Known as the “Pragmatic Manager," Johanna offers frank advice for tough culture problems. In this episode, we chat a bit about her new book, Modern Management Made Easy, a three volume set. Johanna explains why no one's intentions are enough to create an agile culture. Only our behaviors can create that culture. Which behaviors does the environment encourage? And which behaviors does the environment discourage? That's the culture. So come on in, and find out how Johanna can help your company move its culture in the right direction.
And don't forget to listen for how to win a copy of her new book, Modern Management Made Easy. We will be giving away several copies. Oh... and they are all signed too! What?!
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
Known as the “Pragmatic Manager," Johanna offers frank advice for tough culture problems. In this episode, we chat a bit about her new book, Modern Management Made Easy, a three volume set. Johanna explains why no one's intentions are enough to create an agile culture. Only our behaviors can create that culture. Which behaviors does the environment encourage? And which behaviors does the environment discourage? That's the culture. So come on in, and find out how Johanna can help your company move its culture in the right direction.
And don't forget to listen for how to win a copy of her new book, Modern Management Made Easy. We will be giving away several copies. Oh... and they are all signed too! What?!
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
So today we're going to do something a little bit different. We have a big guest coming up. Joanna Rothman drain has just come out with a book in December of 2020. It's called modern management made easy. It's a three volume set. So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna have a giveaway. Joanne has been so gracious enough to signed, signed several copies of her new book for us. And we're going to give them way. So I'd like you to do is if you like this episode, listen through it. Email me, Greg Miller, the Adger within.com. Tell me what the name of her three volume series is. Just that simple. Send that to me. Tell me what the name is. You'll be entered in a contest. And the other piece is we're looking to get a minimum of 100 downloads as quickly as we can here, want to get to 100 downloads preferably within the first seven days. So tell your friends, if you have friends that don't listen to this podcast, get them on, get them listening to them. You got to get 100 downloads within the, at least the first seven days. I'd like you to email me. Greg Miller within.com gets you entered into that contest. Let me know the name of her three books series. These are signed copies. We have several copies to give away to simply email me and we'll be good to go. So looking forward to the series, if you're not familiar with Joanna, wath Rothman, you will get familiar with her. She's been around for a while. She's written over 18 books. She's really big. Or in conferences she's been in conferences with big other big names in the agile industry, product management management industry. She has a wealth of knowledge. She you'll you'll hear. She's very, uh, very good to talk to. Very interesting. I'm excited to talk with her here. So yeah, that's it. Enter the contest. Here we go. Join a Rothman.
Speaker 2:[inaudible] welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Come be more and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, Greg Miller.
Speaker 3:All right. Welcome back to another episode of the agile within. So today we have a very interesting topic today. We're talking about behaviors and how they create culture. And with us today is our guest. Joanna Rothman. Joanna is known as the pragmatic manager. She offers Frank advice for tough problems. She is also the author of 18 books, about many aspects of product development. Her most recent series of books are called the modern management, easy made series published last December. Welcome to the show, Joanna, thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. Well, I'm so excited to have you here. You have a wealth of knowledge, all the books you've written. So you and I were talking earlier about, um, you said you don't believe in the mindset. You said you believe behaviors, uh, create the culture. So let's dive right into that. Let's start talking about that, that your, your, uh, your opening thoughts on that. So I always intend to be calm and collected and cool. And I'm not, I'm one of those excitable people. I that's, my intention, my mindset is cool, collected, calm. I know it was supposed to be calm, cool, and collected or something. Yeah, that's my mindset. That's not what I do. And so, um, I, I have found that if I look at what people do and I look at what organizations do, not what they say they want to do, I am much better off, and I can, I can figure out how to serve them as a consultant. I can figure out how to be a coach. I can do all kinds of things, but if I, if I take them at their word for what they think they are versus how they actually behave. Yeah. That's um, there's a big difference, right? It's like the, um, say one thing and do the other. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So people have a mindset of, I want to do this, but for some reason they act another way. What, uh, why do you think that is? So I, I, I'm pretty sure it's really well in the organization. Let me start with the organization, because I think in some ways it's easier to discuss that. I'm sure your shine talked about organizational culture in various ways, but I boil it down to how, what we can discuss are there for bidden topics. Are there things that we just don't know about so we can not discuss them? Um, how do we treat each other? Who, who, um, who really advances and who does not, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff about that. How, what is reasonable for people to say and do, and then what the organization rewards. So I bet you has seen that a lot of organizations wanting to move to an agile approach have said, we don't want any more firefighting. We don't want any more heroes. We want collaborative cross functional teams that just finished their work and everything is wonderful and lovely, and right. You've seen that. And, and then something happens, a production support issue, a bad release. And what happens, somebody gets pulled into doing something and that person gets rewarded for their heroics.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So that's where, that's where I say, you know, it's all about the behaviors. So if you have somebody who gets rewarded for heroics, what is the team going to do the next time
Speaker 1:They are going to probably rely back on that hero again.
