The One Thing You Need To know with Marius de Beer

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharocrk discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Definitely Maybe Agile with your hosts, Peter Maddison, Dave Sharrock, and joined today by Marius de Beer. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Marius is just telling us a little bit about uh some of the uh things he's been up to. And so, Marius, why don't you go ahead and uh introduce yourself to our audience?

Yeah, thank you, Peter. Uh thank you, Dave. Thank you for having me. Yeah, a little bit about myself, uh mechanical engineer by training, but into software all my life, as what happened with so many people. I stumbled across Agile quite by accident. Um, and it really changed the way I look at the world, and it helped me a lot and fell in love with it, started helping others to adopt it, and then I kind of started falling out of love with it because the world has moved on, you know, things um have evolved and we need to evolve with it. And part of it was um, you know, introspection and reflecting on how I behave in the industry and starting to uh adapt my behavior in an organization to bring about improvement. So that's why I'm here.

Marius, that's just to jump in on some of that, that's more than just not calling an agile transformation agile. What you're describing there, and and you know, we've had many of these conversations whenever we get a chance to catch up, but what you've been describing there is that what worked 10 years ago, what worked five years ago isn't what's working today. And in fact, it's almost quite the opposite. It's there's a real pushback in many parts of the industry, if you like, around I think people trying desperately to say this is what we should be doing, and harking back to the good old days when people wanted to know the optimum sprint length and the tools that they needed to use and things like this, to the fact that there's a desperate need for organizations to get better at what they're doing, but the agile stuff doesn't really do it, right? Did it ever work? Oh, that's how long have we got? Uh you know, that I I think that's a cheeky one, but at the same time, like we've I think all three of us are in the positions that we're at and working the way we do because we've seen it work, right? We've seen that spot where uh something was better than it was before and markedly better. I think certainly when I look at it from the sort of human side, that's the always bit the bit I look at and remember the most, right? Never remember this sort of you know process that we got in, but I remember the where the human side kind of got to and how people came to do their work and the energy and enthusiasm they brought to their work. And and to be fair, I mean you can still get that. It's not like it's never ever occurring anywhere. But I think the pressures in the in the industry in the marketplace are just different, right? And the knowledge in the marketplace is different.

Exactly. I you yeah you touched on a few important things there, because look, there are many awesome examples of things that worked well, and uh, you know, all three of us have been uh fortunate in experiencing those. At the same time, there are many failed attempts that left some of the language broken. So that if you try and help someone, because they've tried probably more than once, the language that we use that used to be new and shiny and generate a certain amount of energy is now, oh yeah, we've tried that. What else have you got? And we all three of us know that even though we've done some cool stuff, the value is in the basics. So, how do we get the basics done without using language that alienates our audience? And how do we get it done weekly? Because we can't afford a long transformation anymore. Uh and that's at the heart of it. So I don't think any of the validity of the tools have changed. It's just how do we get it uh how do we package in a format that people can digest it in today's world?

Yeah, the uh a lot of people now they say, Well, yeah, we've done Scrum. Scrum was what I did in my last organization. That's where we gave all of the managers new titles and they micromanaged us even more than they were beforehand, and nothing really good came out of it, and I never want to touch that again, so because that was horrible and I hated it, and it's awful. So there's a there's a you hear a lot of that and uh a lot of those types of experiences. Even sometimes within the same organization, you'll hear other teams that said, This was awesome! But so it's uh it can be often uh somewhat localized, but uh other times uh it does result in there being something of a a bad taste and a reaction to particular words. Um I was talking to somebody the other day where a language that I would commonly use to thanks things like value streams is apparently verbotum. I can say anything, but I cannot use the term value stream, because that that apparently will trigger people, because they've tried this in the past, and it uh that language now has a uh a bad reaction within the organization.

I I think it's quite interesting what you're because what you're saying, uh and I think what we've got to realize is a few years ago, you when you went went to an organization, nobody knew. So you know, you're able to introduce terminology, introduce ideas that were being seen for the first time or were still sort of close to their wrapping, right? They're still just out of the box in in some cases. Whereas I think nowadays many um many people have tried, they've had experiences which aren't quite the same as some of the ones that we kind of point at to say this is what can happen. And so I mean they're jaded on the one hand, but they're also closed to understanding what really happened, right? And what they could have done differently. So you you now immediately have lost that part of the room, and uh it comes out partially as the vocabulary, but it's a lot more than that. It's it and it it it comes out as as you know, oh, it's another of those change things. Like we nowadays we talk about that whole challenge that organizations have in organizational change, which is you know, which we all know has is a permanent like it's going on all the time, and yet the mindset still falls to those experiences that we've all had of big announced changes, the disruption that follows, the kind of waiting it out. I mean, like literally waiting it out until the next change comes along. So if we're now with a lot of organizations, kind of a lot of the the people that we're working with are really just kind of setting it out, perhaps in some ways. And and I can't blame them. I think that's it's a natural reaction to the experiences that they've had, and quite a fair one in many cases. Absolutely.

