← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
When Leadership Changes—Supporting Teams Through the Uncertainty | Lai-Ling Su
00:13:17
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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.
- [01:12]
B
Hello everybody. Welcome to our Coaching Wednesday and this week we have with us Lai Ling Su. Hey, Lai Ling, welcome back.
- [01:21]
C
Hey, thanks Vasco. I've got a really interesting topic that I'd love to unpick with you today.
- [01:26]
B
Absolutely. So for those of us listening to this episode for the first time, others will already know this is the coaching episode where we explore a topic that is the biggest challenge is what we ask our guests like Lai Ling today. It doesn't need to be the only challenge, but it needs to be one challenge that we explore together in a coaching conversation because this is what we need to do every day as Scrum Masters. So Lai Ling, share with us, what topic do you bring to us this week?
- [01:58]
C
Okay, Vasco, so I am going to speak in general terms to protect the confidentiality of the nature of the conversations that I've been having. But I think there's enough in sort of the demographic patterns at a systems level for us to dive in and explore a little bit. So Australia is on the brink of the largest sort of intergenerational wealth transfer in its history. And over the next couple of decades, three and a half trillion dollars in business and personal wealth is going to get transferred or change hand as businesses, property investments and so forth passed to the next generation. And your listeners might be thinking, well, who cares. But to put that into perspective, private and family owned businesses generate about a third of Australia's $1.75 trillion GDP, provide jobs for about 5.3 million people, which is about 4,40ish percent of the private workforce in this country and 70% of those private and family businesses are planning to sell or succeed in the coming years with this generational change. And what's going to really deeply hit us is that with this generational change, business leadership transitions are being enacted as a part of this transfer. And what I mean by that is you start to see changes in your executive leadership, your CEOs, your business owners, the people who are driving decisions and leading these businesses for the next generation, for the next few decades. And so the leadership styles that we've been used to over the last few decades is going to shift. And we have a once in a generational or once in a lifetime type of opportunity to fundamentally work with these leaders, to shift the workplace environments and the workplace dynamics in the way that we've been trying to craft in the world of product and agile and whatnot for the last few decades on our own, whether from the ground up or in conjunction with the existing leaders. And so I've been spending a lot of time engaging more and more with these business owners who are about to Retire, or the CEOs that are coming in as first time CEOs, either coming through from the family and stepping into these roles with no full breadth and depth of capability to lead or grow These businesses that have to deal with these previous generational owners who don't want to let go yet because they've spent their lifetime building these businesses and they don't want to know what happens when they let go of control, let go of things to flow into the next generation. Or You've got external CEOs coming in after a sale or after a child says to their retiring parent, I don't want to run the business. And these external CEOs are coming in and doing things wildly different to how the business was originally built, and they're facing significant resistance in doing so. And so these and other sort of business leadership transfer scenarios are creating leadership vacuums that are stalling decisions, losing confidence of the customers and the communities that they serve, and they're fracturing what were possibly once really tight knit teams, really high performing tight knit teams.
- [05:41]
B
What I'm hearing is that this transition that you just described is something that many of us have experienced within other non generational transition business transitions. Right? Like what I'm hearing is that there's a certain culture, there's a certain approach to tackling the business as well as the community and the people problems within the business. And that's about to change because the leadership in those businesses is changing. And the leadership in those businesses or any other Businesses, when it changes, there's a transformation, whether we like it or not. It's just a natural consequence. And what I hear you say is we need to be ready for this transformation so that in the case of Australia specifically, it doesn't cause a catastrophic outcomes within the national economy. Right. Like lots of bankruptcy and so on. But, but from where I'm standing, like thinking as an agile coach and as a scrum master, it's also about how do we go through a transition like this and keep the team solid, performing 100%. Is that what you're considering in terms of thinking about how to support these businesses in your work?
- [06:53]
C
Where I'm going is I'm thinking about what can we do to support the outgoing and incoming leaders of these businesses during these transitions. Because they're hard. They're actually really, really hard and disruptive. I've been talking to them about things like proper succession planning, making sure that the old guard transitions, all the wealth of knowledge and the know how into the next generation. And so, you know, there's continuity in that. Been talking to them about uplifting leadership capabilities and you know, using, utilizing and understanding the strengths of their teams so that the transition is much softer and less jarring for the people who are day in, day out operating these businesses and they feel like they still have a home, they still have a job and the future is not so bleak.
- [07:52]
B
And this happens in our teams all the time. Right. Like, because the change of leadership is something that is just a natural consequence of a team that is successful. Right. A team that fails doesn't need to worry about it because it's no longer there. But all successful teams will go through leadership transitions, whether it's somebody internally that grows up to become a leader, to replace somebody else who's gone on to other challenges or the company changes ownership or. Just like we were talking about yesterday in the Tuesday episode, there's an M and A activity that leads to two companies merging. This is something we need to be aware of as leaders. What are some of the things that you're thinking can support these teams in this moment of transition? Not just the leaders, of course, that's one. Both the ones coming in as well as the ones going out, but also the teams themselves to stay solid and focused on what they were doing well in the past.
- [08:47]
C
I think they need to be respected for who they are, what they've done and achieved in the past. Particularly with leaders coming in with no background of the business of the people, this can be quite challenging and put people offside quite quickly and create resistance. And so I think there's something around leaders and scrum masters who protect the team in a very different way to what they've been used to during these transitions. They protect the team by letting the newcomers know about what it is that their strengths are, what it is about the work that's important to the business, what it is that they're doing to create sustainable growth within the business, what it is that this team and these groups of really loyal people can do for the new coming or incoming leaders to set them up for success. It's very much creating awareness to one of our earlier points. Creating awareness, but also creating opportunity and dialogue on both sides. I think there's an element of that, but I think there are so many different avenues that we can take and I'm only scratching the surface of it. And I think with the applicability of this topic across multiple scenarios, as you highlight, our listeners are going to be thinking about their own scenarios and going what can I do with my team? What can I do with my leaders? If we know that there is a transfer of leadership coming through soon, or we've been just hit with one, how do we respond to it in a meaningful and constructive way?
- [10:39]
B
Yeah, absolutely. How do we respond to changing leadership? I think that would be a whole new bonus episode. Maybe we'll get you back to talk about that. But for today, thank you very much for sharing that with us. Really an inspiring topic for us to sink our thinking hats into something to ponder.
- [11:01]
A
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- [12:51]
B
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- [12:57]
A
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B
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