Managing Change in Complex Organizational Cultures | Ellen Grove

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: Managing Change in Complex Organizational Cultures | Ellen Grove Host: Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner
Guest: Alan Grove, Business Agility Coach
Release Date: January 6, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode, Vasco Duarte welcomes Alan Grove, a seasoned business agility coach with a rich background in Agile, Scrum, Lean, and systems coaching. Alan shares his journey from a software tester to a Scrum Master and eventually evolving into an agile coach, offering listeners a deep dive into managing change within complex organizational cultures.

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Alan Grove’s Journey to Scrum Mastery

Early Career and Transition into Scrum (03:32)
Alan begins by recounting his technical roots as a software tester in a startup environment that later became part of larger corporations. Despite not formally practicing Agile, his team embodied collaborative and self-sufficient principles akin to Agile methodologies. However, a corporate directive to standardize software development practices led Alan to embrace Scrum formally.

Alan Grove: “We were gonna try and use Scrum as a framework rather than doing whatever works for us.”
(03:32)

To align with the new corporate strategy, Alan underwent extensive Scrum training with Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum. This training marked the beginning of his organizational transformation journey, ultimately taking on the role of Scrum Master for his team.

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Challenges in Implementing Scrum

Initial Success and Subsequent Struggles (06:53)
Alan narrates a particularly challenging period when he was assigned to lead a project spanning two companies—the parent company and a development partner. This setup introduced a "very complex organizational culture."

Alan Grove: “There were a lot of organizational impediments, and it was one of those projects that went down that path.”
(06:53)

Despite initial efforts to implement Scrum consistently, external resistance surfaced. The surrounding organization perceived the emergence of issues through Scrum practices not as opportunities for improvement but as inherent flaws of Scrum itself. This backlash was demoralizing for Alan and highlighted a critical failure mode where Scrum surfaces problems without organizational support to address them.

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Personal Reflection on Failure

Emotional Toll and Misconceptions (08:49 - 11:14)
Alan reflects on the emotional challenges faced during this period, emphasizing that his interpretation of failure was deeply personal. He believed that adopting Scrum would automatically align everyone towards resolving surfaced issues, a notion that proved overly optimistic.

Alan Grove: “I found this situation really, really difficult to be in because I was kind of naive at the time about... life will be wonderful. And all unicorns and rainbows.”
(09:04)

The lack of substantial organizational support meant that despite some local successes, significant changes remained elusive. Alan realized that as a Scrum Master, he cannot single-handedly transform organizational culture or shouldered the burden of others' responsibilities.

Alan Grove: “I can't take on their burden.”
(11:14)

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Lessons Learned: The Role of a Scrum Master as a Change Facilitator

Facilitating, Not Enforcing Change (12:10 - 13:07)
Vasco Duarte steers the conversation towards the nuanced role of Scrum Masters as change agents. Alan concurs, highlighting that Scrum Masters must foster awareness and facilitate change without being the primary drivers of that change.

Alan Grove: “We're not the sponsor of change... you can't control results beyond your control.”
(13:07)

He introduces the crucial concept that Scrum Masters should create the best possible conditions for change but recognize the limits of their influence.

Alan Grove: “You can't care more than the team does... results beyond your control.”
(12:10)

Alan underscores the importance of detaching emotionally from outcomes that are not within one's control, a lesson many Scrum Masters grapple with.

Alan Grove: “It's a hard lesson to learn.”
(13:21)

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Understanding Organizational Culture:
   Implementing Scrum requires more than just adopting frameworks; it demands an alignment with the existing organizational culture or a readiness to evolve it.

2. Scrum as a Diagnostic Tool:
   Scrum inherently surfaces underlying issues within teams and organizations. How these issues are addressed—or not addressed—can significantly impact the success of Scrum implementations.

3. Role Clarity for Scrum Masters:
   Scrum Masters should position themselves as facilitators of change, creating environments conducive to Agile practices without overstepping into roles that require authoritative intervention.

4. Managing Emotional Investment:
   Maintaining emotional balance is essential. Scrum Masters must support their teams without becoming personally burdened by factors outside their control.