And uh the, you know, if I speak for myself, there was a period where I went through, you know, you don't understand what happened. Let me explain to you what happened. And just uh and it it immediately alienates the audience. You know, that wasn't a good implementation, and here are the reasons why. Now you've lost the room. So that's where I referred to that self-reflection of I can't keep doing this. Something else is needed so that we cope with this continual change without having to sell so hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's and and it's I I think there's a really interesting bit in there, which is so if if you're making one big change, then we can all roll our sleeves up and get the trumpets out and announce the change and make that piece. And somehow there there's an element there of um you're you're with us or you're against us, or whatever it might be in those those old models. But I think you're to the point is no change is permanent. It's not something that can and we we're actually entering a period where we we want to be continuously changing. And that suddenly means change, it's almost like change has to be commoditized. It has to be simple, easy, something we get, we understand, we're continually doing it, which we do in our own experiences, maybe in other areas outside of it to some extent, but but we have to accommodate those changes and recognize that we need to make them less of a bump in the road and more of how we drive on the road, perhaps is a way of thinking of it.

Yeah, being in make it more intrinsic to the way that you are and actually living and breathing it, which which is very very difficult to get to. I mean, it's because you've really got to be invested in actually making that happen. And uh all too often uh it something comes out of left field which is large enough to disrupt the organization such that um it hasn't a reaction to fall back onto what it knows. And or there's there's something that's gonna happen, or you and that can be as simple as hey, we made really great progress where the organization is really starting to adopt this and and uh people are really seeing the value in it. Um, but then the the leader who's driving all of this retires, or their attention is moved off to something else because something occurs that means they've no longer got the focus. And and as focus shifts away from this, it it becomes harder and harder to maintain it if it's uh because if if it hasn't become a part of, as you say, like how you drive, like you get in the car and you drive, you don't think about it after a while, you you just know.

Yeah. And you know, so um I can imagine our audience are listening to this and saying, Yes, I'm experiencing that, because yes, we're all experiencing it. Um which might be a good time to start sharing. So what do we do about it? Um, you know, for myself, and this is highly experimental at the moment. I mean, this thinking is maybe eight months old. So far, I'm reasonably happy with it, but it's highly experimental. I've changed my approach, and now all I think about is how are people supported, measured, recognized, and rewarded. And the support is easy to understand, it's intuitive, measured, easy to understand, intuitive. The two that are weird or maybe a bit more subtle is recognize and rewarded. So recognize is in front of your peers and rewarded, yeah. It's good old-fashioned, you know, salary, bonus, promotion, all those things. And I know I've abandoned everything else, and I just look at those four things. So if there's an area that's struggling or someone uh that's facing a problem or something that needs to be improved, I start off by asking myself, these individuals in the system, how are they supported and measured to recognize reward today? And I go ask them and I ask for examples. It's easy to get examples, you know. The last town hall, who were called up as the called out as the A player? For what were they called out? Um so you can easily get those four and then you start changing them. Now reward is the most difficult one to change, so I leave that one. It's often outside of your control, and you leave it late. But the other three, surprise, surprise, are actually really easy to change the way it's applied. And the response people tend to respond quite quickly to it.

I i it just sounds to me uh when as you're describing that, Marius, how when you think of like the the frameworks that we all have used in the past, which are really about putting constraints on a system, right? They're just putting and but the basic kind of building block of the system is probably a team. Whereas what you're describing is almost exactly the same view, but putting those constraints around individuals, if I'm reading it rightly. I mean, potentially a number of individuals have the same support, potentially the same measures, the same reward mechanism, but it's almost, is it really like a case-by-case, individual by individual approach? Do you look at it? How does that kind of get put into practice?

So actually, your your question has the answer in it, which is you have to look at the individuals, because if you do not take care of the individuals, the team has stands no chance. And then you need to take a look at the team and then the department and then the division, and yes, even the organization. Because organizations are very, very quick to point at a direction and say, we want to change. And then when you look at how they are supported, measured, recognized, and rewarded, it's not that. So guess what? You're not gonna get that behavior. So you have to look at it in my opinion, you know, eight, one, ten, you have to look at it at all levels.

I like the idea that you're bringing in there of looking at it at the different levels. It's um because uh I mean, general leadership and management training will support a lot of this uh when we talk about how individuals are treated, and that doesn't mean people necessarily either attend it or listen well enough to get it, but but the the concept around how you recognize people and understanding that people are individuals and different recognition will mean different things to different people. Some people do not, under any circumstances, want to be called out in front of absolutely everybody to be and because being put up as the person in front of everybody is good it will will be embarrassing for them. They might not they don't uh like it. So you being aware of the individuals, learning who they are, and appropriately applying their the recognition to them, I think is a critical part of it as well, um, which is why it has to be done on an individual level. So I I I like what you're you're saying there around looking also though at this at the at the both from the individual and the team and the and the department and the organization and how it operates at each level. I think that's uh an interesting way of thinking of it.

