 Right, so I'll start with the story, right? So a couple of weeks ago, my daughter was just a hand servant. We decided that she should start learning how to bake. And we started with, let's try and bake a cake. And what we did was on the kitchen bench, to help out, I measured the quantities of all the ingredients in the cake that would go in the mix. So baking powder, sugar, flour, all the kind of things that go in the cake, measured the right quantities together, and we said, let's bake a cake together. She's very excited. And then she starts mixing the cake mix, puts it in the oven, and then she's peeking through this see-through glass to see what the progress is like with the cake. After a little while, to her disappointment, what's happened was instead of the cake going like that, it goes hollow. And she's becoming a bit concerned now. Papa, look, the cake's going hollow in the middle. It's not rising. I said, did you put the baking powder in there? And she goes, oh, no, maybe not. I don't remember. Oh, no, I don't think so. And then we look at the bench, bench top, and the baking powder is still there. And then she goes, oh, Papa, can I open the oven quickly, cake out, and then sprinkle the baking powder and then push it back in? Will that work? The reason I'm telling you this story is because this is exactly the same behavior that I'm seeing with leaders and executives of large and small organizations who are transforming to air joll. Air joll is seen as an afterthought. Many people are treating air joll as the magic dust to sprinkle after the project started or after a transformation has started rather than making it in. And it's said that the leaders and executives of these organizations who claim to be air joll organizations are calling people on people like me to come and help out on a project that's just started. And we want to sprinkle some air joll magic on it. I'm sure you've all experienced those kind of cases where the cake is already in the oven. Now, what I'm going to do today is cause a little bit of disruption by challenging some of the thinking that has been around in the leadership area for a while. And I want to work with you guys to change that mindset and the culture. Now, I've had many years of experience with air joll or, sorry, organizations that have been transforming to air joll over the last years. And I can tell you that this is one area, the air joll leadership area, that our community is struggling with most. So for the rest of the session, I want to work with you to come up with some of the ways that we can help that. Help that community. Are we ready? Very good. That's not allowed enough, yes. Especially after lunch. Very good. So let me start with asking you. Think about kind of barriers that you have personally faced or your organization has personally faced in terms of making you slower with your air joll transformation. Think about that number one thing that's making you slower or your organization slower. And if you haven't started the air joll transformation yet, think about what is it that's stopping you or your organization? Here's a list of all the kind of things that are common barriers in organizations. Can't read the middle too, I'll read it out for you. Cannot change the organizational culture. Lack of expertise within the organization. Concerns around implementing non-IT programs. Cannot change pre-existing waterfall rigid methods. Lack of management support. And concern around scaling and distributed air joll. Those are the most common barriers that I've seen across all the organizations that are. And there are more than that. But these are the most common. And in IBM, we are currently part of what I can call the largest air joll transformation ever to have taken place on earth, affecting 400,000 people. And we are doing this seriously. And we have faced all of these. And most of these, we are currently overcoming or planning to overcome by doing things differently. And I'll share with you what we have done differently. So firstly, can I get everyone to stand up, please? So after all, this is an air joll session. Has Naresh told you that you'll be losing two cages in the week? This is my contribution towards that. So what I want to do is have a think about all those common barriers. And sit down if you feel that cannot change the organizational culture is the number one barrier for you. You may sit down now for your organization. If you feel lack of air joll experts in your organization is the number one barrier for your transformation, you may sit down now. Concerns around implementing a non-ITE program. If that's a barrier, you may sit down now. If your number one barrier cannot change the preexisting rigid waterfall method, you may sit down now. And lack of management support from the top level, if you feel that's the barrier, you may sit down now. Lastly, concerns around scaling and distributed air joll. If that's a barrier, you may sit down now. For the people who are still standing, I'm hoping you're going to say there are no barriers and you're all happy. No? OK, so let's just hear from you guys what your number one barrier is that's not on there. No barriers? Excellent. Who are you? Yeah? Yeah. So I'll have to cut you off there. So we've figured out that scaling is probably your number one barrier, yeah? And your one? Yeah. Yeah, so no barriers. Lucky, lucky. So 99% of the people here, we have got barriers, right? So two, with no barriers, I wish I could work for you guys. Yeah? So the reason I'm showing you this is because what we found in this room here