5. Collaborative Responsibility:
   Agile transformation is a collective effort. While Scrum Masters play a pivotal role, organizational leadership and other stakeholders must actively participate in driving and sustaining change.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a candid exploration of the challenges faced when implementing Scrum in complex organizational settings. Alan Grove's experiences shed light on the emotional and practical hurdles Scrum Masters may encounter and provide valuable lessons on maintaining role clarity and emotional resilience. For Agile practitioners looking to navigate change within intricate corporate landscapes, this conversation serves as both a cautionary tale and a guide to effective facilitation.

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Notable Quotes:

• “We were gonna try and use Scrum as a framework rather than doing whatever works for us.”
  — Alan Grove (03:32)

• “I found this situation really, really difficult to be in because I was kind of naive at the time about... life will be wonderful. And all unicorns and rainbows.”
  — Alan Grove (09:04)

• “You can't care more than the team does... results beyond your control.”
  — Alan Grove (12:10)

• “It's a hard lesson to learn.”
  — Alan Grove (13:21)

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Additional Information

Upcoming Event Announcement:
Vasco Duarte shares exciting news about the upcoming Global Agile Summit scheduled for May 18-20, 2025, in Tallinn, Estonia. The summit promises transformative, practitioner-driven sessions focused on real-life Agile applications, featuring diverse speakers and interactive workshops. Early bird tickets are currently available at a discounted rate until the agenda is finalized.

For more details and to secure your spot, visit globalagilesummit.com.

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Connect with the Podcast:
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Stitcher or iTunes, share it with fellow Scrum Masters, and help us grow this valuable resource for the Agile community.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[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, 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 one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. And this week, joining us from the beautiful half continent of Canada is Alan Grove. Hey Alan, welcome. Welcome to the show.

[Alan Grove]

Hey, I'm delighted to be here.

[Vasco Duarte]

So Ellen is a skilled business agility coach, trainer, facilitator and helping teams and Leaders foster collaboration, productivity and meaningful change. With expertise in Agile, Scrum, Lean and systems coaching, she partners with diverse organizations, from startups to global enterprises to navigate complex challenges, build resilience, and drive impactful organizational transformations across all departments. So, Alan, that was a short intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[Alan Grove]

Well, so my technical background is as a software tester and I was working in a team that had started off as a startup and been absorbed a couple of times by larger companies. So we really had that mentality of we do everything ourselves, we work very collaboratively. We weren't seriously doing Agile, I will say, but we were working a lot of Agile ways. And then the big company came out with the announcement that from here on in, all teams are going to use the same way of developing software. And I don't know what I did to irritate my boss, but I was the person from our organization who sort of got tagged to be part of that organizational conversation. And I was like, we can't work like that. It doesn't make sense. We have to get serious about what we're doing. And that's at the point that we decided, okay, well, we're gonna, we're going to try and use Scrum as a framework rather than doing whatever works for us. And so I went off and did Scrum training a gazillion years ago with Jeff Sutherland, which was really interesting, and took my boss, my boss's boss, and that was the start of our organizational transformation. So I ended up being the Scrum Master for my team or my, the development team that I was managing. And then I complained I didn't like the job our Scrum Scrum Masters was doing. So I ended up becoming a Scrum Scrum Master as well. And that was how I started on this journey.

[Vasco Duarte]

Tell me one thing, this harmonized way of working that the bigger company wanted to institute, was that Scrum already or was that something else? And Scrum was a reaction to that.

[Alan Grove]

That Scrum was the reaction to that. Okay, yeah, big way of working with something that was suitable for, I will say, teams with hundreds of people who released things every few years. Okay. And we had teams of, I think at that point we, our team was 20 people or so and we were releasing stuff to customers every six months and working on a much more frequent cadence. I mean, these days that's, that's a really long release cycle. But, you know, this was back in 2000, something when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

[Vasco Duarte]

Indeed. Dinosaurs and waterfall, they were here about the same time.

[Alan Grove]

Indeed.

[Vasco Duarte]

All right, so of course that sets the context of where this, I guess, familiarization with agile and agile thinking came from. But of course, as Scrum Masters, we don't always succeed at what we try to do. Surprise, surprise. And there's nothing wrong with that because if you're not failing, you're not trying. What we want to focus on is what you learned from that experience. So, Ellen, tell us a story of a moment where you, as a Scrum Master, you did your best. As it so often happens, sometimes the best just isn't good enough. So tell us that story. We'll dive into the details later.

