Truthsayers® Neurocast™
Truthsayers® Neurocast™
Why is embedding change so tough and what to do about it?
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In this episode of The Neurocast™️, Truthsayers®️ CEO, Simon Stapleton, talks to Mark Matheson, Agile Ways of Working Coach, about the challenges that leaders face when embedding change within an organisation.
Mark Matheson has been working in change and transformation for 35 years. With certifications in SAFe and Scrum, and experience in Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Mark understands the challenges that teams and enterprises face when looking to adopt Agile and then to embed it into the fabric of an organisation.
Mark Matheson has been in technology, leading global IT projects for many years, starting as a Trainee Programmer straight out of school (which was little more than getting the tea and coffee for the teams at first 😉), and eventually working his way to Software Engineer, Technical Lead, Project Manager, Scrum Master and Agile Coach. Despite the occasional foray into other sectors such as Telecoms, almost all of Mark's experience has been in Finance: 18 years Sell-Side (Investment Banking) and 17 years Buy-Side (Asset & Wealth Management).
Within the conversation, Mark talks about Agile Management:
- Agile is an iterative approach to project management
- Agile is about breaking large projects into smaller tasks that can be repeated, checked and refined
- Agile helps teams to be flexible and deliver value to their customers faster and fewer headaches
Mark also talks about a Taylorist approach. Named after Frederick W. Taylor, who in 1911 published 'The Principles of Scientific Management' and advocated developing a science for each element fo the work. He suggested an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility with cooperation between the managers and the workers.
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Intro 00:00:00
Welcome to Truthsayers Neurocast - the podcast that brings together leading voices from business science and technology to share reflections and stories on the value of open honest communication.
In this episode, we ask, why is embedding change so tough? And what can we do about it?
Simon 00:24:00
I'm Simon Stapleton. I'm Chief Exec of Truthsayers and I'm here with Mark Matheson who is an Agile Ways of Working Coach, so Hi Mark, do you want to introduce yourself.
Mark 00:34:00
Yeah, I'm, hi there, Simon. Thanks so much for this opportunity. I've been in technology for 40 years started off as a software developer, then became a technical lead, etc. But I would say in terms of change and transformation, I've been changing transformation probably for just under that for about 35 years or so. Finance has been my predominant sector and investment banking and asset and Wealth Management has been the best part of that with the occasional foray outside. And then I soon realized that actually finance wasn't so bad after all, so I always came back to finance.
Simon 01:08:00
Now, I've known you for a little while now and I consider you as a friend and a colleague, and we've done a couple of small projects together. And you know, I think we both organisations got a lot out of that because we learned a few new things, but I just wanted to ask you in terms of change and particularly leading change as you know, you've been full spectrum from grassroots right up to you know, senior change leadership. Why is embedding change so difficult for leaders?
Mark 01:41:00
The answers, for me, come twofold one very much within your space as well as Simon. So the first is tangible and the other one is intangible. The tangible reasons for me would be things such as the structures that are in place in an organisation. An organisation, you may as well say, is an entity in its own right; is a living breathing organism almost in its own right, which means that it has its own value systems; it has its own processes. Changing that is just very, very difficult. We all know that habits are obviously hard to change. So that's the first thing I would say the actual tangible structures that are there. There's good reason for leaders to think well, do I need to go to this new what they think is a new fandangled thing called Agile when we've got these other things that are in place that seems to be working? The second reason is - and this actually comes from a couple of organisations who I've worked with over the years - shareholder value. There's a real tangible reason there again as to why, "well do we really need to change? Is that going to cause damage or inflict some pain on our shareholder value?" And that doesn't always have to be seen in this capitalist sense that you know, that people that has to be construed in a negative way because shareholder value could involve you and me indirectly: we are savers; we may have pensions; we may be investing through the very organisations that I've helped in change and transformation over the years. It's very easy to think these organisations have nefarious objectives, but actually, they could be serving you and me so they are oftentimes - not always, but oftentimes - they are serving just the ordinary person just like you and me and shareholder value has to come into play with the leader's thought process. Another one is control. Do they want to relinquish control? Having strived for 20 however many years to become a leader, having done their time, so to speak, agile promotes servant leadership, a servant being there first. Are they there to serve, or are there to be served? So that's a definite challenge for someone who is a leader. There are lots of tangible but also intangible reasons as to why change is or can be a challenge to embed in an organisation.
