Latest / The Lagging Team / The Harder You Work, The Behinder You Get
Transcript
- 0:00Chris Sims: Well, who says we're behind, right? And and and what
- 0:04are we behind? And what was the standard? And who set the
- 0:07standard? And is that even a reasonable standard? This is the
- 0:11Devon Morris: lagging team. Falling behind is a position,
- 0:14not a verdict. Today's episode: The harder you work, the
- 0:20behinder you get. Hey, hey, hey, hey! I have someone here that I
- 0:30probably, I really, really admire. He has gone on a journey
- 0:35that I have pretty much followed without knowing I was following
- 0:38him on my journey. Whether it is went to U of I, become a
- 0:42certified Scrum trainer. You know, I remember reading this
- 0:45book back in the day. But you see his name on the screen, and
- 0:49I'm going to introduce him. So let me just start with the
- 0:52introduction, because every time I start talking, and the next
- 0:55thing you know, we're just kind of going. So first things first,
- 0:59Chris Sims is an agile coach, a certified Scrum trainer. Was a
- 1:05certified Scrum trainer before me, and the founder of Agile
- 1:08Learning Labs, which I patterned my company after. They're the
- 1:14co-author of two best-selling books: The Elements of Scrum and
- 1:20Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction. And
- 1:25before any of that, Chris made a living as a software engineer,
- 1:30musician, an auto mechanic. And I asked Chris here because they
- 1:36spend years teaching teams how this work gets done, and because
- 1:42they're personally started over more times than most people
- 1:49across their entire career. So here's what I keep coming back
- 1:54to, Chris: a team can be doing everything right by the playbook
- 2:01they've actually been handed and still be behind because the
- 2:05playbook stopped matching the actual work. Let's just start by
- 2:11you telling me a time you watched the team, the ground
- 2:15really move under a team.
- 2:19Chris Sims: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on on your show.
- 2:22I'm I'm excited to be here, and you know for as much as you were
- 2:27saying nice things about me and all that, and saying you admired
- 2:30me, it's very much a mutual admiration society here because
- 2:34I've you know crossed paths paths with you so many times at
- 2:37conferences and all of that and seen what you've done and been
- 2:40like wow look at that! So yeah, a time I saw the ground move
- 2:46under a team. So so there's a pattern I've seen quite a number
- 2:51of times. The teams involved are leadership teams, and the
- 2:56pattern looks like this. And I'll tell a specific story, but
- 2:59the pattern looks like this, you know. We're a startup,
- 3:05relatively small company. We've got some really good people on
- 3:09the team. We're executing well. We're doing what we need to do.
- 3:14We have our first success. Big influx of money. We're hiring.
- 3:21We're growing. We're trying to move faster, and everything's
- 3:26like ramping up, ramping up, going better, going faster until
- 3:30suddenly it's not. And the the ground shifting is actually the
- 3:39success and the growth that comes with the success, and the
- 3:46change that you know is needed at that point, the pivot that's
- 3:51needed by that leadership team is essentially they have to make
- 3:56some decisions, right? They've been both the people holding the
- 4:00vision, the people creating the structure and operations and
- 4:04procedures and all that of the company, and the people like
- 4:09doing the work to build the product. Right, they've been
- 4:11doing all of that, and with growth comes a point where you
- 4:19you can't do all that anymore, and while the people on the
- 4:25leadership team arguably are the smartest people in the room at
- 4:29any given point in time, if the folks around them keep leaning
- 4:36on them for all the important decisions, they become this
- 4:40bottleneck that holds the whole company back, and you know there
- 4:46there's early on you're adding people, things are going faster,
- 4:50right? Oh, we got more capacity. It's amazing, right? A little
- 4:53bit like companies are doing now with AI, right? Oh, we start
- 4:57using AI tools. Oh my goodness, we can build stuff so much.
- 5:00Faster! This is great until you hit a bottleneck. Until you hit
- 5:05a limiting factor, right? And for these leadership teams, they
- 5:08hit this point where we're still adding way more people.
- 5:12Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 5:12Chris Sims: we're not going any faster.
- 5:14Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 5:15Chris Sims: right. We're not going any faster. In fact, if
- 5:17anything, we're slowing down because now there's all the
- 5:19overhead of like there's all these people to look after and
- 5:22all of that, and so one team that I had the privilege of
- 5:29getting to work with where there was success was a team where
- 5:35very dramatically the CTO right who had who had been the tech
- 5:41visionary for the company from from day
- 5:44Devon Morris: one
- 5:44Chris Sims: had this insight in a in a training session with you
- 5:48know the other leaders other tech leaders in the organization
- 5:51where they realized that very viscerally that they were the
- 5:55bottleneck and yeah maybe they had the best ideas, but you
- 6:03can't propagate that out to the whole organization, and you
- 6:06can't know what's going on in detail at the on the ground in
- 6:12all of the localized situations that all those people are
- 6:15working in, and and so they realized they needed to step
- 6:21back from making decisions and focus on guiding the people who
- 6:29are going to make the decisions. Right, learning how to empower
- 6:31other people, but also learning how to like coach and mentor and
- 6:34all that while setting a big picture vision, but stepping
- 6:40back from the details, right? And it's hard, right? It's hard.
- 6:45I I had a corresponding failure story where you know the the
- 6:51tech genius finds was a machine learning startup, and this
- 6:56person was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but they couldn't let
- 7:02go of the control of making all of the important decisions
- 7:07because other people would make them wrong, and all the people
- 7:11around them believed that because this person was so
- 7:14smart. And there just came a point where progress kind of
- 7:18ground to a halt, right? They just couldn't get things done.
- 7:21Right, they they had clients who wanted their technology, but of
- 7:26course, you know, the start of every new client needs something
- 7:28a little bit different. We got to change the product, whatever,
- 7:30whatever. And this one person couldn't scale, right? They
- 7:34couldn't they couldn't handle all of that, and eventually, you
- 7:41know that company sadly imploded, right? Just kind of
- 7:45under under the weight of, you know, the the bottleneck effect
- 7:51of of having all the key technology decisions go through
- 7:54that person.
- 7:56Devon Morris: So, so here's here's why I I want to take a
- 8:00step back because one of the things about you, Chris, that I
- 8:04want the audience to understand is that the location where you
- 8:11spent a lot of time working was where in this good old United
- 8:16States of America,
- 8:17Chris Sims: Silicon Valley,
- 8:19Devon Morris: a very very innovative place, a place where
- 8:23a lot of great tech companies came out of, and you're right
- 8:28there in the seat of that. That is one of the reasons why I I
- 8:35love Chris because he's right there where all that innovation
- 8:39is happening, where all those super smart, super techy folks
- 8:43are are right there, and so that's the experience that he
- 8:46had, and that's an experience that I do not have. I've worked
- 8:50with corporate America for sure, but not like those tech giants
- 8:54like you have spent some time working with. And so you threw a
- 8:58word out there. I want to make sure that some people are really
- 9:01clear about. Give me the distinction between machine
- 9:06learning and generative AI, because most people know about
- 9:10LLMs right now and they think that that's everything. But
- 9:14there was a time before that. Can you tell us a little bit
- 9:16about that, Chris?
