Agile Adoptions and Agile Leadership with Lucy O'Keefe

Unlock the secrets to a groundbreaking Agile transformation as Agile connoisseur Lucy O'Keefe and I, Mark Metze, dissect the vital role of leadership in creating a culture where Agile principles thrive. This episode promises to demystify the often-misunderstood Agile journey, guiding you through the alignment of your organization's culture with the core values of Agile. Together, we address the common pitfalls of superficial Agile adoption, highlighting the necessity of a genuine mindset shift. With Lucy's expertise, we navigate the complexities of assessing your company's readiness for Agile, prioritizing the Agile Manifesto principles, and the collective commitment required to shift from merely 'doing Agile' to 'becoming Agile.'

Feel the weight of leadership responsibility as we dive into the crucial buy-in needed to spearhead an Agile transformation. Lucy and I discuss how a deep understanding and embrace of Agile's spirit is more significant than merely following the rules. Uncover the wisdom of addressing cultural dimensions before deciding on methodologies like Scrum or Kanban, and learn how leadership's push for Agile must be more than just skin deep. The intricate dance between leadership guidance and organizational change unfolds as we share stories on why Agile should be embedded as a cultural shift, not just a collection of practices to be followed.

Step into the realm of leadership influence and its impact on nurturing psychological safety within the Agile transformation. Listen closely as Lucy and I unravel the importance of leadership in cementing a safe environment for teams to innovate and grow—where leaders communicate support and foster empowerment. As we dissect the challenges that come with promoting individuals lacking leadership capabilities, you'll appreciate the fine line between control and guidance that leaders must navigate. Join us for a journey filled with practical insights and engaging stories that will resonate with and inspire both leaders and teams ready to embrace the transformative power of Agile.

Connect with Lucy on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lokeefe/

Check Out Lucy's Offerings Through Dart Frog Consulting:
https://dartfrogconsulting.com/

Transcript

Mark Metze: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Well, hey, everybody, welcome back to the Agile Within. This is your host, mark Metz. Our guest is none other than Lucy O'Keefe. Lucy is a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer and Team Coach, as well as a Personal Development and Mindset Consultant with the Proctor Gallagher Institute, and she also is the founder of DartFrog Consulting. So, lucy, welcome to the Agile Within.

Lucy O'Keefe: 1:08

Thank you so much, Mark. Happy to be here.

Mark Metze: 1:11

So, lucy, you reside in Clearwater, florida. If I were coming to Clearwater for a day, what would you say is one thing that I shouldn't miss doing.

Lucy O'Keefe: 1:23

If you're coming to Clearwater, you have to go to the beach. The beach here is just beautiful. We have the most wonderful sunset, so I would say that you'd have to go to the beach and stay there through the sunset to watch. You know how gorgeous it is over the Gulf.

Mark Metze: 1:39

I love the sunset and I love the beach. Probably dusk, for whatever reason, is my favorite time at the beach. It's just peaceful and calm. Most people have gone in, gone out to eat, and I just always really enjoy dusk. I actually have this background of my picture, background of my monitor. I have a dusk timed picture of the beach.

Lucy O'Keefe: 2:03

Okay, awesome, I'll have to send you one from here.

Mark Metze: 2:06

Oh, do that All right. So we're going to talk about agile adoption and we're going to talk about the role of agile leaders. So, lucy, we talk about agile adoption. What's the first thing that we should consider before getting into an agile adoption?

Lucy O'Keefe: 2:26

Yeah, that's a great question, Mark, and unfortunately it's one of the things that people don't consider most of the time, and it's, you know, culture within the organization.

Lucy O'Keefe: 2:38

I think a lot of times when we're talking about agile adoptions, and a lot of times organizations think about scrum right, scrum or Kanban usually scrum that's the most popular and they're only thinking about, okay, let's, you know, start adopting some scrum practices in our teams, but they're really not thinking about the overall agility of the organization and how the culture is so important, right?

Lucy O'Keefe: 3:04

You can't start doing scrum in your teams and still have a waterfall mindset or a hierarchical mindset or, you know, command and control mindset, because, yeah, they're going to be doing scrum within the teams and, yes, that's going to improve the productivity a little bit, but you're not going to be agile just by doing that. So when I go into organizations, especially when I'm doing some assessments before we start to see what it is that we want to do, that's one of the things that we're looking at is the culture and how the culture within those organizations are aligning themselves to the agile values and principles, and for me, that's the most important thing. So we have to have everybody on board and they need to want that change right.

