The 3 B’s of Going Global: Beliefs, Behaviors, Benefits

Beliefs and behaviors are the hard part. Behavior can get to beliefs, which is cultural. – Brad White, Partner, Prophet, formerly (r)evolution

This is the last of the series “Something Innovative happened at KO HQ this Thursday”

Operating Globally? First, understand the point of view (aka needs) of consumers and then the shareholders’ point of view. The two are linked, products cannot have market success without both needs met.

It seemed all Summit speakers spoke of their successes by going into the global markets first to learn and only then to sell product. I heard loud and clear that if you spend time living in the consumers’ shoes you begin the journey into ethnography, the process by which product teams learn as consumers articulate what they need, and this drives everything else.  Isn’t this hard, expensive, time consuming? What does this have to do with Agile development process?

Everything. It’s tied closely to MVP.

Beliefs

Beliefs are formed from the past, what one has experienced and they are hard to change. Beliefs are cultural and not homogeneous, tending to be regional. Beliefs drive behavior, are the basis for everyday decisions, but determining the “beliefs behind the behavior” is very difficult.

Behaviors

While it appears second on the list, behaviors are what we study first. Behaviors can get you to underlying beliefs because they are seen and can be evaluated. Start with watching your new target’s behaviors and begin to tease out the belief systems. Be aware that we tend to apply our own deeply held assumptions to why another is behaving. This will not provide good information because behaviors are beliefs in action and beliefs are cultural bound. Be honest about your outcomes, avoid stereotyping.

Benefits

The prize for all this research is understanding the new consumers and their unique needs in order to provide products and services they want and will buy.

>>An iterative process, requiring openness to forgetting all you “knew” to accepting all the “new.” <<

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Agile as the Innovator

Thought bytes

Don’t think research is a phase, it is really ongoing. Prototyping is the way you learn. You learn so much by watching how people learn. It’s OK if the prototype is really rough.

Rapid prototyping your guesses* is an iterative process. You learn just enough to feed into building a better prototype. Then you go out and learn more, build again.

Launching is validating how much more solving is needed. If not solving the problem, re-calibrate.

Service design seems similar to product design – but it is harder to prototype an “experience.”

Product design creates an experience. ID the real issues.

Key is have a clear objective of what you are trying to find out.

Think about the smallest thing you need to do to get the most learning – throughout the entire life-cycle.

Storyboards! Stories describe a type of interaction.

Always design for people.

* My note:  a simple word for hypothesis?

Next up:   Outside in Perspective

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 Experience is the Message

People have experiences about product, products don’t have experiences.  - Marcelo Marer, Chief Creative Director, Intel Media

What sells well in the U.S. many not be a benefit to anyone elsewhere. If you sell globally, it’s critical to design products for the new markets you plan to enter. Doing so requires research and an honest/thorough analysis of the information you have collected.

User Stories and User Personas

In the previous blog, the product teams hypothesized their customers and prospects need to collaborate - on demand, from anywhere – with their partners and other growers, in order to be more productive and to reduce risk.

But the product teams didn’t know for sure if this was true for all of the users. This company sells their farm equipment product globally, including into emerging-markets in China and Africa. The needs of these emerging-markets growers was not well defined.

The product teams needed to create personas for each of the growers in each market, to sort out the unique needs of  the many complex roles and to create robust user stories to build innovative products. They had to visit the growers personally.

Day in the Life of a Grower

Multiple teams were sent to live with growers at their farms for three weeks. The task – watch and record (written and video) what the growers did every day.  The goal – to  determine what was important to each of the visited growers and build stories and product plans.

The teams found that if they asked questions on “what did you find difficult” the answer was very different from what the video showed. And if asked “what did you like” it was often difficult for the grower to articulate this. Best practice hint: when in the field/interviewing,  use multiple data capturing methods.  This helps business teams as they review and analyze the research later. It can clearly indicate what needs clarification or additional study, reducing the risk of getting it wrong.

Outcomes

Teams learned that growers in both emerging and developed economies were familiar with and used mobile technology. They also learned that wireless technologies on a farm and in farm equipment had to withstand harsh conditions. This wasn’t surprising to the team, but the first insights were.

The product teams used what they now know and produced MVP products,  getting better as they learned to create additional value. Having feet on the street, as these teams did, can clarify what is uniquely important to global customers.

This team may not say they are Agile practioners, but they are.

Tee’d up> An Hypothesis is Really a Prototype

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Customer Driven Innovation: A Global Perspective

Changing iron by using the cloud

Growers (Matt rarely called his customers “farmers”) are a uniquely tenacious and optimistic group. They have to be risk takers too, so many out-of-their-control environmental factors impact outcomes.  You might never guess that this group is well set to innovate/change how they farm.