- 9:17Chris Sims: I, you know what? I'm not the guy for that. I'll
- 9:20be honest. I yeah, I am I am nobody's AI or machine learning
- 9:26or LLM expert. So I am I am not the guy to give a good answer to
- 9:30that question.
- 9:31Devon Morris: Yeah, because I heard you. I heard you say
- 9:33machine learning. I was just like, whoa, wait a minute. Been
- 9:36doing that too, Chris. I've been like, I'm about to I'm about to
- 9:39really tip my hat to you. I mean, I haven't done a lot of
- 9:42machine learning stuff because obviously, I when I became a
- 9:45developer, it was like I went into COBOL and stuff like that,
- 9:48right? So the mainframe languages, so I can replace the
- 9:51old heads. Because my philosophy at that time, Chris, was let me
- 9:55become a developer to replace developers that I think are
- 9:58going to pass away. And so I just had to start in my head
- 10:02that all these old COBOL mainframe developers, these
- 10:05systems ain't going nowhere, so they're gonna be the ones that's
- 10:08gonna actually pass away, and then I'm gonna replace them and
- 10:12get paid a lot of money. Yeah, right. So that's did that. And
- 10:17so
- 10:18Chris Sims: I remember, I remember the mid to late '90s,
- 10:22Devon Morris: there was
- 10:22Chris Sims: this huge resurgence in demand for for COBOL in
- 10:26particular for Fortran to to some extent and all that, right?
- 10:29These languages that had been more popular in years past with
- 10:34the whole Y2K thing coming up, right? It was all of a sudden
- 10:37it's like we got all this old code we've got to we've got an
- 10:41update,
- 10:42Devon Morris: and I took I took an eight month course, Chris,
- 10:44and it got me into it. That's what I did. Nice.
- 10:48So then, here's here's a question for you. So going back
- 10:50to the story that you was telling, okay, when it when it
- 10:55came to the leaders, right? Who noticed the shift first when it
- 11:06came to that situation?
- 11:11Chris Sims: That's a great question.
- 11:13Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 11:16Chris Sims: So I would say that the leadership team, the members
- 11:21of the leadership team, noticed the change. They noticed the
- 11:28symptoms, right? And I often describe this this situation.
- 11:32I've written about it a few times. I call it "everyone is
- 11:34busy, but delivery is slow, right? And the situation is like
- 11:38we look around this place, and everybody's working really hard.
- 11:41They're you know staying late. You know all right. Everybody's
- 11:45like super busy, and yet it's taking longer and longer and
- 11:50longer to get anything done. Yeah, and so the leaders
- 11:54definitely saw the symptoms, right? Because they remember
- 11:57like, hey, it wasn't that long ago when we were doing all the
- 12:01hands-on work, and we got stuff, we got stuff done really
- 12:04quickly, right?
- 12:07Devon Morris: So then, what what is that difference like? Because
- 12:10when you got your hands on it, and those initial founders,
- 12:14they're going through with speed, and they're they're
- 12:17looking to replace themselves because they can't they can't be
- 12:19at that level anymore. What what has to get through a founder's
- 12:26head to make that kind of shift?
- 12:28Chris Sims: So so the light bulb moment I think is when they
- 12:34realize that it's the exact things that got them to where
- 12:41they are, right? The very strengths that have made them
- 12:43successful,
- 12:44Devon Morris: yeah,
- 12:46Chris Sims: are now the things that are holding them back, and
- 12:49that's a really tough light bulb to turn on, right? Because when
- 12:54you have like I've I've made a career out of being really good
- 12:57at doing this, and I do this, and I succeed, right? And and
- 13:02you know I think of innovation, innovative technical solutions,
- 13:05and I implement them, and you know blah blah blah, and like to
- 13:12have the light bulb go on where it's like wait, yeah that got me
- 13:17here, but it's not going to get me to where we need to go now,
- 13:21and that's hard, right? And that's scary because it means
- 13:27they have to pivot from playing to their strengths, but also
- 13:32their comfort zone, to like something new, and and by and
- 13:38large, right? The folks who who get into these leadership
- 13:41positions and and find themselves in this problem that
- 13:45comes with success that I'm describing. By and large,
- 13:49they're pretty smart, adaptable people. So once they wrap their
- 13:51head around it, they can do
- 13:54Devon Morris: it.
- 13:54Chris Sims: But it's still scary, right? Because it's they
- 13:56need to do different things now.
- 13:59Devon Morris: So then the ground is shaking right now when it
- 14:01comes to AI. So, how are some of them thinking about how how do
- 14:08you see them dealing with those shifts now? Because it's
- 14:11happening under their feet. It's new technology that's changing
- 14:17how we think about a lot of things. I mean, I'm I know
- 14:21someone who you know who is working with five developers,
- 14:24and now it's just him, and he's AI, and then those five
- 14:28developers he no longer work with, and and he's super super
- 14:33productive in getting things out, just being a one man shop.
- 14:37But that just changes everything, and so as you
- 14:42started seeing AI come in, what kind of impacts did you start
- 14:46seeing?
- 14:49Chris Sims: So, there's a there's a model that I really
- 14:53like-a change model. It's called the Satir change model, and it
- 14:57basically describes. How individuals, groups, large
- 15:02organizations adapt and deal with change, and maybe I get the
- 15:11image to you. You can share it, you know, at at some point here
- 15:15in the in the podcast, right? You cut it in and post or
- 15:18whatever you cool kids do. But but basically, it's a curve
- 15:23where, like, on the vertical axis
- 15:25Devon Morris: is
- 15:26Chris Sims: what you care about, what you're trying to optimize,
- 15:28right? You know, speed to market, revenue, whatever it is,
- 15:33whatever it is that you want to optimize. And then on the
- 15:35horizontal axis is time.
- 15:39Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 15:40Chris Sims: And so basically, you're you know, you're
- 15:42traveling along at some status quo, right? We do what we do, we
- 15:46get what we get, right? And then you introduce a change, right?
- 15:50And it may be a change that seems like amazing, like oh my
- 15:52goodness, AI! We need to start using AI, and it's going to make
- 15:57everything better. And as soon as you introduce that big
- 16:00change, of course. Performance drops off precipitously, right?
