 If you if you're as cold as I am it's okay if you want to stand up and walk around maybe we should do some exercise You know some jumping jacks or Time I am freezing. I don't know what it is today. It's just really really cold. So How many of you were here for my keynote two days ago? Good, so I can refer to that and if any of you believe in God Would you offer up a little prayer for me? So that I hope my PowerPoint won't crash. I don't know what else to do. I have checked it I have run my bit defender. I have downloaded new versions of windows. I have done everything I can think of over the last couple of days. It seems to be working now, but you never know and it never hurts They have God on your side Absolutely, so I'm counting on all the prayers of the people in this group. So I'm Linda rising I'm an independent consultant. I live near Nashville, Tennessee in the United States and I have been thinking about and worrying about and writing about Organizational change for about 25 years. So that's a third of my lifetime and With my very good friend and co-author Mary Lynn Mans have written a couple of books and I'm going to be talking today about some general myths So do you understand the word myth? I think India has lots of myths. Don't you a good story? We know the power of stories myths about organizational change And then we're going to look at some patterns that could possibly address those myths So this is a rather high-level talk and I know that there'll be implementation questions I hope we'll fit this all in 45 minutes and as most of you already know, I give away my slides So if you want to send me some email you have my email address Linda at lynda rising Dot org and I will be happy to send you the these slides or the keynote or Anything else that you find online. I'll be happy to send you the PowerPoint and then you You weren't praying hard enough Okay, so you can give the presentation. Oh, let's have a look. I'm assuming that you know what a pattern is Yes Okay, design patterns came about in the mid 1990s and we were talking then about a way of writing a Solution to a problem in a context and then we were going to give it a name and Once we had the name for a pattern We could talk about that solution that problem that context By just using the name and that gave us really a Vocabulary we called it a pattern language, but it's a vocabulary for talking about a particular domain If it was the gang of four design patterns, we'd be talking about design The patterns we're going to talk about today have to do with organizational change. So we can use the name and What we're talking about is a particular solution to a problem in a given context And if the name is a good one, then you don't really need a lot of explanation You understand intuitively a little bit about all of those elements What the problem is and what the solution provides for that context. So that's the power of patterns It gives you a little language and with that language you can talk about the domain at a pretty high level You can have a design discussion You can have a discussion about organizational change Just using the names of the patterns. It's very powerful So the first book that Mary Lynn and I wrote is called Fearless Change. It took us 10 years When I began writing that book, I would have called myself a technical person I have a PhD in computer science. I would have called myself a designer What got me interested in patterns was the gang of four book the design patterns book But by the time we finished that book I Had learned a lot about fields that I had no knowledge of no understanding of Furthermore, I didn't even think they were important. I Discovered the field of social psychology. Now, I know what psychology is and I had had one class in psychology But I didn't understand that there's a different field of psychology that looks at groups group behavior Psychology typically focuses on individuals How individuals respond experiments on individuals social psychology the psychology of groups is very different And it talks about how groups of people behave and that's exactly what we need if we're going to talk about organizational change What is it that social psychology has learned as a science? To help us understand how groups of people make decisions That was something I didn't even realize was a field or a domain of science and Then the field of influence I remember getting feedback on some of these early patterns and someone said you know why these work This particular pattern works because it's based on or it sits on an Influence strategy now to me the word influence meant something. Well, that's what marketing people Business people they use influence politicians use influence and I thought it was underhanded and Deceptive and I wasn't really sure that I wanted to have anything to do with it and After I began to look at it and study it. I realized that I had been handicapped I'm not knowing more about influence because influence studies how you move people in a given direction and if you don't understand that Then you have only one fallback Physician, which as a technical person is what I had always used all my life, which is logic Just explain it to them Just tell them the benefits of your idea and if they're smart people well, then they'll do it and Then finally evolutionary biology says we behave a certain way because we have evolved Over over tens of thousands of years to have a particular response to something in the environment And there is nothing we can do about that because it is hardwired at some point It meant survival our ancestors had it. They produced us ultimately So in writing that first book I learned much more than I anticipated about how people behave In groups and that's how this first book was able to produce so many effective patterns So I'm going to share with you a little bit of my journey Because I believe certain things about people that really turned out to not be true and then in discovering What science can provide as information for a better understanding of group behavior the patterns that evolve out of that understanding Since a quote from Jeff Patton we heard his wonderful keynote yesterday We were on the stage together at one point and he said you're not