Appetite for Disruption: Agile Aspirations vs Readiness with Cherie Silas

Unlock the secrets to Agile transformation with master certified coach Cherie Silas from Tandem Coaching Academy, as we delve deep into the heart of organizational change in this enlightening conversation. Prepare to have your perspective shifted as we discuss how to discern a company's true intentions behind the pursuit of Agile, and why understanding the difference between Agile training and true transformation is critical. As we navigate the intricacies of change, Cherie imparts her wisdom on the importance of comprehensive assessment and aligning a company's readiness for the inevitable disruptions that come with transformation.

Experience firsthand the art of overcoming resistance in an organization, and learn how to cultivate a culture that not only embraces change but thrives in it. Together with Cherie, we explore strategies for gaining crucial management buy-in and leveraging the influence of change-ready individuals to generate a positive ripple effect. Discover how to move teams from skepticism to celebration of their Agile journey, and the pivotal role that strategic communication plays in reshaping project management practices. If you're ready to be part of the transformation that's reshaping the business world, this episode is your roadmap to success.

Connect with Cherie on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheriesilas/

Visit Medieval Times when in Dallas:
https://www.medievaltimes.com/dallas/what-to-expect

Discover Cheris' offerings at Tandem Coaching:
info@tandemcoach.co

Email Cherie:
mailto:info@tandemcoach.co

Join the Alliance using the link below! 👇

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Welcome back to the Agile Within everybody. This is your host, mark Metz. Today we have with us Cherie Silas. Welcome to the Agile Within. Thank you, happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Cherie is a Chief Executive Officer of Tandem Coaching Academy from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and she's from Dallas herself. She's the holder of an impressive list of Agile coaching certificates and is one of approximately 2,000 worldwide master certified coaches with the International Coaching Federation. She's also author of approximately 2,000 worldwide master certified coaches with the International Coaching Federation. She's also author of a book Enterprise Agile Coaching Creating Sustainable Change with Invitational Coaching Approach. She's an executive and an org coach this podcast. So thank you for joining us, cherie. I've got an icebreaker question for you, being from Dallas. If I were coming to Dallas for a day, what's one thing you would say that I absolutely had to do?

Speaker 2: 1:29

Not originally from Dallas. I've been here about 20 years and the one thing that I usually bring people to do is to go to medieval times. I know they have those in other places, but I met it here and it's a really, really interesting event. Those are fun.

Speaker 1: 1:45

So, cherie, I want to it here, and it's a really, really interesting event. Those are fun. So, cherie, I want to ask you, as an enterprise agile coach, what's your first step when a client reaches out and asks you for some help and perhaps ask you the dreaded question about helping with an agile transformation.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Yeah, well, the first step is to get on a call and have some conversation with them first, to find out what is the actual problem that you're trying to solve and what makes you think that agile is going to be the solution for that. Because agile tends to be this magic word that makes everything better, but often they don't even know why they're trying to do it.

Speaker 1: 2:24

There is a lot packed into the word agile, and how do you get to the bottom of knowing what clients are actually wanting?

Speaker 2: 2:34

Most of it is just through a series of questions that we ask them before we actually take on an engagement, and one of the things that we really try to get our clients to understand is let's forget about the transformation word for a minute and let's talk about what it is you actually want. There's three levels of engagements, and often the client doesn't know what they want, and when they say transformation and a coach says transformation, they really mean very different things, and so often what they want is just training. They want to implement some framework. Teach my teams how to do scrum, because they think that that's going to make everything all better, right, and so we talk about that. And what happens if we teach your teams to do scrum but nothing else changes? Right, your organizational structure doesn't change. Where's the ceiling on training and the change that you can bring in?

Speaker 2: 3:32

And then we talk about that next level, which is agile adoption, which I really believe is what most people want. They may be saying transformation, but, but they really want is adoption, and at the adoption level, it's usually like your engineering department, sometimes your product area, that are involved and the change that you can make. Really, it tops out with the top leader and what they control. So if your CTO is the person who's wanting to get this agile transformation, that's great. We can do a lot of agile adoption things in your area.

