Sustainable Value—Redefining Success Beyond Profit | Joel Bancroft-Connors

Summary

Podcast Summary: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast – "Sustainable Value—Redefining Success Beyond Profit | Joel Bancroft-Connors"

Release Date: June 5, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Joel Bancroft-Connors, Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Master

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a deep conversation with Joel Bancroft-Connors about redefining success in the Agile framework. Moving beyond traditional profit metrics, Joel introduces the concept of sustainable value, emphasizing its critical components: sustainable profit, sustainable processes, and sustainable people.

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1. Enhancing Retrospectives for Effective Team Improvement

Timestamp: [01:50]

Joel begins by discussing his favorite retrospective format, advocating for a return to the fundamentals outlined in "Agile Retrospectives" by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby. He emphasizes the structured arc of a successful retrospective:

• Setting the Stage and Context: Ensuring all team members understand the purpose and framework of the retrospective.
• Gathering Data: Collecting factual information without immediate interpretation.
• Generating Insights: Facilitating discussions to interpret data and create affinity mappings.
• Making Plans: Identifying one or two actionable improvements for the next sprint.
• Closing: Concluding the session effectively.

Notable Quote:
Joel Bancroft-Connors [01:50]:
"Our retrospectives would be so much better if people remembered those famous five steps."

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2. The Crucial Role of "Why" in Retrospectives

Timestamp: [03:26]

Joel delves into the importance of understanding the "why" behind retrospectives. He critiques repetitive sessions that become mere forums for airing grievances without leading to tangible changes, likening them to a "Groundhog Day" scenario.

Notable Quote:
Joel Bancroft-Connors [04:38]:
"If nothing changes after a retrospective, then either the retrospective wasn't done the right way or something else is preventing whatever needs to be changed from changing."

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3. Defining Success Through Sustainable Value

Timestamp: [06:11]

Transitioning to the core theme, Joel redefines success within Agile as the delivery of sustainable value. He breaks this down into three pillars:

• Sustainable Profit: Ensuring profitability that can be maintained over time. Joel shares his disdain for the "blank check innovation" era, where projects lacked clear value propositions.

• Sustainable Process: Developing processes that are robust and adaptable, avoiding constant changes that disrupt team stability.

• Sustainable People: Fostering an environment where employees can thrive, retaining institutional and tribal knowledge. Joel cites "Turn the Ship Around" by Captain David Marquet as an example of enhancing morale and performance through sustainable people practices.

Notable Quotes:
Joel [06:11]:
"The definition of success is are we delivering sustainable value."

Joel [12:48]:
"AI will help us to create more sustainable people. They will be able to do more. They will be able to focus on the creative because we leverage off the processes that are clear and well understood."

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4. People Sustainability Metrics and the Impact of AI

Timestamp: [10:04]

Joel and Vasco explore the metrics that can gauge people sustainability within organizations. They discuss concerns around AI potentially displacing jobs, highlighting the need for metrics that monitor employee well-being and retention.

Joel stresses that while AI can automate routine tasks, the human element—creativity, complex problem-solving, and maintaining organizational knowledge—remains irreplaceable.

Notable Quote:
Joel Bancroft-Connors [12:54]:
"If we don't have people, we have nothing. We need sustainable people."

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5. Embracing AI as a Tool for Enhancing Sustainability

Timestamp: [12:48]

Addressing the role of AI, Joel emphasizes viewing it as a tool rather than a replacement for human talent. He likens AI to a hammer given to a master carpenter, capable of unlocking greater creative potential, as opposed to an inexperienced individual misusing it.

He advocates for leveraging AI to handle well-defined processes, allowing team members to concentrate on more creative and strategic endeavors.

Notable Quote:
Joel [12:48]:
"AI is a tool and it's a tool for us to create more sustainable people."

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Conclusion: Redefining Success for Lasting Impact

Timestamp: [14:41]

In wrapping up, Joel reiterates his passion for redefining success within Agile practices. He underscores that the ultimate goal of Scrum and Agile methodologies is to deliver continuous and sustainable value, ensuring long-term success for both organizations and their people.

Notable Quote:
Joel [14:41]:
"The purpose of Scrum, the purpose of Agile, is to deliver value."

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides valuable perspectives for Scrum Masters and Agile practitioners aiming to foster environments where sustainable value drives success. Joel Bancroft-Connors offers actionable insights into structuring effective retrospectives and redefining success metrics to encompass profit, process, and people—all essential for thriving in today’s dynamic business landscape.

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Note: For listeners interested in further resources and community engagement, Vasco Duarte highlights the Scrum Master Toolbox Membership, offering access to extensive Agile content, live workshops, and a supportive practitioner community.

Transcript

[Vasko]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

But you can also join live calls.

[Vasko]

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.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our success. Thursday, of course, the biggest question of the week this week with Joel Bancroft Connors. Hey Joel, welcome back.