- 16:05And in fact, not only does it drop, but you enter this chaotic
- 16:08period, right? It's the chaos period where kind of the old
- 16:11rules don't seem like they apply anymore. We there's this new
- 16:16thing, but we don't really understand it yet. We don't know
- 16:20how to use it, right? And so I've seen you know a lot of
- 16:25that. I'm seeing organizations now, right, starting to have you
- 16:32know AI governance just because of like all of the ways that AI
- 16:36was used poorly early on, yes, and and some of some of the you
- 16:40know bad things that happen from that, so you enter this chaos
- 16:43period, and performance goes down, and then at some point
- 16:48there's this moment, this transformational moment, where
- 16:52we start to see how this new thing, right these days it's AI,
- 16:57really could work to enable us to do what we were trying to do
- 17:00better, and at that point, actually, the chaos abates, but
- 17:04performance doesn't immediately go up. It still continues to dip
- 17:06a little bit. But then, as we get into this period of
- 17:10integration and practice, we get better and better at using it
- 17:15skillfully, and performance goes up and up and up, and then
- 17:18eventually, right, kind of levels off. And so I think right
- 17:21now most of the places that I'm working with are, you know,
- 17:26definitely the the change has happened, and lots of places are
- 17:32in the chaos. Some places are starting to get into something
- 17:38that's like, you know, we've got our heads wrapped around it.
- 17:42We're doing it well. I'm seeing that a little bit more in
- 17:49smaller shops, right? Where they have a few like really gifted
- 17:56people who like kind of figure the technology out, figure out
- 18:00how to tune it. Figure out how to get agents working well, et
- 18:03cetera, et cetera. Sounds like your your friend is one of
- 18:06those.
- 18:06Devon Morris: Yes,
- 18:09Chris Sims: and but I'm seeing a lot of places where what's
- 18:13happening is we imagined the bottleneck was our ability to
- 18:21make code changes, right? Our ability to generate new stuff,
- 18:27and wow, right? AI is you know Copilot and you know whatnot are
- 18:32like oh really good at creating lots of code, right? Very
- 18:36quickly, and so that's definitely no longer the
- 18:41bottleneck. If it ever was,
- 18:43Devon Morris: the
- 18:43Chris Sims: bottleneck now is figuring out what behavior
- 18:48changes do we want to make, and how can we ensure that what
- 18:54we're building continues to do what we intended to do, and how
- 18:59can we release it safely, and how can we validate our ideas,
- 19:03and like all of that stuff around the the you know the code
- 19:09creation, and and it's interesting. And one of the
- 19:13things I'm definitely seeing as a pattern is, and this and this
- 19:20pattern I'm about to describe has has always existed, but it's
- 19:23getting really exaggerated now with AI,
- 19:25Devon Morris: which
- 19:26Chris Sims: is that the cost of ownership of code
- 19:29Chris Sims: is
- 19:31Chris Sims: way higher than the cost of creation. Meaning, okay,
- 19:35right, we can create lots of code, but do we understand it?
- 19:39Can we maintain it? Right, all of that, and the more we let the
- 19:44tools do it for us, the more the answer is like there's nobody
- 19:49around here who actually knows what it's doing, and when
- 19:52something breaks, it's like hope the magic genie can figure it
- 19:56out because you know, and and so. That's that's increasing,
- 20:03right? The cost the cost of code ownership is increasing, and
- 20:07then you know figuring out what we should do, yeah, right. It's
- 20:11also is also generally a big bottleneck right now. But I've
- 20:14seen someone shared with me a really interesting graph a while
- 20:19back about You know, code commits right the pull requests
- 20:27and whatnot in in and code change in in Git and the the
- 20:34churn like in the last six months has gone up just
- 20:38dramatically right the average average life of a piece of code
- 20:44is is gone. You know, it's like it's created, and then a couple
- 20:49days later it's changed. A couple days later it's changed.
- 20:51A couple days later it's changed, and and yeah, the
- 20:55places that I've seen doing it well on the tech side are places
- 20:59where they're actually embracing, or have always
- 21:02embraced, the classic XP practices, test-driven
- 21:05development, and that sort of thing. Because then you've got
- 21:11this intentional harness around it that basically says this is
- 21:15what our system should do, and then it's a little easier to
- 21:19lean back and trust the AI to like create code that does what
- 21:24we have very carefully specified it should do.
- 21:27Devon Morris: You you mentioned you mentioned this being a
- 21:30shift, and would you say this feels different than previous
- 21:40shifts that happen. Oh, is it the
- 21:45Chris Sims: ah? It's interesting. Yes and no, right?
- 21:53So I, I kind of really started my tech career right about the
- 22:00time there was this thing just starting to happen called the
- 22:03internet and the World Wide Web, and that was a huge change.
- 22:09Devon Morris: Yes,
- 22:10Chris Sims: right. It was a business model change. It was a
- 22:13technology change. All of those things, and this is at least
- 22:20that big.
- 22:21Devon Morris: No, now a lot of that stuff started happening at
- 22:26U of I, right? Was you there at U of I during that time?
- 22:31Chris Sims: I I was at U of I, yeah. Like in the Mosaic had
- 22:35already happened, just happened when I got there.
- 22:40Devon Morris: You know, I was there, right? So that's
- 22:42exciting. So, okay, so that was definitely a big change, and you
- 22:47were definitely right there to see where a lot of that actual
- 22:51change was actually being born and coming out of, right? So
- 22:55that definitely was a shift. Okay, so that shift you
- 22:59experienced. What other shifts have you experienced in your
- 23:04career?
- 23:06Chris Sims: Well, I mean, personally in my career, my
- 23:09goodness, some big shifts. My, I don't know that it was a career.
- 23:16It was my first job, right? I worked at Burger King, made a
- 23:20lot of whoppers. I was a vegetarian at the time.
- 23:25Devon Morris: You was a Burger King. So
- 23:27Chris Sims: something something about like expressing my
- 23:30personal values through the work that I chose to do. It just not
- 23:33occurred to me, right? And so then, you know, frankly, young
- 23:38Chris was doing
- 23:39Devon Morris: that. That Chris, did you have a Burger King job
- 23:41at U of
- 23:43Chris Sims: I? No, no, no. Because I did, I did U of I
- 23:45later in life. So, so I was I was in my I was 30 years old
- 23:51when I got to U of I.
- 23:52Devon Morris: Okay, okay.
- 23:54Chris Sims: So, so Burger King thing. Then I became an auto
- 23:57mechanic, and that was you know maybe a little bit better fit
- 24:00because I was really into cars and all of that.
