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Hello again, to all of you, my friends and my listeners. Welcome to the Pepe Le Journal podcast, the show where you can learn about technical leadership and Excellence from my conversations with great thought, leaders in the tech industry and today is the episode number 106.
If this is your first time listening to technology, you know subscribe and follow the show on your podcast app and on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. And if you'd like to support my journey creating this, Cast subscribe as a patron at technology, not Dev slash Patron. My guest for today's episode is you te x times U Theta is a coach consultant and trainer who has helped many teams and
organizations worldwide. Making an angel transition in this episode, we discussed ideas from her book, company-wide agility with Beyond budgeting open space and social currency, also, widely known as the bossa nova book.
Utah started by sharing today's company challenge in terms of Of collision of values between the shareholders customers and the employees, and she provided the suggestion, how to align the values better, she then broke down, Bossa Nova and explain each concept and principles of Beyond budgeting open space, social currency and agile. Utah also shared the four values of Bossa Nova and how they also relate extrinsically to
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Or all things Cloud you can make real connections with people who share your interests head on over to skills method or calm to become part of the tech community that matters most to you. It's free to join and you will find it easy to keep up with the latest tech Trends. Hello everyone. Welcome to another new episode of the package, in our podcast. Today we have a guest, she's an independent coach very well known in the HR World. Her name is utha Eckstein, He wrote a book that is quite
popular. The title is company-wide agility with the on budgeting open space and social currency or in short. People also know it as Bossa Nova, so we'll cover why it's called Bossa Nova and we'll be talking a lot about the concepts from this book. So you gotta really pleased to have you in the show today. Thank you so much for spending your time. Thank you so much for inviting me Henry. So you thought I always like to ask my guests to share any career highlights or Turning Point.
It's before we start into the conversation, maybe you can share some interesting things from your career as well. Well maybe one of my turning points was started off as a developer. One of the projects I was working on so probably for three months or so the project manager walked up to me and because he's probably in 96 or 97.
So really long time ago the project manager walked up to me and said you too, I don't know what it is, but You're on the team, things have changed for the better and that made me think that maybe there is also something else that I can do next to being a software developer on a team. So this was probably the most important turning point for me to think Beyond software development. Then I started first into design and architecture and then more
into leading teams. So maybe if you can share, what was Is it that your project manager found from your contribution in the team? Is there specific? But he said he doesn't know, he just sees that it has an impact. So it he didn't know. He just said that this is what he's observing. That things have changed for the better, anything that you may be figured out as well, throughout time, what I did then was trying out different things.
So next to keep being a software developer, I started into design and architecture and then into team leading. Then in two teams of teams leading and been into supporting organizations. So it kind of started that whole truly if you will but it was really more. Like he said something that I do have an impact in some way, but nobody knew what is so? I kept exploring.
It's very interesting that you pick this out as really great turning points because sometimes even things that you are not so sure about, but you'd bring good impact and you keep on exploring until you you have this career so far. So thanks for sharing this insightful Journey. So you topic today going to talk about your book company-wide agility with the on budgeting open space, on social Chrissy.
I mean, there are a few techniques inside the title itself, but maybe let's start by why you wrote the book in the first place? What kind of problems that you're trying to solve? So first of all, I could do Road it with Chum back and what I saw was around that book, mainly two things. So the one thing, As teams in organizations were quite successful, using an agile approach. So some other parts in the organization said, oh, can we benefit from this as well?
It what could we do in order to be more actual as the company? The other thing that we also saw was some teams roll out so successful when we dig deeper into what's the key problem then it was, will the organization. So that That ecosystem wasn't actual enough. They couldn't really benefit fully from their actual approach. So if you will, one driver was success and the other one was maybe failure. And then of course, also around
that time. The discussion about business agility started which is another thing that she has many things where you could look at and say well what companies are doing, if they Not actual, maybe, in many cases, it doesn't fit what's really needed. What we see is happening right now is that we have this role, but keeps changing so that it's volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous. So the book of world, we are living in and companies.
