach and as a scrum master, what I want to think about is what allows me to create a positive momentum. And in this example by Marshall Goldsmith, feedforward is more likely to create a positive momentum.
- [14:09]
Michelle Pock
Yeah, that idea of like, how do we shift to moving forward? That was one of the kind of biggest paradigm shifts for me in my executive coaching training. So as agilist, we learn a lot about like root cause Analysis. And I think some of this comes from an engineering mindset where it is possible, but if a machine breaks down, it was possible to look for a root cause or the many root causes. And very often in lean, they'll tell you there's very often a human component to this. I'm not trying to overly simplify, but in Solutions Focused thinking or coaching, the idea is this fundamental idea that you don't have to understand the cause of a problem in order to find a solution for it. And that is a major shift, right? You don't. So instead of thinking about dealing with people problems, it's like mining their past and subjecting them like Freudian psychoanalysis, where you have to be like, is your issue with your boss because you had a dominating father and now you have to reject any form of authority in your life. Like, like sometimes I, I see like Scrum Master, you know, people kind of wanting to get into that territory with people. It's completely unproductive. Like, what, what you need to focus on instead is given that we're having a clash with this leader, like, what could we do instead? Like, what would move us, what would move us forward? And some of that is just the mental model of where is it helpful to look? Is it helpful to look back and kind of dig into why? Or is why not necessary in order for us to figure out how to move forward?
- [16:01]
Vasco Duarte
Yeah. So when I think about, like, how can we then take the insights from this and help us as grandmasters and agile coaches? I think one example Michelle, you just gave, right? I mean, Solutions Focused coaching is already named that way, Right? And that's another great example of how language is so important. Solutions Focused is the name of that approach to coaching. And when I think about, okay, so what can we learn about this is that all the language that we choose to use will have a deep and often even unintended impact in the work that we do as Scrum masters. And I'm of course reminded also of Foucault's work where he talks about that. The, the fact that language and culture are interconnected and you cannot separate them. And when we look at how language is defined or, you know, as a result of culture, and of course, language also influences culture, so they can't really be separated. We start to understand that actually a lot of what we look for is knowledge, truth, perfection, cleanliness. Right. Like, for example, the way soaps are described on TV ads is like, it's going to clean all the bacteria. It's just the same way that you know, maybe 50, 60 years ago, people would listen when going to church, right? Christ. Receiving Christ or receiving whichever mythological figure is important for you will clean the scenes out of your body. And it's the same type of language. And one of the things that I find interesting when we try to take that perspective, that language and culture are all about seeking what is good, what is truth in the philosophical sense is that in fact, in human relations, there isn't such a thing. The complexity and the fluidity of the relationships between people in the group is so high that there is no single definition of truth. What is good today might not be good tomorrow. Right. So how do you guys incorporate that acknowledgment or perspective that language is inherently limited in the work that you do as coaches?
- [18:35]
Michelle Pock
I have a thought to share on that, which is that curiosity around the words that people use and knowing, entering the conversation, knowing, I don't share your same model of the world. So the words that I use reflect my understanding of it. The words you use reflect your understanding. In order for us to communicate, we use the same signs, but they may signify something different. And so we only learn that by asking. So some of the things I was trained in my coach training to do are to. When people use a particular, like, it's. They call it recovery and deletion. So when someone says I, you know, something that kind of pops. And so if you're really paying attention to the words that they're using, like, like trust, you know, like, oh, what. Tell me what you mean. Like, could you. What specifically do you mean by trust? Like, oh, my team just doesn't, like, you know, I can't trust them. Or they, like, what. What specifically do you mean? And so they might say something that reveals, oh, it's. It's about. It's about like, they aren't communicating with me regularly or I can't rely. They say they'll complete something, and then it always ends up being late. So what. What specifically is meant by that word? We. We will load it with our own assumptions based on our model of the world, and the other person is doing the exact same thing. So if we want to communicate effectively, we have to kind of keep up this consistent curiosity in order to notice even that we might have a different meaning or that we might have a different way of looking at it. How do you think about that, Victor?
