Ray Arell:   0:07
Good morning. Good evening, everyone. This is the actual coaching network. Agile Coaching network has brought you by Agile Alliance. If you don't know who the agile alliances, the agile alliance is the group that actually started the agile movement back after the signing of the manifesto. I do not remember. Please go ahead up to agile alliance dot org Give it a look. It's a great community. It's a great place where your support actually makes this podcast possible. So thank you for your membership. I'm currently here in Stockholm, Sweden, with a group of thought leaders. Do you guys like the Thought leader title?  

Ray Arell:   0:45
There is always one.  

Ray Arell:   0:48
And what I'm gonna go ahead and do is we just let everyone give a brief introduction of who they are.

Eric Abelen:   0:53
All rights. My name's Erica Bain.  I am an Agile coach of ING Bank in the Netherlands, Belgium.  

Jens Coldewey :   1:00
My name is Jens Coldewey. I'm an adjunct George most part of my provisional life. Enough How honored to be with this group since 2012.

Jutta Eckstein:   1:10
My name is Jutta Eckstein. I'm from Germany. I'm working as a coach, consultant, trainer, and I am also the author of different books and the most recent one is  BOSSA nova.  So it's about maybe dancing of organizations.

Jutta Eckstein:   1:27
Essentially,  the Agile dance

Bjarte Bogsnes:   1:30
This is  Bjarte Bogsnes from the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable. My book is called Implementing Beyond Budgeting.

Elena Vassilieva:   1:38
Hello, my name is Elena Vasilievna, and from San Francisco, California I'm an Agile coach.

Marcin Floryan:   1:43
Marcin Floryan Here, based in Stockholm. Locally working. Currently, at Spotify helping teams get the best environment in which they can do their best work.

Hendrik Esser :   1:55
I am Hendrik Esser.  We're hosting this event proudly this year. And I'am a manager for Special Project, which means I'm a sort of in house consultant, organization coach and I have been working on large Agile transformations for quite a while now. And I'm trying to learn more and share my knowledge.

Jorgen Hesselberg :   2:13
Jorgen Hesselberg on the author of Unlocking Agility and co-founder of Comparative Agility. I have been part of this group since 2012 as well.

John Buck:   2:21
I'm John Buck. I am co-author of the BOSSA nova book with Jutta, which, incidentally, stands for Beyond budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy, and Agile;  and I do workshops and consulting that.

Ray Arell:   2:33
Awesome so that this is the supporting Angela Adoption Workgroup. It's an initiative program that's ran through Agile Alliance. Does anyone just want to give an overview of what we've been doing for the last almost decade of getting together?  

Hendrik Esser :   2:47
Yeah, we always have. Once a year, we have a meet up where we teach this wonderful team on we're discussing. Actually, all sorts of things usually were looking a bit in the big trends in Agile. What are the big needs in the company's? Where is everything evolving towards? But maybe Jutta you have seen that from the very beginning You know bit more about the beginnings.

Jutta Eckstein:   3:08
I'm sure. So one thing that I find really strong about this group said, We're trying to bring out, well different thought leaders is what you used before, together mainly from different companies and companies of a complete variety, as you have probably heard in the opening round. So there is Ericsson, Spotify, ING, Equinor. I'm the truth, but they are all in completely different markets and then finding out if the problems they're having similar on not and what can be learned from each other, which means is it's covering really a lot of stuff that's going on everywhere just because those companies also diverse. 

Jorgen Hesselberg :   3:50
Yeah, it's very practical, and I think I like the title of the group Supporting Agile Adoption  is not solving Agile adoption. It is just about trying to help each other out, supporting each other in this in this journey. And I think part of what we find by disgusting real problems, practical problems is that, you know, there are some patterns that emerge there. Certain things we see and we keep, come back to some things that probably not as primary anymore. You know, stories slicing is not one of  the biggest problems we have. But now it's bigger stuff, and I think we realized that it takes collaboration. This is not something you can solve alone.

Jens Coldewey :   4:27
to piece you with hear phrasing. We're discussing trends, my experiences. That stuff we discussed here became trends some years later. Also way probably were in front of the trends. Maybe because we discussed real issues.

