Bringing Your Internal Coaching to the Next Level

Steve Thomas and Jim Trott talk about internal coaching in Lean-Agile transformations: why coaches are needed, what is involved, the difference between internal and external coaches, who makes good coaches, can manager make good coaches, how to develop internal coaches, coaching as a career, and metrics to use. This topic had a lot of interest and we could only cover some of the many questions we received.

For more information, go to www.NetObjectives.com and search for "coaching academy" or use the forums on portal.netobjectives.com to ask questions.  Note, you will have to register on the portal to do so.

Music used in this podcast: “And So It Begins” and “Easy Lemon” by Kevin MacLeod © Incompetech Inc.

Blog Type: Podcast

 

Transcript

Introduction

Steve Thomas and Jim Trott talk about internal coaching in Lean-Agile transformations.

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Jim Trott: It's October 18th, 2016, this show Bringing Your Internal Coaching to the Next Level.
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Jim: Hello and welcome to another edition of "Lean Agile Straight Talk," a regular podcast series from Net Objectives. I'm your host, Jim Trott.
In this show Steve Thomas discusses what is involved in bringing internal coaching in a lean agile transformation up to the next level. Why coaches are needed? What's involved? The difference between internal and external coaches?
Who makes good coaches? What's involved in developing internal coaches using matrics and so on? We had lots of questions from the audience, so clearly this is a topic of interest to many people who are engaged in a lean agile transformation. We need to visit this topic again.
Before we get started, I want to remind you that you can explore more about this topic by jumping over to the resources section of www.netobjectives.com. I suggest you search for Coaching Academy. There's a lot of good resources on there about this topic area.
At Net Objectives, we're committed to discovering effective software development methods so that we can assist organizations in becoming more successful. We combine our experience to continuously extend the capability of what is possible in creating effective software development organizations.
We provide these approaches to our clients and the community in general so that we can assist people in achieving their goals in making their organizations more successful. We'd welcome the chance to work with you. We're always learning and invite you to join in.
Visit us at www.netobjectives.com. Please subscribe to the Lean Agile Straight Talk Podcast on iTunes and rate the show. That really helps. Let's keep the conversation going.
Today's presenter is Steve Thomas. Steve is a certified Scrum Master and product owner, and an Agile and Lean coach. He is an experienced facilitator of Agile transformations in large organizations and in all phases of the software development life cycle.
In addition, he has been a CMMI authorized instructor. One of Steve's passions is to work with cross functional teams, managers and organizations to establish work environments where collaboration blossoms, and productivity and results sharply rise. He brings systems thinking, Lean and Agile principles in a pragmatic outlook to this work.
The general topic today is on bringing your internal coaching to the next level. Let me set the stage. Almost all medium to large size organizations that are trying to make a Lean or Agile transformation must develop an internal coaching capability.
Relying on external coaches is just too expensive and it's not tuned enough to the needs of the organization. Organizations have a clear need to leverage some of their internal talent and people to coach the organization through the transition and into the next stage of transformation.
In most transformation journeys, we're going to start with bringing in some trainers or coaches to help the organization understand the basics. Once the transformation journey's under way, the need for coaching becomes clearer. Unfortunately, continuing to bring in external coaches to do this is likely to be cost prohibitive.
At some point, organizations reach the point where they need to establish some internal coaching capability. Some do this in a small and formal way. Others establish a specific role or organization that's responsible for the Lean Agile transformation and ask them to provide training and coaching. That's what we're going to talk about today.
Steve, maybe I'll start, which is asking you a question. For the organization that wants to do Lean Agile, why do they need a coach? What is it that a coach does?
Steve Thomas: That's a good question. Organization that's trying to become Lean Agile, they need a coach the same reason that anyone needs a coach. Whether you're in some activity, or a sports, or a personal coach, or a transformation, the coach brings an external perspective outside of yourself to what you're doing.
A coach enables you to see things with a fresh set of eyes to see the organization that's becoming Lean Agile. It sees it from the outside. It brings that fresh perspective into it. A coach is often provides that fresh voice from outside of the organization saying, "OK, here's what it is that we're seeing. Here's what we see in the organization."
Thirdly, the coach brings expertise and experience. They've been down this path before. They're able to help the organization to make the transformation that they need to.
