Latest / The Lagging Team / It Never Sticks

Transcript

It Never Sticks · The Lagging Team

• 0:00
  Jeff Burstein: Now what you find is, yeah, you can let it go, but
• 0:03
  it could be five minutes later, 13 seconds later, two years
• 0:07
  later. You don't even know how it happened, but now that pen is
• 0:10
  right back in your hand, and you're holding it again, and you
• 0:13
  got to practice letting it go again, and you have to practice
• 0:16
  all the time letting it go. So it's that. It I don't know that
• 0:20
  it sticks. It doesn't get any better.
• 0:25
  Devon Morris: This is the Lagging Team. Falling behind is
• 0:28
  a position, not a verdict. Today's episode, It Never
• 0:34
  Sticks. Welcome, welcome, welcome, everybody to the next
• 0:42
  pod. I have a really special guest here who I respect and
• 0:49
  someone who knows what they're doing. Jeff Bursting is an
• 0:55
  inventor, a founder, a consultant, and an enterprise
• 1:00
  transformation coach with 20 years of helping companies and
• 1:04
  government agencies find better ways of working. He's the
• 1:09
  founder of Advanced Enterprise Agility and L-EAF.org. That is
• 1:19
  L-E-A-F.org, and the co-founder of L-EAF Lab, he spent his career
• 1:26
  on the sequence most organizations truly get
• 1:29
  backwards: people, then process, then tools. And I ask Jeff here
• 1:37
  because his entire practice is about the transformations that
• 1:42
  actually stick, which means he's watched a lot of them that truly
• 1:47
  did not stick. Here's what I keep coming back to, Jeff: a
• 1:52
  transformation doesn't fail in a strategy deck per se. The deck
• 1:57
  can be fine. It fails in the team. It fails in the
• 2:01
  organization. You see those signs with the team first, and
• 2:06
  months before anybody upstairs and management even writes
• 2:10
  anything down. Can you kick us off by telling us about a
• 2:15
  transformation that looked done and was kind of gone six months
• 2:20
  later,
• 2:22
  Jeff Burstein: yeah. I mean, I have several examples in my career,
• 2:26
  and first of all, thank you so much for you know inviting me
• 2:29
  onto you know The Lagging Team and an opportunity to speak to
• 2:33
  your audience. I really do appreciate it. I, you know, I've
• 2:38
  been fortunate in that over you know 20 plus years of doing this
• 2:42
  work, I've never spent too long in any one organization, right?
• 2:50
  So over 20 years, I've probably done transformations in around
• 2:54
  30 to close to 40 organizations, right? So to say, oh, have you
• 3:01
  been in a place where you've seen after six, eight months the
• 3:06
  the the things that were showing progress, where teams were
• 3:11
  actually leaning into the practices, and then things
• 3:15
  started to either go off the rail or revert back to the old
• 3:19
  practices. I have been fortunate in that I've joined
• 3:24
  transformations that have been underway, had started years
• 3:28
  before, right? And so you get to hear some of the, you know, some
• 3:33
  of the horror stories. You know, I would say overall there there
• 3:37
  are a lot of examples that I could point to where teams
• 3:41
  started off in one direction, and if you're familiar with the
• 3:44
  Jay Kerber, the Tuckman model of team formation, and it talks
• 3:48
  about forming, storming, or overforming, you know. So where
• 3:51
  teams have moved beyond that, hey, we know how to commit to
• 3:54
  work together, stage forming stage. We know how to be
• 3:57
  predictable. Like we could say, yeah, we're gonna get you these
• 4:02
  if they're leveraging Scrum. You know, we're gonna get you these
• 4:05
  12 story points by the end of our sprint, or we're gonna you
• 4:09
  know flow this work if they're more Kanban or flow you know
• 4:13
  through our thing, and we're you know our throughput, our cycle
• 4:16
  time is about this, so you can expect it around then, and then
• 4:20
  they, by their organization, can be trusted to deliver within
• 4:24
  that time frame. Yeah, you know what? They are dependable.
• 4:26
  They're predictable, right? They are a normalized team, and they
• 4:30
  start to move that towards the performing. Where now they're
• 4:34
  saying, "Oh yeah, it'll take us. It'll take us three spins.
