The New Normal Finding the Transformational Talent at Scale

00:14

Good afternoon,

00:16

LinkedIn live audience and our webinar audience. We’re having our monthly webinar series. And today I got my esteemed guest and colleague awesome Shabazz. And he and I are going to talk about, how do you find transformational talent at scale, you know, every organization, we’re not every organization, but a lot of organizations these days are going through various types of transformations, digital transformations, Agile transformations, and oftentimes, we’re trying to find the right people to put in place because we’re having different role changes, different expectations, and you know, a lot of churn in our organization. So retention becomes an issue, a lot of different things pop up. So how do we retain and find that transformational talent to make these big initiatives within our organizations

01:05

succeed? Alright,

01:06

so without further ado, we’ll kind of go into the get into the topics here in Austin, would you like to kind of introduce yourself? And I Axi,

01:17

yeah,

01:19

this Thank you, Charles. I appreciate the great introduction. I’m awesome Shabazz from IFC, and been working and collaborating with the Eiffel group for some time, actually been trained and supported in develop and mentor by tribes and being able to work within this space. We have worked with the fortune 500, fortune 1000, we have trained and develop 1000s of people around the world working in collaboration with and independently and being able to watch this evolution of this, the learning that we have. So we at AI for taking a new approach, as we began with transformation. And as we work with IFC and collaboration, collectively, we are coming together to produce a better quality of what we do and how we do it. And so we are experienced, we’re global, we transfer knowledge, we actually have our own incubator, where we are working with ideas on digital transformation, working with safe as safe gold partners in the transformation space and being able to bring that learning from our clients and past experience to you. So just want to say thank you.

02:31

Thanks, awesome for the introduction. And

02:34

then myself, you know, founder principal, the i Four group, been doing safe transformations and Agile transformations as a whole for about the last 12 years or so. You know, one of the things we do at the eye for group is we’re you know, experienced consultants and trainers obviously, we’ve been doing that for a while but also to a new area that we’re specializing in a cybersecurity and the cyber agility Academy was open specifically for that, which is a good resource for data science, cybersecurity, quality assurance training, along with Agile training as well. Alright, without further ado, we’ll go ahead and get started and with our topic, and ask them and I are the panel, and we’re going to kind of bounce back and forth and just kind of have an informal conversation about this topic around finding transformational talent at scale. You know, as I mentioned, a lot organizations are going through transformation. And a big challenge is how do we maintain the existing talent, or retrain the existing talent, and we you know, and retain, you know, we want to have good, we don’t want to lose folks within our transformation, because there is too disruptive or they’re not feeling that it’s a good environment to stay in. So a lot of a lot of good, oops, I’m going the wrong direction policies or a lot of good things to talk about here. So one of the first questions that we want to cover is, you know, what are some of the strategies an organization might take to move team members from the traditional roles in the transformation and into the new roles of the transformation. So just some experience that I’ve seen within big organizational transformations are that new roles are being called out, you know, that didn’t exist before, you know, especially, you know, talk about an Agile transformation, the role of like a scrum master, for example, you might have had, traditionally you had may have had similar roles, like a project manager or a program manager in place, but you never had this role that took on similar skill sets or some overlapping areas of specialty that a scrum master might have in common with a project manager. But then there are new aspects like coaching, Team empowerment, being a collaborator, a good facilitator things that may have not been a traditional skill set that a traditional project manager has had. So we then try to transform these, these people and these roles into these new roles as like a project manager to scrum much sometimes we have challenges. So, I don’t know, ask them, what do you what do you what have you seen as some of the strategies to try to overcome this from from your experience that you’ve seen.

05:23

I’ve seen a variety. Charles, like you said, you know, this trying to work with what we have in house and develop them for these roles. It takes a transformation, not only the organization in this business model, and this organizational structure, but the individuals within it. And some of the approaches that I’ve seen that have been most effective, have been this notion of marketing and finding those amongst that guiding coalition, who want the transformation and are in those spaces and are seeking out and want to step up to early adopters for say sometimes that maybe do a pilot, you know, if they’re doing a pilot within the org, or for some multinational, maybe run several pilots to get that feedback, but to start the message division, so people can start to level up and do their own insight that curiosity was to come and then work to slowly integrate them into the new system, by experience, not just a training and then doling them out, but a training with experience and feedback loops the same way you would, and let them know that the training is ongoing. Part of the pressure is not knowing, you know, the inflight work, and not knowing a lot of people have a lot of pressure, I’m new to this. I’ve been incompetent in this other role for the last 15 years to help build this great company. And now all of a sudden, I need to learn to become a product manager. And what is that, and I think the data that’s the challenge is articulating that. So I’ve seen a lot of companies using change management using the marketing prowess within the company to communicate, this is what we need you for who wants to volunteer who wants to step up and begin to cultivate that?