- [20:28]
Victor Pena
I think that's super interesting. What you're saying, Michelle, is that it's pausing and thinking through. Wait a minute. This word trust, which is very common, surely we must all mean the same thing. Surely I know what this person means by trust. And I think that the power of what you're saying is pausing and realizing that therein may lie the difficulty. Right. And what's so interesting about what you're saying is that in our ongoing work, in my ongoing work, trying to find a way to communicate in a way with language that is to your point earlier about that's easily understandable and not assuming that the person has an understanding of a base understanding of agile and agile concepts and principles, things that we all know intuitively. And we throw these turns around all the time because they mean something to us and we think surely everyone else knows it. So what I've been trying to do is, is de Jargonize, if that's a word, as much as I can, my communication with others. And so one of the things, a phrase I've been trying to use is really what we're trying to do. You know, I'm sure you guys, you know, heard this many times is looking at, if you're looking at a group and they're trying to get better in doing what they do well, let's try to optimize. And this comes from Kanban, so I'm stealing this. How do you optimize the process for the flow of value? So I thought, well that's self evident to me, right? What's the process and the flow of value? And so in talking to someone, super intelligent woman, she said, she paused me, she said, victor, what do you mean by value exactly? And I thought that's, yes, that's such an interesting question because to me it was self evident. And so in talking with some colleagues of mine, they said, you know what? So we're trying to iteratively experiment again just in this particular context to find where is the language that is most devoid of any kind of inherent kind of latent meaning that we think they know and maybe they don't. So we're trying to use things like the outcomes, like positive outcomes. Does that register with them? But I guess that's a specific example. But I think the point you're making is so excellent, Michelle. It's the idea of not automatically assuming that your understanding of these key words are the same because like in your example of pausing and saying, hey, could you talk to me about trust? All of a sudden you uncovered all these other avenues that you could pursue. So that's fascinating.
- [22:49]
Vasco Duarte
And this brings us to the next question you've already started, which is the ambiguity of language and how it impacts the conversation. Victor, thanks for that example, because that's a perfect example. I have another one. I've been talking about estimation a lot. I started writing about it more publicly in 2012, but really starting in 2008 with the first few blog posts. And one of the things that I have bumped against over and over and over again last time this week is that people who have a project management mindset cannot accept the existence of work that isn't planned and sized for effort, duration or cost. So in their minds, there isn't the possibility of work that isn't sized before it gets started. They will even say, but you estimate, even when you get out of your home, you estimate how long it takes to get to your place of work and how long it takes to take your shower if you have a schedule. All of these seem logical and obvious at first glance, but in fact it doesn't work like that. I'll give you a concrete example. Let's say you sit down to read a book. It's a book you like, and reading is an activity you like. You sit down for the pleasure of reading the book without thinking of the consequences. So you don't plan it out. You don't estimate the impact. You hope for an impact, right? State of flow, enjoyment, and so on, but you don't estimate it right. And we do this a lot more often than we think. And I give back the example of a programmer. A programmer, when they sit down to write a piece of code, they don't think about how long it will take me. In fact, they can't, because they need to be in a state of curiosity and exploration. And you can't estimate and be in a state of curiosity and exploration at the same time. They don't go together, right? So when you start to actually explore what creative work and knowledge work is mostly creative, what creative work means, you start to realize that estimation, which is knowing exactly what's going to be done before it gets done, and planning it up front is not compatible with the core essential aspect of value creation in the software world, which is a process of curiosity and exploration, and of course, sometimes very much frustration and repetition. I've been there too, but it's not possible to estimate this work. On the other hand, if you talk to people who have a project management mindset, and I'm one of those, I've had that, I try to actively fight it, don't always succeed. For those people, there isn't the concept of work that isn't planned out and estimated up front. So when I Talk about working without estimates for these people with a project management background is as if I am talking about building castles in the clouds.
- [25:53]
Victor Pena
Yes.
- [25:55]
Vasco Duarte
So coming back to that language. Sorry, Michelle, you had something.
- [25:59]
Michelle Pock
I was just thinking, like, what gives rise to that inability to see a different way of thinking about it. And you just reminded me earlier this week, for a reason I don't understand, I picked up my copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and I was just kind of looking through the first couple of. He's talking about his experiment of going out in the woods and building his own little cabin and living there for two years basically as a hermit. And how the people around him, people he would encounter, were totally baffled by why he would do that. And he talks about raising some of his own food. And then by traditional capitalist standards, the next thing for him to do would be to learn how to improve his yield and expand his. Is like, I wanted to learn how to avoid the necessity of selling the, you know, things that I was raising so that I could just. I didn't have to get involved in all of that. And so, like, the thing that you're saying, you know, there's, there's pleasure in living in the world, but this idea, like the culture that we live in, kind of the structure of our society has these kind of preset dictates around, well, this is what's good. This is how your life should proceed. This is how work should be. And I think you see some of that in those, like, base assumptions, like the work must be estimate. Well, why must it be estimated? My guess is a lot of this goes back to, like, the capitalist wants to extract maximum profit. So if I'm thinking about, you know, I'm taking a little Marxist twist on things right now. But, you know, if you, if you look at like, okay, the developer as a resource, what am I going to extract out of that resource that I'm getting the most out? When we, when we obsess about productivity, that's, that's not like, you know, something that's, that's natural or inevitable. That's a reflection of our current time and the way that we think about. We've equated time with money. Time. Time and money don't have a natural relationship. Those things can exist independently. Time existed before we invented money, and yet today they're so tightly bound that it's hard to imagine. We think about, well, is this a productive use of my time? And if you take a different view, that's really quite a silly question. I don't Know, I feel like. Right, right. Yes, yes.
