Easy Agile Podcast Ep.21 LIVE from Agile2022!

"Thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jon, he shared some great perspectives on the impact of the Agile manifesto" - Amaar Iftikhar

Amaar Iftikhar, Product Manager at Easy Agile is joined by Jon Kern, Co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and a senior transformation consultant at Adaptavist.

Amaar and Jon took some time to speak about the Agile Manifesto. Covering everything from the early days, ideation, process, and first reactions, right through to what it means for the world of agile working today.

They touch on the ideal state of an agile team, and what the manifesto means for distributed, hybrid and co-located teams.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript

Amaar Iftikhar:

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Amaar Iftikhar. I'm a product manager here at Easy Agile. And before we begin, Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Dharawal speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. And extend that same respect to all Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and First Nations peoples joining us today.

Today, we have on the podcast Jon Kern, who is the co-author of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development and an Agile consultant. If you're wondering, you're correct. I did mention the Agile Manifesto for Software Development. The Agile Manifesto. So Jon, welcome for being here and thank you for joining us.

Jon Kern:

Oh, my pleasure, Amaar. Thank you.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, very excited to have you on. Let's just get started with the absolute basic. Tell the audience about, what is the Agile manifesto?

Jon Kern:

Well, it's something that if you weren't around, and I know you're young, so you weren't around 21 years ago, I guess now, to maybe understand the landscape of what software development process and tooling and what most of us were facing back then, it might seem like a really obvious set of really simple values. Who could think that there's anything wrong with what we put into the manifesto? But back in the day, there were, what I practiced under as a... I'm an aerospace engineer, so I was in defense department work doing things like fighter simulation, F-14 flat spins and working with a centrifuge and cool stuff like that. And subject to a mill standard specification, which makes sense for probably weapons systems, and aircraft manufacturing, and all sorts of other things. But they had one, lo and behold, for software development. And so there was a very large, what I would call heavy handedness around software development process. We call it heavyweight process. Waterfall was the common term back then, and probably still used today.

And there were plenty of, I would say the marketing juggernaut of the day, IBM and Rational unified process, these large, very much like Safe. Where it's a really large body of work, awesome amount of information in it, but very heavy process even though everything would, say you tailor it, it could be whatever you wanted. I mapped my own lightweight process into REP for example. Sure. But the reality was we were facing kind of the marketplace leader being heavyweight process that was just soul crushing, and from my perspective, wasting taxpayers' money. That was kind of my angle was, well, I'm a taxpayer, I'm not going to just do this stupid process for process sake. That has to have some value, has to be pragmatic. So lo and behold, there were a handful of us, 17 that ended up there, but there are a handful of us that practiced more lightweight methods. So the manifesto was really an opportunity for coming together and discovering some of the, what you might think of as the commonality between many different lightweight practices. There was the XP contingent. I first learned about Scrum there, for example. Arie van Bennekum, a good friend, he taught us about DSDM. I don't even remember what it stands for anymore. It was a European thing.

Alistair and Jim Highsmith, they had, I forget, like crystal methodologies. So there was a fair amount of other processes that did not have the marketing arm that erupted, or didn't have the mill standard. So it was really all about what could we find amongst ourselves that was some sort of common theme about all these lightweight processes. So it was all about discovering that, really.

Amaar Iftikhar:

You all get together, the principles kind of come to fruition, and let's fast forward a little bit. What was the initial reaction to the original manifesto?

Jon Kern:

Yeah, it was even kind of funny that the four values, the four bullets is as simple as it was. The principles came a bit later. I want to say we collaborated over awards wiki, but the original... If you go to Agile uprising, you can see I uploaded some artifacts, because apparently I'm a pack rat. And I had the original documents that Alistair probably printed out, because he was the one... He and Jim lived there near Salt Lake City. So it was like, "Hey, let's come here." And we like to go skiing, so let's do it here. So he arranged the room and everything. And so there's some funny artifacts that you can find. And the way that it actually came about was an initial introduction of each of us about our methods. And really I think a key, we left our egos at the door. I mean I was a younger one. Uncle Bob, some of these, he was at Luminar, I know I have magazines still in the barn that he was either the editor of, or authors of for people who don't remember what magazines are. Small little booklets that came out. So Uncle Bob was like, Ooh, wow, this is pretty cool.

And I wasn't shy because I had a lot of experience with heavyweight methods. So I really wanted to weigh in on... Because I had published my own lightweight method a few years earlier. So I had a lot of opinions on how to avoid the challenges of big heavyweight process. So the culmination as we were going out the door and after we had come up with the four values was I think Ward said, "Sir, want me to put this on the web?" And again, this is 2001 so dot com and the web's still kind of new so to speak. And we're all like, yeah, sure, why not? What the hell, can't hurt. We got something, might as well publish it. I don't think to a person, anybody said, "Oh yeah, this is going to set the world on fire because we're so awesome." And we were going to anoint the world with all of this wonderful wisdom. So I don't think anybody was thinking that that much would happen.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah. So what were you thinking at that time? So how would the principles that you had come up with together, was that maybe just for the team to take away? Everyone who was there? What was the plan at that time?

Jon Kern:

I think it was a common practice. Like I said, there were other groups that would often meet and have little consortiums or little gatherings and then publish something. So I think it was just, oh yeah, that's a normal thing to do is you spent some time together and you wrote things down, you might as well publish it. So I think it wasn't any deeper than that other than Bob, I think Bob might say that he wanted to come up with some kind of a manifesto of sorts or some kind of a document because that's I think what those sort of... I was never at one of those gatherings, but you know, you could see that they did publish things. I have a feeling it was just something as innocent as, well we talked, wrote some things down, might as well share it.

And then the principles, there were a lot of different practices in the room. So some of what I would say the beauty of even the values page is the humility at the top is it's still active voice. We are uncovering not, hey all peasants, we figured it all out. No, we're still uncovering it. And the other thing is by doing it, because I'm still an active coder. And plus we value this more on the left, more than on the right. Some people might say it's a little ambiguous or a little fuzzy, but that's also a sign of humility and that it's not A or B. And it really is fuzzy, and you need to understand your context enough to apply these things. So from a defense department contracting point of view, certainly three of the four bullets were really important to me because I learned... Sure, we did defense department contracting. But it's way more important to develop a rapport with the customer than it is... Because by the time you get to the contract you've already lost, which goes along with developing a rapport with the customer, the individual.

And one of Peter Codes, when we worked with customers and whatnot, one of our mantras was frequent tangible working results, AKA working software. You can draw a lot and you can do use cases for nine months, but if you don't have anything running, it's pretty, I would guess risky that you don't have anything, no working software yet. So it really was I think an opportunity to share the fact that some people thought two weeks and other people thought a month. Even some of the print principles had a pretty good wide ranging flexibility so to speak. That I think is really important to note.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it makes sense. Did you or anyone else in the room at that time ever imagine what the impact downstream would be of the work that was being done there?

Jon Kern:

Not that I'm aware of. I certainly did not. I remember a couple times in my career walking in and seeing some diagrams when I worked with the company Together Soft, and we'd build some cool stuff and I'd see people having some of the... Oh yeah, there's a diagram I remember making on their wall. That's kind of cool. But nothing near how humbling and sort of satisfying it is. Especially I would say when I'm in India or Columbia or Greece, it almost seems maybe they're more willing to be emotional about it. But people are, it's almost like they were freed by this document. And in some sense this is a really, really tiny saying it with the most humility possible. A little bit like the Declaration of Independence, and the fact that a handful of people... And the constitution of the United States. A handful of people met in a moment of time, never to be repeated again and created something that was dropped on the world so to speak, that unleashed, unleashed a tremendous amount of individual freedom and confidence to do things. And I think in a very small, similar fashion, that's what the manifesto did.

Amaar Iftikhar:

As you mentioned, there was a point in time when the manifesto was developed and that was almost over 20 years ago. So now the way of working, and the world of working has drastically changed. So what are your thoughts on that? Do you see another version coming? Do you think there are certain updates that need to be made? Do you think it's kind of a timeless document? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Jon Kern:

Yeah, that's a good question. I personally think it's timeless and I welcome other people to create different documents. And they have. Alistair has The Heart of Agile, Josh Kerievsky's got Modern Agile.

There's a few variations of a theme and different things to reflect upon, which I think is great. Because I do believe, unlike the US Constitution, which built in a mechanism to amend itself, we didn't need that. And I believe it captured the essence of how humans work together to produce something of value. Mostly software, because that's what we came to practice from, is the software experience. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to replace the word software with product or something like that and still apply much of the values that are there with very, very minor maybe adjustments because frequent tangible working results.