Just need to respond to that. For me, a key way to respond, to the book of world is being agile as an organization. I'm not talking about scrum. I'm here, I'm talking about actual more in the literal sense. So being flexible, adaptive responsive Nimble more like that. So I think throughout the last few years as well, we can see as a job has transformed, a lot of
software development teams. I mean the concept of agile methodology started maybe from a software development team from the manifesto and then, as more and more people adopted it, I guess it was also quite popular and hugely successful. We're now the concept of applying it to other parts of I think if I'm not wrong, I've heard things like a gel, HR, a job marketing, maybe a job, budgeting and things like that. So why do you think so many different departments?
Also need to adopt this agile, practices, or mindset. Maybe you can explore little bit on that. Yeah, well, it's exactly for the same book of reasons because they are facing complexity and they need to deal with it. They need to be responsive and adaptive. And so they look at what's working somewhere else. Agile, software development is working at other places and it's, of course also very promising to work in various
non-software places. Meanwhile, a lot of people have tried it and it's dog and figured that it is helping them. Now with the person over, actually, we are more looking across the department. It's also more than business agility. It is really looking at the company level. What can you do as the whole company to Really be that. We actual and that literal sense really in your book. Also, you mentioned one particular thing which I think is quite insightful, right?
Because traditionally companies tend to maximize shareholder values that is like the ultimate goal of company traditionally. But with all these recent changes, maybe with Asia concept as well, customer should become the first point of reference for the company's success. So tell us more about this perspective, where you shift from shareholder value to people too. Customer. And what would you Advocate that a company should look at as a reference point? Actually Beyond budgeting that
said a lot as well. Is that if you look at only the shareholder, they this is probably also what you get your only provide value for the shareholder, which is typically very short term thinking. Whereas if you focus on customer value, you get, Additionally, the shareholder value. Would be also thing. And that's again, kind of what being budgeting also says, if we are focusing on the employees, then the employees and sure that the customer will happy and this
will make the shareholder happy. And so we have this whole chain of providing value for everyone in our ecosystem, actually, it's way more long-term than if we just look at the shareholder. The interesting thing about this is that I think it's about four years ago. So we're the Business Roundtable that's kind of institution in the u.s. got together and it has like the leading CEOs of the American industry.
They made that shift as well. They said, well, in the past, we have only focus on the shareholder belly, but we see that this is appropriate for the Times anymore. And maybe also be have learned that it is Too short-sighted. And we need to really think more about the employees and the customer and the shareholder and actually, as well about the environment we are in. So if I can just repeat, it is a
sequential thing, right? So put focus more on your people, when you have engaged happy employees, it will translate to good customer value. Maybe they produce good products or Goods Services. Once the customer value also increase people are happy and the a shareholder of timidly will also benefit and you brought up that's the last point.
We should also think about the environmental aspect, the sustainability which is quite trendy these days where people are talking a lot about it. So thanks for sharing this as a sequential Focus. That any company should think about volunteerism. It's me the way you just pointed it out. That's absolutely. The way I thought of saying it. That's correct. Thank you for, sorry Rising that no problem. So let's go to your thing, right?
Which is called Bossa Nova. Maybe for people who The puzzle like they are not sure yet. What is Bossa? Nova, it sounds very exotic, right? This? That's true. It may be that as well. You mentioned the title of the book and in that title, there are those different streams that we had looked out for the thing as when we figured that what's needed in the vocab, rule is actually a company. That's actual. So, what we talked already about, we also thought, well, there are already several
streams out there. That look at various aspects of organizations and provide that agility. But think that we all probably know best actual development that. So, in the software world but also, you could say, looking at the process aspect because that's where actual sits more or less by keep learning from really small steps, getting that feedback and then cause correct this way understanding Dealing with complexity. Now, this is not all that's needed in a company.
So, for example, Beyond budgeting looks at the financial area, and if you think about it, if you fix your budget one year, in advance, how actual can you actually be? Because money is already in the various buckets, it's all sorted out, and if you now find out about this really cool, new innovation that you could tackle bologna. You can because it hasn't planned for it in the battered. So we need a way of budgeting which is really more agile.