Speaker 3:Right. And especially, so the more management rewards, the heroics, um, I have this, um, tighter and tighter feedback circle I'm making with my hand. Just imagine the more management rewards heroics, the less frequently, the rest of the team will step up and learn with this, with this hero, or try and work with this hero. Then management by their rewards have totally changed how the organization will respond. And so the intention is cross-functional collaborative teams. That reality is heroes with specific expertise who continue to get rewarded for that expertise. How does that agile transformation goal? Not very well.
Speaker 1:Right. And that's legacy behavior, right? That's yeah. That's something that, um, to your point, they say, we're trying to be more collaborative and you said, not firefighting, but then I've seen this too, before the, the knee jerk reaction is to fall back on the old behavior. You know, you know, you're trying to go to this new behavior, but you fall back on the old behavior because it's what you've done. And that's suddenly, um, I've seen things like that come up, like you said, and suddenly all this agile stuff is out the window. Right. And well, you know, that's just going to slow us down when we go back, let's just go back and get this fixed and get this done. And then once we're through that, then we can go back to the agile stuff. I've seen that a lot before.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So that's why that's, and that's just one little tiny example of why I think that behaviors and culture are really much more important than any mindset.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 3:How do we,
Speaker 1:Let's go into that? How do we change those behaviors? So we just said, we have the manager going to the team with the hero and, uh, but saying that's not what he or she wants. How do we get that manager to act differently, behave differently.
Speaker 3:So I think a big piece of it is, is recognizing that well, even while we're in, uh, an environment of craziness, right, we have a really big problem that we really need to think about what will actually solve this problem now and prevent it for the future. So a lot of times managers get rewarded for short-term thinking. And, um, if the manager is rewarded for short-term thinking, the manager will reward other people for short-term thinking. So we need to somehow balance the short-term and long-term. So when I see, um, a disaster, a crisis, um, I think it was Jerry one Burke who said a crisis is just the end of an illusion, something like that. Yeah. Which is a really excellent, uh, line to remember. So I that's, when I go and think I could, I could rely on, on Greg for finishing this and fixing this and the next 20 minutes, which is probably not going to be 20 minutes. It's probably going to be several hours. And if I get Craig to work with other, with the entire team, I now have trained the entire team to be able to do this the next time. And maybe Greg is the can, can mentor and coach other people while they learn. And maybe the other people also have really good ideas so that they can prevent this from happening. The next time I find that with crises, we often think, Oh, so-and-so can fix this. But when you, when you depend on the expert, you often create many more bottlenecks and cues. So if we can figure out how to not depend on just one expert, but if we can depend on the entire team as a team of experts who understand this problem, now we have a lot of resilience built into the organization.