It's I mean it's a fascinating because um I'm just trying to think of the the situations that that I found myself in, and I'm not as uh you know focused for the eight months or however long it would be in one organization. I'm still in that position of moving backwards and forwards between different organizations and seeing what they want to show at any one time, let's put it that way, right? Um, but I think it's uh we see the same thing, which is time frames are shorter, so people want any sort of benefit has to be pretty quick um in order to stand any chance of getting support and and being being um there. So that measured base becomes really important. But we've also been seeing that there are, I mean, if I if I think of this, and and Peter, you and I talked about this, the the Scrum Master role and how it's basically being written out of so many organizations. And I think so much of that is just because people didn't measure the right things, they didn't support them, they didn't r recognize what they were doing, they recognized what maybe they were asking them to do somehow, right? And there's that mismatch. So I guess that there's there's a question there, Marius, about what happens when you find those mismatches? If you're looking at an individual who is measured for one thing but not supported sufficiently to get there, where are the actions that you're taking, or or is this a case of you encouraging them to take the action that they need? I mean, I'm of course it's case by case, I guess, but there must be some themes that come out.

Absolutely. The one thing that, you know, in hindsight, it's kind of obvious, but it did catch me by surprise is how much it changed my behavior as an organizational coach. All of a sudden I found myself having completely different conversations with completely different people, um, still towards an outcome, but not with the people I used to have the conversation. Um, you know, so let's say it's important for an organization to increase its predictability, and then you start peeling the onion on so how are teams measured? And do we have an idea of whether predictability is valuable? And very, very quickly you notice the the recognize is the easiest one to spot the dysfunction because as we all know, there is a crisis, people work through night, the next morning we celebrate the people and recognize them of how awesome they were. Next to them is a team that's been diligent about their quality, they've been predictably delivering, and they go completely unseen. So, why should they continue that behavior if they remain completely unseen? Now, to fix that, okay, all of a sudden the types of conversations you have are completely different in a completely different setting with completely different people. And then when you do get them to the point of starting to recognize those individuals and the teams that consistently hit the mark, all of a sudden your fires reduce, they are less crazy. Um so it it definitely, yes, um, there are themes that emerge, and Dave, the biggest theme that emerged for uh for me is how many of my conversations actually move away from the team and it's around the team that you have the conversation. It's still their behavior that evolve, but you you never not never, but it's extremely infrequent that you have to intervene at a team level because they just respond to the system.

Yeah, it's uh it reminds me of the uh the old cartoon of the uh where you've got two fires start and uh and there's the one one guy who immediately likes a fire and immediately puts it out and just doesn't think anything of it. And then there's the other one where the the guys stand there and it's like fire let it burn, burn, burn, fan it a little until it's really roaring and roaring. And hey everybody, there's a fire over here, but I'm putting it out.

Which is yeah, no, I I think it it's um I'm just thinking back on so many of the conversations I've had where one of them is um leave the teams, they'll figure it out. And I think that's exactly what you're saying there, Maris. And I th I agree is so true. If the team knows what good looks like, they know how to get there, and they're given the the kind of I don't know, autonomy or the the access to what they need to be able to get the things done, like they do the right things. It's one of the interesting, I'm pretty sure there's a type A, type B measure in there as well. But it's I think people generally, if you point them in the right direction, you guide them the right way, that's what they want to do. And it's a realization that perhaps is still taking a while to sink in because there's still that need to go around and fan the flames to shout out how much the fire is being put out by your team, I guess, right?

Yeah, the on that specific one, the the team will figure out what to do. It's that is where the support comes in. Yeah. Because a mistake that I've made several times and I've now, you know, it's almost at the point of tying a ribbon around my finger so that I don't make it again, is coaching the organization to create that space for the team, only for them to go screw it up. And then you have to have the conversation about safe to fail. But it's a very, very hard sell. Yeah. So personally, I feel our role as coaches needs to be more hands-on. We need to roll up sleeves more often and actually support it so that if someone has got the space in which they can figure out what to do, roll up your sleeves and go sit next to them. That's actually provide them with the the mechanisms that they can then figure out what the right thing to do is. So that when they when they fail, uh, because they will invariably fail, but when they fail, it is clear what was invested to that point. And experienced leaders can look at it and go, Oh, I know what that feels like. You you spilt some blood on the way there and you failed. Okay, I get that. But too often in in uh agile transformation, there's a failure, but that path is not clear. Yeah. And then leaders misinterpret what just happened.