More Dynamic, more flexible, more responsive to what's happening at the very moment and this is what Beyond budgeting is about. Actually, it is also probably broader but it started that's rights in the name, it started from budgeting but it also says, well, because we all know many
rules the world. It means, All kinds of management is triggered, by the way, how we are budgeting so far, you could also talk about being budgeting is actually also a different kind of management approach that is more flexible and is about to continuously adapt. And it's empowering people as well so that's beyond budgeting. So looking at the financial area in organization, then the second stream that we found that That's really helping an organization to become more agile is open space.
A lot of people I can imagine in the edge of Roland who are listening to this right now might know open space as a facilitation techniques so you can run workshops conferences.
And so on in an open space format, the key to that open space format is actually that everyone is invited to suggest a topic that's really pressing and kneading, To discuss and been whoever is interested in that topic, discusses Ed resolves, make suggestion in it, develops ideas, and so on based on in my tation and this thing that everyone can suggest a topic which is also the love to feed or the loss of Mobility, where you can then contribute to whatever is interesting.
You most, these are principles of which we think Super important for an organization. So we are not thinking so much about the facilitation technique as such, but more, as about the principles open face frames. So if you think about, but we see in organizations with their lord, actual is, you are having chopped descriptions for people where we say, well, there's and
that is what we are needing. And therefore, we look for a person who fits that Trump description, and the way I often look at, Is kind of we put people in a box. And the box is defined by the chalk description, which also means that we are not thinking beyond that box.
Now, if you take open space, as a principle here, you're more looking at. What is the potential of the individuals that we are having in the organization and then you have this continuous invite ation for people to come up with ideas and suggestions. It could be about features
products, anything. And then if you have enough, people who think this ideas create, I want to contribute to it and I want to learn about it. And so on, then this is a girl and that companies who are really set up like this, for example, not sure how well load it is in your area, WL, Gore and Outdoor Equipment, recreating shoes, and jackets, and all of that. And this is how they are set up that really everyone in the company.
And come up with the idea at any time and if there are people who are interested, praying that idea forward then it is ago. So that's the second Stream. So secrecy would be the third stream that we found is helping an organization to become more agile. So sir Percy, looks at how power is really distributed or not. And also what we see attached to
power is how decisions are made. If you think about it, you want to be agile as an organization but you make decisions in a centralized way or if you are having like a strict top-down hierarchy, then you might already figured that this slows you down because everything has to run through the top or through this centralized decision-making body, but you need to be quick like that, you can, if you're using it in a
normal, whatever rate. And so surprised, Is providing structures that helps you to make the hierarchy more flexible and more liquid if you will and also ensures that decision making is decentralized and now putting this all together. So the shortcut of that whole concept is or send over and so we had the be that comes from Beyond budgeting that's feet into the be, then we have open space. That's the heroes of The bossa then we have the next ass.
That's the Subscribe, / C and then the a is actual. And so we played around of course with these characters and then Bossa Nova is actually a bird in Portuguese. That means New Wave new trend. And so this is what we hope that we can provide here with an idea about a new trendy way for organizations to become actual. It actually is also a style of music Bad style of music. It's a merger between cool chests and summer. And so by looking at these different streams, but we've done.
This also melting these together or bringing these together, those different streams. And then the third thing is that was analyzed. Actually also Advanced, we just think about, if you want to be agile with an organization, it really is a little bit like in a dense. So when you are dancing, when you are cooperating collaborating, whatever listening responding to the moves of people on the dance floor, it could be chest to your papa, you're dancing with or everyone who's in on the dance
floor. But you're also doing this to the music that's played. However, it's also vice versa. So the way you are dancing often influence is what kind of music is played next. So it is a continuous kind of a dialogue that's happening and that's also what we Is needed for agile organization, my final work to this, I explained the bossa where this is coming from and then the Nova, of course, because there's this music and dance and so on.
But the Nova is also there because we believe the four streams that we have put together as kind of the call for being agile as company. Most likely, there are small out there and most likely more stuff will be invented. Please take a look at what else is out there. Are that helps you to be actual as a company. So it's not that putting Beyond budgeting Open Spaces are can see and actual together is the end of the whole story. You need to continuously maybe Invent Yourself.