Bjarte Bogsnes:   4:46
For me, this is very much about connecting the dots, coming from different places and backgrounds, but there are so many elections on so many patterns; and I find that extremely fascinating and rewarding, and there's a lot of learning into this

Elena Vassilieva:   5:02
and for me, isn't newcomer. It's my first time here. I really observed that this group is live and breath by Agile Manifesto, like we're discovering the better way of delivering great software by doing this in helping others to do that. Is exactly what this group is doing. They're doing, discovering, and helping others.

John Buck:   5:27
Then I think agile is going beyond the software world, and that's it. That's an adventure. And what is all that about? It's been one of the main things we've been talking about.

Eric Abelen:   5:38
It's been going a massive movement perhaps even.  it's definitely beyond software, HR, marketing, other names.  

Hendrik Esser :   5:48
That's partly because we are moving a bit from Agile towards thinking of agility. So agile bit rooted in the Agile Manifesto, which was built around software development, now more moving into agility because all companies are facing the things VUCA  world and everybody wants to understand how can we develop the agility to adapt fast and respond fast to our environments on it?

Marcin Floryan:   6:14
As we expand that the scope, it becomes very obvious that the set of tools we might have been borrowing or using just software may not be enough. So it's so powerful. It actually brings all those different ideas, tools,  thinking models from across the industries on from different parts of research, from psychology to sociology. Economics on to think about how to apply that in organizations

Jens Coldewey :   6:42
were biology this year,

Ray Arell:   6:46
All interesting things and we invite everyone to go up to the  Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative page, and what you'll find is a slew of different articles and different things that this group is published over the years. And as you were saying, it's kind of interesting because I guess most of us have been. There's probably more than 100 years worth of practical, agile and business experience in this room, and that always generates some great conversations. But part of our goal is to amplify this to the rest of the world. And if you haven't had a chance to go see some of the stuff we did about leadership, and we've done topics on; what are some of the topics?

Jutta Eckstein:   7:29
Performance management

Jorgen Hesselberg :   7:32
AWG was talked about 

Hendrik Esser :   7:36
How to take decisions

Ray Arell:   7:37
Great, and what you'll probably find is. And we noticed that as we've been doing the Agile Coaching Network for, I think, Episode 38. It's our fourth year that some of the topics that we talked about in the initial meetings are starting to become relevant today, and it's interesting that thing about it moving out of software. This is something we've been talking about for at least five years. Now the question that I would probably have follow with that there's a number of topics we're talking about this year, which I think are totally relevant to that question of as we start to use more agility within the organization how does this affect other portions of the organization? For example, we had a long conversation yesterday on sustainability and how sustainability in developing our products. But also how does agile practices fit into that? Does anyone want to talk about that as far as why sustainability is top of mind for us this year? And what was the other topic we were talking about?

Hendrik Esser :   8:43
The other topic we talked about was organisational design that we found the Octopus organization.

Ray Arell:   8:54
So both of those for us was just It's interesting because these are the real-world problems that you guys are dealing with currently today in your business is correct, which, you know, you might be there. You might not be there. But I could tell you that every time that we've had agile discussions, it's always about us. I hear this us and then thing comes out. If only those people would change or if we changed better. And you know we can't do a full actual adoption because the organization isn't designed well in order to go support agile adoptions. Well, let's go ahead and let's talk about So why an octopus is an organizational structure, and how did that come out?

Hendrik Esser :   9:32
I think the discussion started with the observation that, for example, in our case, it's a super large company in the nation distributed. ING is proudly joining into the club. Spotify is on its way there.  We're all suffering from the same problem. And that is how do we keep a super large company aligned without destroying all these great autonomous actions that we have a decentralized. So there's a lot of self-organization actually happening, I think, in all of our companies, because self-organization, by the way, you can never avoid it people that use their own brain. They what they think is good for the good off the company's or this is a very positive momentum. But while people are optimizing locally, sometimes when we look at the total picture things are not so optimal. And the question is, can we do something? Can we make this better? And what's on the common patterns that we see in our different companies on what this is?

Ray Arell:   0:00
****  Transcript cleanup is still in progress *** 

John Buck:   10:29
And I knew were comparing the organization to the skeleton of the structure, and I pointed out that that was a very coordinate attitude, the meeting, you know, where you have bones and there's also very intelligent systems that don't have a structure or a skeleton for the structure, which is the optimal size.  