07:03

Yeah, those are some good, there’s some good points.

07:06

Just to add to that, too, you know, some of the things that I think you need to try to tackle along with this is partnering up with your change management, or HR department on what might be some impacts of role changes, you know, and making that clear, and communicating that out clear. Because, you know, some people may think that it will, Hey, maybe I get a pay, pay grade increase, or, you know, you’re calling me a product manager now. And that manager tag at the end of my name might signify something. So we need to kind of have those communication channels clear, from an organizational standpoint on what these things mean, and really set the expectations and the boundaries. One thing that is actually interesting, I’ve seen recently that, you know, it’s always a good thing to do, you know, the spirit of agile, right is to experiment and learn. And, you know, you can always communicate out, this is a pilot, you know, we’re not, you know, we’re not, we’re not locking ourselves into a certain way of working right now, we’re trying to experiment a little bit, and we’re going to evolve and maybe next year, we’re going to really start to roll out new organizational HR type roles, and things of that nature. So that’s maybe another strategy on how to communicate those, those changes that you’re trying to make. And then one last point to you know, asking our coaches I have to throw this in here is that a good coach can always be a model, or an exemplar and kind of help mentor and guide some of these roles. As they’re doing the work, you know, we can, you know, I’ve been myself a scrum master or a product owner before and or an RTE, and played that role and as an exemplar for others to follow. So that’s another couple of good strategies on that.

08:49

That’s a good point and close it out. It is bridging that gap of setting the right expectations, even though we say it and we hear leaders say this is a pilot people approach it as if it’s the real deal. And they often will internalize that, you know, that disconnect, or you hear other leaders within the org, who may not have gotten a message bristle at the notion of a manager being behind the title. And so the clarity and the reinforcement of that communication and having clear workflows, if you can to kind of signify this is the role. And this is what we do, as as transformation stewards that we’ve been, we’ve been able to do that and model that behavior because we’re not within the ecosystem often, and to bring those new ideas and new ways of working to help support that. So it’s the balance of the clarity, and then being able to message that early and often and consistently reinforced that, along with Strauss mentioned the coaches who can come in and present a model, help align expectations and help coach to a future state and so that the organization is stronger than when we came in. But that’s the that’s the idea of space is to enable the organization, its people its capacity, that great talent that they have to be able to step up to the next levels beyond what they start.

10:13

All right. Good, good discussion there on that. All right.

10:19

Here’s, here’s something too, that a lot of organizations seem to struggle with, or, you know, may may or may not struggle with. But you know, there’s a, there’s a concern about maybe having too much contracted out. workforce, for example, give you a more extreme example, like government work typically is almost exclusively contracted out, versus a lot of organizations that are trying to create that good culture of having the employee that works there. And the, you know, creating a good employee culture, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s a balance there, too. So a lot of organizations are kind of maybe in the middle, or on one end or the other. So, contractor workforce versus employee based workforce, how might this balance be different under a transformation, you know, you think about things that, again, you’re going through a change, and a lot of people at the existing company may not even have a clue about what this changes is all about. Or it might be, you know, from a leadership standpoint, you understand you do have an aging set of folks that you’re in a completely new business model, you’re in a completely new way of working that this transformation might be, you know, it is what it is, is actually going to end up replacing a lot of people are going to get replaced by a lot of new new blood in the company. So there’s, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of different ends that kind of go into this. Awesome, what do you what do you think about this? Have you seen anything interesting in this space about balance between contracting and employees? And what do you think in terms of transformation? How that plays a role in that balance? Yeah, that’s