Speaker 1:Yes. Totally agree. Yeah. I'm, I'm actually there right now. There's a, um, and it's the, um, it's not just the management, it's the person to that. Who that the hero person who has all that knowledge, especially if they've been doing it for 20, 25 years and are used to that. Um, I found in my experience trying to get that person to share knowledge with the other team members that, that desperately want that knowledge, they want to grow themselves and the hero who has that knowledge. No, that's my job security. Right. That's I, I'm the one that the manager comes to and relies upon. And, and I'm, my job is secure because I have that, but then you retire or you leave. And I try to, I try to say that I say, what happens if this person leaves or that the, you know, the, the common statement, what happens if this person is hit by a bus, um, then what, then what do we do? And, and no one thinks that's ever going to happen. It never does happen. But, um, I found out, I found out, um, sometimes like, even when like layoffs come around, people are laid off, are let go. And, um, this actually, this just happened. Um, it didn't have, I was asking someone, Oh yeah, it was at my company. And I said, um, my people leader was telling me that, um, uh, the company issued, um, retirement early retirement to a bunch of people and based on years of experiencing so blindly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know where I'm going. Right. And so, so blindly said anybody who has, you know, this many years of experience, here's your buyout. And it went to the people had no idea where that people re worked for well turned out. Um, it went to like the entire, this entire team of five people, they all got it. And fortunately, none of them took it. Um, but I was like, Oh my goodness. And she said, this was a system that could have brought down the company. It was very heavily relied upon. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And then that's when I asked her, well, why couldn't they know? And she's like, no, it went out. It went blindly. And so yeah, your, your response was, was, yeah, it was interesting. So,
Speaker 3:I mean, there's all kinds of issues about why would you just blindly ask people to take a package? It's all about managing salary money, as opposed to thinking about the value that people offer the organization, but even, even if you did want to manage salary money. And I, I mean, we all, even nonprofit organizations are not, they're not, um, no revenue, they just don't return any, any money to shareholders. Right. So everybody needs to make money. And I think it's really important to say if we, if we are worried about our, our bottom line, right, we are, we are worried about our, our ability to bring money into the company, their revenue versus our fixed expenses. And we want to decrease our fixed expenses. What could we do? And maybe, maybe offering early retirement is the right thing, but doing it blindly without thinking about which projects to cancel instead. So you can maybe have more teams on fewer projects. And I have always found that when we reduce the whip, the work in progress for the entire organization, now, all of a sudden, a lot of things happen a lot faster. This is, this is actually Little's law in, in personified. Right. I did not know about little saw when I first wrote, um, I should say the first version of the project portfolio book, but it was very clear to me that the more stuff we had going on the longer everything would take. So if we, if we wanted to finish stuff and get revenue for it, we needed to reduce the number of projects we had in flight fine. And, and even if you do that, and in even, especially, we're recording this in February of 2021, so the pandemic is still with us. It's been with us for almost a year now. Um, people are really, there are a ton of managers who were still kind of confused about where, where there should be going. I totally understand that. Um, however, if you are still in the situation of, um, not enough revenue and you're worried about your fixed expenses, the best possible, excuse me, the best possible and easiest thing to do is reduce the number of projects. Um, put people on as cross-functional collaborative teams on the projects you have remaining. Now, now you've seen what you can release. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So
Speaker 1:One thing I've seen, and maybe you have, I'm sure you have an opinion on this is that, um, companies are hesitant companies I've been to are hesitant, hesitant to take on fewer projects. They, they understood. They, they go agile. We go scrum. We come in there and we tell them we have to prioritize. And we have to say no to things that is very difficult. I found, it seems like my opinion, where I said is, it seems like more and more companies want to be everything to everybody. Um, and I don't interest in how you feel about that.
Speaker 3:So I, I see I'm, I run a consulting cohort once a year for, uh, for people who want to be successful consultants. And what I have found is that the most successful consultants focus on a small class of people who are their ideal clients. It's the same thing for companies. Um, until you get to the point of being an Amazon or a Walmart, where your, your driving force is distribution, you need to find and focus on that. The smallest clientele that you can have successfully, this is not, I like to, when I was teaching my project, I think the most recent project portfolio class I taught, I said, this is like baby shoes. And the women got it right away. And the men said, what do you mean? Yeah, you're a man. You're thinking baby shoes are supposed to go with everything, right? They're a neutral color. You can wear them with quote, anything that is not my experience. I have had bass shoes. They sit in my closet for years and years and years because they don't go with anything because no, this is, this is exactly the same problem. If you don't focus on a customer segment and really understand their problems and understand what you can do for them, you will always be so spread a part that you, that you cannot focus on anything. And that's, that's one of the many, many horrible things that happens when, when you don't know your strategy, you don't know your driving force. You just don't know enough.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. That's, that's, it's like the, um, yeah. Focus, which is a scrum value and, and, um, stay in your lane basically. Right. And, and I've, I've seen, I've seen comments on LinkedIn. People disagree with that. They, they think that, um, what was it Tesla going into? Um, Oh, something really bizarre. I can't remember what it was, but, um, yeah, the concept of doing something completely different outside of cars, and I'm thinking, why in the world would they want to do that? But maybe to your point, maybe, maybe they're big enough that they can do that. But, um, I'm a big proponent of focusing and, uh, companies I've been to, they, they want to do everything probably because to your point, they don't know their strategy and they, they get wind of something that comes along that a competitor is doing and they decide, Oh, we have to have it. Maybe because our competitor has it. So that's why we're doing it. They don't really know why they're doing it.