Eric Abelen:   10:47
Yeah, and that makes it more and more  

John Buck:   10:49
Yes, right

Hendrik Esser :   10:51
Exactly. So I think we look that we start to compare and I think a lot of people have done this before. Comparing organizations are companies to the human body, for example, where we said like you have a skeleton-like the organizational structure and the skeletons relatively ridged and the comparison that we had like when we want to reorganize that Erickson, it takes us months sometimes one and 1/2 years, depending on the size of the reorganization, because you need to go to many countries. There are legal boundaries and implications and negotiations needed. So this skeleton of the organizational, basic design, off departments and sections and business areas. It's relatively rigid and this does not provide the agility that the company needs. So maybe there's something beyond that.

Jens Coldewey :   11:42
But what I found interesting is you started playing painting this kindof structural picture of the company, which actually was local markets. And there was a central part there and centralization sucks because you go to stop the local markets in it and disconnected from the broken markets and decentralization socks because, well, there's too much redundancy in there. What was the company at all if there's nothing inside there? And so we discussed it back and forth until we decide this is probably the wrong dimension. So we started to add the next up mention, which we equated to the muscles and the movement of a body

Marcin Floryan:   12:20
flow and set the organization right like we started thinking about not just how the organization is structured, but how does that workflow between different parts of the organization. Where does the value change start with A. And we started talking about how whose value chains or no necessarily linear anymore. But how today, in complex organizations, putting a lot of things together, mean that we should actually be thinking about probably value systems that contribute towards this final outcomes

Eric Abelen:   12:51
on how in such a structure have this information out? His data get shared because that's a lot off the off the organization and how do you do you do that? It's quite it's quite complex walking up to this this meeting this year. It was fascinating for me to run into Andric and immediately be resonated on that complexity problem that we both thanks in our company's so it's underway. We need to address it, and for me, it's about it. Information exchange. How can we enable that matter?

Jutta Eckstein:   13:21
The most important thing for me us when we kind of discovered that the global improvement global little ming global optimization looking at it an integrated way that this is something we probably should get up because it will not be happening on that scale. Therefore, instead what we need to focus on, it's really more local optimization and local learnings that are happening and more ensuring that the interfaces between those different local bodies that they learned from each other and this way establishing global integrated learning an improvement.

Hendrik Esser :   14:05
And there I learned something from you yesterday. Yeah, local learning. I waas mapping it toe record could structures learning in the department or look learning in the customer unit or in a and over the course of all conversations, we talked about decision circles, groups off people from different departments come together. And actually, when we talk about local running, we mean these decision making circles where you need to of course, in sure that you have a good participation. So the transport is working for a local networked? Yes. And

Eric Abelen:   14:44
the reality is is more about the areas of flow than the position structure. Exactly.

Elena Vassilieva:   14:51
Oh, my

Marcin Floryan:   14:51
assistant, also completely that there there is no perfect organizational structure. So be pragmatic around this. Go for the one that has the most advantages and the fewest disadvantages on. Then we focused everything on mitigating and addressing those disadvantages.

spk_2:   15:12
Would you guys agree that organizational design isn't something you do one sensitive correct.

Hendrik Esser :   15:18
It's constantly evolving that was another inside that learning needs to be facilitated by something on. One important thing is retrospective study. Dual organizational system retrospectives in his learning and decision circles. It's not enough. If you just focus on how do you improve your operations the day to day business you need to also, every now and then make take a step back and look at the organization as such and see emergent behavioral patterns and things like this and then adapt

Eric Abelen:   15:49
projection a leader to the next level because we have the bones. We have the mussels with you country tell of intelligence of a person with bones and hospitals and maybe the color of skin or whatever really way you can discern that is talking to this, these people. So what he's seen on what you're actually experiencing in the market off the intelligence off the organization is two different things. So there must be another level equal. Thio brains on dhe. If you look at how brains work, it's pretty different from all the rest of body works. So that was one of the parts we went through.

