← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
When a Billion-Dollar Team Becomes Invisible | Alidad Hamidi
00:15:42
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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 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. Hello everybody. Welcome back to our Tuesday episode this week with Ali Dad Hamidi. Hey Ali dad, welcome back.
- [01:19]
B
Hey Mesko, good to be back.
- [01:22]
A
So Tuesday is Team Tuesday. We'll talk about teams in a second. But first, Ali dad, share with us what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?
- [01:32]
B
I really find it challenging to answer that question because I went back and I mean nowadays a little less. But there was a time that I used to read one book a week. There were many, many books that I was thinking about. Part of my practice is system thinking, open system theory and other things. So there's a lot I can talk about in terms of systems thinking as well as human psychology. But I want to talk about two books. One had a massive impact on my practice as a coach and the other one as a human being. And hopefully I'll connect it to how it helps the Scrum Master. One that especially helped with my coaching practice, a book called More Time to Think by Nancy Klein. She obviously it help us to particularly about Scrum Masters. I want to talk about this. It teaches you to create a space, not to feel. It help you to listen better. It help the Scrum Masters to create those spaces for team to slow down and Scrum Masters and managers to listen deeply. And designing the containers as an example, meetings or workshops that allow for deeper thinking to emerge nationally naturally, rather than telling them, you know, have to think. It also turn facilitation into liberation. It's about how do you help people to find the solution among themselves. And it had a huge, huge impact on my way of thinking about coaching. I actually first time I listened to the audiobook of More Time to Think, it's actually the second book, second book from the same series that the first book is called Time to Think. But I first listened to More Time to Think and I really enjoyed even now, after I went and read the Time to Think, I enjoyed More Time to Think More. So that's one book, the second one, which is more recent and has a significant impact on my thinking, both as my practice as an organizational designer and advisor, but also as a human being. And it's called Confronting Our Freedom Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging. It's a book that is co authored by Peter Bloch and Peter Kostenbaum. Peter Kostenbaum is an existentialist philosopher and he passed away just recently, Peter Black obviously still alive. And it's about how do we believe in our freedom and human agency and the accountability that comes with that. And it's kind of the similar trait that we talked about earlier. There is this part in the book that says the cost of freedom is the anxiety that comes with it. And it talks about two types of anxiety. The anxiety of accepting that we are living in a world that a lot of it is out of our control, but we are still accountable for our own behavior. And the anxiety about the anxiety, which is the bit that we don't want. The first bit, I think it's the anxiety is something that's part of our experience as humans, I think. How do we live with anxiety? Because a lot of the time in large organizations, in order to remove that anxiety, we come up with bureaucracy, hierarchy, control, metrics, all of that things. I'm not saying metrics, practice, by the way, but instead of being comfortable with the anxiety of living, if you are a human and if you're living in this world, there's always an anxiety there because there's always a space. First of all, world is unpredictable. Second of all, there is always a. A gap between what we want to achieve and where we are now. And that anxiety is actually the engine for a lot of freedom. It's the engine for the innovation for entrepreneurship. But if you want to get rid of remove that anxiety, we end up with a lot of structure and bureaucracy and control. So why is it important for Scrum Masters? I think first of all, understanding that tension that is there. And also if as a person you can't deal with your own anxiety and freedom, if you can't accept the accountability, it's very hard to help the teams that you're working with to do that for themselves. This book had a significant impact on my philosophical view about the world as well.
- [06:41]
A
Very good, very good foundation. We'll put the link to those in the show notes. And now we turn our attention to teams who sometimes create their own problems. So Alidat, share with us the story of that team that you were part of or you were helping and how those little behaviors, patterns, interactions maybe started small but grew and became a problem for that team.
