The Gunter Group Podcast
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The Gunter Group Podcast
Unlocking Agile Transformation: Leadership, Culture, and Strategic Implementation with Jim Calko
Unlock the secrets of Agile transformation with industry expert Jim Calko as we explore how Agile culture extends beyond software development to drive innovation and enhance business agility. Learn how adopting an Agile mindset can align business and technology teams, leading to more effective and profitable outcomes. Jim reveals how leveraging individual strengths through tools like the Clifton Strengths assessment can foster stronger, more engaged teams.
Leadership plays a pivotal role in successful Agile transformations, and we discuss the importance of thorough assessments to identify strengths and gaps before embarking on a transformation journey. Discover how Agile methodologies can create a vital dialogue between leaders and employees, addressing challenges like change fatigue and maintaining trust through iterative adjustments and clear communication. Understand how transparency and partnership are essential in overcoming uncertainty and stress in the workplace.
Explore the nuances of leadership strategy within Agile frameworks, distinguishing between traditional management and true leadership driven by influence. With Jim’s insights, we tackle strategic thinking and the implementation of effective frameworks like OKRs and SMART goals. Delve into the dynamics of team culture and mindset, where fostering a positive, collaborative environment is a shared responsibility. Embrace the generational shift towards autonomy and the continuous attention needed for team dynamics to ensure business success.
Thanks for listening and be on the lookout for more episodes. To learn more, visit us at www.guntergroup.com, or explore additional content on our LinkedIn page. Be sure to subscribe so you can follow along with the release of each episode.
Welcome to Thoughtful Action, tangible Results, bettering your Business a podcast from the Gunter Group. Here we believe that every business decision has the power to spark transformative business change. We're not just about theories. We deep dive into strategic issues that impact organizations. Thank you for joining us today as we explore critical topics in the business world. Our goal to arm you with actionable steps to deliver real business results.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Thoughtful Action, tangible Results Bettering your Business, where we explore the challenges, opportunities and best practices influencing business success in today's fast-paced world. I'm your host, nate Ferguson, and today we're tackling a topic that continues to evolve and shape how companies operate, specifically, the culture of agile and what it means for leaders trying to level up and transform their organization. Now, what most people think of Agile? They often think of software development, but Agile is much more than that. It's a mindset, an iterative approach that can drive broader business outcomes and create a more resilient, adaptable organization. Whether you're in IT, marketing, product development, these principles can unlock significant value.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing Agile isn't just about faster delivery or process tweaks. It's deeply rooted in culture and people, and today I'm joined by Jim Calco, a seasoned consultant and expert in Agile transformations. Jim has worked across industries helping organizations navigate change and embed an Agile mindset into their DNA. He's seen firsthand how Agile culture can boost employee engagement, foster innovation and ultimately lead to better business outcomes. We're going to dig into all of that today and more. Jim, it's great to have you on the podcast, and I'd love to kick things off by asking you to share a bit about yourself and your background, and then we'll dive in.
Speaker 3:Hey, nate, thanks, glad to be here, appreciate it. So I've been with the firm for 11 and a half years. I found my way into consulting early after the military. I was super fortunate to meet Mike early on in this journey. It's just been a great ride, getting a chance to do a ton of work across a variety of industries, like you mentioned, and stumbling into Agile At first, working with some teams and science and everything's like wow, people can really make this more complicated than it needs to be. So I think for me and for us, really trying to be able to have a pragmatic approach to Agile shouldn't be that hard. It should be fairly intuitive to really get to the intent of that business agility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're speaking my language there, jim. That's great. So to set the stage for today, I'd like to start with acknowledging what I mentioned a bit earlier that Agile is often associated with software development, but you think there's more to it and it's really an iterative approach to achieving those broader business outcomes. So can you share with us how this mindset shift can benefit companies beyond just that faster project delivery or IT development teams?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Nate. You know, like I mentioned before, having that pragmatic approach to really make sure that we're delivering results. Again, that's why we do that. At the end of the day, if we're not hitting our goal or our target, we're just kind of doing scrum for scrum's sake or save for save's sake or whatever you know. So I think having that shared mindset between business and technology teams are so important. 