- 24:03Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 24:06Chris Sims: But I, I personally, I discovered that being into
- 24:11cars, right, being enthusiast,
- 24:14Devon Morris: yeah,
- 24:15Chris Sims: didn't didn't actually mean that I was going
- 24:17to enjoy working on them for a living, right, and and so yeah,
- 24:24wasn't loving that so much. But on the weekends, I was playing,
- 24:28you know, rock and roll, and I didn't like the shop I was
- 24:34working at, so I started looking around, looking in the want ads,
- 24:37because back in the day we had to look in the back of the
- 24:39newspaper to find a job, and so I'm looking for other mechanic
- 24:44jobs, and lo and behold, I saw an ad for a bass player wanted
- 24:50for full time traveling band. I'm like, what? I could make a
- 24:54living at this, and so I went and auditioned. Somehow got. Gig
- 25:00because quite frankly I was way underqualified, but got the gig
- 25:06went on the road, ended up doing music through most of my 20s,
- 25:11Devon Morris: okay,
- 25:11Chris Sims: and enjoyed it. But somewhere in my mid to late 20s,
- 25:17I had this aha moment where I realized that there was
- 25:22something missing in my life.
- 25:24Devon Morris: Okay,
- 25:25Chris Sims: regular income, and so if I kept doing music for a
- 25:31living, right, I was going to starve to death, right? Because
- 25:34I was never going to be a rock star, right? I didn't, I didn't
- 25:36have that level of talent, and I was just good enough to
- 25:40recognize the people that did have that level of talent,
- 25:44right? I looked around me and I'm like, oh, oh, oh, right.
- 25:48That's not me.
- 25:49Devon Morris: Yes.
- 25:50Chris Sims: So, and I realized I was on the wrong side of the
- 25:53supply and demand curve.
- 25:54Devon Morris: Okay.
- 25:55Chris Sims: Right. There were way more people who were at
- 25:57least as good as me, and and not very many places for us to like
- 26:02work and make a living and all that.
- 26:04Devon Morris: Okay.
- 26:04Chris Sims: So thus went back to school. Eventually ended up at U
- 26:07of I, computer science degree. Actually, computer science and
- 26:12math. It was the only way I could get into the program. Was
- 26:15to take that like kind of dual thing. And then I was my good
- 26:19fortune to graduate from U of I with a computer science degree,
- 26:24like as the dot-com boom was like starting to boom. Wow! And so
- 26:28yeah, that's that's how I landed out in Silicon Valley. Had a
- 26:33pretty typical software developer career, right?
- 26:35Developer becomes manager, becomes director, kind of a
- 26:38thing. Yeah. And then started my company, and and there there
- 26:46were shifts, right? So initially, I thought what I was
- 26:49going to do was consult to engineering leaders on you know
- 26:56kind of a variety of like how do you become a really effective
- 26:59engineering leader, engineering manager, that sort of thing, and
- 27:04I assumed that everybody was doing this agile stuff, right?
- 27:09Because I I had picked it up actually before we had the word
- 27:13agile, I'd run run across the folks doing extreme programming
- 27:17in about 1999, 2000, right in there, and it worked so much
- 27:22better than what we were doing before. That you know, it kind
- 27:26of really helped me succeed in my career as a leader. Right?
- 27:29It's like get teams together, get them to be effective, build
- 27:33you know products well that are successful. And so I just kind
- 27:37of assumed everybody was doing that. So I thought that was just
- 27:39part of what I would bring to the table was, you know, coach
- 27:44on that. And then it turned out once I got out out there and
- 27:47started trying to like get gigs, I found out no people were just
- 27:52waking up to this agile and Scrum stuff, and that's really
- 27:57what they wanted help with. And so I pivoted my practice from
- 28:02technical management more broadly to, you know, agile
- 28:06stuff, and so you know, yeah, so definitely, definitely pivots
- 28:12and changes.
- 28:12Devon Morris: So here's the deal: that when you when you
- 28:14talk about you coming into the agile space, period, in that
- 28:19way, where you made that pivot toward changing the company to
- 28:24move in that direction, coaching in that direction. Again, there
- 28:28wasn't a lot of people doing it. Y'all were different over in
- 28:30Silicon Valley. Y'all just right because y'all was a bubble,
- 28:34right? And that bubble had maybe some stuff happening, right? But
- 28:39you was at the beginning parts of even that bubble, right? And
- 28:43so you started to see that thing grow, and then it started
- 28:47spreading to other places, right? Because I didn't come
- 28:51around it literally till 2005, right? And so you were
- 28:56definitely around it prior to me, and when I came around. It
- 29:02just wasn't a lot of, especially in the Midwest. It was dead, no,
- 29:05no way in the Midwest, right? It was on the coast and in Texas
- 29:09and and over there by you. So that's that's interesting. So
- 29:12then, in that, you seen organizations start to shift to
- 29:17a better ways of doing work, and managers trying to find those
- 29:22better ways of doing work and trying to find better ways of
- 29:24being more innovative. Along with that, you've seen the dot-com
- 29:28boom happen, the bus happen. You've seen the internet kind of
- 29:33started to come up, and so now when you look at, and I know you
- 29:37say yes or no, when you look at this fabulous career that you've
- 29:41actually had, because that's a fabulous career. No, there's not
- 29:46too many people on the planet. Chris can say, "Look, I went
- 29:49from working to Burger King, working to Burger King, to being
- 29:51a musician to being an agitist, one of the top people in the in
- 29:56the world doing that. There's not a lot of people that can say
- 29:59that. Right, so with seeing all these shifts happen, what makes
- 30:05this AI shift so different? It's
- 30:13Chris Sims: a great question. So let me start with ways that it's
- 30:22not so different, but maybe it's maybe it's the magnitude of of
- 30:26it that makes it different. So when I was learning to program,
- 30:34I you know became familiar with C and C plus plus. You know I
- 30:38like these languages, right? I learned About object-oriented
- 30:41programming, but they were esoteric might be the right
- 30:48word. I'm not sure, but like it took a while to crack the nut of
- 30:53being able to understand how to code in these languages.
- 30:55Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 30:55Chris Sims: right. And we there used to be a thing that people
- 30:59would say early on, like when there'd be a group like at U of
- 31:03I say trying to learn C, is they'd say you know there's
- 31:07going to be two types of people: people who can you know
- 31:10understand pointers, and those who can't, right? And and it's
- 31:15just weird, you know, geeky whatever programming stuff, but
- 31:22it it limited the pool of people who could do it, right? You had
- 31:25to be able to understand algorithms and and things like
- 31:31that at a certain level. You had to really get the theory at a
- 31:35certain level to even be able to use the tools.