- [28:50]
Vasco Duarte
How about you, Victor?
- [28:51]
Victor Pena
It's an awesome. That's a difficult to follow Walden and all this philosophy. It's awesome. It's a fascinating conversation. Thank you, Michelle. You know, I have a profound understanding of the challenge you described, Vasco, although you've described it in a much more concise and articulate way than I have. The challenge of helping people understand the. The difficulty and in fact, impossibility, really, or fruitlessness of trying to estimate creative tasks. And what I realized, and I think this is interesting, it's kind of within this domain that we're talking about, is just kind of a philosophical introspection. What I realized in fighting this very battle. And you were doing it, you know, before I was for sure. Because I think it's been like 15 years since your. Since your book. Right, Bosco? I mean, it was like 2000.
- [29:38]
Vasco Duarte
No, it's nine years. Nine years since the book. It was 2015. Nine years.
- [29:43]
Victor Pena
Still long time. So what I realized in trying to understand what are the underlying assumptions from which the other person is proceeding, and maybe if I can identify what those assumptions are like. Michelle, you're talking about root causes, and sometimes it's not a good thing. But I'm just trying to find what's the underlying assumption that's implicit here, that is informing this person's approach and what the example that I used and I've tried to explain with people is. And it sounds like you are former developer Vasco, so you have an understanding of the challenge of writing code and that it's just as much art like writing a song or a poem. It's not. And this is what I would. This is how I conceptualize it, is that project manager, and I was one myself, is thinking that this is a quantifiable task. So it's like, if I ask you how long would it take you to paint this room that's 12 by 12ft, and you could. You could reason that out. You could say, well, if I can paint this many centimeters or inches per. Per, you know, 10 minutes, then I could just extrapolate out how long it would take. So the problem, as I see it, the. The underlying assumption here was that the art of programming, solving a problem that hasn't been done yet. Right. So I'm not asking you to just code a form that, like, you've done 100 times before. No, I'm asking you to develop something that we haven't built yet. So it's this idea of the. Of the mistaken assumptions or the incorrect model. You're trying to quantify something that is necessarily non quantifiable to your point. And now you bring up really interestingly the creative aspect of it, but going into something you don't know what you don't know, so then any estimate you might give is necessarily going to be just a grasping at straws. So. But I have found that helpful is just underlying what, what the assumptions are that makes someone think that you can even estimate with precision, something like programming.
- [31:42]
Vasco Duarte
Not just with precision, but precision a very long time in advance of anything being done with. Yes, and this is the key, considering all possible preconditions that might develop between now and then, which is of course impossible. I really love the phrase by a Finnish composer who was out drinking with his friends and his wife calls the hotel where they were drinking and asks him, so dear, when are you going to be home? And he answers, I think brilliantly, of course, not very respectfully, but brilliantly. He said, dear, I'm a composer, not a fortune teller.
- [32:27]
Victor Pena
That's brilliant.
- [32:28]
Vasco Duarte
And the world would be better if more developers would say the same. All right, but I wanted to just touch on one. I mean, this philosophy of language topic is so deep and so interesting. I apologize for being so excited about this. There's one topic which Michel already touched on, which is of course semiotics. Semiotics is the idea that there are things, symbols that we look at or say, and then there's the meaning, the thing behind the symbol. It's interesting that even the name Scrum was chosen on purpose to separate this way of working from what was then the practice. So project management mostly, and the words that we chose for the roles or they chose for the roles, like Scrum master or product owner, are in themselves also meaningful, right? And another example, of course we could talk about today is that most people think that doing work in a software organization is moving tickets around in a JIRA board. That is not what work is, but it's the semiotics of work in many organizations, right? Like one stuff moves from one place to the other. Now, semiotics are a really cool thing. For example, Kanban exists because semiotics is a real thing, right? There's a symbol like the card and then there's the meaning behind it. And often in small teams especially, there's only like a couple of very strange and unrelated words written on the card. But everybody knows what it means because they've been talking about about it for a while. And I was thinking we can use this. The fact that There's a symbol, or is it called a signifier, even? And then the meaning behind that is super powerful for us. And the words we choose to use and the symbols we choose to use have a direct impact on the work that you do with the teams that you do. So keeping that in mind, this idea of the symbols, which can be words or of course, graphics, and then of course, the meaning behind it. How have you. Let's start with Victor now. How have you used that to your advantage as a coach?