The head of  Product Management explained that today’s growers, in order to feed the many billion of us, must find ways to limit their risk and increase their yield. They’ve already teased out most of their farming costs from fuel (which impacts feed, fertilizer and other necessary items on the farm). More was needed to be done – there are hungry people to feed.

Matt’s teams hypothesized that growers need to be able to collaborate – on demand, from anywhere they were working – with partners, such as the extension agent or the feed vendor. Their equipment too had to become smart, either sensing a part needing replacement, or actually replacing drivers as tractors convoy across fields.

Wireless !  It became apparent that iron was going to bend to the cloud

The company is described as a pure-play agriculture company. They make farm equipment. They work in iron and they are good at that. They had no long-term experience integrating wireless devices within the working environment of their customers. It was first time at bat for the team.

One challenge was finding ways to implement wireless technology in areas of rough work and tougher dirt conditions.  Concerns were raised about availability of wireless access in the emerging world. Could the team create new products for these growers using innovative wireless connectivity?

Next up  - Innovating  by immersion

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Something innovative happened again at KO HQ this Thursday

The PDMA| Georgia chapter held it’s 9th annual Summit - topics were global in scope but personal in focus. Much shared learning and best practices offered. A very good reason to step away from desks/deliverables and come together with like-minded product professionals.

Innovators may already be intuitively using Agile

Top-line takeaways from the Round Table

• Get a handle on things that bite in your planning stage, not during execution (import laws, regulations)
• RESONATE! – don’t just BE in the chosen markets (do provide consistency, quality, awesome user experience)
• Create RELEVANCY- use everything around your product to do this
• LISTEN, partner with a local  -  help your prospects ARTICULATE their unique drivers
• Walk a mile in their shoes is STEP ONE – learn your biases and “things you don’t know you don’t know”
• When you KNOW your customer, only then modify your product
• Think INCREMENTALLY - message first before modifying product is a successful strategy
• ADAPT - iterate as you learn more
• MEASURE your successes and failures – learn from each lesson

Tying these back to Agile Marketing practice

• Iteration planning
• User stories
• Collaboration
• Personas
• MVP
• Continuous improvements
• Iteration review

Interesting?

Next up  - How a  company in the iron age remade itself by learning their customers’ unique drivers

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*** Disclaimer: I am an active volunteer with PMI’s Agile Community of Practice as one of the 5 official leads. Views expressed here (and related future posts) are my own and not an endorsement by Project Management Institute ® (PMI) or Agile Community of Practice (CoP) leadership team.***

If you know me, I have been pretty active (as a volunteer, lead and contributor) in PMI + Agile space. I volunteer as:

• PMBOK® Guide 5th edition – contributor (engagement just wrapped up)
• PMI Atlanta Agile Interest group – Program Manager for Agile Interest Group
• PMI Agile CoP – Knowledge Management lead

These opportunities have allowed me to connect with lots of people – amazingly talented, some famous agilists, practitioners and gurus. There’s a common thing we all share – desire to learn coupled with the passion to share!

I have learnt a lot, have actually got hands on experience (tools, technology, principles, practices etc.),  mentored a lot of people and I am still enjoying the journey!

What do we share? Knowledge. Of course about Agile, primarily.

I have seen a lot of questions that follow an agile presentation or discussion, ranging from:

• What is Agile?
• Where do I start? (There are so many places to start with)
• What is different at Agile CoP? (from other valuable sites, groups and resources)
• What does a Project Manager do in Agile projects?
• What is PMI’s – Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP®)  certification? Is it for me?
• Whom do we trust as good training companies?
• What are good books, blogs, sites to start/continue building my knowledge about agile?

and many such questions.

There are 2 ways to go about it:  (1) Invest your time – Do personal research, find what’s best for you – decide and go.     (2) Interact with world-wide professionals with experience in agile in conjunction with project management knowledge. Utilize the Knowledge base and assets they are building (of course, by reusing some of the industry famous resources – and providing proper credit to them).

This volunteer driven space of agile experts, passionate practitioners, eager enthusiasts and dedicated newbies is: PMI’s Agile Community of Practice. (agile.vc.pmi.org)

Note:  PMI does require an individual to be a paid member and then you can subscribe to this community.

