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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
What Scrum Masters Must Do More of in 2026—Think Like a Business Owner | Lai-Ling Su
00:13:47
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- [00:04]
A
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 warfree 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 the 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.
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B
Hello everybody. Welcome to our success Thursday, the big question of the week this week with Lai Ling Su. Hey Lai Ling, welcome back.
- [01:20]
C
Hey Vasco, good to be back.
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B
Absolutely. After a very meaty episode yesterday, I think we are kind of, kind of regaining our energy to talk about what I think is potentially for Scrum Masters at least the most important question, what does success mean for us? But before we dive into that, Lai Ling, share with us, what's your favorite agile retrospective format and why?
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C
Oh, there are so many, so many amazing formats out there for retrospectives. It's like picking your favorite child. It's impossible.
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B
I agree, I agree.
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C
So I was thinking about this as we were having the conversations earlier in the week going, what would I do in these scenarios? What kind of format would I create to provide a reflective space for these topics of dialogue to go deeper? And I think some of the best retrospectives that I've facilitated in the past have always also been some of the most deeply uncomfortable ones for participants because of how much of the personal and emotional truths come out when you do have that space to allow really good constructive dialogue. And so one of my favorite ways to create a space for tender and courageous conversations is to set a question for reflection, whatever that might be in your context, and then let participants build and share their thoughts using Lego and then let them work through that deep dialogue to form a common understanding and then action plans to move forward. And the reason why I love using Lego for this sort of conversation, this sort of reflection is it does so many things to diffuse the discomfort, like it's fun and the act of physically building something helps you process and articulate your thoughts in a way that you probably didn't have words for before the build. And then it depersonalizes what is said because you're talking about a physical object and not really talking about a specific person per se. And so there's so many rich ingredients in there to allow for deeply reflective and deeply constructive conversations to emerge that then help you put together a really amazing action plan that will push you forward in ways that you probably wouldn't have anticipated walking into the door of that retro.
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B
Absolutely. So I don't know if that's what you're referring to. There's a number of LEGO based retrospective. There's a certified and licensed one called LEGO Serious Play. I'll put the link in the show notes to that. There's the whole facilitation guide on how to do it. But do you use a different approach to that facilitation or are you following more or less the kind of flow of the LEGO Serious Play workshop?
- [04:31]
C
So I am a LEGO Serious Play certified facilitator, but I don't always use that format. The thing about LEGO is you can freeform it if you wanted to, depending on how much time and how much LEGO you have. Right. LEGO Serious Play has these cool kits, like specialized kits that are very expensive. So I wouldn't recommend you go and get yourself certified and buy those massively expensive kits just to do a retro, but you could just go to your local shop, buy a box of Lego, buy just pure simple bricks and just pose a question and let people build using the simplest bricks that you can find. There's, there's so many ways you can do it. And before I became certified with LEGO Serious Play, that's what I did. I just grabbed basic bricks and told people to build off the back of a question.
- [05:24]
B
Absolutely. Well, we'll put the link to LEGO Serious Play and a couple of YouTube videos there so that people can go and check out some, some first person accounts of what it is to participate in such an event. And I do agree with you, it can be extremely powerful because it puts together the body and the mind and the body also thinks. And this is something, as leaders, we need to recognize that how the body feels affects how the brain works. And LEGO brings those two together. There's the kinetic and the visual element that help crystallize ideas that would otherwise not be able to, to come out so easily. Right. But of course, today's Thursday. We talk about success. Lightling. So when you think about scrum Masters out there and you work with many and you coach many yourself. How do you define success for Scrum Masters?
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C
Success is so contextual and I think the definitions and measurements of success also change over time. So only you can definitively say what success is at any given time and how to appropriately measure it for your situation. But I'd love to approach this question with the frame of what I'd love to see Scrum Masters help move forward. There's something that I've noticed that we're distinctly missing right now in the business landscape, and that's the lack of smart, strategic and commercial decision making. This could look like like, you know, doing simple things like reducing the number of SKUs in your product range to enhance the operational flow, reduce time to delivery for your customers and reduce burnout in your workforce without needing to keep hiring more people and increasing your fixed cost base. Like that's a smart, strategic commercial decision that's going to protect your people and it's going to help your customers be delighted quicker and improve the way that your business runs. Other ways could be like investing in change management and uplifting leadership capability as part of your transformation from day one, instead of bringing in after, after the transformation's done and you realize something's missing or partway through and you've got to play catch up along the way. They, you know, there are other things like particularly if you're a startup or a smaller company and you're really watching your, your Runway, you can review your expenses and cut out what's quietly going unused. And examples of that could be, you know, you're spending $100,000 on software licenses that people aren't using, and that could be the difference between paying for those unused licenses or saving a colleague's job for the next 12 months. Or it could be that you could spend that 100k making your product a game changer for your current and future customers, instead of just being one other option in amongst a category full of competitors. So it's looking at what you've got and using it smarter. And then there are so many various other scenarios that you can look at to make smarter, more strategic and more commercial decisions that are what is the
- [08:48]
B
question that you help your Scrum Masters to consider when you want to help them exactly do that, right? Like consider strategic aspects earlier in the process. Like how do you coach Scrum Masters in your work to be able to, to get to that level of thinking and acknowledging, right, because this being strategic is also about acknowledging many things that are not in our day to day
- [09:14]
C
something I'd love to do when I, if I do have the time with them, is actually put them in the shoes of a business owner, whether it is manufacturing a simulation and getting them to think about what exactly they have to do as a business owner running a small business. Because there's not a lot of give when it comes to the commerciality of that. Not a lot of give in terms of run versus change business. There are other times where if you've got a vast network that you can tap into, you can allow these scrum masters to shadow business leaders and actually sit side by side with them from a mentoring capacity and look at your businesses, P and L side by side with this business leader. You can go and visit a retail shop front with that business owner and hear the conversations that they're having. Or you can get them to pair with their product owner or their product person and ask them to walk you through what is the business side of the product. We know the build side extremely well, but what's the business side of the product? And get them to walk you through that and then also get them to bring you into conversations that are around that topic so you can learn through immersion in that way as well. And then you've got your typical coaching conversations where once they've had those experiences, you can then tap into, draw from, translate those experiences through questioning as well.
- [10:59]
B
Absolutely. And this is definitely a blind spot that many of us in the industry have today. This ability to think like a business owner, as you put it. Or in other words, to think about the business as a holistic system rather than just my team and how my team interacts with the nearby teams and stakeholders. So a great thought for us to develop ourselves as well. Thank you very much for sharing that with us, Lai Ling.
- [11:26]
C
No worries.
- [11:31]
A
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C
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B
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