Elena Vassilieva:   16:25
Yeah, and this is what I like to reflect on this is what John mention how many brains off? It's not just one brain. How many veins that that inboard of organization toe achieve this local learning and decision making? It should be great, dissenters related probably the same way octopus and chief flexibility and adaptability go.

spk_2:   16:49
I think that also brings into the you know when you're doing these types of this type of work, never do it with just one brain. Have a diverse group of people coming together toe have those conversations within the organization because I've been through organizational design, and I've watched this low demographic of people go into a room or one person desert by themselves and come out is a prophet to say Here's the new design for the organization and never once looked at and brought the actual users of said or GE into a room to help out with that discussion. So I think maybe the nine minimum brain model of the Octopus might be where you should see the dynamics in the teens that

Eric Abelen:   17:33
you're using. And I like the Spotify observation that the most stable thing and Spotify is that is the team's themselves, not how the teams in a related with each other that there's air

Bjarte Bogsnes:   17:44
stable and expand on that I'd like to hear a little bit more. I

Marcin Floryan:   17:48
think there's many organizations have this idea that the most efficient way to use their people is to put them around the pieces of work with the organization meets about that really leaves out this this dimension off interpersonal dynamics and team dynamics. So it's, what, five we really believe in the investment off a group of people working together, and we really want Thio profit from that. So it makes much more sense to keep those teas stable and together and profit from the investment they've done on working together on dhe make them cross functional, t shaped, if you like to some of the actual language on dhe so that they can really adverse multiple problems, the problems that the organization has a particular point in time

Eric Abelen:   18:39
began. This leads us back to the great metaphor because, well, the intellectual capacity of a brain can't really judge Benton over off neurons that are there. You have the number of connections between this nuance in the years themselves, a pretty stable off. The connections are remade over and over again every time you learned something. If we compare that to the organization, it's not about the structure of organizations, not about the flow. But it's about the number of connections

Hendrik Esser :   19:09
in the reconnecting, which is the corporate learning

spk_2:   19:12
and the speed at which you can reconnect.

Marcin Floryan:   19:13
Justin, I can give you a sneak peek into some research that we've actually been doing with University this year and Spotify, where we have started looking at the relationship between individual teams, sense of autonomy and their network in the organization. And, of course, the naive you would be. The team that is least dependent, least interconnected across the organization would be the most upon this one because they can just function on their own. And, of course, the opposite is true. The teams that have the most connections that those connections happen through most members off the team are the teams that appear to be the ones that feel the sense of autonomy to the greatest degree and that teams were There isn't a single person that owns that connection, so it's not a PM or a manager that connects the team with the rest of the organization, but also where those who said that those connections can very quickly change involved when

spk_2:   20:13
you brought up the question of the brain and learning neural plasticity within an organization in order for organizations to move to something new or to evolve or exact ation occur that neural plasticity in the organization. Some people will challenge back and say, Well, I don't have any time to learn or evolve or do these other things I'm so busy delivering on my backlogs and trying to meet those key dates by, you know, what would your advice be to the people who are stuck in a state where that can't living?

Jutta Eckstein:   20:50
I would say like this old saying, We can't build the fence, We have to chase the cattle Interesting. Yeah, which doesn't help us to get anywhere so off what's really needed. And actually, this was also one thing we discussed yesterday. What's needed. ISS intentional reflection in all to find out what needs to be done differently and what has been learned, which ourselves a big thing. But what we all I think have experienced that for ourselves that overnight thoughts, all the past we're having overnight helps us to solve even really heart problems. Hands

Hendrik Esser :   21:33
to sleep. Yes, all

Jutta Eckstein:   21:34
right. And so we really mold to do these intentional reflections. Also inside cos

Eric Abelen:   21:42
views sleeping analogy. We need to explain, I guess.

Hendrik Esser :   21:47
No, it was just a reflection of what he said. Do that that Okay, there needs to be opposed where you can digest all the inputs that you got all the sensory perceptions and everything that was going on and conclude something out off this. You can't just keep running

Jutta Eckstein:   22:02
right. Then if you utilize all the time, then this can't happen.

Eric Abelen:   22:07
John gave us very interesting inside. And how neurons are actually synapses are built in the she would bring. The often direction is the first chemical you think first, chemically camel G, and you need see foot. That sleep helps a lot with the process. So So sleep and dream is organizations need about the teams. They've done so in our discussion, we were we were talking about it. Also, organizations need time for reflection on that. Often we don't take that time. So has thio matter for sleeping.

Hendrik Esser :   22:41
So that's what I meant previously with these organizational retrospectives. This may be a practical way off. Organizational sleep. Not that you're doing and you think it is just that you're taking our diagnosis. Is sleep deprived organizations Yes, I think we see this in all over the planet, in different companies who are people get burned out and so on because this level's off learning, not building defense, but chasing the kettle all the time. People are getting really, really tired.