It's uh I I just did an enabling constraints talk at a conference recently in Toronto. And what I find really interesting going through that is I've been talking about constraints and applying those and and so on for years. And invariably what I find is we talk a good game, but when you sit down and go, Okay, show us your constraints, we go, well, we've you know, but that's for you to sort out, right? And that's and and I do I think this is one of those where you really need working examples. And we we have a tendency of speaking in principles, principle-led, which is wonderful, but contextually we need those principles to land. And and uh I I couldn't agree more with your idea of just rolling our sleeves up. I think we maybe it's just been too long and we're getting a bit too, you know, theoretically minded in some parts of the community, I don't know, or whatever it might be.

I'm seeing Peter gaze at the ceiling there, so there must be something uh I think that there's a I think there's a piece of uh sometimes if we've seen it, we assume that others already know it. And so there is an element here too that we're we incorrectly make assumptions about what it is that is known. So yeah, you just do it like this, right? Yeah, bye. We'll see you later. Yeah, and uh without that as exactly as you said, Marius, uh sitting down and supporting people through it, remembering that not everybody is going to have heard this and learned it, and this may be the first time any of them have ever encountered it. And so helping them with that and uh understanding, okay, so was and listening as well. I mean, as coaches, it's it's our job to listen and say, Well, you say that you understand this, but I'm not sure you do. So um, and and helping them uh work through that.

Yeah, so a real example, um, you know, I used to talk about a healthy backlog because it's once of my one of my passions. You know, if you've got a healthy backlog, your life will be so much easier. I used to beat this drum day in and day out and had some successes, but for the rest, it was a heavy soul. It was a difficult thing. Now, what I do is if I see someone that struggles to answer difficult questions about a roadmap, I go sit next to them and I say, let's look at your backlog. Let's see how we can get that answer for you. And then oh, this is this is taking you further away from answer. This is not helpful. And then actually help them. That's the support. And support measure, recognize, and reward. And afterwards they feel supported. And now they have something to reach out to you for with a question. I remember we did this last week, but I I can't quite remember how we got there. Please show me. It's no longer a two-day training course where you cram a healthy backlog down their throat and then hope they get it.

Yeah, and I think it's that's uh it's it's been a fantastic just reminder in this conversation of I think there's things that intuitively are beginning to happen and beginning to change. And you see this when you go and talk to people in the community and you can tell the ones who are really like at the coal face, and they're trying to they're they're I would say riven with self-doubt is way too strong, but there's a question in people's minds. Like they're those those of us who are right at it, at that coal face are kind of looking around, going, something's different, we've got to change it. And I really like that that conversation that that's led to, that thinking that you've done coming through it. Uh, because I think intuitively a lot of a lot of our listeners, a lot of the conversations I'm having are leading in that way, but it's not always obvious exactly where that is until you kind of look behind. Yeah. Petra, you're gonna wrap this one up. What three things are we gonna pick up from this uh conversation?

Well, I I could say that now, but it'd be kind of redundant. But I can uh if you like, yeah, let's go. So what three things can we draw from this conversation?

I was hoping you kicked that one off.

Uh I know I'm I'm gonna go okay. Over to you, Dave. What's the first one?

Well, I'm gonna let Marius walk us through those four steps that he looked at. I think that's a fantastic uh takeaway for sure. Uh I think one of them is change itself has changed, right? We've talked about this many times in these conversations. And I use that idea of commoditizing change, making change not be a road bump, but something that we do all the time as part of what we do. And I'm really in I I think that's one of the key takeaways. How do we make change less scary, less of a hiccup, and more of a what we're doing all the time as we learn and respond and grow?

Yeah, I think uh I think the one for me is um the application of the four principles that we're gonna let Marius talk through in a minute. Each layer of the organization is uh is something that um I I thought was a good way of of thinking of it. It's that we we often think of these things either at an individual or team level, and but not always at like, well, what does the organization need? What is the organization recognizing for itself? How does that look? So I think it's an interesting one too. And Marius, over to you. Take us away.

Yeah, for me, I would say, you know, we all have these toolboxes of mechanisms that can help and can work. But in terms of how to help an organization in this rapidly changing world adopt them, just look at how are people sorted, how are they measured, how are they recognized, and how are they rewarded, and focus on that. The tools we've got, we know how to use them, but focusing on those four will actually get people to ask for the tools and all from you that uh that direction that we're leading them into instead of selling so hard and alienating them in the process.

Awesome, I love it. So I really enjoyed the conversation as always. So thank you very, very much. And uh if anybody has any feedback, they can send it to us at feedback at definitely maybeagile.com. And don't forget to hit subscribe so you can get more or less uh wonderful content. And uh I look forward to next time.

Thanks again, Mara. It's always uh always a pleasure to learn something new and what you're seeing out there.

So really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for inviting me. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.