Let me also highlight a pattern where you may not need a coach. That is when you are implementing. If you are choosing just to implement a particular methodology, then you actually may not need a coach because you can take the training, you implement it, put it into practice.
But the challenge with Lean Agile is that you're not just talking about implementing a set of practices or methodology. Lean Agile is talking about changing the organization in all aspects of it, in order to be driving by business value, in order to be delivering small pieces incrementally.
It changes the whole organization from how it prioritizes work, how it makes its decisions, how the organization communicates and collaborates, as well as how the organization is delivering its work and delivering the results to its customers.
To bring that level of transformation, you need someone. A coach provides that external point of view as to what the changes are necessary in this organization. They bring the expertise and the experience to what are the patterns that they can leverage, that this organization can leverage in order to make those changes.
Jim: I know we're going to be talking about internal coaches. I wonder if we should start off talking about external coaches. Why would an organization bring in an external coach?
Steve: Good question. Many times, an organization starts off with an external coach. That's for all of the reasons that I just mentioned because a core part of that coaching dynamic is to have someone outside of yourself.
Even professional sports players hire coaches who are going to help them with their golf swing, or help them with their basketball throw, or with their football throw or their stance. They bring that because they need a fresh set of eyes. They need someone who's outside of themselves who can see the organization.
Most organizations of medium to large size companies that I've worked in, they usually start off with an internal change agent. Someone who is, or multiple people who are passionately driven about and can envision a new way for the organization to be and they're passionate about it.
It's, in many cases, tempting for them to start off as that external point of view, that coach. Yet, almost always, in every case that I've been aligned with, they have come to recognize that they need an external coach as a partner.
That coach that gives them credibility talking to different levels of the organization, it gives them the experience. Someone who can say, "I've been down this path. It's not just theory. This can work in your situation," and gives them the tips and techniques on how to do it.
Every case that I've worked at in medium to large organizations, they don't always start off with that place of recognizing they need an external coach. But they quickly, as they grow their knowledge and information about the transformation that they're trying to make, they recognize, "I need an external partner. I need an external coach who can help this organization reach this point." It's a starting place, definitely.
Jim: Because you can only go as far as you've been, I suppose.
Steve: Exactly. They don't have knowledge. They do have the internal to the organization knowledge about what is possible in this organization. That's actually one of the reasons why most organizations recognize they need to develop the internal capabilities.
The organizations I've worked with recognize sometime during their transformation journey, six months, a year, a year and a half down the road, they recognize, "This is not just an implementation. We're not just putting into place a set of practices and we're done. But this is in fact changing the muscle memory. This is changing the organizational dynamics."
The three reasons, the three primary reasons why they need to develop the internal capability are first of all, cost. It's just way too expensive. When they recognize how many coaches that they're going to need, how many teams they're going to...Even the companies with the deepest pockets recognize, "This is just not a sustainable model. We can't afford that."
That's the first driver that's very obvious. The second and third are a little bit more, are subtle, but are actually as important or more important is that the second is that you, at a certain point in the transformation process, you actually need the external point of view to be married up with the internal realities of the organization.
The coaching capability needs to be aligned with, to be cognizant of all of the very subtle and hidden dynamics going on inside of the organization. An external coach who stays with an organization for frankly a year or two years, they actually become frequently part of the system.
Whether they are still paid as an external or not, they have become an internal part of the system, but relatively expensive one. You need someone who's got that internal point of view who can help shape the organization from the inside, bringing that Lean Agile set of lenses to the table.
The third reason that why you need that internal capability is to make the transformation lasting. There's too much muscle memory for the organization. When we look at the entirety of the whole system dynamics, there are still forces that are it wanting the system to snap back, to revert back to the state that it had been in.
Then, you need a coaching capability that's going to stay with your organization that can help it adapt to and help modify those particular issues that are coming up.
Jim: You've been doing coaching for a long time. I wonder, as you're consulting with somebody, what do you look for in an internal coach? Somebody that wants to get started, what should they be looking in somebody that could become a good internal coach?
Steve: That's where we'll spend a lot of time. I expect there's a number of questions about that. The first thing that we want to do, one of the things, one of the roles that you would have your external coach to do later after they've helped you go through some of the initial transformation is have them be looking for identifying potential coach candidates, and then training those.
Who makes a good internal coach? You want people who have developed a passion during the early part of the transformation. The light bulb has gone off for them. They've reached that "Aha" moment. They have become passionate about sharing the change and the transformation with others. They've become not only passionate about it, but they've become effective at it.