is conducive to what has been shown in the most of the air joll surveys globally. And I want to refer to this one here, which was done by version one, inability to change the organizational culture and inexperienced people. And the last one, resistance to change. Those were the three top ones in that survey there. However, I want to show you this one here, which is a survey that was done by IBM Global across 1,500 practitioners. And what they found was what makes change most challenging is changing mindsets and culture. And those people who were here last year, you might have seen Dr. Edmeth 50's talk. Anyone remember that? And he talked about what are the two key ingredients of sustainable organizational agility. And he was saying culture and mindset. And those are the two key ones that IBM have also found that people are struggling with most. Now, when it comes to culture and mindset, you don't just create cultures overnight. I'll talk about that a little bit later. But what I want to show you is as leaders, we want to also focus on what makes a change successful, top management support. We want to make sure that as leaders and executives, we are not just providing lip service and approval on paper. We are really empowering people. As leaders, we want to create empowerment, not just provide support like that. And what can leaders and executives do to really make that happen? Culture doesn't just get created overnight. It doesn't just automatically get changed. And leaders can't be magicians in there. Agile coaches can't be magicians in there, change the culture overnight for any organization. What does a leader really do to change the culture of an organization? Leaders have a huge influence on where the culture is going with an organization. What leaders can do is make sure that they understand that the culture of an organization is shaped by the worst behaviors that they are willing to tolerate. And what's even more important is they should realize that a culture of an organization is shaped by the best behaviors that the leaders are willing to amplify. There's a huge difference in the two. And you've got to do both. So talking about culture change and things like that brings on to all the kind of things that mindset and culture, when we get that right, then there are things that leaders have to demonstrate themselves. So what I've done is, based on my work with lots of organizations that have gone through this journey, I've learned a lot of things that leaders were not doing and needed to do. And we've learned by our own mistakes as well. And with inspiration from those people, the leaders of those organizations, what I've done is put a checklist together. And this checklist is based on four key elements, the catalyst and the nourishes that promote progress. And I'm also highlighting the inhibitors and the toxins in this checklist that promote setback. There are a list of questions in this checklist that allow the leaders to self-assess and then look at their own behaviors and perspectives that create or promote progress. They look at themselves and look at their own behaviors like, as in a retrospective of themselves, saying, am I doing the things that are needed and expected out of this team, or my team, my organization, to promote that culture change? Now, I'll tell you where you can get that checklist shortly. But this photo here is from the London Olympics. And this is Hussein Bald, the fastest man on earth. The 100 meter race in the Olympic game is the most anticipated event in the whole 16 day program. Do we all agree? The 100 meter race. And also, I love the 4 by 100 meter race, where the four best runners from every country are on the track at the same time, and they're passing the baton around to win that race. Now, what I want you to think about is, when you are watching that 100 by 4 meter, 100 meters by 4 race, relay race, there's a guy on the starting block. And there is another guy on the 100 meter mark, another guy on the 200 meter mark, 300 meter mark, and then there's the finish line. Do you ever focus on the other runners? What do you focus on when you are, or what does the camera focus on when they are televising the relay race, the runners, which runners? Wines with the baton, the ones on the starting block. And it's most exciting when they go to the 100 meter mark and they pass on the baton and this thing falls. For me, that's the most exciting bit. I don't know about you guys. But that's what you look at, the baton. And the team that gets the baton past the finish line first is the winner. Do you ever see the camera, or have you had the privilege of going to this event first hand and watching these races? Do you know what the guy in the 100 meter mark is doing? While he's waiting for the baton to arrive, what's he doing? Finding autograph? Warming up? We don't know. I've never seen them. I don't know if you guys. 300 meter mark? What's he doing? It's going to be a while before he gets the baton. What's he doing all the time? Does anyone care? Because he hasn't got the baton. Now, imagine this is the race of the Olympic game. And there was a consulting company, and we shall name that company ABC Consulting. I hope there's no ABC Consulting in India. So ABC Consulting are also participating as one of the races. So there's Jamaica, lane one, lane two, USA, lane three, Japan, lane four, Canada, lane five, ABC Consulting. And what they have done is found four runners from the organization that can run sub 10 seconds in 100 meters. And there are four runners from each team. This is how the consulting company would run the race. Firstly, they will introduce a project manager on the track. So what's going to happen is the guy with the baton, he's all good, he's all good to go with the same bolt and everyone on the starting line, or maybe not the same bolt, he's on the 300 meter mark. The guy in the 100 meter mark, you work for ABC Consulting. 