Book Reader comment

 

Why Customer Collaboration is Painful? How can we improve?

James is an Agile Coach. He has picked up his current assignment for Agile Transformation for large product development.

One of his observations was business or customer was no way involved in product solutions development.

They were far from the product development teams.

Team members were tried to invite the business and customers to share their insight with the PO, but the PO was not accessible most of the time.

Business does not find any value to involve themselves with IT on the solution side. They want results!

IT is an expert in building IT solutions and the Business wants to keep themselves aways for all these discussions.

Team members were not able to appreciate what they are developing and how those solutions will be consumed by the end-users. They were struggling to visualize the end-users’ usages of the systems.

Team members discover issues later the course of the development proceeding in feature delivery flow.

In today’s digital era, we have to build the first time right product as often as feasible. When the customer has been involved in co-creating the end solution, it is very much likely we may succeed in this approach.

James had an incredibly challenging assignment as an Agile coach to address this issue. How to enhance customer engagement?

One of the Agile Values says,

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

One of the principles says

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Now, where are the business involvement? How to expand?

After several months of close scrutiny, James discovers there are many impediments in the organization which is not supporting the customer to come to close to the IT organizations.

One of the blockers is Organizational structure.

IT and Business are 2 building blocks.

One invests money to build products, and another builds the products.

As everyone needs capital to exist, IT always seeking funds.

So Businesses, as they are generating revenues, are invariably in upper controls. There is always conflict and wrestling.

In the end, who has money they dominate in the argument! else fund will go somewhere else! Nobody dares to pinpoint such an issue which is slowing down the organization.

There are many people who are playing the interface role. There are many roles created to complete these jobs. All these roles are a very senior role, and their everyday activities involve managing the same. Both of the IT side and the Business side. They are gatekeepers, enablers, and messengers from both sides of the wall in the product development flow!

Those employees are feeding the business organization. The business is pretty comfortable with these jobs. As they are not directly involved and information is also fed to them. They were protecting each other and defending each other roles.

87 percent of organizations agree on traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers. (Source: Accenture)

86 percent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or inadequate communication for workplace failures (Source: Salesforce)

James had an arduous task to break, these communication barriers, and establish a strong agile team by dismantling these barriers need to find out. He involves a third-party consultant to undertake this assignment.

He & the consultant did a value stream mapping workshop to understand the execution speed. And figure out where most of the time consumed. He had found that as too many layers are involved in between development teams and business stakeholders, the time taking is remarkably significant.

The new team of Change agents has recommended a new lean organization. The layers in between, people/roles in between have been optimized. Team members should be able to access direct customers with minimal layers and communication barriers.

Initially, customer representatives(Business) were not comfortable with these new ways of working. There were many unknown initially. But with an appropriate workshop and hand-holding, they started feeling comfortable. There was a lot of top pressure as the Business people were not enthusiastic to participate in such events. For a substantial period of their career, they were not done with such work. They are more comfortable with domain work. They would love to continue to play the role of end-users of the IT system. They feel lost when we talk about IT jargon.

Earlier model customer representatives are in the upper hand. They were the receiver of the solution. In that model, it was natural to get into conflict and blame mode. Team members used to waste a lot of time in mail exchange, in meeting to demonstrate who is right. As customers used to pay money, they used to dictate the discussion. This creates disappointment, dissatisfaction at the team level. Their KPI was different. By collaborating with the IT product development team, they were not getting many benefits. All these aspects had to alter with the new model.

Leadership was not convinced for long to let their business people involve IT solutions building. After several rounds of benefits realization discussion, these factors are obvious that at a certain % of their involvement to start with and incrementally we can expand based on the demand. The pilot approach demonstrated the issue of discovery at a subsequent period has reduced with this fresh approach. This leadership is again convinced that it is workable and value-added. Once leaders are agreeing, it considers much natural to coach the business team members to collaborate with IT.

The change management team has submitted to optimize some of these roles and direct, in small size connectivity with the development team members. E.g. the Earlier model, many large size flow of requirements were handled by the many business representatives. Now Few large size flow of requirements were managed by a few business representatives. It was comfortable for business people to deal with volumes and sizes. It was easy for the development team members to instantaneously access the business.

New roles and responsibilities for this new structure has been clearly defined. There were autonomy and commitment improved among team members for this new structure. With the help of the agile scrum model team members are able to rapidly minimize the risk and demonstrate the progress.

Various automated tools have been used to establish there is complete transparency of product development flow. Product team members are able to clearly view the bottleneck and eliminate rapidly. Business stakeholders were are having concerns if they have to spend more time with IT or not. But with the right structure and eliminating ambiguity through tools, everything is unusually apparent. Who is going to do what, by when? The frequent synch has have diminished any such issues.