Speaker 3:So that's one of the really big things and, and modern management book, three, uh, practical ways to lead an innovative organization in the first chapter I said, start with why, why does the company exist? Why are you doing this particular project or product? Um, why for everything? And if you, if you think about starting with why, and then, and then you say we live to serve these kinds of customers. So I will, I will say that with, um, I have never been in a company as well-funded, as I believe any of the Tesla companies are never. And I, you know, I might like working with one of those very well-funded companies at some point in my career, I think it's not going to happen. So, um, I continue to work with companies that are not strapped for cash, but have to manage their money as almost all of us do. And that means we have to make choices. So instead of, I mean, the scrum values actually came from a lot of the lean thinking and stuff. That's been around for many, many, many years, right? This is it. This is not new to scrub. So if I think about what is the focus, in fact, I think that a focus might have you even have come from XP. I don't remember. But, um, if you think about lean thinking, then, then you might say focus is a really big deal because if we have to manage our whip, if we have to manage our work in progress, what are we choosing to focus on and what are we choosing not to do right now or ever correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, totally. Yes, definitely. Um, so yeah, yeah, definitely focuses a big part here. So I'm looking, I'm looking through here. We were talking about earlier, some of the myths that, uh, were in your, in your second book here of modern management series made easy. And, uh, switching gears a little bit here, you talk about one here of, um, myth that people don't need credit. Let's dive into that a little bit.
Speaker 3:So I think it's, I think it's really interesting that, um, a lot of people think, well, maybe too many managers actually think this, that they don't need to, um, to tell other people in the organization what a great job this particular team or set of teams has actually done. And I have found that the more we actually give people credit across your organization, the more that credit kind of reflects back on us. So, um, at the beginning of this, I, I told a story of, um, of a boss I had where she, she used to tell everybody, um, in, in the senior leadership team and the operations committee, um, anyone who would listen, what a great job we did. And she would say, um, Jr did this really interesting thing. She found this really interesting problem. Have, have you ever seen this problem before? Because at the time I was a tester. And so, um, she, you know, she would say, Hey, did anybody see this where we just unaware of this thing? And so she, not only, so she used giving me credit to also start people thinking about what we were doing with our products. It was a really, she was underhanded in the best possible way. Right. That was very subtle and really wonderful. So when they wanted a program had been a, a tester and then a project manager and the testing department, and then when they wanted a program manager to bring all these software teams together about, I don't know, 30 or 40 teams, they, they tapped me because not because I was moving up in the organization, but because people knew what I had done, they said, Joanna thinks really strangely, this is a positive thing. She's organized on also a positive thing. And she gets people to do stuff, even though she's not their manager. Right. Also a positive thing. So my boss had kind of, um, so those seeds over the previous year or two, even, I don't remember how long. And that was all because she gave me credit. Now I did the work, right. I mean, I actually, all that work that she gave me credit for. So this was not fake, but I, I think that when, when we sow the seeds for people to be able to move across or up or down the organization, we, we, I mean, she looked great. My boss looked fantastic because here she was helping me do great work. And we, we support people in their next role, whatever that next role is.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. I like how, yeah. Instead of suppressing what you did and maybe taking credit for it herself, she showed that you did it. And it, I think I agree with you. I think in the end it makes a manager look better. If they show, Hey, this person did well, this person did this and they, and, you know, inadvertently looks good upon them. I totally agree with you. I, I, I'm a scrum master, so I don't have anybody reporting to me obviously. And I try to, I try to, um, bring up the wins that, that people do on the team all the time in front of the team. We do, uh, in our retros, I do a kudos thing where, um, we can give recognition to one another and I give recognition to people all the time. And I do, I'm kind of a lead into the next thing I do. One-on-ones with, um, with my team members where I am. And I can find that you can, you can learn a lot about people in one-on-ones. And that, that kind of brings me to my next point. You, you also mentioned in the book, um, another myth that you don't need one-on-ones, uh, this is a myth again. And I liked that when I read that, I was like, yeah, people think they don't need. And, and because I was just thinking of some things I've recently learned about, especially, especially now being, you mentioned the pandemic, we are February 20, 20, 21. We were in