82% of organizations say that they're matrixed in some sort of way. It's hard to get things done so when we're all in it together, working with the same mindset and processes, that's how we can collectively get our best work done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's more than just how they do business, but how they think of doing their business together. Yeah, that's a great mindset, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think oftentimes I know it's cliche, but like we're seeing it right. A lot of companies are digital companies, even healthcare, financial services, healthcare. A lot of those clients are going through types of transformation and they need to be on the same page to get to provide better services, better products and better experiences. I know Bader and Angela and some of their work with the Digital Transformation Starter Kit they call it. Like 80-some percent of companies or consumers rather look for not just products and services, but also go to those companies that have good experiences. Again, that just doesn't automagically happen. That's when thoughtful IT, business, product data, engineering, design everybody comes together to make sure that they're working on the same process but also have that development of trust where they understand what's being said, what's not being said but implied through those interpersonal skills. So having that level of personal knowledge and trust really important as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Matt talked quite a bit about digital transformation and if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I definitely recommend going back and doing that. Jim, I'm glad you mentioned trust in that last little bit there. Can you dive a little bit deeper on building trust in teams?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no, totally. You know, I think for me trust, like you mentioned, super foundational For me. I like to incorporate the Clifton strengths. You know I'm a certified coach so it's kind of my bias, but the concept is really just leveraging what does a person naturally do good at and how do you do more of that? So when people are doing their best work, they're feeling good about that because they're playing to their strengths as a team, collectively, we can start to leverage each other's strengths and we also find out when teams are using their strengths they're more engaged.
Speaker 3:Those organizations that use strengths are more profitable. I think Gallup says something like 12% more profitable, 8.9% more engaged in their work. So that's incredibly important and how I like to do that is give people the assessment, if they haven't already taken it, and talk about the results. We'll do an exercise that's called the team grid where basically in a matrix form, outlines what are everyone's top 34 strengths and it gives people the opportunity to kind of see where is everybody else's collective strengths. So it's a little bit of awareness exercise, but also like who's your go-to.
Speaker 3:We did this with the TGG leadership team. Laura and I did a couple of years ago, and Angela is big and restorative, which is kind of problem solving, and it was great to know that. So, like, whenever I'm on a client or whenever there's a particular problem, I need to go to someone that has that restorative strength. It's like, hey, angela, can I pick your brain for a few minutes? So there's a practical component to that, in addition to just that overall like, hey, let's get to know each other, let's start to build that trust so that we can collectively do some of the best work together.
Speaker 2:That's great. Do you have another example of a story with a client where you did an exercise like this, or maybe one of your favorite experiences using the CliftonStrengths?
Speaker 3:I will. So I was doing an Agile workshop. It was a two-day workshop with a client in Southern California in the footwear and apparel space and the first day of the workshop we talked about kind of pragmatic Agile. You know for them where they were at in their maturity is still in their infancy, so it's not we're going to go all into scaled agile or whatever. So we kind of right size the process for their program team on how do we deliver in a way that works for them in a consistent manner.
Speaker 3:So that was day one. And then day two was how do we leverage our strengths and have going through some of these exercises to practice and to develop that awareness of all right so-and-so is good with communication, so-and-so is good with some of these influencing skills? How, as a program manager, are you being more influential Because you don't have that authority to make decisions and stuff like that? It was a great opportunity, nate, because folks got to have that awareness of themselves and their team but also how they could bring that into their work so that they can continue to do their best work throughout this agile process.
Speaker 2:What's the most obvious thing that you see when the team or leaders lack trust?
Speaker 3:Oh boy, processes fail, things don't work. There's micromanagement you could have the best strategy, you could have the smartest tacticianers, but if you don't have that fundamental element of trust in people, the plan will fail or it's going to be harder than it needs to be. That's why, especially in agile, where it requires collaboration, it requires that trust, not just that technical proficiency and everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I want to talk a little bit about the intersection of agility and business or digital transformations now. So, before starting a big transformations, what are some of the foundational elements that you think organizations need to think about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, well, I mean shameless promotion. I think starting with a digital transformation starter kit is great, I think not just saying that, but I think kind of doing an assessment to see where are you at Again, what are you naturally already doing? Well, that aligns to that, and then what are those gaps? And the assessment helps meet you where you're at, to help do some of that you know, so you can have start to put that plan and not to realize halfway through your when you it's like boy, I wish we would have focused more on culture at the beginning. Or I wish we had a better change management strategy at the beginning, because doing a change management strategy in the middle of transformation, there's a lot of catch-up to do. So I think starting with that is a great thing. Again, shameless plug over, no, totally.