Scrum team members are a coach to accept, support, and welcome the business team members. They were encouraged to inspire the business team member’s participation in the initial days. They handhold the business respectively for initial days. The redundant roles were coming in the middle layers of the development flow e.g proxy roles, interface roles either they have been moved to the business side or in other teams similar business side roles.

Rewards and recognized as a whole team. The complete teams win when they were able to build features at every sprint level. The entire chain of product development is celebrating success and taking the blame for failure. The measurement indicates the improvement team is making, The satisfaction index has progressively raised to substantiate this new model.

It took James and his team to optimize the structure and improved the customer engagement for 6 months to one years with many activities, discussion, workshop and pilot, etc work.

The top leaders’ blessing and good change agents were key in this drive.

There was considerable value, speed improvement has been observed in these unique ways of working.

Social Skill for High Performance Team

Why Social skills are one of the fundamental ingredients to select team members?

As social animals, we adapt our conversations and actions to conform our audiences. To varying degrees, we note our performance and modify it to establish the impressions we seek.

In today’s business every assignment we take up, the fundamental part is a collaboration with individuals as comprehensive as feasible.

How well am I getting along with others? It predominantly depends on our Self.

How is my Self has been developed?

We are all different! But in a group, we are all in the same family! We adjust to the rules and standards of the group, We have a shared goal, Shared Understanding, and Shared Purpose.

A substantial part of our Self again dependent on other individual and their Self. As we operate in a social system.

The structure of our social factors are

The characters we play ( Parent, Teacher, Friend, etc)

The social identities we construct ( Priest, Doctor, Nurse, Engineers, etc)

The correlations we establish with others ( Harvard MBA Grads vs Standford engineers ...etc)

How other Individuals judge us

The surrounding society & Ambient

Everything shapes our self and we influence other’s self. Occasionally we are independent and occasionally we are interdependent.

It is significant for us to choose our team members with all these factors.

Indicators that can give us an orientation about these social skills increase the chance of success.

Team members who are having polish social skills are advantage from others who do not have so mature social skills.

One of the crucial parameters is self-knowledge. Knowing Thyself! How much we know about ourselves? Can we control our behavior? Our emotions at the relevant time?

What is our Self Map? How well our belief system influence our self Map? An excellent team player designs their map respectively. They find out what needs to adjust to adapt to the prevailing context.

These are some questions we can ask ourselves and likewise can figure out from others. All of these factors matter when we work as a team.

We have to be aware of Self-serving bias. What is that?

A self-serving bias is the familiar habit of an individual taking credit for positive events or outcomes, but blaming outside factors for negative events.

e.g I have done a wonderful speech because I have natural to skill and also I have practiced hard. If I have performed inadequately, it is because the system or infrastructure was not good!

Self-serving bias also emerges when we compare ourselves with others. We have to figure out all such factors if team members are having such bias.

Unrealistic optimism, an incident that shows us to be insufficiently in touch with reality. However, establishing that we are in fact making an error when assessing the likelihood of subsequent outcomes is exceedingly difficult. Being too optimistic can contribute to impracticality and overconfidence.

Another area to consider into

Self-efficacy and self-esteem, sound similar but are distinct concepts.

If we believe we can do something, that’s self-efficacy.

If we admire ourselves overall, that’s self-esteem. Both are very much essential ingredients to look into when we select team members.

Self-esteem in some cultures correlates strictly with “what others judge of me and my group.”

For some cultures, self-esteem is more intimate and less relational.

Most individuals are exceptionally motivated to maintain their self-esteem.

Just give it a thought, What happens when our self-esteem is threatened? What do you do?

Cultures also shape the self. Many individuals in individualistic western cultures assume an independent self. Others, often in collectivistic cultures, accept a more interdependent self. This is how our self has unfolded in a community context. Balance Self-esteem in desired in a team context.

Moods also influence our interaction with other team members. Moods pervade our thinking.

When we are in an awful mood, we have more depressing thoughts. Happy people, by contrast, are more trusting, more loving, more responsive.

Good and bad moods trigger memories of incidents associated with those moods. Moods color our judgments of ongoing experiences. Good team members recognize how to modulate their moods so that they can generate the finest atmosphere for synergy.

Another area that influences team members is Social anxiety and Shyness. Social anxiety is an unreasonable fear of being negatively assessed by other individuals.

Individuals are more likely to feel shy when they’re not certain how to respond, don’t know how others will behave, or when attention is on them.

This created an issue at team performance because the individual who is shy will avert situations that most individuals consider “normal.” Some amount of social discomfort is reasonable. We desire to identify team members who maintain the balance.

