Leading Exponential Change

by Erich R Bühler

  About 100 people would have four hours to create new teams based on their personality and formal and informal skills. I proposed two simple rules:

  Each new Scrum team must have all the skills to successfully implement a product.

  Each team should have a maximum of eight core members.

  During subsequent talks, the management team asked two interesting questions:

  What would happen if one or more people were left out of the teams because others thought they had little knowledge or were not very skilled?

  What would happen if the employees did not organize themselves and the game failed?

  Clearly, this could cause the initiative to lose traction, and it was certainly a risk. But even though those situations could be problematic, I suggested moving forward and finding a solution for such cases if they arose. I even bet a month’s salary that the dynamics would be successful!

  In all honesty, I’m not sure that the bet influenced the management team’s decision, but they finally gave the green light to my Farmers Market proposal. The following day, we asked each of the 100 participants for an informal resume that answered these questions:

  What’s your name? Attach a photo for identification.

  What skills do you have?

  What are some recently learned skills that few people know about?

  What do you enjoy doing or have a passion for?

  What should others know to work comfortably with you?

  FIGURE 7.8: Sample resume created for the occasion

  We asked everyone to temporarily forget about the already-existing teams and to give the new dynamic a chance to work. As they were all Scrum teams, there were already eight Product Owners and one Scrum Master per group.

  The eight Scrum Masters and Product Owners were placed in the center of the room and told that the nearly 100 people would have half an hour to talk with them to learn more about the products to be implemented. It was also an opportunity for them to get to know the Product Owners’ and Scrum Masters’ personalities.

  Shortly thereafter, the energy in the room was high and people were enjoying the dynamics. Everyone wanted to know more about the future tasks and discover each other’s personality. When the time was up, we asked everyone to paste the previously prepared resumes on a wall, and we presented the two rules of the game. We started the timer and gave them four hours to form new teams.

  People remained motionless during the first two or three minutes. The managers observed, worried, and asked themselves what was happening. They decided to stand back and give participants the space they needed to find their own solutions. A few minutes later, to the relief of the managers, everyone started speaking, asking questions and moving throughout the room to learn more about the available skills. Soon, individuals began to recruit and form new groups.

  FIGURE 7.9: Participants looking for new team members

  Not only did everyone want to know more about their partners’ formal skills, but they also wanted to hear about their recent training and preferences. In addition, they sought out the personal and emotional connections that are key to success.

  Without management intervening, the teams began to form, making offers to attract the talent they needed.

  Forty-five minutes later, something important happened: they discovered that some necessary skills were scarce and that there weren’t enough people with specific knowledge for the number of groups that needed to be created. Once again, the managers were concerned and considered intervening. I asked that they be patient. A short time later, they were surprised when explicit working agreements were created between teams, indicating how people would be shared and how some would act as coaches without being part of the groups.

  Although we had planned the activity for four hours, it only took an hour and a half for the new Scrum teams to form. After this, we carried out the first work-cycle planning session (Sprint Planning).

  Since this activity, the motivation and productivity of these self-organized teams has been surprisingly high. The activity was a success, and I felt confident I wouldn’t be losing the month’s salary I had waged.

  When setting up new teams, the employees didn’t consider only formal and informal skills. They also valued factors such as personality, learning approaches, and job expectations. This outcome freed management and saved the company thousands of dollars. It also established crucial habits for self-organization and group commitment. Reducing the Permission-to-learn pattern helped create self-managed teams, while the company learned exponential forms of work.

  If your company trains in more-traditional ways, you’ll want to learn about Sharon Bowman’s six powerful, neuroscience-based principles. The following website will help you change your training habits and reduce the Permission-to-learn pattern: bowperson.com

  To reiterate, create measurements so people can understand the areas to focus on and what has already improved.

  When you create a new procedure, technique, change plan, or other transformation strategy, include informal structures that actively decrease the Permission-to-learn pattern. Below are ideas that could help:

  Actively eliminate bureaucracy.

  Support any additional activities, discovered while carrying out regular work, to be resolved collaboratively, without the need for prior authorizations.

  Have communities of practice that, in addition to training, offer the opportunity for members to make decisions about the future of the products, both technically and strategically.

  Provide an environment where teams can self-organize around scarce skills.