[Alan Grove]

So when the. Sorry, the time where I sort of felt the most personal failure as a Scrum Master was a couple of years after that initial experience. When I was started as the Scrum Master, I was working a little hard to be anonymous about this. I'm going to say the post office. It was very, very early days for the post office to be thinking about Agile. And I was on a project that was quite revolutionary in that it actually spanned two companies. Half of the team, half of the team worked for the mothership, half of the team worked for a different company that was the development partner for the mothership. And I will just say it was a very complex organizational culture. Very, very complex organizational culture. And I went in all keen, we were going to Scrum all the things. It was going to be the best project ever. And while there were lots of little successes in terms of how we were able to bring the team together, it was a really difficult situation. Organization, as I said, challenging organizational culture where you had around the team. There was not a lot of support for what we were trying to do. There were a lot of organizational impediments and it was one of those. So one of the Scrum failure modes is Scrum is designed to surface all the problems you have in delivering things and the way the organization can react is go, oh, that's great, let's start solving those problems. Or the failure mode is, oh, look at all the problems Scrum is causing. This is terrible. We didn't have those problems before because we didn't see them. And this project went down that path and it was.

[Vasco Duarte]

How did it manifest? Was it like in the daily meetings, things were coming up or managers were kind of interrupting? Like, how did that resistance to accepting that Scrum was uncovering rather than creating the problems?

[Alan Grove]

I'm going to say the resistance was actually coming from outside the team, within the team. Everybody was like, yeah, we know this is a problem. This is our daily battle. But it was the people around the team who were like, oh, but this is terrible. We didn't know about all of these things before. Clearly, working with Scrum is the problem. And so that was very demoralizing. And the failure as a Scrum Master for me was, it's not that Scrum Fail failed, it's that for me personally, I found this situation really, really difficult to be in because I was kind of naive at the time about I could just show people the light and everything will be great. They will realize this is a sensible way of working. Scrum is doing what it should in terms of surfacing the problems. We'll all band together to fix them and life will be wonderful. All unicorns and rainbows and needless to say, people have their different agendas and different concerns and different problems that they're trying to solve. And so while we were able to make some changes locally for the team to show success at working across that company divide and putting things out more frequently, we weren't able to make any kind of significant change. And the emotional toll was incredibly difficult. And so I think of that as a failure because of the stress that I took on. I was seeing it as my responsibility for trying to make all of this work, rather than recognizing that as a Scrum Master in the organization, I can help try to create the best conditions, but I personally am not responsible for that. There are other people who have a role to play too, and I can't take on their burden.

[Vasco Duarte]

That actually brings in a very interesting topic which we will talk about again on Wednesday, which is this idea that as Scrum Masters, we need to take the responsibility of becoming change agents, because we can't change things. We can only help others change what they think they need to change. Right. And the specific aspect of Scrum surfacing the problems that the team was facing is a great example, because you can't force the team to solve anything. They need to want to solve it. And you can't force the managers to accept that the problems are indeed there and they do need to be tackled. They need to want to do that. Right. And it kind of brings in that aspect, which is kind of the creator. Meaning Scrum Masters need to become the creator of awareness and the facilitator of change, but not the changers. Right? We can only help others change.

[Alan Grove]

Yeah, we can only help others change. We're not the sponsor of change. And a phrase that has popped up a lot in my recent work where I've been working more as an agile coach than a Scrum Master, but is you can't care more than the team does, the organization does. And it's not that you shouldn't care, but you can't become attached to results that are beyond your control. And I think that's a lesson that a lot of Scrum Masters struggle with. Because when you find yourself in that situation, when you're realizing, oh, I. I can't fix all the things, I'll say that one of the Scrum Master failure modes I've seen is that people try and exert more control over the situation, which is kind of antithetical to what the role of a Scrum Master is, and also counterproductive. Right? Yeah.

[Vasco Duarte]

Yeah. So this is a great point, and I think you really described it well, and I think that phrase has a lot of depth. We shouldn't become attached to results that are beyond our control.

[Alan Grove]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's a hard lesson to learn. It's a hard lesson to learn.

[Vasco Duarte]

Thank you for sharing that with us, Alan.

[Alan Grove]

You're very welcome.

[Vasco Duarte]

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