When you look for a High-performance team, look for all these aspects in team members. Highlight those factors and coach the members to improve on these factors( These are few, there are many such). When all these skills are in balance team members will create a positive team environment and achieve many things together.

Coaching/Mentoring Contract for a High-performance team

Leaders are the coach of the team. Scrum master is coach the team. Senior team members are the mentor for the teams. Once Individual have reached a particular level of maturity, coaching and mentoring by these individual will aid others to become better at whatever we are doing.

We need to coach and mentor where we identify opportunities to ensure we build a strong High-performance team.

How do we start this journey?

Coaching and Mentorship is an agreement where two individuals conform to adhere to a particular way of functioning for an accepted goal & Purpose.

The goal could be to become better whatever we are operating.

The learning has to flow from upstream to downstream( from Mature team members to new/entry-level team members). The awareness has to grow, unknown challenges have to explore and come out with unique ways to resolve for progress.

Both the party will steer for a known and unknown territory together and come out with diverse experiences. Better or bitter whatever it may be.

The purpose could be, both the parties should candidly discuss what could be our short-term goals and capture those.

Few areas can help us to structure and start this journey.

We openly examine and capture the benefits of such type of agreement and we acknowledge if there is any adjustment desired.

This meeting has to be scheduled in the calendar in well advance so that everyone is ready.

As coaches or mentors, we have to establish a space where we allow team members to share their side of the story. As a coach, we suggest many queries to explore their world and motivate team members thought to investigate and explore many options.

As a coach & mentor, we recommend many tools and guidelines to look into and come back with queries, if any.

A) Where are we now?

B) What is our overall goal? Short term and Long term? What we would admire to achieve? Solving the complex question, Improving the performance gap. Enhancing current ways of operating, etc

C) What are our roles and responsibilities? How do we ensure we are aligned for a common goal?

D) What is the support system enabling us? What are the things we should look into growing support from the system?

E) What cost we have to bear to achieve the new heights? Are we ready to pay this price?

F) How do we adhere to each other? what is our boundary?

G) What will be our feedback mechanism? Agreement to share constructive criticism.

H) When we will meet? How many times in a week? When we will demonstrate our progress?

I) A confidential agreement? The platform should be safe to discuss.

J) What behavior is acceptable and not acceptable?

K) How do we know we are irritating each other, hurting each other’s ego? what is the signal to check we have crossed the boundary

L) Celebration time, when should we celebrate? and based on what criteria?

M) Any point we do not choose to discuss? which are too personal and not impacting performance?

N) An agreement to create open, trusting, transparent ambient?

O) An agreement to come out from the contract? When should we choose that we have succeeded with our goal?

As Mentee or coachee, I adhere to these below points

A) As a Coachee, I understand the purpose of our meeting

B) As a Coachee, I understand what I am going to discuss

C) As a Coachee, I am prepared and share all the challenges and progress I am making

D) As a Coachee, we discuss together to measure the progress

E) As a Coachee, I devote my times to demonstrate dedication and commitment

F) As a Coachee, I look for feedback which can help me to experiment, study and reflect

G) As a Coachee, I openly discuss what is working and what is not working and we agree to course correct

H) As a Coachee, we identify the development areas and work upon on those

I) As a Coachee, I comment about the openness, a trust created in our discussion

J) As a Coachee, I share my feedback about my coach/mentor

K) As a Coachee, I ensure I cancel the meeting well ahead and the same action admitted from the Coach/mentor side

L) As a Coachee, I ensure our relationship maintained and we work together to improve the same

When we prepare ourselves with such a structural approach, we can discover how will this procedure is supporting all of us.

We could be a mentor or Mentee, coach, or coachee all of us will get benefit from this structural preparation. We can consistently customize and reform upon this.

Coaching Rotten Apples?

As an Agile coach, it is too part of our exercises to identify the bad apples from the team.

If we have to establish a high-performance agile team, we require to work out this exercise. It is not only reporting manager jobs, you as a coach desire to support the manager to surmount this crisis.

How can we help the bad apples so that other apples also do get rotten!

Else all the coaching efforts will go in vain!

We have to rapidly stop bleeding to recover the team!

As the traditional maxim goes, one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel

It merely takes one “rotten apple” to influence employee engagement across your whole business. If you place one bad apple with other few good apples, it has been discovered over a period of a timeline all apples will be started becoming bad! It is an absolutely genuine fact.

First, identify those bad apples, there is a diverse school of opinion suggesting, there is no bad apple, it is the only circumstance which creates those bad apples, once you alter the condition they will spiral into a Good apple.