here to build software You're here to change the world. So whether you're trying to do some kind of organizational change effort or not what you do every day Has as its heart or the intent to change the world So even if you think you're not an organizational change agent You do need an understanding of the patterns because this is really what you are all about So here's myth number one Let's take a little poll How many smart people in the room? Oh, come on three threes four five smart people. Oh come on. I'm smart. Yeah We are all smart. I know you're you're smart because you're here There is clear evidence that you are a smart person and you have a belief that Because you're smart that you are logical Anybody sure and so your decisions are made for rational You can explain it You know why you decided to come to this conference today or you decided to have a couple of cookies Those were all conscious decisions and you decided those for some logical reason. You could even explain it If somebody asked you you could give a reason So because we can give reasons for our decisions We believe that we must have made those for logical reasons So that is a myth Not only are you not logical none That is zero of Your decisions are logical But what you have been fundamentally doing when you try to change people You believe that they must be smart and so therefore they make logical decisions So therefore if you just give them reasons That will convince them That's the heart of the only tool in your toolbox To convince others just explain it to them That's all you've got at this point and you've been subscribing to a myth We have already seen at this conference even several talks that have mentioned the wonderful book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking fast and slow how many of you the first question is how many of you have heard of the book? How many of you bought the book? How many of you read the book? I know it's a big book and it's very difficult and it's well-written, but it's long It's a slog. I would say If you were able to get through it You would learn an enormous amount about how you make decisions and what's in the book is All of the evidence the science behind what I just Exploded that first myth by saying you're not logical We are not and for evidence I'm going to point you to Kahneman's book Which I know you might buy but you're not going to have the time to read There's lots of other information on the web if you don't want to read the whole book There are many wonderful summaries of the book that will give you a little bit of an idea of what he's talking about a much easier Reference is anything by Dan Ariely who's an Israeli Behavioral economist and the books that he's written about how we are not very good at rational thinking This is my favorite predictably irrational and I think I saw a copy on the little book table out there So you might be able to get a copy if there's one left his books are more accessible Easier to read They're not as comprehensive But they're still good the experiments are interesting and the field of behavioral Economics right now is all about how poor we are at making decisions and how None of our decisions are based on rationality So if that's the only tool you have in your toolbox, that's really limiting you Subscribing to that myth is going to get in your way So you need something else So an example at least in the United States are is there an Indian stock market where you buy stocks? Good. Okay. So here's the recommendation for stocks buy low Buy when the price is low Sell when the price is high. That's rational And what do you do? And what do I do and what do all of us do when the price starts to go up We think ah, this stock price is going up. I better buy some So we buy when the price is going up now what happens when the price is coming down We get scared and we think I better sell it It's not a logical decision at all watch in times of turbulence on the stock market and see what happens We don't follow this Rational advice we go with fear and our gut reaction of saying no, no, no, it's going up. I better buy some Oh, no, the price is going down. I better sell We do exactly the opposite and if you start looking now You might notice many other examples of how irrational we are at making decisions Not you of course, but other people other people So the patterns that we identified in fearless change have to do with not appealing to a rational argument, but instead looking at Emotion Making an emotional connection and the first pattern we always recommend is one called evangelist Now Mary Lynn lives in the South and at the time we wrote the book I was living in Arizona and we tried to decide what the name of this pattern should be the person who leads the change effort Or who initiates it should have enthusiasm Should have passion Should care about it should know about it should perhaps even love it all in love with the idea So I was working with a telecom company and In Lucent we used a term corporate evangelist Meaning someone who is going to lead an effort around that particular idea And I suggested the idea of evangelist and Mary Lynn said no, no, we can't use that word You know what that means in the South means religion That means a preacher Standing in front of a crowd of people saying yes people. I will show you the way So we debated we finally left it as evangelists And now as we look back on it We realize that is the exact perfect wonderful name because in the beginning When you have an idea and you want to change your organization, you don't know You often have no evidence One of the things I talked about a couple of days ago is that we have no evidence for Agiles being successful in organization. All we have are stories Have no science No experiment So especially in the beginning if you want your organization to go agile, whatever your idea is you don't know All you have is what's in your heart What you believe and it's that belief That passion That's what will drive the whole effort. So evangelist is exactly what you are You are trying to convince people because you believe in something and you want them to believe in it, too You know have any scientific experiments that show clearly your idea is a good one But