Mark Metze: 3:50

How do we so? How do we actually get started? Because there's, you know, this is such a big venture. We're talking about doing this org wide. How do we not get into a position where we're in analysis, paralysis and we're making sure that everything is just right before we get started?

Lucy O'Keefe: 4:12

And before I answer that question, we don't necessarily want everything to be just right, right, because if we wait for everything to be just right, we're never going to start. So we do want to start as soon as possible. But of course I'm a little biased because I am an agile coach, right? So I would say, you know, bring somebody in that is non-biased, that's neutral, to your organization to observe a little bit what's going on and sit down with leadership, sit down with management, sit down with the teams, figure out what's going on in the organization, what are our pain points, what do we need to improve and why? Right, a lot of times, people, you know they think of agile and it's that you know, new shiny object, right? Oh, everybody's doing it. So we must do agile right, which, as you know, we don't do agile right. We become agile, and they just want to do something so that they can say that they're agile without really looking at what's going on inside of the organization.

Lucy O'Keefe: 5:10

So the first thing that I would say is bring in a coach or you know, or have your change management. People in your organization also work with you to see where are we. Where are we in comparison to those you know values and principles of the agile manifesto and, yes, I do go back to those often, because they are practice agnostic. They don't care if you're doing Scrum, convun, xp, whatever it is. So for me, that's where the culture comes in, that's where the mindset comes in, and let's see where we are with those, see which ones are the most important for us. That's one thing that I do often is go through every single one of the 12 principles of the agile manifesto and ask leaders and ask management and ask the teams which one of these are our biggest challenge, right? And most of the time there's going to be multiple that are going to come up and then we talk about which one is the most important for you, right?

Lucy O'Keefe: 6:13

Which one is the most important for you as the focus of the customer? Is it empowering your teams or you know any of the other ones? And then make sure that we are talking about their agenda, right? What is the agenda of the organization? The agenda is not to do Scrum. The agenda is to become a better organization, whatever that means to them, and help them figure that out through those values and principles, so that we can work on the right things. Because, once again, it's not my agenda as the coach right To do that, it's figuring out what is important to that organization. So, to answer your question, I know I'm a little long winded here, but you know it's really about bringing somebody in having an assessment done, because it's very hard when we're involved in something to see what is going on right. So it's always easier to have an outsider come in and do those assessments and then have a conversation together about what is important to us right within the organization in order to become agile and why.

Mark Metze: 7:21

So I want to pause and focus just a little bit on one of the things that you said, and that's that the objective is not to do Scrum or to be proficient in Scrum, and so this may I'm going to give a sports analogy. So sorry to those individuals out there who don't identify with sports, but it was very critical to my. You know is something that I was brought up with and just lots of lessons that I learned. So I'm not a golfer, but I golfed long enough to learn that it's a very difficult sport to to be proficient at, and one of the things I think is think about is, when you play golf, the objective is not to follow all the rules of golf to the tee because, if you do, you're not gonna be successful and you're not gonna have very much fun.

Mark Metze: 8:16

That's all that you focus on. But if you really focus on making progress and trying to improve your score or Make better shots or be in better situations, that's when the game really comes to a life comes alive to you and I think there's a lesson to be learned. When we come into a new organization and Team see that, okay, the leaders want us to do. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, scrum, hmm, tell me how to do a sprint review. What am I supposed to do? Give me the rules that I'm supposed to follow, and you can very easily fall into the trap of following all the rules but not truly Following the spirit.

Lucy O'Keefe: 9:03

Yeah yeah.

Lucy O'Keefe: 9:05

Yeah, I love that analogy. And what I would say to is scrum is a vessel, right, the scrum is a vessel. That's good to become agile with scrums, practices and principles and values. You know, it allows us to put into practice certain things that are gonna help us achieve agility, but we also need the mindset. So that's why I said scrum is not and I love scrum. You know, I love scrum, you've known me for a while. Right, yeah, I love scrum, but I would never come into an organization and say, oh, you want to become agile, you must do scrum. That's that. That's not what it is at all, right.

