martin: [00:00:00]
Francois, thank you for joining us. Nice to see you on on this Friday morning.
Francois: [00:00:05]
Thanks for having me.
Satish: [00:00:07]
I think this is one of the podacasts. With the three people from three continents.
martin: [00:00:14]
It is so welcome to the narrative podcast series Citizen I co-host and hold a space. So as a community, we can listen to leading change makers and enterprise agile leaders talk about their agility narratives. Francois, we're pleased to welcome you to talk about your personal journey as an advocate of change, the challenges you see and how you look to help organizations address them. Each narrative, we hypothesize, gives us an insight into part of the whole in your career you've traveled from project management to leadership to agile, and then you've become part of the uncertainty movement, a set of techniques that helps organizations understand and adapt to change in the world of unknowns. Can you start by telling us about how you first came across agile and what your journey has looked like?
Francois: [00:01:11]
Yeah, certainly. Thanks for having me. My first contact with the agile world was around 2001 2002, something like that, and it was not the agile manifesto, although that was the thing coming out at the time. But I was an aspiring project leader in a software service company and I was busy working with wikis and this is before Wikipedia even existed. So setting setting up a wiki for the company and helping clients manage their projects and it was every day, every week was more of the same and we kept running into the same kinds of problems, not having foreseen certain things that would break the whole project, not being able to help our customers the way we wanted to. And on my quest to find ways of dealing with that in a different way. I happen to come across the agile manifesto and the writers behind that. And so I started off on the Scrum Master Course in 2005 and immediately caught the virus because I felt this was something completely different, not just another method and not just another way of labeling things, but a completely different way of looking not only at projects, but even at the world. So that was my first contact, and it was I was thrown into cold water. It was it was really a shock to my system because the world was a world full of certainties before I was doing my scrum master course with Ken Schwarber, and there was a role play in there and where he threw some uncertainty at you and made you lie about what to tell the team and and how you would get yourself out of that situation. And then he just stand you there on the scene and say, Why are you lying to me? And that, of course, is a shock to any system, and it made me realize that that's what we were doing with the traditional project management.
martin: [00:03:11]
When you took your new learning back to your organization, what happened, how did that work out?
Francois: [00:03:19]
It was a classic young evangelist comes home who knows everything about what the company should do. The company elders just shake their heads and say, We don't want none of that and none of her customers is looking for that. So why should we do that? So I'd say that was basically there was this period, the two or three years after that where I was torn between two between two worlds. I was looking at my mentors. I was looking at the people I was following online and seeing that they were progressing in a very different way than I was. And at the same time, I was kind of trapped in a company situation where my manager said, Look, we've heard about this agile thing, but we don't think it's actually something we need. And so no, we're not going to do that. We're not putting that in our portfolio. And it came to a moment of, you know, really crossing the threshold after this call to action, where my mentor in that company, he sat me down and said, Look, Francois, these guys, they just don't want what you brought back. So it's up to you. You, you either change the company or you change the company. And so that's what I ended up doing because he said, you're pedaling like a fool. You're spending lots of energy on something that's not giving you anything back that's not going to be sustainable. So my advice is, you know, change the company or change the company. And so I resigned from that company and went off on my own.
martin: [00:04:57]
And you found people more receptive when you were on your own coaching and leading?
Francois: [00:05:02]
Yes and no. I found, you know, as I cross this threshold, there were inevitable tests and enemies and allies, and sometimes you find them in the most unsuspected places. Yeah, I did find a market that could sustain me for over five years of being a freelance coach and trainer for four scrum teams. I'd say those were the times where they were not yet twenty five thousand agile coaches piling up any given day. So, yeah, for sure. Different times, different times.
martin: [00:05:34]
Yeah.
Francois: [00:05:34]
So it was a time of adventure. It was a time of lots of learning for for me and in the terms of the hero's journey, I'd say it was a time of approaching the inmost cave of, you know, and surviving different setbacks and surviving different moments of despair and loneliness. And yeah, and also advancing with a certain naivety.