Speaker 2: 4:07

We can change your organizational structure if needed, we can train your people, we can help you with the culture, but ultimately, the things you don't control can't be changed. You might be able to influence HR and finance and legal and sales and marketing, but you don't have control over them, and so really, what we're looking at is adoption and then we talk about well, what is transformation? Who would need to be saying yes, we want to do this, and how that actually impacts the whole company outside of just engineering and product. So I think key is both the client and us understanding what is it that they really want, so that we don't get in there and we're trying to make changes that actually can't be made. We don't want them to be frustrated and we don't want us to be frustrated.

Speaker 1: 4:56

So any type of agility that you're looking to inject requires some level of disruption. Otherwise, you're just going to do the same thing you've already done. How do you gauge what the appetite is for disruption within an organization without just being an order taker and saying what are you here for? You want me to just give you some training classes. Okay, I'll give you training classes, and then my engagement is done.

Speaker 2: 5:22

We usually, you know, after we've had all our conversations, we don't propose an entire engagement. We propose a 30-day window where we come in and do an assessment. Not an assessment in terms of what's right, what's wrong. You're doing this right. I'm going to tell you all the things you're doing wrong. It's more of a survey. So it's talking to people at every level of the organization, in every role team members, people on the periphery and then all the different levels of leadership. And what we're looking for is how do you see yourself? How do you see the world you live in? What problems do you see that are happening? What are the things that keep you up at night? What's frustrating you? What's your technical environment look like? What's your culture? Look like? All those things.

Speaker 2: 6:12

What we're listening for is trends. So once you talk to the third group of people, you're going to start to notice, okay, here's some things that keep coming up. So at the end of that time we spend with them, we actually document. So here are the top five, six trends that we're seeing, or themes that you're telling us are the things that are holding you back. We go back to the executives and we say, okay, here's your current state and here's what we are hearing. You say you want your future state to be.

Speaker 2: 6:43

And then we look through those and say, well, first, do you agree? Is this what your organization is going through? Most of the time they're going to be like? Absolutely, how in the world do you know that after just a couple of weeks, right? How do you know us so well? It's like, well, we're just telling you what you told us.

Speaker 2: 7:01

We just want to make sure that what everyone else is saying is what you actually see, that there's an alignment. And then we look at that and we say, well, what of this do you actually want to make change to? How much change are you willing to make? And we talk about the investment, not just financial investment, but the investment of time, the investment of people, the investment of having to change processes, maybe organizational structure, maybe roles. Are you actually willing to change job descriptions and payment structures and performance management and all these other things, legal contracts? And so we kind of talk to them about what's going to have to happen to get from here to here and how willing are you to do that. And then we prioritize which things do we want to work on and which things do we not want to work? And from there, then we can build out a plan for, okay, we're going to do an engagement and this is how we're going to work together.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So what happens and you'll have to tell me if this is a situation that you've encountered. Something tells me you have where you do that survey and you are talking with individuals, and then you come back and present that to the executives and the executives say, well, yeah, but you really don't understand these groups. They're really complainers. So what they really are saying is this what you're hearing is not the same thing as what they're trying to tell you. What happens when you come across that?

Speaker 2: 8:24

Yeah. So I generally don't come across that at the executive level and at that broad level, because they know they're so far removed.

Speaker 2: 8:34

That usually happens more at that middle management level. Once we're in and trying to make change, then they're like well, you don't understand how we're different than everybody else and none of that's going to work here because we're different, right? It doesn't work like that. That generally happens more on the ground, right, and that's a matter of that resistance piece. And now we've got to actually help them make those changes. And part of the way we deal with that is by just first listening.

Speaker 2: 9:09

That's fine, like I'm not here to actually give you the solutions and tell you how to fix your problems. Let's talk about what hurts. Let's talk about what's not working for you. You know, okay, fine, you think that this can't change. But let's talk about your current state and how is that for you, what of that is not working and what is working? Because for people to want to change, you have to be solving their problems, not your problems. My problem is I want to get the company to where we agree with the executives it would be. Their problem is they've got to live in it day to day. So what's the real challenge for you and how can I help you? If I focus on their problem and helping them to resolve their problems, the bigger problem will get solved.

Speaker 1: 9:51

How about the case where you make a proposal and the response is yeah, we tried that before and it didn't work?