There might have to be models, because you're not going to build a skyscraper and tear it down and say, "Oh, that wasn't quite right," and build it again. But nonetheless, there are variations of how you can show some frequent results. So I think by and large it's timeless. And I would challenge anybody. What's wrong with it? Point out something that's somehow not true 20 years later. And I think that's the genius behind it was we stumbled on... And probably because most of us were object modelers, that's one of the things we're really good at, is distilling the essence of a system into the most critical pieces. That's kind of what modeling is all about. And so I think somehow innately, we got down to the core bits that make up what it is to produce software with people, process and tools. And we wrote it down. That's why I think it's timeless.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no absolutely. I think that was a really good explanation about why it's timeless. I think one of the principles that comes to mind in a kind of modern hybrid or flexible working arrangement is one of the principles talks about the importance of face to face conversations. And in a world now where a lot of conversations aren't happening physically face to face, they might be happening on Zoom. Do you think that still applies?

Jon Kern:

Yeah, I think what we're finding out with... Remote was literally remote, so to speak, back 20 years ago. I was working with a team of developers in Russia and we had established enough trust and physical... I would travel there every month. So kind of established enough of a team, and enough trust in the communication that we could do ultimately some asynchronous work because different time zones. And me being in the east coast. 7:00 AM in the US was maybe 3:00 PM in Russia if I recall. St. Petersburg. So we were able to overcome the distance, but it's hard to beat real life. And I would often sometimes even spar a little bit with Ron Jeffries that on the one hand you could say the best that you can do is in person. But on the other hand, I could argue a little bit of some of the remoteness makes things... You have to be a little more verbose, possibly a little more precise, but also a little more verbose. A little more relaxed with... You might take a couple of passes to get something just because, I mean there are two time zones passing in the night. But that was based off of some often initial face to face meetings, and then you could go remote and still be successful and highly effective.

So I think it's important that teams don't just say that they can still do everything. And zoom is way better than 20 years ago, admittedly. Zoom gets, at least you can see a face. But nothing replaces the human contact. And I think also for wellbeing, I think human contact is important. So I would still say that the interaction aspect in the manifesto is still best served with a healthy dose of in-person. And that's kind of the key about most things in Agile. It's to me it's about pragmatism, and not just being dogmatic but rather, what might work better for us? And even experimenting with try something a little bit and see how that works. So even how you treat the manifesto, you should treat it in an Agile manner so to speak.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, no absolutely. That's a great point. On that note, as an Agile consultant or the Agile guy, what have you seen are the best practices or what works, what doesn't work for distributed teams?

Jon Kern:

Well I think the things that are most challenging that I've run across big companies and even smaller ones is that... I don't know if it's natural, God forbid if it's natural, but tendencies that I've seen in some companies to set up silos where you're the quality control, you're the UX, you're the front end, you're the back end, makes my headwater explode. Because that's building in a lag and building in communication roadblocks and building in cooperation which is handed offs from silo to silo, versus collaboration. So I've seen more of that. And I get it, you might want to have a specialty, but customer doesn't care. Customer wants something out the door. If I showed up and I'm going to pull a feature off the stack, what do you mean I can only do part of it? I don't get that. And yeah, I know I'm not an expert in everything but we probably have an expert that we can figure out what the pattern is. So I find that sort of trend, I don't know if it's a trend, but I find that's a step backwards in my opinion. And it's better to try to be more cross-functional, collaborative, everybody trying to work to get the feature out the door, not just trying to do your little part.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think knocking on silos is a big part of being agile, or even being digital for that matter. And often the remedies for it too are there at hand, but it's a lot harder to actually be practical with it, to actually implement it in an organization, a living, breathing business where there's real people and there's dynamics to deal with, and there's policies and processes to follow. So I guess as generic as you can be, what is your thought as an Agile consultant to a business that's kind of facing that issue?

Jon Kern:

One of the things that... Adaptive is what my colleague John Turley has really opened my eyes to. I tend to call it the secret sauce, or the missing piece to my practice. And it has to do with individual's mindset and what we call vertical development. So it might sound like weird wishy-washy fluffy stuff, but it's actually super critical. And I've always said people, process, and tools for, I want to say since late nineties probably, I mean a long time. And the first I've been able to realize why sometimes I would have just spectacular super high performing teams and other times it'd be just really, really well performing but not always that spark and sometimes kind of like, eh, that was a little meh. And a lot of it comes down to where people lie on in terms of how they make their meaning and what their motivational orientation is, command and control versus autonomy.

So what we do is we've learned that we can help people first off recognize this exists, and help people with what we call developmental practices. Something that, even the phrase, you probably heard it, like safe experiments. Failure, or trying something and failing. Well if you chop someone's head off for it, guess what? They're just going to probably stay pretty still and only do what they're told, not try to... I have a super high dose of autonomy in me, so I've long lived by the, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and always felt as long as I'm trying to do the right thing to succeed and do the best for the company, they probably won't fire me if I make a mistake. But not everybody has that amount of freedom in the way they work. So you have to help establish that as management, and that's a big thing that we work with, with teams.

And then we also start with the class. If you've ever watched office space, and if you haven't you should, but the, what is it that you do here? So there's a great, the consultants Bob and Bob coming in, the efficiency consultants, "So Amaar, what is it that you do here?" But literally that's something, whether we're helping teams build a new product, is okay, what's the purpose? What's the business purpose of this product? What is it that you do here? What do you want to do with this product? What value does it provide? Same thing with anything you're working with as a team. And that's why whether it's software, producing some feature that has an outcome that provides value to the customer, or some product. But the point is if you don't understand that, now it's making, the team is going to have a real hard time being able to make decisions which are helping us move forward.

So if you help everybody understand what it is we're here to do, and then try to get the folks that might reflect all the different silos if you're siloed, but all the different elements. How do we go from an idea to cash, so to speak, or idea to value in the customer's hand? And have a good look at that. Because there are so many things that just sort of... Technical data often creeps into software code bases. And the same thing, we sort of say the organizational debt, the same thing can happen. Your process debt. You can just end up with, all right, we want the development team to go faster, John and company, can you come in and help coach us? We want to go agile. Sure, okay yeah. All right. We roll up our sleeves, we look around and after an initial kind of value stream look, like, wait I'm sorry but there's a little tiny wedge, it's about 15%, that's the development. And then you spent the 85% thinking about it.

Let's pretend we could double the speed of development. Which was initially the... Yeah, we need the developers to code faster or something. That's a classic. And no you don't, you need to stop doing all this bullshit up front that's just crazy ass big waterfall project-y stuff with multiple sign-offs. And matter of fact, one of the sign-offs, oh my gosh it only meets once a week, and then if you have a typo in it, you get rejected. You don't come back for another... Are you insane? You spent eight months deciding to do eight weeks worth of work. Sorry, it's not the eight weeks. So things like that, what I recommend anybody self inspect is try to... If you're worried about your team, how you can do better is just start trying to write down what does your process step look like and what is a typical time frame?

How much time are you putting value into the... Because a lot of times people batch things up in sprints. That's a batch, why are you putting things in a batch? Or they have giant issues. Well that's the big batch. So there's lots of often low hanging fruit. But to your point, it's often encrusted in, this is the way we work and nobody feels the ability to change or even to stop and look to see how are we working. So I think that's where we usually start is let's see how you actually work today. And then while we're doing that you can spill your guts, you can tell us all the things that hurt and that are painful and then we'll try to design a better way that we can move towards, in terms of working more effectively. Because our goal is to help teams be able to develop ways to do more meaningful and joyous work, really. Because it's a lot of fun when it's clicking and when you're on a good team and you're putting smiles on the customers' faces, it's hard to almost stay away from work because it's so much fun. But if it's not that, if it's drudgery and you're just a cog in the machine and stuff takes months to get out the door, it's a job. It's not that much fun.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah. A lot of the points that you mentioned there strongly resonated with me, and the common pain points. It sounds like you've kind of seen it all. And by the way if you haven't seen office space, definitely need to watch it. It's a really good one. You've mentioned now a lot about of the element of the challenges that a distributed team faces. Now I want to flip it over and ask you what does the perfect distributed team look like today that lives and breathes agile values?