100 meters down, it's going to be a while before you volunteering, by the way, to take part in this race. It's going to be a while before the baton gets to you. What are you going to do for the 10 seconds? I've got an idea. Can you go on there and say, can you just do the high jump quickly, come back in time for the baton to arrive? And then guide the 200 meter mark. Now, 20 seconds. I'm sure you can run 100 meter on the second track there, come back in time for the baton, and then receive the baton to pass it to Evan, who is going to be the 300 meter runner. Evan, by the time the baton gets to you, it's going to be ages. You can run a half marathon, and then come back in time for this. That way, we are all fully utilized. And then the race starts. Jamaica, USA, Canada, they all run past this track. The 100 meter guy, he's just done the high jump, he's coming, huffing and puffing, receiving the baton, and says, which way? The 200 meter guy, again, he's just finishing off the 100 meter race on the track two, running, huffing and puffing, while all the other runners are almost finishing, whereas Evan on the 300 meter mark is nowhere to be seen, because he's still running that half marathon. Because we are all focusing on the runners, keeping the runners busy rather than winning the races by focusing on the baton. And as leaders, we need to change that. We need to change how we measure people and success. Now, if we were to do things differently, here's what I suggest leaders look at. And I'll refer to the relay race quite a lot to see how this fits in. So stop starting and start finishing. Of the seven things I want to talk about first, because what this does is we all want to seem to be like busy. The perception we want to create to the outside world is we've got too much work on. And we do that by taking more and more projects in our portfolio or in our areas. That's just human nature. That's just how we operate. Because then we are seen to be important, because we've got so many things in progress. Again, IBM was classic in this behavior. We recognized it, and we are changing it so that we are treating work in progress as a liability rather than as an asset. Focusing on minimizing the runners and keeping the baton moving to win the races more. And when I'm talking about races, I can be talking about projects, programs, anything, smallest of the task or the largest of the program. And the key here is to slow down to go faster. And this can only be done when you measure success differently, when you measure people differently. The performance of people is measured not by how fast they're running, but rather how much output they're producing, how many races they are winning. Slowing down to go faster, there are three key elements that you look for in any through agile environment. Complete transparency, inspection, and adaption. We all know that. Yet there are so many leaders and executives who are not allowing their teams to slow down to inspect and adapt and continuously improve. Again, being measured on how fast they're running. And the teams don't feel like they should be slowing down to inspect and adapt. Whereas in theory, we all say, yeah, we're doing retrospectives and things like that. But truly, we are not allowing our teams to do that. We're not encouraging our teams to do that. I'm making a huge generalization here, but you know what I'm getting. So when we're talking about stopping to inspect and adapt, a lot of people say, oh, yeah, we did a PR. We did a post-mortem. We do that every project at the end of every live program word. We do a post-mortem. That's too late. The person's already died. Post-mortems are of no use to that project, because the project's finished. And hence up, if you have an environment where learning from a project are relevant and reused, all the learnings are applied to the other projects. None. I haven't seen any. So a better way to do that would be to do a pre-mortem. And the thing I'm talking about is before the project starts or within the project, do a pre-mortem saying, this is what it's going to be like. And the CIO of IBM does it all the time. And I'll give you an example of what I've got here is a pre-mortem. So this is a project that maybe it's a fake project, by the way. It's a project that's going to start in July. Sorry, finish in July. And it hasn't started yet. And here's an example of a pre-mortem that a CIO of the organization could write and publish it in their internal intranet. Over the first weekend of July, 2016, we put into production our long-anticipated new timesheet system. While the actual release went smoothly, it wasn't without challenges. The integration to the payroll and HR applications were particularly tricky. However, team members of all three departments worked as one team and made sure that everything was OK. Our new timesheet system is now in place, and the change management team has done a terrific job to ensure that each and every employee of our organization can seamlessly transition to using the new fully integrated timesheet system from now onward. Well done to the team, CIO. Imagine the project is about to start. This is on the organization-wide intranet. What effect does this