As a coach, we need to understand all the circumstances which induce those. It is part of the assessment and we are liable to turn a team into a high-performance team. Also a part of change management activities.

a) Find the individuals who spend most of the time complaining about the system. Whenever they comment, it commences with a complaint. Looks for the evidence if he/she has done anything to alter the situation. Or just grievance!

A recent study organized by the University of Washington Business School examines just how much damage one bad apple can inflict. The study, published in Research in Organizational Behavior, reveals that in the presence of bad apples individuals aren’t as willing to handle problems that arise, don’t communicate with one another, and generally stop functioning as a team—not a great recipe for high performance and productivity.

Let us find if such bad apples are not passing from one team to others

b) Need to coach those Bad apples. Emphasize and try to understand what kind of challenges those individuals are dealing with. Talk to the reporting manager about the strength and weaknesses of those individuals. Need to observe them thoughtfully and ask managers to talk periodically about those individuals. Provide feedback for the progress.

c) Most of the time those individuals are street smart individuals. They know extremely well how to play the game in the system. Dialogue and agreement with such individuals have to be recorded and set the expectation very precisely. Measure the outcome based on their contribution. Need to involve reporting managers in any such arrangement and improvement plan. The goal has to be SMART and evaluate with the right feedback for such individuals.

d) Those individuals have not polished themselves to stay relevant with the modern technology trend. To come out of the inability they will try to distract the attention or discussion in some other way. A coach needs to talk to those individuals structurally. Need to convey what they can contribute in 6 months and a 1-year timeline to upgrade their knowledge gaps. Coach them and update their reporting managers.

e) Those individuals(Bad Apples) due to some reason have forgotten the passion, aspiration to establish something significant. As a result, they are not capable to match the expectations organizations are demanding from them. Some way the innovation speed has diminished a contribution has come down. They have to rekindle the fire within themselves to create something worth it. Need to understand their world and point out the modern way of thinking so that they can become self-driven to rehabilitate their world.

f) Communicate to their Manager, sometimes, the ecosystem push to those team members to move to this Bad apple state. Understand what action Mangers are performing for those team members. Observe the manager’s management style and look for opportunities if we can help those managers to modify some of their styles which is not aligning with Mentoring, supporting, coaching style of leadership.

g) Coach other good apples to help the bad apples in all the desirable ways. There could be a timeline for those bad apples to turn into Good apple. Organizations can assure that there is enough support system in place, by using these approaches a Bad apple can turn into a good apple. All the other team members require to serve those bad apples by coaching, mentoring, and training based on their capacity. The coach and Reporting manager can discuss and measure improvement and progress.

h) Most of the time, bad apples will not walk the talk. These are truly typical symptoms. They will talk loud and tall. But their contribution is absolutely minimal. It takes courage and wisdom to catch hold of such individuals. As a coach, we do not stand for any such confusion. Looks for improvement, contribution, and the impact they are making month on month. Regularly update their reporting manager regarding the action you are taking for those bad apples. How those individuals are performing in their day to day progress.

i) Look for the cues from the team members, who are not taking many activities, watch for the individuals who are having maximum excuses most of the time, Looks for the individuals who are not able to accomplish their activities most of the time and what reason, look for the individuals in the meeting says many different ideas but not able to contributes as the expected level, talk to the team members. These are clues where we can make out who are the bad apples. They are great manipulators so search for those clues and reach the bad apples to diminish the damage rapidly.

I am sure you are also coming across such individuals, Let us all find those and help the organization to be a better place to work for. One day those apples will turn into a good one.

When Fear kills our Creativity?

Creativity is an art of thinking, analyzing, and carrying out ideas in an exceptional manner.

In neuroscience, scientists have discovered substantial evidence that when individuals live in fear, most of their potential creative energy is usually diverted to dealing with this fear.

Dr. Will Schutz, a renowned psychologist, and pioneer of the human potential movement believed that fear is the biggest block to creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love says that “Fear and creativity are conjoined twins. What holds people back from being creative is that in order to murder the fear, they end up killing off the creativity as well.”

An environment which is more encouraging, more optimistic flourish greatly with fresh ideas and solutions. People, where they can freely experiment, express an exchange, can contribute more new ideas.

Creating a better work ambient when we have leaders who protect individuals, who guide, multiply rapidly.

Let us call everything which could be tagged as a failure into an “Experiment”.

Why, to tagged them as a Failure, tagged those individuals as Idiots!

Our brain always designs to escape uncertainty and ambiguity. Brains want to be in a relaxed place. But the outstanding innovation takes place when we embrace the unknown. The people surrounding us require to support us to embrace this uncomfortableness, then fear from the brain will diminish and fresh ideas will come out.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Albert Einstein.