Speaker 2: 9:58

Yeah. And so when I make the proposal, basically what I do is we come back to these areas that we want to, that the company has decided they want to work on. We sit down and we talk about it and we say, okay, well, here's where you want to, here's where you are, here's where you want to be. Let's talk about what we're going to measure. That's going to tell us we're going to get there, that we're there right. What will look different when we're in your end state than it looks like today? What will feel different? What will you be hearing? That's different. What will you be seeing? That's different. And together we work out the measures of success, which tells us like here's the goal post, and then we talk about here's some of the things that we will do to help you get there. So it's not. We don't come in and say, well, we're going to do this, this, this, this, this and this, and then they say that doesn't work. We say, well, where do you want to be from here to here, and what's it look like to get there? And then we actually work with them to figure out you're going to solve your problem, not me. I'm here to partner with you, to help you think through the problem. Who do we need to get into the room to figure out the different experiments? We might try to get there and then we'll try the experiment. If nothing works before you even try it. Nothing works here. Well then we're going to have a challenge, but we could at least try an experiment.

Speaker 2: 11:19

You're always going to meet some level of resistance, with people not wanting to change, and that's normal. I think the big thing to do is to look for. Well, where are the people who do want to change? Because often, when coaches are working with companies or anybody any change agent, you see these people resisting and the human tendency is to say I'm going to go get those people who are stopping me from being successful, I'm going to force them to change man, I just leave those people alone.

Speaker 2: 11:48

There are way too many people who want to change and who want to do things. So I go and I look for those people and I look for the influencers and I say well, what is it that you want to do and how can we work towards you getting better? Because what starts to happen is those ones who are implementing change and getting better. They start to separate from the rest of the pack. And then people are like, well, wait a minute, how come that's working like that for you? And so then they start to gravitate over to where success is. If you start with trying to like chase down the resistors, that's going to make a lot of noise and people are going to start going towards the resistance side right. So you create negative momentum. We always want to create positive momentum.

Speaker 1: 12:31

That's really interesting because it's counterculture, so to speak, and you've got a group of kids that you're working with. Many times you're spending all your time with the ones that are misbehaving, and the poor ones that are doing great get left alone. That really disrupts the dynamics, and I like the way that you let the detractors see success and then they want to come along, as opposed to trying to look at them as a nail and I'm going to hammer them into submission right.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Right. I've definitely worked with teams where I've worked with them for a while and they said they wanted to change, but they didn't. They didn't actually want to change anything. And after a little bit I've said you know, I don't think you're ready for this, so I'm going to step away and I'm going to go work with somebody else, and when y'all are ready to actually do something different, let me know and I'm happy to come back. I've worked with management teams. Where I've had I've actually had to fire management teams, right, we teams. Where I've had I've actually had to fire management teams, right, we're done here when I go and it's like, okay, we've made as much progress as we can make at the organizational level. Now the barrier is this management team, so we need to make a decision together. Do you actually want to do something different, or is this the level of your tolerance for change?

Speaker 1: 13:46

Do you ever run into a case where you're brought in for an engagement but the management level doesn't necessarily they want you to solve all their problems for them. When you suggest the top-down approach of getting that support, it's like well, that's why I'm bringing you in, you're the one that's supposed to be teaching the teams, not me. How do you approach that case where it's the executives and the management levels wants to be much more hands-off?

Speaker 2: 14:12

Yeah, I actually just don't take those clients. So we do have that conversation up front, right? I can't solve your problem. The only way that I can solve the problems in this company is if you give me your job. So do you want to give me your job? Because if not, you've got to solve your own problems, right?

Speaker 2: 14:32

I don't have the power to make change here. I'm an external person and you don't want me, who's going to be leaving in a few months, to make decisions about your business for you. That's not a very safe way to go. So what I need is for you to be involved, or this won't work, and so one of the requirements that I have is that I get, at the very least, a single individual who is responsible for the changes in the company, who has the power to execute change, preferably a team of people. Don't give me a scrum master who can't change organizational structure. I need someone who's got power to actually make change, and my goal is to work with them as the leader of that change and help them to design the strategy to make that change. And I'll bring coaches in to help and we'll partner with people to execute that plan.

