 We're on record now. So if you want to change your name or go on virtual backgrounds or put a funny little meme on you instead of your face, then now it's time to do it because I will cut it here. And we'll crack on. So what's been going on for you guys? What do you want to talk about? First to speak gets to go. Going, going okay for me so far. This assignment is a good team. I mean, professionally, a team is team is good. They're quite open to experiments, which is a good thing, you know, as a work wise. So that part of going okay. Personal wise. Yeah, things are things are okay settling down and slowly slowly come back to normality. And nothing much to be honest like just came with open mind. Yeah, to discuss and see what questions other people had. Yeah, or something can come out of my mind as well. Is that a problem? Yeah, yeah. How about you, Jeff, anything on your mind? Oh, I'm sure there's there's plenty. I'm in a large organization, large enterprise with, you know, multiple subsidiary companies that have been acquired over the years so lots of change, you know, rapid, rapid change and a lot of turnover with this great resignation sort of as I've heard it referred to and other things that are going on. People finding jobs. So, so it's really interesting I'm seeing so much change that people are just they don't know how to describe it it's almost like they're, they're shocked they're stunned they're sort of stuck. And I'm wondering if people are afraid to even invest themselves in the energies to like figure out what's next and to try to make something better for themselves and their teams or wherever they sit within an organization. Honestly, I guess I'm intrigued. My question would be something of what are some fresh ideas for us to engage with people to kind of figure out, you know, to get them to open up, you know what I mean. People are just in my experience so far. They're just kind of going through this daily hamster wheel. They are just easily pressured by just some sense of a business person a boss or whatever kind of saying, we got to get this thing done because we've got this deadline. But I'm just really concerned about people like kind of going through the motions and I'm looking for ways to, they're not inviting coaches in, they're not asking for somebody to come and sit with them and talk and open up. They're not themselves that opportunity so I'm without forcing myself upon people as a coach. I'm wondering, what else can I do to help people realize, hey I'm here, I could maybe I could help. So I don't know if that forms a good question for you Jeff, but that's kind of where I'm thinking right now. Certainly dinged a couple of things for me because you're not the only person that I've been speaking to said something similar and it. This isn't a criticism what you said but it was quite ambiguous in a way it's quite vague in a way but it was touching on a topic that sort of overlaps other things. Again, in a vague way hard to put a finger on it type thing. And I think what I've taken from all those conversations and I might be making a false joining the dots in a bad way but I think we are in a really, really. And I'm not going to say I'm not going to say unprecedented, but it's a situation that we haven't really had to face. In this particular instance and what I'm saying what I mean by that is not just a pandemic thing but almost a fallout of it. And there's you've you mentioned chair. You're not by far the only company that said there's so much chair going on. There's more demand than there is supply so people are being tempted and this is something that we are used to hear a lot about companies in places like India Sri Lanka and Bulgaria replaced those churn because all the companies were in the same place and they could just tend someone across the road but it's one increase inside. And so I think we're seeing that here for the first time. And there's that plus other companies are not quite stable enough to be able to say we're not going to lay anybody off. So there's this uncertainty about well actually, am I going to put myself out there because I might be going somewhere else soon, or actually half my team might be going somewhere else soon, or the company might be going somewhere else soon. So this lack of stability, I think has led people into almost self defense self preservation type mindset of, I'm not going to risk that energy. So, the second part of the thing that was, is there any new ways that we can engage with people. Whenever I think about engaging people I think about well, you know, it's going to sound cruder than I mean it but what do they want. What are they looking for, what are they lacking, what are they missing. And security is one of the things that I think most people that I would agree is is kind of fundamental across all human beings we all like security we like to feel secure. But at the same time we also like a little bit of adventure we don't like monotony so is that sort of tension there. We like growth, but we also like comfort again another another bit of tension there. And when we're lacking one thing that we think is fundamental to us, and to our happiness. Then we generally kind of make sacrifices and we'll compensate with other things or our behavior will kind of like kid acting out if you like because they haven't got they don't feel they've got enough attention or what have you. So where am I going with that I think having that you know having that conversation about what's missing in your environment at the moment and the way that I tend to. That kind of conversation is when was the last time you felt really alive to work and you felt really good when things were working for you where you had what you needed to be successful. You know all the cards were in your favor. And you went home at the end of the day or the end of the week or yes, that was a good day or that was a good week. And compare that to now. What, what could we do that would get you closer to that state. And to be honest, they very rarely have an instant answer. Because it is quite abstract. But just letting that seed for a minute, or even a day or even a week. So just finished filming, filming sounds like a grand term that