once you've taken on this role of evangelists with the idea of I'm not sure but I believe in it I believe it will help. I Talked about small experiments. This is exactly what the next stage is Start doing small iterations. This is a little cycle. It begins by saying just do something Pick an idea an idea for a little trial do it stop Take a little time for reflection do a retrospective look what works Where were you successful? Build on that and what you want to always concentrate on our little tiny baby steps and now repeat This cycle has a name in psychology that we didn't discover until after fearless change was published It's called the cold learning cycle. It is how we learn. It's how we learned as babies We are walking around today because we did exactly that we stood up We took a step we fell down we looked around and we said that didn't work so well Maybe I should try something else and then we experimented with another baby step That's how we learn to walk. That's how we learn to talk all language is learned that way in fact all adult learning is in that cold learning cycle over and over and over and in the process find other evangelists let them start experimenting until what you have is an organization full of Experiments that was the goal of my talk two days ago. That's the goal of fearless change Organizational change comes about because you've got a complex adaptive system And the only way to move forward is little tiny baby steps lots of little experiments over and over and over It never ends You never stop organizations individuals country For a wonderful opening keynote about a change in a government It's exactly the same All change happens this way even if you want to call it a revolution. I'm not sure that it was Organizations are complex adaptive systems and the only way to change them is to do something small and then watch and on the basis of what you learn Move forward and if you have that attitude then there is no such thing as failure There's only learning and if you remember what I said two days ago It's small simple fast and frugal Over and over some point Maybe you'll reach a tipping point and now you'll have an emergent behavior that will move the organization Faster in a given direction, but you don't know if that will happen and you certainly don't know when It will happen Myth number two. Oh My I've just told you you're not rational Now I'm telling you goodness does not win This is a bad way to start the day Goodness does not triumph As an evangelist you believe as a follower of God we believe and Somehow we fall into the trap of Thinking because God is good Because our ideas are good. We know it we believe in it But that should be enough Can't other people see how good this idea Why isn't that enough that the idea is a good one? It's a bias that we have a cognitive bias Very wonderful talk yesterday on cognitive biases. This is just one. It's called the just world Fallacy we want to believe that goodness will win. Well, I'm sorry Think of times in history When bad ideas won I Live in the United States. We had an election year and a half ago Doesn't look so good to me So it doesn't always happen Goodness sometimes has to take a seat in the back I'd have to wait a while to repair that damage So you can't count on goodness and you're gonna think that this is a strange pattern It has to do with the power of food. It's one of my favorite patterns and here's one of my favorite experiments It has to do with feeding people So in this experiment there was a control group That's the group that just got the presentation or that In the treatment and then the other group got the same treatment or presentation But was also lucky enough to get some nice food. Now this experiment has been replicated many times So it's been validated Perhaps the presentation was about Making a vote for a particular issue or adopting a new practice. It could have been anything But in trying to convince the two groups of people we did exactly the same thing with the only difference being That's why we hope to measure the effect the only difference being that one group got food and The other group did So in the final analysis when we look to see which group Adopted or voted for or moved in the direction we wanted Which group was more likely to do that? What do you think? Oh, it was the group that got the food Now here's the really interesting part of that experiment I Mentioned that it's been repeated. It's been done many many times Sometimes the idea is a bad one It's not something that works to the advantage of the people who are hearing about it. Maybe it means increasing taxes or Raising some restrictions It's not something that they should be in favor of But nonetheless When you feed them They support it So it's not about the goodness of the idea It's about the goodness of the The food yes exactly exactly Because there have been versions of the experiment where the food was something they didn't like something healthy and In that case They vote against it. So it better be good food That's what we care about not the goodness of the idea But the goodness of the food I See you had a question. Can I ask you to hang on to it? Unless this is a vital thing? Okay, and just hang on So it's one of my favorite patterns and I recommended in almost any situation if you want to talk to a group of people about your idea Bring in some cookies or whatever it is. It should be something they like something. They appreciate It's powerful. I Gave this talk once in London and somebody sent me this little picture of a cake and they say in our office We follow Maria's rule Maria's rule states there are very few problems That cake cannot solve So if you're having some struggles call Maria and She will bake this very nice cake and you will all enjoy the cake and everything will work out Well, I'm not sure I would go that far with it But apparently it works for them and at least it's a step in the right direction This is a hard-wired thing Even though in the United States we struggle with childhood obesity That power of food What we believe from our Stone Age ancestors is sharing food meant I trust you You must be a part of my family or my close associates If we share food together in fact in French the word