Leading Change Without Hierarchical Power | Stuart Tipples

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: Leading Change Without Hierarchical Power | Stuart Tipples
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Stuart Tipples
Release Date: June 11, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a profound conversation with Stuart Tipples, an experienced Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Master. The discussion centers around the intricate dynamics of leading organizational change without relying on formal hierarchical power—a challenge many Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches encounter in their roles.

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Stuart Tipples' Background and Role

Stuart Tipples brings a wealth of experience to the table, having served in pivotal roles such as a Scrum Master chapter lead at British Telecom. His journey illustrates the multifaceted responsibilities of a Scrum Master, particularly in environments striving for large-scale Agile transformations.

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The Challenge of Leading Change Without Hierarchical Power

At the heart of the episode is the exploration of how Scrum Masters can effectively lead change initiatives despite lacking formal authority. Stuart emphasizes the daunting nature of this task, especially when interfacing with senior executives and directors who operate within traditional hierarchical structures.

"The biggie is how do you, as a Scrum Master, lead change when quite often you have zero formal power, hierarchically speaking... it's super challenging."
— Stuart Tipples [01:21]

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Case Study: British Telecom and Agile Transformation

Stuart recounts his tenure at British Telecom, where he played a significant role in the early days of digital transformation. Operating as a Scrum Master chapter lead in a scaled environment, he adopted the Spotify model to foster a community of Scrum Masters acting as change agents across multiple tribes.

"I built a community practice. I did a huge recruitment drive bringing in new Scrum Masters to the organization... they ran their own quarterly retrospectives."
— Stuart Tipples [05:23]

This initiative not only empowered Scrum Masters but also demonstrated to the leadership the tangible benefits of Agile practices, such as the regular retrospectives conducted by directors, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

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Strategies and Tools for Leading Change

Stuart outlines several strategies that proved effective in driving change:

1. Community Building: Creating a robust community of Scrum Masters to act as change agents.
2. Empowerment: Equipping these agents with the necessary tools and skills to influence their respective teams.
3. Leadership Engagement: Encouraging leadership to participate in Agile practices, thereby setting a precedent for the rest of the organization.
4. Retrospectives: Instituting regular retrospectives at the leadership level to model Agile behaviors.

"It's one of those metrics of success as a Scrum Master or as any change agent... the behavior continues and it doesn't need you to drive it."
— Stuart Tipples [05:24]

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Successes and Lessons Learned

One of the standout successes Stuart highlights is the adoption of quarterly retrospectives by the leadership team. This not only improved their operational dynamics but also reinforced the value of Agile practices across the organization.

"The leadership team sort of drank the Kool Aid and sort of practiced what they preach."
— Stuart Tipples [05:24]

Stuart also reflects on the importance of sustainable change, emphasizing that true success lies in behaviors that perpetuate without constant oversight.

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Contrasting Change Experiences

Stuart contrasts his successful experience with a more challenging scenario involving a value stream-level transformation. In this case, external consultancies led the change initiative but ultimately reverted to a waterfall approach, highlighting the pitfalls of top-down transformation without inclusive collaboration.

"They went and built waterfall. And there's many factors to this... the role of a change agent requires us to show up daily."
— Stuart Tipples [10:22]

This experience underscores the importance of involving all stakeholders in the change process and the risks associated with maintaining rigid hierarchical controls.

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Key Takeaways and Practical Advice

Stuart distills his experiences into actionable advice for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches:

1. Focus on Influencing Smaller Units: Instead of attempting to overhaul the entire organization at once, target specific teams or units where change is more manageable and visible.
2. Celebrate Successes: Highlight and celebrate successful Agile implementations to inspire and motivate others.
3. Build Relationships: Foster strong, trust-based relationships with leaders and team members to facilitate smoother change processes.
4. Adapt and Persist: Understand that change is often non-linear and be prepared to adapt strategies as needed.

"Change one team, affect what you can change. Change that one team you're working with. That will be contagious because if you're celebrating the success... people will look to emulate that."
— Stuart Tipples [12:24]

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Conclusion

This episode provides a compelling exploration of the nuanced role Scrum Masters play in organizational change, especially in environments resistant to traditional hierarchical power dynamics. Stuart Tipples offers both cautionary tales and success stories, enriching listeners with practical strategies to drive meaningful and sustainable Agile transformations.

For Scrum Masters and Agile practitioners seeking to enhance their change management skills, this episode is a treasure trove of insights and real-world experiences that illuminate the path to effective leadership without formal authority.

