People & Teams

Despite thinking that organizations are slow to innovate, innovation actually abounds at many companies. Kodak, DEC, and Xerox did not fail due to lack of new, cutting-edge innovation; they failed because their organizations were tuned to their traditional markets, and a failure to change their business models and organizations led to their eventual disruption. The key to achieving business agility lies in leadership that transforms organizations. Transformational leaders succeed by changing the system, leading with purpose, and steering from the edges. They own their responsibility and boldly lead their organizations into the future. It's time for all of us to undergo personal transformations and start leading for innovation, disruption, and business agility.

When coaches encounter resistance to agile transformations, we often treat it as a phenomenon to be overcome, confronted, or combated. But resistance is a natural reaction to change, and that reaction can't be alleviated by violent opposition. Rather than meeting resistance head-on, the clever coach will work around it by helping people recognize and resolve the negative emotions that drive it. Once those negative emotions are resolved, people are more likely to let down their guard and embrace change. In this interactive session, you will learn to use a method known as humble inquiry to help people uncover the emotional roots of their resistance so that they can resolve their reluctance to embrace agile transformation. You'll identify common resistance behaviors, then practice by engaging in humble inquiry. You will learn ways to use humble inquiry to build trust and rapport in your agile team.

When it comes to our day-to-day work interactions, there are many factors that pass us by simply because we’re not used to paying attention to them. The best way to become more observant is through deliberate practice, so join Julie Wyman for a brief introduction to themes and different aspects of interactions to start observing, followed by small group exercises to practice observing and to help understand what it feels like to be observed. The exercises will be followed by a debrief and full group discussion about how to observe thoughtfully and share feedback in a neutral, nonjudgmental way. You will leave with an understanding of the critical importance of being able to observe interactions at the individual, team, and organizational levels, and with ideas for how to observe using multiple senses. You'll go home with your coaching and support skills more aligned to your team’s full situation and needs.

Successful agile testers collaborate with programmers as code is written, isolating problems, troubleshooting defects, and debugging code all along the way to getting the product to done. But modern systems are scaling beyond what traditional teams are able to understand using familiar tools.