Speaker 2:I think it helps folks walk into things with eyes wide open or maybe clear a bit of the fog or haze if you're in the middle of a difficult situation. It doesn't have to be a big transformation or project, but yeah, that type of assessment, especially when you can have a trusted partner with maybe an outside perspective, exactly, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:So, aside from that, you know, to the first part of your question, I think it really starts with engagement. You know, I think you need to have that engagement and Agile helps create that ad, that that highly engaged workforce, right. It creates two way dialogue between leaders and employees. It makes sure that people are starting to understand ways of working and developing that trust, because otherwise, when you don't have that, the work gets hard, people lose interest, people get frustrated. So again you're losing half of that two-way dialogue. It just becomes top-down, which isn't going to be successful, because you need people at the closest to the work, closest to the data, engaged in the decision-making process, and leaders need to be comfortable and trust those people that they know their job, they're good at their job and that they have the best interests of the company at heart as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I think, the aspect of people in high collaboration and high trust situations. I think you're painting a really good picture for how Agile can play a role in this and what leaders can do to help adopt a mindset, a shift towards agility, and how we can practically approach helping them with that. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit more about engagement. You mentioned that with leaders and their teams and managers and maybe their individual contributors. So I think engagement is especially key when it comes to handling those organizational changes. You mentioned that a bit, so can you talk a little bit about change fatigue and how you've seen some of the agile principles applied in situations to improve those outcomes for folks? Yeah, yeah, I think two things come to mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think two things come to mind, nate. I think the first. There's a study by Donald Meichenbaum and the crux of the study was how do people react in stressful situations, especially when there's a lot of uncertainty? So he took two groups. One group received 20 strong electrical shocks, the other group consistently. They received those shocks consistently. The other group received 20 shocks, but it was three strong ones and 17 less strong ones, intermediate, moderate ones, and the group that fared worse was the group that received three, not 20. Why, because of that inconsistency they're always worried about, is this next one giving me the strong one? That sense of not being in control really took a toll on that group, as opposed to the 20,. They knew it was coming, they knew it was gonna be hard, they knew it was gonna be painful, but they were at least ready for it. So they actually fared better, which I thought was really interesting. I think the other thing too is when you look at stressful situations, it takes a toll on the body.
Speaker 3:There's another body of research. It was published, I forget, a handful of years ago in the Journal of Occupational Health and Psychology. Not that I read that in my spare time, but I came across that, and when folks are going through these stressful situations, there's a significant uptick in people leaving work, people taking PTO, people taking more sick time, people quiet quitting. So again, when an organization is going through change, having a strong change manager, going through a lot of transformation, it's important to have that change management communication strategy. It's important for leaders to be clear on the buy-in why are we doing this? What's the goal? So that people feel like they're part of that change too, because then they have that control to the Mike and Bob study, but also be able to create that partnership to where they can be partners in the solutions and provide the details based on the data and everything else.
Speaker 2:I totally see how acknowledging some of the agile principles of acknowledging change and only making decisions with the information you have and really embracing that iterative approach helps you adjust along the way If you see folks burning out or if you see that lack of engagement, or if you see situations where there should be high trust and it's not functioning. You adjust along the way If you see folks burning out or if you see that lack of engagement, or if you see situations where you you know there should be high trust and it's not functioning. You have all the process stuff down, you have all the you know the bits and the data pipelines hooked up, but it's just not working because of that people aspect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and especially that, that fear. I love that you said that, nate, because there's also this element of fear. Right, maybe the pipelines aren't hooked up. Do you want to tell your boss that when you know he's breathing down your neck, he or she is breathing down your neck or they're maybe not someone that you have that comfort there isn't that? Maybe we'll talk about it later, but just again, there's the environment, and if a leader doesn't have that right environment set up, okay, we're gonna quietly fix this or we're gonna dismiss it, not going to care because maybe we're already looking for our next job. So having that space and having that trust, being able to have hard conversations, is really essential in a transformation like that. And I think when you're constantly talking to someone and you're in dialogue, two-way conversation with them, you're talking about the good, bad, the ugly. They know you're coming from a good spot, they know that you're putting your best foot forward. So I think that's really important having that trust and to have those hard conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it sounds like early and transparent and authentic is definitely important when it comes to leaders and their role in communicating that change. 100% yeah, 100% Great. So with any type of transformation or changing the way that an organization does work, it comes with a lot of change in a lot of different ways. People process, technology, all those typical things, but what are some of the things that the leaders need to specifically be thinking about in order to be successful?