have? Firstly, what's happened is everyone is now on board with the CIO's vision. CIO has also, in a subtle way, highlighted some of the difficulties and the kind of things that will be challenging in the project. Everyone is now acknowledging it and across all of those difficulties that are anticipated. The most important thing that a leader of any organization can do is make sure that everyone from top to the operational level, down to the operational level, is sharing the vision of the leader. I'll tell you a story around last year when I got invited to help a team in a large telecommunications organization in Australia. The first day on the job, they said, oh, 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, Monday morning, you come in and we'll do a workshop and start the project. And they didn't tell me much about the project. I said, OK, that's cool. I'll rock up in Melbourne at 10 a.m. Monday morning. Take my bag, put it in the room, and there's about 25 people around the table, all waiting for me eagerly. And this is 5 to 10. And they're all there. So I walk in and I just hear someone saying, oh, this patient's here. We can start kickoff sprint one now. And I'm thinking to myself, I have no idea about this project. I hope these guys do, because if they're going to kickoff this first sprint now, I hope they know what they're going to do. I'm just here to facilitate as a coach. Because I was expecting as a coach, I would just go in first day, get to know the people, get to know about the project, and then plan the roadmap for the rest of the journey. But I'm hearing there are different ideas here now. So then I get everyone to introduce themselves. They're all key people from IT in the project. And the thing that I asked them first was, so why are we doing this project? And they go, Deepesh, we don't want to waste time today. This is our third goal starting this project. This is a real story, by the way. This is our third goal at starting this project. We don't want to fluff around with all these kind of things. I know you're an agile coach, but we want to get down to doing things. So let's not just talk about fluff and get down to doing it. I said, OK, do me a favor then. Just write one sticky with one centenzo nut, one sticky nut, and put it up on the wall, each one of you, as to what you think is the driver for this project, why are we doing this project? And they all look at me in a funny way. And then I got three stickies up on the wall. Of the 25 people, there were three people who put stickies up. And I read the stickies out loud. All three were mutually exclusive. And the people who did not write stickies either had no idea why the project was to be done, the drivers or the vision. They knew the details of what they had to do as a tester, architect, everything else. But on the ground level, no one knew why this project was being done. This is my challenge to you. Think about your own project, the own organizations that you come from, the program of work you are involved in now. And if you ask the people on the ground, developers, testers, DAs, architects, what is the driver for this project? What is the vision? Why do we want this project? Get them to write a sticky. And I can assure you that less than 50% of them would know that. If you get a score more than 50%, email me please. Because this is something that I see in every single organization that I go to. The people on the ground are not sharing the same vision as the CIO or the CEL. It's not cascading down. Now, I see that in these organizations, a lot of leaders and executives, we all know that we should be focusing on doing the right work. Leaders have the most impact when they're focusing on here, letting people know what the vision is, and driving people towards doing the right work. Yet we see that most leaders would delve into that. Micromanaging people to see if they're doing the work right. Now, this is what the leaders should be doing. Objectives, goals, mission, vision. Define all those, cascade down into one funnel, and let the teams pull what is to be done. Teams self-manage, and then decide what they're going to pull into their own team system. Now, and we all see leaders should be doing this. What I'm seeing is leaders getting involved in this area. And I'm sure you will agree with me where you see leaders operating in here as well. And that's where we're getting the balance wrong. This is where these things are not being cascaded down. And we need to use agile and the agile method to cascade down the vision and the mission and all the goals of the organization down to the operational team level, just like that. And if the teams were able to see the vision, they'll be performing better. They'll know the reason for doing things, and they'll become more innovative, because they'll think of different ways to do things. One pattern that I see in many organizations, most traditional organizations, IBM included, up to very recently, was we have got set up teams that have got all developers based in Pune, all testers in Hyderabad, all BAs and business reps in Sydney. And we're trying to do this agile thing with silos of groups of people in every location dotted around the world. And this is common, not just to IBM, but this is common behavior to large organizations all over. Even large banks like HSBC, but yes. So what we've started to do with more and more need to scale up and go distributed and think about that, distributed agile. We've been forced to go into a scenario where we have to minimize the handoff, get rid of these pods and silos, and