is companion Someone with whom I break bread is my friend and We still have that it's very deep and very powerful myth number three if I had enough power if only I were the president or The CEO I could just tell people look people We are going to be agile by next June do it Make it happen. Well, that's a myth and In writing fearless change we learned because we believed it to Remember these are myths. We subscribed to we heard from presidents and CEOs who said this is not true. I Have tried it and it doesn't work We do know that if you threaten people and you say we will kill you or We will fire you if you don't line up and do this. Yes They will do it But what you'll get is the appearance of Being agile or being Catholic or being Muslim or if you line people up, you'll get the appearance of that Compliance if their lives are on the line if their jobs are on the line. Yes people will Give the appearance of doing it, but as soon as your back is turned As soon as nobody's really watching And they'll go back to doing exactly what they did before You're just going to drive that behavior Underground and now you have to bring in some kind of processed police And they have to watch everybody and they have to check everybody and they have to make sure are they really doing agile We want this check box check check check check Enormous overhead and it only increases Where your goal should be not? compliance But commitment You want people to do it because they believe in it themselves You as the evangelist want as your goal people to share that belief and They do it because they think it's important not because they have to or they must line up or they're going to be killed or Fired Stephen Covey is one of my favorite authors. We lost him a couple of years ago. We passed away He said you can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart His heart is where his enthusiasm his loyalty is You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain That's where his creativity is his ingenuity His resourcefulness You can't say look people Be creative We got two weeks get on it. It doesn't work So I don't know how many of you've read the habits the seven habits of highly effective people So, you know, I love real books and I try to give a lot of them away So this one is going to be on the stairway right here and maybe somebody will come pick it up India after all The pattern is pit personal touch When you go out as an evangelist and you want to talk to people about your idea In the back of your head should be some way of answering this question Everybody wants to know why should I do this? Why should I go agile or why should I look at these design patterns? What's in it for me? Again a quote from Jeff Patton data is not going to help you here. It's empathy You have to get inside How are others thinking about this most of the time? They're a little afraid you have to address that and Everyone is different You have probably seen this before it's from the work of em Rogers, but I don't think we use it correctly But em Rogers noticed in his research was that in a population of people you're going to get different responses to any new idea Some people are going to say yay. This is a new cool thing sign me up. Those are the innovators but oh my goodness not too many in a normal population a very small percentage two and a half percent in a Normal population and I have never seen a normal population though and Then the other group you know this sounds like an interesting idea But I would like to learn more. Maybe you could give me a book to read about it How about a paper on Agile development? Help me out. I want to understand it The early adopters, but again not very many 13 and a half percent even if we put them together The early adopters and the innovators. We don't have a big chunk of the population And then the next big group is the early majority. They don't move Until they see Everybody around them people they know people who are just like them until those people are doing it You can buy all the chocolate chip cookies you want And they're not going to budge and Then it gets worse The late majority Alright, I have to if I have to I guess And then finally the laggards They'll never move They will always find a way always find a way to avoid coming on board with it So your job as an evangelist is don't worry about the people who are not enthusiastic Focus your attention on the people who are listening the innovators and the early adopters And what we know is that most of the people that you work with are smart Most of the people you work with want to do a good job And if they begin to see that others are excited about it, and they're having success with it They will come to you and they will want to know what's this all about. Is there some way I could be involved in it And we know that this is the initial response only that people will move up Over time So work on the people who are open and who are responsive and bring in the others gradually Now it's a myth. I have heard this so many times So I would say this is an overarching myth about agile that we are all going to do agile in the same way To that I say nonsense You're never going to do anything In the same way because this is always in place I don't care if it's agile development or TDD or whatever Some people are going to be very enthusiastic And they're always going to be leading and some people are going to be resistant And they're always going to be dragging their feet and they're going to be slower to adopt And that's just the way it is. You have to live with that Don't draw a line and say let's fire everybody If they don't immediately get on board if they won't pair a program, they're out the door If they have a contribution to make and work with where they are and Realize that this is what your organization will look like all the time And you should foster it Those people who want to lead the innovators and the early adopters. Let them go ahead. Let them lead the experiments Let them try out things and on the basis of what they learn. They can help Bring the others on board, but those others those late majority and laggard. They are always going to be behind It's not always going to be the same people people play different roles