Simon 03:52:00
I guess the whole ESG or the rise of ESG has really shone a spotlight on to what you've just said there. It's not just about the capitalist behavior. It's not even just serving the people inside the organisation. It's the whole the social side, very much the social side. Embedding change, so it serves those purposes, which are often you know, beyond the day to day work, is absolutely you know, a key challenge for leaders. So Mark, having been involved with change - we've both been involved with change - right, as I said earlier, from grassroots working within teams, managing discrete projects, and then managing programs you know, that that whole hierarchy there. Just interested to know your view on how understanding our own attitudes, beliefs, you know, sentiment, and probably personal challenges. Why is that important? As a leader particularly?
Mark 04:47:00
This is gonna sound really cheesy, but this really is a great question for someone who loves Agile.
Mark 04:56:00
When I look at what Agile is trying to do for both individually and organisation, because Agile is a fractal methodology really right from micro through to macro that almost doesn't matter what you're trying to measure using agile, the scale ...it is agnostic to the scale that we wish to actually see something and we wish to measure something. So when I look at Agile with the core values - 5 Core Values - so, as I remember them CFORC - so Courage, Focus, Openness, Respect and Commitment; the 3 Pillars of Agile: Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation, and then the 5 Events of Agile but two in particular, the Review and the Retrospective (I know that these are more scrum flavour Agile) but essentially Agile, or variants of it, do these things to some degree or another. And when I take all those into account, Simon, those all give an individual, a team and then an organisation an opportunity to examine its own attitudes, its own shortcomings, its own strengths. And so when you take into account the transparency, inspection and adaptation, in particular, if somebody then has the courage to use those values, and they're doing them on a regular basis - sorry, I've tapped into all three of those areas there - using the retrospective and the review, in a tangible sense, (because that's what organisations are really there for first and foremost, they are there to deliver tangible value to its customers and to shareholders and to employees) the tangible things that you say, "well, tangibly, have we delivered something, have we delivered what the customer wants?" So if they if the answer to that is "well, we don't really know", could it be because we haven't put in place some very simple mechanisms that enable us to be transparent to ourselves? Don't worry about to the outside world - but to ourselves? If we say "we have", great, we've got some mechanisms there to be transparent, then the next one is, "okay, have we had the courage to inspect, using those transparent means and mechanisms?" Again, the answer is almost the binary one again, yes or no? If we have, that we've had the courage, firstly, to be transparent then to do the inspection. Said, "okay, great, we've done both of those two things." The third one is the difficult one, the adaptation. You and I know, that change is hard, - especially, as we'll probably come on to when we get into the subconscious elements of it - that bit is very hard to change. How do we adapt something when for whatever reason, it doesn't feel right to do? And sometimes we can't explain it with a tangible cognitive reason: "Okay, this is the reason why it's very conscious, very logical" - Sometimes it just doesn't feel right. But maybe that will unfold over time as to the tangible practical reasons, the pragmatic reasons why we cannot do something but Agile, just to summarize all of that, those three areas: the values, the pillars, and the events, they give us a real opportunity to examine - as I said, individually, and team wide and then organisation wide - to examine our own attitudes, our own values and therefore hopefully to deliver something that is tangible to a customer and to an employee as well as something intangible where you do get that warm, fuzzy feeling that it feels good because you have delivered something tangible and you've received something intangible. Does that make sense?
