Episodes

  • An Agile Conversation with Ramz Shaft
    Jan 14 2022

    We've been off the air for a few months focussing on our new website and working with our client’s projects. But we are back with today’s guest Ramz Shaft who shares his journey to become a scrum master.

    Ramz did not start his career in the IT project management space, but rather as a gamer, entrepreneur and salesman. He has a big personality who has learned how to manage his enthusiasm to be a rather more selfless facilitator, where empathy is critical. He talks about his career, the persistence and networking needed to get where he is and the reasons behind such a significant career change.

    His career mirrored the arrival of the now all pervasive web and digital world we see today. He reflects on the tools we use old and new, and the many techniques and strategies he has learnt over the years. And especially how he has tailored his approach when dealing with small to large companies . Hierarchies anyone?

    For any fledgling Scrum Masters, fresh from their CSM, can get insight into the challenges Ramz has overcome, his thinking on complexity and those difficult conversations we all bump into. Welcome to his chaos!

    Find Ramz: linkedin.com/in/ramzshaft

    Ramz Book Reference: Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (www.wob.com/en-gb/books/bruce-p…ations/978067092134)

    Agile

    scrum

    Delivery





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    50 mins
  • An Agile Audience with Amanda Toussaint
    Jul 5 2021

    Amanda Toussaint - Successful Business change with a human heart? I’ll buy that!

     

    Amanda is a change manager with a particular love of high street retail, a world facing intense pressure from the big internet platforms to form compelling digital responses to compliment the brick and mortar space.

     

    As a change manager, Amanda’s role usually spans the technical teams, the user community and the stakeholder. Hitting the objectives for the Exec and keeping them informed, achieving engagement and capability in the people on the shop floor and make IT shine as a business partner. In a changing world organisations are recognising that change management is s skill set they need and becoming more proactive in getting those skills.in. But there is still those who wait the until the ‘shit hits the fan’.

     

    Do people resist change as the accepted wisdom tells us? Amanda doesn’t accept that premise and dissects how to achieve the all important engagement (and the ROI) And if you were in any doubt about the importance of managing your stakeholders, think again…it is critical and fundamental.

     

    And it seems that agile incremental thinking helps a great deal. Which leads us to whether change is a project or an ongoing investment and evolution of adoption and value. Amanda explains what good handover looks like using data, metrics and long term management & ownership sensibilities.

     

    Oh and she addresses the classic COTS dilemma of too much, unsupportable customisation v vanilla installations that don’t quite fit the user community

     

    Retail is changing in front of our very eyes and with much loved brands no longer able to cut it. With such high stakes, can you afford to not to land change really well? We discuss honesty…when the change will have good but also difficult consequences such as redundancies. Amanda’s warmth, pragmatism and experience really comes to the fore.

     

    And finally, the change manager is changed…adopting new tech to reach the shop floor and connect with real people in new ways. The future of work is evolving very fast (probably)!

     

    Contact Amanda:


    Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-toussaint-98840b8/


    Email: Amanda.toussaint@agilesaints.com


    https://agilitybynature.com/contact-us/


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    45 mins
  • An Agile Audience with Michael Short and Agility by Nature (Ian Gill)
    Apr 29 2021

    Michael Short - Stop turning the handle of the sausage machine. Working with social animals!


    Michael Short, Founder of Culture Works Consulting, uses Executive Coaching with his business experience to support others achieve leadership and cultural change, he is also an extremely experienced Agile Coach and certified GCIndex practitioner.

    And he knows that the productivity in most companies is simply not good enough! But, instead of looking for silver bullets in ways of working frameworks, managers should really be working with people and teams to harness strengths, passions and energy.

    When you give people things to do that they want actually want to do, where their energy and passion truly lives, they can become incredibly productive. And this is also the path to the holy grail of business: innovation.


    We explore the five state model in the GC Index with roles of:

    Game Changers,

    Strategists,

    Implementors

    Polishers

    and Play Makers.


    How do they map to performance in different scenarios and phases of a project or work generally?

    Importantly, Michael helps us understand how psychological safety is not just pop-psychology babble, but really works and is truly necessary to get the very best of teams, out of people.

    If you are serious about delivering value, engaging with your people, and getting real productivity this is for you. Get the right mix of happy.


    Write To Michael:

    michael.short@cultureworksconsulting.com

    Talk to Michael:

    Tel: 07711875909

    cultureworksconsulting.com


    Read:

    The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety (Defining the path to Inclusion and Innovation) - Timothy R. Clark

    Visit and Interact:

    cultureworksconsulting.com

    More about the GC Index:

    www.thegcindex.com


    Contact us:

    agilitybynature.com/contact-us/


    #coaching #people #leadership


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    1 hr and 20 mins
  • A conversation with Samantha Horsman and Agility by Nature (Ian Gill)
    Apr 26 2021

    Samantha Horsman - Infrastructure is Sexy! 