or different innovations But this curve will always hold and it's a myth That you ever going to be marching together So don't embrace frustration by saying what's wrong with these people? Why can't we all get on board with this? It's just not gonna happen Sorry Those are roles not people Sometimes you might be an innovator. Sometimes you might be a late majority There is a correlation Older people tend to be at the bottom of the curve Newer younger not only people but also organizations are more innovative That's just the way it is people can move around within that curve And you can imagine why this is true Let's go back 10,000 years And we're living in a little tribe on the savannah in Africa And we notice some new berries Some new plants that we hadn't seen before and someone says wow look at this is new stuff We should all go try those new berries What would happen if we all said okay? Let's all go eat those berries Ah Well, it could be good on the other hand It could be bad Wouldn't it be better if we say hey you guys go try it and we'll watch We'll see how it goes for you And you you young guys who are healthier and faster and you let us know how those berries are Maybe Maybe we see how it goes. It looks like it's gonna be okay. Maybe we'll try it later Can you see the benefit or survival? If not everybody wants to jump on the latest and the greatest thing and so why that's deeply hardwired in us Not everybody should run after the latest and the greatest thing. What if we were all innovators? We probably wouldn't have survived So it's a good thing embrace it and work with it Which leads us to the next myth those people who are so negative those nasty skeptics Bad people obviously We should just be ignoring them. I'll pay attention to those people The pattern is called fear less Don't run away from that What you want to do is learn from them a Lot of times the people are the cynical people the skeptical people usually those older people That's there's a reason for it They are skeptical for some reason find out what it is learn from that Listen to those people Not with the idea of arguing that's another talk actually I gave that one last year not with the idea of arguing fear less is about listening with intent to learn In fact, that's what Stephen Covey recommends seek first to understand If you understand where they're coming from you'll learn a lot before you worry about Implanting your innovation or your new idea Into someone who's resistant listen Listen first champion skeptic is a valuable role For people who are a little resistant for people who think I'm not sure whether I should get on board with this idea Or not embrace that person and role and Respect what they have to say because every team every meeting should have somebody who's not sure Whether the idea on the table is a good one or not They have so many examples of group think where a lot of very smart people made a very bad decision Because nobody was willing to raise a hand and say I'm not sure Can you help me understand? Was this really the right thing to do How about and we'll raise a question Something we should have thought of Consideration that we hadn't considered because we were all so enthusiastic and we were all so on board with this We just missed it devil's advocate Edward Debono while wrote a wonderful book called six thinking hats and he said somebody should wear the black hat Somebody should say wait a minute. Is this where we really want to go? And have a little footnote This is not about just keeping that cynical person busy It's about listening It's about learning and you know what strange thing happens when you respect and pay attention and listen to people They become a little more open to and they say, you know, I've been learning about this new idea Maybe maybe I could try it. It works both way that respect thing magic myth number five You're smart. We already decided that we took a little poll So why should you ask for help from anybody else because after all this is your idea You know, if I bring in too many people to help me well, then I won't win that innovator of the year Or that bonus No, no, that would be bad. This is my idea. I own it beware The pattern is called ask for help and it's not only influential But on so many levels it works because when you ask for help You're offering a little piece of the idea to someone else and as soon as you do that Then they own it They're in they get it and Once they've taken that little step They're more likely to continue Asking help or others is the absolute best way to Influence them and when you do to appreciate them The greatest gift you can give anyone is to say thank you for what you did. I really appreciate it When we wrote this pattern, we thought do we need to write a pattern that says hey, don't forget to say thank you to people and When we got reviews back we realized Yeah, I guess we do Because so many people say they worked over time and they solved a big problem and they were able to make the customer happy and nobody Not the team lead not the scrum master not anybody said Thanks for that So we thought we need to we need to put that pattern in there and then we found some research There's actually some research around giving thanks It should be on time and sincere Say what you mean. Don't just get up in front and say team. Thank you. Thank you team for all your contributions. No, no It's what did you do? What was the contribution? What did you do to help the team and then the impact? Because you worked on that bug because you helped us solve that database problem. We can now do that customer demo Thank you There's research around people who do this all the time They're called grateful people. They're always thanking others appreciating others Look at these wonderful benefits What's not on here the one that really appealed to me was you live longer? So I'm on board for that one I'll show you how it works You know you could have gone to any other session today or you could have been out walking around this beautiful place But you decided you'd come in and share 45 minutes with me and That means a lot To look out and see all these nice faces and people paying attention as though I had something to say I Really appreciate that Thank you