Satish: [00:05:59]
It's good to see that you have been through a similar journey that most of us would have when we transition from traditional to the agile, world busting US analogy of an evangelist trying to tell the world how to change. I like to change the company or change the company. I think it's a good way to look at things. So from being a champion evangelist to agile coach, how did you kind of transition to being a coach and advising others how to go about adopting agile?
Francois: [00:06:34]
I'd say in these times there was a lot of need for training and for just getting information across about this new way of looking at things. And so training and accompanying teams on delivering value in this new way with time boxes and backlogs, the basics of any agile approach retrospectives. This was something that was asked for in the market because there were some books, but there were largely theoretical books, not much experience there. So anyone with a little bit of experience under his or her belt would be an interesting person to have on board, at least for a few weeks with a new team. And so that was basically my line of work. Speaking at conferences, sharing about retrospectives and about the power of incremental iterative development. And by that, getting to a company teams and getting to experience agile in anything from the industrial world to administration to finance to aeronautics, to you name it. Now there has been an inflation and of course, inflation with a number of frameworks and tools and all that. And this kind of this line of work would not be successful anymore to sustain any, any kind of business. Now you need to bring some different value to the table in order to actually be hired. But in 2008 09 10, that was a big deal.
martin: [00:08:16]
Can we move to maybe twenty fifteen twenty sixteen? How had the world changed and what was your career looking like at that point?
Francois: [00:08:27]
Those were the years basically where you had these, you had the big frameworks competing, you had lots of people being certified and there was a certain, I say, loss of naivety. The people who had who still were working under the illusion of control. They just pasted agile titles on the top of their predicted control frameworks and work just as before. And so you had to start looking at what was inherently different in agile but actually something that brought in some new KPIs ways of looking at things, values, mindset. Before we had mostly start ups and people in a market that was constrained that had new developments that were moving very fast, so speed was the main driver before. And in 2015, we started to have companies to move to agile because it was hype because it was the thing to do to retain their talent. Send them to agile courses, but with no actual intention of going agile. And that was around the time I moved into a company which is in the aeronautical business where time does not play a role at all for development. If the project is a one year late, then it's one year late. That's not a big problem. If it costs more. It costs more. It's not a big problem, but quality is a big driver. And so enterprise architecture and quality were there were the big drivers.
martin: [00:10:04]
I had a few questions to help set the context in our prior chats. You talked about managing VUCA world. Can you tell us about what VUCA is and why is it important today and how integral coaching and human systems designed as critical to the vehicle world? And how does that contrast with where you've been in terms of this journey that you've been on?
Francois: [00:10:31]
My currently best illustration of Lucca is the coronavirus crisis. Ok, so we've all been thrown into this big maelstrom as a planet, as humanity. Ok, we've been thrown into it. There's nothing we could do. So there goes the illusion of control volatility. Everything can change. You can have a new variant tomorrow. Nobody knows. We tend to believe or not the scientists who bring those news and they they're not so sure if they really want to tell us the bad news anymore. So there's there's there's lots of back and forth moments between what do we know, what is certain? What is uncertain. How do these things interact? Volatility and uncertainty. We all now know what that is because we live it. We live it on a daily basis. Complexity is a bit of a tough. It's to look at how people interact and how there's no single cause and then single effect or we cannot. Luminaries are thinking lots of things interact. It really helps us understand who amongst our leaders are clueless when it comes to handling complexity. Yeah, because they just have linear thinking models and who are, you know, who are the leaders who are actually apt to to live and to lead in these uncertain times, complex times where today's advice might be tomorrow's foolishness. We are not in a black and white world anymore.We have fractal lines of knowledge of what is acceptable behavior. So to me, the virus really sums up VUCA. For me, the virus is really a perfect illustration of all it brings to the surface. And it brings our models are thinking models or leadership models are management models to the surface, and we see that some things work out in a totally different way than we would have thought and how it puzzles us and what it does to our interior beings as people in this in this crisis. This really brings in the human element. Also, we talked about human systems dynamics there. There are situations where it's not about he who has the best model wins. It's about how do we live with this situation? How do we thrive in a situation as humanity, as a community, as a group of human beings? And of course, the comparison to to the climate crisis isn't far away. There's there are other crises looming on the horizon where we will have need for the same kind of skills and for the same kind of leaders with strong opinions that they hold lightly because they can be subject to change. But thinking about leadership, authority, thinking about guidance, roadmaps, all these things comes into a very different light in light of a crisis like this.
martin: [00:13:47]
For me, there is both aspiration and fear that drives change. With COVID, we've seen fear drive huge change. Do you think it where the trigger for that change? Does it change our ability to be more human and be more understanding? And when we're as aspirational versus when we're in fear?