Those first set of internal coaches you want to identify is someone who are naturally change agents. They could come from all sorts, so they could be practitioners in some of the technical practices. They would be coaching their peers in how to implement continuous integration, continuous delivery, processes.
They could be ATDD experts. Again, helping their peers in the development organizations really move forward in those. If the organization has put in place some Scrum practices, they may be very effective Scrum Masters who are going to then help and coach other teams and other programs.
There will be leaders, hopefully, that you'll identify who, some of those early change agents who may also become internal coaches for their peers. We look at all sorts of different types of coaches.
Jim: One question I received is would you think that being an internal coach is a good career path? What are the steps that I would take if I wanted to become an internal coach?
Steve: An internal coach, it really depends on the organization. I have been in organizations where an internal coach is a very good, good career path. I've been in ones that it's a dangerous career path. I'll cover both of those.
It's been a very good career path when for those who become passionate, who recognize that this Lean Agile is not just about how the organization delivers value, but it's about helping people do their work better, and helping people's lives improve.
I was became an internal coach and was developing an internal coaching capability in my company first. It was because I could see this was necessary for our company to succeed, and because it was making people's lives better, our developers' lives better, and our testers, and frankly even our managers, making their lives better.
It can be a very rewarding career choice from a personal point of view saying, "All right, what I'm doing is making a difference in people's lives," and very rewarding in the sense of, "It's making a difference in the organization." You can ask me more about details.
But the flip side of it where it became a dangerous career path is when the organization is not yet committed to doing this transformation, or if the organization changes its mind, then the coaches can be seen as very much an expendable, "Oh, we don't really need those folks anymore." That really depends on your organizational dynamics as how much you would want to set that role specifically.
I have seen some people who do that to some extent part time saying, "OK, one of my hats is going to be as a coach, and I still have in essence my day job." We can talk about where that works or doesn't work.
Jim: I guess one question that brings to mind is, is it possible to have an internal coach be a part time coach? Is it OK for organizations to be part time, and what that would look like?
Steve: I've seen that work. We've seen it work, and I've seen it fail. In the organizations where I've worked, I've set a bar, which typically set a bar, of about 50 percent. The challenge becomes when someone says, "All right, I want to be a coach.
I've identified someone, or I've volunteered," and say, "I want to coach, but I really only have a limited ability to do that." The challenge is that person won't have enough time. If it's less than half time, we find that is typically much, much less than half time. They won't frankly be able to be the change agent that they want to be.
They will be kind of instructor. They will be an enforcer of the process, but not really a change agent changing the process. That's where it becomes problematic. Be aware, it could become successful, but no one that I've worked with this has tried this model.
It's to say, "Let me be a coach full time for half of the year, and then the other half of the year I'm going to fill this other role within the organization. I'm going to be a product manager," but they frequently are more saying, "No, I want it on a steady week in and week out basis to do this at a small." I have seen people do it at about half times or so.
You could hire up being an internal coach, so looking at system dynamics, being able to see what's going on in the organization, be able to coach people, not just recommend changes, but coach people on how to implement those changes, and to coach them on how they see the system dynamics.
You can do that with a portion of your time and still, in essence, maintain your day job, whether your day job is as developer. In the technical practices, someone could be a really good developer, and implementing XP practices, and become in essence an XP evangelist or an ATDD. Your coach is helping other teams while at the same time.
In many cases like there, they would actually, "OK, I'm going to spend several months where mostly most of my time is working on my home project, and then I'm going to spend a period of time that's I'm available and some on my home project, but mostly working with other teams, and embedding with them, and helping them understand this practices."
In the same way, a project manager or a Scrum master might say, "OK, most of my time or half of my time is going to be spent coaching these teams, working with the teams that I'm normally working with, and a part of my time or half of my time is going to be going out and setting up more or helping new teams forms to coach them into the processes used in practices that they need to be following."
It kind of the factor goes at all of the different levels above that in the organization. You definitely can do it part time, and in fact in long term I think that's actually a healthy thing to have people who are embedded in the organization who are doing a day job.
A job that is very much valued by the organization in delivering its normal business value at the same time that they are coaching, and working on the organization, and helping the organization continue to grow to transform itself and learn.
Jim: You've mentioned a bunch of roles, are there some roles that make better coaches or natural coaches in others, do you see?