we did our episodes, one of our prestigious pints episode for the podcast last night with Sally Anne Freudenberg I don't know whether any of you know Sal, but she's PhD in collaboration. Huge proponent of neurodiversity and inclusive collaboration and things. And one of the things that we were talking about was slow retrospectives that wasn't the term we use. I don't think she actually coined a phrase for it, but she said, one of the, one of the things that she's kind of got slapped herself in the face for after quite a few years about job coaching was going along with the trend of playing up to the extrovert. And all developers sitting in their cubicles to all developers in open space with post-it notes on rooms and icebreakers and funny games. And she said, neither of those extremes was bored encompassing was inclusive. And so retrospectives will often get people in a room for an hour and say, right, what do you think, what do we do, how do we make it better. And some people really, really love that urgency they love that sense of focus they love that sense of, you know, we're here we can get something done in an hour. Other people really need time to process. And so they did this experiment, her and Catherine Kirk did this experiment around slow retrospectives that they put the stuff on the wall, how we want to improve whatever whatever they were doing madside glad or whatever. And during the course of a couple of weeks, people could add stuff to that wall as it went anonymously. And she said, the depth of learning the depth of reflection they go with magnitude is greater than everybody in a room for an hour. I went off in a bit of a tangent there. I heard that is thank you very much. I heard that as another creative, potentially creative way to create some engagement is setting up some sort of this slow retrospective way that people could pass by or go and look at the virtual thing, process a bit, maybe let it ruminate and when they pass back by on another day they could finally contribute if they thought of something so that's how I received that but that was helpful. Thank you for that Jeff. No worries. Welcome Matt. Hi Matt. Hi Jeff. Hi Jeff. Good. Good thanks. Five in the morning here though so I'm just going to say first coffee. I'm going to work out the time zone. That's yeah. Well thank you for joining us. You've been to the gym yet or are you going to go after this. No, I'll go after this. Yeah. Yeah, so still in my first coffee though so just need a wee bit of warm up. Yeah, no worries you ease yourself in. So yeah, quite a few people said they were going to join them and never get everybody here on time so it is being recorded. So, whether you want to affect your behavior or appearance whatever that's up to you but it won't be shared publicly just with your community. Yeah, anybody else got any thoughts on that in terms of you know this is sort of different ways of engaging people in this new situation that they're finding themselves in especially when it comes to your noticing the same thing around high levels of churn and change. Yeah, I think there are some yeah there's definitely some unique challenges at the moment around, you know the current situation. I guess the questions I have more we have we've got some organizational change at the moment where we're bringing in change management, and they do a lot of that they do a lot of upfront work around repairing people, but that's tends to. It tends to be a lot of overlap where they come into some of the vision creation. A lot of it is more aspirational, but it also creates a little bit of fatigue with the stakeholder groups that we're working with as well because they have all of these sessions that they need to go to for the change management people and then the product owner comes in and they're kind of a bit over it by the time we come in there so So yeah have you ever had to work in with something like that where you're working in with sort of change management or something similar that or have you ever seen that situation and is there a is there a way to sort of deal with that elegantly. So I heard fatigue and change management and in my head I put those together as change fatigue is that is that what you're talking about. No, no, no, it's more it's fatigue on that actual engagement part so having all of those workshops. So it's not so much the change fatigue that's why we brought in the change management to change fatigue. And now I guess there's maybe some workshop fatigue. Yeah, so they sort of come in two or three months before and start doing that. That ad car sort of stuff where they they get people ready and you know because I guess there is a lot of change we're changing all of our EIP CRM everything. So I'm so it's about getting people on board who might have been there for 15 years using the same system and maybe 20 years that's that's how the incumbent system is and why does it need to change. So they're definitely needed. But I guess yeah that's just where that overlap is there seems to be a significant overlap and we're working in with them but but obviously they have their, their methodologies and the things that they're trying to achieve. And they tend to try and do a heck of a lot more upfront and it starts to becomes more difficult to manage some of the expectations rather than making them easier to manage which was what was hoped. And who, if you had to sort of pick out one role or group or department that was more fatigued than others, which would you say. So a lot of this is going into the CRM work so to start with. I mean it's probably something that not a lot of people would relate to because it's in local government but probably in community development which works with sort of the other organizations, charity organizations gives out funding around grants and things like that for community development and they work with sort of homeless organizations and and all of those types so I guess I guess perhaps them. There's a little bit of fatigue there and getting time from people because they come in and they say okay we want all these half day sessions or we want all of these, you know, we're going to need three or four hours a week from this big group of staff and then I come in and go okay I've got two half day sessions and then I'm going to need a couple of at least a couple of hours a week. Plus we're going to need you all the way through develop all the way through delivery and we want to be we want full access to you and we want you know, we want you to come to our reviews and we want you to come to a bunch of stand ups and I want you to do all this other stuff and they're kind of going off and can I get back to my job. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think whether that that question I asked was relevant or not I just it just seemed something on to last but for my, for my experience when it comes to change is. I've seen a number of different reasons why people tend to get a bit fed up with it. I haven't got any sexy names or model for some just off the top of my head. The first one is, what's in it for me, you know, do they actually get that this is something that's for their benefit rather than do they feel it's something that they need to do because others want them to do it. No sense of obligation. And immediately if it's if it feels like a chore or something they don't see the point in everything's going to feel like pulling teeth. And I think is a little bit maybe around maybe not so much around the word change as such. But something that I know I had a big issue with in a lot of the organizations I've worked in where they call it transformations, because in our heads. We are kind of cell put in my head yesterday is phrase deadline junkie I've never heard it before I think we kind of like to finish things. And so if we've got in our heads, we need to go through this change, then one of the first things we tend to do is we tend to imagine a finish line. And we're always measuring ourselves, not so much in how far we've come, but how far we've got left to go. And in something like a transformation, which can be seen as really really big really long and we might even admit that it's going to be quite long. That sense of motivation can really really get just look at anybody's new year's resolutions or trying to start a new habit we will hit. Really why did I even start this kind of before it becomes normal and accepted in part of what we do is the always looking at the finish line when actually what we're doing. If we actually look at a longer period of time there's a good chance that we're always going through some kind of change in our companies. So it's not that we're starting a change project. It's just a different pivot, you know, a different way of inspecting adapting what we're doing. And if we can change that mindset of, you know, a distinct thing where there is a finish line that might help. And the other thing I've seen quite important is around this sense of achievement which ties in I suppose to achieve ability. I'm going to wrap my brains now. There was a guy called, I'm going to say Daniel Goisetta, something like that, who was some kind of executive at Coke or Pepsi. And he was tasked with increasing the amount of Pepsi or Coke drinks that the general population were drinking. And it was something that they drink on average people drinks something like 32 ounces a day or something like that. And four ounces of that is Pepsi. And they wanted to increase that they wanted to close that 28 ounce gap or something. But instead of focusing on the 28 ounces that we need to get from four to six or something like that, you know, and it's that kind of achievability positioning something in a way that yeah we can we can actually do this that's actually doable. The finish line is perhaps closer than we thought it was. It hasn't moved, but we've just reframed it in a way that's more achievable. And then getting that sense of we've actually achieved something I can see that the effort we put into this workshop has actually worked out not just for the book for me. The return on my investment I can see it. That I think is another big part. I think you also mentioned something really, really important there, which doesn't get spoken about enough, which is that a lot of this stuff these workshops is on top of your day job. Yeah, the expectation is, yeah, you still got your 48 hours a week whatever your contract to do. And by the way, we need you to put that extra shifting because we're going through this change program. Yeah. And it's just not, it's not fair. It's not sustainable. And I think that happens quite a lot and is, you know, you're almost on to a loser straight away. Or is it even if you just said, you know what, 10% of your workload. Tell me 10% of your workload, I will cut that out for you. Yeah, I think a lot of it is the individuals perhaps doing it to themselves a wee bit as well because they kind of, I think they have been given permission to reduce their workload but I think they are unlikely to actually take that permission. So yeah, maybe it's a bit of a maybe start that off with a little bit of that as well just making sure that they actually think about it themselves and make that choice consciously to reduce their workload could be worth a shot. Yeah, being the first person to take management up on that offer is quite a scary place to be, isn't it? Yeah, I'm just not going to do that bit. Yeah. They'll be quite brave or secure to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. No, no worries. Anybody else experienced this workshop fatigue. Yeah, I was about to say, I can't resonate, but you just said Jeff, and on the leadership still want those teams to deliver something right and still take part in those workshops or the transformations they're doing. And I can fully resonate with that. It is happening. So, yeah, so I kind of asked the question obviously is I'm not into that business unit at the moment but I did ask the same question. They said, yeah, that's what it is, you know. So how would we, so that prompts to my question so how would we change the leadership mindset into that so they think about clearing the way for the teams to if they wanted to transformation, think about the team and and eventually join them in that journey as well. Not like just saying yeah, we don't need the workshops only team needs those workshops. So how would you go about changing