Marcin Floryan:   23:13
And sleep is a good analogy as well, because humans are not capable of catching up on sleep you cannot not seen for a week and then sleep for three days. So I think the same needs to apply to organizations, T I mean, since your animal pace and you have to have some sort of good cadence for those reflection points. They cannot all happen for a week every year. It's much better to stop for half a day every few weeks, actually something that I do with my leadership team, that we get together at very regular cadence to reflect on how the organ issues going. And I would encourage organizations to do

Hendrik Esser :   23:54
that. Yeah, do that interest we have in parts of Ericsson have bean doing this where we had like quarterly retrospectives on the organization and that organization that I was part off doing this. It was a really healthy organization.

Eric Abelen:   24:08
I think one of the core things there, two things I want, that one is rich Perspectives is usually are connected to team retrospectives, and I think that falls way short of its potential. Really potential great respect is our cross team on dhe actually long value streams or even across value streams. And the other thing is, I think there are other ways for an organization to its called sleep ingested the prospectus. Heck off. I think our wave off dreamy.

spk_2:   24:37
Yes, that was my next point on this is that during retrospectives and we had a lot of criticism that I've heard people call in for the podcast and they'll say we do retrospectives, but they're not actionable. We don't do anything about it. But combine the retrospective dreaming, which is Let's go do something in the retrospective to make this place better and walk out of those those meetings with progress versus walking out of them with just a list of something that you're gonna throw over the fencer. Our look at the next time you do a retrospective ago. Yeah, the 12 things were still there. Nothing's happened that changed.

Jutta Eckstein:   25:16
How that's the big problem. Retrospectives Often that he's I hear from people that download helpful because people do not take the time to really Brooke the stuff. So it is more like collecting the pluses and minuses. But then saying okay, and what do we do for the next spring? Federation? Well, we chest welcome on the minuses, said he injured. But this doesn't help lead us in

Bjarte Bogsnes:   25:45
a bit of bitching sessions. Okay, let's be honest. I mean, we actually did some research on this. So what? We did this. We said, How about we put a neural network on this and see if we can look at certain practices that people do? But what has the highest correlation to time to market customer satisfaction and quality and the one single thing that stood out waas. The teams do retrospectives and take action in a timely manner. Well, to me was

Jutta Eckstein:   26:13
taking taking the actions of Stephanie a very important thing, however, and this leads back to

Elena Vassilieva:   26:19
the reflection thing. What I find is even more important is the generating insights, So

Jutta Eckstein:   26:24
it's not only coming up with the lists off whatever needs to be done differently or so. But then providing the insides. Why are these things the way they are and what hinders so far for not making a difference? Because there might be circumstances in our ecosystem that kind of wanna keep it like this. So their stuff where we all think, well, there's just bad. But it's full of benefit off something somebody, whatever, and therefore it stays that way. And if we're not generating those insights, this will never go away

Marcin Floryan:   27:03
yet actually drew a very nice model yesterday. I remember on, like how feedback in systems work in cybernetic systems. So I found that useful justice they're thinking toe. Maybe you can describe those three elements.

Eric Abelen:   27:19
Wellit's pretty simple, honest you have to sense we have a bond is you have to process what is sending, which means generating inside. And the third one's gonna be tracked, which is actually the cybernetic version of the motorcycle. So you have that different variants around on the call thing. There's see that most informations make a pretty good job in sensing. We usually call that complaining they may do some job processing, which is they're putting on flip chart with applause. I mean, Highness, up. They do very bad job, actually acting so taking consequences. What's happened? That's right on. I think this is the one thing where really agile oppositions excel the others. They are able to turn complaints into insights and turn that into tangible action. That really makes a difference to the organization,

Hendrik Esser :   28:18
as he also that very often we spend too little time on getting into insides and too fast to action.

Ray Arell:   28:24
Right, because we just have

Eric Abelen:   28:26
one hour of retrospectives

Hendrik Esser :   28:27
exactly, and some action needs to come. Also, this inaction focus instead of inside. Focus on. I think the inside focus is more important than the action focus. Once you've got the inside, the action will come automatically.