Steve: I'm going to answer a little bit different question of who gets typically tagged as a potential coach. It's frequently people who come from a process background, or they're process engineers, or the quality, not the testers, but the quality process folks or project managers will also get tagged as, "OK, we want them to be our coaches." They can make good coaches.
Some of the, actually, the best people that I've found making very good coaches are some of the line managers. That would be the first level or second level line managers, but they're the people who became managers probably because they were good at getting the work done, but their passion has shifted to caring for people and caring for how the organization delivers work in a way that's sensitive to the people in the organization and sensitive to the customers.
Those people, I have found, make absolutely the best coaches, not from a technical practices sometimes, but more from a team coaches, program coaches, even enterprise coaches, because they have a management of experience and background, but their passion has been around helping people.
They've been able to see things from a bigger perspective than just in the trenches doing the work. They've been able to see a little bit beyond to that in their management experience. In fact, many of them can continue to be managers in the organization, and to be coaches and change agents.
The challenge that they will often face is that do they get the level of visibility in traction that they need to in the most senior levels of the organization. That's a challenge for them.
Jim: I guess part of the game is to know how to ask really powerful questions as a coach, not trying to solve things for people. Are there problems because the manager tends to have responsibility, or oversight, or performance evaluation role as well as the executive in the way of the manager being a coach?
Steve: It does when they're coaching their own organization, so that can be definite. Where they can be most effective as coaches is frequently going to be beyond their home organization. Again, you need to identify the people who are trusted by the people who are doing the work in order for them to be and trusted by their peers.
These are the individuals who they're not going to be, if you will, the fast rising stars, the people who are going to climb that ladder and step on bodies in the way. They won't have the trust with the people who are doing the work, nor with their peers that, "OK, they're going to give me a message.
It's really going to be for my benefit." I found, at least, more success with managers who have been in that role for a while, and they care about people and much more than climbing up to the next level. They have that level of trust in even in the side of their home/work organization, because they have that trust and foundation.
They're able to coach and influence even there, but there are far more effective, because you eliminate the issue of the fear that may come along with hiring and firing, raises and promotions, and whatever if they are working outside of the organization.
Jim: A different career path, but it could be really rewarding.
Steve: Yeah, it's very rewarding for them, because they see the lean principles, respecting people, and respecting our customers, and driving by business value, and continuous improving, improving the whole process. Those are tremendously rewarding to helping both your organization, helping our customers, and helping the people inside of it.
For them personally, it's tremendously rewarding. The challenge with project managers or with even process people is the danger there that they have to shift their thinking. This is not just a methodology to put in place. This is not just a transformation plan to be tracked.
They actually have to change the way they think outside of the traditional discipline a project management or a process management they may have come from. They in essence have to learn Lean Agile Thinking from the ground up.
Jim: This is kind of an aside I heard. I was just listening to Pete Carroll, the coach of the Seattle Seahawks, talking about, "It's so much more than just the Xs and Os in football." He spends a lot of time thinking about the psychology of the team, and that's even more important than the method or the techniques. That's similar of what you are talking about here?
Steve: Absolutely, I'm a big Buckeyes fan. With the Ohio state, they do the same thing. We're living in Columbus. We hear about the different guest speakers that the coaches brought in, and it's all about the mentality. The same is true. Lean Agile Thinking is the heart of the transformation that we want to see in these organizations.
We want to see a whole different way of approaching about how we serve our customers and how we do the work internally. That's the reason again, going back to the very beginning. That's why we need coaches.
If it was only about implementing something, just putting in place a scrum, or just putting in place Kanban, just putting in place safe, then the need for coaches will be very limited, but it really is about changing the way we think about the business. The way we think about our customers.
The way we think about delivering to our customers, the way we think about how work flows and collaboration inside of the organization. It's all of those things, and that's where we continually need someone to have that outside perspective.
Jim: Turning to what is like to develop as a coach. What sort of training is needed to get people up to be speed to become good coaches, what have you found?
Steve: In the organizations I've been part of where they've recognized, "We need to set an extra or an internal coaching capability," it most commonly turns to training, so there is definitely your training that's needed. You need training in the particular methodology, but far more than the training is where you need the real life experience.
In the first company where I became a coach and where we set up an internal coaching capability, we had a set of courses. In this case, we needed everyone to go through Lean thinking and through Scrum basics and through how to apply Agile at scale.