Lucy O'Keefe: 9:45

And I mean, I've been in organizations where I mean, I just contracted with an organization for about 19 months and they were mandating that all new product development teams do scrum. And this wasn't even software, this was manufacturing and yeah, which is, you know, hard to begin with, but and and I didn't agree with it all the time, but it was a mandate if you are doing new product development, you're doing scrum, that's how it is. And if you're doing you know, customization, you know the other things that they did, then you do con bond, right, and and and. For me, yes, once again, I love scrum, but is that really the objective, to do scrum, or is it the objective to make sure that we find a way to To do product development In a way that's more productive and more efficient, regardless of what that practice is? So so, once again, the objective there is not to put a certain practice in place. The objective is to become Agile as an organization.

Lucy O'Keefe: 10:57

And you know and we did do some leadership training and product management training when they could learn more about being agile but that was secondary and that often is in most organizations. I know you've worked in a couple as a scrum master. I've worked in a few as well, and unfortunately it's always secondary. It's always the like put scrum into our teams first and then we'll figure out the rest. Where it should really be the opposite understanding why do we want to become agile? What does becoming agile mean to us? How is that going to improve us as an organization? Right, and then figure out Okay, if this is our objective, what are the practices that align best with what it is that we want to do?

Mark Metze: 11:41

hmm, and.

Lucy O'Keefe: 11:43

And it's just. It's just so backwards sometimes, unfortunately, because they they're not thinking about the mindset, they're not thinking about the culture up front. And a lot of times you have consulting firms that are going to come in and what are they pushing? They're pushing either scrum or Kanban or their own framework that they've come up with you know for for them to do, but really not thinking about the change management side of things, the cultural side of things, the mindset side of things, which, for me, it's the only way for an organization to be successful in their agile evolution and I think you know I don't like the word transformation and their agile evolution is to focus on that first. You can't change the outside if you're not changing the inside.

Mark Metze: 12:29

So on that, on that subject, as a consultant, when you're brought in to a company, yep, and you have these Executives, these leaders that are telling you you know they want to have some sort of I'm gonna break your rule, but let's be real you probably do hear that people say we want an agile transformation. Yep. We want a new mindset across the organization. We want teams to find better ways to work, so we're bringing you in to help us.

Lucy O'Keefe: 13:03

Yep.

Mark Metze: 13:06

What do you do as a consultant coming in? How do you work with not at the team level, we can talk about that but what do you do to work at the leadership level to establish that basis so that the teams do get the support that they need?

Lucy O'Keefe: 13:23

So, first and foremost, for me, I think training is imperative. If leadership doesn't understand what Agile is and what's in it for them especially, they're not gonna be success with leading an organization that's undergoing an Agile and I'll use the word transformation, so making sure that they understand what that is Not like. We're not teaching them Scrum, we're not teaching them Kanban, but we're teaching them what does it mean to be Agile? What are the benefits, what are the things that need to change? Right, and trying to get their buy-in and they're not gonna buy into everything all the time, right, that would be awesome if that happened, but that's not the case. But they have to figure out. Okay, what are the parts of Agile that resonate the most with me, resonate the most with the organization? So let's start working on that. If you don't get their buy-in, then there's no reason for you to be there, because then you're gonna be pushing something onto an organization that they're not ready to accept. And like the organization that I was talking about before, where they were telling everybody to use Scrum and Kanban and all that the minute a lot of us coaches, consultants left, they just stopped doing what they were doing and went back to the non-Agile way of doing things right. So we don't want that to happen. And once again, we need to figure out what are the things about Agile that are important to you and why.

Lucy O'Keefe: 14:58

Why do you wanna become Agile? It's not just because everybody else is doing it. There has to be an underlying reason for that. And then making sure, once again, that we're following their agenda. It's not mine. If you were up to me, I'd be like, okay, yep, we're gonna have two week sprints, we're gonna have all these cross-functional teams and this and that and that. All right, we're gonna do Scrum, but it's not that. So what is it that they are trying to accomplish? And then figuring out with them and giving them some coaching and mentorship and training on this is what can work the best. If these are your objectives, so how would you like to see that done?