Speaker 2: 15:29

But at the end of the day, these are your problems. I know agile stuff, but you know your business and what you don't want from me or anybody else is to take some cookie cutter solution that worked somewhere else or in some book and say this is how we're gonna fix your company. That's a really bad idea. The presenting problem might be the same as was in somebody's blog or book or at some other company, but the system underlying that problem is very different, and only you know what will work and what will not work in your system. I can tell you things we've done in other places, but that's going to be a here's what we did over here. What ideas does that give you? Or how would something like that work here, or what would we need to do in order to do something like that here? But we need a custom solution for your custom problem.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Custom solution for your custom problem. I like that. So switching gears a little bit. What advice, cherie, would you give to a team member who's feeling nervous, apprehensive about this big change, that's coming in and wondering what this means for them, who may have the attitude of, well, what we were doing was working. Why are we necessarily changing? What advice do you have for those team members that are more apprehensive and a little more standoffish?

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, and this happens a lot, and again it's often at the management level, but not only. A lot of times it's like hey, I'm a senior developer, I've been doing this forever, I've been here for a long time, we don't have any problems. It's not for me to convince them of what their problems are. It's for me to find out what's working and what's not. I'm here to partner with them, not to inflict change on them. I'm here to help them get better. And so if what's working for you inside of your team seems great, wonderful, what's working for you inside of your team seems great, wonderful, what outside of your team is actually hindering your progress?

Speaker 2: 17:31

People can usually point to what other people are doing that is not working way better than they can point to what they're doing that's not working. And so we start to look at that bigger picture, and really it's about building relationship and about empowering them to know if you don't want to change, you don't have to change. I can't make you change. Now, this company is changing. Whether you go along with that change or not is a personal decision. I can help you go along with that change and I can help you to be successful and figure out the things that will work, but ultimately it's a personal decision if you're going to stay the course or if you're going to make a different change. Either way, things are going to change.

Speaker 1: 18:17

Do you happen to have an example that we could lean on and we could listen from, on somebody that moved from being very antagonistic and very doubting to I don't want to say winning them over, but more or less a supporter of the change, and what that looked like, what led up to them making those changes in that new mindset? Hmm?

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, I, I actually took an engagement this was a few years back with a company that didn't believe that they needed scrum masters. They were like we don't need scrum masters, we've got this thing, but we think we can do really good. It was kind of a challenge to me because I really liked the company. So I was like you know what, I'm going to do this a little bit differently. I'm going to come in as a scrum master and I'm going to just work with you as a scrum master. They were trying to build a case for do we really need a bigger agile practice here? And so I came in as a scrum master and I started working with a couple of teams and it was pretty amazing to see what was happening. Like the managers were. They were like well, we're not really managers, y'all the team, y'all just do whatever you want to do, right? Like we're not really your managers, that's not our job. They had this weird kind of screwed up thinking of Agile and what it meant, and and and. So I got to work with this team who had not delivered anything in six weeks, at all nothing. And so we started having those conversations and it was like so what's your job manager, like, so you just like, people just don't deliver and that's okay, you don't have a conversation. And so we started. We started talking about well, conversation. And so we started talking about well, what's the manager's role, what's the team's role. And so we worked together and that team actually started delivering.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Eventually, what happened was that organization they saw the changes that that team I was working on, how they started delivering more. And then when they asked me to go and work with a different team as a scrum master, okay, fine, so they hired somebody to take my place with that team and we went around to a couple of different teams until we had scrum masters actually in place, repeated over and over, and then they just asked me to coach the organization and then so it kind of went as we went along. They went from not needing we don't even need scrum masters to we actually built an entire coaching practice for the organization and we ended up with 12 enterprises that had enterprise coaches working with them throughout the country. So it was a matter of seeing the difference that a coach can make and the changes that can happen when you focus on continuous improvement. Right, not focus on agile. You've got to do your 15-minute daily scrum and get it right.

Speaker 2: 21:11

The three questions like, forget about all that stuff. Let's talk about what we're delivering and how we make things actually work better and improve quality and improve communication across work sites. Right, and start to think strategic about change, instead of having everybody fighting for their own territory, pulling teams together of leadership and saying, well, we've all got a single goal not I'm running my org, you're running your org, but let's pull it all together. And so slowly, those changes increased. And it was really one of those things that it was a bottom up change, which doesn't usually work, but it was about like showing the leadership that if we do change, you're going to get the benefit. And when the leadership started to see the change at that bottom level, they really got bought in and actually just made a bunch of all the changes that were needed as we went along different organizational structure and everything else. So it was a good ending and it was a really fun adventure.