We did all of that, but that was not even really, if you will, step zero. At that point then we said, "What we really need, the first step, is to actually be mentored by a coach" either external to the company, which is what we had at first.
All of our coaches had to be mentored by someone outside of the company, an external coach, and say, "OK, learn from them," which meant shadow them, "walk with them as they're coaching and then, have them explain what decisions they're making and why they're making them." Then, we went through a period of pair coaching, that's coach side by side with them, and then an observation period.
For me, it's been far more important to get the mentoring and experience than the training, so we definitely wanted the training, but the training is necessary in order to become a practitioner. In order to become a coach, really we wanted the ability to be mentored.
Some of the skillsets that we typically were looking for, in every area where I've been setting up a coaching capability, is any people who are good listeners, people who can watch and see the whole system dynamics, people who are good teachers. It helps if they're a good trainer in a classroom type of setting but, even more important, that they can do that training in a small group setting, they can teach people and people will listen to them.
That comes from themselves being able to listen, observe, understand the particular context that they're working in, and adapt the solution for that. What we found absolutely essential in every case was to set up a coaching community of practice, too, because there's just no way that...I continue to participate in Net Objectives, in a coaching community of practice or multiple of them so that we can share and pair up with one another.
I will mention, because Net Objectives has a coaching academy, where they are going into medium large size corporations that are trying to set up coaching capabilities, and their coaching academy is based on the same pattern, which is not about what could be taught in a classroom but that's the starting place.
There's skills like facilitation, like listening, like customizing to the specific situation like how do you work with business people, how do you help, be able to communicate with, help them understand what the Lean principles are, working with managers.
There's those individual training skills, but it's much more about the ongoing or the academy part of the process, which is the pairing up with someone who has the experience and a broader set of expertise and pairing up with them, figuring out, understanding why they make the choices that they make. If you go back to a sports analogy, why are you focusing on this muscle group versus that muscle group? Why is that going to help the organization get better?
Jim: To find more information about the academy, you go to www.netobjectives.com and search for Academy or you can write to Steve at steve.thomas@netobjectives.com. Are there certifications in the industry that you're aware of about Agile coaching?
Steve: There are some certifications just like in a certified Scrum master there's a certified Agile coach. I'm not one, so I don't have a pretty good plug about some of the certifications.
For an internal coaching capability, if you're looking to develop a resume for a moving external or if that's going to be valuable inside of your organization, your corporation, then you may pursue those. For myself I have not found it valuable to pursue the certifications, so, Jim, I don't know if you're aware of any...are you aware of other certifications?
Jim: No, I don't know any. I think you're right that it's the experience that really matters and having that on your resume is probably more...
Steve: Yeah, I have found that that's far more important, and in my current engagement, the company is actually asking me to interview all of their potential coach candidates. I will tell you that certifications aren't relevant in that interview process that it's all about...in fact, I've seen at least one candidate and it's, "Wow, lots of certifications," but as I had a conversation, he didn't have nearly the experience that...
The certifications looked like, "Wow, this is really great," but then, once we probed into some of the experience, it's like, "I think he could be a good coach, but he was more of the team level and not what the organization was looking at, someone who could really influence EEO at a program, influence the business leaders of a pretty good division, and work with the product managers and so on.
On paper they may have that, but they don't really have yet the experience of working with business leaders and working with product leaders to understand their issues. That's so much of what the coaching is about, being able to get into that place of empathy so that you can actually understand the situation that the people that you're coaching are in.
If it's at a team level, I need to understand what the world of the developers, the testers, the people who are delivering doing the day to day work, what their life is like. I need to able to understand that and understand the tools and processes, the continuous integration that they're using and be able to...I have to understand that in order to be able to help them to make the changes necessary.
Likewise, at a higher level or a different level, I need to be able to work with the directors and managing directors and the business people who are driving the particular product decisions so that I understand and can help them see how their thinking needs to adjust and shift as they apply Lean Agile principles.
How they recognize what business value looks like, how do they communicate that to their peers and to their stakeholders, and so they can articulate and drive, recognize what's real business value and what is likely to be business waste.
Jim: Book learning gives you just so much but there's a gravitas that comes with experience and gives you that felt empathy and credibility. With whoever you're coaching, that makes them want to trust you.