11:59

a, that’s a good question. I think it’s, what I’ve witnessed is that some companies get it right. And it’s more of a science in the art, that they have a culture that looks at the contractor, who often will come in willing to do what it takes to lift the company, you know, that’s their focus, they’re not tied to the political dynamics, or the movement within the company, though they may be impacted by it. But they come in, you know, they’re looking at that balance, okay, what’s my mandate, you want me to model how can I support and with the right type of contractor, they come in looking to support and enable success. And that’s really important, and when the leadership so there was a initiative that we did for a multinational company in automotive finance space, and they trained and equip their contractors just like they did everybody else. And they saw them as contributors. And they actually funded the investment. We had that just last year, another initiative where they’re actually a team out of Ukraine, before the war started, was, was there and getting trained and supporting the initiative and adjusting their schedules, and seeing themselves as a part of the organizational success. So that value stream success because of that value stream, it doesn’t matter where they are. And so I’ve seen them make sure that they’re very intentional about that. And then they even were able to adapt because of the agility that they were adopted, they will be able to adapt that capacity and let those teams know, let us know you’re coming back on. So I’ve seen about them. And that’s one of the success than having them integrated. And, and having them scale down, as the organization is scaling up, you know, as it becomes more, sometimes even higher and more. But as it becomes, I would say, more enabled to manage the transformation on its own and continue to evolve it, you continue to see that that that legacy starts to fade in that new growth starts to take off. So those are the good aspects. I’ve also seen it mismanaged because of the contract law in HR and how you want to distinguish them. And as a culture where the contract is seen as the adversary as if they are the one bringing the change, as if they are the one leading the transformation. And that can go really well because it creates a outsources down and you don’t really get the value out of the human beings that you bring into the table and their creative genius that can help empower your company for the next six, nine months to two years if you need them to. Yeah, I

14:29

was gonna ask you a question on that, because one of the things that I that I’ve seen, and we know too, is as you know, change agents that just telling, you know, like voluntold type of way of working, that a contractor or consultant can come in and say, Well, hey, this how you do it, but then the organization doesn’t seem to take ownership of the change, that there was kind of artificially grafted and brought in from outside it wasn’t there change how do you You see that because ultimately, the organization, the company has to own it. And it needs to be there their DNA on how this thing works. And if it’s brought from the outside, you know, doesn’t it sometimes seems artificial? It didn’t you can’t create a good culture around that change. You observe that or you got any ideas on on that one?

15:20

Yeah, bizarre. That’s why we brought you in. That’s to say these things because we can’t say it right. You know, that is often how you get positioned. Anyone who’s been in this space, no, you know, sometimes you can find internally, you get promoted, because you’re new. And you come in and like, Well, you didn’t know person, you can speak these truths. We can speak these truths. And in all fairness, it is difficult to have fierce conversation within organizations. And the consultant, the coach, you know, from a transformation standpoint, should come in a tone and learning the culture. We’re not trying to pull heroics as if they own the transformation. And that’s one of the reason why I actually we started to look at saying we’re stewards of the transformation, this is yours. And this is a collaborative ownership, and stop giving solutions and start working in collaboration with and eliciting solutions from the team that they can all we had the syndromes news to call it, you know, the consultant books, you know, was so and so said, when really what you’re looking at is what’s best for the company, well, safe says, Well, what’s best for the company? What What principles are you owning, because you have to stand behind it, when you hear that language, they’re not owning it, they haven’t internalized? Hey, my research has indicated this, let’s experiment let’s you want to hit that we, and not the external references so much as if you know, and sometimes you hear this, but you’re the expert. And it’s like, actually, you the x 22. Environment, I’m the coach here to help enable your expertise to achieve your goals. And that’s the role that you really want to play. Yeah,

16:58

I like that word, that expert.

17:01

Comment always kind of rubs me the wrong way. I always like to clarify, I’m not the industry and the things are changing so fast. And you know, the nuances. You know, I have a lot, I have a lot of information, but I don’t, you know, I might be able to help you. But just don’t be quick call me the expert. Like it’s said and done with me. That’s not

17:20

That’s not it. That’s not it.