• 4:37
  There, but they're delivering it in two because they're they're
• 4:39
  moving faster than they can, and what it is that will typically
• 4:45
  go ahead and cause any team that's making that, you know,
• 4:48
  continuing that, you know, and and staying committed to that
• 4:52
  relentless improvement that every team, every organization
• 4:56
  has to have from a mindset perspective in order to have a
• 4:59
  transformation. That sticks, right, is something in the
• 5:04
  environment has changed. Something around them that no
• 5:10
  longer rewards or supports that behavior, right? That now is
• 5:19
  forcing them, and it could be any number of things. It could
• 5:23
  be new rules around how the organization puts together its,
• 5:28
  you know, its PIPs. You know, everybody's got a an improvement
• 5:32
  plan for the year. What are your What are your things that you're
• 5:34
  going to go ahead and deliver on? If those aren't related to
• 5:38
  the initiatives of the company, and if teams and the individuals
• 5:42
  on teams can't track the work they're doing on a team to
• 5:46
  helping them get their bonus, guess what? The team's going to
• 5:51
  go off the rails, right? So there are a lot of cases that I
• 5:58
  could actually point to, but I would say it's more of a
• 6:01
  pattern, and what an organization really needs to
• 6:05
  watch out for is when anywhere in the organization, after a
• 6:10
  transformation has started, and any of the teams have started to
• 6:16
  realize the benefits of working in new ways, visualizing,
• 6:20
  communicating, collaborating-how all that stuff is done-but then
• 6:27
  something in the environment has changed, and in me notice the
• 6:33
  slowdowns. I would really challenge the organization to
• 6:36
  go. Okay, so what new rule? What new policy? What happened that
• 6:43
  all of a sudden you were able to notice and feel as a leader?
• 6:47
  Maybe you sensed that there was a slowdown in the flow of value
• 6:51
  from teams, or oh, you know, teams that were very predictable
• 6:55
  and actually were moving faster. All of a sudden, they're moving
• 6:59
  slower. What's going on, right?
• 7:03
  The question is rarely what is the team doing differently
• 7:09
  because they don't. They're they're no longer wanting to be
• 7:15
  self organizing, right? Like what team doesn't want to self
• 7:19
  organize around the problem, right? So it's got to be that
• 7:23
  something has been put in place that makes the transformation
• 7:27
  work and the working in that way counterproductive and not
• 7:32
  beneficial to the team. And those are the things that I
• 7:37
  would really, really watch for.
• 7:40
  Devon Morris: Okay. So then, then that's a that's I like
• 7:43
  that. So, how when you have that conversation with a leader about
• 7:50
  that impact, something in the environment has changed. Tell
• 7:55
  me, how do how has leaders classically received that?
• 8:02
  Jeff Burstein: You know, so I I would say that there's a spectrum. As
• 8:07
  in all things you're dealing with human beings, this is what
• 8:09
  mindset coaches will tell you: is you can have the exact same
• 8:12
  conversation with the exact same person at two different times of
• 8:15
  day and have the exact opposite outcomes. Why? Because people
• 8:20
  bring emotion, and emotions are unpredictable, and you cannot
• 8:24
  account for how someone's going to interpret anything you share
• 8:27
  with them, right? Because you don't know what happened to them
• 8:30
  on the way to work last night, whatever they're dealing with,
• 8:34
  right? So if you consider that, right, you understand that okay,
• 8:40
  leaders fall on that spectrum, and they're going to react. And
• 8:42
  so you're going to have the leaders who, hey, look, I
• 8:45
  believe that working in this way is beneficial not only for me
• 8:49
  but for my teams, for my organization, because I know
• 8:53
  this is a better way of delivering value. Because we can
• 8:57
  stop doing all the things that don't deliver value, and what a
• 9:01
  great way to reduce waste in our company! And if I'm a leader
• 9:04
  that sits on that side of the conversation, I'm open to
• 9:08
  hearing. Oh, I created a policy, or a policy was created and put
• 9:13
  into place that impacted that. They're going to be way open.
• 9:17
  But if your leader on the other end of the spectrum is like,
• 9:20
  look, I've seen transformations fail. This is never going to
• 9:23
  work. They might have intentionally or subconsciously
• 9:28
  put a policy in place just because they were hired as an
• 9:32
  expert to lead a company. Yeah, and if they don't have all the
• 9:35
  answers, they'll just be replaced by a board, you know.
• 9:40
  And so they have the things that they care about too, and if it's
• 9:43
  not in alignment with the transformation and what got them
• 9:46
  there, right? You know, so you know, I've been in organizations
• 9:50
  where it's come time to talk to the leader, and I know which
• 9:54
  leader I'm talking to based on the hey, we've observed
• 9:57
  something, and their reaction is going to. Either be oh my god
• 10:01
  what'd you see I'd love to hear about it or it could be oh how
• 10:06
  many X Y Z kind of companies have you been the CEO of before
• 10:11
  and my answer is usually zero. However, I have coached X number
• 10:18
  of CEOs through these exact kind of problems before, having never
• 10:22
  run a company in their industry before. So, right, it just
• 10:26
  depends on who you're talking to, and a mindset coach is going
• 10:30
  to have a sense of that because they are used to dealing with
• 10:34
  human beings. A process coach is going to point to the process. A
• 10:38
  tools coach is going to bring you to the Tools,
• 10:41
  Devon Morris: yeah, I would have to agree with you. So then, here
• 10:46
  here's the question, right? Because I always I always look
• 10:48
  at things a certain way, and we we talked about in the
• 10:52
  introduction, people process tools, right? So to just
• 10:59
  straight up, why that order, and what happens when somebody hands
• 11:07
  the team the tool first?