Steve: Absolutely, and that's part of one of the skillsets that coaches, internal coaches and external coaches, are going to look to say, "How do I develop my ability to listen, how do I develop my ability to empathize? In some cases, I don't yet have the ability to engage with the product side, the business side stakeholders yet, so I need to spend some time with them so that I really understand what their issues are in order to be able to coach them."
That's where the internal coaching capability again is going to look at what are the needs of the whole organization, how many we need technical coaches that are going to help us change our technical agility practices or implementing continuous integration, implementing DevOps practices, implementing ATDD.
We need those, but we also need EEO team coaches that are going to help us really form cross functional highly collaborative teams. We need EEO management coaches or portfolio or program coaches that are really oriented around how are going to truly drive by business value, so you need all of those.
One of the keys of setting up the internal coaching capability is recognizing what is the mix of coaching that the organization needs, what is the transformation journey, where's the needs that the organization needs to learn and change.
The coaching community, in essence, internally would need to coach itself on those or bring in others, external coaches who will mentor them in, "All right, we really need to get much better at working with our business partners. We really need to get much better at ATDD, we really need to get much better at DevOps."
The organization then recognizes, "We need that, we don't have it currently, and again, we want to bring in an external coach who's gonna provide us jump start you, the fresh perspective, that expertise and experience, but then, we're also deliberately learning from those external coaches so that we can quickly internalize it into...we can a, save costs, but more importantly, we can internalize it to the specific needs of our business, so that our business is successful."
Jim: Is it important to move people around in their coaching assignments to help broaden out their skills? If I'm charged with developing an internal coaching capability, do I need to be paying attention to what people are doing?
Steve: Absolutely. The different coaches have different passions of what they're interested in, and you'd want to move them around for that purpose. I also would definitely...
We had similar organizations, and they had two different sibling organizations development and the both had coaches that were highly in demand in their different respective areas. We made a deliberate choice to swap them, because the coaches were going to learn more from what the other organization had already implemented.
They would bring a fresh perspective to that other organization, just like we talked about in the beginning, that external viewpoint, a fresh set of eyes, and a fresh set of experiences. What was wonderful about that is, at the same time, the coaches were able to learn from their other organization that they were part of.
That's the same reason why a core part of an internal coaching capability is to set up that community or practice so that you're learning from each other, and I think you're spot on. We want to have coaches swap assignments or rotate and say, "This where I'm gonna learn some more and where I'm gonna provide fresh perspective and where, as an organization, we're going to continue to transform better and faster. We're gonna learn more by having that cross polinization."
Jim: You haven't got, not really part of the team in this sense. Your...
Steve: Exactly.
Jim: ...is being able to bridge a lot of different experiences and teams.
Steve: Exactly, right. That's it, that's a key point. Just like for an external coach or an internal coach, by the time they've been part of the system for a year, they have become part of the system, they have become an internal to that organization.
It really helps for them to rotate and to say, "OK, they've quite likely reached a point of diminishing return in that particular organization and it's valuable just to shift for that reason, to bring in, again, a fresh set of eyes to help the organization learn," or this organization itself may have reached a level of maturity and that's our goal that the organization has reached a level of maturity that what it did in fact is providing coaching capability to some of the organization's peers, so it's spread virally within the organization.
Jim: Let me move to a question I got. This is about tips on doing some coaching, so here's the scenario.
It says, "We have multiple development teams, some of which have been very successful in their transformation, and have there also some dependent teams that either don't have leadership support or that teams are kind of refusing to embrace new ideas." That's got to be a pretty common scenario for coaches. How would you handle something like that?
Steve: It's a very common pattern, where we see some that have really embraced it and have made the changes, and other teams or pieces of the organization who are really resisting or they're not being successful.
Potentially, they're resisting some of the change, I misspoke there, but more that they...it hasn't been EEO embraced by that team and it hasn't seemingly to be effective for them, even though they may in some cases be going through, "Yeah, we're doing what you're telling us to do but we're not seeing the benefits of the impacts."
That's a case where, as a coach, we really want to understand the system dynamics of what are the influences that are affecting the organization. One of the things that I find effective in that case also is to identify who are the thought leaders in the teams that are struggling, understand, and then really pair up with them.
Say, "OK, these new practices, this new approach doesn't seem to be working for you. Tell me why not. Tell me what are the challenges that you're facing or what does your world look like." And, again, get into a place of empathy so that we can really understand them.