- [07:07]
B
First of all, I just want to maybe just add something there. I'm a systems thinking practitioner and I use a lot of system thinking in my work. System thinking is not something you can do. It's obviously a state of being and it's a lens to see the world in my view most of the times it's not, I would say 90% of the time it's not teams fault, it's not teams that are self destructive or anything. You know, simple analogy is when a flower is not blooming, you don't fix the flower, you fix the soil. You make sure that they get the right sort of light, they get the right nutrition, they get the right bugs, they have the right plants around them. So there is, do they get the right shade? So and you know a lot of systems thinkers, you know Edward, I mean, I mean he wasn't system thing, he was more a processing but, but he has this say like 85% or 90% of the factors for the performances or the failure of the system of teams are related to the system rather than the individuals. So I just want to put that as a kind of a preamble. Right. Well I think part of that is having that existential philosophy for life. We could say it's the system but we could also take responsibility. Second order cybernetic. We are always part of the system. System is not something that is out there and we go into it. We are the system as well. Yes, there are other things that is out of our control. But a lot of the time obviously what you see, how you see the performance of the team is significantly influenced by the way the system around the team team works. But I think I do believe in the agency of the people. And I think every individual and teams, they have some agency to change the environment that they are in. Okay, so I want to talk about one team and then I want to talk about how I help them and if time permits I want to talk about a.
- [09:29]
A
So let's do it quickly because we have about three minutes.
- [09:33]
B
Okay. So the example I want to use is there was this Team, they were maintaining number of systems, large number of systems. But because the organization were moving, replatforming, this team was kind of this team out there on the side. It seems that no one really care about them. They also get to this pattern of I always refer to one person to help with everything and I kind of were quite demotivated. I don't think it was wrongly so initially when I joined I did a lot of, you know, oh, let's just do some team building activities, et cetera. I'm not saying it didn't help, but the impact was very minimal. But I use a model, viable systems model and instead of doing the typical, let's just do retro and write better stories and things like that. I started with the five systems in the Huawei system of the number. System five is actually about identity of the system.
- [10:38]
A
But effectively and here the system is the team, not everything around the team.
- [10:42]
B
Yes, yes, the subsystem. When you talk about viable systems model, you have this fractal model that the systems within the system and each is subsystem. All of those five things exist. There's five systems, system one to five. System one is the operation, which is what the team does. The main reason that exists. System two is the coordination, let's say daily standup is a coordination mechanism. System three is the management, which is how do you manage your work? It's not referring to the role of management, it's referring to if you have work, then how do you manage the work? What are the metrics that you have, et cetera. System 4 and 5 is a strategy and identity. So one of the first thing I did, I went back and I talked to the stakeholder and I say the system that these guys are maintaining, what's the worth of this system for them? And I started to put numbers. It was like billion dollar worth of revenue, right? So I brought that back into the team. I asked them to start run a series of training for each other and the broader group. I also did a bit of a self assessment. They identify how much they know about their skill set about each of those 10 different systems. And by making it visible that you guys are maintaining a billion dollar worth of business here. Yes, your systems are being replatformed, but currently you're running this business. Completely shift their perspective about, about how they feel about their work, the importance, the motivation. And it's interesting, I did a lot of work with that team. But when I left, I did a reflection with every team member. I said, tell me what I did for you. I thought they're going to talk about all of the fancy workshop around with them. Unanimously. They said one thing. You made us visible. That's it. Yeah.
- [12:33]
A
And that's an incredibly motivator, incredible motivator for people. Right? Because if. If I'm not seen, I don't exist. If I don't exist, I start questioning my ident. It's a deeply human need to be accepted and well, not always understood, although understood is very important. But at least accept it. For me, the critical part of this story is really that twist. Right? Like you help the team understand themselves, why they existed as a team. And of course that brought visibility from other people around because they themselves, they projected that visibility because they started to understand themselves, why they were important in that organization.
- [13:17]
B
Yeah.
- [13:19]
A
Great story. Thank you for sharing that Alidad.
- [13:22]
B
No worries.
- [13:25]
A
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- [15:15]
B
Slack.
- [15:17]
A
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