Some of the benefits in my opinion:

• Agile project management experts from across the globe are active in this community
• Access to experienced practitioners, consultants and trainers in one place
• Features like: Ask the community, Discussion forums, Newsletters, Blogs, Experience reports, Social media and Webinars (Live plus recordings) with agile experts
• Access to ACP guide that helps members prepare for PMI-ACP
• As a volunteer, working with various level of agile practitioners, coaches and experts on a frequent basis
• and by the way, while doing all this, earn your PDUs!

Are you a project management professional, who:

- Is currently a member, subscriber of the 17,000 + strong community?

- Is using or planning to use agile methods in your project(s)?

- has a story to share with the world about your success or learning?

- has a question that the community can help answer for you?

Join, connnect, contribute and earn PDU’s while learning from the best who are trying to help bridge the gap between traditional project management and agile practices today with their everyday work. What more would you like to see being discussed here that brings value to the profession of project management and agile practitioners?

I plan to continue sharing my experiences with the amazing audience of AgileScout and learn from your experiences too! As it is, life is too short to make the same mistakes again and again and again..!

It’s good to get back. It sure feels good.

Sameer

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The 8 C’s of Agile Coaching

1. don’t compare (with others)
2. don’t compromise (Agile foundational truth)
3. don’t be critical (of anything or anyone)
4. don’t centralize (on self)
5. don’t be careless (give your best)
6. don’t over-commit (know your limits)
7. don’t conform (be yourself)
8. don’t be cynical (pessimism is a no-win deal)

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Me, doodling…

Part of coaching often includes putting the coach in a ‘trainer position’ in that we hold workshops or scheduled learning opportunities for clients.

The essence of training is not that we necessarily teach, but rather communicate effectively. This includes more than just ‘telling’ people, but rather engaging, involving, and working with the students to learn.

On Organizational Communication:

• Sender – puts a message into words through encoding
• Receiver – decodes the messages and attempts to understand it.
• Feedback – helps us determine whether communication is actually taking place

Three aspects in the communication process: Communication is …

1. Mutual – communication always involves more than one person
2. Present – communication is always going on existentially (the real here and now)
3. Simultaneous – communication is always going on both tracks at the same time. It is not like tennis where one ball is bounced back and forth. It is more like tennis being played with two balls. There is more than one idea or opinion involved.

 5 Tips for Communicating your Agile Workshop Effectively

1. The issue is not so much “what to teach, but to whom you teach” – Understand your audience. Each member is different. It’s a little easier when you’re at a client, but public courses are harder as the mix of individuals come from all over the place. How do we do this? – First, understand their experience by doing a survey (have them line up and tell you their experience with the topic). Use this to understand what level you’ll need to speak at, at which times, and to whom.
2. The trainer-trainee’s relationship with each other is paramount in the beginning – Grow their respect for you by speaking (in my opinion) less about yourself and how awesome you are because you’re standing in front of them. Bring the class into the workshop world. Involve them from the get-go. Lectures = fail.
3. Students will know (or sense) that their trainer knows his stuff or not. - People aren’t stupid. Know your material. Don’t read from slides. Have great moments of sharing an experience that relates to the materials. People won’t listen and (potentially) change… until they know you’ve been there before and experienced it yourself. 
4. Trainer’s need to strive to avoid the applause syndrome (self-worth determined by workshop success) – Do your best. That’s all we can ask. There will always be room for improvement, but that will come in time. I say this because I, personally, have struggled with this in the past. I want PERFECTION from MYSELF!… but I don’t demand it of others… why do I demand it on myself?
5. Workshops and training sessions are really developed by experience and enthusiasm – Seems obvious, but there have been several occasions recently where I’ve witnessed trainers who speak about something they don’t know intimately about… also, I’ve seen people train who don’t love it. If you don’t love the classroom/workshop. Get out. Seriously. Many who attend your workshops have been through college and terribly boring lectures. They don’t need more death-by-powerpoint.

I’m sure you can think of plenty more, but above are my top 5 for now! Hope that helps. We’ll talk more about workshops and communication in the next week!

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Why is it that human relations problems are more difficult… the larger an organization gets? Is it simply a function of not being able to ‘touch’ everyone? Or is it deeper?

I believe as businesses grow, the ability for people to define what the business-culture is, becomes an exponential exercise. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons relationship building is tough at large clients (or any client) for that matter:

5 Roadblocks to Positive Human Relationships

1. The Words We Use

“I didn’t mean that” or “that came out wrong” are things hate to say in the ‘real world.’ The last thing we want is for that to happen in business-relationships. Since (most) people try to be as tactful as they can in the workplace, we, as coaches, need to be super aware of the words we use, how we use them, and the conciseness of their usage. We’re not consultants who say:

“That depends…” – Average Consultant Lingo

We are here to give effective advice and guidance based on our background and experience. Your clients expect it. Fulfill it.  