Jon Kern:

Yeah. I don't know if you can ever have such a thing, a perfect of any kind of team. So I would say harking back to the types of distributed teams that I've worked with, and this goes back to the late nineties. So I've been doing this for a long, long time. Only really done remote, whether it was with developers in Russia or down in North Carolina, or places like that. And I think that the secret was having a combination of in-person... If you want to go somewhere as a group, there are things you can do to break the ice, to establish some, what you might call team building type activities.

And not just, hey let's go do a high ropes course and be scared out of our wits together. But rather also things that are regarding why are we here, what are we trying to achieve? And let's talk about whether it's the product we're trying to build, and take that as an opportunity to coalesce around something and get enough meat on the bone, enough skeletons of what it might look like. Because there's good ways to start up and have a good foundation. And that's part of what I've been practicing for decades. If you get things set up properly with understanding that just enough requirements, understanding... And I do a lot of domain modeling with UML and things like that, just understanding what the problem domain is that we're trying to solve to achieve the goals we're looking for, have a sense of the architecture that we want. So all those things are collaborative efforts.

And so if you have enough of a starting point where you've worked together, you come in and, let's say you even had to go rent someplace, because nobody lived near office, so you all flew somewhere. I mean that's money well spent in my opinion. Because that starts the foundation. If you've broken bread so to speak, or drank some beers, or coded together and did stuff, and then you go back to your remote offices to take the next steps and then realize when you might need to meet again. So that's really important to understand that the value of establishing those relationships early on so that you can talk bluntly. And I have some good folks that I run a production app for firefighters since like 2006.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, very cool.

Jon Kern:

And that friend that I've worked with, we are so tight that we can... It makes our conversations, we don't have to beat around the bush, we don't have to worry about offending any, we just, boom, cut to the chase. Because we know we're not calling each other's kids ugly. We're just trying to get something done fast.

And building that kind of rapport takes time and effort and working together. And that's what I think a good successful distributed team, you need to come together every so often and build those relationships and know when you might need to come together again if something is a problem. But that I think is a key to success is it shortens the time. Because you may have heard of things like the group forms, if this is performance on the Y axis they form and they're at some performance level, then they need to storm before they get back to normal, and before they start high performing. So it's this form, storm. You get worse when you're storming. And storming means really understanding where we're at. When we argue about, I don't think that should be inheritance, Amaar. And then you're like, "Oh bull crap, it really..."

And again, we're not personal, but we're learning each other's sort of perspectives and we're learning how to have respectful debates and have some arguments, so to speak, to get to the better place. And I've worked in some companies that are afraid to storm, and it feels like you're never high performing.

Everyone's too polite. It's like, come on. And I love when I worked with my Russian colleagues. They didn't give a crap if I was one of the founders. And I'm glad, because I don't want any privilege, I don't want anything like that. No let's duke it out. May the best ideas win. That's where you want to get to. And if you can't get there because you don't have enough of a relationship, and you tend not to say the things that needed to be said because you're being polite, well it's going to take you really long to succeed. And that's a lot of money, and that's a lot of success, and people might leave.

So I think the important thing is if you're remote, that's okay, but sheer remote is a real challenge. And you have to somehow figure out, if you can't get together to learn how to form and storm, and build those bonds face to face, then you need to figure out how to do it over Zoom. Because you need to do it, because if you don't, if you never have words, then trust me, you're still not high performing.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, I kind of feel like being fully remote now is being offered as almost a competitive advantage to candidates in the marketplace now, because it's a fight for talent. But if I'm understanding correctly, what you are saying is that in-person element is so important to truly be high performing and those ideas kind of contradict each other, I feel.

Jon Kern:

Yeah. And again, having been remote since the late nineties, I've been doing this a long time. And commuting to Russia is the longest commute I ever did, for three years. I mean that's a hell of a long flight to commute there over seven times, or whatever the hell it was. Anyway, I used to say that that being remote is not for everyone, because it really isn't. I mean you have to know how to work without anybody around, and work. I mean it has its own challenges. And yeah, it might be a perk, but I think what you need to do is look at potentially what the perks are and figure out too, can I fold them into... It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And I think that can be a easy mistake to make maybe is to, all right cool, we don't have to have office space. That's a lot of savings for the company. Yeah, but maybe that means you need to have some remote workspaces for occasional gatherings, or figure it out.

But yeah, I think even... And certain businesses might work differently. In the beginning of building a product, I want to have heavy collaboration and I want to get to a point where it's almost, I feel like the product goes like this where once you get things rolling and you kind of get up, get some momentum going, now the hardest thing to do is be in front of an agile team, whether they're in-person or remote. Once things are rolling and rocking and kicking and it's like everything's clicking, you can just bang out features left, like boom, boom, boom. Yeah, okay then we probably need to be...

Unless we've got ways that we're pairing or things like that. I will say when we're together, mobbing is easier. I'm sure there's ways to do it remote, but being in a room, I don't know, it's a lot easier than coordinating over Zoom. You just, hey there's this problem, let's all hang out here after standup because we're just going to mob on this. So it doesn't take a whole lot versus anything remote, there's a little extra, okay, we've got to coordinate, and even different times zones, gets even worse. So yeah, don't get carried away with remote being the end all be all. Because I have a feeling there's going to be a... I would wager there will be a backlash.

Amaar Iftikhar:

And I'll take that back coming from the Agile, the person who does this day to day who helps teams become agile, I'll definitely kind of take your word for it. Plus with my experience too, I've seen nothing really beats a good white-boarding session. That is really hard to replicate online. I mean we have these amazing tools, but nothing quite mimics the real life experience of just having a plain whiteboard and a marker in your hand. That communication is so powerful.

Jon Kern:

Great point. You're so, right, because I had just with the one company that I was with for five years, we were doing high level engineered to order pump manufacturing sales type tool for... So it was my favorite world because it blended my fluid dynamics as an aerospace engineer, plus my love for building SaaS products, and building new software and things like that. And even having a young, we would interview at Lehigh University and we'd have some young graduates that would be working with us, and being able to bring them into the fold, and there was a room behind where my treadmill was and we'd go in there, we'd have jam sessions on modeling and building out new features. And man, you're right. Just that visceral three dimensional experience. Yeah, Miro's great. Or any other kind of tool, but yeah, it's not the same. You're absolutely right. That's a great point. You're almost making me pine for the good old days. [inaudible 00:42:04]

Amaar Iftikhar:

I think the good old days very much still exist. I think even now, it's kind of been a refreshing time for me to be with Easy Agile. I've only been here for just under two months now. And there's a strong in-person dynamic. And again, it's optional, where if people are remote or they're hybrid or they need to commute once in a while, it's a very understanding environment. But once you're in the office or you're in person, you kind of feel the effect you were describing, you're motivated to deliver for the end customer. You just want to come back. It's an addictive feeling of, I want to be back in person and I want to collaborate in real time in person.

Jon Kern:

That's beautifully said, because that's... One of the companies that we're beginning to engage with in South Africa, they're at this very crossroad of struggling with, everybody's been remote, but boy, the couple times we were together, got so much done. And you're describing the flame of, the warmth of delivering and let the moths come to the flame. I mean nurture it and then fan the flames of the good and let people opt in and enjoy it. And still sometimes, yeah, I got to say home, I got the kids or the dog, that's okay too. But giving the option I think is where we're going to head. And I believe the companies that are able to build that hybrid culture of accepting both, and neither mandating one nor the other, but building such a high performing team that basically encourages people to opt into the things that make the most sense at that time. And I think that those companies will rule the day, so to speak.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah, absolutely. It's been so nice to chat with you John, and I've really enjoyed this. I want to leave the audience off with one piece of advice for distributed agile teams from you. We've talked a lot about the importance of in-person collaboration. We've talked about the principles of the agile manifesto. Now, what would the one piece of advice be when you're thinking of both? When you want the agile manifestos to be something that's living and breathing in distributed agile teams, what one piece of advice can you give businesses today right now who are going through the common struggles? What can you tell them as that last piece of advice?

Jon Kern:

Well, I think kind of a one phrase that I like to use to capture the manifesto is, "Mind the gap." In my sort of play on words, what I mean is the gap in time between taking an action and getting a response. Whether it's what do we do about the office, what do we do about remote, what do we do about this feature, what do we do about this line of code? The gap in time is, it's sort of a metaphor about being humble enough to treat things as a hypothesis. So don't be so damn sure of yourself one way or the other about the office or remote or distributed. But instead, treat things as a hypothesis. Be curious and experiment safely with different ways and see what works. And don't be afraid of change. It's not a life sentence to, you got to run your business or your project or your team one way for the rest of your life. No. Don't tell the boss, but work is subsidized learning. I never understood people who just keep doing the same thing because they weren't given permission. Just try it. So that's what my departing phrase would be regarding making those decisions. Mind the gap and really be humble about making assumptions, and test your hypotheses, and shorten the gap in time between taking actions and seeing a reaction.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. I really wish we could let the tape roll and just keep talking about this for a couple more hours, but we'll end it right there on that really good piece of advice that you've left the audience off with. Jon, thank you again for being on the podcast. And we've really, really enjoyed hearing you and learning from your experiences.