17:25

I really, let’s take a look at another one of the questions that we got here pulled up. Okay, so next question is,

17:34

you know, what are some of the successful models that you’ve seen for training and mentoring and coaching, that enable an organization’s workforce to transform so we know, you know, from a industry definition standpoint, that these are three different areas of concern training, obviously, coaching, I’ll throw in another one consulting and mentoring is for different aspects. And as a coach, as a transformation coach, we come in, and maybe touch on all of those that at different times. So we you know, we’ve seen a lot, we’ve seen a lot of what works and what doesn’t work, especially from the standpoint of how an organization may set up a coaching group to support the transformation. And, and even where that coaching group sits, I’ve seen the coaching group maybe sit just within the IT space, or it sits in an independent space, like maybe from, you know, you know, a more evolved organization might have its own transformation group, and not necessarily that the transformation or the coaching group sits within a particular business unit or a functional unit within the organization. But that plays a big part in how effective that coaching group can be in instituting all these four areas of training, mentoring, coaching and consulting. So I don’t know ask, what are your thoughts just kind of on that whole area of those things, coaching, training and mentoring and success models that that can be enabled there?

19:07

I think, you know, as you spoke to that there’s a variety, I think sometimes you have not, sometimes you consistently have to set the right message, that training does not equal competence. And a lot of the times that’s where we miss it, we because the transformation, the business still has this business priorities. It still has its goals and objectives and financial outcomes. And sometimes the transformation has a fixed date, which is something that we don’t want to see, but it has a fixed date. And so people focus on that date, and they’re trying to drive as much as they can. And when that starts to happen, there’s a there’s a belief, unintentionally, I do believe that the train is somehow measures equals competence, that they took the two three day training on his skill set and a new way of working for which they haven’t encountered before in that transfer. Once their work, and suddenly they got it. And what I’ve seen from organizations that get that is that they start coaching them before the training into the role. So they can have some experience in the role so that the training has more of a significance to on the job learning. And they are mentored and coached for either one or two pi’s. After that, I’ve also seen a pattern we Coast elitist first, so they can set the right expectations around how to mentor and support, how to be supportive of new ways of learning, which in all spaces fail fast, right, get fast feedback loops. Understand that all data coming in error right now was not good data. Because it’s been historical. It’s not there’s no true historical context, and start to calibrate their expectations so they can mentor and support. And those are two strategies, I’ve seen that work consistently, and then enable from a community of practice a continual evolution of that learning mechanism, do the POS or do the rows, let me just say the rows, because they can cut across from the C suite all the way down to the teams, where they can begin now to transfer ownership to the organization, and they come up with those topics that continue allowed them to evolve in their space. So I see that you have to have a strategy around it, you need a plan and a roadmap. So people know that I’m not just being trained, and then being left out there as if I’m certainly supposed to be an expert. There’s that word again, that my job I have competence, but that there’s a path for me to continue to engage a coach continue to work with more mature people in the space to get better at what I want to be the best bet.

21:33

Yeah, so good, some good,

21:35

good nuggets there. Thanks for sharing it, what you actually made me remember one of our colleagues, those name out there, Craig duchateau, he always used to remind me that you you train dogs, but you educate humans.

21:54

That was that was one thing that always stuck with me.

21:56

And it’s true, because so when you know, education is something that that needs to have kind of an institutionalized way of, of, you know, residing in the organization. And, you know, so training, a lot of times, it’s his own department, you know, training doesn’t fall under business or IT Training usually fall it falls under the Human Resource Development aspects. So in a way, that that is a, you know, key component there. Oh, another thing that came to me, as you were talking, and I did a little research in this area, which is knowledge management. The area in the Bible study of knowledge management as a, as a body of knowledge, or as a as an area of study, is in a lot of organizations is its own entity as well as its own organization. And so there’s an organizational unit, if you will, that’s responsible for retaining and disseminating the knowledge about what you know, important within the organization is an asset knowledge is an asset that the company values. And you know, transformation knowledge is an asset on how we move forward within a transformation. And so it shouldn’t necessarily reside with one group or another, to have its priorities be played out about what’s important for a particular vertical with an organization, it is something that’s important for the entire organization. And so, for transformation to happen effectively, you need to train mentor coach and, and oftentimes consult that you need to think about the knowledge that’s associated with that being an asset. And you know, that asset needs to kind of be prioritized across the board, not just within one particular vertical within your organization. So just something to kind of wrap your head around.

