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What do you think about this model of leadership?

I came across an article called “A universal model of leadership.

They claim to have a data-driven model that is both simple to understand, yet rich in meaning. Then the authors go on to state that “The optimal leadership profile above was created by asking 50,000 managers worldwide to describe the kind of leadership that, if it existed in their organization, would allow the organization to thrive in its current marketplace and into the future.” <Needle slides off the record.> What?!

I interpret that this way:  the model is based on a bunch of managers imagining a good leader. I’ve seen plenty of managers who have some pretty odd opinions of what behavior would be beneficial to the organization. And, there’s some research to indicate that we’re pretty poor at imagining what we need. Lastly, organizations are complex, and this imaginary leader’s actions are bound to have unintended consequences. So, their methods seem very flawed.

‘d love to ask the authors, but their post doesn’t allow for public comments. I’d welcome your thoughts. I’ll probably go back and read it again when I have a fresher mind. How do you see it?

St. Patricks Day Retrospective Activities

St. Patrick’s day is upon us, as is a retrospective for a team I am working with. That brought me to thinking about retrospective techniques appropriate for the day. If you try them, enjoy, and let me know what you thought or how you modified them approach for your use.
There are three ideas in this post for you to consider:

1. Drive The Snakes Into the Sea

Tradition Snakes and Sea Retrospectivetells us that the reason there are no snakes in Ireland is because St. Patrick banished snakes by driving them into the sea. While biologists speculate that there may never have been snakes in Ireland at all, driving snakes into the sea sounds like a fun way to gather data about what is bothering the team.

Supplies and Setup

  • Post It Notes (large and small)
  • Sharpie Markers
  • A room with enough wall space to post use for collecting the results
  • Draw a body of land and some water on a  large flip chart or whiteboard

Step 1 – Set Context

Share just a little of the legend of St. Patrick banishing snakes from Ireland. Then, tell participants that for the retrospective, the team will identify the snakes that are in their environment, and then they will decide which they are going to drive into the sea.

Step 2 – Identify Issues

Begin with silent writing. Ask participants to think about what has “bitten the team” in the recent past, or what is about to bite them in the future. As they think of something, have them write it onto a larger PostIt note, one topic or concern per note.  Have them hold onto the notes until each person is done generating their own ideas. Be sure to allow enough time for people to reflect and write their thoughts Watch the activity level of the room as your cue for moving forward or not.

Step 3 – Collect and Group Them

The sharing will be done in a rotational basis. Put the PostIts on the “land” side of the drawing you created in the “setup” step. Begin the sharing by having the first person share one idea, then another person shares one, and continue until everybody on the team has shared one idea. Then, the first person can share a second idea, and we rotate through the team again. Continue until all the ideas are on the board. If an idea is a duplicate, or quite similar to another idea, put them next to each other. This will begin to form the head of the snake. The more common a problem, the larger the snake head.
TIP: Set the expectation that the sharing should be brief and we’re not asking for a fully detailed explanation of the issue and its background. I like to ask that people keep their comments “tweet sized,” or no more than a sentence or two. This will help get some context and at the same time avoid going into lengthy analysis of each item.
After everybody has posted their ideas, it’s time to gather some data about the items that have been posted.

Step 4 – Get Consensus

This step is essentially a “dot vote,” except that we are going to build a body for the snakes based on the consensus of the team.
Begin by giving each team member the same number of the smaller PostIt notes. You can choose the question that the team is “voting” on. You can choose any single criteria by which people will vote using PostIts. Try to keep the questions in the frame of the “snakes into the sea” metaphor.  Candidate question include: “Which of these do you think we have the energy banish into the sea this sprint?” Or, “Which of these, If we were able to have banish it to the sea, which of these would allow us to feel safer?”
Team members will then build a “body” onto each of the topics by stringing their votes out. Topics with more PostIts will be larger snakes. Of course, people can divide their votes amongst several topics.

Next Steps

At this point, your team will have identified topics and expressed an opinion about which topic they would like to work on. Take that snake, the one that has the longest body to it, and move it into the sea.  Then, facilitate an activity to figure out how the team is going to try to make that happen.