Jon Kern:

Oh, my pleasure. Any time. Happy to talk another couple hours, but maybe after some beers.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah.

Jon Kern:

Except it's your morning, my evening. I'm going to have to work on that.

Amaar Iftikhar:

Yeah.

Jon Kern:

My pleasure, Amaar.

"It was a pleasure speaking with Ray about empowering teams and helping people reach their full potential" - Mat Lawrence

Mat Lawrence, Chief Operating Officer at Easy Agile is joined by Ray Arell. Ray currently works as the Director of Agile Transformations at Dell Technologies, is the host of the ACN Podcast, and the President Of The Board Of Directors for the nonprofit Forest Grove Foundation Inc.

Ray is passionate about collaborative and inclusive leadership, and loves to inspire and motivate others to achieve their full potential. This is exactly what Mat and Ray dive into in this episode.

Ray and Mat explore the concepts such as inclusive and situational leadership and the connection to agile ways of working, empowering the organisational brain, and fostering authenticity within teams.

This is a fantastic episode for aspiring, emerging and existing leaders! Lots of great tips and advice to share with colleagues and friends and understand the ways we can be empowering and enabling one another.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript:

Mat Lawrence:

Hi folks, it's Mat Lawrence here. I'm the COO at Easy Agile and I'm really excited today to be joined by Ray Arell. Before we jump into our podcast episode, Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we're broadcasting today, the people of the Gadigal-speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander and First Nations people joining us today. Ray, thanks for joining us today. Ray is a collaborative and inclusive leader who loves to inspire and motivate others to achieve their full potential. Ray has 30 years of experience building and leading outstanding multinational teams in Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, and startups. Also, he's recognized as a leading expert in large-scale agile adoptions, engineering practices, lean and complex adaptive systems. So Ray, welcome, really good to have you on the podcast today.

Ray Arell:

Thank you.

Mat Lawrence:

Love to get started by understanding what you enjoy most about being an inclusive leader and working with teams.

Ray Arell:

Yeah, so I've been in leadership probably for about 15 years, leading teams at different sizes. When you have the more intimate, smaller teams of maybe five or six people, upwards of teams that are upwards of several hundred people working within an organization that I might be the leader of. And what I enjoy the most about it is just connecting with the talented people that do the work. I mean, when you go into leadership, one of the things that you kind of transition from is not being the expert person in the room that's coding or doing hardware development or something else. You have these people who are now looking for direction or vision or other things in order for them to give them purpose in order to move forward with their day.

And I enjoy coaching. I enjoy mentoring. I mean, a lot of my technical side of me is more nostalgia now more than it is relevant with the latest technologies. There's something rewarding when you see somebody who can, if you think of Daniel Pink's work of autonomy, mastery and purpose, that they suddenly find that they are engaged with the purpose that we're doing as an organization and then the autonomy for them to just do their day and be able to work and collaborate with others. And that's always been exciting to me.

Mat Lawrence:

I can relate to that. Yeah. I think in our audience today we're going to have a mixture of emerging leaders, aspiring leaders, and experienced leaders. I'd love to tap into your experience and ideally rewind a little bit to earlier in your career when you were transitioning into being a leader. And I'd love to understand around that time, what were some of the successes that you saw in the approach that you take that you've been trying to repeat over the years?

Ray Arell:

Well, I think early on, I think, especially when you grow up through the technical ranks, and suddenly at least the company that I was with at the time, very expert-based culture, if you were the smartest person in the room, those are the people that they looked at and said, "Okay, we're going to promote you to lead, or we're going to promote you to manager or promote you into the leadership ranks." I think looking back on that, I think Ray 2.0 or Ray 3.0, whatever version I was at the time, that I very much led from that expert leadership stance, which is sort of I know what is the best way to go and approach the delivery of something, and everyone should be following my technical lead for however this product comes together.

And I don't think that was really a good approach. I think that constrained people because you ended up being more or less just telling people what to go do versus allowing them to experiment and learn and grow themselves in order to become what I had become as a senior technical person. And so I think lesson learned number one was that leading a team from an expert slant I think is probably not the best approach in order if you're going... especially if you think of agile and other more inclusive teamwork type of projects, you're going to want to give people more of a catalytic or a catalyst leader type of synergistic-based leadership style so that they can self-organize and they can move forward and learn and grow as an engineer.

Mat Lawrence:

Are there any times that stand out for you where you got it horribly wrong? I know I've got a few stories which I can happily share as well.

Ray Arell:

I'd love to hear some of yours. I think horribly wrong I think is... The question is is anything ever really not fixable, not recoverable? And in most cases, most of the issues that we've dealt with were recoverable. I think that looking at, and again, kind of back into that stance of well, am I creating a team or am I creating just a group of individuals that are just taking their work from the manager and I'm passing them out like cards type of thing... I think early on, probably the big mistake was just being too controlling, and the mistake of that control meant that I couldn't have a vacation. Others were dependent versus being interdependent on one another. And I think that made the organization run slower and not as efficient as it could be.

Mat Lawrence:

I've certainly been guilty of that same approach earlier in my leadership career where I became the bottleneck, absolutely.

Ray Arell:

Yeah. Exactly.

Mat Lawrence:

And to recognize that, it can be quite hard to undo, but it's definitely worth persevering with. Something else that I was fortunate to get some training in situational leadership, oh, probably nearly 10 years ago now. And that really opened my eyes to an approach, the way I was treating different people in my team. But I was treating them the way I first judged them. So if I saw [inaudible 00:07:01] an expert and a master, I would treat them as an expert and a master in all things. And [inaudible 00:07:05] if someone was less capable at that point in their career, I'd kind of assume the same thing. And so I would apply the same level of direction or lack of direction to those people for everything. And in situational leadership, the premise for those who don't know at home, is you change the level of direction that you give depending on the task at hand. Have you used that approach or something similar to guide how you include people in different ways?

Ray Arell:

Well, in order to include people, I think part of it is you need to... As you said, you were situationally looking at each person, and you were structuring it in a way that was from a way, an approach, of very individualized with somebody. I think the philosophy that I... Not everyone is very open or can communicate very well about their skills and their strengths, or in certain cases some people, they might be good at something but they don't exercise it because they themselves feel that that's not one of their strengths, but in reality is it is. So I think that when you're saying from a situational leadership perspective, when you hear somebody place doubt that they could be the one that could do something or to take up, say, even leadership of something, I think part of that just gets into that whole coaching and mentoring and really setting it up and helping them to be successful through that.

And I think from an inclusive perspective, I think there's a set of honesty that you have to bring into your work and humility about being humble about even what you've accomplished. Because in engineering in particular, you tend to see that when you put people into a room, the people who are newer will sit back, and they will yield to who they think has the more experience. And reality is that they came from, say, let's say they just got fresh out of college. They actually might have more skills in a particular area based upon what they just went through in their curriculum that we might not have. And so the question of how do we use the whole organizational brain in order to bring all of the ideas onto the table, I think at times it requires us to be able to be effective listeners and to sometimes just pause and allow people to have the floor and pick up the pen and not hog the space, if that makes sense.

Mat Lawrence:

It really does, and I think I've seen that in every company I've worked in to some level. I'd be really interested to tap into how you go about addressing that scenario. For the people who are listening that would face that situation, it might be the first time they've been a leader and seeing that scenario and observing it. Is there any advice you would give them to help change that dynamic?

Ray Arell:

Well, one, just becoming aware of it. I frequently doodle when I'm in a group of people, and what I'll do is I'll sit there and I'll put dots on a paper of where people are at in the room, and then I start drawing lines between those individual dots if I see the communication happening between certain players. And what's interesting is if you watch that over about a 15-minute period of time, you start to see this emergent pattern that maybe someone's domineering the conversation or they're the focus point of the conversation, and it isn't going around the full room. So then that's when you get to be a gatekeeper and you invite others into the conversation. And then you politely help the ones who are being dominant in the conversation to pause, to just give space and allow those other people to talk and to get that out.