Another pattern, too, that I may use in cases like that is to see is it possible to have some of the teams trade places, some of the individuals in the teams trade places and say, "OK, I want you to just for a time to go be part of this team."
The way that organizations are set up and the developers are specialized, most commonly that's not really an option, but where it is, it gives an opportunity for the people who swap places to become a change agent themselves.
Certainly, if I'm a part of an organization or team that's really struggling to implement these practices and they don't seem to work, and if I go spend time as part of a team that's really embraced it and that's really working well for has spent not just enough time to see it on the surface but actually live inside that team, then I come back to my home team and I can really, "Oh, now I understand. Here's some of the shift in thinking and how we need to apply it."
If we can do that, that's fabulous, but frequently we don't really have that option. Then it becomes the role of the coach to get to that place of empathy, so understanding both when it works and how and why it works there, and then understand the dynamics of why it's not working in this particular situation, why it doesn't seem to be getting the team results, the business results that they would want.
Then be able to coach, mentor those particular people to...what are the practices that are necessary. Frequently it is a system's thing. There's forces whether it's management, managers who are influencing the system, or how the backlog is coming to that team or something else that's impacting them.
Then that becomes the point of focus to say, "Let's change this system around this team that's really holding them back." That's getting to that, in a place of empathy, but also following the OODA Loop, Observe and Orient, Decide and then Act, so recognize where is the other forces that are impacting this particular system of this team or the set of teams that...
They're going through, they're following the Scrum practices or they're following some set of Agile practices but they're just not getting the benefit. They're not getting the transformation that we would look for, and then that's where I look for the other things that are part of the system that are impacting that.
Jim: Let me ask you something about metrics and success. How can you tell how good a coach really is external or internal and do you have different metrics for an internal coach or an external coach?
Steve: You really actually want to have very similar metrics. There's going to be some measurements absolutely is something that when you establish an internal coaching capability you want to have the ability to measure. It's such a difficult and complicated area because of it depends as much on the organization, the team that you're trying to coach as it depends on the coach themselves.
You definitely want to be looking at their leading indicators and trailing indicators. The trailing indicators are clearly around, is the team very much measures the organization is likely capturing anywhere. The overall team satisfaction, how happy are the individuals in the organization?
How productive is the organization in delivering business value and are they able to measure the business value that they are...Those are trailing indicators. Those are going to be a long time in shifting and adjusting. Some of the leading indicators are going to be around some of the maturity practices. There's different measures of looking at a team level.
I've been involved over the years in many ways of doing assessments of or measurements of agile and lean practices. The organization should develop some or adopt some set of gauge of, or assessment, or how are we tracking relative to agile maturity?
How are we getting as far as prioritizing by business value? How are we doing as far as being able to communicate or develop incrementally and deliver in small slices?
Some of the technical practices are going to be easier to measure. Things like how frequently does the organization deploy to production like servers, how often does it deliver into production, how was the cycle time for getting a change into production, the number of defects that the organization is producing?
All of those are good measures from technical practices. From the business side of coaching, you're going to be looking at how well is your organization doing as far as prioritizing business value. How do they know if they're doing well or not doing well?
Those are things that you'd be want to looking, the organization would want to measure of itself anyway. The coaching measures are is the organization in fact improving in doing those different practices?
Jim: One last question. How did you get started as a coach?
Steve: Actually, I was an internal coach in many areas including, as you mentioned in my biography, in working in CMMI. I was a process person, but was around internal inside of Bell Labs working as a coach and change agent for a number of different areas.
Lean and Agile became one of the things we adopted, but what became a passion for me was that this was going to change both how we delivered our products to enable us to be continue to actually survive. Not just be successful, but even survive in the market place.
We were on a death march. We had lots of people who were just exhausted from years and years of changes and of the pressure to deliver. We saw this as a way of helping us by focusing on business value and to really...
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Steve: ...have a much better quality of life. The ability to affect the organization, the ability to affect people's lives and make those better is what the passion for me.
Jim: That's beautiful, Steve. Thank you for sharing that. I hope you'll come back again because we have a lot more questions we'd like to cover on internal coaching. Thank you.
That' wraps up the show for this time. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being involved. We welcome your feedback on what you heard and your suggestions for future topics. You can send a note to Al Shalloway at alshall@netobjectives.com or to me, Jim Trott at jim.trott@netojbectives.com. We'll talk again.

Transcription by CastingWords

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