Wow. Thank you for this beautiful explanation, how you come up with this name Person over it has actually different types of meaning. So the first Bosa is a combination of these four techniques Beyond budgeting open space and social currency, and agile, putting it together as Bossa Nova it. Actually means different thing. So it could be a new way for Trend. It could be music, it could be also dance and it could be also like learning new things.
It's not just the four techniques that you mentioned and that's it forever. So thank you for sharing that maybe if we can just go deep into each of the techniques shortly, you mention about Beyond budgeting. I think many people might have heard about this technique as well and we all acknowledge that Financial budgeting system, is kind of like rigid most companies will do yearly. Budgeting I assume. It's still It is in many parts
of the company's. Maybe you can also see it in your Consulting techniques how this method is actually being adopted. Is it something that many corporates have already Incorporated and you mention that Beyond budgeting is not just for finance, right? So maybe you can share a little bit about this. How is the adoption? Like and how other principles actually helping people to be more agile from Beyond
budgeting. Yeah, so again be a budgeting really understands itself more asking Yawn command and control because you command and control also with the budget a lot. This is really deeply connected here and so one way of looking at it, it's really thinking about being toward the management model that is more empowered and adaptive, maybe we start with one key idea is to look at the different purposes
at that budget provides. For example, one reason why you are coming up With the budget in the first place is because you want to look at what are we aiming for? So what's our Target actually that we are aiming for? Then the second thing is that you're trying to make a forecast by asking. Okay, what do we think will happen? So you know what you're aiming for and now you make a kind of an estimate, what you think will happen in the future and therefore, you put an x amount
in that bucket. And then the third thing is, what the fuck. To best. It's a way of allocating resources. The resource here is the money, which goes into all different directions. If you want to really do this in that project, we would need to spend money on a given technology or we need to run whatever rooms. And of course, we need to ensure that we have the people and they are equipped with all kinds of stuff and so on.
So it's all of these three things so Target, forecast, resources, Location know, the one understanding in traditional, budgeting way, is that these three things are put together into one number? The first idea is already understanding that. These are actually three different things and you don't need to put them all together into one thing because if you do, then you're being super inflexible. But you need to be more
adaptive. Once you understood that this is already super helpful but then what you could also do you And think about the targets, not being fixed. So you have a Target that's most often. The best ways to do it. Relative to whatever you have done before or relative to a competitor. It could be also, of course, the demand that's out there may be
an encounter example for that. If you think you are a salesperson and your target is that you sell, let's say, 100 of whatever your product you're selling, and they then at the end of the year, you will find out that you managed to sell the hundred and so you are happy and you get your bonus. However, if you then look and see that, the competitors have actually sold 500 of their competitive products in that time, then maybe the hundred isn't really that good and vice
versa. If you found out that all the competitors had sold, only maybe 20, then the hundred means it's something completely different. Having fixed targets isn't yearly adaptive enough to what's happening in Bible cover. So that was making targets relative. Then we have the forecast, which was about thinking what's happening or what's my assumption about what's happening and because things keep changing the whole time. But you need to do is to have kind of patrolling forecast
which is pretty known. I would think in the actual World which is we keep reading Planning all the time. So with every Sprint it for use from, for example, we look again. Where are we and what's coming? Next Rochester? Highest priority now and therefore, we aim for it and plan for it, and that's actually exactly needed in the way as well for budget. So it's having a rolling forecast then also to rise from that the resource allocation needs to be as well.
Dynamic based on what we came up with our rolling forecast, so again, She fixed that a year that groans. Oh my God, then you might have people sitting around and doing stupid Southall. They are way too busy because you are lots having enough people there. For example, all you didn't spend enough money on the right technology or you have a lot of money left over, which is also happening at times. And then, what do people do?