the pandemic, we're home. And I've been working from home yeah. For almost a year. And, um, I think one-on-ones more than ever are needed. Um, not that they weren't in the office, but I think in the office I've I found myself, uh, what I miss is the, um, unplanned, you know, uh, conversations that happen, you know, organically that you, you walk past somebody or you're coming in early in the morning, they're sitting there, Hey, you just start talking those little that you can learn things now. Uh, I have to have to be more focused, uh, on that. And I've, I've found by doing one-on-ones over the, just over the last couple of weeks with a fairly new team that I have made a few months. Um, I'm I th I think they're one, I think they're thinking one way, but I don't really know. So I'm talking to them, I'm digging in and I find all kinds of stuff that I didn't know, um, that I can, that I can then use to help improve the team. So
Speaker 3:What do you think about the don't need one-on-ones so, yeah, so, so back in the office, we could wander around right in, in, behind closed stores, Esther. And I describe this as management, by walking around and listening that listening part, we don't get to listen when we're all remote, or even when some people are remote, we just don't have that. We also don't have the coffee room. We don't have the cafeteria or the lunchroom. I mean, I know a lot of, a lot of organizations just did away with those, which is crazy thinking, but fine, but we don't have, we have no serendipity when we're all at home to run into each other. So one-on-ones are really important. And I'm not sure if the manager is also having one-on-ones because I, I I'm sure that you are having much more team oriented one-on-ones then career development oriented one-on-ones. Yeah. And what they really interesting thing about team-oriented one-on-ones is you can actually say, um, I am not a fan of kudos. I am a fan of appreciations. So I actually, I, I much prefer to say the words, I appreciate you, Greg, for whatever. Um, actually, let me, I'm going to say this now. I appreciate you for scheduling our meetings at five minutes after the hour. That always gives me time to finish the meeting that goes up up until the hour, take my little bio break and get my water and come back and not be late. Right. That's that's an honest appreciation. You, you know, I really feel that way. And, and that's, I I'm sure that that's a little thing that you do and believe me, it makes a huge difference. Cause I was, um, I had a meeting before this, as usual as everybody does, so yeah. So that's, I really prefer appreciations because they are specific about the thing and it, it tells you what the impact was on me. Right. So that's, so that's one thing. Yeah. Um, but I, I find that when we think about a one-on-one is the first signal producing meeting, you might see things in a daily scrum at the team does daily scrums, you might see things in mobbing or swarming or pairing. Um, but it's really hard, especially as a remote scrum master to, um, you don't want to, for a retro to see what's going on that's way too. Um, and, and the team, the team might have story meetings, intermittently and maybe little cousins, but it's so important to say, how can I support the team and their teamwork in your role? And the one-on-one is great for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And yeah, like you said, so the one, the one, um, pushback I've gotten from, in, in every team I've been on, is that not just around the one-on-ones, but all of the events is that we don't have time. Right. We have too many meetings or the meetings and, uh, they do say, yes, they have one-on-ones with their manager. And so I try not to step on their toes and, and book them with too many meetings. I just do a half an hour. And, um, yes, it's not, it's not, well, I don't come in there with it. I just come in, I don't have an agenda. I just come in there open book and say, what's going on? This is, you know, I just, I want to offer my support here. And I know, um, like with my team, I say, you know, scrum is new. I know it's a new way for you working. What questions do you have? How can I help you? How can I support you? And just let them open up and see what they say. And some people have opened up about their career and say, Hey, you know, I don't, uh, I don't like that. I found out that, um, a couple of people don't feel part of the team and I had no idea. And, uh, until that one-on-one, and they want to get more involved in, in, uh, this one person doesn't want to do support anymore. She wants to get more into, into actual development. I had no idea about that. Um, and I said, you know, I, I said, I do, I do, I do meet with, with, uh, these people's managers. Cause I want to get to know him better, not to report on them, but I said, Hey, uh, I might be able to influence this. Did you mention this to, to your manager? Yes, I did. Okay. What did he say? And then they tell me, and it was positive. And I said, well, would you, would you be okay if I brought it up too? Cause I think this is kind of the direction I want us to go in. You and I were talking earlier about the cross functioning, um, not being in your silos. So this is what I wanted to get towards more and more of the pair programming. Uh, cause this team is still kind of siloed. So I'm wanting to break that. So here's my opportunity to do that. So I would have never known any of that stuff had I never done one-on-one so, uh, yeah, I'm definitely a big proponent of them.