- [34:50]
Victor Pena
That is a super interesting question. You're talking more about just the use of symbols and helping people thinking more symbolically or not so overtly that.
- [35:01]
Vasco Duarte
Or just anything that becomes a symbol, like even a word, right? Like scrum Master, a term it has. Has a symbolic meaning, right? Like it's not the same as project manager. In fact, this is so often referred to with the simple question, what does a Scrum Master do?
- [35:21]
Victor Pena
Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's a super interesting concept. I think one. One area where I've struggled sometimes is in when. Or at least trying to help people think more outside of just the two dimensions, right. That, you know, I need to know, like this idea, right, which, you know, the original. I think Ron Jeffries came up with the idea like a card. It's just a symbol to have a conversation. So. And it's a struggle because someone say, yeah, but, but, but what else do we have to do? You know, give me the requirements. No, no, no. It's just a placeholder so that we can talk about it, you know, so this idea of a symbol, and Michelle and I have talked about this, you know, our kind of. Our mutual love of kind of Buddhist thought and philosophy. You know, the idea of the symbol Buddhism is so rich in symbols and symbolism in that that, you know, an object can have just really profound meaning beyond just its apparent what it might mean, apparently. And like the example, the classic example of a lotus, right? Just the lotus flower. And it's this idea the symbol of, like the lotus begins. And Michelle, I think, was even reading a book on this. No mud, no lotus, right? This idea that the lotus begins life in the. In the bottom of a pond. There it is. There it is in the mud and the muck and it's, you know, however deep the pond is, it can't even see the sunlight, but it rises through the darkness of the water and then it hits the surface. And when it hits the surface, it hits. It reaches the sunlight, is now exposed to the sun, hence enlightenment, and then it blooms, right? And then it becomes what it was intended to be. And so it's. For me. I wish I had a good answer for you, Vasco, because it's a fascinating question, helping people think in terms of. Of symbols and at the same time not being just too abstract, like, obviously the three of us can have this conversation about the lotus and Buddhism. You bring that up in a, you know, in a meeting with others and they might say, what are you talking about? So I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are, Michelle, because I feel like helping people make that, like, cross that chasm, if you will, and being able to understand, oh, that signifies something else. I think that's such an important skill. And when you can help people cross that chasm, the work will flow much smoother because now there's that shared understanding.
- [37:40]
Michelle Pock
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like, the understanding that there's something different there, like the balance point, I think that's really difficult is using symbols that show this is a fundamentally different concept. Like, people, I don't know, you've probably both experienced this if you're participating, like an Agile 101 training or something. And people, you know, they hear, they introduce to the. The roles. And an inevitable question is like, so Scrum Master, just a project manager. Like, like people want an equivalency, right? Like, so is that just this? And then, so they're looking for, okay, you're using a different, A different sign or a different symbol. Does it signify something that exists already in my worldview? And sometimes, actually I think, I think what. Where we run into conflict is that the answer is no. Like, you don't have anything for this in your worldview. And so, you know, I, I've been fond of this kind of thinking for a long time. Like, when I was in school, I studied languages, and so, you know, and. And I studied Italian and English and I studied abroad in Italy. And one of the things I learned kind of very early in my language learning career was that, you know, when you. If you know not a word of another language and you're approaching it as an adult or like in your, you know, somewhere late teen, you know, you're not a child, you're looking for equivalencies. Like, like you see a sentence in another language and you think, okay, here's the translation. And you look. How do I map this word for word? And you may be able to do that with some very simple constructions. But the more you learn about the language, the more you realize, like, they're describing entire concepts that don't exist in My language or culture. And so we're experiencing the same kind of thing when we talk about Agile ways of working in a traditional project management driven work, like Taylorist informed, like work concept, like people, these are completely different ideas. And so, you know, I think that that's, that's really the hard part is how do you welcome people into a new way of thinking where they don't just shortcut back into like, oh, this, like you're using this weird word but it means this. Like, no, this is a totally different idea. You don't actually have a word for this in your language. Like, like, I wish you could almost invite people over to like, like, like a different physical space. Like welcome to Agile Land. Like, like here's, you know, you have to have your passport to get in, you have to go through customs and then you notice like, like everything's different. Like it's, the colors are different, the food's different, everything. Like when you do that in real life, going to different countries, you realize these people have a completely different way of thinking about the world moving through their lives. And so it's easier to grasp the concept that their language is built differently and thinks differently. But I think in business we don't have those physical signs that tell us I'm in a different place now. Like, this is the same.