Speaker 3:Great question. Two things, a couple of things, but I think the first thing is let's be clear on the role of management versus leadership. I know a lot of folks know that, but I think just the kind of level set.
Speaker 3:You know a manager is someone of formal authority, right, that's a person who you report up to and everything else. A leader can be a manager, but it could also be an individual contributor. A leader is someone that builds relationships, that helps communicate ideas, that doesn't have to use formal authority. They use influence to get stuff done. So you can be a program manager, for instance. Again, program managers typically don't have other program managers reporting to them to get work done right. A scrum master obviously doesn't have that. If you look at scaled agile, you look at RTE, again, you know you could pick your framework product managers right, they don't. They don't technically. The development teams typically don't report up to them. But they have to be influential. They have to be able to have those soft skills, the good people skills. They have to care and the team has to receive that and then reciprocate that as well. So a little bit of a long-winded answer.
Speaker 2:That's great, Jim. Can you now put that in context of strategy for leaders and what they should be thinking about and focusing on?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think a couple things. When it comes to strategy, I think leaders should spend more time on that. You know Stephen Bacon and Tracy Bell, two of our consultants that are part of our strategy practice. They did some great research and I think part of the research is like 85% of leaders spend less than an hour a month on strategy. 50% say they spend no time at all. Another study that they cited 45% of nearly 800 executives said their strategic plans fail because they fail to track progress on the execution of those things.
Speaker 3:So I think it's important for leaders to understand and be engaged in that strategy and this isn't one and done, especially as part of transformation, where it is going to be complex, it is going to be hard and that storytelling is so critical. I think it's also important for leaders to be clear, because that's how kind of subordinate teams can start to ladder their goals up to the higher objective and goal right. This is where you can start to talk about different frameworks like OKRs, objectives and key results. Folks can have MBO managed by objective. They can have goals, objectives, strategies and tactics, ghost smart goals, et cetera. So when we're clear on the strategy, then other teams can be empowered to say okay, if this is our goal, this is how my work then ladders into that. So that's, I think, one part of that.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? So far, that totally makes sense. It's thinking about what you mentioned about change management and communication and trust. I see strategy as forming the foundation of the content of what you're going to talk about 100%, because once they know the strategy, then that's where the roles and responsibilities come in.
Speaker 3:And I think that's kind of the second thing, because not everyone can be the quarterback right. Everyone has to have a different role on that team. Everybody has to know what they're doing to contribute to that goal. That also helps. Again, thinking back to the 80% of organizations are matrixed. It's hard to get work done. Who makes a decision? Who has a voice?
Speaker 3:The thing we used to do with one of our clients is who gets a voice versus a vote. Everybody gets a voice, but not everybody gets that vote. We need to have one decider. If it's overly matrixed, maybe two. So this is where a RACI or a rapid decision framework could be helpful, where you and your team talk about the framework, talk about different use cases or different scenarios, who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted, who's informed, and then continue to revisit that as a team. This isn't a one and done exercise Until the team has that maturity to agree to that framework. You know it's going to take some time. So I think that's where, like a rapid or a racy could really be helpful to cut through the matrix to make sure folks know what they're. Who gets that voice or who gets that vote?
Speaker 2:And how do some of the frameworks that folks might be familiar with in the agile space like be useful in this scenario?
Speaker 3:They can be useful. So I think enterprise agile frameworks scaled agile, disciplined agile, less, et cetera I think those can be fine. But again, in order to achieve the goal or the objective, you may not need overall organization transformation to achieve those goals. So those frameworks bring a different process, they bring different roles. They bring different role structure.