Elena Vassilieva:   28:40
I like the follow up, and that deeper in the woods Ray was saying about hacker phone is a combination off reflection and dream, sleep and dream very often in organization. Hacker phone. It's really like engineering stuff. They do something over there, but I really would like to have a personal act and ask your kids how in the business a jellicle world, how we can use reflection and dream to bring the entire organization into this participation in paper form will be heck a phone after the business genius,

Marcin Floryan:   29:15
I'm not quite sure. Army response.

spk_2:   29:18
I need Thio. Yeah, well, if I may, UH, there's nothing stopping an organization from doing a design thinking workshop and go to a neutral area that's outside of the current walls of your organization. Get to a place where it's comfortable and nice where you can actually fantasize it. Should you fantasize about your business, fantasize about what are the possibilities toe add in the space and And I think that way met with a group of local, agile coaches, and I was listening to them and there, in the thick of it there in the battle for, you know, helping organizations to be change agents in that environment. Some change agents might say that the stuff that you guys were talking about is a little lost E for them. They don't have the they don't have the positional power. I've heard others say, not this group, but others have said, How do I do it as a single change agent within the system, too? Have these things come into existence. We had a

Eric Abelen:   30:32
session with his meeting with. I hope I'm a talk about that with several of the internal coaches, very experienced coaches very well rooted in Najaf, thinking on all of them complained about different impediments they had with the organization. So we figured out that this is actually the this time working mood, often agile coach, at least of the successful one, because it's this painting that actually starts to make a difference in the organization.

Hendrik Esser :   31:03
If you're going to feel the pain any more than you stop learning.

Eric Abelen:   31:06
Yeah, who's probably stop being on service. So there needs to be paying with civilization to change something. Yeah, vein is good words because you used to complain. That's not what tigers I heard deep concern for organizational health. This may be one of the core differences. Complaining is just well, the world is bad on dhe, so I feel bad. And it's your go to Blaine concerned. It's something that I want to make a difference. Yeah, in a way, it was really very positive. I was. I was very impressed. A simple, practical suggestion for anybody's listing who does retrospect is that when you have your smiley faces and your friendly faces and your pluses and minuses. Ask, what does that say about how we're thinking? How is our thinking contributing to this situation? And can we think in a different way? And then you have a chance to really hop through something new?

spk_2:   31:58
And I can tell you one of the strategies have used in my career has been when somebody wants tohave the difficult conversations, and I'm not ready for that conversation, it's better to say, Look, can we reschedule this and do this at a time when I I will be more engaged, There'll be more of me here. But right now I'm not ready for this conversation and therefore, let's do it later

Eric Abelen:   32:23
if if you go back to the original idea. If retrospectives. Oh, that came from perfection doing community. He's writing about three day retrospectives, getting on with a lot of preparation upfront

spk_2:   32:38
in there. I

Jutta Eckstein:   32:39
haven't the nights in between for reflection,

Eric Abelen:   32:43
having sleep in between on. So if you think that respect is there just one and 1/2 hour thing about Philip Philip Jarlsberg, the plus and minus you, it's so short off the original idea by the way, I'm May advertisement here in Long currently needs our help. So we will post a link on that Andre, if you want to be a little bit back to him, what contributed to our community? You may want to check that. Think

Jutta Eckstein:   33:13
I want to go back to the design thinking session, but you kind of brought up. And the thing is, I'm always getting a little bit nervous when I hear that and I'm getting nervous because the way they typically are run those design thinking sessions. There is somebody who invites to the design thinking session, and besides, who will be creative at whatever time that has bean pick and they and what makes me nervous about that is that it's not based on invite ation, and it's not an open thing that people can decide kind of by themselves. Is today a good day for being creative, innovative? So I think something that I get the same thinking session has to take place all the time and no being something that's completely coughed out, and it's like one time it went, and so where I'm heading it, it's more well connected to open space which is the invitation is open and out there all the time and therefore people can contribute and praying that I beers I whenever they the

spk_2:   34:31
purse. I fully agree with that. I just grind it up is one malt potential method one thing that we established and with previous Fortune 100 company that I was that we created innovation hubs and the innovation hubs were open during the day. In every morning we had anyone who wanted to show up to this lean coffee session. We had just continuous a continuous market place that was open and there were coaches available there to help people through just even thinking through and getting a slightly different perspective. You know it again. Is that how much diversity can I bring to the table when I'm working on a problem? The more brains that we have, I think that more creative, the solutions come out. But also with that. The company that I was with was also very much a extra vert community, and you get a bunch of extroverts and one introverted a table. Oh my goodness. You also need the facilitators to acknowledge the introverts and because there might be some really cool solutions are just, you know, really great ways of you have to. You have to hear the whole organization. I guess this means