Speaker 3:Well, and so what's really interesting is I always have this tension when I'm coaching a new to agile team, they, they say, I often get brought in after scrum looks like it's falling apart or because I'm yeah. So when the, and they say to me, we have a planning meeting, we have a story, um, refinement meeting, we have estimation meetings. We have to meet for this. We have a daily standup that last half an hour. Oh yeah. So I mean, they just go on and on and I say, so the fastest way to reduce your meetings is to work together. What, where can you work together during the day? Not, not at a stand up let's let's exclude the stand-ups. What kinds of things could you do together that would make it, so you either did not need this standup or major standup shorter or reduced the length of your planning meetings or reduced the, the number and duration of your refinement meetings are of your story creation. Um, you know, and that's when I start to realize that the product owner is looking, you know, 14 weeks ahead, not to, I mean, well, they're supposed to have a roadmap for the next 18 months and all of this is all of this is because people are handing off work. So you read, you read these books and I, uh, I am a huge fan of flow efficiency thinking, how do we get teams of people to collaborate? So how does the product owner collaborate with all the other product people that he or she needs to collaborate with? How does a product owner collaborate with a team so that not so much as to reduce a number of meetings, but so you reduce the decision time between meetings so that the overall we, um, time reduction is in the delays between decisions, right? How can you reduce that? And I find that when, when I challenged teams to think about how they could work together to stop starting, right, we start this and then we have a question, we start this, we have a question. How can we, how can we stop all those questions? Not by ignoring them, but by collaborating. And that changes the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yes. So that's, that's more difficult in, uh, um, in the pandemic that we're in, right?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So, um, one of the things, um, I'm not sure if, if I shared this with you, Mark killed me. And I wrote, um, from CAS to successful distributed agile teams. And we have a spreadsheet that we, we freely give out the Google link for this, um, where you can figure out your team's hours of overlap and what I've been saying in the pandemic, especially with parents trying to educate their children and taking care of dogs and taking care of parents, the pressures on people are horrible. Just horrible. Right now I have started to say to people, can you find 20 minutes at a time to collaborate with your colleagues? And some of the developers have said to me, Johanna, I need an hour or two of thinking. And I say, I understand that. And while you might have an hour or two, we're thinking your colleagues don't always have the same hour or two. So what would it take for you to organize the work, if you, as a team to organize the work and figure out how to proceed from here so that you could optimize for those 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes sessions at a time, what would you have to do as a collaborative team to prepare everybody to often do their own thing? Or could you actually, if you had all the people together for 20 or 30 minutes, could you mob on something and make a lot of progress? And the answer is, I don't know, right? I mean, maybe that's not going to work for your team, but the more we think about collaborating as teams, the better our results are in my experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I totally agree that. Yeah. I'm trying to get my team to, I think they work well together, but they're still in their silos. They still, I know this, I know this, but they do. I have got them to understand that the daily scrum, uh, they do like the interaction with one another. So yeah, I do. Um, I do have to get to one more thing here that, that is sticking in my head here that you, uh, um, this really stuck out to me and my, one of my pet peeves too. Uh, one of your HMIS is,
Speaker 3:Um, well,
Speaker 1:The people are, uh, people are interchangeable resources. I hate that by the way. So I have to get, we have to talk about that. I have to get your opinion on that.
Speaker 3:Well, people are quite resourceful, right? People are very interesting. They have all kinds of capabilities and skills. We had no idea that they have, but nobody is in FTE for people who don't know if that's full-time equivalent, FTEs are only on paper and spreadsheets you. So I mean, you and I both kind of act as scrum. Well, you do act as a scrum master. I have performed that service for some teams. I have often performed that service for leadership teams. Although wouldn't call it a scrum master kind of role, but it's that facilitative leadership kind of role, right? That, that we both play, right? You and I are not interchangeable. We are not, there are people who probably really appreciate your, your coal common. Collectedness Just for example. And then there are people who appreciate my craziness and, and those, those people are not the same, either some. So I got feedback from a client, um, Oh, I don't know, years and years ago I came into work. I got my coffee. My mouth did not shut up. How was your weekend? How was your evening? How are your kids? My kids did this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And finally, one of the guys actually said to me, I don't know how to answer you. You asked me 14 questions in the last 30 seconds. I said, Oh, I'm extroverted. And this guy is a big time introvert. I should shut up. So I mean, we, even, if that was the only thing that was different about us, it's a huge, huge difference. So how can we possibly treat people as interchangeable resources? This is, um, this is the craziness and the fact that we call HR human resources.