[Joel]

Thank you, Vasco. Looking forward, we're on the downhill slope.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

And for all of you guys who remember the Monday episode, I said I'm eager to hear your answer to the Thursday question. Joel. Well, today's Thursday, so we're going to listen to it. But before, let's talk about retrospectives, the tool, in the end, that we so often use to try to get to that successful place. So, Joel, share with us, what's your favorite retrospective format and why?

[Joel]

Well, I'm going to go a bit meta here because I think we're in an era where you just, every time you turn around, somebody's got this new retrospective format. Here's a retrospective format on the Rolling Stones, here's a retrospective format on, on the Marvel superhero movies or whatever. And it's like all these different things, which a lot of them boil down into very similar actual base structures. And for me, my favorite retrospective format is to go back to the basics from Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larson and Esther Derby. Because so many people forget that there's actually an arc to doing a retrospective. Setting the stage, setting the context, introducing the retrospective framework you're going to use, making sure everybody's aligned on what is the purpose of why we're here today. And then gathering the data. Take the time, gather the data, be factual, don't try. Interpret the data while you're gathering the data, then generate insights. And that's where everybody starts talking about it. And what does this Mean, creating affinity mappings, getting everybody on the same page so they all understand what the data means. And then really, the most important part. Okay, great. Now make a plan. What's the one or two things that we're going to improve in our next retrospective? And make the plan for how we're going to do it. And then finally close. And I think if people just remember that there is actually an arc to the retrospective, and sometimes you can use different little exercises at the different parts. I think our retrospectives would be so much better if people remembered those famous five steps.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

All right, so I've got to put you on the spot here, Joel, because you've been preaching the importance of why, and I think this is a great opportunity to exercise that mindset. So back to the basics. Follow the arc. Give us the. The real reason why that is so important for our teams and, of course, for us who are facilitating the retrospectives.

[Joel]

Because I think I just did a post on LinkedIn yesterday, and I called it. I like to do my LinkedIn, my Sunday Funnies, and I call it the Groundhog Day Retrospective. And it's like the. We go into a retrospective and we talk about these problems, and we all nod and everything. Okay. And we move on. We come to the next retrospective, and we talk about our problems, and we all nod and everything, and, oh, yeah, it's a problem, Then we move on. And I think a lot of the retrospective formats, if you don't understand that underlying structure, why. Why do you have a retrospective in the first place? And what is that underlying structure to make decisions? All that happens is Groundhog Day, and you just keep repeating that over and over again, and nothing ever gets done. And people hate retrospectives in part because why should I be in a retrospective if nothing ever changes?

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Yeah, absolutely. That's also a very powerful, I think, insight into the role of the Scrum Master as well. Because our role is to help teams achieve things. I mean, they have to define to a large extent what it is that they need to achieve. Part of it is stakeholder, but also part of it is internal to the team. But we are there to help them. Right? And if nothing changes, if all we do, and sometimes that happens, is to help create a forum for people to share their grievances, which catharsis is very important, but it's not the end result. We need to start moving things into whatever direction that we agree needs to be moved in. And I think that's a very important aspect of the retrospectives. And if nothing changes after a retrospective, then either the retrospective wasn't done the right way or in a way that has impact, one should phrase it, or something else is preventing whatever needs to be changed from changing. And that's what we're there for to help solve that blocker. So thank you for reminding us of that, Joel. And of course we do these retros because we want to be successful. But given your Monday answer to the failure story, and if you guys didn't hear it yet, now is a good time to stop, pause and go listen to the Monday episode and then come back. I'm really curious to hear how you define success for yourself, Joel.

[Joel]