23:37

You know, you said that, and it brings me to some examples, Charles that that will happen, you can educate the workforce and give them quote, the skills, the tools to do the job. And yet don’t don’t change the expectations around them, you still measure in the same way, they still come in have to do the same reports. And they just learned when we run into this, and they just learned and being coached to a new way of working and yet that it didn’t go beyond that silo group. And so everyone that they’re running, they’re running around trying to do reports now, and trying to get all this information together. That has nothing to do with creating the business value that they’ve been developed on that the investment in their future has to enable them to do and they’re still challenged with old ways of metrics that you have to have a strategy to make sure you transform that tarp, and make sure that the education is there, and that the expectations and the alignment of the systems to actually harness what they’re creating and what they’re developing. And so that way you get that continuity across you need that continuity across the the ecosystems.

24:46

Yep, that makes makes a lot of sense. There are let’s let’s go on to our next topic here. What measures

24:56

what measures have you used in the past that you’ve seen six successfully use to gauge how prepared or ready your workforce

25:04

was for to operate within the transformation. So,

25:09

you know, often I think you pointed out early,

25:13

awesome about how,

25:14

you know, maybe it’s just not how many people have been trained. You know, sometimes I did that. We’ve seen that, though a lot. I mean, it is one data point, you would say, you know, that people that have gone through the training class, it is some type of calibration, but we, you know, oftentimes, we see that they weren’t ready, or what was the expectation that come out of that, and that that’s why we like, actually, a lot of times seeing that we’ve experienced practically that we would go, you know, we might give the training, but then there’ll be a series of workshops that they must go through afterwards, to kind of make sure that they’re prepared to hit the ground running. But But how do you measure that I know that a lot of a lot of enterprise, agile, PMOS and agile transformation offices, that has an expectation for their, you know, their leadership and your executives that they want to see measures, you know, they need to see these measures to give them confidence that we’re moving in the right direction. And so, you know, what, what do you what are your thoughts on that? Ask them around around these measures, and from an agile, you know, PMO office or agile transformation office? What do we do with these measures? How do we how do we communicate the readiness to the rest of the organization that the transformation is, is ready to proceed or we’re ready to get started, or even sometimes the health of where the transformation is at any particular time.

26:44

There’s a there’s a science and an art to this thing, because the measures, don’t always provide looking at the data alone doesn’t always tell you what is actually happening, and what the readiness state is. And I think that that’s over dependence on data points too early, is something that we have to really coach the mindset readiness, of leadership, and of those who actually doing the work of a value stream, that that the art lives in, that they understand that that the PMO understands why this is a reset, we need to reestablish the baseline zero as if we’re entrepreneurial again, and now measure our capacity, our velocity, let’s look at quality measures that we predefined and see where we’re going with that. One, I believe that it takes from experience at least to PIs where you start to feel like your team is competent, you only do a pie once every eight to 10 weeks, roughly unless you’re on a quarterly. And that’s your baseline. I’ve seen some people come in and prays and you start to measure the execution, we start looking at a Scrum Masters, we start looking at the value stream, and how well is it adapting and calibrating and looking at those predefined metrics that we can look at. If we’re looking at mindset, I know that you and I’ve been doing some read some r&d, awesome tools that can help assess leadership and help look at the value that they have going in and start measuring the mindset that goes in as they’re ready to help to be able to adapt. But a large part is is experienced while doing you can’t get enough quote requirements down and eat enough books and watch enough videos and go through enough trainings to feel like you know, you’re competent at this, there’s the point where you have to actually start to do the work, grapple with the uncertainty and and not knowing and learning on the job. And adapting and providing feedback at those at those intervals that are early and often so the system can begin to calibrate. And once they start to see them, once they start to look at the system is calibrating it’s like a hockey stick approach for us, we say You know, it’s gonna take a dip. And once it hits this, you know, the short and we say a very short decline their productivity, you’re gonna start to see a consistent ascent. So you want to make sure that the organization is on their retros that they’re creating those feedback loops that they value feedback and learning to improve the system, not just the data and metrics without context, which can be which can have you chasing a red herring of sorts, and never get to the bottom of it. Your thoughts on that? Because I know you’ve seen a lot out there.