Lucy O'Keefe: 15:41

But if they don't have buy-in, if they don't think that it's their idea, if they don't think that they have a say on what is done, you're gonna be met with a lot of resistance, which I have had over a decade that I've been working in an agile way. So the buy-in is extremely important. And then working with them and letting them know that you are their partner. You're there to partner with them to make this organization a better organization that's gonna work in an agile way. You're not there to say you're wrong, your way of doing things is wrong and my way is the only way to become agile, because the minute you leave, they're not gonna wanna do it anymore. So having that partnership is extremely important and helping them understand that you're there to accomplish their objectives and not yours, and then from there figure out, figure out. Okay, are we working in projects? Do we wanna move to product? How are we gonna do that? How are we gonna organize our teams and then start talking about the more tactical side of things? But once again, that partnership.

Mark Metze: 16:59

So, regarding the partnership that you talked about, lucy, have you had a situation where a company brought you in to consult with them and they were under the impression that you were going to. You were being brought in to coach the teams and to do the training at the team level. But as far as the leadership level they were like no, we're good, you just handle the teams.

Lucy O'Keefe: 17:24

Yep, yeah, and that happens more often than I'd like.

Lucy O'Keefe: 17:29

To be honest because, once again, they think that they already know everything, that there is nothing that needs to be to change at the leadership level. And when that happens, to be honest, if they're hiring as a consultant, you're there to do the work that they're hiring you to do. But I will still have conversations of okay, this would be the plan then, right, to meet up with the team, see where they are, see what needs to change from their perspective and do that and just make sure that they are okay with everything that you are doing, because, at the end of the day, once again, they're the ones that hired you. But if they don't want, you know, to learn more or to be assessed or anything like that, there's, there's not much that you can do. I mean I can't go in there and say, oh, I'm not gonna work with the team, unless unless you let me work with you first and make sure that you have the right mindset and the right culture and all of that. I mean it's. That's unrealistic, you know, especially sometimes and there's a lot of people, for example, that work for consulting farms, and I have in the past, not my own but another and I was brought into an organization and I was really only allowed to work with the teams and when I had conversations with some of the leadership about you know what I was seeing and maybe some changes that need to be made. You know they they don't want to make those changes Right, so they just wanted everything to work perfectly at the team level, without really understanding how much leadership impacts the work of the team. And then you know this very well, mark right, I mean we can be doing, you know, perfect scrum until we're blue in the face at the team level, but if the rest of the organization is not agile, the rest of the organization doesn't understand how that works. You know the team is still not going to be as productive and as effective as they would otherwise.

Lucy O'Keefe: 19:31

So in one of the organizations that I've been at, the team was doing scrum pretty well, but the their stakeholders didn't really understand you know what needed to change. So they still kept coming to the developers to ask them to do things. You know kept calling the developers and Sending emails, coming to their desk after asking them to add things to the sprint. You know, without following. You know that the way that we want things to be done, which is, you know, with product owner. Right, that's funnel that we want the product owner to be.

Lucy O'Keefe: 20:08

So it was causing issues. It was, you know, it's causing a lot of productivity issues because and this was in another country where it's very how do I say this that I guess that the command and control mentality is very strong, and so you know if a leader comes to you you're not gonna say no, right, I mean there, that courage just doesn't exist in a, in an environment like that. So they were never finishing stuff in their sprints Because they kept being, you know, bogged down with with Other stuff that people were bringing in for them to do so. So I finally went to some of the leaders and said we need to have some training for the stakeholders, for them to understand how this works, because, as I said before, we can do scroll into or blue in the face and the at the team level, but if everybody else is not buying into it and understanding how it works, we're still not going to be able to be successful.

Mark Metze: 21:09

So talk to us about how you did that. I'm giving air quotes and nobody can see but that selling job. How did you Elaborate on the problems that you were seeing so that? So that they actually did recognize that and come to the realization that, boy, we really do need training after all?

Lucy O'Keefe: 21:30

Yeah, I mean I had conversations with, like, the engineering manager, if you will, of the organization and pretty much just highlighted all the issues that we were Seeing and and I came to him from the what's in it for you, um type of vision, when we had a conversation, not about okay, how is, how is this really impacting the team? Wise, you know the team is complaining about this. It's, you know, how can this make things better for the organization if other people understand that there is a proper way of Intake, right of doing intake within the teams and understanding your requirements, and that's going to make sure that we're working on the, on the right things and prioritizing the right things. And you know, and also how, how the productivity was, was low. We're not finishing anything in our sprints because all this is happening and, of course, at the end of the day, and they want the teams to be productive, they want things to get done.