these few and I think it depends on on your relationship you have with them. So when I'm working with leaders it's usually in the role of coach. And so I have permission to, to play what I'm saying but also ask them to challenge their own assumptions about how other people might be perceiving the same situation. So for example, be perceiving this as well this is in their interest why wouldn't they do I don't, I don't understand why they're not jumping at this you know this is good for them, having a better system to work with it make it easier to do their job it's going to save time. Whereas the people doing the job might be thinking oh they're just doing this so you cut costs to make some of us redundant or they don't have to go through the switching or the actual having two systems in parallel at the same time. I think helping people see a different perspective so often place in my perceptual positions, where literally get people to stand in different parts of the room and say right in this position you're thinking about it from your perspective. In this position to think about it from this person's perspective, and you be them. And you don't then have to have that debate that discussion where someone has to admit that they're wrong they're coming up with these ideas and these different perspectives themselves, increasing their emotional intelligence emotional awareness, you know, empathy. But yeah if you're if you're working, if you're raised to be slightly different and say you're an agile coach in the organization what what's your kind of relationship there what would your natural. This is more of a rhetorical question. What would your natural in to a conversation be. Are they asking you how things going with the teams. Are they asking you so why isn't this going as quickly as possible. But whatever you're in is then using that to look at what's in it for them. Why do they want, why should they want to hear this truth. What's going on for them that might stop them hearing this truth, even though you're saying it quite out loud. Because just because I say something doesn't mean you hear it. Yeah, what's what might be incentivizing them or compromising their incentives to act in a way that they would rationally like to. But yeah, there are lots of different ways you could be engaging with each of these people right. Okay, thank you. Sorry for being late. No worries, no worries. It's a, it's like an open door thing you turn up when you're here. On a bit of a different note. Yeah, if you, the something I'm just recently found out last night, I think I told you before the scrum scrum master was sick for a couple of weeks. Recently, the teams really mature, they pretty much just self organize and manage themselves. The scrum master's kind of been moved to a newer team. Because they really do need her a lot more. It will be the, we, you know, there will be another scrum master coming on probably won't get one till the probably the start of next year really at this stage for how long it will take to hire. It'll be the third scrum master change this year. But as I say that the team is very strong very mature. Would you suggest, or what are the, what should we be thinking about when we decide whether to to have one of the team members been interim scrum master, bring in a contractor through that period and have more change and potentially we don't know the contractor might be someone who's might not be might not be a good fit, or just let the team run without scrum master. Yeah, cool. I'm just making a couple of notes because I start answering a question I forget the different points. So a couple of things came into my head there first of all, if the teams that mature, that's generally a question that you can ask the team to say, you know, all these options, what do you think would work best for you between now and then. I think they're probably in a state now where they've seen things change, they know the impact of change but also, you know, they can, they can, they can work that through a slightly less mature team might not push themselves as much. But having said that, and one thing that I've seen, which kind of goes against the general advice that I would tend to give general advice I would tend to give is around stability. One of the exceptions that I've seen in practice is with mature teams, where they will consciously choose to have more frequent changes of scrum master because they will deliberately bring in a different fresh perspective on a more frequent basis and allow them to greater chance of seeing more and more development opportunities because they're different people they're seeing different things they're fresh that device, and then mature enough and confident enough to be able to say, Yeah, we're okay with that. We're going to, I see what you say in there, but we're okay we like that about us, we're going to, we're going to keep that thanks. Good point over here. The other thing around mature teams that they can offer an organization is almost like apprenticeship schemes. So, I like, I kind of agree with what you're saying and your reservations around the contractor side of things. If you were going to go for an interim. And the team thought, yeah, we could do it, but we'd rather not. It's often a great opportunity for a new person, a youngish, not necessarily chronologically young but experienced young to get a bit of experience in the role. You know, this team's probably good enough that they can challenge them a little bit but not let them fail too much. And they get a nice little bit of exposure, knowing that there's a bit of a safety net because a few months time someone who's trying it. Yeah, funnily enough that was kind of a recent scrum master who's moving on was a brand new scrum master. And that was after coming from one who was 15 years experience and agile coaching and scrum master who would help make the team very, very mature and then we've kind of done that and now they're moving on to help a brand new team who are probably quite resistant. So they've got some real challenges, but they've made some really good inroads in there of just some of their early forming sessions and made some, you know, so they've really picked