Francois: [00:14:10]
It certainly does impact our gut feeling and our drive and our emotional strength in these situations. I tend to move away from the word change, actually, because we the HD word we use is adaptive action and it's more about adapting. Right now, the thing that changes most is the virus. And so all we're left to do is actually adapt and do adaptive action experiments. Find out by feedback loops if it works, if it doesn't work, if it works better than what we have before and we adapt. We are on the receiving end, and it's not so much that we, as humanity, decide to do this or do that, but we adapt to our environment. And so it's recognizing a bit humbly that we might not be masters of the Universe the way we thought before. But there's the strength of adapting to the environment is something that you can bring back to the enterprise world. And every entrepreneur knows that you start with a business plan, which is basically just a piece of paper. And then you you do these experiments with the market and you find out what what's the real need out there and not your projection, not your idealistic four page document. But what's the real demand? What's the real need out there? And then you adapt to that.
martin: [00:15:39]
So in taking adaptive action, if that's driven by fear, that's a different mindset that you're going into that adaptive action.
Francois: [00:15:48]
When you're in a state of fear for your life, you develop a certain energy and resourcefulness that gives you, quote unquote, superhuman strength. So I think there's a difference in the agency in the way that you can be creative. There's a big difference. You're not very creative when you're when you're full of fear. You can be very energetic, you can be very strong, you can be very resourceful. But when you need creative energy, this is more found in the sweet spot of the humility of knowing that you're basically adapting to whatever is around you, but that you have agency that you have an inner strength. That's what we're talking integral and that you're working with a system that includes other fellow human beings. So you're more creative in that kind of environment, like children playing in a sandbox. You know, when when you're safe, your parents are looking after your safety, you can. You can play, you can engage with other children. You can fight about some piece of sand, but your creativity is at its peak, that kind of moment. And we need this kind of creativity in there in our current world.
Satish: [00:16:59]
I like your perspective on change management. Do you think change management in itself is a very arrogant way of looking at things and adaptive action is a more humble approach? Who is the protagonist in your view?
Francois: [00:17:18]
Looking at the integral model, there's at least a part of the change that has to happen in yourself because you have to go through that red pill blue pill moment. You have to decide that you want to look at things the way they are, even if that means throwing some of your preconceptions overboard and some emotional and sometimes even spiritual pain, but looking at things as clearly as possible with the least possible preconceptions. One of the protagonists is really your your own soul searching your heart, your guts, your thinking, your way of looking at the world.Then there's the we quadrant integral, which is the culture, the way you, you interact with others, the corporate organizational culture. That's where on that side of things, I'm very much in line with the whole permaculture movement, which comes from gardening, where it's actually a culture has a totally different, a different aspect to it. I mean, the word culture comes from gardening. So cultivating food, you're looking at the long term with the environment that is there, not polluting your soil, making sure that everything moves in in short cycles and you're not draining any of the resources. I think that there's a lot to say about organizational permaculture, which is a stark contrast to corporate strategy. So I like Peter Drucker's famous quote Culture Eats Strategy for breakfast. To me, it's more organizational. Permaculture outlives corporate strategy, so it's you have to go back to people not calling them human resources, but people to go back to being a guest on the planet, to be being a craftsman, someone who's learning all the time. You have to work with the resources. They're in this permaculture and not just run after some corporate strategy.
martin: [00:19:29]
I love that phrase guest on the planet, so it's very evocative. What would you say your theme of your agility narrative would be, and why would you pick that theme?