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Notable Quotes Recap:

• "The biggie is how do you, as a Scrum Master, lead change when quite often you have zero formal power..." — Stuart Tipples [01:21]
• "It's one of those metrics of success as a Scrum Master or as any change agent... the behavior continues and it doesn't need you to drive it." — Stuart Tipples [05:24]
• "The role of a change agent requires us to show up daily." — Stuart Tipples [10:22]
• "Change that one team you're working with. That will be contagious because if you're celebrating the success..." — Stuart Tipples [12:24]

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Transcript

[Vasko]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[Stuart Tipples]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the Leading Change episode this week with Stuart Tipples. Hey, Stuart, welcome back.

[Stuart]

Hey Vasco, good to see you.

[Stuart Tipples]

Likewise. So today we explore the murky waters of change. Of course, because we are always involved with some sort of change process. Sometimes it's the team, the organization, and sometimes even ourselves. But whatever the change process it is, we need to have an idea of how we want to navigate it. So that's what we want to learn from you today, Stuart. So share a change process. You were involved with us and tell us the story of how that went from beginning to end. And as you go, highlight for us the tools, the tips, the tricks and the techniques you learned back then that you still apply today.

[Stuart]

Yeah, of course. I think it's an interesting part of the Scrum Master role. The Scrum Master as organizational change agent. Right. Because the big question, the biggie is how do you, as a Scrum Master, lead change when quite often you have zero formal power, hierarchically speaking, should we say organizationally, it's super challenging. It's also really daunting if it's something that you sort of are experiencing for the first time. It's really daunting to be mixing potentially in a C suite with executives, with directors, and you are sort of trying to put forward these quite often cultural change, right? These big changes that are the easier ones, that are the sort of governance and the structures. But when you're starting to talk about sort of big agile transformations that require mindset shifts, and you have to remind directorate and executives in the C suite that it's not just the team that can have to change how they work. You guys are as well and you've got no formal sort of hierarchical power. It's really, really, really tough. I've had a couple of instances where I've been involved in this. We talked earlier about my time at British Telecom and during my time sort of in that sort of Agile arena in digital there were several sort of attempts and run ups at quite sort of large scale change in terms of digital trans transformation. Some achieved a certain level of success, others are happening now since I've left and sort of remain to be seen the benefit of. I think one of the more successful ones that I was part of and sort of helped lead the change on was in the early days of digital. And I had at the time I was working as a Scrum Master chapter lead. So I was working in a scaled environment. We had multiple sort of tribes. We'd adopted the Spotify model quite wide. I'm not sure even Spotify didn't keep the Spotify model. But VT decided it was a good idea to sort of use and I built a community practice. I did a huge recruitment drive bringing in new Scrum Masters to the organization. And what was great was building that chapter, using them as my change agents, right? Getting out into their programs of work, arming them with the tools and the skills, whilst also from my position, a slightly easier position as a chapter lead where I had a space at the table with the C suite and with the directorate. And towards my end of this role, what was great was by no means perfect. As we said, these people are messy, this work is complex and very, very challenging. But one of the great practices that I'd seen my directors in the digital space continue was they ran their own quarterly retrospectives. Now something I suggested early on, we'd seen really great sort of response. They understood and saw the value in this. There is beneficial optics to a leadership team sort of drinking the Kool Aid and sort of practicing what they preach, right?

[Stuart Tipples]

Absolutely.

[Stuart]

It was really, really good. And again, it's one of those, it's one of those sort of metrics of success as a Scrum Master or as any change agent is like the behavior continues and it doesn't need you to drive it. Right? So that was fantastic and that was really good.

[Stuart Tipples]

How did you get the directors to actually embrace that idea? I imagine maybe you had a few facilitated retrospectives with them, but how did you introduce the idea? What kind of like, how did that develop?

[Stuart]