So, yeah, I think as a SCRUM master, an agile coach, a trainer, I've really evolved over time and again. I mean, I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek. Start with why. And so understanding why we're doing this and why, why does agile exist? When you ask people, well, what is, what is agile for and what's the meaning for it? Well, I look at the def, I go back and I look at the actual definitions. I mean Principle 1 of the Agile manifesto says to deliver continuous value. The Scrum got, the Scrum guide says the purpose of Scrum is to generate value for complex problems. And so for me, the definition of success is are we delivering sustainable value? And I think that's very, very key here. ATIK Rafiq, in an interview about his book Design Sprints, talked about the era of blank check innovation is over. I lived through those. I lived through the dot com era, the sock puppets, the webvans. I was in the San Francisco Bay area. I literally saw web vans driving around. I drove past the pep.com headquarters, home of the sock puppet and, and how these, they built stuff that nobody needed. There was no reason why are we doing this? And so they didn't look at value. And then the other part of it Luke Coleman talks about in his books Software Profit Streams is it's not enough to make profit. You have to make sustainable profit. You have to be able to do it over and over again. And so for me, what does success look like now? For me, success looks like the ability to generate sustainable value, which means three things. Sustainable profit. Profit is not a four letter word. It is instead the ability to do things. Even a not for profit organization in the United States, they're not there not to make money. They're there to make any money they make goes back into their mission into feeding more children to help building more, more homes for homeless people. So sustainable profit then sustainable process. We have to have Sustainable process. We can't be constantly changing and doing one offs and exceptions or bringing in the new process du jour, the process of the day. And so we need to create that sustainable process. And then finally at the end of the day, we need to remember, no matter, we can have the best business plans in the world, the best processes in the world, the best financial backing, the best technology. And if we don't have people, we have nothing. We need sustainable people. We can't be constantly hiring and training new people. We need to create that sustainable knowledge, that tribal knowledge. I think a great example of that, if I have time for it, is from the book Turn the Ship around by Captain David Marquet. He took command of a Navy submarine in the United States Navy, the USS Santa Fe. And when he took command of it, it was one of the lowest performing subs in the Navy. And one of the reasons was believed that it had one of the lowest reenlistment rates. So literally they didn't have any institutional knowledge built up. There was nobody who knew the system, knew the sub, knew and could tell new people, oh yeah, this one's got a little thing and that door sticks. Everybody had to discover that that door sticked or stuck. And as he put in his leaders intent model and a lot of the book is around that and how he helped lead the leaders, the officers and the senior NCOs change how they led. What happened though was that the morale of the ship went up, the performance of the ship went up and the reenlistment rate of the ship went up. And one of the reasons why that ship became one of the best performing subs in the Navy is because they weren't losing people all the time. They had that carry on knowledge, that tribal knowledge. And so for me again it goes back to how do we create sustainable value through people process and profit.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of raises the question, which is what is that people sustainability metric that we're looking at? Right. Like you gave the example of Captain David Marquez, with whom we have an episode on the podcast. I'll put the link in the show notes for that. And that was the reenlistment rate, Right. And we need to have some sort of, I would call it a sensor that helps us understand how are we on the sustainability for people side. Right. Because when we look at profit, there are whole systems looking at profit, right. Like you know, the whole accounting and finance department will be looking at profit for a public company. There's quarterly reporting obligations that will talk about what profit is and how it's being generated and, and so on and so forth. When we talk about processes, there's an internal organization, usually, especially in larger companies, that focuses on process. Right. Like could be the PMO or the Agile Excellence Office or whatever. It would be that whatever name they come up with, there's going to be people that are going focus on that. But how do you make it sustainable for people? And I just want to give a very specific example right now. There's a lot of people talking out there, CEOs of larger companies, especially how they're going to replace people with AI. How's that creating a sustainable work environment in those organizations? Right. And when you think about it like if we just play the film a few or we play the TV series a few seasons forward and we ask, okay, if everybody's going to be fire, who's going to have money to buy the products that they're supposed to be creating with AI? And that lack of vision that points to the people, sustainability is also a serious problem. So I really like that approach. Right. It's not just the money, it's not just the process. Those are necessary. But it's also about how we create an environment where people can thrive, create the value that they're supposed to be creating so that profit can be sustainable in a way that they understand and they can feel a relatedness to. Right. Like the process needs to speak to the people who are implementing the process itself. But ultimately that keeps people in the organization keeping that knowledge growing, keeping that experience growing, which ultimately will have a much bigger impact than the 30% code generated by AIs. That. What's the guy's name?

[Joel]

Sundar Pichai at Microsoft.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

That's the Google. The Sundar Chachai.

[Joel]

Sorry. Satya Nadella.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Satya Nadella. Somebody should tell Satya Nadella that we were already automating 30% of the code when we had case tools in the rational times. Right. Like the rational rows and case tools associated with that were already generating 30% plus of the code automatically. What are these people talking about? Do they even know what they're talking about and they're scaring people off.

[Joel]

Yeah. I think how AI factors into this and the sustainable people and everything probably is a whole nother bonus episode. I'm actually a big fan of AI, however, as it's. It's a tool and it's the. My. I did a LinkedIn post about it. It's like you don't give a hammer to a three year old, but if you give a hammer to a master carpenter, then they're going to do incredible things with it. And it's like we need to look at the sustainable people in AI is AI will help us to create more sustainable people. They will be able to do more. They will be able to focus on the creative because we leverage off the we take those processes that are, that are clear and well understood and we can automate those and leave the complex thinking problems for the people.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

I am an AI, or should we say a one? If you know, you know, optimist. I just don't believe that we have figured it out just like we didn't in the time ofwebvans and pets.com. we had not yet figured it out back then. But you're right, this would be a long bonus episode. Thank you very much for sharing that perspective on success for Scrum Masters, Joel.

[Joel]

Absolutely. One of my big passions right now is redefining success. I think honestly, we as Agile coaches and Scrum Masters and everything have been some of our own worst advocates and allies because we were so focused on, oh, happy teams and all of this and forgetting that the purpose of Scrum, the purpose of Agile, is to deliver value.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Absolutely. Very well said.

[Vasko]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

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