- [40:58]
Vasco Duarte
Absolutely. I think you just described it beautifully. It's like going to another country and speaking a language you don't understand. And as you know, translation will only get you that far because in fact what you need to do is to start speaking another language. And that gave me the thought, like Agile or any new reality can only be understood on its own terms because this is recursive. We could get into Buddhist thought as well because of this, right? Because you can't understand enlightenment from where you are. In order to be enlightened you have to go beyond where you are now and nothing can tell you what that is because it's of course different for everybody. And this also tells me about not coming back to Agile, not Buddhism anymore. In Agile, Agile can only be understood on its own terms and we are constantly trying to reframe it and retrofit it back to the project management mindset. And it ain't gonna work. It has never worked that way. It will never work that way. Now you can still get a lot of benefits, don't get me wrong, right? Like just focus on flow and project management, you'll get much better. Not completely, because of course project management brings its own frame into what's possible. But you'll get much better. But in order to understand Agile, you have to leave all of that baggage behind. It wasn't easy for me to come to where I am when it comes to estimation or no estimates, which is where I am now. And I do often recognize that when I talk to people, I'm talking across from where they are. Like, I say the words, but they don't register right, because they don't know what that means. And some people came up with excellent ideas that I now use. For example, options thinking, which comes from the investment world, which is something that helps us understand some of the ideas that Kanban as well as no Estimates tries to bring to software development within this wider Agile pond. But even options thinking is not something people will readily understand. In fact, you need a little bit of a mathematical head in order to just get the understanding of what options thinking might mean in practice. I think we have this challenge and maybe we take it into another episode where we go through some more fundamental philosophical concepts like skepticism and Socratic dialogue and so on. Because what we need to do is really to go to the root, right? You can't build a new tree by starting to trim a little bit of the branches, which is what we're doing in the corporate world these days, right? Kind of slapping an Agile collar on top of a few project management branches ain't going to work. So we might have to go a little bit deeper and do a little bit of, how do you say, inquiry into the roots, right? Like what is bubbling under the idea of Agile that we can see on the surface. That brings us to what Agile is taking the enlightenment metaphor, allowing us to express in terms of potential, right? Let's just take that as a metaphor for a second. If we can reach software development enlightenment first, we need to understand what is behind that need to change paradigm. And we don't know yet. I mean, some of us have some ideas, but perhaps that's the next step for us, right? Like, I don't know if you guys agree that's it's an invitation, you take it or not. Up to you.
- [44:44]
Michelle Pock
I love that invitation. Yes. These are things I wonder about especially, and I think it's very timely question given, you know, I'm sure there are many people who are listening to this who have a feed on LinkedIn that's full of posts saying things like Agile's dead or we've entered the post Agile universe or, or what have you, but, and maybe there may be some elements of truth to that, I don't know. If that's a conversation worth that. But, but the, what is the thing that's trying to come forward? That thing? I don't think that thing is dead. I think that thing is alive. Well, but it hasn't, it hasn't made it all the way. And I think that's worth, that's worth exploring. But, but having, having an understanding of even just an inquire, why do we find it necessary to break off into a new way of thinking or working? And what is this a response to? From both, from a historical perspective, philosophical perspective, like what is it about right now that makes that necessary? And I think we can see kind of these, you know, how we have philosophy influencing our social structures or geopolitical structures or what have you. They're all in response to a moment, a moment in time. And you know that, that could be a very broad conversation about like shifts that we see, you know, in terms of what's the fate of democracy right now by the way, guys? Or all other kinds of, you know, that could get very, very broad. So maybe we don't do that. But yeah, we promise we will stick to Agile. Yeah, I'll try to, I never promised that to Victor. When we chat, we go, we go all over. It's just a wide ranging.
- [46:33]
Vasco Duarte
And you're welcome to do that, but when you're here, then I'll try to keep us on the, let's call it the dimension of agility.