- 31:37Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 31:38Chris Sims: So then along came things like Visual Basic, and
- 31:42Visual Basic made it such that like people the the bar got way
- 31:48lower for like who could get in there and build an application.
- 31:51Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 31:52Chris Sims: right. You could draw your user interface, and
- 31:55you know you start typing, and there was auto complete. So it's
- 31:59like, oh, what I want to do right now is print something. So
- 32:04pr oh it's going to auto complete with print and then
- 32:06show me like the things that go in, and so it it made it way
- 32:09easier, and suddenly a lot more people were were creating
- 32:15software, but the quality wasn't great, right? And in fact, the
- 32:23tools I remember at the at the time, Visual Basic got a bad
- 32:25rap. It was like, oh, it's a terrible language. You know,
- 32:28people write terrible programs with it that are unmaintainable,
- 32:31and blah blah blah. And and I actually love that tool. I use
- 32:37that tool a lot. I don't think it was a bad tool. I think what
- 32:41it did was it lowered the bar so much that people could get in
- 32:44and build things that they didn't know how to maintain,
- 32:48right? Which hey, this sounds familiar. Didn't I say something
- 32:50like this just a little while ago? So at one level, AI is like
- 32:55that. It's it's empowering people who before didn't have
- 33:00the qualifications, credentials, the whatever, right? To to get
- 33:05in and do what they want to do, right? I was I was out camping
- 33:08recently, and there was this person who was you know very
- 33:13much not a tech person,
- 33:15Devon Morris: okay,
- 33:16Chris Sims: right? They were like social media kind of
- 33:18person, and they were talking to us about the app that they just
- 33:22built and you know had released into the app store and stuff,
- 33:27and because the AI enabled them to do that, right? They were
- 33:33like, "I want an app that does this and this and this and this
- 33:35and this, and so it's changing the playing field, right? And I
- 33:43think there are things in the past that have done that. This
- 33:47the scale, right? And what's going on right now is, I think,
- 33:51unprecedented, right? Because the all of the information and
- 33:56material that these these large language models have sucked up,
- 34:00and you know, theoretically, have have immediate access to
- 34:04right in a way that you know most human brains don't right.
- 34:07We don't have the capacity to hold all of that and access all
- 34:10of that. It's interesting. It's also interesting in that it's a
- 34:19big shift in terms of creating technology, creating code, in
- 34:25that code is deterministic; it does exactly what you tell it
- 34:32to. Doesn't mean it's going to do what you want it
- 34:34Devon Morris: to,
- 34:34Chris Sims: but if it's not doing what you, you know, if
- 34:36it's doing something you don't want it to do or not doing what
- 34:39you want
- 34:40Chris Sims: it
- 34:41Chris Sims: to do, ultimately it's because you've told it the
- 34:43wrong thing, right? Where the AI and the LLMs and the agents,
- 34:51they're non-deterministic, right? It's not it's not
- 34:56deterministic code anymore, and it. That's that makes things
- 35:02different, right? It it is in some ways like working with the
- 35:07human,
- 35:08Devon Morris: yeah,
- 35:09Chris Sims: right. Because you can ask it to do a thing, and
- 35:10it's got great capacity to do the thing, but it's not always
- 35:13going to do it
- 35:15Devon Morris: right. Yeah,
- 35:16Chris Sims: and so if you or somebody else doesn't know
- 35:21enough to identify that. Wait, that's not right. You know, it's
- 35:26just like, hey, I had a coworker, and they're smart.
- 35:29They know how to do things, and I asked them to do a thing, and
- 35:32they they did the thing. Did they do it right? Hopefully,
- 35:36more often than not, they did, but not always.
- 35:40Devon Morris: That is, I think the way that you phrase that up
- 35:43is beautiful. It provides a connection for people that they
- 35:51wouldn't quite get, and the magnitude being the thing that
- 35:56is really different because we've had shift after shift
- 36:01after shift, Chris. We've seen them, right? But you, you going
- 36:06back to the pointers, right? And and that visual, see the visual
- 36:11basic, and how it kind of lowered the bar, and pretty much
- 36:18AI had and took the playbook that people had, and just made
- 36:23it more available to other folks that didn't have the skills up
- 36:27there. That is, I never thought about it that way. But when I
- 36:33think about examples from me doing software myself, that's
- 36:37exactly what it is, man. That's exactly what it is, and so then
- 36:44the question becomes: as AI is chomping up everything, you
- 36:52know, what does a person do now?
- 36:57Chris Sims: Such a great question, right? And I think
- 37:03that what the AI tools don't have, at least not right now, is
- 37:15judgment, and what's the word I'm looking for? Something along
- 37:27the lines of I don't know if it's ethics, morals, but like
- 37:30like what's the right thing to do here, right? And so I think
- 37:36judgment and kind of decision making and all of that is more
- 37:42critical than ever, right? Because we can we can do a lot
- 37:46of things a lot faster, right? The cost of doing these things
- 37:50Devon Morris: is
- 37:51Chris Sims: lower, but which things should we do? Which
- 37:54problem should we solve, right? If if our if our product can
- 37:58suddenly have almost infinite features, well, which one should
- 38:02it really have, right? Because the the one a study that I like
- 38:08to point to sometimes is the was it 2019, 2018, or 2019 Pendo
- 38:14feature adoption study, where they found like 80% of the
- 38:19features in the software products they looked at were
- 38:22rarely or never used, and so we're already building a lot of
- 38:28things that at the time we're building it, we think, "Oh my
- 38:30God, we got to have this. This is so important. And then it
- 38:33turns out, right? Once it's out there, it's like, "No, it's
- 38:36actually not that important. And in fact, it's probably
- 38:38cluttering our product up and making it harder to use and
- 38:42harder to maintain, et cetera, and so I think having the
- 38:48judgment about what to build, which features to add, right,
- 38:56and then also the the long term vision because I I don't know
- 38:59that the AI is so good with like long-term vision, right? What
- 39:04are we trying to do here with the product? What are we trying
- 39:06to do as a team? What are we trying to do as a company?
- 39:10Goodness help us! What are we trying to do as a country and as
- 39:13a civilization? So, you know, choosing choosing what problems
- 39:20to solve, I think, is is is going to become so much more
- 39:25important.
- 39:27Devon Morris: So then, as a as a leader, right? When you when you
- 39:34have a situation here that is unprecedented at a magnitude
- 39:40that nobody's ever experienced. How the heck do you prepare your
- 39:48teams?
- 39:51Chris Sims: Yeah, I I think that this is a place where some of
- 39:59the real fundamental. Of Scrum, in particular, become more
- 40:05important than ever.
- 40:06Devon Morris: Okay.