go to a scenario where we've got back to the relay race. One baton holder who is taking the race by its own and then taking it to the finish line. So minimizing the handoff, creating end-to-end capability by each location. And it's taken some effort, especially for organizations that's as large as IBM. It's taken a lot of effort to have end-to-end capability that has more accountability, less coordination, and all the kind of reduced cycle times and things like that for things. Now, this is all good at the team of teams level, where you set up teams that are end-to-end capable. Then you look at, within each of the teams, how do we get those teams within themselves operating at the optimal level? So here's something that I wanna show you. Here's a list of 14 common weaknesses that human beings have. And we are all human beings, none of us are perfect. Some of, we have some good qualities and perhaps not so good qualities. So what I wanna do is try this as an exercise here right now. Pick three of these 14 common weaknesses that resonate most with you. And don't worry, we won't share it with anybody else, it's just for your own benefit. From this list here, pick three, shouldn't take too long. If I was to pick three, I would say I'm number three stubborn, I'm number six, shy and 13 indecisive. That's what my wife tells me anyway. So we got the three biggest weaknesses? Yes? If you're ready, go, yay! Are we ready? Okay, so time to move on then. Okay, now here's the good news. Look at the numbers that you had for the three biggest weaknesses. And look at the traits of your three biggest weaknesses. On the right hand side are those hidden strengths. Just because I'm stubborn, I'm dedicated. Just because I'm shy, I'm reflective. Just because I'm indecisive, I'm patient. This is one of the best team exercises I've found yet that will gel a team together. When forming new teams, we need to make sure that the team members amongst themselves know each other's strengths and weaknesses. And only by knowing each other's strengths and weaknesses, the teams know where to go for additional strengths that they're lacking or help other people with the weaknesses that they may have. And as leaders, we need to create an environment where team members feel safe to open up and share their weaknesses with everybody in the team. We've got to create an environment where it's safe to do that. I walk into so many organizations where there's this defensive behavior. It's all about protecting yourself. There's no feeling of safety there. And you wanna do agile in those environments? It's not gonna happen. So when creating teams, you should look at competencies that have a huge overlap. But when it comes to picking team members within the teams, pick teams that share the same values of openness, transparency, honesty, all the good things that agile brings in, respect and trust. If you've got that at the ground level, then you cascade that up. Now, if there is only one message that you wanna take out of this talk here today, make it this one. As leaders and executives, create an environment where our people feel safe to fail and then notice the difference. Then only you will see innovation thriving, not by the innovation labs and innovation department. We don't need to create that. Create an environment where it's safe to try a lot of things. Think about this. What happens to employees when they have an experiment that has been successful in your organization? Are they rewarded? And what happens when these experiments fail? Are they still rewarded or are they punished? After a failure, would that employee feel like trying out another experiment? Think about this. Because as leaders, we need to create that environment where employees feel like twirling things over and over again till they succeed. But fail safe, fail small, not big ones. Teams thrive when there is an environment where they can twirl our things. Now, number six is deliver business value rather than just project. What I've seen lots of organizations doing is when they transform to agile or start their journey towards this transformation, they pick a flavor. Or it's gonna be scrum, or it's gonna be safe, or it's gonna be something else. And they try and implement all the kind of things that is prescribed in those flavors or that matters. Without changing the undercurrent. And what is that underlined thing? You can have as many principles, as many practices, as many tools, but what is that one underlined thing that will change and promote different behavior? For me, I'm like a drop in the ocean in IBM. 400,000 employees, I'm one of them. What's gonna drive changes in my behavior? Scrum, safe, agile? No, it's my KPI. Isn't it right for you as well? It's my KPI. How am I measured? However I measured is how my behavior is gonna be. All the things that I do is gonna be driving towards achieving that KPI. And what most leaders are missing is that step in their organizational transformation journey is to adjust the KPIs of their people to be conducive to the agile way of working. We're still measuring the success of the people in the older way of how fast they're running on the track rather than what output they're producing. We're still measuring projects by time and cost rather than ROI. How do we measure success of the organization? And that's all that is currently being done in IBM is we're changing all of that. It's taking time, but we're changing all of that as to how we measure everything. And you get what you measure. And this is the key thing that we need to recognize is