And then I think the question of whether or not what the person says may sometimes be coherent or not coherent to the conversation, or maybe they're still trying to learn about just dynamics of everything. You just have to help to get, sometimes, to get that out of people, and use open words to basically open sentence... I mean, some open questions to pull that out from them. And I think that works really well.

Mat Lawrence:

I love that. I'm a doodler as well. I'm an artist originally in my early career, and I've worked my way into solving problems through tech a long time ago now, but I still can't... I need that physical drawing to help my mind think as much as anything else [inaudible 00:12:30] than just doodling on a pad.

Ray Arell:

Same here.

Mat Lawrence:

Something that you said a little earlier, we touched a little bit on inclusivity. In your LinkedIn bio you talk about being an inclusive leader who loves to inspire and motivate others to achieve their full potential. Something I'm really passionate about is that last part in particular, is helping people achieve their full potential. It's why I love being a people leader and a COO. You get to do that across a whole company. I'd love to first touch on the idea of being an inclusive leader. How do you define what it means to be one?

Ray Arell:

Well, inclusive leadership, there was an old bag that I used to have, a little coaching bag that I used to carry around with me. And at the very top of it said, "Take it to the team," was the motto that was at the top of it. And at the bottom of the bag it basically said, "Treat people like adults." Were the two kind of core things that I think part of what being inclusive is is that I have to accept the fact that, yeah, I'm a smart person, but do we get a better decision if we socialize that around the team? Do we see what other ideas or possibility thinking? Sort of in the lean sense, make the decision as late as you can.

It's more towards the Eastern culture of, well, if I keep the decision open, maybe we're going to find something that's cheaper or better or even just more exciting for our customers. And so I think part of that is knowing that you don't have to be the one that has to make the decision. You can let the team make the decision. And we all embrace because we're empowering ourselves with this was what we all thought, not just what Ray thought, which I think is cool.

Mat Lawrence:

There's a second part to that piece you talked about in your bio around helping motivate others to achieve their full potential.

Ray Arell:

Yeah, yeah.

Mat Lawrence:

Yeah. Let's talk about where that came from for you, that passion, and what are some of the ways you look to help emerging leaders reach their full potential?

Ray Arell:

Yeah, I mean, I was lucky enough when I joined Intel Corporation that Andy Grove was still running the organization at the time. As a matter of fact, he taught my Welcome to Intel class. At the time when I joined Intel, there was only about 32,000 employees. And here's the CEO, founder of the company teaching the Welcome to Intel class, which I thought was incredibly cool, a great experience to have. He oozed this leadership, whatever mojo or whatever it is he is got going out into the environment as he's talking about the company. But he was really strong on the one-on-ones, the time that you can spend with your manager or others within the organization because you can have a one-on-one with anyone within the company. And he encouraged that. And I think that helps to... When somebody is trying to figure it out, they're brand new to the company, and you get a standing invitation from the CEO that says, "You can come and have a conversation with me," I think that sets the cultural norm right up front that this is a place that's going to assist and help me along my career.

And I could tell you that there's been a number of different times that those developed into full-blown, "I'm the mentee and they're the mentors." And in those relationships over time, it's sort of like then you say, "Well, I'm going to pay that forward." Today I have at least six or seven mentees that have all sorts of questions about how do they guide through their career or if they had some specific area that they wanted to go focus on. And it's their time to pick my brain. And in certain cases, if I don't have the full answer, I can guide them to other mentors that can help them to grow.

Mat Lawrence:

I love that approach of pay it forward that you touched on there. It's definitely something that I've been trying to do in the last couple of years myself, and I wish I'd started sooner mentoring. I've had the privilege of working with some amazing leaders in my career who I've learned a lot from. And once I started mentoring, I realized how much I learned by being a mentor because you have to think. You really think about what these people are going through and not just project yourself onto them. And it validates the rationale about why you do things yourself, why you think that way. And it forces me to challenge myself.

And I think if there's anything... I talk to some of the younger people at work who are emerging leaders, and they're exceptional in their own way. They've all got very different backgrounds, but a lot of them don't feel like they're ready to be a mentor. They really are. They're amazing people. And I wonder, have you seen people earlier in their careers try and pass it forwards kind of early on or do people feel they have to wait until [inaudible 00:18:22]?

Ray Arell:

I think it depends. One, I think the education system, at least in the United States, has shifted a bit. When people go for their undergraduate degree, it used to be just they were by themselves, they did their book studies. Very little interaction or teamwork was created for this study. I mean, back when I got my electrical engineering degree, it was just me by myself. There might be occasional lab work and lab projects, but it wasn't something that was very much inclusive, nor did they have people step up into leadership roles that early. I look at now my daughter who's right now going to the university, and everything is a cohort group. There's cohorts that are getting together. The studying that they do, they each have to pick up leadership in some regards for some aspect of a project that they're working on. So I think some of the newer people coming into the workforce are sort of built in with the skills to, if they need to take up leadership with something, run a little program, run a project, they've been equipped to do it. At least that's what I've seen.

Mat Lawrence:

I love that concept. Something that I've been observing and I talk it about a lot with our leadership team and our mentor exec teams for the [inaudible 00:19:56] as well. A lot of the conversation that comes up is around team dynamics, team trust, agility within teams, and to generally try and empower teams, set them up so they can be autonomous, they are truly empowered and they're trusted to make great decisions and drive work forwards. You've got a lot of experience in agile and agile [inaudible 00:20:21] agile leader. In your experience leading agile teams, those adoptions and those transformations, I'd love to understand if you see there's a connection between being agile as a team and those traits that an inclusive leader will have. Is there a connection there in your mind between what it means to be agile and be an inclusive leader?

Ray Arell:

I think so. Because if you think of early on, they established that servant leadership was a better leadership style for agile teams. And so I think when we talk about transformation, some of the biggest failures that occur tend to be more based upon not agile, but on issues of trust and other sort of organizational impediments that had already existed there before they got started. And if they don't address those, their agile journey is painful.

I've heard people say that they've gotten Scrummed before, using it in a really kind of derogatory way of thinking that, well, instead of getting a team of empowered people to go do work within the Scrum framework, they end up being put under a micromanagement lens because the culture of the manager didn't shift, and the manager is using it as a daily way to making sure that everyone is working at 120% versus what we should be seeing in the pattern is that the team understands their flow. They're pulling work into the team. It's not being pushed. And those dynamics I think are something that if leadership doesn't shift and change the way that they work, then it just doesn't work in organizations.

Mat Lawrence:

In the many places that you've worked and coached and guided people on, you've started to come across... There's a term that we've started to use of agile natives where people who've really not known any different because so many companies in world are going through agile transformations, and that'll continue for a long time. But as some companies are born with agility at the forefront, have you experienced many people coming through into leadership roles that don't know anything but true agility and really authentic agility as you've just described?

Ray Arell:

Well, I think it's kind of interesting because as you talked about that phrase, I was thinking about it, about, well, if you knew nothing else... But I can also say that you could become native after you've been in the culture for a period of time as well. So you can eventually... That becomes your first reaction, your first habit is pulling more from the agile principles than you would be pulling from something else. Yeah, there are those people, but it's been interesting watching companies like Spotify or watching Salesforce or watching Pivotal, and I can just go down the list of companies that have started as an agile organization, they got large, and then suddenly the anti-patterns of a large company start to emerge within those companies. So even though the people within the smaller tribe are working in an agile way, the company slowly doesn't start to work in an agile way any longer. It falls underneath a larger context of what we see happening with the older companies.

And I think some of that could be the executive culture might be just coming in where they bring somebody from the outside who wasn't a native, and they have a hard time dealing with the notion that, well, we're committing to a delivery date sometime over here, and we think we're going to hit it. But no, we don't have what would be affectionately known as a 90% confident plan that says that we've cleared all risk out of the way. And yeah, it's going to absolutely happen on that day. And some of those companies get really... They feel that they have to commit everything to the street, and if they don't meet it, they've already glued those in to some executive bonus program, ends up driving bad behaviors, unfortunately,

Mat Lawrence:

Yes, I have been there. I'm assuming that in our audience, we're going to have people who are transitioning into more senior leadership roles. They're not emerging leaders, they've been doing it for a while, and they've probably run some successful agile teams at the smaller level as you've described. For those people who are moving into the more senior roles, maybe into exec positions, is there any guidance that you'd give them for navigating that change and trying to maintain, through agile principles and what it means to be agile, in those more senior roles?