Our surrounding people when they criticize, when we fail, our fear increases. Next moment we will be cautious more not to try something fresh. Not to share publicly. Criticism goes inside at a deeper level and comes back very hard whenever we are investigating something fresh and original. The brain loves to embrace negativity. How can we stop criticizing and look for opportunities in misfortune?

Franklin D. Roosevelt reminds us:

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” - Joseph Chilton Pierce

We recognize that how people being tagged us quickly when we make anything silly. It takes great courage to stand tall when something is ruined. It demands good team support and organizational support to proceed when an organization gets into the fault-finding approach, blame game mode, we surrender our best creative capabilities.

“Fail, fail again, fail better.” Those are the words of Samuel Beckett, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature when asked what was the secret to being creative.

Leaders need to safeguard employee emotional safety when something does not work well. Team members also require to collaborate to assure each other emotionally.

Creativity is a multifaceted construct, in which different moods influence distinct components of creative thoughts (Kaufmann, 2003)

How well our ambient inspire us to perform better ways of dealing with something? Imagine, all your surrounding team members are full of toxic thought, backbiting, what will be the quality of product innovation! we all desire to work on this to establish a healthy team culture of innovation, when we regularly do fun and ensure we do not hurt anyone emotionally we are moving in the appropriate direction.

The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

Let us build up our creative element by getting rid of those fears from all possible ways, let us aid each other to develop into creative.

As a coach are you striving for all these by eliminating fear from the system. Coach the leader to assure that they constitute a fear-free ambient for better creativity.

In my book, The Scrum Master Guidebook, I have one chapter on creativity development.

Coaching to promote customer centricity at the team level?

A number of years ago, Deloitte and Touche organized a critical study on the financial merits of being customer-centric. The study found that customer-centric companies were

60% more profitable

2X as likely to exceed return-on-shareholder equity and

Twice as likely to exceed goals for pre-tax returns on assets, sales growth, and market share compared to their less custom-centric counterparts.

86% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. (CEI Survey)

The team should be capable to deliver end to end customer value.

Look for any opportunity to knock out any silos as a coach you discover at the team level.

Team members will explain or indicate incompetence to resolve some of these silos. Take help from the leadership team to get rid of systematic issues to eliminate silos which can weaken customer-centricity and preventing better customer satisfaction.

“Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed at how many companies don’t listen to their customers.”

– Ross Perot, American Business Magnate

Every team members require to understand, compose, and visualize the customer journey map. They require to be trained and communicate about the end to end customer pain point discovery. Look for an opportunity if there anything which is not customer-centered. No half-baked food for end users. Everything should be an end to end consumable perspective.

Look for the process and practices which do not facilitate the fastest customer satisfaction. Looks for technologies and platforms, how effectively those are utilized for full customer satisfaction. Use technology to bridge the gap if there are any, in customer end to end journey map.

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” – Simon Sinek

At the team level and organization level, the universal ground rule for customer service was drafted and regularly upgraded the same.

Look for competency at the team level if there are sufficient skill and proficiency available at the team level to comply with the end to end customer demand fulfillment point of view.

Anticipate customer’s needs well forwards so that team can be ready with the contribution.

“The most valuable resource you can give customers is your time. Listen to them to uncover their real needs. Only then can you find a way to solve their problems or meet their expectations. Treat the cause, not just the symptoms.” – Ginger Conlon

Team members should be passionate about the customer-first approach. If there are any inconsistencies, talk about those in a retrospective meeting. Collect the feedback from customers and work on those. A customer-focused approach may use A/B testing to understand what ads resonate most with customers.

Train team members on customer relationships build skill, esp empathy, listening skills with perfect communication skills.

Establish a co-creation and collaboration platform with customers. The end offers will be with the appropriate alignment when we join hands together with the customer.

Have a monitor and analysis system about the customer movement for your offerings and solutions. Use the data analytics to measure how well the customer is hooked for your product and solution.

“If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers.” – Shep Hyken

Build a customer experience strategy. Your team members should continuously work on that strategy to make it polished and enhanced.

Reward your team members on better customer service. Make it a culture in your team.

Always accessible to the customer so that you can understand their pain and their world better. You various survey to retrieve their concern and needs. The frequent in-person meet will help to know and connect with them better.

Ensure all the customer touchpoint tools are in place and easy to use. End users should be able to connect at lightning speed, and you need a resilient system to fix any concern.

Frequently collect NPS score and study what is missing

Create innovative thinking to deal with customer issues or any pain point. Reward team members on unique ideas suggested in this regard.

“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell

18th July 2020 My books shows in Top

Why These Guidebooks?

Guidebooks...