2. Shamrocks

Shamrock

In many works of art depicting St. Patrick, he is shown holding a shamrock. St. Patrick used the shamrock to talk about the trinity of the Christian faith.

This technique is designed to be a relatively short opening or closing activity for the team, allowing them to identify three items that they are happy about.

Supplies and Setup

  • Create shamrocks for the team, enough for each team member to have one. Or, display a shamrock image and provide paper so that each member can draw their own.
  • Green markers for drawing (optional)
  • Sharpie Markers

Step 1 – Identify Three Things

There are times when we get distracted by things that are not going well, and stop to think about what is positive and uplifting for the team. Using a pre-printed shamrock, or drawing one on their own, write three things that are uplifting, one item on each lobe of the shamrock.

(optional) Step 1b. – Identify What Unifies Those Things

As the stem connects the three lobes of the shamrock, ask team each person to identify what connection they see between the three items they identified. Ask them to write it on, or near, the stem.

Step 2 – Sharing

Ask people to volunteer and briefly share with the group what they put on the shamrock.
I chose to make this optional since some people may feel a lack of emotional safety, thus choosing to not share.
End the sharing when everybody who wants to participate has done so.

Step 3 – Thank everybody

Be sure to thank everybody for participating.

3. Green Beer

Green Beer

It’s important that team members have relationships that extend beyond just “doing the work.” This technique is simple:

Take the team out of the building before the normal end of the work day and get some liquid refreshment. Relax. Get to know each other better.
If you choose to drink, drink responsibly. Provide cabs as necessary (hopefully it’s not). Drinking soft drinks is permitted. Be aware that things you say might still need to stay within HR guidelines. Try not to dance on the bar.

Principle-Centered Agility: Your Path to Better Options

Principle-Centered Agility - Your Path to Better OptionsAgile methods typically don’t have a lot of built-in rules. That’s a good thing! So, what can you use as your guideposts as your team or your company encounter novel situations? That’s what my conference proposal for Agile DC is all about; Principle-Centered Agility.

If you like what you see below, please jump over to the conference proposal and give it a “like” and perhaps ask for clarification on anything you find confusing or unclear.

In the conference session, we will create a common understanding of the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto. Depending on your individual background, some of the principles can be a little tricky. You will have a chance to reflect on which principles are present in your organization, and which ones are not present.

Next, we will introduce the concept of Force Field Analysis. Force Field Analysis is an approach for exploring the forces that are promoting or inhibiting a change from happening. Using the presence or absence of a particular principle from the first activity, you will have some time to create a Force Field Analysis of the situation.

Lastly, we will generate additional options to change the situation. We will introduce you to three elements of change, and you will be able to use those to come up with a plan for making your desired change a reality.

You will leave this workshop with a toolkit for applying to any number of situations when you return to work!

Four Tips For Granting Teams Budget Autonomy

Money TrapEvery company I have been in has had a fairly rigorous process for approving budgets and purchases. More than once I have seen an organization spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars worth of time to clarify, justify, vet, and double-check a purchase of less than $200. Instead of micro-managing purchases, what would it look like to empower people with budget and the duty to use it wisely; whatever they decide wise might be?

What Got Me Thinking

Today I placed a purchase for my South Bend Coworking Space, The Branch. It’s a 1-year old business that my wife and I are bootstrapping. We did not go raise a bunch of capital from friends, family, and fools. We decided how much we were comfortable risking, gathered market data to make sure we weren’t doing “stupid”, and launched the business.

We love the technology that supports the startups and telecommuters. Bootstrapping led us to getting good equipment that was good enough for the job, but not “high-end”. Our network switching equipment is leased, and our wireless router was effectively a “hand me down.” The router was very performant for the 14 months, but for some reason it restarted itself couple times over the last two or three weeks. My philosophy is that the technology should just perform. No hiccups, no problems. Technology should function so well that you forget about it. A network that drops during the day, even for 30 seconds a couple times over two weeks is not acceptable. It was time to upgrade immediately!