Ray Arell:

Yeah, I think part of it is the work that you did as a smaller team, everything still can scale up. And I hate to use the word scale because I think scale is kind of... People kind of use it... What would be the right word? It's misused in our industry. I think values and principles are scale-free. You can still walk each day walking into your team and still embracing those 12 principles, and you're going to do good work. The question is though, is if you're doing that at the lower level, say with a Kanban board, the question is, what does it look like when you're at your executive desk? What is the method that you go pool? If you look at most of the scaled frameworks that are out today, there's very little guidance that's given to what should be in the day in the life of an agile executive. What should that look like?

And for me, if I think about the business team, the management team is working with the delivery teams daily. They should be doing that. So what are you going to put in place for that to facilitate and occur? What are you going to do about... stop doing these big annual budget processes. Embrace things like the beyond budgeting or other things where you're funding the organization strategically, and you're not trying to lock everything in on an annual cadence, but yet your organization beneath is working every two weeks. So you should be able to re-move your bets with any organization based upon the performance of each sprint. Can you do that?

The last one is probably the most important one, is impediments. And that is how fast does it take information to go from the lowest part of the organization to the highest point of the organization? And if that takes three weeks, two weeks, or even sometimes later for certain organizations, optimize that. How do you optimize an impediment that you can personally help to go remove for people so that they're not slowed down by it any longer, whatever that might be?

Mat Lawrence:

You're touching on something there, which I think is a fundamental part of being agile, which is that ability to learn and adapt, and you can only learn when you are aware of what's happening around you, you can observe [inaudible 00:28:39] to it.

Ray Arell:

Well, I said something a couple months ago, and everyone just went, "Why did you say... I can't believe you said that out loud." It's the quiet stuff out loud sometimes. [inaudible 00:28:53]. We were trying to get a meeting together to go fix one of these impediments, and all the senior leaderships was busy. They were busy. And my question was is if this isn't the most important thing right now for us, what do you do? Really, are you doing in your day if this one isn't the highest priority that you walk into? And the questioning senior leaders that maybe they're not paying attention to the right things, and sometimes speaking that truth to power is something we have to do every once in a while.

Mat Lawrence:

I agree. That level of candor is definitely required at all levels and being able to receive that feedback so you can learn and adapt as an individual, as we were talking about earlier, about being adaptive as a leader, but also as a team. There's a point that I'd like to touch on before we wrap up, which is as you climb up the career ladder and you get into a more senior position, and then you become responsible for a broader range of things, particularly as you start reaching that executive level, I've witnessed people struggle with the transition from being the person, as you talked about right at the start of this discussion, being that person who knows everything and who can direct and have all the answers into someone where I see your job changes to being the person who can identify what we know least about, what we as an exec team know least, where we're... have the least confidence, where we see the impediments and we don't know what to do with them.

How do you go about guiding people to embrace that? Because I think what I see is the fear that comes with that, almost a fear of exposure of, "Oh, I'm admitting to people I don't know what I'm doing." And I've been rewarded through my entire career by becoming more of an expert, and suddenly my job is to be the person who's confident enough to call out, this is what we don't understand yet. Let's get together and try and resolve it. When the risk is greater, the impact is greater, and you're responsible for more things, how do you help people transition into that higher-level role?

Ray Arell:

Well, I think part of it is can they let go of that technical side, having to have their hands dirty all the time? And I've seen certain leaders that, really, somebody needs to go back and say, "Are you really sure that this is the career that you're wanting to go to? You seem to be more into wanting to be into the nuts and bolts of things, and maybe that's the best place for you because you feel more comfortable in that space." The other aspect though, as they transition, I think is again, trust becomes critical. Trust the people that are working for you, that they're not coming in and being lazy and you have to go look over their shoulders all the time because you feel that they might not be being productive or other things. You have to have the ability to say that, look, that the people that you hired are talented, and they are moving us towards our goals.

I think what becomes more critical for the health of the organization is that you have to do a much better job at actually saying, "Okay, well, here is our vision," whether it be a product vision, whether it be the company's vision, whatever that might be, helping people to understand what that North Star is, and then reinforcing that not from a perspective of yourself, but a perspective from the customer. And I think this is where a lot of companies start to drift because they start to optimize some internal metric that, yeah, that'll build efficiency within your organization. But what does the customer think? And constantly being able to represent as, if you think of from an agile perspective, the chief product owner of the organization, to be able to represent this is what the customers need and want and to be able to voice that in the vision and the ambitious missions that are set up for the organization. Make it real for people.

And then the last part of that is not everything is going to happen and come true. If you read most executives' bios, there's lots and lots and lots and lots of mistakes. And I remember this of one leader, he was retiring. And I thought this wasn't most awkward time that he actually did this. He actually went up on the stage and he talked about his biggest failure. Now, throughout my career working with this person, I always wondered whether or not they were human. And then on the day of this person's exit, they finally decided to give you a few stories about mistakes that they made. And I think that he really needed to share those stories much, much earlier because I think people would've probably found... They would've been a little stressed working around him. And it would also show some vulnerability for you as a leader to say that you don't have everything figured out, and sometimes it's just a guess. We think that this is where the product needs to go.

And then as soon as you put it in front of the customers, they're going to tell you whether or not... If you take the Cano model and suddenly you're going to hit this is the most exciting thing since sliced bread, are they going to love it or are they going to go, [inaudible 00:35:12]. I'll take it if it's free. You get into this situation where it's like, well, we can't charge as much. But I think those stories become important and anchor organizations. One other aspect of this is I think that by having somebody who's approachable and can relay those stories effectively into the organization and talk about these things, I think then that opens the door for everyone else to do it as well. Because like it or not, humans are hierarchical in the way that we think about things. A lot of people manage up, so they mimic leaders. So be that leader that somebody would want to mimic.

Mat Lawrence:

I think that's great advice, Ray. The connection for me that's run through this whole conversation is around engaging with your work authentically, whether it's the team that you're trying to lead, whether it's the agile practices at whatever scale and level that you're operating at. And to build that trust to enable that to work requires that level of authenticity.

Ray Arell:

Yeah, exactly.

Mat Lawrence:

I would love, as we wrap up, for you to leave any final tips or advice for both current and emerging leaders on that topic. If there's a way beyond just sharing your own personal stories, how would you advise people? What would you leave them with to build some trust in their teams?

Ray Arell:

Well, a couple of things. Number one, you have to be mindful about who you are as a person. Again, like I was saying, that people manage up. And if you send out an email at three o'clock in the morning, and five minutes later your people were responding to you, then you're not being a really good role model of a good work-life balance. So a lot of your tendencies will bleed off into the organization. So regardless how you assess yourself, do an assessment of your leadership, where you think it is. Harvard Business Review, a long time ago, put off the levels of what they saw as leadership models. And the lowest level is the expert and the achiever-based leaders. And if you're one of those, those are not very conducive to a good agile or collaborative culture. So if you're currently setting in that slant, then you should look ways of being able to move yourself more to a catalytic or a synergistic-based leader.

And that journey's not an easy one because I went through that myself. It took years in order to pull away from some of those tendencies that you had as an expert leader. And as an example, an expert-based leader tends to only talk to other experts. If they perceive somebody not to be an expert of something, they tend to discount those individuals and not engage with them. And so again, the full organizational brain is what's going to solve the problem. So how do you engage the entire organization and pull those ideas together?

The other one is that as you go into, from an emergent leader perspective, I think you said it yourself earlier, and that's not just the bias of you're not an expert, I'm not going to talk to you, but any bias that you might have can affect the way that you lead and judge an individual, and really could limit or grow their career based upon maybe a snap judgment that you might have had. So I think you have to be mindful of your decisions that you're taking within the organization and especially the ones you're making of people. And so you got to be careful of those.

The last one is probably just... And this gets into the complex adaptive systems space. Not everything is cut and dry, black and white, or mechanistic, meaning that we can take the same product, redo it again and again and again, and we're going to get different answers. We're going to get different requirements. We're going to get different things. It's okay for that stuff to be there. And it's okay for the stuff that's coming out of our products to be different every once in a while, and specifically because everything, it's a very complex environment. Cause and effect relationships and complexity is, customer can change their mind, and we have to be comfortable with a customer changing their mind. Our customer might have new needs that come up.

And likewise, our employees, they sometimes will have change of thought or change of what they are excited about. How do you encourage that? How do you grow those individuals to retain them in the company, not to use them for the skill they have right now, but how do you play the long game there? And I know I'm getting a little long-winded here, but the thing that I see most, even with all the layoff notices that are going on right now, is that that company's not playing the long game. I think that's a bad move because all you're doing by letting an employee go is enabling your competitor with a whole bunch of knowledge that you should be retaining. So anyway, I'll cut it short there.