Speaker 3:I remember I was talking to a client in Southern California in a hospital and they're going through this transformation. One of the people said that well, we're bringing on product managers. Those are basically just like project managers, right? No, fundamentally no, it's a different role, it's a different skill set, it's a different mindset. You need to make sure that when you're going through these transformations, that you're actually bringing in the right roles that you need. So if you need a scaled agile, great, but if you don't and that can be done in a more hybrid faction, that's fine too.
Speaker 3:Product model is kind of a similar thing too. Some folks we're on clients again down in SoCal we're talking about going into the product model a little bit of a smaller team. They don't necessarily need to. They can and they can grow into it and it's great for growing and scaling because it gives the predictability. It gets like all right, what are the job descriptions we're going to need? What are the skills going to be needed If we need to do up-leveling, we have a framework Before they're at. It's like we can do a little bit of hybrid and it works for that team high-performing team.
Speaker 2:So you had to choose a favorite, like what do you think you see works most often? Or what are the situations you see? This is my jam. This is what I love doing.
Speaker 3:I have the most success when I see teams and this goes back a little bit to my military days. But I really like the team of teams approach Because, for those that aren't familiar, team of teams is really kind of a cross-functional tiger team set of approach where teams that are closest to the work have the autonomy to make those decisions. General Stanley McChrystal, his consulting firm, wrote a book about it. It's a great concept. I think that's a great way to get work done. The problem is you need to have a lot of trust. Previous client up here in the Northwest, a really great agile thinker, great leader. I really enjoyed working with him and we were talking the one day and he was like asked me if I read the book Team of Teams. I told him oh yeah, years ago and we geeked out a little bit on that and he's like I would love to try that model here and I was like let's do it. So I set up a Miro board and kind of mapped out what are the roles and who are the people so we could actually start to apply it. And then we started trying to do so. But I say trying because it ultimately failed because the organization was going through way too much change. There wasn't a lot of trust, there wasn't a lot of communication. So, yes, academically it worked well, or it should have worked, but it just didn't because we didn't have a lot of those fundamentals. There's duplication of roles, there's just the laundry list went on. So I think, when the conditions are right, a team of team approach is great.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm smiling because there's also this concept of MacGyvering as a strategy and I think it can be actually very relevant to digital transformation. So a couple of professors that I went to University of Portland to get my MBA Dr Meckler, dr Halloway over the years stayed in touch with them and I recently met up with them and they were talking about. The paper that they just published is about this concept of MacGyvering. Growing up, love, the show continued to use the phrase that sort of thing. So it's a fun article but also very relevant and a very pragmatic approach. Basically, they explore the context of the kind of necessitating rapid innovation and entrepreneurial action with immediate impact. Right Looking at, like the food services space, that's an area where they really care about and, as part of that focus, focusing on kind of some of these other concepts of effectuation, causation, improvisation and bricolage as part of that get-to-market approach.
Speaker 3:So as I was thinking about this and we were talking, I was like this is very relevant to digital transformation, because when you start small, you need to be able to start small so that you can start to scale and grow throughout the organization. And we know no plan is going to survive the punch to the face Again the Mike Tyson reference, right. So if you at least have enough to where you can start to figure out what's our goal, how do we start to like with whatever we've got? How do we start to improvise and everything else, getting our way to achieving that goal? You know so that once we, once that we get to a spot, to where we're successful, okay, now we can take a step back. Let's retro. How do we start to scale this? How do we start to apply this in a different way or not, but at least we still just didn't waste a bunch of time going through this transformation and have nothing to show for it. How can we be very practical and pragmatic to get after this goal as part of the transformation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And as you talk through that, I kept coming back to a phrase I've heard before doing the best with what you have, where you're at right now, for the outcomes you're trying to achieve right and then justice. Where's that paperclip when you need it? Right, absolutely so. You talked a bit about strategy and the roles and responsibilities that leaders need to be thinking about, but before we move on to the next sort of big question leaders and having the right culture and the mindset themselves can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, nate, I think that's great because I think we could talk about strategy, we could talk about roles and responsibility we touched on it. But again, just to continue to underscore the importance of just for leaders to have rapport Again, this isn't just managers with their direct reports, but leaders having that rapport, talking to folks, having that connection, having room for a healthy debate, having hard conversations, is really important and there's a lot of different ways you can go about doing that. Again, I mentioned having a retro right. You could have a team agreement. This is a way that we all agree to work and we're going to continue to do that and then, as new person comes on to the team, we could adjust our team agreement to make sure that we all have the same understanding ways of working right Again across business and IT teams or whoever that team is made up that cross-functional team is made up of. So I think that's important being able to retro on that.