We contacted KineticIT, who’s been a reliable technology partner for us. We got a quote on a Cisco Meraki router, and decided to make the purchase. Upon realizing that The Branch did not have a Power Over Ethernet (PoE) switch to connect the router to, we got a call from our vendor. The question: Did we want to buy a PoE injector (about $100) or an AC Adapter (about $50)? Considering that we are in the process of expanding our operations, and that we have VOIP phones that also would benefit from PoE, I inquired about the price of a switch that would provide PoE. We got the quote, decided it was fair, and authorized the purchase of materials and labor. Without going into too much detail, it is easily an investment that goes above $1,000. And, the incremental expense for the switch was decided in under 10 minutes.

After reflecting on the purchase, I went back to the realization that I’ve had to try much harder to get approval for much smaller purchases. It led me to wonder: What would it be like if every company trusted its employees to make wise purchases similar to the investment I made. What if you could walk into your managers office to report, or you posted to the company’s intranet site that you just spent $1,000 on _________ because it allowed the company to do ________? As a manager, would you be OK with that? What scares you about it? Are you willing to try it?

After hanging up the call with my IT partner, my fellow agile coach, Susan DiFabio and I were brainstorming a bit. What about buying books? No problem. New furniture? No problem. What if they spent it on a team dinner. A nice one, to celebrate. Are you OK with that? My initial reaction to a scenario where they pocketed the money was “oh, heck no.” But then we explored it more. What if they pocketed the money? Think about it. If the team’s been busting their hump, feeling down, and wanted to give their team of 10 a $100 bonus each? Seems like money well invested. Compare that to the cost of turnover, and the $100 per person seems like one hell of a deal.

How To Structure The Autonomy

Are you willing to extend autonomy to your team around some amount of budget? Here are some tips for how to set up such an arrangement:

1.Don’t Be Cheap!

Make sure it’s enough. If you are only willing to give autonomy over $50, don’t run the risk of insulting your employees. Our brains have strange wiring when it comes to money. Offering too little indicates that either a) the company is in trouble and cannot afford more, or b) you don’t actually trust them to spend it wisely. You might feel that it signals something else, but I’m quite confident it won’t. It’s bad to signal either corporate insolvency or district, so make it a good amount of money.

To keep things in perspective, imagine a technology team where the total compensation is around $100,000 per person . if you have a team of 7, and they get autonomy over $1,000 total, that’s only 15 one-hundredths of one percent of the cost of the team! That doesn’t even begin to include the cost of furnishings, space, etc. So, don’t be cheap!

2. Don’t Be Stupid!

Decide how much you can afford to risk. Don’t risk more than you can afford. And, don’t offer an amount that if it all gets spent causes discomfort for the organization. If you can afford $5,000 across your 50 scrum teams, go for it. If you can’t, don’t.

3. Make it Public

Make the teams or individuals publicize the purchase and the benefit they see. Get the teams to share what they decided. There are a couple reasons for this. First, the sharing will perhaps give good ideas to other teams. Second, the social pressure of sharing what was purchased will help ensure wisdom.

4. Experiment

Run it as an experiment, but be careful if you end the experiment. Timebox the experiment. You don’t have to commit to it forever. Try it for a year or two. But, if you do decide to cancel it, just roll the amount into their base pay. As humans, we hate to lose things. If I use to get autonomy over $1,000 of the team’s money and you take it away, that will hurt. The pain will be lessened if you take the $1,000, divide it across the team of 7, and just give it to them as base pay.

It’s time to try it!

The idea is interesting to me, and I would love your feedback. Do you know anybody doing something related? How is it working out?

Just to drive the experiment home for me, I will be conducting it in the fall. Our coworking space business hasn’t grown to the point of supporting the addition of employees, yet. But, we are having an intern from Indiana University South Bend for the fall semester. I’ve decided we will give her a pre-paid visa card, and ask her to just use it wisely for whatever she sees fit, and let us know what she decided to do with it. Google ads for marketing? Fine. Banner to hang out front? Sure thing. Pocket money? Hmmm. If that’s going to get her out of a bind and able to get to work, or help with something else that allows her to focus. Sure. I’m a big fan of trusting folks to do the right thing. Of course, sometimes you get burned, and nobody’s perfect. Far from it. I hope to let you know how the experiment goes.