it up and they're doing really, really well. So it's really, really great to see. So they have kind of already nurtured this scrum master. So yeah, yeah. What do you think about how did they feel about it? Did they enjoy that process? Did they think that that was like an extra thing that they'd rather not, you know, split their focus on? No, they're, they're a very, the culture and the team is very sharing and it's a very mature team, but also a very nice team to work with. They really care about each other and they care. They, when they bring someone into the team as well, whether it's a scrum master or, you know, a new tester or a vendor who's coming in to join us for six to 12 months or because we do have that happening as well. They really welcome and then give them a lot of support. So they use a lot of, a lot of sort of peer programming practices, whether it's programming or not, you know, they pair up a fair bit. So, so yeah, no, they have enjoyed that. They have been fine with that. I wonder as well, is there, is it worth giving one of the team members an opportunity to all ask you? Yeah, I suppose we will ask the team, but what do you think about? What kind of overhead do you think that would give them if they're already in the team kind of following this pretty similar practices and they're probably not going to try and bring in anything to revolutionary? Is it worth giving, like, is that going to take a lot of time away from their production, do you think, for a team like that? I'll come back to that one after I've heard what Rohit's got to say. Okay. Rohit's raised his hand on this, so he wants to say something. Yeah, actually my question was on the do actually mature teams do need a full time scrum master because they're quite mature. So they know what practices they're doing, they know how to facilitate, they know how to be technically experts, you know, have a technical stability as well. And, oh, do they need more of a like just a, you know, a coach or a coach whenever they need someone they can go to, rather than have a full time scrum master if they quite mature enough. So I think that my general answer to that one is, you can get to a point where you don't need a full time scrum master that should be there. In fact, they should be aiming to not need a scrum master at all would be what Rohit typically said, but I know of a few teams, and it sounds a little bit like your team might be fitting this into this sort of bracket map But yeah, they this idea that when you think about growth, you know, a growing be within an organization, most people think about scrum master growing a team. But there are a few situations where that team actually can help grow scrum masters and even product and it's because they're experienced that stable enough. I've yet to, I did meet one team that said, you know, we don't, we don't need retrospectives, because you know, we're awesome. And so what should we do now. And my advice then was to resign, set up a new company and charge shit out of money as the best team in the world for hire. Because if they are the one and only perfect team, then they could be rolling in money. But it's slightly facetious comment, but in my experience, yeah, every team has the opportunity to improve some way and I know it's a little bit of a cliche, but even if you are at the top of your game, you only the top of this game. And the game is almost constantly changing. And you if you said that the apex predator theory that they've seen usually around the organization. So the organization with the largest market share is optimize themselves for the current market conditions which makes them prime candidates for extinction. When the market conditions change, same for a team, optimize their processes for how things work now, and slowly and surely they become more and more I shaped after they become T shaped. And so what the really smart teams will do is they will actually force themselves almost like a chaos monkey style, you know, resilience building. We're going to break something and then work out how we as a team can actually respond to that really, really well whether it's we're going to take someone out of the team for a sprint. You know, we're going to swap a new member in, or we're going to, and it sounds counterintuitive because you're taking something that's working really, really well, and making it work less well, but that resilience that ability to respond to the unknown is a huge competitive advantage in your teams if you can get to that point. Now, could a team member play that role. Yeah, they could. And so what the overhead would it take kind of depends, you know, what their comfort levels are if they come if they're happy to just sort of sit there where they are right now so you know we're pretty good. We've got things ticking over quite nicely in there we're very predictable. We don't really need to push things that much anymore. Everything's working quite nicely. Let's not rock the boat. Things are probably the ceremonies are probably running really smoothly the product back was probably in a pretty good state. It's almost, you don't really need planning sessions this team might almost be close to a pretty good combat set that because everything screams nicely. But if they wanted to push themselves. If they wanted to increase their resilience, then I would suggest that the team of playing that role wouldn't be the place to go for it. Andrea wants to jump in as well. Yeah that's another option and opportunity to be considered from my point of view. How about splitting the team and spreading the knowledge the XP and whatever they have in hands to other teams who might not be in such a comfortable situation, depending on circumstances that could be the right point to say okay guys you have figured it out for yourself. Now spread the news show the practices show the other guys what we can do here. Yeah, depending on the circumstances that would be an option to grow the company not the team. Yeah, it's definitely an option. And I'm going to link back to to actually the first conversation that we have Jeff which is around motivation and engagement and when things are churning. And a lot of people in those teams that I