Speaker 3:Hey, nate, we agreed to not have meetings after five o'clock, but you're sending me meetings at six and seven o'clock. Can you please stop doing that? I'd never do that.
Speaker 3:I know, but you know those types. Having a space for those types of conversations to make sure that we are on the same page is extremely important, I think, also being mindful of how we communicate. There's a lot of research out there we're not going to talk about, but, just like the culture of dignity, creating psychological safety, nonviolent communication, you know, being able to avoid kind of the escalation of assumptions, and things like that are really important for leaders to have. 25% of folks say that they're 25% of employees feel like they're not heard, not heard. So just doing those little things can really go a long way to create that culture of trust, so that when it comes to the strategy, when it comes to the roles and responsibilities, we have that space to do our best work together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, almost like building blocks, right Starting with that, the trust communication. It's only then that you can build into these bigger, more sophisticated growth, real, big, audacious sort of outcomes and goals that organizations are shooting for. So I've worked with you long enough to know that you're big on culture. We've talked about it a lot today, but talk to me a little bit about the intersection of business agility and transformation and culture, and why is it so important? Here, in cultivating that mindset.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think you know. Culture, having a strong culture, isn't just a perk, right, it's essential to business success and when teams are engaged in their work, they're empowered to make decisions. They know their opinions count, they know that their work is having meaningful impact on the bottom line. Everyone's happier and everyone's making money or at least, hopefully they should be. So I think that's really important. I think also, when you have and the only way you really do that is really through that agile, iterative fashion we're all in this together, we're all taking those steps together fashion we're all in this together, we're all taking those steps together and we're also mitigating a lot of those risks as opposed to maybe a big bang type of release or big bang type of transformation.
Speaker 3:I think there's a couple of bodies of research out there that are kind of in the back of my mind. I think one is from Wynn Consulting. They've done some fantastic research about really showing the correlation of that productivity paradox. When you have good business culture along with results, they're not separate, and when you have that, really part of their formula is, this will affect your bottom line. There's a monetary number around that when 70% of employees are not engaged in their work. That's 70% of less productivity that you can be getting. That translates literally to the bottom line. Out of part of the research that they've done, 9% of companies that were able to outperform on those metrics on high business and people metrics had 28% higher return on capital and 8.5% attrition. So, again, when you're focusing on business, when you're focusing culture, when you're focusing on results, good things happen. It's a proven approach.
Speaker 3:Additionally, part of their research can recognize what are the warning signs. So, as a leader or as a manager, what's hindering your business performance and making sure that? How do we get ahead of some of these things before it really catches up? So, again, if half the organization, or 75% of the organization, is just there to get a paycheck, doesn't have skin in the game. That's less transformation, that's less work, that's less value, that's getting delivered. To be clear, though, it's a two-way street, right, it's not just all employees are checked out and it's employees are the problem, absolutely not. It's very much that leaders owe that to their teams. They owe the direction, they owe the guidance, they owe that roles and responsibilities, they owe that space to have those conversations. You're seeing generational trends, too, nate, where folks want more of that they don't want to be micromanaged. They want to be given. What's my goal, what's my objective, what's my role? Let me go do that and if I need help I'll ask. So the more leaders can create that space and do that, employees can do their best work.
Speaker 2:So do that employees can do their best work. So again, very much a bi-directional, two-way conversation. Yeah, it takes a lot to foster that, not just from the beginning but throughout an organization's lifetime. In a team's together time we know those stages of team formation and whatnot. It's things you got to pay attention to around the whole life cycle.
Speaker 3:Exactly, I love that you said that because, again, I did a lot of research, I've been doing a lot of research, a lot of numbers, I've been doing a lot of research, a lot of numbers. But, like I think, gallup produced a study where it said 70% of people leave their manager, not necessarily their company. So the importance of a manager having that a formal manager right, not just the leader, but having that formal manager that's productive and one-on-one, having a conversation, feel like someone cares about them at work. It's super important because, even if the overall company is maybe not clear on the strategy, that's where you as a manager, you as a leader, can absolutely have that positive impact on that person for the betterment of that person, but also for the betterment of the company.