Lucy O'Keefe: 22:29

So, and I'm a very candid person I think you know that about me, mark Very candid person and and I was right, I'm you know, I don't I don't sugarcoat things a lot. I mean it's not like I'm being disrespectful, but I was pretty clear on how it was affecting the productivity, the effectiveness, the efficiency of the team and the outcomes that they were expecting. And and he finally realized, you know, yeah, it's, you know, I think it would be a good idea to to bring some stakeholders in. So he took it upon himself to to make sure that all stakeholders knew that they needed to attend this, this training of. Fortunately, only 40% of the people came to the training, but you know, but it helped a little bit.

Lucy O'Keefe: 23:19

Better than zero it definitely better than zero, but in you know, it's one of those things you can't force people to do things they don't want to do. Right, right, you know we can't change people unless they want to change themselves. So that's, you know. For me, that's the hardest part of being an agile coach or agile consultant, whatever it is they want to call it, because you know, we understand, and sometimes even some of the leaders understand what needs to be done, but some of the people who are more involved and Sometimes are the most resistant, just don't want to buy into it and do what needs to be done. And that's one of the reasons I don't like calling it a transformation, because it is an evolution. It's not something that you start today and you say, okay, three years from now you'll be agile right, yeah.

Lucy O'Keefe: 24:09

Yeah what we have to change again, right, so? So it is an evolution, because Not everyone is going to buy into this at the same time. People have different levels of resistance. Some people may see the light much sooner than others. So you have to give people that time, and we may have to do trainings a million times, we may have to coach the same people a million times until they get it, and and that's why you know they evolve into becoming a more agile organization. But it's not something that ends right, it's you know. I mean, even for me. I think of myself as a, you know, very agile person, but I still have a lot to learn. You still have a lot to learn, right? We know that. And so just that consulting firm can come and Work with you and three years later, you're gonna be fully agile. It's you know.

Lucy O'Keefe: 25:04

We're kidding ourselves if we that so and and specifically when you have different types of people within the organization. So it's okay that only 40% of the people came into that training, because if I had stayed there, we would probably have had more trainings. You and more people would have come in the future. No, so repetition is a great thing and it's one of those things that we need to make sure that we are doing, and even with our own teams. I mean, we can't just introduce the team to Scrum in the beginning and then never teach them anything again, so it has to be a constant, regardless whether we're talking about the team level, you know, mid -management or leadership, because things change, the goals change and we want to make sure that we are working towards, you know, the goal. That's the most important at that time, whatever that takes.

Mark Metze: 26:01

So I can really see how your personal development and your mindset consulting that you do. I can really see how that just has a whole nother, gives you a whole nother lens aside from just being a trainer and a coach to organizations and recognizing that if people aren't ready to change, they're not ready to change Right.

Lucy O'Keefe: 26:27

Yeah, nobody would think of anything else.

Mark Metze: 26:29

So my previous job. When I left my previous job and was interviewing for my next position, I interviewed with one company and it was a small company, and I asked them to tell me a little bit about the product side of the organization and they said, well, we don't have any product, people, because we know what we want. I was like, really yeah, we know exactly what we need. We're just now. It's just a case of we just need to execute. That told me a lot about the organization and the mindset, enough to know that, yeah, I need. I didn't want to pursue that particular position, so yeah, yeah that's, that's kind of scary.

Lucy O'Keefe: 27:16

Right, we're clairvoyant, we know that you do yeah that's long. Yeah, you're coming in as a consultant. Lucy, you're working with, with the leadership You're training them.

Mark Metze: 27:31

Okay, they're all trained up. Now it's time to move to the, to the team level. How do you build that Psychological safety within the team to know that the leadership is really real about making a change here? So I would say that it's not so much me. I think leadership needs to do it.

Lucy O'Keefe: 27:56

Communication and transparency are key when we're talking about becoming, you know, an agile organization and not just an agile organization. Communication and transparency should be true in every organization. So, you know, this is one of those things that I think it's so important to come from the top down Right To have those conversations. I worked at a I'm not going to say the name of the company, but I was at a company for about 10 years, a life insurance company and I remember when they started talking about becoming agile, the CEO was very clear with the organization that this is where we want to go. Right, that we're going to put all the tools in place and everything in place so that the teams can succeed in adopting Scram or whatever and becoming agile. And I think that that says a lot about the organization right, saying we are willing to change. Right, we're willing to change from being, you read, organizations who command and control organization to a more blue organization. Right, we're empowering our teams and they were very clear about that, you know, to the whole organization.