experienced they've got that point that they things are working so well. They trust their teammates, they've got this sense of completion. They've got this sense of camaraderie that identity as a team. And the idea of breaking that team up is such a sort of visceral threat to them they really they don't want to lose that attachment, even though they can see the logic in spreading this out and you know the idea of the idea going to and they're almost like well if I'm going to leave this team I might as well leave the company. Now, I'm not. That shouldn't be an issue in an ideal world that shouldn't be an issue. Right, because we're all corporate citizens. And, you know, we all know that actually helping the organization be better as better for us individually but we're also a little bit selfish as individuals, and are working with these people have probably all been on dysfunctional teams as well. And when they found one team that's working really really well, they probably don't want to take that gamble. And that I found quite difficult. And the, that has actually been one of the biggest areas of, I would say, subconscious resistance to change. That might not be, that might not be too true because you don't see it as often as you see dysfunction but people don't realize that they're trying to protect what they've got. When they're resisting what's on offer in my experience. The principle behind that is absolutely spot on. So, years ago, when we when, when the first conversations around scaling scrum came out. You know, the Tiger team to Tiger team or not, you know, was was the debate that most organizations have do you get one team working really really well, and then split them so that you can see two teams or three teams. Or do you say, right, you, you've got it going you stay together everybody else. Look at them. And there's no right or wrong answer. And there's all sorts of variables to take into account, not least of which the personal the emotional things. I don't think there's, there's a blueprint out there. But this, maybe there's, maybe there's a middle ground. You know, maybe our sprint, our experiment sprint or stretch sprint, whatever you want to call it our chaos monkey sprint is we're going to take one person at this team or two people at this team to go and work with other team members. And see if we can get back to being amazing by incorporating these new people. While those people can go off and spread some knowledge and spread some love elsewhere in the organization, maybe that's a middle ground. Yeah, I certainly felt that visual reaction that you talked about, and I've got all this backlog to get through and there's new new initiatives coming up and I thought, I need this team. Yeah, even that just as a product only learn what, you know, one of the actual people in the directly in the team. Yeah. On a slightly related note. When we talk about what I'm talking to these teams about capacity management. Yeah, how do you resource things within your teams in an agile way. The one piece of advice that really sort of hits them in the face is, don't let your best person do the work. So if you've got an expert in whatever it is, that's the one person organization that should not be doing those tasks. They're the best person at it, they'll do it quick as they'll do it best. They're the best person that can do it. Whereas if you've got them slowing down by mentoring somebody else, you will know this right but this, you can increase your resilience as an organization. But that individual, are they motivated by the prospect of mentoring. Are they secure enough in the value that they add that they don't think they're undermining their value by sharing their skills with organizations. Yeah, above the line things these are emotional psychological things but they're all part of behavioral responses. If I think yeah, I'm not, I'm not becoming more dispensable to the organization by helping people grow their skills and what I do. And I'm not becoming less relevant by not keeping my hands in. And I can cope with seeing someone do it slightly not as well as I would do it. Then everyone's going to be in a better place. And the same goes for a team right so if you've got that team that's brilliant at this. Arguably, you could argue, they're the last team that should be doing that thing, because that team will become my shape. Possibly. And to build on on what you're saying Jeff. If that team is so good, they should be hunting for the obstacles, the impediments in the organization and help the organization to grow itself. Because inevitably you have two aspects in scrum that is doing the work that is valuable to the customers and showing the organization what obstacles they have to arrive at that point. So they then could hunt for for the obstacles and show management where to improve the system. If you leave the team alone and just use them as a feature factory, let's say. Yeah, you could do that. That would be waste from my point of view. They could become consultants to have the management with their knowledge from the trenches where are obstacles and what is the most important bottom like to be resolved right now. Yeah, we had to. I don't necessarily, I don't I'm hesitant here because I don't want to dilute the great point you just made there and there's with an anecdote that might not be. But we had a team back when I was at BT. Some really, really good XP people that we've managed to hire a lot of them from the States. And because that's where XP was quite big back in the 10th century. And to bring in this idea of agile engineering practices and so on. And they very quickly became they called them the code red team. So basically they became the team that was parachuted into sort out, you know, the failing projects the ones that were on the on the radar of senior management. Was that a good use of them. You could argue yes. And I think in the early stages, it was a good use of them because they kind of related to how companies like ThoughtWorks work. It's that going in and just solving the technical problems. It gives you a short term nice feeling. But then you become dependent upon that. And the people that you leave behind are no better. So to begin