Speaker 2:And I think, for the avoidance of doubt, we're not just talking about culture, like free pizza Fridays or those sorts of things that might be parodied in movies and stuff.
Speaker 2:But what I hear from you, Jim, in talking a lot about this, is the individual relationships matter and the context of the organization and the effectiveness of the team and those things really contribute to the trust between individuals and that leads to the team's trust and then scale that up to the team of teams right. If you have that type of environment where individually and at a team level you have that trust, there are some great things that can be done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and kind of continue that thread. Right, like when you think of an organization, how do as an organization, how do you start to build that culture right? Gallup identified what they call the Agile Eight. Right, cooperation, speed of decision making, trial tolerance, empowerment, technology adoption, simplicity, knowledge sharing, innovative focus. Those are all things that you need to have as part of that agile culture. So again, not the free pizza Fridays and that sort of thing, although it's great if you're gluten-free, dairy-free, like me, sometimes it makes it a little hard. Salad's fine too, but when you have that right culture to do your best work and again deliver results. Again, when you look at the Agile 8, that's not fluff, that's real work, that's real innovation. It's getting in front of customers and saying, okay, how does this work? How does this work? Does this land, does this experience land, does this product land, does this service land, so incredibly important?
Speaker 2:And I'm sensing a bit of a sort of approach from both angles. Right, we've about the leader's role, responsibility where this weighs on their shoulders as far as a culture that embraces the agile principles and what they can do with their teams, but it's also the folks have to be interested in working in this way and want to have that.
Speaker 3:I think the point yeah, absolutely not to cut you off. I think that point is you have to have skin in the game. Everyone has to have skin in the game. Everyone has to be committed to doing this work and committed to being successful and committed to the excellence that it's going to take to get that work done. It's going to be. It's a long game, as you know. It's a long game, but they have to be committed to each other to do that and it starts at that personal level and scales from there. That's great.
Speaker 2:So, jim, what are some of the things you want folks to walk away with, or to not forget, or remember, or first steps to take?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think the first thing is Agile just doesn't mean you talked about this at the beginning, right? Agile just doesn't mean, like you talked about this beginning, right. Agile just doesn't mean an iterative approach to developing software, but it's truly a people-based, iterative approach and mindset that's focused on an outcome for everyone throughout the organization, from the leaders down to how the tactical teams work. Right? Again, it's not just scrum, it's not just these teams working over here. They're going to work iteratively. I'm going to continue. It has to be together and it has to be that shared mindset. So it's not just about software development, it's about people-based getting work done to achieve that goal right, that common goal, shared understanding. I think the second thing is an agile mindset is an approach to achieve higher employee engagement, I think, which is absolutely critical for that overall successful transformation. It starts from the top down and also goes bottom up right, it has to be that two-way approach, like we've talked about.
Speaker 3:I think the last thing, again, it requires trust, trust with individuals, trust across the teams throughout the organization. Trust is earned. It's, again, not just the technical proficiency, it's not just the follow-through, it's part of it, it's a big part of it, but it also has that human component. Can you trust that person when things go sideways, when they have those hard conversations? Because then you walk out of that feeling like, oh, I feel great, I feel good. I think about the work, I think about my military experience, I think about the teams that I've done some of my best work. Those were not easy days. Those are hard days with hard clients, but you walk away feeling like, wow, you have a deeper connection, you have more pride in your work and people just feel better and selfishly, people reminisce about those days right when you have those kind of components and it starts with that people element. So I think keeping that in mind as part of the overall Agile process is really important. The mindset and the people are very important.
Speaker 2:That's where we started and I think that's a great note to go out on today. Jim, thanks for being with us today. This has been fun for me, a lot to think about, very complex but also very practical. Thanks for joining us. Happy to Happy to yeah. So for Jim Calco, this is Nate Ferguson. Thanks for joining us on Thoughtful Action, tangible Results, bettering your Business.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you next time. Thanks, this has been thoughtful action, tangible results presented by the Gunter Group. To discover how the Gunter Group can help your organization maximize its potential, visit guntergroupcom. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to stay updated on our latest content.
