Click the video below to see what Ronica says.

Want to know when and where you can attend Creating Results-Based Teams?

See more testimonials for this workshop.

Dan Mezick

Listen to the Interview

If you just want the “meat and potatoes”of who should attend, why, and what they will take away, skip to Part 2 of 2. If you enjoy a wide-ranging dialog about people and interactions at work and human progress, then you will like Part 1 of 2.

Part 1 of 2 (23:55) (click to listen, right-click to download)

Part 2 of 2 (16:51) (click to listen, right-click to download)

More cool links for Creating Results-Based Teams

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Top agile company CEO endorses Creating Results-Based Teams

Recent evaluation by IT leaders of their experience with Creating Results-Based Teams

Derek Wade and I are hosting one or two RP game design sessions at Agile2011 in Salt Lake City to see if we can develop a useful game. You are invited to participate if you too would love to have a useful Responsibility Process game. We are planning to meet Sunday afternoon or evening for the first time, then perhaps again Monday afternoon right after my Coaching Success: Getting People to Take Responsibility workshop.

Add your email to the meet-up list and I’ll keep you informed.

How to design a learning game?

I’m not an expert, but I have designed quite a few games. Here are some things to consider:

Think of a game you enjoyed playing as a child, like Tic Tac Toe, Hop Scotch, Jacks, Go Fish, Charades, Scavenger Hunt, Hide and Seek, etc. Then ask yourself how the game could be adapted to your subject matter.

Consider how much more engaging it would be to add dice-rolls, turn-taking, point-scoring, judges, or a timer to something simple like role-playing. The game conditions should only add to the discovery process, not interfere.

What other game-design ideas do you have? Leave a comment.

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As you saw in the Responsibility Man – Part 1 video, my son Thom is having fun mastering his Leadership Gift by lovingly mocking his dad. Here is the super-hero costume he’s outfitted for me.

What do you think? I’m not sure I can have the costume pulled together by Agile2011. Should I try?

I’ll post Thom’s next video — Responsibility Man 2 – I Am Here — maybe after you and 9 others leave a comment…

I firmly believe that the software development movement — and now business movement — known as “agile” is a mindset and culture, not a set of tools and processes (see this related post). Agile coach Michael Sahota is writing a set of articles about agile and culture that are worth a look.

I summarized my thoughts in a comment on his blog post Agile Fits Better in Some Company Cultures Than Others.” In part, I said:

I love that agile thinking, lean thinking, Scrum, Kanban, WIP, TOC, complexity theory, all challenge people at work to think — some a little and others a lot — about what they are doing at work. I do believe the agile movement is causing a sizable shift world-wide at the level of individual discipline. I think it is beyond critical mass and irreversible. I tell my clients that if they – like me – came of age in a world of linear thinking (i.e., waterfall-like planning and execution), and they don’t embrace agile, it is very likely that someone who today is 30 years-old and has been practicing agile thinking for 8 or 10 years will soon be taking their job and running their department and company.

What do you think? Comment.

I recommend the review and interchange to you.

I was limited to 1000 characters there

So here’s a little of what I didn’t include:

My view comes from thirty years of studying and applying the sciences and arts of leadership, management, and organization. Through this thirty-year lens I see agile and lean as philosophies born of TQM (Total Quality Management, the life work of Edwards Deming). No wonder they go so well together. I realize there are plenty of other perspectives about the relationship of agile and lean, which is superior, which is the overarching umbrella, etc.

What’s the scoop?

I’m giving away:

1. a downloadable PDF copy of Peter Saddington’s new book Scrum Pocket Guide: A Quickstart Guide to Practical Agile Software Development (sells for $17)
2. an autographed copy of my book Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When sharing Responsibility (sells for $19)
3. a copy of my DVD The Journey to Responsibility and Self Leadership – Personal/Silver Edition (sells for $497)

Why?

Peter offered me a copy of his new Scrum Pocket Guide to give away. I thought it would be a fun thing to do and see what happens. Giveaway details are below.

My Review of the Scrum Pocket Guide

Peter Saddington must be a pretty busy guy. His Agile Scout blog devoted to democratizing agile is full of breaking news, important coverage and commentary. It’s a refreshing addition. If you don’t already subscribe to it, I’d consider it or at least read it regularly.

And now Peter’s published this handy reference guide.

First impressions

Scrum Pocket Guide is well written. Easy to read. Peter doesn’t waste your time. He’s concise. And the information is accurate – Peter represents Scrum well.