Mat Lawrence:

Right. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed the chat. So yes, thank you for joining me on the Easy Agile Podcast.

Ray Arell:

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

"It was great to be able to have this conversation with Maysa and have her share her story. So many great takeaways." - Nick Muldoon

Join Nick Muldoon, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Easy Agile as he chats with Maysa Safadi, Engineering Manager at Easy Agile.

As a woman, growing up in the middle east and being passionate about pursuing a career in the world of tech, don’t exactly go hand in hand. Navigating her way through a very patriarchal society, Maysa talks about her career journey and how she got to where she is today.

Having the odds stacked against her, Maysa talks about challenging the status quo, the constant pressure to prove herself in a male-dominated industry, the importance of charting your own course and her hopes for the future of women in tech.

This is such an inspiring episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Transcript

Nick Muldoon:

Hi, team. Nick Muldoon, co-founder co-CEO at Easy Agile, and I'm joined today by Maysa Safadi, who's an engineering manager here at Easy Agile. We'll get into Maysa's story and journey in just a little bit, but before we do, I just wanted to say a quick acknowledgement to the traditional custodians of the land from which we are recording and indeed broadcasting today, and they are the people of the Dharawal speaking country just south of Sydney and Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander and First Nations people that are joining us and listening in today. Maysa, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you, Nick. Thank you for inviting me.

Nick Muldoon:

So, Maysa's on today. We're going to explore Maysa's journey on her career to this point, and I think one of the things that interests me in Maysa's journey is she's come from a fairly patriarchal society in the Middle East, and has overcome a lot of odds that some of her peers didn't overcome, and she's managed to come to Australia, start a family in Australia, has three beautiful children and is an engineering manager after spending so many years as a software engineer. So, Maysa, I'd love to learn a little bit about the early stages of your life and how you got into university.

Maysa Safadi:

I was born and raised in United Arab Emirates. I am one of nine. I have three brothers and five sisters. I'm the middle child actually. Dad and mom, they were very focused on really raising good healthy kids and more important is to educate all of their kids regardless if they are boys or girls. Started my education at schools there. When I graduated from high school, I end up getting enrolled in a college like what you call it here in Australia, TAFE.

Education in United Arab Emirates, it's not free. Being one of nine and having that aim and goal for my father to educate all of us. When it comes to education, it was two factors that play big part of it. Can dad afford sending me to that college or university? and then after I finish, will I be able to find a job in that field? One of my dream jobs, I remember growing up I wanted to be a civil engineer, and I remember my older brother, he's the second, was telling me it's good that you want to study civil engineering. Remember, you will not be able to find a job.

Nick Muldoon:

Tell me why.

Maysa Safadi:

United Arab Emirates, it's male dominated country. Civil engineering is a male dominated industry. If you are going to look for a job after a graduation, it is pretty much given to males and Emirati males first. So, kind of it needs to go very down in the queue before it gets to me, and to be realistic, sometimes you give up your dreams because you know that you are not going to have a chance later in life.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, my gosh, this is demoralizing.

Maysa Safadi:

Unfortunately.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay,

Maysa Safadi:

So, the decision for me to get to engineering, it was, again, I couldn't really go to university because it was too expensive. My older sister had a friend who told her about this institute that they are teaching computers. When it came to mom and dad, they really told us, "Do whatever you want, study whatever you want, it is you who is going to basically study that field and you need to like it and you need to make sure that you can make the most of it." So, with that institute, it was reasonably okay for my dad to pay for my fees and they were teaching computers. I thought, "Yeah, all right, computers, it is in science field, right? I can't maybe study civil engineering, but I'm really very interested to know more about computers."

Nick Muldoon:

Similar, close enough.

Maysa Safadi:

Close enough. I end up getting enrolled and I remember the very first subject was fundamentals of computers or computer fundamentals, something like this, and I thought, "Yeah, all right, that is interesting," and I did really finish my education from there. After two years I ended up getting a diploma in computer science.

Nick Muldoon:

So, was this a unique situation for you or were most of your girlfriends from high school also going on to college?

Maysa Safadi:

It's unique actually, unique to my family. I'm not saying it's rare, you will find other families doing it, but it's not common. It is unique because, yes, most of the girls, if not all they go to school, it's compulsory in United Arab Emirate, but very small number of them pursue higher education. Pretty much girls, they end up finishing school and the very first chance to get married, they end up getting married and starting their own family. I remember-

Nick Muldoon:

And you've chosen a different path because-

Maysa Safadi:

Oh, yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

... yes, you have a family today obviously, but you established your career, you didn't finish school and get married.

Maysa Safadi:

I think I really give so much credit to mom and dad in that sense. They told us education is more important than starting a family or getting married. They said, "Finish your degree, finish your education, then get married." The other thing they said, "Do not even get married while you are studying because for sure you won't be able to finish it. Maybe because your husband wouldn't want you to finish it. Maybe you will become so busy with the kids and you will put it back." I remember actually so many times with my older sisters when someone, it's traditional marriage there, when some people come and propose to marry or to propose for their hands, my dad always used to say, "No, finish your education first."

Nick Muldoon:

So, this is interesting because I think your eldest was born when you went and actually continued education and got your master's, is that correct?

Maysa Safadi:

Yes. I got diploma in computer science. However, I always wanted a bachelor degree. I knew that there is more to it. I fell in love with computing but I wanted more, and always I had that perception in mind, "If I'm going to get a better opportunity, then I have to have a better certificate or education." So, I thought getting a bachelor degree is going to give me better chances. I was working in United Arab Emirates and saving money, and Wollongong University had a branch there in Dubai. So, I had my eyes on finishing my degree there. Eventually I end up enrolling at Wollongong University, Dubai campus, to get my bachelor degree in computer science.

Nick Muldoon:

So, just for folks that are listening along, Wollongong is the regional area of Australia where Maysa and I and many of our team live. So, University of Wollongong is the local Wollongong University that has a branch in Dubai.

Nick Muldoon:

So you were with University of Wollongong doing this bachelor degree, and how did you make the transition and move to Australia?

Maysa Safadi:

When I was studying at Wollongong University, Dubai campus, and was working at the same time to be able to pay the fees, I met my husband at work, and happened that he has a skilled migrant visa to come to Australia, coincident. So, I was thinking, "All right, he is going to go to Australia, he is a person that I do really see spending the rest of my life with. So, how about if I transfer my papers to Wollongong University here in Australia, finish my degree from here, while he gets the chance to live in the country, and then we can make our minds. 'Is it a place for us to continue our life here?' If not, it was a good experience. If good, that is another new experience and journey that we are going to take." So, we end up coming to Australia. I finished my degree from here.

Nick Muldoon:

What did you find when you arrived at Australia? How was it different from United Arab Emirates? How was it different for women? How was it different for women in engineering given what your brother had said about civil engineering in Dubai?

Maysa Safadi:

I had a culture shock when I came to Australia. Yes, I was in a country that.... male-dominated country, third world country, no opportunities for females, to a country where everything is so different. The way of living, the communication, the culture, everything was so different. When it comes to engineering, because I didn't really finish my degree in United Arab Emirate, so I didn't even get the chance to work in engineering though. However, knowing about the country and knowing about the way they take talents in, I knew I had slim chances. Now, coming to Australia and to finish my degree at the university, it was challenging. Someone from the Middle East, english is second language, being in computer degree where looking around me, "My god, where are the girls? I don't really see many of them around." And then, yeah, getting into that stereotype of industry or of a field where it is just only for males.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, so a bit of a culture shock coming across. I guess fast forward, you've spent a decade in software engineering and then progressing into engineering leadership. What was the change and how did you perceive the change going from a team member to a people leader?

Maysa Safadi:

I graduated from Wollongong University and I end up getting a job at Motorola as a graduate software engineer. In the whole team there was three females.

Nick Muldoon:

How big was the team?

Maysa Safadi:

How big was the team? It was around 20.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay.

Maysa Safadi:

Yep. There was the network team which had, I can't remember how many, but it was a different team. The team I was in, it is development team, and there was three girls in there, one of them another graduate that end up coming to the program and one that started a year before. Interesting, these two females, they are not in IT anymore. I really loved the problem solving, I really loved seeing the outcome of my work in people's hands because I was developing features for mobile phones. So, all was in mind then as an IC, how to become better at my work, how to learn more, how to prove myself to everyone that I'm capable as much as any other male in the team.