Speaker 1:Right, right there. It's yeah. You're set up for that. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I don't know. Um, if you've done, I'm sure you've done some research on that. W where just my curiosity, where did, where did that term evolve from resources to apply to people? Do you know where that even, how did that start? Do we know that?
Speaker 3:Um, so it's all from cost accounting, right? If you, if you put people and their salaries in a spreadsheet and you, you use cost accounting, you start to think of people as resources and cost accounting arose from slavery. If you have not read Caitlin Rosenthal's accounting for slavery, you are missing a huge piece of necessary management history. It's horrifying, it's astonishing. It's true. And, uh, I know if I could, I mean, I w I wish that people would read my books, but I think if, if people started with Rosenthal's accounting for slavery and they realized how cost accounting has changed our language, and therefore our thinking that might actually really help in the organization, which is if I can circle back around you and I got started on this thing on this recording, because you had reached out and said, you thought there was the agile mindset. I thought it was behaviors. And when I talked about culture and what, what we can discuss and how we treat each other, when we think about people as resources, that is a big part of how we treat each other, that people with this spreadsheets think that everything can be, and every one can be reduced to a number somehow. And I love my spreadsheets. I am not quite the spreadsheet queen, but I am. I really love them. I run my business on my spreadsheets, but I do not account for humans and my spreadsheets. And that's a huge, huge difference. Right.
Speaker 1:You really got my mind thinking on this one, this, this is, yeah. I wanted to get to, I will definitely read that book accounting for slavery. That's so this is, I've seen a lot of, um, lot of people in the agile world, including me hate this word. And I just wanted to understand where it came from. And, um, so as you were talking there, you got me thinking if you're talking about spreadsheets and cost accounting, and well, when you start a re we're, we're given, we're given, everyone's given an employee ID, right. A number, right. I guess you could boil it down to that too. Right. If they look at the number, take away the name, if they look at a number and then the salary, right. It's all numbers, right? That's all they care about. This, this ID, this person's number, whatever, like in prison, I think in prison, they, in prison, they can't even use their names. They have to use their number. Um, yeah, I heard I, so just, yeah, a quick story here. I was in, um, true story. I was in tech support early in my career, um, supporting the website and, uh, got a call, um, came in from, from someone. And I, and I didn't know what the person said. I thought it said, uh, Emmett something and trying to look it up and trying to look it up and, and, um, came back to the person and the person was saying, no, um, this is, I thought it said Emmett. He was saying inmate, um, such and such and such. I was like, Oh, he said, this is inmate Bob, blah, blah, blah. I was like, and so I can't look that up in my system, right. That doesn't come up, um, in, in our, in our, to take notes or to look up what company he's calling from, he's calling from a prison and, uh, come to find out. I don't think I asked this person, but I was talking to coworkers and Eric. Yeah. I don't think in prison, they can use, they can, things like that. They can't use their name. They just use a number. So, yeah, that just got me thinking. So, yeah. That would make sense. You talked about slavery. Yeah. And that would the I'm sure. Uh, back then, they probably didn't talk, call them by their names. I'm sure they use some dehumanizing way, but yeah. Yeah. And that's how, I guess that's how they do it. You know, if we're just resources, like a, um, like a, like I have a, I have a company laptop. Right. And it has a, um, has a sticker with an, with a number on it. Right. And when, when you call up support, they say, what's your resource number. I've actually been asked that before on your, on your part. And that's what, that's how they treat us, uh, inadvertently. They probably don't think they are, but yeah, that mindset, like you said, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, and, and a laptop is a resource. It depreciates over time. Right. However, people learn over time. People get more valuable over time. How can you, uh, and that's, that's why people are resourceful because we learn and we grow over time. But that's why thinking about people as a numbers on a spreadsheet is, and, and that example, you said before where, um, they took the oldest people or the people with the longest service, let me not call them. Right. The people along the service and wanted to, to offer them early retirement. That's right. As resource thinking. Totally resource thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. And, and, and of course, I mean, my first question out of the gate, when I heard that was to my people, leader was well, didn't, they didn't, they look at that all these people were on a team and she's like, no, no, they did it blindly. They just looked at, they looked at the people years of service and everybody got the letter regardless of, of where you worked. And I said, well, that's short term. That's very, short-sighted, that's very, I mean, you could have devastated your, you could have done it. You devastated your own company inadvertently. I'm sure that's not what they intended to do, but, uh, they went into their spreadsheets, like you said, and, and solid, and just send it out the letters and the, this entire team. Got it.