2. Ineffective non-verbal communication

Body language. Folded arms, sighs, rolling eyes, looking beyond people… all of these things will and can hang you at a client. How you appear can have profound affects on how people will engage with you. Sometimes perception is 99% of reality. That’s just how it is. Act and look first-class and people will treat you first-class.

I find it quite fascinating that as some coaches become rockstars, they can lose the professional attire, demeanor, and attitude. It’s not ok to show up in a t-shirt and ripped-trendy-hipster-skinny jeans. If you work for a apple app mobile startup company, yea dude, do it.

3. Hiding mechanisms

Leaders need to be open and not so closed-mouthed. The words “non-inclusive” come to mind. Some people have to have info pried out of them because they keep everything to themselves. As a coach, you have to be able to facilitate, elicit, and garner information from people.

This is how you figure out how to help your client! I’ve met some “agile coaches” who are terrible facilitators and communicators. How does this happen? When I think of being an agile coach, I think of a master facilitator, someone with way-above-the-norm ability to communicate. Think you’re a great communicator who can effect change in organizations?

Ask yourself the question: “In my past, have team members, managers, directors, VPs, and c-level executives all been able to communicate with me effectively? Have I even been able to talk to a c-level executive?” – Change needs to happen at all levels. You might be a great TEAM COACH. Great. Start there. If you want to effect enterprise culture, you’ll have to be able to speak comfortably with the c-level suite.

4. Improper Conceptions of Motivation

When we misunderstand what causes people to do what they do… then we employ the wrong methods to get them to do things and we end up manipulating rather than motivating people.

Bottom line – You have to understand how people operate. You have to get your sherlock holmes on and do some investigation. It takes time… but you can accelerate your ability to understand people’s behavior by utilizing team science.

5. Perverted Views of Leadership

Leadership styles and attitudes can and does cause roadblocks to human relations.

“Perverted” in the true meaning of the word. Part of your job is to help leadership be better at leadership. Part of your job is to help leadership understand how to apply themselves as better leaders to their business context. Read a couple books on leadership. Google it. Spend some time thinking about what servant leadership looks like (to you).

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” — Lao Tzu

“A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.” — David R. Gergen

“A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.” — Robert Townsend

“A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” — John C. Maxwell

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Squatting at a free area… for now…

Agile Coaching isn’t an easy sport to play… and when you have an entire group of Agile Coaches working together at a client, it can get even more hairy.

Leading a group of Agile Coaches is like herding cats… cat’s with a lot of expertise, knowledge, and even a bit of ego. A couple of tips when working with multiple coaches.

Multiple Agile Coaches – 5 Tips

1. Ego Aside – Put your ego aside, we’re all here to do one thing: Service the client and help them deliver. At the end of the day, delivery is key. “Servant Leadership” comes to mind here…
2. Coach Alignment on Engagement- Spend some intentional time with the other coaches to align on how to engage with the (common client). Last thing you want are “turf wars” or “religious wars” around how best to estimate, do planning, etc. etc. Make it a pizza and beer night. Get all the coaches together and go through a list of common themes/ceremonies/artifacts and get everyone playing by the same book. I did this with multiple coaches [SEE EXAMPLE BELOW FOR WHAT WE AGREED ON]
3. Coordination of Roles/Duties/Expertise – Some coaches excel at certain areas. Allow them to flourish in that. Not EVERYONE needs to be “scaling agile.” Look, we all need to coach teams at some point, but not everyone needs to be into everything. Split up duties, take on roles that work within your skill set. If a coach is great at ATDD and dev-ops stuff, let them have it! If two coaches want to attack the executive level, figure out what works.
4. Collaborate – Multiple coaches means that it’s hard to pin down where they are and what they’re doing. Use a common communication platform if coaches are in different locations. Use an agile or scrum tool if necessary to collaborate and communicate. Do a daily standup to talk about how we can all help each other. Look, as sick as it sounds, sometimes tool-agnostic coaches have to use tools to work together (me included)!
5. Leverage and learn from each other – When do you get to work with some of the best Agile Coaches in the world under one roof? Answer: Not very often. Bleed each other for knowledge and free consulting. As iron sharpens iron, you’ll only get better at your craft.

Sometimes coaches don’t talk to each other when working either…

Example Alignment for Multiple Coaches on a Client:

 This is a continuation of our series on “Becoming an Agile Coach”

• 7 Tips for Client Engagement
• 6 Tips to Get Mentored by a Coach or to Mentor!

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