ROI, Trump, everything when it comes to success. Measuring success. Tip number seven is around servant leadership. This is the underpinning thing. This is the thing that underpins everything that I've said so far is all the kind of things that we as leaders need to do has to be seen as empowering rather than just providing approval. And I've heard many talks around this area. We all know what it means, but what does it really mean? When it comes to leadership, when it comes to executive servant leadership, doesn't sit well with them. I've talked to so many leadership executives where they say, oh yeah, yeah, no, I've empowered my team to do agile and they've got all the resources, they've got all the tools, we've got coaches, everything's all good. So there's no excuse for failure. Isn't that what you've heard as well? So what do they need to do differently? What can executives and leaders do to help promote that culture and the mindset that's required to achieve that organizational agility? Be the role models, just like they expect of the other people. Same behaviors they have to demonstrate. And it's difficult. It doesn't come naturally to the leadership group. It doesn't come naturally to the execs to demonstrate the same kind of behaviors as a servant leader. And this is where I want to remind everybody about when you start baking that cake. Don't sprinkle agile on the top. Agile is pervasive. Agile is gotta be thought, not a afterthought, but something that you've got to put in from the very beginning, because agile is a game changer when it comes to solutioning, when it comes to pricing, when it comes to resourcing. And as executives, we want to make sure that we've thought about that, all of that, and then being part of the journey. Did you have a question? Yeah. Is that based on the safe fail thing? Yeah, I'll take it after I finish. Yeah, we'll park it, yeah. So, good question though. So I'll just wrap up on this one and then we'll take questions. So what I wanna talk about is all the kind of things that agile executives and leaders have to do differently. It doesn't come naturally. And we all know that there are leaders and ex-ex amongst us that are struggling with this notion. And to help that, is this checklist here that I've created that can be used to remind leaders of all the kind of things that they do on a daily basis, like interactions with the team, asking questions, how they approach team members, how they approach or share their vision, how they provide feedback, how they communicate to everybody, all the kind of things that are small items but have a huge bearing on the perception that they create amongst the organization, other employees of the organization. So what I'd like you to do is download that checklist using that URL today or, better still, in the IBM booth, you can pick up a hard copy of this checklist and give it to the leaders or if you are a leader, start using it immediately. Because only then you will come across or become aware of all the kind of key elements that need addressing for you to be able to unleash the full potential of your agile transformation efforts. Thank you. So Q&O. Q&O is in questions and opinions because I don't have many answers. I have lots of opinions. So repeating your question around how do you assess or validate, yes, right? So when you have end-to-end capability, it's not to get it right the first time, right? Even when you have end-to-end capability at each location, it's to be able to trial out ideas within that pod, right? So we should be under no illusion that you've got to create this magic team that will get things right the first time, right? Whatever you do, there's gonna be mistakes, there's gonna be learning, there's gonna be continuous development and all those kind of things that you've got to change and adapt. Now, where is the line of balance? In terms of when I'm looking at ROI, we've got a certain number of a bucket of money to say, okay, this is set base so is it, we're gonna go with two approaches or we're gonna go with one approach first? That decision has to be made up front by the leaders as to how much money you can burn without failing big way, right? So it's all of that kind of thinking that has to be done up front for any initiative. And if that expectation is set up front, then there is no question around three months in saying, oh yeah, we failed this one because we said option one but we didn't, it should have been option two. So you make the decision up front as to what the consequences would be and how much you've got to have this leeway off. Does it answer your question? Good question. Is the checklist around building a culture of process-driven behavior? Yeah? The answer is no. So the checklist is all around behaviors of the team leaders looking at themselves. It's like looking in the mirror as to seeing how did I come across today? Was I like a servant leader or was I like a dictator? So the checklist is not to say, oh yeah, you gotta do these things. For example, how did you provide feedback? Did it come across as something toxic or was it encouraging people? Someone failed today. What did you do to encourage them to try again? So it's that kind of thing. All the things that I talked about, that's in the checklist. Good question. I encourage you to pick it up and it's, you know, yeah. Any other questions? I think we've got two more minutes or not. Any last question? Or the slides? Yes, it's gonna be on the conference slide and I'll also put it on slide share. It's good, right. Thanks for your time, everybody. Thank you.