     

    How to liberate your user community.

     

    Putting people first is not just a tired cliche at the Wellcome Trust where we discover putting users first guides the leadership team. 

     

    Samantha Horsman is the Platform Manager for Wellcome Trust a Not for Profit that is focussed on health, supporting a museum and Library, funding activities into cutting edge healthcare research and a trading floor to name a few.

     

    Being able to support facilities, curators scientists and financiers means “90% of my job is a communicator” and everyone is a ViP and special.  

     

    This has meant liberating technology that enables a diverse user group do their best job with tools that work for them (not just a budget holder’s view of the one size fits all enterprise ) ”IT can’t happen to people it has to work with people”

     

    Sam describes the use of agile in infrastructure (yes agile in infrastructure!) For Sam the user is central to everything they do, what is it the user needs, are we checking back to see if this is right?

     

    Samantha presents how modern , responsive IT leadership can work without disguising the challenges in balancing user needs and keep the “Blinky” boxes working safely and cost effectively. The organic v enterprise, the arbitrage between alignment and personal choice, is not a simple one to navigate. The core brief remains: We need to have an environment that anyone can plug into safely. But where are the boundaries?

     

    Sam is the refreshing face of enlightened IT leadership where Infrastructure is sexy and IT engineers are computing educators. She brings warmth, energy and pragmatism to her role that is infectious. The question for IT managers now is: are you really enabling your users or are you just another IT says no? 

     

    Learn more about Wellcome Trust:

     

    https://wellcome.org

     

    Learn More about Human Experience:

     

    https://wellcomecollection.org/?utm_source=wellcome&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=.ac.uk&utm_content=trusthomepage-text-banner

     

    (Re-opens 18th may 2021)

     

    Plan Like Samantha:

     

    https://www.liquidplanner.com

     

    (Other planning tools are available)


    https://agilitybynature.com/contact-us/


    #infrastructure #planningtools #agile


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    47 mins
  • A conversation with Catherine Botting and Agility by Nature (Ian Gill)
    Apr 5 2021

    Catherine Botting - If you can’t manage change, you cannot manage!


    Go one everyone do some agile.as long as you will align everything and change yourself. More often than not, companies struggle rolling out company wide change and transformations. Including Agile transformations.

    Catherine Botting Change, innovation and leadership specialist & Lecturer at University of York is fascinated by leadership and what makes for successful change. Her journey started with

     GE, under the leadership of the legendary and notorious Jack Welch purveyor of the “Boundaryless Organisation”. This proved to be the masterclass in understanding how change comes about and the influence of leaders is crucial in making that happen right.

    Catherine gives us fabulous insight into what is needed so that

    everybody has the capability, the support and the understanding to play their part. She shares her thoughts on shareholders and short-termism and whether people and customers are the better focus for leaders. How to facilitate, manage and communicate change- and keep humanness in your organisation. And do hierarchies really work?

    We discuss the management obsession with creating structures and process for change without engaging, thinking and being part of the change themselves. Change needs alignment, comprehensive action and that is all encompassing…tinkering at the edges is pointless

    Catherine is incredibly passionate about her specialist subject particularly helping young students and graduates become leaders and change managers. Her insights into change what works and what doesn’t is forthright and evidenced based on being a practitioner and an Academic. Ignore at your company’s peril!

    Catherine’s Current study: Catherine's doctoral research is exploring the change management capabilities of Agile practitioners and consultants in the software development industry. Her aim is to provide new knowledge that will drive forward both effective practice and academic thinking in the implementation of Agile across organisations.


    Contact Catherine:


    https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinebotting/


    A brief into to Jack Welch:


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch


    Contact: www.agilitybynature.com


    #transformation #leadership #management


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    50 mins
  • The world of Not For Profit with Agility by Nature
    Mar 26 2021

    The world of Not For Profit organisations is a rich and diverse arena demonstrated when Sam Horsman of The Wellcome Trust; Julian Stanley of the Bounceback Project and Gary Henderson of Millfield School sat down for a chat with Ian Gill and Joanna Spicer-Brown of Agility By Nature.

    As we approach the end of Lockdown 3 we are all looking forward to days ahead when the work day is not conducted entirely from a laptop at home, Zoom fatigue fades, and maybe we get ot have a holiday somewhere even if it is just at the end of our street. But will it be as simple as the end of one thing and the start of another?

    Millfield School is an International Boarding School and when the doors re-opened on the 8th although many of the students walked into the school, the many non UK based students, currently unable to return to the school, continued to study remotely. Millfield is therefore moving to a Hybrid model of teaching with some children learning face to face and some still via technology with the teachers needing to deliver successfully through both channels.  

    This perhaps is just the first of the many aspects of education which will move to a new normal in the coming months and years. As Gary discussed, the education eco system contains a lot of different actors, and change does not come easily, but perhaps the lessons we have learned over the last year give us an opportunity to re-imagine what schools are trying to achieve.