Simon 08:21:00
Totally. Yeah. And I think back to the project we did last year in the summer of last year, where we took a couple of teams and we assessed them using the Neurotech assessment and really to measure their knowledge - not just what they would choose to say how they think - but also their subconscious how they really feel about something and we saw some interesting stark differences and what I found equally fascinating with some of the the conversations and narratives to come out of that because if we, if we were to assess somebody and they think they're really good at something, but actually subconsciously, they're not so good at it, you know, you could conclude off that that actually, you know, that they're not not telling us the truth. But actually, as we know, that's not the truth - just because somebody finds that their natural sort of sentimental position is very different than that how they reasoned it. It doesn't mean they can't do it. It's just that they have to wake up in the morning and work bloody hard at achieving that.
Mark 09:25:00
Yes, yes.
Simon 09:27:00
And also, I think it's really important to change because, you know, I'm sure you would agree that change doesn't fail because the mechanisms of change are wrong. Change fails, because what needs to get done doesn't get done, on time, to budget, you know, to the right level of quality. And often as we know, things don't get done because they're really difficult.
Mark 09:52:00
Agreed
Simon 09:53:00
When you know, if I'm really good at one thing, but bad at something else naturally, then I'm going to choose the things that are easy for me to do.
Mark 10:00:00
Yes-
Simon 10:01:00
If I'm under pressure, time is running out, I'm gonna do the things- I'm going to cherry pick the things that are easy for me from an attitudinal, from a, you know, a brain power perspective.
Mark 10:11:00
Yes
Simon 10:12:00
I'm gonna leave the things that I struggle with innately.
Mark 10:15:00
Yeah
Simon 10:16:00
And actually, as we discovered, there are things that people do struggle with innately - that's true for everybody. You know, you show me a person that doesn't struggle with something. When we understand ourselves and our innate challenges, we can then put something around it to support us in it in our manager or leader can understand their team and then how they're struggling and put the rights of support or, you know, bolster resources or whatever.
Mark 10:56:00
Definitely.
Simon 10:47:00
I mean, I really enjoyed having those conversations you, because in terms of our Neurotech, switch, and we learned a slightly different framing of the conclusions -
Mark 10:58:00
yes.
Simon 11:00:00
Because it's a new domain for us. In terms of learning from that exercise that we went through last year. What were your big takeaways from it?
Mark 11:11:00
Two that really stand out to me. Firstly, we know that with Agile stand ups are absolutely essential. They're part of those five events that enable transparency, inspection and adaptation on a regular basis.
Simon 11:22:00
Yeah.
Mark 11:24:00
And one of the things that I found really fascinating Simon with a piece of work we did last year was lots of the team members were saying that they found the daily standup consciously -explicitly - they found that really valuable, they found them useful, they served the purpose that the daily standup is meant to serve or as it's called in disciplined Agile, the Daily Coordination Meeting, which is what it's really meant to do. It's meant to coordinate us toward that iteration of goal that's been set by the product owner. And the team felt as though they were they they were getting the most value from that daily standup - that daily coordination meeting. However, what was fascinating with the Neurotech platform, it revealed a complete, diametrically opposed, innate response to what the daily stand ups were doing. They didn't feel as though the daily stand ups really served their purpose. They didn't feel that they were worthwhile, and they were worth attending. That for me was a really great example of something that is so inherently - is so strongly - a part of an Agile process, Agile approach and Agile methodology, something that's fundamental to it, that people who were engaging in it didn't feel as though it was delivering the value that it should do, despite the fact that consciously "Yeah, I turn up every day. It's half past nine, we were only there for 15 minutes. So it's a good use of my time." But actually, did you feel that way? That for me was a real enlightening moment. I've heard many times over the years lots of people say "oh, I don't see why I've got to do it every day." Okay. I kind of get that. But when they get to the end of a sprint, they see the benefits of it and they say "oh, okay, yes, that worked for me then." But actually the process or the journey through that one week or two week or four week sprint - as the case maybe - they didn't feel as though it was worth it. They almost had to get right until the very end, and then there was this eureka moment - this Eureka feeling - of "okay, yeah, this was worth it." But that was something that I wanted to change, that I wanted to see - what could we do that could get them to feel a bit better? and, Simon, it