Well, they keep spending it. Anyway, this is also that helpful for the company, so if you keep being more flexible, Belen, adaptive to the current need. This really means that the company can be more successful, also financially, although I ought to know it sounds a bit scary. It sounds more secure to fix it, but it in advance, but actually, it's not, it's just a perceived security, but it's not really there. So, how about the adoption? Because again, like you said,
people may be a scared, right? Because financially want to secure the sustainability of The company. Probably they note the prophets and the expenses they want to Project based on your target before cars and the resources allocation. So how does the company adoption so far? Has the company understood and if it's not nearly, what would you Advocate that? Is it monthly? What is the Cadence for this budgeting cycle? So, then try some companies
doing that. Because we are now talking about this exact year, not about the bossa nova in general, So on the Beyond budgeting website, that's actually bbrt dot-org for Beyond budgeting Round Table. I guess we can provide links later on. You will see they're all the companies listed. They are worldwide. It's really a long list. So it's not anything exotic if you will, there are different ways.
Well, as you can imagine because we are speaking of the book a brawl, there's not one size fits all playing. So there are different approaches, how you can be? With it just to give you some ideas but companies are doing for example, you can think of defining a burn rate as a guidance. So you can ask your team's to operate with full autonomy within specific Rage or level. So where you say okay? You can't over spend that amount but as long as you are in that range, you just do whatever you
think is needed. Another thing that people do is unique cause targets where it It says, well, you can always spend more if you produce also more, so then it's Dynamic to what's the need in the market right now. All you can think of Benchmark targets where you can look at unit costs that are below the average of the piers, and the pills could be inside your company or external. If you compare to that, or it can be also like a story beta of yourself, or you can think of profit.
It's that you spend in a way that you are maximizing your overall, bottom line. So this is another way. All you could also say well we don't have any kind of Target and it's just monitored probably top management. Also will only intervene if they feel like it's needed, that's also something that we see that's happening again. There's no one-size-fits-all which is I think good. Because in the book Cabral that can't be Exist. And so, they are just various ways that are done.
Also, depending on the department, that you are able, whatever kind of work we're doing here. Thank you for sharing some of these permutations of different ways you could do this. So, I myself don't come from the financial background, so some of these things could not relate to well, but I think for those people who are so maybe you can use some of these techniques and maybe you can find Inspirations from some of the companies who have adopted this technique.
So let's move to this open space because you And in the beginning, it came from. This facilitation technique, right? We're probably it's like a conference, you can have people opening up a certain topics any random people can just go in and chip in collaborate and comment or they can also decide to work out. Something people can just easily come and go and make decisions and run away, right? I guess there's something else that you want to pick up from this technique.
Maybe there are some values from it. Maybe you can share a little bit about this technique so I first would like to do a very quick recap on Open space. So there are those principles. The one is it starts when it starts, it ends when it sends, whoever is there are the right people. And I just want to repeat this there a bit more than that. But just with those three very often, we sit in meetings and for example, we wait for somebody to show up who then doesn't show up.
Instead of we are saying, well, whoever is there are the right people because they have the passion to really work on that topic. But Meeting is about and therefore, these are the right ones and also if I refer to the second one that I just mentioned, like it ends when it
ends. But I've also seen kissing, if you think of regular meetings that sometimes it feels like the time is Phil just because the meeting has been set up to a one-hour thing and therefore we meet for one hour or so, we might be done earlier only, we might even need more time. Also this can happen and so open spaces here. More focused on what? What's needed really, and where is the passion? You know, keeping on with the principles. There's also, whatever happens
is the only thing that could. So the topic might also shift a little bit because that's where the passion leads us to. And then, it also says, the last principle here is wherever it happened. Is they own the place, it should. So it might happen like wherever we are right now or we need the specific location. I talked already about This law of two feet. If we don't think about taking those principles to the
organizational level then. Well, we talked a lot here about self organization meaning that everyone really is invited and we even rely on everyone to suggest and burp on any idea that important for the company. However, that invite ation has some limits. And the limits should Should be guided by the passion. People are having if I'm not passionate about it, but I think, well, somebody should
really work on this. Well, then it's not going to happen, and I see that a lot as well that people say, well, this is some advice this and bad, not really working out, but if nobody has the passion to fix it, nothing will happen. So passion is some kind of very constrained. Another constraint is the responsibility. We actually put this often together and say Passion, Bound
by responsibility. The responsibility is, for example, the overall vision of the company or another thing is, well, we know about the ethics of the company, and then, there are other things. So, like the passion follows that old-world strategy, the other thing is that we are all self responsible for the learning of ourselves, but also, Kind of helping others to learn. So what we are basically talking about is empowerment because anything can happen.