When Fear kills our Creativity?

Creativity is an art of thinking, analyzing, and carrying out ideas in an exceptional manner.

In neuroscience, scientists have discovered substantial evidence that when individuals live in fear, most of their potential creative energy is usually diverted to dealing with this fear.

Dr. Will Schutz, a renowned psychologist, and pioneer of the human potential movement believed that fear is the biggest block to creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love says that “Fear and creativity are conjoined twins. What holds people back from being creative is that in order to murder the fear, they end up killing off the creativity as well.”

An environment which is more encouraging, more optimistic flourish greatly with fresh ideas and solutions. People, where they can freely experiment, express an exchange, can contribute more new ideas.

Creating a better work ambient when we have leaders who protect individuals, who guide, multiply rapidly.

Let us call everything which could be tagged as a failure into an “Experiment”.

Why, to tagged them as a Failure, tagged those individuals as Idiots!

Our brain always designs to escape uncertainty and ambiguity. Brains want to be in a relaxed place. But the outstanding innovation takes place when we embrace the unknown. The people surrounding us require to support us to embrace this uncomfortableness, then fear from the brain will diminish and fresh ideas will come out.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Albert Einstein.

Our surrounding people when they criticize, when we fail, our fear increases. Next moment we will be cautious more not to try something fresh. Not to share publicly. Criticism goes inside at a deeper level and comes back very hard whenever we are investigating something fresh and original. The brain loves to embrace negativity. How can we stop criticizing and look for opportunities in misfortune?

Franklin D. Roosevelt reminds us:

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” - Joseph Chilton Pierce

We recognize that how people being tagged us quickly when we make anything silly. It takes great courage to stand tall when something is ruined. It demands good team support and organizational support to proceed when an organization gets into the fault-finding approach, blame game mode, we surrender our best creative capabilities.

“Fail, fail again, fail better.” Those are the words of Samuel Beckett, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature when asked what was the secret to being creative.

Leaders need to safeguard employee emotional safety when something does not work well. Team members also require to collaborate to assure each other emotionally.

Creativity is a multifaceted construct, in which different moods influence distinct components of creative thoughts (Kaufmann, 2003)

How well our ambient inspire us to perform better ways of dealing with something? Imagine, all your surrounding team members are full of toxic thought, backbiting, what will be the quality of product innovation! we all desire to work on this to establish a healthy team culture of innovation, when we regularly do fun and ensure we do not hurt anyone emotionally we are moving in the appropriate direction.

The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

Let us build up our creative element by getting rid of those fears from all possible ways, let us aid each other to develop into creative.

As a coach are you striving for all these by eliminating fear from the system. Coach the leader to assure that they constitute a fear-free ambient for better creativity.

In my book, The Scrum Master Guidebook, I have one chapter on creativity development.

Can Certification solve our problems?

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

AGILE KPI

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/business-value-calculation-digital-transformation-chandan-lal-patary/

Leadership Development Process

Why does Organizations choose to invest in YOU?

It is not requisite that you have excellent skills and knowledge; if you not are saleable!!

Others should also discover you, and they should get an interest in you.

And you should be useful to them! You develop an interest to those fishermen so that they move behind you to catch You!!

“Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.” – Howard Schulz

Some of the outstanding factors which you can be ready with so that organization grabs you!

The organization chooses to invest in you based on the track record you have with the execution of a substantial scale critical program. Do you have any?

A track record is a key motivator for businesses or organizations to acquire you!

You have potential skills and knowledge which are profoundly significant in the forthcoming market and relevant to the prevailing technology trend.

You also have some indicator that you have exercised those skills and knowledge. The more hot the skills are, the higher demand you can create.

The organization is thinking long term by utilizing these skills they will build products and solutions and generate a lot of wealth.

They seek the opportunity and anticipate the potential use of those products and solutions which you will be capable to generate and will establish an impact on the same for the organizational bottom line.

“Dating and hiring have a lot in common.” – Scott Wintrip

What particular problem you will be solving for the organization. How significant is the problem for the organization, How efficient you are to solve those problems? How complex those problems which only you can solve?

Have you dealt with such problems earlier and how is wisdom? what is feedback from the people who have benefited from your service?

What is the unique strength you are bringing about this problem where the organization is searching for the solution?

You also require to ready with the proposal if the organization ask, what are the distinct way your skills and competencies can serve? What alternative approach you can apply to figure out these problems, etc?

If you have any failure in your current track record, that again benefits you to sell yourself to the organization, every experience affects.

You need to aware about your competitor and come up with a better proposal than your offering, which is unique and nobody has such a solution, you can bargain with the organization better

You should be capable to present your offering for 1 mins pitch, 20 mins pitch, and 1 hrs pitch about your key attributes and services flawlessly.