Nick Muldoon:

Do you think, Maysa, that that's something that you've had to do throughout your career to prove yourself?

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, yes. It's a tough industry. Really not seeing so many females it makes it hard because you look for role models that makes you think, "Oh, she made it. I can make it. If she's still in there, then I can learn from her." I missed all of that. I never had another mentor in my career or having even a female manager in all of the jobs I had before. So, always I was dealing with males, always I was trying to navigate my way to show them the different perspective I can bring. Even the subtle interactions I used to have with them giving me that, "You are not capable enough. You are not there yet. This is our territory. Why are you here?" All of these things, it does really, without you think about it, it does really sink your self-esteem and the self-worth when you are in industries like this. Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

So, I'm conscious, you know are in this position now, you've kind of talked about you can't be what you can't see. If you can't see a woman that's a people leader and you're not reporting to one, then it's hard to see how you can become that. But, here you are, you have become that, and for our team here, you are one of the women leaders in the company, which is fantastic. So, I guess, what are the sorts of activities that you are undertaking to try and be present and be visible that you can be a woman people leader in the engineering field. I think it was earlier last month perhaps that you were at WomenHack in Sydney.

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, I've been-

Nick Muldoon:

What's WomenHack?

Maysa Safadi:

Okay. WomenHack, it is organization to bring diverse talented women intake together, to support them, to educate them, and not just only that, to try to connect them with other companies that they appreciate diversity and inclusion, and basically try to recruit... Pretty much, it is finding opportunities for women in tech, in companies that they do value the diversity.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay. So, I think it's interesting, I see these parallels here between your mom and dad that kind of went out on a limb and extended themselves financially to get six girls through a college and university education in the Middle East, and they were doing something that was perhaps fairly progressive at the time. You said it wasn't common. It sounds like WomenHack is bringing together more progressive companies these days, that are creating opportunities for women to get into leadership or even to accelerate their careers.

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, it is so pleasing to see the change that has happened over the years. When I reflect back in 2000, when I graduated and end up working in IT, and all of the behaviors, there was no knowledge or there was no awareness how much diversity is important, and they were not even aware that really females are really quitting the field or not that many females enrolls in the first place in degrees like computing or engineering. Even education through the school, no awareness was there. Then you see now the progress that is happening, more awareness is during school. Universities, they are trying to make the degrees or the fields more inviting for females and diversity. They are trying to bridge the gaps. So, many companies that are taking action to make it easier for females to be in the field and to progress in the field.

So, WomenHack, there are so many other groups like Women in Tech, there are so many companies that are allies to females in tech as well, where they are trying to really support and make their voice heard by other companies. Is as well all of the research and the science, are really proving that having diversity in teams, it is going to be more beneficial for the companies, for the teams, to have more engaging teams having these differences. So, yeah, there is a lot of awareness happening at the moment, and so many companies are trying to do something about it. I wish if that was early on.

Nick Muldoon:

Earlier in your career.

Maysa Safadi:

Earlier in my career, yes. So, many times I felt so isolated. So many times I was sitting back and saying, "Is it worth the fight?" Why do I have to work always twice as hard, to just only prove that I'm capable? Why does it have to be this way? Why I'm not equal?" That what actually made me change my career from IC to people leader. I didn't want to put other females... Being people leader wasn't just only for females, it was for me to voice, to be able to help pretty much. People leader to be able to help anyone in the field regardless if they are males or females. Moreso is to lead by example, is to be a role model for others, is to show others that if I can make it, then definitely you can as well, is to provide the support, it's to build that trust.

Nick Muldoon:

So, how can we, as an industry, I guess, how do we change... I'm reflecting on Iran at the moment, and the activities that have taken place over the last 60 days in particular, but really just more media coverage for hundreds of years of oppression of women. What do you hope, you being a people leader, a woman that's come from the Middle East, what do you hope for these young women and girls in our Iran over their trajectory? If we're still making a journey here in Australia, in a male dominated industry, what sort of hope do you have over the 20 years from here to 2040, for these women that are in the Middle East today and still haven't found a progressive society?

Maysa Safadi:

Politics. It's the game of power. Really hoping is the awareness to get there for these females in locked countries to know that there are better opportunities for them. They need to be stronger, they need to support each other, they need to empower each other. As much as it is easy said, it's not that easy done. However, all of that frustration that is built in them, it is surfacing from time to time. I'm really hoping for Iranian women, not just only Iranians, I'm really hoping for every woman in the world, regardless if it is a third world country or even if it is advanced country like Australia, is to always feel that they are worthy, is always to feel that they can have a voice, they can be part of life, and they are doing meaningful things.

Now, if they are raised in a way that always being told you are second, always being told you role only to get married and raise family, they will believe it themselves. So, it needs to come from women like us, leading by example, being role models, sending the awareness. Really media, we need to use the media very well so we can get to these people who are really locked in their countries now thinking that this is normal. It a lot of work needs to happen.

Nick Muldoon:

Well, that's an interesting observation. It is normalized for them, isn't it? So, look, reflecting on my own upbringing, I remember that my parents would always say you can achieve anything you put your mind to, but I could open up the newspaper, I could look on TV and I could see a host of people that were people that look like me, that is white males that were Australian, that were successful in business, and so I believed that I could do and be whatever I wanted to do and be. So, I guess, how do we get this message out? How do we tell your story more broadly to get this message out? That you can do whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve whatever you hope to achieve. There's something interesting for me to reflect on about the media piece that you're talking about.

Maysa Safadi:

Yeah, and I think the countries that they are advanced, the countries that they are really recognizing women more and more, they are more responsible in sending that awareness. They have to do more. It is basically, yeah, media, it is such an important thing. This is what people read everyday or watch everyday.

Nick Muldoon:

I guess, I'm conscious, like we're talking about half a world away in the Middle East, but you're actually involved in a community group here at home. What's that group that you're involved in and how's that helping women?

Maysa Safadi:

Yeah, I'm a board member for organization called Women Illawarra. It is run by women, for women. Basically this organization is to help women in domestic violence, it's basically to set them in the right path. It gives them services and it does educate them and even help them with the counseling, with legal support so they can get out of these situations. Make them believe that they can be part of this society, that they are important voice in the society, in the community, and they can really contribute and make an impact. So, by providing this education and this support, it is empowering these women to take matters their hand, and again, to really set the path for their own life and their own success. They need to take control back again, and yeah, even help their kids see their moms that they are really doing the right thing.

Nick Muldoon:

It's this interesting thread that comes through in your entire life story and your journey, that mom and dad wanted you to have an education so that you were empowered to chart your own course in life-

Maysa Safadi:

Yes.

Nick Muldoon:

... and here you are today, giving back to other women, trying to help them get an education and feel empowered so that they can chart their own course in life. I think that's fantastic. Thank you, Maysa.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you.

Nick Muldoon:

What is your hope for women over the next 10 years? Because it sounds like we're on a trajectory, we're making progress in some countries, we're not making as much progress in other countries. What's your hope for 2030? What does it look like?

Maysa Safadi:

My hope for 2030, or my hope for... I really hope it is even five years, less than 10 years. My hope for 10 years is not to have conversations about how to reduce the gap between males and females, because by the 10 years time, that should be the way everyone operates. My hope in 10 years time is to have equal opportunities for anyone regardless what's their gender, background, language they speak, physical abilities, it needs to be equal, it needs to.... Equity, it is such an important thing. Giving exposure to the same opportunity, it is so important regardless what's your abilities. Stereotyping, I need that to get totally erased from the world.

We are all a human, we did not really choose where we born, who our parents are, what our upbringing, what our financial situation, it wasn't our choice, why do we have to get penalized for it? We have responsibility toward the world to help everyone. We are social people, we really thrive when we have good connections and good bonds, we really need to tap into the things that makes us better. So, we have so many talents that we can use it to the benefits of the world. I know countries always going to have fights and politics, that everyone is looking for the power, that's not going to disappear. But us, as people part of this world, we really need to try to uplift and upskill everyone around us. I really hope for the females in all of the other countries to know that they are worth it, to know that they are as good as anyone else. They have the power, they don't realize how much strength and power they have. So, it comes from self-belief. Believe in yourself, and you will be surprised how much you will be able to achieve.

Nick Muldoon:

There you go. Believe in yourself and you'll be surprised with how much you are able to achieve. Maysa Safadi thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you so much Nick. Thank you everyone.