That's inspired by anyone actually so yeah. Thanks for sharing this open space. I think it makes sense, right? It is not just to be translated as is. So some of the principles that you mentioned, whoever that is there is the right people, whenever it starts to the right time. And when it's over, it's also, it's over. So I guess these are some of the principles from the open space technique and some of the values like you mentioned, Asian
passion and self-responsibility. And the last one is empowerment people to be empowered to make decisions and work on what the things they are. Passionate about, can I add one more thing? Because people keep asking us so often about that because there is open space at reality as a concept that some people might know. So they are asking how this relates for US Open Space agility which is actually using open space, the workshop format
for your ankle. Surely if so, for bringing agile to a team or two teams of teams and so on. And so this is how we think about open space. So you can also start thinking of getting on your journey for company, right? Agility, by using various shops that are following an open space format, but we are doing is feeling Mall doping, at how can be used the principles on the Strategic level. So is the principles and the values rather than just doing the activities of the
techniques. So let's move to the third technique, which is social croscill you mentioned. It's about having people working together. It's about collaboration, distributive, decision-making process. So tell us more about. Maybe there are some principles as well behind the social policy and how should we use it in organization? So at the core of So Co can see we have equivalence. That's I would say, we leave the key to everything. Nothing maybe I'll start with decision-making.
So one thing that so surprised because she is suggesting is to make decisions by consent if you think about the way, how we of make decisions so they are very sprays, the one can be autocratic. So one person says this is the way we go and decides for everyone else which is super fast and sometimes really super helpful as well and other times not so much because people don't have the buy-in The decision because they never got asked, then we have like maturity
votes. So what we often do in retrospectives that people do dot voting on things and where we have the most thoughts is kind of the thing that we are doing then which is creating a sense because we ask everyone, everyone has a voice. However, the minority is ignored, it might not have to buy into what we're doing. There are other ways to come up with a decision for people with consensus, where we really ask everyone. And we have long, long discussions, until we are coming
to an agreement. And this is the way we go. Of course, you can also do like a random decision making. So you throw a dice and says, if it's a 6, we do this and if it's a one, we do the opposite or something now. So, sir Percy comes with another way of making decisions which is called deciding by consent. It sounds a bit like consensus but it's not Remember consensus was about coming to an agreement now, consent is about coming to acceptance.
One of the key questions, we often ask there is, can you live with that decision? Do you have an objection that might go in the direction that you see our joint goal at risk? If we decide that way, or can you tolerate that decision? So it's really more about About, can I accept it and not necessarily do? I agree with it. I might favor something different but can I live with it? Maybe yes. So and then there are some other things that we also put together
here. Like we asked, well, is that decision may be good enough for now safe enough to try and safe enough to try mine? Then also be true. If we say, what about if you put the time box to it but about if we try that for the next three months and then revisit every Off with think, whatever we do is for eternity, but it's seldom really is if we look back, what happened in the past, right? And so why not making that more transparent? That it's not for eternity or poet?
Feels like that. So again, the key thing is looking for acceptance, not agreement, and asking everyone's voice. So ask the really everyone who is involved here. So that decision making another thing that That's really super important. And so sir Percy is how we are looking at the structure in an organization. So I mentioned before that very often, we see like more hierarchy that's top-down and so the information trickles down and decisions, go top to bottom
and so on it's not only slow. But it also means we are ignoring a lot of people on the way from top to bottom that maybe know a lot about The stuff that we are looking at right now again in that book of world, we need all the different perspectives to make good decisions or to bring all the information together and so on and so. So sir, Percy kind of starts of where we are.
So we have a top-down hierarchy but then it introduces now I'll be using more natural term a feedback Link in the structure because that's what's missing and then top-down hierarchy everything goes top the The bottom. But now if we introduce a feedback link, it's also having that structure bottom to top. This is done by electing representatives of every level in the hierarchy. That's representing that level one level higher.