You should have business acumen about making wealth, how to exercise your skills and knowledge to build up the business.

What are numerous cultures, countries, and challenges you have struggled with, stronger is the story, they more attractive the story is, they will generate into more curiosity about your offering, so what is your selling story?

what is your current demand of yours in the market, can you show someway statistics to persuade? 

Organizations may pick up you and amalgamate with some other remarkable team members who have complimenting skills and establish a greater solution and service which you alone can not produce

“You need to have a collaborative hiring process.” – Steve Jobs

Organizations may take you, train you, and strengthen you for a grander mission, they have seen something which with limited investment can expand.

Are you warm up? are you watching at the horizon and strengthening yourself for those powerful people who can grab you?

Which Book cover you will choose? please advice

Leadership Development Case Studies

Case Study 1: 

You have been appointed as a leader to a fresh department established in a healthcare product. What will be the initial few steps as a leader for the first 15 days in your appointment? 

This is a new startup company. CEO has a lot of ambition from your department. 

Once 15 days is over, you got an invitation from your sales team that there could be a million-dollar order in a pipeline for a software solution development. They involve you in their initial potential software product development dialogue. 

What would be your steps as a leader? As a presentation to others, what you would be suggesting to them? 

Let us first forward to this condition. After 1 year, your department has 100 + team members, and you are the leader for all of them. 

You got an invitation from a potential company in the health care department to take over and integrate the same with your team. As a leader of the department, what is your understanding and what you will be sharing in the department town hall meeting? 

Case Study 2: 

You are an associate director in a business line that provides assistance in Business Transformation to the whole enterprise. You report directly to the Center, head of the enterprise. The whole organization is going through a cost optimization drive. And also, the corporation is experiencing severe attrition. Many talented team members have left the organization. 

You are under immense pressure not able to spend time with your 2 managers who are managing the whole program in your Transformation business line. 

These 2 managers are here with the organization for a long time and you are comparatively fresh. There was a constant accusation that your department is not competent to help the organization in the overall transformation process. The transformation is remarkably slow and not efficient. 

The managers are sensing that staff are becoming overworked as everyone takes on increased responsibilities due to significant staff turnover. The staff has also reported that your “glass-half-empty” communication style leaves them feeling disheartened. In addition, you have not shared budgets with your managers, so they are having difficulty appropriately allocating work to staff. You also recognize that you have not obtained ample information from the finance department to complete the budgets. The finance department said they have sent you all the information they have available. 

As the staff becomes distressed, the managers are becoming frustrated. They feel like they are unable to advocate for their staff or solve problems without key information like the departmental budget as well as vision. You sense that your managers also not so competent in the transformation work. Most of the time you got the report that both of these managers are conflicting with each other. 

You as a leader 

· What steps could be taken to strengthen staff confidence? 

· How can you most effectively use both management and leadership skills in your role as associate director? What combination of the two do you think would work best in this setting? 

· Which leadership style do you think a leader would need to be adequate in this situation? 

Case study 3: 

Prasad is functioning as a department manager; he was working with this company for the last 10 years. He has two decades of overall IT experience. He has developed himself from the bottom up to this department manager position by performing hard work. He is a remarkable people-friendly individual and most of the team members appreciate his management style. He understands the pain of the team members. He supports them whenever demanded. He has many managers reporting to him. Some are efficient and some are not so competent. But Prasad mentors them periodically. In Recent major re-org, Prasad was baffled about what will happen to his position as the whole organization has suffered considerable transformations. He was assigned for a new digital transformation program with 50 team members. On an earlier occasion, he was managing 200 people. 

a) What will be his motivation or drive to perform better? 

b) What stakeholder management he will do in a digital product? 

c) What should be his initial few steps once he commenced this unique role? 

d) How he will safeguard his success? 

e) What you would have done when you are in his situation? 

Case study 4: 

Niraj was the project manager, he was performing great for his project and all stakeholders acknowledge his hard work. He was consistently managing his project better and his team members also recognize it. He has remarkably efficient network skills with the top. He understands the domain. In new organizational transformation, he has promoted to a new business line lead. He has been in charge now to define the product strategy with 120 team members. He has never administered more than 30 individuals in his career. 

He is responsible for new product budgeting and sales as well. 

a) What he should do differently? 

b) What new thing does he need to know? 

c) What you would have done when you are in his situation? 

Case study 5: 

Alok was the center head. He was one of the distinguished young individuals to run this center. He is a dynamic and quick learner. He was managing 400 people and driving a major multimillion-dollar portfolio in a retail unit. He is a hard worker and a workaholic person. In recent turmoil, his center got dissolved and fragmented into many minor units. He has got a global role with 120 team members to establish a Dev sec and ops team first time in the organization. He had many competent managers who were his close company. In the new structure, he has not given any of the mature people. 