29:09

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you’re actually making me think about you know, a lot a lot of different things, but one little philosophical saying came up and started tying this into what you were talking about. It’s like, you know, the show improved, you know, you could talk all you want you can say you got in your head all you want but what do you actually do? Or you know, there’s one like getting one of the philosophical quotes that I’ve heard before it’s like, you know, you know, your habits about your thinking and then your habits about your speaking is one thing, but then the habits about what you actually do that becomes like your destiny, that’s actually what you actually get accomplished. And so, yeah, what I was hearing what you were saying is, is that the real true measure is what are they doing? You know, we can we can run up through training weekend, you know, even the assessments we’re talking about, we have an r&d that to test the leadership mindset, you know, having what What’s in your mind is good too, because that kind of confirms that you got the right thought patterns happening. But what is actually happening on the ground, do we actually make it come to life somehow on the ground, and that actually, you know, is probably the best indicator. And to your point, you know, and that’s why we say one of the things that we always look for, as a pilot, the best pilot test case is the teams that are already sprinting in an agile transformation space, which teams are already sprinting, they’re already you know, having daily stand ups are already doing planning to a certain level. And we always want to start there, because they usually give us the most bang for the buck in terms of testing out our transformation initiatives on how we’re moving forward. So having having a little bit of historical data on some of these ready criteria actually being implemented, as always, usually your best examples, it, that’s why I gotta have a lab, that’s why gonna have some teams in the pilot phase doing things and that way, they’re, you’re, they’re experimenting, and you got some, some things already started, you can’t expect to hit the ground running from zero, you had to have this, you know, you know, you have these laboratory experiments ongoing. And we call that you know, what, you know, in terms of our jumping up to kind of portfolio management, these are these horizon three areas of, of, you know, investment that we should be making, that everything shouldn’t just be coming up and hitting us in the face. And we’re reacting to market trends and market rhythms were actually proactive, and we got some, you know, things in lab that we’re working on, whether it be agile teams, DevOps teams, or BDD, whatever the case may be, that we’re trying to get this transformation kicked off with that we’ve been working on it for a while, we got some historical data

31:46

to prove it out. So yeah,

31:49

I like that. Cool. That’s that let’s go on to the next one. This one, here’s, check out this question based on our discussion of the questions we went over so far ago, so we’re kind of wrapping up our discussion here, what what are some of the biggest takeaways that you could give to a leader or a transformation coach that’s in there their job right now that might be struggling to, you know, get get their organization? You know, they’re trying to get some traction with their workforce. And, you know, so what are some takeaways, awesome, that you think are some good takeaways for the audience here on what we talked about?

32:46

My belief, when I approach the work, and when I work with coaches, when we work with organizations, is as a coach, as a transformation steward. You can’t lose belief in what is possible, you’re you have to have a healthy imagination of what is possible, and a healthy way of, of communicating what is possible, a healthy way of responding to challenges as a, as a friend of mine, says, opportunity and rich environment. And that’s the reason why most of us are there, we’re there to help enable and to help the organization realize its full potential. And to be a part of that journey. I call it the great adventure because it can go amazingly well, it can go horribly wrong, and you shouldn’t forget that. And every day that we touch people, we help transform their lives, the nuggets that we bring from our collective experience to help move the needle forward. It’s really them doing the work and us collectively supporting them. Do not forget the mindset that we as coaches bring to the work that they value that there that there’s an opportunity here. And let’s reframe it from us being heroes to us being able to support that. So when you think about that the vision is really important. But you said it earlier, but you can’t state the vision and your walk is gone and divergent path, that we’re able to own it. And we’re stating it. And we’re showing them in our roadmap, how we’re supporting the work that’s being done. And we lift up the winds, and we highlight the learning opportunities, and we act on the learning opportunities that our coach cannot shy away from acting on a learning opportunity. And nor should those who have to own the work, because otherwise we’re going to repeat the same cycle. So energize them with the vision, walk the talk, show them the roadmap so they can see where we’re trying to go. And they can provide input. If we’re say we’re trying to hit the sunny California, and we’re going up to Alberta in the wintertime. And the signs indicate that then we shouldn’t be in denial about the size and the data that we’re getting back from our teams. We should be able to look and respond to it. It shouldn’t be pressed forward in the wrong direction. So honor the feedback on your people and on the troops there and inspire them every day to come in and inspire them. You have goals you have objectives. Yep, yeah objectives. Yeah, Scrum Masters are working from iteration to iteration of fast feedback loops. And leadership has to be open to that as well, that this is a great opportunity for us to transform and impact the organization for for the next 10 years. So that’s what, that’s how I tried to position it and wake up to it every day.