was the most innocuous of things. So when we got to a retros pective, I then put that to the team. They saw for themselves what was measured by the Neurotech versus what they had explicitly answered, both individually and as a team individually, they got their own reports. Collectively, we looked at the team as a whole and it was pretty consistent. So when I asked the team well, what would you like to do differently? It really came back down to the wooly feelings, to be honest with you, Simon, they said, "well, it feels like when we have the stand ups, it feels like there's no kind of banter there. It just feels so formal. It feels so as though we're there just to have a meeting and you know, just to talk about the stuff to deliver." And when the team then talked it around in terms of the retrospective, they then decided for themselves to say, "well, maybe we just spend the first two three minutes just having a bit of a laugh and a joke." And when we then re measure them, it was completely different - something as simple as that. But organisations, with the best intent I know, that they put on like social events and all that kind of stuff, but those are one time events, and they're big, maybe every quarter every half a year or maybe even just every year, but people are going on their journey on a day to day basis. Those are the small stitches that bind them together. So what can they do on a small scale basis that enables them to feel good through that journey that came through loud and clear for me?
Simon 15:02:00
I mean, what was really pleasing for me on the other side of that was knowing that the platform itself had revealed something that you were probably never going to find out, and- -it's unlocked something - actually a real simple solution. I mean, I'd be lying if I said, you know, in the programs I've run before, I haven't dreaded the stand up meetings, even though I've got to put on a brave face and smile and look as though I'm in complete control, I've absolutely dreaded it, because it's been such difficult situations. And if I was to have been honest with the people who I was serving at the time, I'd have probably made some changes as well that would have just eased the tension, which would have made it a more congenial environment to work in. Probably because I'm speaking with hindsight, I didn't know at the time that that's how I was really feeling so actually, I think, crikey, I wish I'd have had what we can now deliver, at that time, running that program. So it's really pleasing for me, who provides this platform as a service to people like yourself to hear things like that.
Mark 16:04:00
And there was one other stark, great thing that came out from the platform and the use of it. There was a particular team member she's very quiet, really quiet, lovely lady, really quiet. But when it came to the retrospectives would never really put - she wasn't the kind of character - she wasn't your type A personality. Consistent with her work, always delivered, superb work, but when it comes to retrospectives and things like that, you always want to have the most diverse views and thoughts that come through so that, you know, we actually take into account -everyone in the team - so that kind of person wouldn't naturally step forward. The Neurotech brought this lady out like nothing else. It was absolutely night and day. It was fantastic to see that somebody who was naturally quite reserved as a character -within a team setting at least anyway - was able to elicit- in fact of all the people in the team, those who you would naturally have thought would be quite strident and give their views and their thoughts as to this new fandangled way of measuring how we feel about our work environment or how we feel about our team and delivering, you'd have thought that they would have stepped forward. and one or two of them did which is great, but I genuinely did not expect and did not anticipate that it would be that good for somebody who- she not only became vocal but very open. It produced a sense of openness, one of the core values of Agile - as you said courage, focus, openness - and because it did that for her, other members of the team, who are equally quiet, they came out of their shell too. So there is a lot to be said for really getting under the skin - I suppose in a metaphorical sense, as well as it even in a literal sense - really getting under the skin of both teams and individuals using something that doesn't allow them to use their intell - and especially in tech, you know, very intelligent people - to use that intelligence: "Oh, actually, no, no, no, I'm not like this. I'm like that actually." Actually something that just says you have no control over your response necessarily - I'm not saying no control, very limited control - to rule out an option that you might not wish to present. But actually it's giving you- it gave her an opportunity to challenge herself back to the question before she challenged her own attitudes as to: Is that really me? That was absolutely- that was a really, really- both a shining example of what getting under the skin can do with something like this platform, as well as enabling both an individual to operate in a much more expanded way within a team. It was fantastic.