with, they were given the time to actually coach and pair with the people in place. And as they got a bit of a reputation. The projects got more and more important, more and more crucial, more shorter and shorter deadlines. And they didn't, they were just a case of coming fix it, stop the red light flashing, go on to your next mission. So there's, I think the moral there is these people can be at value in lots of different ways to your organization, either as a team, as a feature team, split out as mentors. Or in different ways that they can find as a team. That really intrigues me in terms of, I guess like an operational or mobilization sort of a perspective on that like, how have you seen an organization successfully realize, you know, where we're on the battle map of the organization, they need to drop in a team like that and kind of define what their success is going to look like so that they know when to pull them out and you know what I mean like just logistically I'm intrigued as to has anybody seen this as a model kind of. I mean what you described Jeff seems to suggest it works somewhere. So I'm curious like if I wanted to try to introduce a pattern like that and another organization. I guess that's the question how, how would I maybe do that. The floor in that setup that I described there was, it wasn't really very strategically prioritized. It was, it was literally a case of highest paid person in the ring. Who knows who, you know, who owed who favors that meant that this was the project of the day. Organizations that have done it better have managed to say, they have managed to link strategy and tactics. They've managed to say strategically these are our priorities this is what we're trying to achieve. We're going to cut down some of the stuff that doesn't contribute to that, because then we have more people to work on the most important stuff. And when things aren't, when things are threatening our strategy. It will take more drastic action. But we know how to decide which areas deserve more attention, and actually when it's better to actually not fix it now. Because sometimes coming in and putting out a fire just invites people to become arsonists. We had something very similar started this year and it was exactly that was the, we have essentially a roadmap that we sort of have a fairly goal oriented outcome oriented roadmap. That is across multiple work streams. And, and then there's the stuff that the exact just comes up with that they suddenly need. And we put together a team that we called spec ops, and they said, give it to Matt because, because he, he always manages to get stuff done. And then so I was another work stream and two teams I was feeding. And we did it. But I'm not, I just say I'm not doing this anymore. This is way too hard. So, but it was exactly that it wasn't strategic. It was just the stuff that, oh, we also need this on top of all your other stuff, but it was that we also need this team. And there was nothing strategic or clever about it really, other than here. I think for me one of the one of the metrics that it's actually a really almost business school 101 metric if you like. Well to business school 101 metrics that actually become more important when you actually start doing this stuff strategically payback and opportunity cost. So, usually we think internal rate return our way there that they're the clever metrics they're the NBA metrics they're the sexy metrics. Payback when can we actually get our return on investment back. It's effectively saying, how can we run cheap experiments. How can we get an MVP that gives us our investment back quickly. And opportunity cost is what if I do this one thing. What can I not do. What does that stop me doing all I have to stop doing. Actually, I posted in the communities that I was reading this this book near a hour and distractible and part of, as you know it was a podcast. And it was the etymology of the word decision. And so, decision is to cut. Right. So when you're making a decision, you're cutting off your options, because you're deciding on that. And a lot of executives and organizations don't see the cost of the decision they don't see what's being cut. And really good agile implementations help people make better decisions because they can see quite clearly the cost the opportunity cost, as well as the actual, you know, how much is this going to cost me in terms of manpower and capital and whatever the opportunity cost. And I think that's a really important part of it for me. I imagine what kind of management would listen to something like that. A discussion like that. What is it that we are aiming for strengthening our structures and not doing things. I have rarely seen someone to to take advantage of that discussion and to focus on that. I'll be interested to say rarely so that means you have to be interested in your example of what you have seen. For me, the general thing around this is new. So I don't know what the what the data is these days but when when I was at BT we were always told that senior management generally change every two to three years. You've got a CEO CIO there after two or three years and they go to the next job. Same with your board members they change they get promoted they leave to get to stop they didn't get promoted they do. So two to three years. When you get someone new coming. They want to make an impact they want to be able to say I changed this I made an impact I took this organization. I did this program, and it was better. So those people who are new, generally are the ones that are more open to doing something like that in my experience the ones that are close. They've been there a couple of years, they generally don't want to rock the boat because they got their next gig lined up they don't want to leave on a bad note. So they want to take a risk in my experience. What about you. The organization I have in mind and I've seen reflects itself and the management is listening very well to the people to the experiments and the experiences they are having in the daily work. So they don't think they have all the answers. They are not so convinced about their points of view of the world. They have learned that they have only part of