35:18

Cool, I’ll add a little bit to that as well. So to your point about the nine, I got more than just one takeaway. So I will get a little bit bored of what tech went to.

35:31

So as takeaways, I think, you know, the things that we’ve seen, and you spoke to it to ask them is just a clarity from a leadership standpoint about where we’re trying to go. And that’s, that’s crucial, just that vision and purpose about where we’re trying to go. Because ultimately, those within the organization, especially existing employees, if they can’t see a career path that fits them. Based on what’s happening, there’s seen a lot, a lot of changes happening, but there’s no real clear message from leadership that we’re going down this path, everybody is going to be okay. And I’m going to actually make I’m going to benefit by being here. And this is actually tied into my overall career goals and journey that I’m that I’m planning on being on then yeah, I feel good about what’s happening here. Versus the opposite, where people don’t hear much of anything, and they expect the worst. And so they end up leaving and you got you started developing a culture that’s very secretive. And you know, there’s not a lot of it’s not very transparent, there’s not a lot you could do in that situation. But leave potentially ask what most people do when there’s that type of leadership going is not very clear for the rest for the entire organization. Once that message is in place, and it’s clear to support that, you know, having the training programs going having the coaching support that you need, ideally, the coaching support is aligned in a very neutral space within your organization that is designed to benefit the entire organization and not really just prioritize for one part of the organization. And that coaching organization is very supportive of the CLPs communities of practices within the organization. As well as the concept of like Dojo is coding Dojo is from a technical standpoint, but the coaching, our organization is very supportive of all these learning forums, and the training, the ongoing training that’s needed. One thing that we didn’t touch on this, just from like a leadership standpoint about retaining your organizational talent, as well as attracting new organizational talent, is as a leader, it might, you know, it’s a good opportunity for you to go out and check on the local Agile community meetups, to see what’s happening in those meetups and things of that nature. Because you’ll you know, you’ll hear a lot of new ideas, as well as your, you know, introduce yourself to a lot of other agilus in the community that might share some good tidbits with you as well about what’s going on in the Agile community and some of the trends that other organizations are taking, that might benefit your organization, the community involvement aspect of it as a whole. And as some I remember, we know, we were a part of the initiative here, with Capital One, where we help support an agile conference get launched in the Dallas area. And that’s not that’s not an idea just unique to Capital One. But Toyota has done similar things. You know, I know at&t isn’t, you know, a lot of companies do this, but they may sponsor an agile conference, where you attract a lot of the local attention about, hey, this is an agile company, I might want to work here, they seem to have a great culture, they got good, they got good facilities, or they’re modernized, they got I met a lot of good employees at the conference, I might want to go there, I’m, you know, I might be a coach, I might be a naturalist and I might not want to work for that company now that they put on a conference for the community. And so it’s a very, it’s a, you know, it’s it’s advertising your commitment to agile as a as a, you know, industry way of working and it’s, it’s something that you might want to take advantage of. And then lastly, too, is just show up at job fairs. If you’re your company, you’re recruiting at college campuses, you know, make that one of your calling cards is that you’re you’re invested in the Agile way of working, you’re, you know, you’re cutting edge. And this is this is an environment that would be attracted to new college hires and those that are looking to get into this field is another good takeaway, maybe for you leaders that might want to support the Agile retention. So any kind of you got any feedback on it? Awesome. Awesome. Those those things?