Francois: [00:19:41]
When I trained people in scrum in those 2008 2010 timeframe, I was brought back to this one term. This is all about conversation. And I'm still brought back to this, it's imperfect, but it's been helpful for me to watch the quality of my conversations, to be careful about my intent in a conversation and to even extend the word conversation to non-human people and beings around me. You can be in conversation with Mother Earth. You can be in conversation with the market. You can be in conversation with different parts of your business or if your personal world and a real conversation is made of lots of listening, of lots of learning. And there might be people speaking, there might be people listening, asking questions. There might be onlookers just taking it in to me. Lots of, you know, First Peoples ceremonies have this aspect of conversation as something that is that is valued and for which time is set apart. And the retrospective in the agile world plays a bit of that role. But to me, conversation is actually a bigger than just a retrospective. Any planning meeting is a conversation, and the outcome is not so much. The finished plan, you know that, but the conversation in itself is the important part. And so to me, I would say that the real theme is is learning to be in conversation, which doesn't necessarily mean to speak. It doesn't necessarily mean to have a say, but it's actually listening, learning, capturing what the story is all about. You spoke about empathy. You spoke about meaning there's there's lots of these age old concepts that play your role in any conversation.And to me, that's I would say that would be the central theme, making it less of a speech or preach and more of a conversation. This has a lot to do with the conversation with your inner self that that you can cultivate. Finding out what is going on in their inner self and having a conversation to probe and to discover what what those those rivers of inner self might reveal about them. So once you listen to what your inner self is trying to communicate to you, it's probably not in words, but you have different senses to find out what you're at ease with and what you're not happy with. It's gut feeling or whatever you want to call it, what your heart is yearning for, what you're really trying to fulfill. That is a dialogue. That's a conversation that has a lot to do with what the outer world, the non-human beings around you can point you towards. I'm not sure how the conversation between my little character and Mother Earth might play out in my immediate environment. I can certainly sense where I'm depleting the resources that are so freely given to me and where I'm actually giving something back and how I feel about that. And so to me, we have these sensors in ourselves, but we most often don't listen what they're trying to indicate to us. And so to me, that's making that conversation deeper and happen more often is an aspiration that is probably going to be lifelong.
martin: [00:23:41]
Thank you for that beautiful expression. Can can you relate that back to agile and agility for organizations?
Francois: [00:23:52]
That's where integral comes into the picture is if we, as individual beings can develop and evolve the capacity of sensing these things, then this will also bring back new capabilities and skills into the corporate world because we can have conversations with customers at a different level of empathy, at a different level of understanding. And as such, we can probably also sense where an organization is not happy with the way it's structured and where it's constantly making noises. When we have to deliver a new product and we can we can pick up these organizational things between the organization as a container and its customers, or between competing organizations or you name it, there are different entities and containers in the corporate world. That's. We will discover have some kind of sensory expression. And this is not picked up by traditional KPIs, and I'm not advocating setting up new KPIs for that, but it's just opening our senses to when have you last asked after a merge of two companies? How does that feel now? And I'm not talking. I'm not talking figures and a number of teams and corporate culture. How do you feel in this new constellation? What comes to mind? What would you compare it to? That kind of conversation, I think, would would unearth lots of things that would be very valuable for organizational development.
Satish: [00:25:37]
If going to we talked about the protagonist, we talked about the themes. Very, very interesting perspectives. So now let's get into the other part of the whole game and who are what are the villains in your view? And are there always constraints?
Francois: [00:25:56]
I have to admit, I have to chew on that word villain. Maybe because it it kind of presupposes an intention to hurt, an intention to destroy harmful intention. And the protagonist and antagonist image is much more helpful to me. As in as in our body, if we only had protagonist muscles, we wouldn't go far because we could bend our arm, but we could not stretch it out again. So it's actually the interplay between and the feedback loops between these that actually move us forward. So to me, it's tempting to say, well, there's some certain constraints, there's legacy thinking and there's this illusion of control and those are the villains. Boo, boo, boo. Bad, bad, bad. But I'm struggling with the word villain in this case because it's just part of the givens for our adaptive action and for our situational ethics. What do we reward? What do we do? What? Why do we do things? There's no intention to harm there, but it's to me, there are thorns, there are constraints. There are things that make our adaptive action more difficult or more pressing. We need to make decisions faster. The interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist that I actually move this forward as a full system. And how can we make this interplay as fruitful as possible? How can we make the outcome of this interplay as good as possible without giving each other names?