Jutta Eckstein:   35:40
we're kind of bank from where we were, which is like the local optimization local Erling, And this is really how reorganization, innovation and the ruling is happening in companies. And so just what we talked about. It's like one example

Elena Vassilieva:   35:58
of how this can happen,

Marcin Floryan:   35:59
right? You just said a word that really triggered me, and I think there's again a pattern here emerging, you know, he said, like, you do the innovation continuously, and I think that's the word that we should be applying way more often to everything or organizations to and beyond. Budgeting is really that the way here. Think about how we continuously think about our budgets or investments. You know, we should think the same way about planning, how we continuously think about what's next. How do we continuous we have mechanisms for learning in the organization

Eric Abelen:   36:31
said to me. Many people today start start to copy what they call the Spotify model. We owe them really looking at what the difference is. It's not that Marston is not wearing the suit, at least whenever I see him. And it's not. That department at Spotify is called the Tribe. The coughing is a talk to Stan. It's department leaders, senator organization. She won't tell me something about what we have to do that and should be by these are building ourselves that she will be deeply involved in day to day stuff. When I talked to Marci, he's deep involved in just how how to leave this organization on how to change that organization. So I think the coughing off really agile organization is that the management, especially the what I call be upper middle middle management, is deeply concerned about these topics. Hauser Accusation learn How does information about how the neurons building and how can we support building unions? I think that's the bridge to the other thing. And I think this also matter off lack off connection lack off neurons and that would be the brooch. Which

Hendrik Esser :   37:52
reminds me off the notion we had before about the understanding that it's not about single use dreams but the value ecosystem, where nowadays many companies cannot live on their own anymore and do a business on their own very often business operated from many different companies, joining forces not sometimes not knowing. Will that be really revenue for me and the thing? But just in the hope that something will emerge, we go in and create value ecosystem,

Jutta Eckstein:   38:24
which is actually, and they wanted to call off the call things that I needed false statement because a company by itself, even if he discovers something which helps to be more sustainable, doesn't really make much difference. It makes only a difference is if what that company has learned is shared with the others. And then it's leveraged and really helps sustaining. Know. So been that company, but also the ones who are in that ecosystem in the next room.

Hendrik Esser :   38:59
And I think I was in November. I wasn't a conference called the Invasion Roundtable, and their lot off different companies are meeting practitioners like myself and Marson, who really are embedded deeply in businesses on dhe sustainability wasa big thing. This is a thing we're and it's the innovation rounded, so those are the people and companies who are looking a bit forward. What's coming? This is on the agenda off all companies, and when you talk about it. You can really feel how people resonate with the subject.

Jutta Eckstein:   39:34
Yeah, I would think that sustainability will soon beside on the reputation off company, and if a company doesn't have a good answer to it, then it will have a hard time to survive in the market. So I think sustainability will be probably the disrupt

Bjarte Bogsnes:   39:55
doctor confirmed That said, just real quick that you want to go into a little bit about what the scope of sustainability means,

Jutta Eckstein:   40:03
which is something we still need to explore, actually, so from from my understanding at the moment, it's one of the things it means is taking full responsibility for products recreating so meaning? It's not only important Bell Yeah, delivering and if the customers happy, but also being responsible for what that's the customer actually do after what's with that product. And then also why producing the product and again, how it's used, thinking about from sustainable aspect, how many and what kind of resources are actually consumed. And can we do a better chop and, well, one way of me saying that is maybe that has to go into definition off Done also, always checking now how are we dealing with resources? What are we doing? How do we consume them? And just like one data point here. So at the moment, there is like one off the forecast saying that in 2030 it will be I t consuming about 21% off all the energy that's consumed on the planet. So it means we do have a big responsibility here. If we are not contributing to that, well, then be contradicted in the other way too, if we can all that. But

Hendrik Esser :   41:27
at the same time, I d enables the reduction,

Jutta Eckstein:   41:30
right? So it's

Hendrik Esser :   41:32
a global eco system and

Jutta Eckstein:   41:34
that's our heart.

Hendrik Esser :   41:36
But sometimes also need to invest into something to save on the other side and to understand these kind of things.

Jutta Eckstein:   41:44
But if we're not a bear fed, just it will not happen.

Hendrik Esser :   41:47
Exactly. Awareness is the first step.