And so if you think of a department or a team that they have kind of two leaders, so one is appointed top to bottom, maybe a classical manner. Sure. And the other one is elected bottom to top. Now they both together collaborate with everything that's around leading the team. And then if you think of how we make decisions based on consent, they ain't you also know that we always hear all voices. Also the ones from the bottom. Well, this is a very interesting technique.
So there are so many things that you unwrap here about social Chrissy. The first is about decision making Aching by consent is not consensus again. You explained it very clearly consent doesn't mean that everyone agrees and accepts, but you will have some of these questions. Can you live? Can you tolerate with that decision? So it's not necessarily just acceptance and you also mention about election, right? The concept of top bottom bottom
up, right? So you should have two leaders may be representing from the bottom as well, so that it's not biased just from the leaders point of view. But the feedback from the bottom is also kind of like a Channel Through the top and Everyone make decision by the consent together. Again, it's really beautiful way of explaining that. So, the last one, I think most people know about a job, a job, Manifesto.
But I would like to pick up this values that you actually took from the Asia Manifesto. You use it as a generic thing, not just for software development but for the organization in general. So maybe can you share us this for values of the age are part of Bosa, Nova? So yeah, I said, we looked at the Manifest because what we found was that the book of world is asking for companies to be agile and therefore, we have a lot about actual out there.
And so looking at the manifesto just made sense. If you look at the values, what they basically mean is that you need transparency, you need self organization, you need a constant customer focus and continuous learning. So, these are the four values that guide A company towards
being actual. If we then look at what this means is, well, transparency means that we need to be transparent for everyone who is involved in two directions to directions mean, I am transparent about what I am doing but I also know that if I seek information for something that other people are also lowering those barriers that I
Find the information. So the thing for us is that we don't think necessarily that everything needs to be transparent, but whoever needs whatever kind of information will be able to get that information. For me, at least it's kind of rapport with to not necessarily make everything transparent because there's so much information overload already. So there are also things that are not important for me to know and so I'm fine with that.
And of course This also here, it depends whatever your setting is, it might be important to you to make everything transparent. If you look into self organization as the next thing is that we really think it's super important to have cross-functional teams and we recommend that the team select themselves which is actually sitting in open space as well but you have the passion dieting. The people what they want to work on. So if they select So they also follow their passion with
responsibility. Remember, we said that passion also should be linked together with being responsible in what we are doing. And then if we look at constant customer focus, that means in whatever we are doing we always need to have the customer focus in mind. So no matter if you looking at the product process structure strategy or our individual contribution kind of every Spect should be related back into, how does it provide the value for
the customer? And then the fourth thing was continuously rolling, which is really about, we never should stop learning and we also have a responsibility to contribute to other people's learning and then we keep getting feedback in the deck which probably sits the most in the actual area. Here, there's maybe one thing that I find important, we talked a little bit that I said Ability.
And the environmental aspect is kind of important to me, at least there's a reason for it. So if you manage to be agile as a team or as an organization as a company and you also say so that you say, oh we are natural T, we are lateral company, then this comes actually with an expectation. So just consider you say you are natural team and then people find out that you are not inclusive that you Not welcoming
all kinds of people. They then I'm pretty sure people will say, well, I thought your actual or if a company says its actual but then people find out it's not paying fairly or its maybe even polluting the environment. Then also people would say, well, I thought your actual that's actually still in the bossa nova book as well. The last part where we say well okay you think you have managed that Shirley yes and one hairdo Did it.
But now I would you need to look at your external responsibility if you then look, again at the values. That's why I wanted to make that point here. Those values, the meaning of the values shift a little bit, so transparency, then leads to making the company's actions, transparent bowls internally and externally, or self-organization. Then means that we should regard the company as one node of a Double letter, that creates an environment that lifts in together with other companies
and societal institution. So self-organization is now really not only what's happening with the teens inside but what's actually the bigger part of the come, if we look at constant customer focus, then it means like understanding the economic economic societal and social environment as a customer that
needs permanent attention. So sometimes I do a shortcut to that and say, well constant customer Sing, that sense means we also take the planet as one of the stakeholders, and then continuous learning, then means learning continuously from and West Society to make the whole world, a better place. So, again, it's the same values. But now, we really mall with the shift to what's our external wall responsibility. In the ecosystem, we are living in as a company.