Satish: [00:27:29]
I do understand villainy is a very harsh word antagonist. We can live with the antagonist as a right option here. Thank you for that.
Francois: [00:27:39]
I was thinking about what is holding us back, and in my 15 years of of working inside this field of agile transformation. Were there reasons for people to drop off or for companies to renounce moving forward and not to step into this evolution? There's a lot of comfort zone thinking that actually holds us back and inhibits us from actually looking at things and stepping into a new option, new opportunities and finding new ways of having conversations in a meaningful way. I like to use know Joseph Campbell's hero's journey and for my own trajectory, but also for companies, but for most agile teams and for most agile pioneers or evangelists in their company, in their surroundings. This is a very real situation, so it's finding out what does that do to me and to my quest? Does it reinforce me? Does it help me? Does it? Does it point out some difficulties that I hadn't thought of before? And in that case, it's sharpening my, my perception and that's, you know, the antagonist bringing something back to the protagonist that will help the protagonist move forward.
martin: [00:29:01]
Could you identify a few factors that help the protagonist refine that journey?
Francois: [00:29:08]
I spoke about my naivety, my young evangelist view of things and everyone needs scrum and well will be fine. This run in with my management, basically where my my mentor told me, Look, they just face it, they don't want this. That was a very helpful thing for my, for my whole career, because that may that made me move out of that company without slamming any doors, but with a very clear view. And it has been one of my most helpful mentoring moments to realize that and to say, look, they're not bad people. They just run a company. And their objective is not to evangelize the world with scrum or agile or whatever, but they just want to make a living with their company. And this doesn't fit their worldview. And so just live with that. That helped me a lot. And paradoxically, I think this kind of thing when one of your evangelists, energy employees leaves the company, that also sends a message to the company managers saying, Well, you know why? Why couldn't we hold that person back? Because they had actually lots of energy. And so it also brings a positive reaction to the company. They are now fully committed to agile. A few years later, which is so we have both moved forward from that moment of agreeing to disagree. And so this is a very practical conversation that was not happy clappy kumbaya. Everyone's nice, but a conversation that allowed us to clarify certain things and to clarify our own thinking and their own priorities. And so for both partners basically to to evolve in in ways we wouldn't have thought before. It was very generative on many integral quadrant levels also. So to me, I'd like to see more of my conversations from that point of view to to to say, OK, so what? What are the things that really shocked me? And how can that move me forward and what really, really bugged me and what really upset me and being more listening to my inner self
martin: [00:31:27]
And your agility narrative, what's at stake here? What's at stake for your clients and even for the industry?
Francois: [00:31:36]
My turning point came at the moment when I started discovering that this was much more about people than about any kind of method or tools or artifacts that the whole human systems aspect of it that really clicked when I when I started realizing that and it's sort of I started scratching my head really hard about where have I tried to slap a label on something and not being able to actually see the person and sense holistic part of this whole problem? And where have I try to solve it, quote unquote with some kind of project management artifact? I'm an engineer by training, and so I like to solve stuff. I found that I care more about people than I care about agile or scrum or whatever method or process or mindset.
martin: [00:32:34]
If your clients don't adapt their current models to. Include adaptive action or thinking about people rather than process. What do you think the implication is what's at stake here?