- 40:06Chris Sims: Right. The idea of inspect and adapt. The idea of
- 40:11experiment. Right. The idea of try it. A guy that I I had the
- 40:17privilege of working with for years. Sadly, he's he's he's no
- 40:20longer with us. He's he's passed on. Steve Bockman, I was a
- 40:25member, you know, at Agile Learning Labs for a bunch of
- 40:29years, and his his mantra was, "Let's try it. How can we try
- 40:36it, right? And so I think fostering an environment where
- 40:43people can try things, but doing it wisely, right? Because in the
- 40:50chaos, right, when people are just like you know, it's the
- 40:54cowboy days of AI. Lots of bad stuff happens, but so does lots
- 40:59of good stuff. But it's it's hard to figure out like well
- 41:02what things worked well what things didn't work well and all
- 41:05of that and then take that learning and propagate it and so
- 41:09to the extent that we can just a little bit more thoughtfully and
- 41:15mindfully try things and do them with a you know it's almost like
- 41:20the scientific method right oh this is going to be an
- 41:22experiment. We're going to try this. We're hoping for this
- 41:25outcome, but we don't know, and we're going to see what we get,
- 41:29and then circle back, and then decide what to do next. I think
- 41:35is more more important than ever, and even during the you
- 41:41know this big uptake of of using AI and agents and you know all
- 41:48of that, even things that we think we figured out, six months
- 41:54later we may have to go back and refigure them out, right?
- 41:57Because it's it's shifting so fast.
- 42:02Devon Morris: Wow. So so then, inevitably, a team, an
- 42:09organization, group of people, they're going to get stuck to
- 42:15get behind. And when you start saying let's experiment, and
- 42:20then you have something at the magnitude that AI brings, you
- 42:25know. How does one really deal with that, Chris? Because you
- 42:32know you have people that got to get paid, and people who got to
- 42:36eat, and you know customers that want something, and a team that
- 42:41is behind, and it's the wild, wild west right now. Ooh, man,
- 42:48what do you do when when they're behind?
- 42:51Chris Sims: Yeah. So, couple of thoughts come to mind.
- 42:57Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 42:58Chris Sims: and the first, maybe it even challenges your basic
- 43:04paradigm and premise, which, which is my first response is,
- 43:09well, who says we're behind, right? And and and what are we
- 43:15behind, and what was the standard, and who set the
- 43:17standard, and is that even a reasonable standard, right? So
- 43:20one of the things I've I've found is when multiple times
- 43:26when I've been brought into organizations and they're like,
- 43:28"Oh my goodness, we have these teams and they're behind, I find
- 43:33out that the problem was well, like somebody set them up to
- 43:35fail, right? Somebody set them up with a completely unrealistic
- 43:39you know goal or set of expectations. So sometimes it's
- 43:43not that we're well. Sometimes it's more about like, well, why
- 43:48do we think we're behind, right? And who who set that bar, and is
- 43:53that bar even a realistic bar and whatnot? So that's let me.
- 43:56I'll just put that out there and then I set it aside. Okay. Okay.
- 44:00And then the other thing that I see all the time is when we feel
- 44:08like we're behind. Most people's response-it's a natural
- 44:13response-is work harder.
- 44:17Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 44:17Chris Sims: right. When they put your put your nose to the
- 44:19grindstone-is that the saying? That seems like a bad idea.
- 44:22Putting your nose to a ground. That doesn't seem like lend
- 44:26well, right? I agree.
- 44:30Devon Morris: I agree with that.
- 44:32Chris Sims: So, but but that's their natural response, right?
- 44:34Like, oh, I'll work later. I'll work harder, right? And I think
- 44:40very often when we're in like there's this fundamental shift
- 44:43happening, we're not going to work harder ourselves out of it,
- 44:49right? We actually need to like believe it or not. Very often,
- 44:53what we need to do is slow down, and we need to like kind of look
- 44:58around and go, okay, what's going on here? And what
- 45:02assumptions have we always been able to just, you know, work
- 45:06with that maybe it's time to question because they're not
- 45:11true anymore? And you know, the the for the leadership team I
- 45:16was talking about earlier in my example, for them it was like
- 45:20the assumption was that, oh well, if it's important, we
- 45:23should do it because we're the best and we got us here, right?
- 45:28We got we got this company to where it is, right? So we could
- 45:31get it to where it needs to go. And actually, that assumption is
- 45:34not true anymore, right? And so if those leaders just work even
- 45:40more hours, like that's that's not. They're not gonna catch up.
- 45:45They're not gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna get more
- 45:47and more behind. Right. The. I remember a time I was in this
- 45:52with Agile Learning Labs early on when we were growing, and and
- 45:55Steve Steve Bockman was coaching me, and and he was trying to get
- 46:03me to have this insight. I wasn't there quite yet,
- 46:06Devon Morris: and
- 46:06Chris Sims: I remember I said, "I don't know. The harder I
- 46:09work, the behinder I get. And and for those leaders, it was
- 46:16really true, right? The harder they worked at this, the more
- 46:22they were holding the company back, and so they had to. And
- 46:25this is hard, right? Because assumptions are things that we
- 46:28don't think about, right? They're built in, right? Like we
- 46:31assume there's air here, and we're going to get to breathe
- 46:33it. So we we never think about it. It's like that, right? It's
- 46:36like how do you start to see the thing that you've never seen
- 46:39before, and and in order to do that, you gotta slow down. You
- 46:46gotta start like looking around and questioning things and
- 46:50trying new things, and and that's so hard when you're
- 46:54behind.
- 46:56Devon Morris: Yeah, I'm with you, Chris. I really am with
- 46:58you. No, it's it's in the chest. It don't feel right. So then
- 47:03here's the question, right? Because with the magnitude of
- 47:07AI, and now you're telling me, Chris, to slow down. But there's
- 47:13been some cost here for teams and people because there's an
- 47:18identity crisis as well because my expertise, I got to go back
- 47:25to being a beginner at something with the magnitude of what the
- 47:29AI is doing. So now what you're telling me is I got an identity
- 47:33crisis because I got to go back to being a beginner, and you
- 47:37want me to slow down at the same time, and we got these
- 47:40assumptions that we made to get things out of. How do I get out
- 47:44of this conundrum, man? Seriously,
- 47:47Chris Sims: it's so hard. It's so hard. We need Devon.
- 47:51Devon Morris: No, no, they need they need.
- 47:54Chris Sims: We need you, man.