Lucy O'Keefe: 29:07

And so I think it's not my job as a consultant to provide the psychological safety. I mean, of course, I'm there to make sure that the conversations are respectful and that everybody you know feels like they can be themselves within the team and all of that. But they're not going to. And I've had that with another organization where you know they didn't feel safe. They felt that if they disagreed with something or if they made decisions, that the organization wasn't going to be happy right, that they were going to be retaliated against. So, regardless how much psychological safety I tried to provide as a coach or consultant, if they don't feel that the leadership you know is able to have that psychological safe environment, you know it's not going to make a difference. So it needs to come from leadership.

Lucy O'Keefe: 30:03

And so I think we need to make that commitment to the teams, to the individuals, right that we are here. We understand that we're going to be undergoing this evolution, transformation, whatever it is that you want to call it. It's not going to be easy. So let's not set unrealistic expectations here that we're going to waive a one and everything's going to be perfect tomorrow we're just talking about how difficult it is going to be but that they are there to support the individuals, support the teams, and you know that they are empowering people to make more decisions and that they value transparency, they value candor within the organization, because I think that that's very important, because, once again, people don't feel that they can be themselves honest, candid, and they feel they're going to be retaliated against.

Lucy O'Keefe: 30:55

If they say something that doesn't agree with the narrative of the company, then you know that is not psychologically safe. So that's why I'm saying it has to come from the top. They need to make it clear that that's where they want to go, but also, you know, we're human and also making sure that people understand listen, we are going to make mistakes. It's not going to be perfect all the time. You know, sometimes we're probably going to hear something from, you know, the teams, the individuals, the coach, the consultant that you know we don't want to see that. It's true that we don't want to accept, but we're going to try our best to make sure that we're handling that in a, you know, in a respectful manner, right? And that there's going to be no retaliation. I think that those things need to be outwardly said from leadership in order to make sure that that exists. So it's not a one person thing, right? It's not a coach thing, it's an everybody thing.

Mark Metze: 32:01

Any stories of how you've used your superpowers. Maybe your spidey sense started ringing and you just started feeling that the team is like yeah, I hear what leadership is saying, but it's really just lip service.

Lucy O'Keefe: 32:16

Yes, so I went into an organization just to do it was just an assessment, so never really got to work within the organization, but just doing the assessment. And with the assessment, with leadership, they were telling one side of their story, their side of the story.

Mark Metze: 32:38

There's always two sides of the story.

Lucy O'Keefe: 32:40

Oh yeah, it's like yeah, we want this to happen, we want people to be honest with us, we know that there are issues and we want to hear from the teams what is going on. And then, when I had the same conversation with the teams, it was the complete opposite. It was we brought this issue up and then they removed me from the project, or somebody brought this issue up and, before you knew it, they were no longer with the organization. Yeah, so there is a lot of that because, let's be honest, there are some egos in organizations and life, right, a lot of us have egos and we don't like?

Mark Metze: 33:26

What are these egos you talk about, Lucy?

Lucy O'Keefe: 33:30

I'm kidding.

Mark Metze: 33:31

I'm kidding.

Lucy O'Keefe: 33:32

Yeah, I was going to add that though, because some leaders in organizations think that they know everything and they know best for everybody, and God forbid somebody says that things are not working out the way that they're supposed to, so people take that too hard. Some leaders don't like that, and in command and control organizations this is very obvious that you can't speak up against policy or something within that organization without being retaliated against.

Mark Metze: 34:10

And you have those people that have risen through the ranks, so to speak, because they are very outspoken and persuasive and are able to bend the ear of the people at the top. Yeah, and so that's To them. That's what makes them successful is that their ideas are the ones that cause change and that get followed. So those are some of the more challenging ones, in my experience, to work with.