He obtained an all-new set of team members from a distinct company that recently been acquired. 

a) What will be the few challenges he will have to focus on? 

b) What will be his strategy? 

c) What you would have done when you are in his situation? 

Case study 6: 

Kannan is an extremely poor project manager but someway in front of the stakeholders he managed to carry out the show by which Stakeholder was extremely pleasant, He was managing testing projects and it was one of the mission-critical projects. He used to market his deliverables extremely well, however small it may be. He used to take many initiatives across the organization, and everyone knows him. He used to take many training sessions and CSR activities. 

There was massive program development work showed, 120 individuals, 3 various department requires to build this program/product. 

He has been appointed as an in charge of this large program as everyone knows him, but he does not have done such monumental work before. 

a) What do you think he should do to be first considered? 

b) How he will establish he got the appropriate individuals on the bus? 

c) As he was dealing with 20 individuals, what he should be working to deal with 120 people? 

d) What you would have done when you are in his situation? 

e) Most of the team members are incompetent in this company what he should be doing to safeguard delivery? 

Case study 7: 

Balaji was managing global product, development teams. There was a competitive product being developed in another corner of the world in the same company. 

They are marginally varied offering in nature. Most of the time customer was perplexed as both of this product team participate in sales bidding and demo work. Balaji was consistently in conflict with one more global manager to demonstrate whose product should remain and which one to drop. This tussle is ongoing and most of the top leaders realize. All the top leaders choose to preserve their buddies on the payroll. As these products have been around for the last few years. 

Balaji is leading this distributed product development team, and he is retaining the budget. These teams are distributed in 5 different geographical locations. It has developed into challenging to continue this product due to diverse issues, product issues, people issues, cost issues, license issues, a political issue, internal departmental conflicts, customer issues, etc. 

Team morale is down at the highest level 

a) What is the next step for Balaji? 

b) When can he get the promotion? 

Case study 8: 

Dilip is a recent college pass out. He did 2 MS in a different subject. He did one internship with one of the prominent firms, and one of his ideas accepted the best idea award and select for a product to be developed with immediate effect. The company where he used to work as an intern, they grant him for a full-time job for the same product development. He started functioning as a project manager for product development. 

With him 4 architects all are more than 25 years’ experience, 2 product managers, and 30 team members, most of them are 15 yrs. of experience. 

What do you think Dilip should be doing as a leader? He is young, smart, quick to learn, bright but fresh to the software product development world! 

How he will get along with all these experience personalities? 

How you will ensure he gets acknowledgment for all these team members? 

How he should be driving the whole show? 

Should he go back to earn a management degree? 

Case study 9: 

Shilpa is a technical lead. She is a district topper and extremely bright developer. The organization where she was working, they got a development assignment that they were seeking for some time. But the Organization could not pick up it owing to the resource competency issue. The client was willing to pick up a few developers as an on-site developer. Shilpa was among them. She has gone there at client location for 6 months assignment; it was a c++ work for large-scale product development in the Medical system. There were 25 experienced team members working, Shilpa was among them. She turns into an on-site coordinator after 6 months. She got extensions for 2 years and further work started showing up to India. There were few more team members who started traveling to an on-site location for development. Shilpa used to conduct the weekly call with offshore location, Every 6 months she used to travel to India and take classes. After 2 years, she came back and decided to marry and relocate to America. Sharath will succeed in Shilpa's role and will take up the on-site coordinator role. 

a) What do you expect Sharath to do? 

b) How do you think Sharath will take care of business expansion and business continuity 

c) What action plan Sharath should have? 

Case study 10: 

Narshimma is a Transformation lead for the Agile Transformation department in an organization. He has received the target to transform the team with an absolute deadline from the top. He has got 75% contractor and 25% full-time employed to run the show. The transformation budget was extremely tight and there was an abundance of tracking to demonstrate the outcome. There was immense pressure on the staff to show the progress. There were daily calls, weekly calls, monthly calls to indicate the progress. The staff is having an internal call with global colleagues. There was a speed pressure, delivery pressure everywhere. Team members were collapsing and Narshimma also pressuring as from the top also individuals are asking Narshimma to produce development. 

One day in one of the global meet up, few team members complain again Narshimma. The global leaders took prompt action and they eliminate Narshimma from the lead position and nominate a new person. 

The new person does not know anything about the transformation program 

a) What do you want the new person to do so that healthy environment prevailed in the department 

b) How to boost team morale?