- 47:57Devon Morris: I think I think a lot of people are having that
- 47:59crash right now, man, and teams in particular, because it's a
- 48:07different way to work together when you have this magnitude of
- 48:12stuff that's just kind of come and hit you for the past three
- 48:15to four years. So, been a very interesting journey, but yeah,
- 48:20that is that slow down thing is is probably what I would say,
- 48:26but it would be kicking me in the teeth, Chris. Me saying
- 48:32that, so I got to wear braces or mouth guard or something because
- 48:36it just doesn't work right. And then just finding ways to deal
- 48:39with that identity crisis is that other thing that's
- 48:42Chris Sims: yeah
- 48:44Devon Morris: permeated the space right now. So if you're a
- 48:47leader dealing with all that stuff, I mean, how do you
- 48:50survive?
- 48:54Chris Sims: Yeah, I I don't know honestly, right? But I do think
- 49:05that some of the ingredients are humility, curiosity, and a
- 49:19willingness to go into that uncomfortable place, right?
- 49:24Because exactly you put your your finger right on it, like,
- 49:29hey, I've done this thing I've done for a long time. I'm really
- 49:33good at it, right? I have a lot of identity wrapped up in it.
- 49:38Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 49:40Chris Sims: Now that thing is maybe not as valuable as it was
- 49:43two years ago, six months ago, last week, and I need to do
- 49:52something different. And it's like, oh, but I'm, I don't know
- 49:57if I'm good at that, right? That's. Scary. That is so scary,
- 50:05but it's it's real, and it it's also interesting to me. I'm
- 50:11seeing certain skill sets. The how can I put this? The
- 50:21perception of the value of certain skill sets shifting and
- 50:24changing in big ways.
- 50:26Devon Morris: Yeah.
- 50:26Chris Sims: So, you know, back in my days of writing code and
- 50:31whatnot, in the organization, you know, maybe we had people
- 50:34who were primarily like the code writers, right? And then they
- 50:39were oh, right, a certain level of status, and you know
- 50:42whatever, and then you know maybe above them, architects,
- 50:45right? Oh, right, and then you know unfairly, but nonetheless,
- 50:51I saw this all too often. Oh, then you know QA people, right?
- 50:55A little lower, and then maybe you know people like you know
- 50:58analysts, right? Down, down somewhere in there, and all of a
- 51:03sudden, writing the code is no longer the magic.
- 51:10Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 51:11Chris Sims: and suddenly, like the analysts and the QA people
- 51:16and folks like that, like those are actually the higher valued
- 51:23skills suddenly, right? It's like, oh my goodness, we have
- 51:25to. We need to understand what problems we need the magic to go
- 51:32solve, right? The magic used to be the people who could code,
- 51:35right? Now the magic is the people who know how to get the
- 51:38AI to code.
- 51:40Devon Morris: Yeah, like it's it's a it's a it's a beautiful
- 51:45thing with us having been in this agile scrum space, because
- 51:52we philosophically think about transparency, inspection,
- 51:58adaptation, building things in smaller bits and pieces, so and
- 52:03then we can get feedback sooner and shorten those feedback
- 52:07loops, which fits perfectly into what we're what's happening
- 52:11today. And so it's like the distinction of adapt versus
- 52:17digging in, right? Like a lot of leaders right now, they're just
- 52:23kind of digging in, and when you say magnitudes happen, you know,
- 52:28there's a value shift, identity cost that's happened. So value
- 52:32has shift on a team in terms of status as well. So, man, what
- 52:39kind of skills do you have to have to deal with teams today?
- 52:44Chris Sims: I I think it's you know more than more than ever.
- 52:51Leaders need vision plus real leadership skills, right? And
- 53:01and and what I mean by that is, we used to be able to get by on,
- 53:06you know, the business leaders got by other business acumen,
- 53:09and the technical leaders could get by on their technical
- 53:12acumen, and all that. And I think when things are shifting,
- 53:20you your core skill area, right? Your subject matter expertise,
- 53:26very often is not what's going to carry the day anymore, right?
- 53:30It's a your ability to adapt your thinking and your
- 53:34approaches, and your ability to influence people around you to
- 53:41do the same, and your ability to sense patterns in the chaos,
- 53:49right? Because during in that chaos period in transition, if
- 53:57we pay attention, there's a lot of gold in there to be mined,
- 54:02right? Because there's this time where the old rules don't really
- 54:06apply anymore, the new rules haven't kind of gotten
- 54:10solidified, a lot of things happening and being tried, and
- 54:17some of those crazy things are actually really amazing and
- 54:20super valuable, but like part of it is is developing the sense to
- 54:27notice that, and and part of it is social engineering, right?
- 54:37Cultivating a culture where. We're going to share these
- 54:44things. We're going to notice these things, and in the chaos,
- 54:48especially, an awful lot of what we're trying is is going to
- 54:52fail. And if we create an environment where you know
- 54:56failure is not an option, right? Then then information. Flow goes
- 55:02way down, and we need exactly the opposite. We need to we need
- 55:08to embrace the fact that yeah, the rules are changing, right?
- 55:14And we're going to try things and fail, and it's going to be
- 55:17messy. But if that's okay, and we can share our struggles and
- 55:26our failures, we only have to do that learning once, right? As
- 55:31opposed to like if we create an environment where no, no, no,
- 55:34it's not okay to fail, then that same mistake is going to happen
- 55:38over and over and over and over throughout the organization, and
- 55:42so, so I think, I think those are the things that leaders
- 55:47need, and and and you know to some extent there's cultivating
- 56:00a certain groundedness that people can look to and say,
- 56:05"Okay, yeah, you know, the the ground is shifting underneath
- 56:09Devon Morris: us,
- 56:10Chris Sims: but you know, our our our leader is remaining
- 56:15grounded, not not not stuck and dug in, but but remaining like
- 56:21kind of present and paying attention and adapting and kind
- 56:32of creating an environment where it's like, hey everybody, this
- 56:34is a wild ride. Yes, it is. Let's go on it together, right?
- 56:39This is exciting. Let's figure it out.
- 56:42Devon Morris: So then, when you think about that leader, those
- 56:46leaders that you're describing there, how do I rebuild my own
- 56:52confidence, man?
- 56:58Chris Sims: I, I, I think this is where again leaning back on
- 57:04on you know Scrum stuff right agile stuff iteration is so such
- 57:12a powerful thing right I try something it fails so I try
- 57:17something different fails try something different oh that
- 57:20worked out a little better. Yeah. So I try a variation on
- 57:24it, right? And over time, we can iterate towards things that are
- 57:30working better and better and better. And the thing that we
- 57:34can hold onto and feel confident in is, in fact our ability to
- 57:42adapt and change, which is a pretty powerful thing to to
- 57:48start to get comfortable with. It's hard, right? You know, most
- 57:53of us don't fundamentally don't like change very much, right? I
- 57:57I think I became a change agent,
- 57:59Devon Morris: yeah,
- 57:59Chris Sims: fundamentally to you know, as as my own recovery as a
- 58:02control freak, right? It's like change, ooh, scary, right? So so
- 58:07maybe I'll learn how to get others through it. You just
- 58:11Devon Morris: this confused me. So a musician that is a control
- 58:15freak, how does that happen?