Speaker 3:So that's, that's one of the myths in, in, um, book three, which is I can manage by spreadsheet. Yeah. I have. I mean, that's, um, the spreadsheet I have, there is, uh, a manager came in and wanted to manage by every team's velocity, which is kind of the most stupid thing I can imagine, but I, I should have used this example, although I'm not sure people would have believed me if I had used your example.
Speaker 1:They wouldn't have believed, you know, it's not real. Yeah. Yeah. I, I found that and this is, uh, this is, yeah. I found it very hard to believe, but, uh, this, this, this topic really fascinates me. So, so what can we, how can we change that behavior that I really like this? Um, if you want to give your example of book three about manger by spreadsheets, that will be great. We can talk about that. I really like this. Um, treating people like resources. It's not a good thing. How do we, how do we change that?
Speaker 3:So I think that the, for the first thing I always do is to say, when people say the word resource, I say, do you mean people because the language is so embedded in our organizations, the first thing is to become aware of the language. And when, when they say yes, I say, okay. Um, and I did this with a recent class. I actually said for the duration of this class, of this workshop, can you please use the word people instead of resource? I, uh, do I have permission to ping you a little bit? If I hear you say the word resource and everybody agreed that was a working agreement, and that really helped us because we could talk about needing machines and needing software and needing permission. Those are resources versus needing people, right? So we could, we can start to separate out the actual problems that we were having. So that was the first thing. The second thing is, don't understand why you're talking about resources when you mean people. And I often find is it's a combination of, uh, we need to cut costs. We need to get more products at the door. We need to do something. So, um, that's when I say it's time to look at the project portfolio, which projects are we going to postpone for? Now, we're going to stop doing them. This is reducing the organizations whip so that we can get fewer projects done and out, and maybe making us some money. So we get some, some breathing room for the organization, right. And that's, that's not easy, but it's doable. And then I really like to, to think about how, how do people think about the organization? And I, I find that they, they say, well, the organization should be a well-oiled machine. That's a very mechanistic view of the organization. I, I, I don't really like to say let's embrace the organization's messiness. Let's optimize for the fact that we have people and people are resourceful and people could do interesting work if we tell them what we want them to do. So
Speaker 1:I, I, I say, how can you clarify the overarching goal for, for the organization, for this team, for this department, where wherever you are, how can we create the overarching goal for the people to know what to do? And then how can we encourage collaboration? And then how can we release work as early as possible to get feedback on? So these are the agile principles, but it's not a specific agile approach. And I find that when, when I help people reframe the culture from one of resources to one of opportunity, they start to think differently about how they manage. Right. Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. I could talk to you all day. So you have a lot of, a lot of great information, so, um, yeah. I want to thank you for your time. That's about all that I, I had to, uh, go over. So once again, this has been, uh, Joanna Rothman, Joanne is known as the pragmatic manager. She has written over 18 books. We've been discussing some of the myths from her latest series called modern management made easy, and we want to thank Joanna for her time. I definitely have to have you back on sometime Joanna. I can talk to you for a long time. I'm definitely going to read the accounting for slavery. I think that will help me in my, uh, understanding more of the resources. And, um, so yeah, thanks everyone for joining us on this episode of the agile within, uh, please reach out to me on any of the social media. Uh, you can get a hold of me through my email, Greg Miller at the agile, within.com with questions, show suggestions. I really appreciate that. Any comments that you might have, how the show went, leave us a, like a subscribe to us on your podcast app. So you can get notifications of the latest episodes coming out, and please make sure to check me out on Patrion. If you want to subscribe and support this show financially, I would definitely appreciate it. This is all paid for by myself and any money that you could help would go a long way if you like these episodes so we could have on guests. Like Joanna. Definitely appreciate that. So thanks for joining us. See you again. Next episode, this has been Greg, the agile within where we help you to be more agile.
Speaker 2:[inaudible].