  After teaching a new concept, ensure that everyone reflects on what they have learned.

  Facilitate changes in the culture so people feel safe.

  Focus on having employees learn while they are working (hands-on learning).

  Teams need the autonomy to manage their budgets for formal (or external) courses and training. This could increase everyone’s satisfaction and sense of fulfillment.

  If you want to create an organization that can adapt quickly to markets, it’s essential to decrease the Permission-to-learn pattern.

  Enterprise Social Visibility

  In the late 1980s, people began to realize that social changes in companies could not be explained without taking into account where their activities took place. In addition, certain behaviors couldn’t be easily altered without changing the layout of the office.

  Your company might not feel it’s a priority to evaluate how physical space affects results, or how the layout of an office can impact the adoption of a change. If this is the case, it would be a good time to introduce ideas to help your company understand why evaluating this aspect is important.

  Think about the software teams you consider successful. You’ll see that they do not spend most of their time coding in front of a computer, but rather talking among themselves and working collaboratively on new ideas. They are confirming assumptions with clients and learning from each other. This is because activities that require creativity also need a high social component.

  In 2001, the Agile mindset and Scrum framework suggested that those who contributed to increased business value for a product (the value stream) should be physically near each other and should communicate primarily face-to-face. Based on this, organizations began to give more importance to the interactions between individuals than to their processes.

  But how do you get most of the information in your company? Those around you will likely say that their information comes from emails, chats, telephone conversations, or face-to-face talks. These standard channels have been used for years to communicate with employees and to get feedback from customers. We mustn’t forget that people receive a lot of information by sharing space where they can see each other.

  It is estimated that over 50% of your conscious information comes from what you s
ee. Each optic cell has over a million nerve fibers. Ten million bits per second are transmitted to the retina and six million reach the brain. Of these, 10,000 are transmitted to the prefrontal cortex, and only 100 reach your conscious mind. It may seem like a small number, but this action is repeated several times per second. In addition, our amygdala can interpret between 2,000 and 4,000 subtle messages from our physical environment each day, without any of it perceived or interpreted by your conscious mind. Therefore, information from our physical environment greatly affects our learning and the decisions we make.

  When visual information is scarce, creative activities aren’t as productive. Individuals begin to create new behaviors or processes that replace the information they need and don´t have.

  Many companies have employees in different geographical areas. In these cases, technology (video, chat, etc.) is used to replicate physical channels of communication. But experience tells us that groups who share the same space have much higher productivity than groups that are separated. Information from Scrum Inc. speaks of a loss of up to 50% of business value when the person acting as the Product Owner of a Scrum team is physically located at a separate site.

  With distance, we lose channels where a great quantity of information flows. Individuals working remotely do not learn at the same speed, or they do not always fully understand what is happening. The result is diminished transparency and a need to add new processes or reports to make up for the lack of information.

  To cultivate behaviors that favor the constant flow of knowledge, Enterprise Social Systems offers a specific component so that people understand what they must take into account when modifying a physical space or working remotely.

  Enterprise Social Visibility refers to knowledge that supports the flow of work and is passively captured from the environment. It includes social interactions, information radiators, and the recognition of behaviors and facial expressions.

  Enterprise Social Visibility focuses on educating people about where information comes from so they can create more effective plans, processes, or frameworks. Enterprise Social Visibility suggests five areas of action:

  Public Information radiators: Use physical panels (paper, whiteboards, and screens) in public and visible areas, with relevant information for the people who do the work. As much as possible, information recipients should be aware that a board has been updated because of a social behavior. If you are dealing with electronic boards, for example, ensure that alerting others of the change requires a visible social interaction such as having to stand before the public touch screen to modify it.

  Visible social interactions: People should be able to observe the standard social treatment or etiquette of other members; that is, recognize the social protocol of those around you (such as a handshake). This allows everyone to gain knowledge about different situations, even if they do not participate in them.

  Recognition of visible facial expressions: Individuals should be able to observe the facial expressions of others to judge their emotional state, like when there is a conversation between two people at a distance but in the same space.

  Visualization of actions and movements for recognition and prediction: Individuals should be able to observe others when they are performing other tasks (social movement within the office). This causes their brains to establish links (conscious or unconscious) with the people observed, and to store knowledge based on the results of the perceived interactions.