Francois: [00:32:47]
My personal measurement for I'm going to put a lot of quotes around the word success, but for feeling happy about what I've been able to catalyze as a shift in a client situation has much more to do with, you know, have I been able to deepen the conversation? Have I been able to point out, ask some questions enabled them to to see to open their eyes about some of the things that are going on in their company and around the company? I feel happy coming back from a client engagement when when I've made them think, when I've made them reflect on some of the roles and practices and guidelines that they have much more than having a perfect solution. When I can feel that there has been a connection that is deeper than just what was mandated on paper, but where they feel inclined to work on their skills and conversation for clients. What's at stake is often they are stuck in a situation and they feel that their current mindset toolkit method, whatever doesn't quite do it, and they have a hunch that something out of the realm of agile might be a solution as long as they're still asking for. Just add water and stir solution they will be unhappy with with what I can give them, and I tell them, quite frankly, up front about this. My role is much more to be the Kings Fool to ask some quote unquote stupid questions which make them think about consequences of the way they look at things and maybe offer a blue pill or a red pill or two.
martin: [00:34:31]
To close this conversation, you're talking to a group of state key stakeholders wanting to move their organisation forward and honestly, they feel stuck. You understand you have empathy for that, for that position. What's going on? What would be your call to action to them?
Francois: [00:34:46]
Let me answer with a picture. You know, there's this monkey trap where you you make a hole in a coconut and you put some peanuts inside. And so the monkey comes once a peanuts grabs like peanuts and can't pull his hand out. And so you've trapped him and you can catch a monkey that way. End of story. The picture is basically when you're stuck, you're probably holding onto something. Yeah. And so my call to action in that kind of situation where executives say, Well, you know, we really want to move forward, but we feel stuck, the conversation I would try to to start there is what do you feel you need to let go? How can you travel more lightly and how might that get you unstuck? Is there one thing that maybe you can't say it for yourself? Maybe you can say something for a colleague. We can start a conversation about what are the things that we need to let go, maybe just for a while. What do we need to experiment with letting go in order to get unstuck? And maybe we can get out of that monkey trap if we just let go of some of those peanuts?
martin: [00:35:55]
That's a great picture that you've drawn for us. Thank you.
Francois: [00:35:59]
You're welcome.
martin: [00:36:01]
So a lot of the conversation we've had, especially that you had your core theme as a conversation, you just identified that in talking about people who are stuck. Just one last question is so from a neutral country like Switzerland. How do you see the threats and opportunities we're facing today around our future around this topic of conversations?
Francois: [00:36:28]
It's interesting to see how the concept of neutrality has has also shifted neutrality used to be a guarantee for a safe space, for a conversation. And it still is to some extent we've had, you know, Presidents Biden and Putin meeting in Geneva lately. So there are some aspects of that that are still there. But there's also a danger in neutrality, just being outside of any conversation, just standing outside, saying I'm not getting involved. So to me, that's why I mentioned in a conversation there are people that are actually asking questions or speaking and listening, but there might also be onlookers that are also part of that conversation. And I think that's an art that we need to invest in as as humanity. Again, this is not about conversations between superpowers, bilateral conversations. This is not about the u.s.'s and United States discussing nuclear warheads. As we've seen with the virus and with other examples, we need to have conversations where lots of people gather and commit to being there and being part of the conversation, even if there are no direct things they will say. And to me, that's the challenge of being neutral and being at the same time catalysts for generative conversations as a neutral country. We've shied away from that a bit in the past. We're outside of the European Union, we're outside of NATO, we're outside of lots of organizations, and that sometimes is more a cop out than actually being neutral. But if we can become actively concerned without taking sides, without preconceptions about solutions, then I think we will be able to host meaningful and generative and absolutely necessary conversations about the future for the planet. We've we're learning our lessons. We are licking our wounds and finding out what we can do better in the future. And yeah, I feel that neutral is kind of a tasteless word right now. It doesn't evoke much movement. It doesn't evoke much hope for the future. So I guess we'll have to find a better word.
martin: [00:39:08]
I understand where that thinking comes from. I like your redefinition. My company is called neutral advocate. Sounds like a conflict, sort of in terms of the twoTerms, but Being neutral on content and advocate for process or advocate for change. So it wasn't really thank you for this interview. You're a very thoughtful person and you have huge value. I've learnt a lot from listening to their answers and thank you very much
Francois: [00:39:41]
For your engaging conversation. It was, yeah, I felt very alive in this, and it has evoked lots of new thoughts in myself, too. So thanks for that opportunity. Thank you.
martin: [00:39:53]
Thanks very much.