the answers and the other answers are somewhere else. And they have to come together across hierarchies without thinking in silos or so what is the opportunity here where are we good or missing some customers demands or requests. That has see those people get to that point. So I have in mind two consultancies of the HR ways of working. And they are reflecting a lot, and they are changing their managers regularly, you, you don't get go into that one and have a career management. It's, it's just a role for time. And then you, you switch. That is the type of organization I have in mind. The reflection where, where have we shifted decisions that could have been made, maybe, where have we been too late where have we been too early. These kind of questions they are rarely discussed. Coming together regularly without a clear general and just reflecting what have we observed like a retro. Big retro maybe. That is really rare to be seen. I've used it in one company I work with and it worked well but it took a time like a year so to get there. And we had some ugly truth out there. Emotionally heavy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've seen some really. A couple of really frustrating. Just frustrating for me personally situations where I was almost 100% certain that every single member of the senior leadership team understood what was needed. But there was some other games going on. And I wasn't aware of them to begin with. And usually it's to do with jobs changing. So they knew that the CEO was going to be moving on, and they were pretty sure that it was going to be a choice between two or three of the other. It was going to take that person's job and so that there was, they weren't incentivized to collaborate or look good or take personal risks. And just that that little game was such a frustrating way to miss out frustrating reason to miss out on what could have been a really, really good. Good outcome. So there are lots of reasons why it won't work, which makes you wonder, how does it ever work, but how did we get there. It needs a level of healthy conflict there, which is hard to sustain, even if you can have it once no room. Yeah, healthy conflicts. Well used phrases. For me, I think part of that is visible. For conflict to be healthy, it has to be transparent. Like we have to know what we're having conflict about not conflicting about one thing as a, as a way of avoiding talking about another thing, you know, and that's what I, that's what I've seen more often than not people holding their cards to their chest at that leadership level, because they they're looking at their next move. Going back to your original question, what kind of people would would not do that. I think this is going to, this is a risky answer for me to give us a younger people to younger leaders who know that or feel at least that they've still got time on their side. They don't have to get this particular role. I think what I'm seeing, I am seeing, again, I'd like to see the statistics actually let's see the data on this. The age of board members the age of senior leadership teams is, I would say has dropped quite considerably from when I started. And it's become more diverse, not enough but still. I think that's that's a good thing there's a higher appetite for risk, the younger we are. And there's a higher appetite for collaboration, generally speaking, I think. Having said that, there's more wisdom. Later on, when you've seen these kinds of things, but whether that wisdom turns to cynicism is the, is the key thing I think for me. I was an enjoyable conversation. Sounds like a startup. Describing. Well, I think that's part of the reason why boards and senior leadership teams are becoming younger, because organizations who are slightly more traditional realize that the only hope they've got is to bring in that that energy that that sort of start at mentality who would normally not want to work in a corporate environment they are that so have that sort of entrepreneurial mindset give them the resources that they need to channel the energy in the name of the organization rather than go at, you know, risk their own risk their own and almost get a head start with a bit of bit of backing bit of finance bit of resources rather than infrastructure rather. So, yeah, I mean it was even even in, even in government departments. There are sort of spin off startups to try and inject. Even in government. So I wasn't a digger you know I was thinking more about my own local area. I've seen it. I've seen it here by council we went to visit. So, yeah, I know it was quite interesting they did created this little, little team that was essentially allowed allowed to do whatever they wanted and come up with they came up with really cool stuff the laps and things like that and yeah it was quite interesting but it's not there anymore unfortunately. Well, and in a way, they probably shouldn't right if they've been successful. They should probably be either subsumed into something else will spun off if they haven't been successful then they would stop being funded in a new new thing should be better. And so they shouldn't be around for that long. But yeah that idea of injecting that mindset in injecting that energy and creating and I'm going to again because perhaps because I really like this sort of closure idea I'm going to bring this back to just original thing take it back to where we started different ways of engagement, creating that sense of a bubble, whether it's an island or something something some small area that people feel that they can have impact on they can feel safe and they can feel connected within. They can feel does provide them some stability but also the ability to do something new. I'm not necessarily talking about creating new corporate bubbles but just some kind of. This is us. We are committed here we are in this we have a purpose we have a goal we can trust each other we can put our energy in and not feel it's going to be wasted. I think that is a different way of engaging people within a larger organization that might be worth exploring. Nicely done. I think it all together I like it. Well thanks for joining guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.