Thank you for the plug of this sustainability angle. So I really love It the way you explained and using the same four values. You mentioned. Transparency, self-organization, constant customer focus and continuous learning. I have one interest about this transparency because I myself have experienced in non transparent company faces, very transparent company and its
really totally different. In a transparent company where you have access to all the information, you could even make sense of why certain decisions are made pick up a quote that you mentioned in the book from Michael Herman saying, Troubles can be bounded by transparency so I like you to maybe elaborate on this angle because I can see this is probably one of the inside that distinguish between non-transparency versus
transparency. Why is it such the case that sometimes troubles is because of the boundary of transparency? Well, the one thing is that we cannot solve the problem if we don't know about it. And so if we keep hiding stuff like any kinds of trouble so far, Problems, then they will sit there. Most of, that's at least my experience. If we have a problem and it sits there, it typically doesn't go away.
Most often it gets bigger, there might be some exceptions, but most of the time, a small problem got bigger over time. So we need to be transparent, maybe it's also has to do with courage. So we need to be courageous about stating the problems and therefore, then being able To address them. The thing is, again, we are coming to the passion again. I mentioned that before, but what I see as well, but people point out problems, but then you find out, nobody has a passion to solve it.
So then we really have to accept that a problem. Maybe that's not a pauper to us and then we should also start stating it as a problem, if that's the case, or we keep stating it as a problem, when then we need to Ask why has nobody to Passion to work on it? Maybe it's not so pressing. I also had an episode with Jim Benson not so long ago and he
shared this concept called obey. Yeah, people put all the information in one place so that everyone gets informed of anything that happens within the project or maybe the department and team and so you can make informed decision what the problems are and what the solutions you decision records, probably. I think it's also an interesting concept that I learned from Jim. So you thought thank you so much for sharing all this. I think there are so many
information. It's like an information overload because there are so many techniques that you mentioned the values. And the principles, I will refer people to read your book if they want to know more about all these different techniques. Unfortunately, we have to wrap up pretty soon. But before I let you go, I have one last question that I normally ask for all my guests, which is to share this thing called three technical
leadership wisdom. So it's like some kind of advice that you want to give to the listeners for them to also reflect and maybe adopt if it makes sense for them. So maybe If you can share, what are your three technical leadership is them? Well, I would think the first thing is you need to keep learning so your Learning Journey, never finishes and maybe that's a he thing, especially for leaders because sometimes we think we are now in
a leading position. And therefore, this means we never at all, which definitely is not true. So we have to keep learning also from the people, we are leading, maybe the Will thing is you should be aware that we are only a leader because somebody's following us so there is no leadership By Appointment really. Because if nobody follows and they don't trust us. As a leader, they will find their way around us. This of course, is saying a waste of time of everyone.
It's my own waste of time because I tried to be beneficial for my team but my team doesn't want that. Because it doesn't feel it's my team because it's not following. So it's also a waste of my own time and of course, the time of the team as well. So there is no leading without following. And then probably because we have talked so much around that, which is Passion Bound by responsibility. So also the people you are
leading. And the way you're working yourself, and sure that people can follow their passion that And bound by the responsibility that it cannot be something that's completely outside of what the company is doing, or what's important for us and so on. So it's not that it's going by wild. But if you are working with the passion of people and which is also true for yourself, then I think everything is possible.
Well, I really like the leader. You cannot be without any followers, so it's not only by appointment actually, you need to make sure that people can and do what To follow your, maybe comes back to the consulate soon. They consent to have you as a leader as well. Right there are two. Yes. So thank you so much Utah for your time, so for people who would like to follow your work or maybe reach out to you if they want to ask further questions, is there a place
where they can reach out? Well, the easiest is to reach me on Twitter and my Twitter handle is you textiles of first name, last name, one word, or on LinkedIn. And I should be easy to be found there also. Just with my name there, that boasts fine. Thank you so much for your time and your time for explaining all this concept. I really like the bossa nova. So the different types of meanings that can come up out of that term. So thank you so much for sharing today. Thank you for having me.
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