The Neumanagement Agile Blog Is Migrated!

It Is FinishedUnlike discovering that the TP has run out, we are happy for this to be finished! Thank you for your patience as we migrated the web site and blog to a new hosted solution. The new solution will allow for more control over the experience. We have some additional details to introduce, so look for a richer experience as we go forward. For now, other than the look, the biggest feature you will notice is the social media sharing options with each blog. If you read something you like or found valuable, please share it with your friends and colleagues. We welcome your comments, as well.

Happy reading.

FIRST Lego League Challenges – Against the Odds

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUIZdOk1oTs]

I’ve spent the last 7 or 8 weeks coaching a group of 6th through 8th grade students as they prepared for the Regional and State competitions of FIRST Lego League. FIRST Lego League combines research, technical, and teamwork aspects into a really great contest. I’m going to take a minute to share how my co-coach Dr. Joshua Enszer captured our pretty challenging season. Despite the challenges, the team members have had a great time. Both teams at LaSalle Intermediate Academy had a good showing at State competition, and one of our teams progressed to the state level of competition.

This is how we got to where we are:

“On October 11, I received a phone call from a parent at LaSalle Intermediate Academy. She had been calling people who knew people in search of a coach for their Lego League team. They had one parent, Dan Neumann, committed to coaching, but needed another coach in order for the program to exist with the school’s two teams. Already a month behind in the season, parents were scrambling to fill this void so that the children could participate in Lego League this year.

Two days later I was in contact with Dan, another newcomer coach. We had no idea what we were getting into. LaSalle had historically performed well at competitions, but they’d also had the same successful coach since this program started! I personally had not heard of this program before this year. We read over the coach’s manual and scoured the websites and arranged for our team to meet for the first time on Friday, October 15, with five weeks to regional competition.

That Friday – and the following week of meetings, actually – was spent getting students (some with past experience, but largely not) to know one another and to set up the tables for this year. Veteran Lego League students brought new students up to speed on the aspects of the competition from day one – the research project, the programming challenge, Gracious Professionalism. It took three meetings just to construct the pieces for the programming table and to select a research topic. Four weeks to competition.

With the table ready for practice, students found the school’s NXT kits, evidently untouched since the year prior. It took no time to realize two things: one NXT’s display was no longer functioning, though it still had the capability to run programs; teams had never used light sensors and only one was to be found among the school’s supplies. We put in an order for more sensors and a replacement NXT as soon as we could. The team soldiered on with what equipment was available, and team mentors – previous Lego League participants now in high school – came back to help support the new students with their research with mere weeks left.

The students never gave up. We met three times—seven to eight hours—a week for the duration up to the regional competition. The new equipment came in and functioned perfectly. And then, the day before the regional competition, just an hour before we were to pack up and prepare to leave, the hard drive on the programming computer crashed. A student took it home to his father, who spent the evening retrieving the data, and miraculously, had it for us the next morning. We have doubly backed up everything since.

Harried, but determined more than ever to give a good showing, the team performed as best they could at the regional competition. Things did not go entirely as planned, but the students were not down. As the judges computed final scores, parents watched as our students lead a number of people in some games and dances. And after an interminable wait, the judging was announced, and our team placed in the regional competition.

The team has been imbued with a drive to succeed all season, and this placement only tempered their resolve. With a week to go to the state competition, the repaired computer bit the dust entirely, but files were securely stored elsewhere. Programs have been improved and expanded, the presentation script refined. Regardless of the result at the state tournament, these students have already survived a late start, rookie coaches, faulty and missing equipment, and two computer crashes. They’ve already beaten the odds to get here. Who knows what is next…? I wouldn’t underestimate them.

Josh Enszer ”

Thanks, Dr Enszer, for describing the situation so accurately. I am looking forward to taking this year’s lessons and returning to coach next year, if possible.

Here is a video of the robot trying to solve one of the challenges. We finally get consistent results toward the end: