Arguing Agile

AA231 - Real Strategies to Help Influence Without Authority

• Season 1 • Episode 230

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You're expected to drive transformation but can't fire anyone. You need to deliver results but don't control budgets. Welcome to the reality of leading software development efforts - all responsibility, zero authority.

Join Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel and Product Manager Brian Orlando as we discuss proven strategies for building influence when you have no formal power, including:

• Building relationships before you need them
• Leveraging expertise without becoming a gatekeeper 
• Creating value through results delivery
• Navigating authenticity vs strategic communication
• Why being right isn't enough

Whether you're a product manager caught between stakeholders, a team lead struggling with team dynamics, or an agile coach trying to drive organizational change, this episode gives you tactics that actually work in the real world.

#AgileCoaching #ProductManagement #Leadership

Tags: agile coaching, product management, scrum master, influence without authority, leadership skills, team dynamics, organizational change, agile transformation, product operating model, stakeholder management

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Website: http://arguingagile.com

INTRO MUSIC
Toronto Is My Beat
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Om, I wanna talk to you about a dirty secret of agile coaches. Ooh. Okay. We're, we're getting out all the dirty secrets this episode. You're expected to drive transformation. I know we don't say transformation anymore; you're expected to drive towards the product operating model. See what I did? See what I did? Oh, nice. We're selling books on the podcast. You're also expected to deliver results. You're expected to change organizational behavior but you can't fire anyone and you don't have control of budget and you don't have control of executive decisions like they make those. So, yeah, you're essentially a middle manager except powerless, I feel like one of those clowns in the circus with his hand shackled in a burlap sack. You're supposed to do all of these things, but you have absolutely no authority. That's right. On anything. That's right. We want you to move mountains and we don't give you any tools to do it with. So that's the question then because there are coaches out there that can do it. Yeah. Oh boy. What a great topic. Some savvy coaches can pull off a lot but they've built up a repertoire of their skills over their career. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about. What are some of the things that are in your control even without authority that you can try to control your teams into, into doing, but through just influence basically. Let's start with the premise that if you don't have any authority, is there, is there anything you can do? Right? We'll start there. How do you do that? Well, first of all, you are a catalyst, right? As a change agent, and you need to establish trust with your team. If they don't trust you to make changes you've already lost, right? So that's the first thing is establish trust and credibility with them. And then you can move. Smaller, like rocks first, maybe pebbles. Then borders before you get to the mountain. So how do you, how do you do this with a bunch of people that you don't even know when you first go in there, but they all know that you have absolutely no authority. So you have no hire or fire authority, you have no authority to move team structure. Eventually you'll get to the point where you can do this. You can highly suggest you can do all of those, but they typically fall on deaf ears if you're first you know, first into a, into an organization trying to do this. So let's start with trust. First of all, how do you build trust? I was hoping you would ask that question. And you build thrust you, you build thrust, you build, you build thrust by. Yeah. Yeah. You turn, turn the airplane up to 11, you turn the knob up to 11. That's how, no, you, I don't know. I should I cut that out? I think I should leave that in. Just leave it. You build it by doing what most people would probably tell you in this category, which is in order to approach influence by authority, you need to build strong personal relationships. And I just gave this networking event we were at last night. I just gave this advice to somebody who said, well, I'm a scrum master and you know, I'm having difficulties and I dunno what to do. And, my suggestion was, well if you're a scrum master that like, it tells me that. You are a people person and that you like building relationships. So what I would suggest is you start cultivating deep relationships with people all around the business because you never know when your team is, got the call. You know, pull that thread and ask for a favor, and it's, it'd be way better if it was coming from a friend, coming from someone that they trusted because they have a relationship with. Now the team may be too busy to have those relationships, but now, like your job is exclusively to have all the relationships with all the people in the business. So that in the future you have that stored up. So yeah. I would add a little more to that and say it's not just building relationships mm-hmm. In the business if you're a matrix organization, you should try and build relationships everywhere. I mean, everywhere so it starts with maybe at the reception desk security. Because your team may need you to come in on a weekend one time to come in and maybe do a deployment or something like that. It helps if you have these connections, if you know people well, or in my case where you work outta government offices, sometimes, like it really helps the security people Because you're coming in with guests every other week and they're going through the signing process or whatever. It's much easier if you just know all those people. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. So if you're coming in as a scrum master or Azure coach, one of the first things you should do is do a, what I call a force field map. Mm-hmm. So it's, again, two by two typical sort of BCG matrix. Mm-hmm. And just write down who are the people that can help you and who are the people that can hinder you. Right? So the the detractors, if you will, and put their names in these. You're not sharing this document with anybody. First of all, this is just for your own use so you can understand where things lie. When it talks about strong and weak forces, it's just about alliances, right? Where do you need to form alliances and, three out of the four corners, I'll tell you, just jumping ahead a bit, okay? Three out of the four corners should be where you need to build alliances. And the fourth corner is not where you don't need to. It's just not now. So you'll come back to it at some point, right? When you start to get to know more people. So net, net, all of them, you need to build a alliance as much as possible across all of them. Like in the old arguing, agile back and forth here, the kind of what you're outlining is the relationship first method of building influence. So I'm trying to think if there's a pushback on this. I really can't think of any in this broad category of like, the more relationships that you have banked, the more effective that you'll be. You know, like this usually comes out in another podcast that we've talked about. This comes out as communication skill or other things. Like it's not exactly that though. No. It's, this is so communication skills can be learned. We'll come back to whether this is something that you can learn or is it innate collaboration we've talked about in previous podcasts. Right. But this is a bit more than that. When you're collaborating you need something from them. They need something from you. Mm-hmm. But when you're building relationships, there's none of that. Well, here's a pushback that actually is a good one. I mean, it's not good, but it's as good as you're gonna get from me in this category, which is, you're building these relationships, the real substance isn't truly you don't actually care. You're just doing it to, oh, you know what I mean? You're basically manipulating, right? And like you people realized that you're not being authentic. So it's like you're spending a lot of time doing it. You may as well not bother if you're, if you're doing that right, you're basically faking it. And, and don't, don't do it because you've wasted to your point, you've wasted time and energy getting to the point where you're getting nothing from it. In fact, it's worse than not doing it at all because people will know that you are, you're faking it and then you've got no chance of getting that trust. And the other. Part of this is gonna be those people that you will definitely run into that say, oh, oh, that's can't you be like, well, you're just talking to people can, and you're not even really necessarily about work stuff. Can't, can't, isn't there important things you could be doing? You know, you're gonna run into those people. Yeah. I try to just go around those people because there's nothing more important than building relationships right. The time to build them isn't when you need something. The time to build them is ahead of time when you don't. Just go ask people, walk by the security desk and just say hi to them you know, how's their day going? Seriously? I mean that, if you do that, what will happen is your name, your face will stick in their minds, and when you go in again, they'll greet you with a smile. Now they're already open. With the possibility if you did have a need you know, like getting in the building after hours, whatever it might be. So the time to do it is not when you need something, it's before. And also don't stop. Just keep doing that is that the old, like one's the best time to plant a tree like 20 years ago? Is that, is that that kind of like day one? It kind of is it really is day one. Yeah. When, when's the best times? 20 years ago, when, when's, when's the next best time? It's like right now, today. It's never too late okay. If you choose to go through the process of building your influence by building relationships, which I think we both will suggest, like on the product management side, I'm definitely, I'm only trying to play devil's advocate here, but on product management, that's just not a job you can do without doing this. So if you choose to do it, like to be authentic. Be reciprocal. Don't don't try to shortcut it, that kinda stuff. This is not something you can shortcut and I would say, I dunno if you have any particular advice on like, ways to go about it, like focus on other people's, like goals, challenges, you know what I mean?'Cause you never, you also, like the other side of this is you never know when you might be in a position to unblock somebody that you didn't really even realize that. Exactly. So you've heard me say this many times with them. This actually came up last time. WIIFM or what's in it for me? So think about it from the other person's perspective of what's in it for them. If you do that, you might be able to help them. And so that, that's also true that be prepared to give. If not, just listen. That goes a long way if you just listen and then make a suggestion, maybe somebody can help them, right? So you can kind of connect the dots. That in and of itself is a good is a good thing and, and a great help to people that are asking you for things. So, yeah. I mean, the time was yesterday and now, right? Basically. Yeah. Yeah. if we're gonna transition to the next category, the, the expertise and credibility as influence, this is, I kind of hinted at this, you're gonna get this from people, is like, well, my expertise is my credibility. I don't need to, I don't need to waste time. On talking to people and having one-on-ones and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world I don't need to spend time having one-on-ones. I am smart. Look at me. Anyway sorry, I, I was gonna curse there. So that school of thought argues that deep expertise and demonstrated competence creates a natural authority. So I don't need. The the bank of influence by connecting and making all these personal relationships that we talk about already in the podcast. I don't need that because I have the authority.'cause I like people respect me.'cause I'm amazing. When you consistently provide valuable insights and solve problems that other people can't, then you become the go-to person people seek your input regardless of they like you or not. And then now you have the influence. That's, that's, I I I see you cringing. Yeah, I see you cringing. I, I I can understand, the thinking that because you're an expert, people will. Come to you, right? But that's not the same as having influence. That's not the same at all. That's simply, they're simply coming to you for your technical prowess. Yeah. For your, for your guidance. Yeah. Or, or because they have to, presumably because they have to, because they didn't have to, they would go to somebody else who does have influence, right. And empathy and all of that. So people like this, people who think this way typically don't like to share information. And when they, when they find themselves out there looking for work for whatever reason they're gonna be in for a surprise, rude awakening. Yes, indeed. Because the next organization they go to, depending on the culture of that org, they may not fit at all. No. Well, you won't, you won't get through the interview process. That's right. Yes. Because you'll come across as the know it all. Yeah rather than somebody who builds bridges yeah. Unfortunately I've seen a few people known a few people like that in my career. Ah, yeah. I mean, I'm telling you, even executives don't like to talk to these people, but they talk to them because they have to. And these people typically cannot talk at the same level. So an example, right? These people are in a position of authority, so they automatically find themselves being invited to things like conferences. Sure. Or user user conferences it's find here trade conferences, right? Yeah. So they're, they're the trade conference at your booth and in comes somebody else, potentially a prospect. Mm-hmm. And they want to talk. And these people talk differently. Yeah. Yeah. They talk tech talk. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. And they talk down to people that don't understand the technology that they understand. None of that bodes well for the organization as a whole. Well there is you know, if I'm gonna stay on the arguing side of this one and then take a shower after is, sorry. there is some credence to technical expertise. Like if I'm thinking about agile coaches, for example like I want, on my program I want an agile coach that's been there before on a program of several hundred people. And is not gonna balk at leading a program retrospective with leadership up and down a chain. That like titles don't mean anything. Like I, I'm looking for someone with, I'm looking for the seen it all seen it all done at all. Agile coach who is not shaken by anybody, challenging him, that kind of person. So there is some credence here to be, to say when I like when the pressure's on, I'm looking for that person. That has the ability to perform. Yeah. First of all, I think what you're describing is a seasoned professional. Right. But also we don't hire anyone over 27. So, I mean, we have a tough time hiring here at Brandon sza. Right off consulting people. We look for people that are under 27 with 20 years experience in ai that's called more energy. That's what it's called. That was E Real, that was ere I'll never stop bringing up in a podcast like that. That's what I was told one time when hiring Brian, you gotta find people with quote, more energy. More energy. I was like, oh, you mean younger? No, of course not. I would never say that because it's illegal. Wink. There's a difference between the scenario you just described, somebody who's been around the block Yeah. Or been around many blocks and they can not bat an eyelid standing in front of a town hall of 300 people. Sure. Whatever it might be. But the previous discussion we just had was about people having the expertise and hoarding it. Right. Because they wanna appear meritocratic yeah this is what I bring. Right, right. Yeah. And you need to come to me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Somebody who's an agile coach or a business agility, person would say, I'm not the bottleneck here. Right. I don't provide the solutions. I wanna co-create with you an environment where you can find the solution. Mm-hmm. So I think there's a difference there, because in the latter case, you're not hoarding anything. You don't even have that deep expertise. Yeah. You do in soft skills, facilitation skills, all of those things. Mm-hmm. But people aren't look coming to you to learn that or grab that from you they don't necessarily do that. But let's say you are a enterprise architect who understands database schema and whatever else it might be. So people need to come to you. Yeah so I, I think there's a difference there. Agile coaches and the they are all the more eager to share their knowledge. Mm-hmm so they'll go to a team and say how about talk to a scrum master? You need to, you need to facilitate, but let me show you some tips. Mm-hmm the other case, however, is I'm just gonna give you just enough. Yeah and then the rest you'll have to squeeze outta me. Yeah. You know, another thing that sorry. It bugs me because It's true. That's why it bugs me, is that, being Right. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're gonna be heard. Yes, yes. It's very true. So have you come across people like that? Yeah. That are always right? Yes and people say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's Mr. Know-it-all, Ms. Know-it.All, and we just gonna ignore what they say. Mm-hmm. Because you only have to be wrong one time and down goes your credibility. Yeah. But you're not worried about that.'cause you're focused, you're riding your expertise all the time so when people see you fall you know, in their eyes because you failed at some point, even if it's not like an object failure you lose the trust. Yeah. That's the bottom line. The only other thing about expertise and we'll probably cover this later so I don't wanna harp on it now, is I've been in a lot of organizations where expertise starts as a cross-functional skill and then it turned into a silo. You know, I, I think of like all the, I think of like when I work with great ui UX folks they start with one team and they're cross-functional and they're just like part of the team. And then they get mo because they're effective, they get moved off that one team into like a shared services model and then they become completely ineffective.'cause now they're serving six teams and they can't do any real meaningful work. And the company won't hire more people 'cause they're not quite sure how to incent that position.'cause again, you've gotta you've gotta incent every position. Otherwise, oh my goodness. What would people do if I didn't? You know, put a carrot and the stick in front of 'em or whatever. Yeah. This is one of the disadvantages of a matrix org because you do have this situation where you have shared services, models, pockets of expertise that are just lent out to the teams. Just enough. So they're typically lent out for their hard skills. Right. They're not lent out to instill knowledge and ability capability, I guess in, in amongst those teams. They don't have time to do that so they're gonna just go in there, in your example, knock out some ui, go right back and so the teams are left with a UI that. They got. But if they have to change that, or if they have to come up with a new one, you're gonna go back to that group again. Chance says, oh, you'll find somebody else going it to you. Yeah, yeah and now you start all over again, right? Yes. And that, that's exactly what happens. And also you nailed it when you said you'll knock out some ui and that's not what I need from them because I've got a senior front end engineer. They're pretty good at UI design, they've seen a lot of different designs. And I've been coupled with a lot of mobile developers that are really smart about industry trends and what's on the forefront. So, the UI is not what I need. I need the systemic view of the ux, the flow through the whole system. The walking through of the customer experience is what you're looking for there, right? Yeah. And that, that you can only get that when you go deep. Correct. So you need time and investment of that person to come in and stay embedded with the team for an extended period of time. So in this case, the expertise actually has done the opposite. Your deep expertise because of bad org design has now theoretically your deep org expertise, should make it so that you are respected and your relationships get deeper and like more people come outta the woodwork to like la your, the, the meritocracy, right? But sure. But in actuality what's happened is now, like everyone thinks you're flaky. You never stay on one thing long enough, you pivot but, but it's like, it's an effect of like, everyone wanting to use your skill and the organizational design is kind of undermining. So like in that case, we go right back to the very first category is like, well what can you do There is like, if you're connecting with people in and outside of like your day-to-day work like that, what's going to come through is. Hey, my skills and demand in the company is like not willing to pay for more people. So this is, I'm doing the best I can and then you'll treat them like a person doing the best I can, being overwhelmed, not this person is flaky and whatever. You know without the relationship, you'll see that object of a person rather than the actual person who's like, that's right. Well, the company doesn't wanna buy another they don't wanna have, buy more time, so what are you gonna do? You're gonna get a crappy job. Yeah. I have nothing more to add to that. Absolutely correct. De personifies your contribution completely. I'm not sure about the takeaway in this category. Build T-shaped expertise. Deep knowledge in your domain, plus broad understanding of adjacent areas, sharing knowledge through teaching and mentoring to multiply your influence beyond direct application. That thinking is a little bit older now. Yeah, yeah. Now people are talking about mha, believe it or not. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's what they're talking about. They're saying, so you have. Pretty solid skills.. Those are the, I guess they're verticals if you do the m in a certain font. But, you can ramp up and down quickly is what the, the down and the upward angles of the mr. Oh, and I, I, I can't relate it to what we're talking about necessarily. If I had a nickel for every time that I had a load of font locally just to be able to use it, people hoarding though, they'd be o-shaped, right? Yeah, because they contain everything within the circle. Everyone's adding so many shapes. Okay, so expertise, I get it. Expertise can get you invited to the table. But the next point we're gonna talk about is value creation and results delivery because the two sides of this one are the, the pragmatic approach to influence, which focuses on consistently delivering measurable value, which by the way, I'll tell you this, this topic right now, I'm saving for a whole separate podcast. And the title of that podcast is if you are not visible, you are not valuable. Question mark. Like that's, I already have the working title of that podcast 'cause I think it's a strong, strong podcast that we need to talk about. Yeah. That idea that's stuck in people's minds is like, well, if you're not out there constantly marketing yourself, like you're worthless. I'm like, Ooh it sounds like you want to get into a fight. I don't know if I believe that. So the argument for this one is simple if you make people's lives better and help them achieve their goals. So results are important, the results and metrics obsessed culture of like corporate America, the what lends itself to short-term thinking like that it that seems to undermine this so like, we're, we're obsessed with creating value, , none of us are gonna be in here two years. So who, who cares? Listen at the end of the day, if you are an individual who cares about improving your craft, right, you should care. It doesn't matter if you think you're not gonna stick around. There's greener pressures everywhere. At least it appears that way. So you should definitely care, right? And. As far as like, okay, if you are helping somebody, that's one thing.'cause it's overt, right? You are there, they're there, there's an interface there. Yeah. But after that, you peel away and people that you helped at some point later could be talking to other people and say, Hey, that, you know that Brian in product. Right? Right. He's, he helped us out. If you've got an idea or if you, if you're vexing on something, talk to him. Yep. You won't necessarily hear that. Yeah. Yourself. Yeah. You won't, but you'll get a random slack ping in the middle of day. Yeah exactly. From someone that you don't know. You don't know. Exactly. Yeah. So when those kinds of things start happening, you know you're doing something right but you can't, you can't set out thinking that's the end result you are shooting for.'Cause you'll just be. It's, it's noise in the middle of your workday. So it's like, you're just like, oh, what can I help you with? Let me go. Oh, go. Let me give you the smallest thing you can to go away. And then eventually it turned into a big thing, and then that turns into a relationship. But it's just like extra stuff that makes you busier during the workday. And you won't realize it, , maybe now people listen to this podcast. Now we'll gain the self-awareness to realize that like, that is an indicator that one of those seeds you put out there has now, like grown, is strung a sprout. Yes. Now it's grown. It's a, it's a tree and it's like growing seeds of its own. Yeah. And you know, the word is out. You're doing your keep doing what you're doing. That stuff happens to me a lot where people ping me for help, where it's like, it's not gonna help me accomplish any of the stuff that, like my boss is looking for. And it's not gonna help me like, directly do stuff that my team is working on right away but it's stuff that I really should stop and make time to help people. Because if I like wheel way back, like 30,000 feet way up, then I would have the high level view to understand that like, oh, these people are approaching me.'cause other people said, oh, I was successful when I went to Brian and Right. Maybe you can talk to him about this thing. And maybe he doesn't know exactly about it, but you know, he, he's smart. He will work through it with you. That kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean if that kind of stuff happens to you, maybe you don't even realize it. Maybe now that you've heard it on the podcast it'll ring through that, you know? Yeah. And if it happens to you repeatedly, then it builds on itself, right? Yeah. So that's the reward for me is when people call you that you don't even know and they'll just say, so and so said you helped him out two years ago, and now I've come across a slightly different issue. Can you help me? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't contribute to what you're doing for your boss, but. You are actually helping your organization. You know, the interesting thing about this one is , I think about this like later career, it's harder to find an example to put my finger on early career where I was just a QA analyst, QA engineer, working on a team big team or whatever, like knocking out a multi month project that the project management came down with the big book of pages and like with UML diagrams and stuff like that from back in the day. You never saw the user, you never heard from the user. You didn't know if what you did affected anyone. But you still in, even in that environment, you had some developers and QA people and stuff like that, that, went over and above. And did a great job, nobody ever saw, I mean the people to your left and right. Saw it, no customer ever saw any results from your work.'cause like that old way of working, you know? Where you went months until anyone could inspect your work as opposed to like, what we talk about all the time is like, oh, you, you're always working directly for somebody in short increments. You know, the new way of working that is called the product operating model. That's what I'm calling it. It has nothing to do with the namesake of this podcast at all. Totally different. But if you're working that way, like the structure lends itself to what we're talking about now, just the structure of, Hey, I'm delivering a small subset of features to you like personally. In a very short turnaround time, and then you can tell us what you think or you know, what you like, what you don't like, what you think about it. Yeah. And then we'll change what we're doing like that, like this, because the other side of this is the people that will say like, well, your metrics are what people are judging you on. So like, the people side of it, like the, the like customer happiness or whatever like if your customer happiness metrics are not factored into your, raises and , your promotion at the end of the year and stuff like that. Yeah. Then like, they're not real,, , but the numbers that you're judged on, like they are real. So you need to do those or otherwise you'll never give, get ahead. That's absolutely true. I often think about those poor people that are at the end of a phone call or chat away supporting customers, right? People don't think about those people necessarily those people have a direct interface with frustrated customers typically. And they do a pretty good job on the whole of understanding their issues. So it doesn't matter what your role is, if you're trying to figure out what is really troubling the customers go sit with your customer support reps for a bit. And you'll learn a lot from that. And then you work with product sales, whoever to kind of augment the product. Yeah, if you are not incented to do that, why would you? Well, I say that all the time on the podcast if you're not traveling with your sales folks and talking to prospects and doing prospecting with them you know, I mean, what are you doing? You're just talking to the customers that you already have committed buying your product. Like that's a, I mean, that's a limited scope. Very much so. So yeah, there's a lot here. I mean, we could stay on this topic, the whole rest of the podcast, focus on leading indicators of value rather than lagging indicators. Which is kind of, we talked a little bit about that. I feel we could stay on this one for a long time. But I wanna move us along just because we got a couple more points here to talk about document and communicate your contributions clearly. But always share credit with your team and try to be expanding that sustainable influence. So there's a bunch of stuff that we talked about in this category. Well, let's see. Yeah. I mean, long term is the key here, right? Sustainable. And you're not in it for credit, right? How, how do you know you are winning? It's not just you as an individual solo person. Enable your team to get those wins, right? And then the teams will talk about you 'cause you're the ones that actually influence them to get to that position where they can win. So results open doors, like we already talked about that but let's pivot to the dark side real quick. Let's , just take a minute or two to explore this for me because I need to explore this one. Remember the old Phoenix project or the dude that was like the go-to, I don't remember what his name was. Brett. Brett or Brent or something like it was, yeah, yeah. Possibly, yeah. The opposite of how to win friends and influence people here is like what the worst people do with this, which is the information hoarding , so the approach of becoming indispensable through information access and strategic positioning. So I have talked many times on the podcast about a particular developer I worked with in the past who was very good at this. Remember , the old report story where it was like he had the reporting database and you had to just go to him. He would never give anyone access. You had to go to him to pull any report you want, and then he would like, take out all the data that made development look bad. Whenever he would give reports. That's information hoarding. Some people excel at this, right? We've come across those people in our lives already. So that, that's how he kept himself in the middle influence for him. Was being the person that you must go to, the gatekeeper might I add, which is interesting because modern organizations should be pricing exactly the opposite of that. Yeah. Transparency you mean? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Transparency. People that build agency within the org. But no, we've come across people that will not share information with you. Yeah. And they will have multiple reasons. They'll throw any number of reasons at you. It's very complicated. It's like, what does that even mean? I understand technology, right. But it would be, oh, it's too fragile. If you touch it, it's too risky for you to touch it. It's like there's all these different things they'll come up with. That was his excuse by the way, is like oh, we can't have you hitting the production reputation tape. Something that it's very, it's very sensitive and you you could bring it down with a bad sequel query. You don't know the table structure. I'll just get you the data you need. That was, I don't know what this is the ASMR version of it. I dunno why I that, I mean, this is solid gold right here because I, I'll, I will tell you there, there's going to be, at some point on this video, there's gonna be somebody who had the same experience that I had with the same like, disingenuous this is a disingenuous person Yeah. Dealing with. Yeah. But the this is a common archetype that people will. People will encounter most definitely if you, if you've worked for more than a couple years, I'm sure you've come across at least one person like this. Yeah. Yeah. They're unfortunately, they're very common and you can tell, right? You, I mean, these people aren't going to cooperate with you right off the bat. You go to them with a request and they'll just say, go formulate the request properly. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, okay. Can you help me? What, what about this do you want us to change? Look, we're gonna, we're gonna take a tangent on the podcast. It's been a long time since I monologue though. This is this is a nice thing about LLMs and the agentic workflows of the future that are emerging now is everybody has a client. I mean, everybody has an MCP server that you can pull a client to, right? Sure. So like, Elasticsearch has an MCP server, I'm sure Postgres, if they don't already, they're going to have an MCP server where you don't need to know the table structure and the schema and all the table you don't need to know in elastic search, you don't need to know all the different fields the hundreds of fields and the different specific types of query. You just need to pull a client, pull down the MCP server, have access granted to you, and then you just threw an LLM ask it, Hey, I need to know this data. And then it figures it out. These types of artificial barriers, these artificial silos that have been built, they're like, oh, you want stats? About production. Ooh. Well, we're on Elasticsearch. You don't have Elasticsearch query knowledge. You gotta come to me because I'm the resident expert who knows all the data scheme and I've got the, the old enterprise, the relational diagram or whatever it used to be. I don't remember. ERDs. EERD Is that what the anti relationship diet? Yeah, yeah. Entity relationship. Da, yeah. The old database. Like all the tables. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got I've, that arrows from foreign key to foreign key's. That's right. I've got that in my cube, and I'm the only one that knows all that. And, oh, that's outdated. You don't know the latest changes you don't like the future in the future. You won't like that, that is not power anymore because all of the technology just connects it. So like you don't need to know all that deep stuff. You can still go find it and figure it out. Certainly that's not going away. But for the casual of the skill level of the casual observer is what I'm saying, is been elevated up to a point where like the, your gatekeeping now , it becomes obvious that is what you are doing. I agree with that. Resistance is futile for those people. I think because anyone can learn how to query using, using prompts, right? Yeah. So anyone can do that. These people's power, if you will, is diluting by the day. So it won't be long before you, you won't even have to go to these people to find out stuff well, and what will they do? I mean, it was, well, first of all, it was always toxic what they were doing. No doubt. You know? So what will they do? Like go find another place to hide. Like maybe find another organization that is like less technologically advanced to hide in it. It's gonna be increasingly hard to find, but yes, at some point that will be too difficult. Yes, so then it'll be too late for these people to pivot to anything because they left it like that. Right? Too late. You know, the other thing about like team lead, like a good team lead, like they become the connector between organizational silos. So like you and I would look at an organizational silo and be like, well, that's bad you need to break that down and have cross-functional teams and not have these silos. I've been coupled with some really excellent team leads or solution architects, like those kind of people. They find a way to connect different teams and bring teams together despite the disadvantages of the org structure i'm trying not to make this into a org design podcast, which we will have at one point. Well, I hope so. But there, there's that too. I mean individual teams deliver those people that glue the program together, they don't deliver anything. So Well, they enable the teams, right? They they do. But again, if we don't have metrics promoting agile coaches and their ability to, what, what they allow teams to do, we definitely don't have it for the solution architect. So the enterprise architects, those type of people either. so yeah, I like becoming the go-to person, you know? Like it's a good job to expand your influence if you're not abusing it. And if you're the go-to person for whatever reason, you happen to have arrived at that situation now, right? Yeah. Maybe think about spreading some of that knowledge. Yeah. You know, with your teams, right. That should be rewarded by the org rather than this person is elevated to their highest level of incompetence. Incompetence, yeah. Yeah. So if you are one of those people, yeah, by all means, start sharing that information with people. All right, let's move on. So the takeaway here use information, access to facilitate better decisions. Rather than controlling them. Correct? Yes. This facilitation, we, we could have spent a lot more time on this podcast talking about facilitation. Sure. But again, there's gonna be stuff that comes outta this, that goes to another podcast that's on a similar vein. So I don't, like, maybe there's a lot of stuff here. I don't know. I gotta think about it. In the editing, I'll think about what I want to take focus on being the synthesizer rather than a gatekeeper. Yeah. Always work towards making information more accessible, not less more accessible, more transparent, not less so. Those are a few takeaways here. So this category was about like the disingenuous way that information can give you a seat at the table and the, the category we're going into. The final debate that we're gonna have our last point for the night, that's what we're saying. That's right. It's nighttime, no matter where you are right now, it's nighttime. The final debate centers around authenticity versus strategic influence. Should you focus on being genuinely yourself, letting influence flow naturally from your authentic leadership? Or should you strategically adapt your approach based on what works for different stakeholders? This is a complicated one for the last category, so I don't know how fast we're gonna buzz through this, but as a, oh, I think it was the Stakeholder communication podcast that we did. We said you have to adapt your leadership style to the people that you're leading, and that is wrapped up in this one. But I, I mean, to bring it up in the sassies most disingenuous method possible by saying like, you're having one-on-ones and you're saying, Hey, buddy, what's going on? You don't you're not, you don't really mean it. Yeah. Yeah. You're doing it strategically to have to make yourself seen as. You know what I mean? Like, you're not really trying to help oh, it sounds like you've got some bad things going on. Well, that sucks kid. I hope somebody saws it for you. Yeah, I'm out. I gotta get a coffee and go play golf man up. Yeah, no, so I think in this one, this isn't a binary situation where you're always one or the other. I think you really need to adapt to the situation and the people that you're dealing with we've dealt with some very sticky stakeholders management style. And it doesn't matter what you do with them, with the soft skills, you're just not gonna make any headway. So for those kinds of people, I've been guilty of, I'm not saying manipulating, but strategically positioning my approach okay. And that's because, look, I only have so many hours in a day. I'm gonna make sure I win and this is how I win but for others. I'm there for them without anything like what's in it for me personally. Yeah. I'm just there to understand, listen to them. And if I can't help, I can at least lend a shoulder. So there's pushback in this one,, just so I don't bury the lead here, let me lead by saying my leadership style is completely authentic and if people want to ask like, Hey Brian, where do I stand with this? Or, Hey Brian, what's your opinion on this? I will tell them, and it will be brutally honest, and some people don't like that. Some people do not like my unfiltered initial take, but it is, it's my initial take on things and when I find out more, I'll change my opinion and sometimes that rubs people to the wrong way. The opposite side of that, which is very legitimate, says different stakeholders respond to different influence styles differently. And one size cannot fit all. And your authenticity is not an excuse for, for not like shuffling, you know what I mean, not changing your personality or style to deal with a different person. So if you were in charge of all the product managers in the organization home, right? And like you came to me and you're like, what do you think about this idea, Brian? And I'm like, this idea sucks. Like you, it's full of assumptions. You haven't vetted anything. Like if you go down this idea, like you're gonna waste six months of the UX time and whatnot why would you do that? No customers ever asked for it it's terrible. And then you go to another product manager they might tiptoe around a little bit more than I would. Yeah. And now you're gonna have a tough time consolidating that feedback together on an equal playing field, not realizing like not, not taking like personalities into consideration. You do have to bear in mind who you're speaking with, right, right. And, and kind of craft your messaging accordingly so here, here's the thing to, to remember. You can be completely 100% authentic all the time. Yeah. And you'll be successful most of the time. Yeah. But not all of the time. So the times when you're not successful will be with those people that really don't want to hear what you have to say, but they're gonna ask you and now when you say, well, this idea sucks that's not what they want to hear what they want to hear is, your idea is good, but... I would just say, have you considered this? Right if you haven't, you might, and then we can talk again maybe in next week. I mean, you just summarize my career right there. There are certain people that they don't want to hear that their idea is bad. Like they just flat out so you need to communicate with them in a way you need to change your communication style to maintain your core principles. But to communicate with them in a way where you change their diaper gently you, you, sorry, that was, that was uncalled for. That was unnecessary you treat their e like you put a nice pillow under their ego, so there's no chance. Of it being bruised in the confrontation that happens when they're for some reason asking for your opinion, which by the way, they're gonna disregard anyway. And you know, they're gonna do that when you go into the conversation. But again it's the, I would argue here, you are not being like, there is a level of