  Connection between the value stream and the physical space: The physical space must represent how value is created for the client. If fifteen people are needed to do the work from the conception of a product to its availability, then the best way for that group to carry out tasks should align with points 1 to 4. If there’s a change in how value is created, then the physical space must adapt as quickly as possible to the new value stream.

  As you can see, interactions with the physical environment offer data that are constantly made visible, allowing individuals to reach different conclusions and decisions. For example, social knowledge creates links in your mind that can make you react in a certain way.

  If you observe your task partner David meeting with a marketing expert who has a skill that’s indispensable to your team, you will create a link in your memory that will relate the skills of that expert with David. In the future, if you need to know more about marketing, you would probably talk to David before looking for the expert.

  The five key areas of Enterprise Social Visibility provide the foundation for maximizing the flow of knowledge from the environment, and this refers to any improvement process or new framework.

  An idea to increase social visibility is to have all participants stand during talks or meetings. By doing this, people will move more and their minds will connect those actions with shared ideas and the environment.

  Don’t forget that information from the office is filtered by your brain. This means that it will only store what it considers relevant. A vision of the change, product, or definition of business value will therefore help minds prioritize what to pay attention to and what to discard.

  To keep everyone “on the same page,” visual facilitation activities can increase Enterprise Social Visibility. Use sticky notes or flipcharts to display drawings or notes, thereby capturing the essence of the ideas that arise during conversations.

  Fixed-cadence meetings, or meetings that take place at the same time and place (Scrum events), also increase attention and have a positive impact on Enterprise Social Visibility . Here the brain is prepared in advance for what will come.

  Tools can increase Enterprise Social Visibility in environments where teams are geographically distributed. Sococo (www.sococo.com) is a pioneer in virtually connecting social and spatial environments that produce a constant flow of information.

  FIGURE 7.10: Sococo allows the creation of virtual spaces that provide rich social information

  No matter where they are, this type of tool helps people observe who they are meeting, social movements and dynamics within the office, daily patterns of movement within the physical space, and cadence. It also allows face-to-face communication, when necessary. This will notably increase Enterprise Social Visibility.

  It is worth pointing out that the Boston Consulting Group opted to take these concepts to the next level. In 2017, they opened offices in New York and set about maximizing the impact of the physical environment on the informal connections between people. They designed a workspace that increased interaction among the employees, ensuring these interactions were as unpredictable as possible. The goal was to increase the flow of random information and to ensure that knowledge flowed in all directions within the organization.

  The design of the office forced employees to run into each other frequently, increasing the probability of exchanging knowledge informally (Enterprise Social Density) and thereby multiplying knowledge from the physical environment (Enterprise Social Visibility).

  To achieve the latter, the firm Humanyze asked volunteer employees to wear sensors and work as normal for a few weeks while the Humanyze team recorded how and where they interacted.

  Apart from when and where most of the communications occurred, they also monitored latency, that is, how long employees moved throughout the office without exchanging words with others.

  The data collected allowed them to analyze all communication patterns and to know what areas of the office had higher or lower social density.

  Next came the magic. Humanyze suggested modifying the layout of the offices to maximize the flow of relevant knowledge. As a result, their design ensured the constant flow of knowledge from the environment, enabling employees to adapt it to their existing ways of working.

  The Humanyze design entailed the following:

  Flexible and open spaces that allow different uses and styles of work, and that maximize interactions between people.

  Large and f
ully equipped rooms for groups that work together for weeks or months.

  Multipurpose areas for social and community events that allow all office employees to get together.

  Spaces specifically designed for customers and employees to interact without physical barriers.

  Immersion rooms to facilitate the exchange of information in real-time among the participants, with giant screens and controls that enable virtual interaction.

  Hexagonal rooms with touch monitors to accelerate the design and incubation of new ideas.

  Technologies that allow you to work anywhere, at any time, and observe those who are in the office.

  As you can see, Enterprise Social Visibility enables the flow of knowledge from social interactions and supports any change plan. The following are recommendations for increasing Enterprise Social Visibility:

  Use information radiators (boards, Kanban, etc.) in public areas to share relevant data; alternatively, find other ways to share information—anything that attracts the attention of value network members.

  Have employees who create value sit together as much as possible.

  Ensure that the environment supports the product or change vision and how value is produced for the customer.