- [46:41]
Michelle Pock
That's fair, that's fair.
- [46:43]
Vasco Duarte
All right, go ahead, Victor.
- [46:46]
Victor Pena
No, I was just going to say where all this becomes very, very practical. And I love this conversation and thank you, Vasco, for kind of bringing these thoughts up, these questions because these aren't the things that you think about on a regular basis, but when you do and stop and think about them, they're just really, they're insightful and they make you think about things in a different way. But I feel like this is where this all becomes very, very practical and we go from the philosophical to the, to the real is. You talked about language and what words mean. What I'm seeing, and Michelle just touched on this in terms of the broader environment in which we find ourselves. I'm seeing a situation where organizationally there is not an appetite or even a belief in the value proposition of Agile. So you might say, oh that's terrible, that's happening. But then when you dig a little deeper, you find that the problem if, what are we all trying to do here? Right. The goal of Agile is helping people do their best work. Work. Right. In a way that people do build the right thing and we build the thing. Right. Right. Just as that kind of saying goes. Right. That's just, it's a more optimal way of working. But what I'm seeing in this environment, which I find myself, is that the core value that we bring in Agile is still very much in demand. No one's saying, oh, we don't want this. Like Jeff Bezos said, In 10 years, people aren't going to say, oh, I wish Amazon wouldn't deliver products to me so quickly because he asked the question, what's not going to change in 10 years? And so what's not going to change is, you know, businesses, our clients are not going to say, you know what? I wish you would stop delivering such high quality because it's not really meeting my needs.
- [48:22]
Michelle Pock
Yeah.
- [48:23]
Vasco Duarte
And so fast.
- [48:24]
Victor Pena
It's so fast. And the people, they're so, they're, they're happy, they're energized, they love to come to work because we were giving them more time. That's not going to happen. So the very things are, the core value proposition that we bring has not changed. So you say, well, where's the problem? The problem is in the understanding of the word agile and all the baggage and freight that that carries. This is my opinion, of course. And so what I'm realizing is if you say, wait a minute, like we were talking about before, well, what does this word mean? If you stop and you realize the problem isn't with the things that we are stock and trade. Like the way I say what I say to people is it's not like we're selling fax machines and there's not a demand for faxing machines. So no, the skills, the knowledge, the value we bring is still 100% in demand. It's the challenge, as I see it, is that the understanding of the word agile, in some ways it's like a ship that's run, you know, that's run aground. Right. And so if you get past that and say, well, wait a minute, what is your objection? And then you'll find, well, the objection isn't so much Agile per se, the misapplication of agile. And I was reading this book that was written by a gentleman whose name I'm going to mispronounce. So I'm not going to say it is. He was talking about what happened with Lean, what happened with business process re engineering, and what happened with something which I wasn't familiar, which is called strategic HR management. And he talked about how all of Those kind of the, you know, Michelle and I have talked about this. You know, the Gartner hype cycles of technology, and all of those went through a similar hype cycle in the trough of disillusionment, and then that slope of enlightenment and then the plateau of productivity. I'm applying Gartner to this. The author did not. But as I see it, in our world, and where this becomes practical is when we understand the. The meaning of language and that that slope of enlightenment comes from kind of getting through and reaching that shared understanding that we're talking about the same thing. So if we can kind of like with a machete, cut through the differences of language and culture and what words mean, and if we can land on that place, I think we'll find that we are all trying to do the same thing. So to me, that's a message of, I think this hope and there is a way, a way forward in this. So that's just my perspective.
- [50:40]
Vasco Duarte
Absolutely. Well, Victor and Michel, thank you very much. Before we go, let's have a round. Michel, where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
- [50:49]
Victor Pena
Me?
- [50:50]
Michelle Pock
Awesome. Yeah, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Michelle park, last name is Pauk. Or you can find me@streamside coaching.com, which is my website. I've got blog with some different thoughts on these topics and others that you can check out there. And all my contact information is there as well.
- [51:11]
Vasco Duarte
And how about you, Victor? Where can people find you?
- [51:14]
Victor Pena
They can find me on LinkedIn or my email. Victorpana.com.
- [51:19]
Vasco Duarte
Absolutely. We'll put the link and the email in the show notes for everybody to easily find those contact points. And thank you very much, Michel and Victor, for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.
- [51:33]
Michelle Pock
Thank you. This has been so much fun.
- [51:35]
Victor Pena
Thank you, Vasco. Thank you, Michelle.
- [51:40]
Vasco Duarte
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