I’m not a fan of the cover – my wife said people who wore pocket protectors would like this book. Ouch. If you also don’t care for the cover then I’d invoke the rule that you can’t judge this book by it’s cover. A useful consideration about this impression: who am I to judge a book cover? Teamwork Is An Individual Skill claims one of the ugliest covers ever.

The internal design of Peter’s book is remarkably attractive, as a short reference guide should be. In fact, I made note of the designer to consider for one of my projects. Yes, it is pleasing and colorful, but that’s not all. The colors and icons on the internal pages provide useful flow and markers that make it easy and delightful to find what you are looking for.

My final first impression: It’s a long quickstart guide. Quickstart guides for setting up my bike computer or DVR are 4 pages at most. This one is 53 pages. Calling it a pocket guide is the better of the two metaphors.

What’s cool

Scrum Pocket Guide is organized around the

• characters (Scrummaster, team members, etc.) you will encounter
• vocabulary definitions (when teaching Scrum I find it helpful to capture our Glossary on a flip chart as terms and phrases are uncovered) you will use, and
• meetings you will witness in Scrum

Get the PDF version. That’s the one I’m reading. It has clickable resource links, and plenty of them, to resources like the Agile Manifesto, industry alliances and lots more.

Each chapter averages just over one page in length so you can absorb it fast. Short lists of most important questions – for instance for Scrummasters, Product Owners, etc.) are included in most every chapter.

This book puts the focus on people and interactions — it opens with a chapter on servant leadership. That’s cool.

When appropriate, Peter includes photos from projects and scrum teams so you can see examples of task boards or other tools.

To sum it up

I liked this book and recommend it. I’ll carry it on my drive or in DropBox and refer to it in coaching engagements.

How to enter:

Simply leave a comment below about why you would like to win these three resources.

How to earn up to 3 extra entries:

Leave a separate comment for each extra entry.

1. Subscribe to Christopher Avery blog updates (top right-hand corner) and leave me a comment on this post that you did. (I will never share my readers’ address).
2. Follow me on Twitter and tweet this: “win Scrum Pocket Guide and 2 other prizes at @ChristopherAver’s #book #giveaway #Scrum http://bit.ly/ebCV7f”.
3. Sign up for the next free preview of The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

{I received one book for this review and no other compensation. This is my honest opinion. This giveaway ends Wednesday, February 23, 2011, at 6:00 PM USA Eastern. Three winners, one for each item, will be chosen by Random.org and will have 48 hours to respond to my email. Open to U.S. residents only, will ship to USA addresses only (sorry international friends). Incorrect or incomplete entries are out of luck.}

Everyone says they want to be on a winning team. And nobody ever says they want to be on a lousy team. So how come we end up on frustrating teams much of the time?

Here are the steps you can take to make sure that being on your teams remain the worst, most frustrating experiences ever. Master each of these four steps and then be sure to pass them to others so they, too, can bring all their teams down.

These steps are especially important if you want to bring agile practices to a standstill…

Step 1: Assume someone else is responsible for team building

Never, under any circumstance, should you allow yourself to feel a sense of ownership for the quality and productivity of the whole team, collaboration, partnership, or relationship. By all means, let someone else do that, preferably someone you can despise for not having as much technical competence as you. Also, assume team building is black magic instead of a skill set composed of straight-forward, repeatable conversations anyone can bring to any relationship any time.

Why? Someone — anyone, regardless of their role in the team — who cares about the productivity of the team will make a huge difference in putting into motion the conversations and ideas that build the team. But when no one does, then it’s completely up to chance whether the team develops effective dynamics.

Consider this: 15 years ago I had the opportunity to interview dozens of science and engineering staff in a couple of large, failed programs. Everyone was a “top 10 percent” graduate from a “top 10” university, the crème de’ le’ crème. When asked, “To what do you owe your participation in this failed program?” the No. 1 response was: “I got put on a bad team.”

Memorize that line so you can repeat it in your next review.

Step 2: Resist attending to anything other than the most narrow description of your role

Whatever you do, refuse all invitations to meetings, orientations, or informal gatherings where the team’s overall mission might be discussed. If you do, you might get sucked into caring. And if you actually cared, then you might feel a sense of ownership, and next thing you know you’ll be sub-optimizing for your own role and optimizing for the whole.

Why? The No. 1 point of leverage for team building and team leadership is to talk together about the larger goal. I call it the what-we-must-do-together-that-is-bigger-than-any-of-us,-requires-all-of-us,-and-none-of-us-can-claim-individual-victory-until-it-is-achieved conversation.