Lucy O'Keefe: 34:43

Yeah, that's the antithesis of leadership, right? Wanting to be followed, wanting to rise to the top, regardless what I'm doing to the people at the bottom. That's not leadership. That's wanting to be in control, and we do have a lot of that. And you said that there's a lot of people that rise through the ranks doing that. But there's also a lot of people who rise through the ranks because they were great at what they did and the people above them were like, oh, he's so good at doing this that he should now manage the people that do it. And that just keeps going on, and going on, and going on. But those people are not leaders and they think, oh yeah, I was doing the same thing as you, so since I'm better than you, they made me a manager. So now I'm going to treat you the way that I think you need to be treated. I'm going to manage you.

Mark Metze: 35:35

Oh, boy, you're just giving me cringes. Now I'm going to manage you.

Lucy O'Keefe: 35:38

Yeah, and unfortunately, that's what a lot of people do, A lot of people that have leadership titles. They are trying to manage people and not lead people. I go into organizations. We talk about empowering people empowering people to make their own decisions and I see people cringe when we talk about that and they're like well, I want to make sure that they're doing the right things, I want to make sure that they're following what I'm telling them to do.

Lucy O'Keefe: 36:09

And I'm like then why are you hiring intelligent individuals if you're just going to tell them what to do? But it's that fear of relinquishing control. If I let them do what they think is best, then one, I have no control over what they're doing. And, oh my gosh, they may be the ones that get the kudos from the organization for doing certain things, which is, you know, it's sad, but it's the truth. It's the truth. It's true in more organizations than I'd like to count.

Mark Metze: 36:48

Yeah Well, lucy, as we wrap up our time here, I want to ask you so what is one bit of parting advice to somebody on the other end, somebody that's working at a company and you know they could have a role of? Let's just consider it, if they have a software role, if they're a team member, a developer, a tester, maybe a product person, maybe a scrum master, maybe a development manager, and someone is coming in, such as yourself, to do this I'm giving air quotes again agile transformation. What advice do you have for them?

Lucy O'Keefe: 37:30

Last thing is be open-minded. I think that a lot of times when people hire coach or consultant, they have this box right, that they want that person to fit into and that they want the person to work within. And if you're hiring somebody to come in, it means that you think that they know more than you do about this specific thing. So if it's an agile consultant, for example, this person knows more about agile than you do. So you open-minded about the things that they're going to tell you. And I'm sure you've heard this Mark. But one of the things that like Scrum and I'll speak specifically about Scrum one of the things that Scrum does very well, I mean agile in general, but Scrum is, you know, it shows this mirror right, lays this mirror at the organization, and the first thing that you're going to see are all the flaws, all the pain points you know all the things that are not going well, which is why a lot of people say, oh, scrum doesn't work for us, it's not that.

Lucy O'Keefe: 38:33

But be open to seeing what is wrong and what needs to be changed. And maybe wrong is not the right answer, but what are the things that are not working well or maybe that are impeding us from adopting Scrum or becoming agile? Right, and be willing to work on those right? So don't be so close-minded to think. You know, this is the way we've always done things and it's worked for us. Why do we need to change? You know, think about okay, maybe there is a better way of doing things that's going to help us become more productive, more effective. You know, focus on the customers a little bit more, make sure that we were focusing on outcomes instead of outputs and all of that. So for me, that's the main thing. It's the open-mindedness.

Lucy O'Keefe: 39:21

I've worked with some organizations where even members of the team are so close-minded that it makes it impossible to adopt Scrum, for example, because they're not willing to make those changes. So, and you know what? Everything's an experiment, right. So be open-minded, be okay with experimenting. If it doesn't work, we can pivot. Right, we can do something different. But sorry, long-winded answer again. But being open-minded, you know, is extremely important.

Mark Metze: 39:58

Growth mindset over a fixed mindset.

Lucy O'Keefe: 40:01

Yep definitely.

Mark Metze: 40:03

Well, Lucy, if our listeners out there want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Lucy O'Keefe: 40:09

So LinkedIn is probably the best way. I'm on there daily, so I would love to connect with everyone and chat more if they would like.

Mark Metze: 40:21

Great, so we'll put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, as well as to your training offerings and to the DartFrog Consulting website as well.

Lucy O'Keefe: 40:33

Awesome.

Mark Metze: 40:34

Well, lucy, thank you so much for being our guest today. It's been absolutely wonderful to have you. You've been on the list for a while now, so glad to have you as a guest, and we're going to wrap up here today for another episode of the Agile Within. This has been Mark Metz. Lucy O'Keefe, we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch, and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.