authenticity that you have to throw a veneer over to deal with people like that. Maybe it's just an organization thing. Be like, well, Brian, that's just your organization and like, if you're in that organization, you gotta play that game, quote, play that game. And that's the way it is. My arguing side of this one is you're, you're either being authentic or you're not. Obviously it's not black and white in reality. Yeah. But for the purpose of the podcast the people that can be completely authentic at work with everyone and say like, Hey, I don't like that idea. Because the first time that you shout somebody down that says, I don't like that idea in a meeting. Like, again, I've been on development teams 20 years in a career. Yeah. I've seen a lot of testers, developers, shouted down by product owners or VPs or C-level executives when they raise this tiniest concern and that person never speaks up again. So, yes, absolutely. But here's the other side of it, right. So what happens when somebody, let's say at the C level Yeah. Asks you for something and, and you know, their idea is stupid. Yeah tell 'em that upfront in this case. Keep that resume updated. Oh, I wouldn't tell 'em they already is stupid. I feel very lucky. I work in product management. I can say like, is this something you're willing to bet on? Meaning is this an assumption and you think that if we do X then we'll get this result? Or do you know? And if you don't know, would you mind running this test against a customer or would you mind our team meeting with the customer to do something? Meaning would you mind if the UX person or whatever, like test the idea. And if that doesn't bruise their ego, then we're on the path to success. But if that little tiny question, is seen as a challenge. now we're in a bad way. Okay. We're in a bad way from the start. We haven't even started yet. But you started with simply asking, you know about the bet and so forth, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a different approach than just being very cur with somebody and just say, Hey, listen, that idea is terrible. I mean, listen, also, I will tell you also like I am curt with the people I can be curt with. So you, you can be authentic in both cases. Mm-hmm. But how you come across how, how you present your authenticity. Yeah. It's veiled sometimes. Listen, and, and true necessity. This is a great final area that we landed at in the podcast because it builds on everything we talked about earlier. I'll go into category number one because I have salespeople in my company now that I can tell them that is a bad idea and we can't do that. We don't have the systems, we don't have the expertise, it would take a long time. Yeah and I'll tell them we can't do that. I can only speak to them that way 'cause we have a deep personal relationship and they're not gonna be offended by it. They will immediately change and say, okay, I understand you're saying that Brian, but I still think this is important. How can we pivot and do something else? And then we will change the conversation to have a productive conversation. But I have traveled with them, i've spent a lot of time with the sales folks. Same thing with the development team, same thing with customer service, same thing with everyone in the company. Executives up and down the chain. I spent a lot of time getting to know the person so that when I say I don't think this is gonna work, or I think this will work, or, you know what I mean? That kind of thing. They hear it differently. Yeah. So flip side of that, right, is people that you really haven't got that equity with in terms of having a relationship and they are senior to you. You just start carefully, is what I'm saying, right? You're still being authentic though. It's not like you're saying something that's disingenuous just to appease them. You're not doing that by any stretch. You should never do that, but you're positioning it with the way you started what evidence do you have, right? Can we go get some, those kinds of things. Yeah, that's a, that's a general way to push back at them a little bit instead of saying how high when they say jump. In both cases though, I think you are being authentic. Like I said, in some cases, when you don't have that relationship, which you can have by the way, with even C level after a certain period of time, you can say that, right? You can say, Hey, Mary, that's a dumb idea, or whatever, but. You don't do that before you get to know that person very well, right? So I think both are are valid. It is just what you choose when. Yeah let's move through the end. Like where does that leave us? that's the wrap up of this podcast. Where does that leave us? Whether you're building relationships developing expertise, delivering results, brokering information in a good way, transparent way changing systems, meaning like the agile coach, kind of like reforming the organization, delivering results. The real question is whether you're willing to do the hard work of building the hard. Slow work of building influence and relationships over time so that when you need them in the future, they're there. And if there's anything in this podcast, like there's a lot of like not black and white kind of stuff that we talked about today but yeah, you never know when you're gonna need these relationships. And again, people that listen to this, that are team members or product managers you don't know when you're gonna need these relationships. I think that that's the main thing that I want to get across today. So continue doing it and consider it part of your job because. You will need it. Exactly. Yeah. You don't know when, but you will need it. And building relationships is your job there was enough content that got. Cut out of this podcast. And also there was enough stories that we cut out a couple little stories, I'm sure during the podcast. We probably could do a part two on this. Sure. Yeah, I agree. Very easily with more in depth tips and techniques and stuff like that. Yeah. But I wanna have this one'cause we we've been having a lot of product centric topics in a long time. Sure. Yeah. And I wanted to have one that was more, on your side of the aisle. The aisle. I like that. Yeah. My side of the aisle. No, this is great. I, we, we can definitely do another one, but you know, if you guys think we should let us know in the comments below and tell us about what your experiences have been with this topic. And don't forget, I can subscribe,