Speaker 1: 22:16

That's a great story because you could have very easily come in and said, okay, I'm going to work from the top down, but you realize the situation and great example of not being a cookie cutter approach where you're just going to come in and say, okay, I'm the executive coach, I'm going to come in and coach from the top down and push the changes. You really made the changes happen. So really you were a mentor starting off to the team and you gave them a guide to show them how things should work and showed them how they could be successful in order for them to be, because they didn't know what they didn't know.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Right yeah, was the way I dealt with a lot of that resistance at the higher levels was, instead of trying to go directly to them, I would go to someone who they listened to an influencer and we would work together and make some strategic plans and what changes need to happen, and then that person would go and sell it to the leader above them. And this was a really interesting scenario of how Ground Up actually worked in that organization to get the next level involved at every interception.

Speaker 1: 23:33

I imagine some of it's organic, but how do you find those influencers?

Speaker 2: 23:36

A lot of it is just by paying attention and watching. Who is it that when you're in meetings with these higher level people, who is it that has ideas that they're actually paying attention to and that they actually have real conversations with? So you can start to tell well, who under the leaders right, is it that the leaders trust to make decisions and to advise them? Because as a leader, you're not in the work, right, you're not in the weeds. You have to trust somebody who's further down in the weeds to make those decisions. And so it's really about paying attention to who has their ear and who's got that ability to influence and connecting with those. You can't always go straight to the resistance, because you just create more resistance. You have to always go with the momentum. Where's the momentum at? And if the momentum is with this other person who's an influencer, great, I can influence that person who is open to me, and then they can influence and chip away at that resistance.

Speaker 1: 24:48

As we're coming to a close and our time is running out. Here we talked about the team level, but to an organization that's coming in and wanting to see some change, but they're not sure what that change should be, what advice would you give?

Speaker 2: 25:01

First piece of advice would be nothing. Cookie cutter does not work. Don't look at how someone else solved their problems and think you're going to have a plug and play solution. Work with somebody who is going to dig in and find out what your particular problems are and help you to start to identify what the root causes of those problems are, so that you can design solutions for those root causes, because your problem might actually have multiple root causes and multiple solutions that need to be put in place. That need to be put in place. I would also say, if you've got someone who's pitching an engagement to you that's telling you we're going to have this done by this day, and you're getting like nine months from now you're going to go from here to here and it's going to be perfect, and like, don't, they don't know what they're doing. Don't listen to that, because we don't know the future and you don't know what's going on from a 15-minute conversation I cannot solve your problem from a 15-minute conversation and it's a process of uncovering and discovering, and agility takes time to get there right. It's a continuous improvement.

Speaker 2: 26:14

The biggest thing that we tell our clients is that agile is not the goal. If you think agile is the goal, then you've got the wrong goal. We need to stop right now and we need to understand what the business problems are you're trying to solve, because agile is a solution. Agile is not a goal. So if you've got a company who's making it like agile is the goal and we're going to measure all this agile adoption, we'll have all these teams and do all these things Well, that's great. But I want to understand how a 15-minute daily scrum is going to change your customer's opinion about this company, because those two don't connect. So tell me what the business problem is. If your customers don't like your products, let's solve that problem. I don't care if we have a 15-minute daily scrum right, your customer doesn't care. That might be one of the things we do in order to communicate well, so that we work with somebody who's focused on your business problem and how you're going to measure progress towards solving that business problem.

Speaker 1: 27:25

For our listeners out there that want to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to contact you?

Speaker 2: 27:30

Our website is tandemcoachco or you can email us at info at tandemcoachco.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Great, and I know we're both connected on LinkedIn, so people I'm sure can connect with you on LinkedIn and follow you there as well, right?

Speaker 2: 27:48

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 27:50

We'll put that link in the show notes. So, cherie, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. Yeah, as we close out here, just want to thank you for your time, so thanks so much, cherie. Thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. Yeah, as we close out here, just want to thank you for your time, so thanks so much, cherie.

Speaker 2: 28:03

All right, thank you for having me, mark.

Speaker 1: 28:05

All right, We'll see you all next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, Mark Betts.