Jutta Eckstein:   41:48
Yes,

Eric Abelen:   41:49
And again we come to the point that intelligence is the natural kings again. So when society is countries decided cut off their networks because, well, bastard, we need to make up ourselves first or whatever. This is actually reducing the global intelligence off.

Hendrik Esser :   42:08
If you cut the synapse than your brain can communicate more stupid.

spk_2:   42:13
Exactly. Well, I think also awareness, too, because, I mean, you know this example just because I traveled around the planet multiple times I've seen companies like when they're clean water facility wasn't producing for the factory. They were pumping cleaner water back into the into the ground, replenishing aqua firs. But they don't announce that they don't tell people that they're doing some of these things. And I think even just taking a list of what you're doing today is a good starting spot. But I think for most people, let's say of programmers, hardware, software designers themselves. I don't think we consciously spend enough time on. You know, if I write this code cleaner, it's going to execute with less power because, as you know, most of our cloud based platforms, especially if we have a 1,000,000 users of a particular product, you just think about the that unhealthy block of Cody writ route being executed and millions and millions of times. That's a lot of power so

Jutta Eckstein:   43:20
well, which means maybe we have the thing. Both tests as well, then that I mentioned yeah,

Hendrik Esser :   43:25
but with thing comes back is questions like they the centers and very efficiently. There's a huge question on your part ownership on operation expenditure when you're running these things. And I think these are capitalistic drivers, also for its

Jutta Eckstein:   43:42
well. But this is a good point because they are already also cos looking at this, like running their data centers and the carbon mutual way by having been farms powering them. And so there are possibilities as well. I think looking at sustainability, and I guess we all agreed to that. It's not like rolling everything back. It's more leveraging the I t and software and all we can bring to that to make it better

Eric Abelen:   44:13
on. I think what's important here. A few of us have the possibility. Thio tell All Data Center a company used to go to Iceland where they actually can take that part of the ground is good, too. But on the other hand, I think each of us has way more influence on decisions and if you really think about was in your area off competency. One of the possibilities to save like Ray just gives on the couple's on, On the other hand, promoting the networks that make organizations learned that could be a pretty big contribution to sustainability, especially you. Look at the T the street, which is the college sued today. I

Marcin Floryan:   44:55
really like this perspective off. Everyone having a role to play nothing. It's like the engineer can write better code. When you deploy this, you can think about the use off. For example, if you deployed to the cloud, it's so easy to think that that's pro free. But if you do some out of scaling than something, you can reduce your footprints. But is the manager, for example, you also have a role to play. We've been organizing some offsides on deliberately chosen to go there by trend, for example. Or, you know, think about what kind of food you order for your off site or for your retrospective or for your lunch. We'd started Thio with this notion now that maybe by default or food that we ordered for lunch and learns is vegetarian.

Eric Abelen:   45:37
There's also we very briefly touched on the political sustainability. If you're contributing to authoritarian systems that reduced the amount of creativity in the Oculus or that are used for evil, you could say evil. Sure thing are you is this you mentioned youto where the customers doing with it is that is their activities. Something that you support? Is it in your company's value system free much of products being produced to be used that way. Look, do you do about

spk_2:   46:13
an employee? You know, it's been plenty of stories where big companies start using a software, our hardware system in a different way than it was originally designed for. And when employees become activists within their company to say no. And I've seen many a company that big giants you would never have expected to reverse course they have. So don't think that if you're just a lone person creating sustainability in the organization, the ethics that goes into what we build, stand up and raise up against the tendencies or whatever, it might be in there.

Ray Arell:   46:53
So that's believe it or not. We're at the top of the hour, and that's all. We have time for this, that everyone I want to wish everyone a happy holiday as we closed the last month's way said that that was going to be the last one of the year. So this is sort of a surprise podcast. That's your Christmas gift. We did this last year. By the way. Listen to the group from last year. That was actually really great conversation conversations on that as well. If you want to come see me, I'm going to be at Agile today in India at the end of February. Please come Beiste and have a chat. You guys have a great holidays, and I would like to thank everyone in this room for the conversations that we had. I am deeply, deeply, deeply honored to be a part of this team. Thank you. This'll Podcast has provided by General Lyons for educational and informative purposes only to find out more information about the member supported, agile alliance. Please go to agile alliance dot org to find out about more upcoming events, as well as different programs that are available to help you with your actual training.