Written by Lakisia A. Jones, PMP

How do you empower Agile Teams? Those seeking answers to that question received the answer during the Agile Forum on August 18, 2015. The presenter for the evening was John Williams, Enterprise Agile/Scrum Coach, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) and Certified Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant (SPC). He shared the knowledge he has acquired over the last 10 years as an Agile coach. John began by asking, “How do you keep people motivated?” Attendees in the audience replied receiving compensation, to be told they are doing a good job, feeling like they are appreciated, receiving bonuses for hard work, and recognition. As the question was answered, the audience selected from an assortment of pipe cleaners. John explained that he learned a trick from a Scrum meetup at Lego Play that people tend to be more interactive and less confrontational when their hands are busy. So, for the remainder of the discussion the attendees were encouraged to make something interesting with the pipe cleaners while actively engaging in the discussion. John continued the discussion while the attendees listened, interacted, and made cool objects with the pipe cleaners.

 

  • John says that motivating people can be easy and hard at the same time. If you don't know the individual, you don't know what makes them happy. People who are shy and bashful may not want public recognition, but they would appreciate being acknowledged privately. You should send a nice email to the individual to acknowledge their accomplishments. What doesn't motivate people? According to John, people do not like to be referred to as a resource. He says resources don't care. However, people do. People will do things for you if you give them the ability to be human. If they are treated like resources and commanded all day long, you will get exactly what you ask for and nothing more. If you want to motivate people, treat them like a person and not an inanimate object. Have a discussion with them to understand how they think. John drew upon an experience he had working with teams in India to bring the point home. He said that while working with the teams in India, he noticed that the people doing the development were terrified to talk to the directors, vice presidents, and senior executives. In the business culture, the developers were taught to follow the chain of command. By following the chain of command, the original question or idea that needed to be communicated changed by the time it got to the Executives. If they had been allowed to work directly with each other, the potential for miscommunication would have been greatly reduced.

  • Another way to motivate people is to get everyone involved in the problems and solutions. Get them up at the board to express their ideas. If they are not comfortable expressing ideas at the board, you could use a tactic that John uses where no one talks for the first 5 minutes at the beginning of a meeting. During this time, the team writes their thoughts on post it notes and put them on the board for later discussion during the meeting. Doing this allows all team members including those who are shy to have a voice. Some of the best ideas have been discovered through this method.

  • People have conversations with others but don't acknowledge what they say. When talking to people you should employ the 3 to 5 second rule which means to listen more and talk less. Jokingly, John says some people need to take 10 seconds so that others can get a chance to express their ideas. Employing this rule shows that you respect others’ ideas and opinions. However, one should be careful not to employ the “Yes, but” rule. “Yes, but” is the act of acknowledging a person's suggestions, but then dismissing their ideas as if you don't care. Doing this could shut down the person or the group and stifle communication. The more effective way to motivate teams is to practice "Yes, and." Employing this tactic allows individuals to feel included and it encourages the flow of ideas. The person's ideas are acknowledged and additional ideas and comments are encouraged. This gets people to get creative and think outside of the box.

  • Marketing is everything! John says if we do not believe him, we should ask our last date. If you didn't package yourself properly, you didn't get a second date. This concept can be applied to any meeting, interview, or networking social event. Companies are looking for problem solvers to fix people problems, infrastructure problems, program problems, etc. If you can package yourself properly and show that you can solve problems you will get a "second date."

  • How do you empower people? You can empower people by providing positive feedback, giving constructive criticism, allowing them to make decisions, trust in them, and most importantly allowing them to make mistakes. If people are not allowed to make mistakes, they will not take necessary risks. This is where the failure bow Agile game comes into play. The failure bow is an exercise in which the team stands, raise their hands in the air, and bow while saying "I fail." Then repeat the exercise. The object is to remind the team that failure is ok as long as you learn what the failure was, figure out the mistake, and how to improve upon it. This empowers team members to learn and grow within an organization. Management needs to allow teams to have small failures so that the team can figure out what works and what doesn’t. John says that he starts management and executives in their own Scrum leadership team. John spoke about his experience with Cisco where executives and managers were part of a Scrum leadership team. The team included a Scrum Master, Product Owner, Senior Architect, and Senior QA person. The executive team prepared the backlog, identified anything the team might need, and identified obstacles that might block the Scrum teams that were downstream. They put the obstacles on the board. Anything that couldn't get removed in 48 hours were moved up to the next levels obstacle board (i.e. manager’s obstacles moved up to the director’s obstacle board, etc.). Items couldn't be removed from the board until the Scrum team that raised the obstacle accepted the resolution. The lower level teams were empowered to reject resolutions that didn’t solve their issues.

  • John shared other methods to help empower Agile teams. He says managers should respect their people. They should make sure the team gets the training they need. Managers should be human. If the team gets demotivated, managers should ask them questions to find out what is wrong. This adds a human touch that will open the lines of communication.

The presentation ended with a Q & A session. John’s advice included:

  • Whenever possible get the teams in one room. Getting them in one room encourages active listening and discourages distractions. If meeting in one room isn’t doable, setup video conferencing.
  • If you become aware that the team has issues with something you are doing as a project manager, have a conversation with them to address their concerns and figure out a way to fix it.
  • If you are working with remote teams, its best to see the team face-to-face during the forming stage of the project team. This is the time to build a rapport and trust with the team.
  • Keep your teams together as much as possible. Once a team has gone through the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages of team development, they become a good performing team with a team dynamic. If you move someone in or out of the team, the team has to start the stages of team development all over again. 
  • When dealing with multiple teams across an organization, you should create an enterprise with a network for communicating. This encourages cross team collaboration.
  • Agile is simple. It's all about communication.

The session was engaging and interactive. The audience hung on every word as John told stories of his experiences motivating and coaching Agile Teams. To top it all off, he did it with the least number of Power Point slides…0!


Thanks to our Sponsors for making this event possible:
Matrix Resources provides the location for our monthly forum meeting
BrainTrust provided Scrum diagrams and gave away a class seat for one of their upcoming classes to a lucky attendee.


Special thanks to our Presenter, John Williams, for a riveting and engaging discussion:
Williams John

John is an Enterprise Agile/Scrum Coach, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) and Certified Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant (SPC) and has been coaching Agile for over 10 years. He likes to refer to himself as an Orchestrator of Change by helping companies to enable their people to achieve excellence.

John has over 15 years’ experience in Web/Internet development, training and project management working with UX/UI, Digital, Mobile, Cloud, Social Media and Web Projects and more recently turned to Agile/Scrum Training and Coaching with focus on CxO levels and Management Coaching. He also enjoys working with UX and CX (User and Creative Experience) Teams. His experience ranges from working with the Big 5 to the Fortune 100 companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises, Cisco and Cisco Video Technologies, CapitalOne, Ventyx (An ABB Company), Aetna Insurance, PWC, Accenture, Andersen, IBM, Lowes Home Improvement, Walt Disney, and Turner Broadcasting (TBS - March Madness on Demand), as well as several small startup opportunities.

John has also coached many Pilot Teams within an organization to identify large or organizational impacts of going agile, resolving organizational concerns and ensuring success in rolling agile out at a program/organizational level. John can be followed on Twitter via @johnwlms

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