It was quite an easy sell if I'm honest, because As I say, because this was a new sort of transformation. We had a culture focus group that was running in parallel, so that was generating a lot of feedback through sort of team health check surveys that were coming to the leadership. And it was a really easy suggestion to say, hey, look, the teams are going away and they're inspecting and adapting how they work. They are taking time to look back and they are looking, taking time to set themselves actions as to how they can improve. And these are actions that they can measure so they can actually qualify and quantify those improvements. You guys should be doing the same and more to the point, you should be seen to be doing the same and it will get you positive feedback from the teams. But more importantly, you guys are going to improve. You're going to improve how you work as a leadership team because you are still, even individual directors, you're still part of that broader leadership team. So you still need to establish your ways of working. You still need to see what is working about how you're working and what can you change and be open to the idea of change. So in that instance, it was great because I was very much pushing on an open door and as you say, a few sort of facilitated workshops, sort of retrospectives by myself. Show them how it's done, show them how to sort of a bit of a structure. Show them a couple of different ways they can run it in fact, which is great because they had that variety to do so, but with the very simple sort of key sort of outcome has to be that you have, you know, two or three actionable items that go on your backlog, that you are going to go away, you are going to action and you're going to come back and you're going to revisit and you're going to see what worked and see what didn't work, measure that success in that instance. Great, easy. And it really did have that positive impact of sort of showing the teams in the tribes well, hey, these guys are doing it and that's great. And they're listening to us, right, because they're taking that feedback, they're building into their retrospectives and now they're going to go away and they'll come back. So that communication was huge. I think on the flip side of like very challenging change and where, I guess this links to a sort of early discussions around sort of where, you know, we will fail and we individually have to sort of take learning from that and sort of figure out what we'd do if we encountered that situation again was a transformation Again, at Value Stream level that I'd been sort of asked to work with, this time from the position as an agile coach, very different, very challenging because we had external consultancies coming in to support as well and being shut out of the room, not being invited those to discussions, but also not even being able to sort of elbow my way into those discussions. It was very much closed door. The result being that when they came out of that room and sort of shared their structure, their approach, how they were going to build this, how they were going to do this, how they were going to build the teams, they had gone and built waterfall.

[Stuart Tipples]

Okay, so what you're saying is that in this contrasting change, instead of involving the people who were going to implement the details of that change in practice, they kind of went into, we could call it an ivory tower, right, Designed what would be the ideal value stream. But then when they came out, what they were actually preaching was basically going back to waterfall.

[Stuart]

Yeah, yeah. And there's many, many, many factors to this. One was, to be clear, the intention was good, right? It was a big senior sponsored transformation. So the intention was well placed. The challenges were you had again, looking, they sort of maintained something very similar to the sort of a scaled safe approach in that structure, but in that sort of tribe leadership role, they had two directors. So again, instantly my sort of feedback is, are you really gonna have the time you need as a director to show up daily? Right. Because this role needs you here daily. Right.

[Stuart Tipples]

The role of a change agent requires us to show up daily.

[Stuart]

Exactly right. And of course what happened is when they've built the team, they've built what they know the structure, they've delegated all their roles to other sort of squads. We had two, three squads in the structure that were in service of the tribe, so not in service of the customer, not in service of the product. And arguably, like, if you know, being blunt, as I was at the time, they offer zero value. There is no value here. It's a complete. You have just delegated out your responsibilities in this role, which is why I challenged you, are you the right person? Should you not be a sponsor of this Value Stream rather than a direct and it comes to control, wanting to maintain control or feeling that they need to maintain control. So it was super challenging, didn't get resolved. I applied all my sort of usual techniques through relationship building of like, I'll work with you, I'll make myself available to your time frame, you tell me when you're available and I will be available, I will work through this, we will help make the this work. I will show you why this isn't going to work. You don't want to be the voice of doom, but it's like, I've seen this, I've lived through this, this will not work. And you will be revisiting this.

[Stuart Tipples]

And of course, at some point we just need to step back and let them do their thing. Right.

[Stuart]

And yeah, the driving concern as well at the time for me personally was that this was, this was the first attempt. So this was the experiment. So there is that element of you're absolutely right, sometimes you've just got to let it play out and fail. My contrasting concern was I don't want this to be the model of good. I don't want everyone else that sort of follows this to look at these guys and go, well, this is how they do it, so this must be great. So yeah, that one really tough. And I left that organization before I got to see that resolved.

[Stuart Tipples]

Probably for the best, right?

[Stuart]

And I took a lot of learning from that one in particular, but from the positives as well. Right. And again, if we want to sort of arm people with sort of tools and with something practical they can take away, I guess I would say change doesn't scale, change spreads. So don't try and change the org, don't try and beat the machine because you will lose. You're screaming in the wind, right? Change one team, affect what you can change. Right? Change that one team you're working with. That will be contagious because if you're celebrating the success and people are seeing that success, people will look to you and they will look to emulate that. So don't take on the machine because you won't win. Change what you can affect, work with that one team and watch that success spread.

[Stuart Tipples]

That's a great advice. Thank you for sharing that, Stuart.

[Stuart]

No problem.

[Vasko]

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[Stuart Tipples]

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