- 58:18Chris Sims: Are you kidding? All, all of us, all of us,
- 58:24right? I just
- 58:24Devon Morris: maybe I got some thoughts about musicians that's
- 58:26different, man. But I just, you know, just seems so easy for you
- 58:30as a musician to say these things, right? And everybody
- 58:34else is not a musician that can go by that rhythm. You can,
- 58:38y'all can, y'all can decide on a new song, and we think about
- 58:42y'all adapting in a moment, right? You know, that's the kind
- 58:46of thing that you're basically saying leaders need to really be
- 58:50able to do is adapt when shifting around them, yeah, them
- 58:56to understand that. And if they don't do that, how do they build
- 59:00the confidence in themselves. How do they build the confidence
- 59:04back in the people that are all
- 59:08of this stuff, all at the same time? Because it almost feels
- 59:11like it's a one big gigantic human experiment. Is what's
- 59:17happening to us with AI.
- 59:20Chris Sims: I think it
- 59:21Devon Morris: is. It's like every aspect of life, right? I'm
- 59:24over here cooking, man. I'm over here cooking dishes that I would
- 59:27never be able to cook at. You know, because I wouldn't think
- 59:33about it in advance enough for me to go buy a cookbook that
- 59:37would allow me to be be able to do that in the moment, and so it
- 59:41just has had such an impact on our lives, man. That it's been
- 59:45it's been crazy on so many levels. So that being said, we
- 59:49we've talked about everything here, and I think there's so
- 59:52many nuggets that we have that we can actually allow people to
- 59:56take away. But I'm gonna ask a. Closing question, Chris.
- 1:00:02Chris Sims: All right,
- 1:00:04Devon Morris: what would you tell a leader whose team is
- 1:00:07behind right now, and they know it in this age of AI?
- 1:00:15Chris Sims: I would, I would say, I would ask them, what
- 1:00:22support does that team need in order to be able to better learn
- 1:00:27and adapt? And very often it's right. They need some space to
- 1:00:32learn and adapt. So the like just working harder that shrinks
- 1:00:35the space, right? You you have less space to learn and adapt.
- 1:00:39So you got to find ways to like give them some breathing room to
- 1:00:41learn and adapt, but what other support do they need? Right,
- 1:00:45there's like psychological, social support. Right, is this a
- 1:00:48psychologically safe space? Can people experiment? Are we
- 1:00:53working in ways that support experimentation and learning?
- 1:01:03Just a little, one little example. Shorter sprints support
- 1:01:08more experimentation and trial and error. For ages and ages, I
- 1:01:17was advocating one week sprints, right? And all of a sudden,
- 1:01:23right? We got AI, and suddenly people are doing one-week
- 1:01:25sprints. And now I actually know places that are doing one-day
- 1:01:28sprints, right? But, but you know, the faster the iteration,
- 1:01:35the faster the learning can happen. But you have to make
- 1:01:39space for the learning.
- 1:01:41Devon Morris: All that, right?
- 1:01:41Chris Sims: You have you have to build in the space for them to
- 1:01:44learn, right? Because otherwise, people are just going to work
- 1:01:46harder, and I've coached
- 1:01:52Devon Morris: just doesn't get them there.
- 1:01:53Chris Sims: Yeah, yeah, and I I've coached people where you
- 1:01:56know they're like, oh, right, this team is behind, and we
- 1:02:00don't have time for a retrospective. We don't have
- 1:02:04time to experiment with a new piece of technology. We don't
- 1:02:08have time to like play with the AI. Blah blah blah. And and my
- 1:02:14response is often, oh, I understand. You've got so much
- 1:02:18wood to cut that you don't have time to sharpen your saw, right?
- 1:02:24But it's like it's that-that's when you need it the most.
- 1:02:27Devon Morris: Yeah,
- 1:02:27Chris Sims: right. But it-it is counterintuitive. It really is.
- 1:02:31Devon Morris: I agree. And this-this has definitely been
- 1:02:35different than what I expected, Chris. You have been absolutely
- 1:02:39amazing. You know I'm going to have you around again, but
- 1:02:43here's what I'm going to ask you: Where should people find
- 1:02:46you, and tell people what's coming up for you?
- 1:02:49Chris Sims: Yeah, so Agile Learning Labs is my company, so
- 1:02:54AgileLearningLabs.com, and lots of appearances coming up. I do a
- 1:03:01fair amount of conference speaking and presenting.
- 1:03:04Goodness, I'm going to be in Vancouver and Boston, Madison,
- 1:03:07Wisconsin, Washington D.C. All in the next couple of months.
- 1:03:11I'm going to be in Prague pretty soon, and then you'll find all
- 1:03:17of this at AgileLearningLabs.com. So that's
- 1:03:19probably the best place to go, so yeah, I would I would say go
- 1:03:23there.
- 1:03:24Devon Morris: Well, I'm gonna say you have been more than
- 1:03:27amazing. I you know I appreciate you, man. You know I like I told
- 1:03:33like I said to everybody earlier, it is always nice to
- 1:03:38have people that are in front of you, and you can just look and
- 1:03:47copy a little bit. You ain't got to innovate too much for too
- 1:03:51much away from. Just kind of copy them a little bit to try to
- 1:03:56get to where you need to get to. And I would say to you,
- 1:04:00fundamentally, you are one of the people that I copied.
- 1:04:04Bearded Eagle would have existed if learning, if Agile Learning
- 1:04:07Labs didn't exist, because you were one of the people that I
- 1:04:10saw independently doing it that wasn't with the crowd, and
- 1:04:16that's the key, wasn't with the crowd, right? And still having
- 1:04:21success, and so I'm gonna say, man, I really appreciate you,
- 1:04:25Chris. If you need anything whatsoever, reach out to me,
- 1:04:29man.
- 1:04:31Chris Sims: Likewise, and I'm I'm really honored to be on your
- 1:04:35show, and I look forward to our next conversation.
- 1:04:39Devon Morris: All right, Chris, you have a good one, and
- 1:04:40everybody, thank you so much. We will see you next time. Thank
- 1:04:45you for joining us. Where every Tuesday and Thursday we work
- 1:04:50toward bridging the gap for teams that are behind. Any
- 1:04:55questions, comments, or you just want to start? Start your own
- 1:05:00conversation with us. Go to thelaggingteam.com/start.
- 1:05:09Otherwise, find us at any place you listen to your podcast.