    Although there are many children desperate to be back at school, some children have faired much better in an online environment and it will be interesting to see how the gains experienced by such children be capitalised on in future?

    But, it is not just school children who will be experiencing this Hybrid model. With recent surveys regularly showing that many, currently remote based, office workers would like to return to a model of some office based work, and some work from anywhere based work, what does this mean to the modern office and company dynamics?  

    Sam lamented the days when during the course of an office based day she would speak with people outside her immediate responsibilities about nothing and everything. Without that banter and discourse office relationships become more formal and benefit less from non official means of communication. How, when you don’t see people walking back to their desk after a tough meeting do you know that members of your team could do with a coffee and a de-brief. 

    Julian could also see the day when resentment might occur between people whose role require them to be more office based (whose costs of travel in terms of both time and money will be higher) and those based at home (who see the office people networking without them)

    Working with offenders and those at risk of offending Julian and the Bounceback Project work to reduce the rate of re-offending. A rate which is heavily influenced by education, skills, employment and a support network. With only 16 prisons in the UK cabled for the use of technology in the cells how do offenders, and society, work towards a successful release with no access to face to face education, training and mentoring and such limited access to the online resources that the rest of us take for granted.  

    Something everyone agreed on is that as we move forward, and hopefully lockdown eases, as a society and organisations we will try different ways of making it work and we won’t get it right first time. In the best Agile traditions we will need to fail fast, learn from our mistakes, and make alternate plans.


    www.agilitybynature.com


    #nfp #charity #government


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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • A conversation with Chris Foulkes and Agility by Nature (Ian Gill)
    Feb 24 2021

    Chris Foulkes - Regaining the lost art of change and innovation 


    Chris Foulkes is an internationally experienced CIO, CTO and strategist with an award-winning track record in IT innovation and delivery. Chris generously shares his key insights and tools to help companies and their senior teams navigate todays challenges be it Innovation, Digital, Change Programmes and the best use of Offshoring.


    We explore the dichotomy of those who can run and those who can build. Large, mature Companies have forgotten the art of change after their early days of the entrepreneurial beginnings and have hollowed out the ability to do and develop. They have the skills to scale “the same” but stifle creativity.


    Chris shows how he helps companies plan and roadmap change effectively and understand the pitfalls most companies fall into - including why embarking on an agile transformation is a bad sign!


    Chris explains why it is vital to align the vocabulary and the importance of agreeing what good looks like then forming an incremental approach to achieving it.


    And he outlines the why and how a focus on customer & user experience and UX thinking can transform engagement throughout the business (including the Execs) into a change platform.


    Is a “bodge” still a great customer focus and learning experience? Don’t delay in learning from customers by waiting for your systems to be ‘right’. If there is a will there is a way!


    Finally we explore good and bad uses of offshoring and what we can learn to adapt to all remote working.

     

    Chris recognises the hard work involved in change, but he makes it seem entirely achievable and shows why he is such a motivational leader!


    Contact Chris:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisfoulkes/ 


    Reference:

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-transformation-parallel-process-chris-foulkes/?trackingId=ITrFwICIQ7SL6ZZFKOtI8g%3D%3D


    Contact: https://agilitybynature.com/contact-us/


    #transformation #coaching #agileteams


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    53 mins
  • A conversation with Philippe Guenet and Agility by Nature (Ian Gill)
    Feb 12 2021

    Philippe Guenet: Understanding Successful Digital Change Journeys - getting on the right Coach.


    Companies are facing the imperative to change and adapt. Leadership is lonely and leaders need to consider their change partners very carefully before embarking on their digital and organisational transformations.

    Philippe Guenet is an Executive Coach and Leadership development expert who focuses on the work system organisation, practices, people & leadership development associated with Digital and Agile transformation. His work in many substantial companies gives him a deep well of direct experience to draw from when advising his clients, coupled with his formal coaching training.

    Philippe explains the differences between coaches and consultants and gives a wonderful and detailed tour of the role of the coach in organisations - from helping teams at the coal face and especially at the exec level.

    His insight into authentic coaching, agility, and organisational change is thoughtful, well considered and compelling

    For Execs thinking about transformation in their organisation, Philippe provides a primer for the key areas, cadence and importantly, the people to consider in the journey to come. A change that starts with you being involved. In the journey into change and uncertainty, Philippe is challenging but ultimately, reassuring too. He is the trustworthy voice by your side, assisting the journey of change through coaching.

    Contact Philippe:

    www.henko.co.uk

    www.linkedin.com/in/philippeguenet/

    www.meetup.com/DigitalLeadership/

    References:

    Simon Wardley - “recovering consultant” blog.gardeviance.org

    The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eli Goldratt

    agilitybynature.com/contact-us/

    #agility #agile #wardley


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    55 mins