Simon 18:36:00
What Neurotech does is measure the nonconscious innate attitudinal response to whatever, and also you've then got an opportunity to answer those questions how you choose to and it's the difference which is often the greatest, you know. People will often want to position themselves, present themselves in a slightly different way than what they really think for all sorts of reasons, not necessarily bad reasons. Because we all do it. You know, every single one of us does it to a certain extent. And the project we worked on together, enabled you to look through both of those lenses. And see, not just where people are different, but also where they align - their thoughts and feelings align.
Mark 19:24:00
Yes, yes, definitely, definitely
Simon 19:25:00
Just to sort of think of the future - because that was so successful, and you know, we believe that this this is a very useful tool for leaders, particularly those in change, you know, we are now taking this and productizing what we've done together to take it to the market, you know, because we believe that actually this short, sharp piece of work, done, pre-change post-change, you know, regularly will give leaders that lens to look through - two lenses to look through - to really see how people are feeling, adapting, maturing, being more authentic about themselves. Just wondered, what do you see is the future for that tool Mark?
Mark 20:07:00
I see it as a very bright future, to be honest with you, Simon, because thinking of the current way that organisations are structured, having inherited a Taylorist* way of thinking (and I'm paraphrasing here): that the management must determine the best way for workers to work. What is quite interesting about that is that although the Taylorist way certainly for the tangible side of organisations has been brought into the picture, what's been missing is that the Taylor's view also focuses on the intangibles because it talks about harmony. It talks about cooperation; it talks about developing the individual. That's the bit about Taylorism that people have just completely cast aside. And if we were to bring all of that back into the picture, you actually end up with something like a Neurotech platform, because because actually having the ability to say to someone, "well, this is what you're comfortable with. So let's measure that explicitly. Let's find out what you really think at this point in time." So they give their heartfelt view - their thoughtful view - as to how they measure against those particular things, but also to have that harmonic, cooperative, development side - the intangible side of the individual - also being measured, I honestly do believe, that the organisations that genuinely latch on to that side of measuring an individual (don't like to use that word, but we know what that means in this context); allowing the individual to measure themselves in tangibly, without conscious bias. That organisation stands a very good chance of getting all of the individual to work, as opposed to just the explicit, conscious part; the part that they know they have to do - they have to go to work, they have to be there - actually the reason why I want to go to work, because I've actually been able to look at myself through this intangible lens as well, this implicit bias lens, "Oh, this is what I feel". Actually I'm struggling with ...I'll make it up... "I'm struggling with attending a sprint review. Because that's where we have to be open and honest and say, well, actually, we didn't deliver what you wanted us to deliver this sprint and we did the same last sprint and I'm feeling really, really nervous about that". Can an organisation put something around an individual that says, "We won't blame you? What we want to do is support you and find a way to make this work for you. How do we do that? We won't treat you as though it's a competence issue. We'll treat it as though there's something that we we don't know explicitly what's going on. You we believe that you want to deliver for us great. How do we make this work?" It's almost as though there's a partnership going on, as opposed to a top down- the part of Taylorism that people wish to take- as opposed to looking at all of that. So, I think that any platform that lets an organisation do both dimensions - tangible, intangible - and then allows that to unfold into a partnership between the leaders and those who they're serving, will end up in a very good space. And I think that leads to the tangible benefits of actually making more money for the organisation, which is what they're there for
Simon 23:19:00
Mark, it's been fascinating talking to you. I've really enjoyed that conversation.
Mark 23:23:00
Likewise
Simon 23:24:00
So thank you very much, Mark.
Mark 23:26:00
No worries. Thank you Simon
Simon 23:27:00
Good luck- / -and I'll see you soon.
Mark 23:38:00
Definitely wish you guys all the best. It will certainly serve organisations superbly to use your platform.
End roll 23:47:00
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