39:53

Yeah, I think that those are all great points. And they have to be done. holistically in collectively and as a strategy, they’re not one offs. And you have to the learning aspect of and community engagement internally and both externally and advancing the leadership. And knowing that everyone from your, your developer and q&a now has a leadership role, because everyone has a vested interest. And in assisting and supporting and involved in the transformation. That’s number one, like you said, and that resonate really well with me i part of that. And when you said it is decision making, a lot of the organizations when they move into agile, and they start to move to agility at scale with whether it’s as a safe implementation, while you’re customizing it, we’ve done them all, you start to learn that people don’t know how to make the decisions that they’re being asked to, to make, like, what’s my, what’s my scope of the problem I’m trying to solve? Where do I fit in this space? Because it has been decentralized in AI and power. And we’d like to say that, but a lot of time, they don’t know what that means to them. No. So does that mean, I’m the one to blame. And so when you come out of this, you want to learn that you’re the one to learn and evolve, and we trust you. And that’s the opportunity, like you said, to open up to more talent who comes in, also to enable that talent within to be able to struggle with making those key decisions, but have that support in place, or develop the support as they grow, to be able to support that because the future is always buried in the present, when you live in in a space of fast feedback loops that you take that feedback. So So I agree there’s a that engage with that community. I know we do roundtables, I know that we’ve supported and done conferences, and just to watch the energy and the people that you meet that become part of a learning community, especially when it comes to leaders who can get siloed, who, sometimes because of the rate of the speed of change in their own domain, they’re limited sometimes to the dashboard, that you know, approach of getting information, when sometimes you do have to get out and connect and meet with your peers and find out what is working, we have enough experience behind this now where we can have lessons learned for what is working and adapt to change. So thank you.

42:11

All right. So that takes us

42:12

right to the end of our conversation. Now at this point in time, we’re going to open it up to any questions that might come in, or anybody that’s on the live session or in LinkedIn live that has any questions around what we just covered. So pause here for a second to see if we have any questions.

42:36

Any questions for our panelists?

42:53

While we’re waiting on any questions to come in, awesome, let’s kind of wrap up to just to talk about maybe some of the upcoming opportunities with IFC. And as being a safe gold trading partner. I know there’s a lot of opportunities and a lot other meetups and things of that nature coming up or or classes that might be being offered

43:17

to the to the community you want to got any news to share on this. Yeah, I

43:23

know that Charles as we’ve been working and collaborating on this, that we have seen a shift in the market with you know, OKRs, and looking at the lpm and lean portfolio management. So we’ve been getting a lot of feedback as from dialogues, roundtables and discussions and trainings coming up. So we putting those out there for 2023. And also with our meetups and roundtables in Dallas, Houston and Austin area that we’re going to be there’ll be have already kicked off starting last month within in Dallas, and then moving to a meet up this fall. This winter. Well, hopefully it’s still warm. But this winter, I think we sit around, we could have 15. So there’s a lot of opportunities there. And we’re always looking to develop. So we have a talent cultivation pipeline strategy, where we work with emerging Scrum Masters emerging POS and PMS, to develop their skills. They want to take it to the next level in support of training that they may have patent certifications, along with a community of practice. So that is ongoing initiative that we have internally. So if you’re out there, thinking like, Hey, I got the start, I have some experience, but how do I take it to the next level beyond the training, we’re always looking for that. And then finally, we’re at home for SPC development, you know, we do a lot of coaching a lot of elevating skills and focusing on the future aka the curve to help promote our SPCs that we have to be able to enable them to be successful with us and beyond, but always to the benefit of the client, the customer. So those are that’s what we have going on and we have a bright pipeline for 2023 He and I wrote about that. We can’t wait till December. So thank you.

45:07

All right, thanks. Seeing a couple All right. Any, I’m just checking the LinkedIn live comments. I’m not seeing anything come in yet.

45:29

Alright, if there’s no other comments if anybody is on LinkedIn live, you got any comments or questions, please chime in. I’ll check our webinar chat here as well. But But yeah, I’ll just kind of second, you know, get ready to close us out then. Awesome. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for for joining, and having this conversation. And we talked about possibly having these more frequently to on other topics as well. And you know, again, we even appreciate you community members joining in and again, if you guys got questions, or you guys want to hit us up, we’re on LinkedIn, you got both of our profiles on here. We love to take questions around these topics around Agile transformation. So be on the lookout, those that that did attend, you’ll be getting, you know, you’ll get a thank you, as well as kind of keeping you in a loop of our further, you know, further lunchtime conversations going forward. So with that said, I don’t I still don’t see any questions come in again. Thank you so much. Awesome for your time today, sir. My pleasure. And then thank you LinkedIn Live community as well as our webinar community. And we’ll see you guys next time. Guys. Have a great rest of your afternoon. Thank you