Step 3: Don’t care whether others on the team and extended teams are winning or losing

By all means, whatever you do, maintain a constant vigil of nonchalance about how what you do affects others on the team or beyond. This is relatively easy to master. Besides repeating the mantra “I don’t care” you can also:

1. Assume the only way to motivate anyone is with the carrots and sticks of management, which peers on teams don’t have available, thus you can’t affect other’s commitment.
2. Never, ever ask “What’s in it for you — beyond a paycheck — to work on this project?” That way, you can continue to not care, and you also don’t have to know whether you are stepping on someone’s win.
3. Never own up to having any inspiration at all about why you come to work other than for continued employment and a paycheck. That way you can maintain low interest and commitment to most things.
4. Finally, assume that other people and departments should do what you think they should do because you all get a paycheck from the same company.

Why? Most people say they want to be on a winning team. That means actually practicing win/win/win at every level and juncture, which requires some caring, knowledge, and effort. And that means understanding how peer motivation works and committing to generate as many wins as possible out of every decision and action.

Step 4: Make only agreements you must in order to get others to leave you alone, and don’t worry about keeping them.

Since there is a fuzzy authority system in teams, collaborations, and partnerships, feel free to say and do anything you can to get people to leave you alone. That usually means resisting opting in and engaging until they twist your arm and then saying whatever you must in order to end the pain and move on. Making agreements you never intend to keep is a great way to ensure continual frustration and failure.

Why? Teams, collaborations, and partnerships operate on a different frequency than the hierarchical functions of an organization. Where authority structures create the fabric of the institution, making and keeping agreements of all types, from operating rules to delivering work, creates the fabric of the team.

Practice, practice, practice

Repeat these four steps over and over. I promise you will be a whiz at bringing down any team without even trying.

What steps did I miss?

Did I mention or miss a personal favorite of yours? Let me know.

Christopher Avery, Ph.D. wrote the popular book Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility — which Fortune Magazine claimed is the only teamwork book worth reading. He is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Master leadership or build a responsible team (or family) with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

Why is collaborative leadership required for agile environments?

Good question. Consider this: The Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) is founded on the principles of the Declaration of Interdependence (DOI). (As a point of transparency, you may want to know that I co-authored the DOI and cofounded the APLN with, I’m pleased to say, fourteen regarded agile experts.)

Notice the term “interdependence.” All six principles of the DOI point to some element of interdependence with — not independence from — project and business forces:

• We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our focus.
• We deliver reliable results by engaging customers in frequent interactions and shared ownership.
• We expect uncertainty and manage for it through iterations, anticipation, and adaptation.
• We unleash creativity and innovation by recognizing that individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating an environment where they can make a difference.
• We boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness.
• We improve effectiveness and reliability through situationally specific strategies, processes and practices.

Interdependence implies simultaneous multi-way, cause-effect relationships. The interdependent business forces include (at least):

• your customer’s idea of value,
• variables in your operating environment,
• the vicissitudes of your creative talent, and
• your methods and goals.

To recognize interdependence means to realize and admit being only one player among a group of factors

You must dance with time and nature — you can never isolate and freeze time and nature while you assemble static pieces of your project. Once you recognize and declare your interdependence at the project level, then you realize that organization is a snap-shot fallacy and organizing is the activity of the day everyday — that’s what IT leadership is about, continuous and ongoing organizing (not static organization).

While organization is static, organizing is alive and always in the process of emerging, creating, and becoming. A leadership style that is closed to input and interaction, walled off from the customer, with a siloed focus on head-down efficient execution and little regard to effectiveness of the results will not recognize interdependence and suffer the consequences.

Leaders who refuse to recognize their interdependence with the world around them account for their frequent failures with wails of “No one could have seen that coming,” “It’s not my fault,” and “That’s just the way it is; there’s nothing I could do!” Does this sound familiar?

The reason for collaborative leadership is to open your leadership senses to the flow of forces around you

When you do, you’ll find that your culture and your project teams will also be open to the same. Instead of having to operate in a frame of “me against the world,” you and they can adopt a sense of “me with the world” and work together a lot more efficiently.

As I’ve said before, to begin generating a cultural mindset of collaborative and agile leadership, assemble your leadership team and brainstorm ways to stretch yourselves into the six principles of the Declaration of Interdependence. Perhaps you could work in six-, eight-, or twelve-week leadership sprints or iterations followed by a week or two of release decisions, retrospectives, leadership feature planning, and the next leadership team sprint.

It’s worth thinking about.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a popular agilist and expert in the only how-to approach for taking and teaching personal responsibility. He advises leaders worldwide. Find additional resources for mastering agility and leadership or building a responsible team at The Leadership Gift.