• 11:10
  Jeff Burstein: So that that's a great question. Whether it's the tool
• 11:13
  or the process,
• 11:14
  Devon Morris: yes, okay,
• 11:15
  Jeff Burstein: right. So here's what there is that not a lot of
• 11:18
  people think about. We live in a world of interconnected systems.
• 11:23
  We have we're human systems. This is a system. This is we are
• 11:27
  developing a system. We have a relationship, you and I. That's
• 11:30
  a friendship. That is a human relationship system. It's based
• 11:34
  on how we communicate, right? We're we each have families.
• 11:38
  That's a human system. Our families exist in communities.
• 11:41
  Human systems. We have governance systems. You have
• 11:45
  local laws. I have local laws. The United States has federal
• 11:48
  laws. There's state laws. Those are governance systems. Every
• 11:51
  company has a governance system. There are mechanical systems. A
• 11:56
  manufacturing plant has machines that you put something in,
• 12:01
  something comes out. The other mechanical system, digital
• 12:04
  systems, websites, all these things. There's all these kinds
• 12:07
  of systems, process systems. How do we work systems? All these
• 12:11
  different kind of systems. Of all the different type of
• 12:15
  systems, once they are designed a particular way, when you put
• 12:21
  in the the resources needed to kick off the process, the output
• 12:26
  is predictable unless something is wrong with the system, and
• 12:30
  that is true of every type of system except the human ones.
• 12:35
  Humans are the only ones that have emotions. I can talk to two
• 12:40
  different teams who are having the exact same problem and give
• 12:44
  them two completely different solutions. Why? Because they're
• 12:50
  human beings. They have needs. They have emotions. They are
• 12:53
  where they are in their journey. And if you can't account for
• 12:57
  that, then you're going to rub up against them. Right. So. if
• 13:03
  we realize that of all the different systems and every
• 13:07
  organization is just a mixture of all these interconnected,
• 13:11
  they're a hybrid system of systems. So if we don't deal
• 13:15
  with the ones that are unpredictable first people, and
• 13:19
  we don't get them a mindset that allows them to for themselves
• 13:24
  control their how they're reacting to things.
• 13:28
  Devon Morris: Yeah, yeah,
• 13:30
  Jeff Burstein: right. Because in life, there's what happens. Hey, I
• 13:33
  asked you for a report. You didn't get it to me on time.
• 13:36
  What happened? I asked you for a report. You didn't get it to me
• 13:40
  on time. Then there's everything that human beings make that
• 13:44
  mean. Oh my God, I'm going to lose my job. Oh my God, I'm
• 13:46
  going to fire you. Whatever it is, but it's just what happened.
• 13:51
  Like, would you yell at your car because you put diesel gasoline
• 13:57
  in an unleaded car and you kill the engine? Why did you stop
• 14:00
  working. Why? Why can't you just be happy with the gas? Like no,
• 14:04
  that's insanity. So that's why you have to start with people
• 14:09
  first, because people need an adaptive mindset to deal with
• 14:16
  the complexity and chaos that is work today. There is so much
• 14:21
  unknown and unknowable,
• 14:23
  Devon Morris: yeah,
• 14:24
  Jeff Burstein: that all we are going to do as human beings is react
• 14:27
  to them. And so, if we don't have some sort of framework,
• 14:32
  some sort of common language, a system that we can all agree,
• 14:38
  yeah, as human beings, we know we all are going to have
• 14:40
  reactions, but we're just going to agree that if we're going to
• 14:44
  be committed to getting to a particular place as a group of
• 14:49
  human beings who have a shared common goal to deliver this
• 14:52
  particular value to this customer, then let's just do
• 14:56
  that. And you know the fact that somebody. Cut me off at work, or
• 15:02
  that my spouse didn't appreciate what I did, or they did, or my
• 15:06
  kids got you know got the dream job, or they got fired,
• 15:11
  whatever. I can just show up and go, yeah, that all happened, and
• 15:16
  I'm going to have to deal with that, and I have emotions about
• 15:18
  that, but I am here to do this work with these people and
• 15:21
  engage with the systems, and to just give myself just a little
• 15:25
  bit of way to do that, and that's why starting with people
• 15:29
  is so important. And if you look at any of the frameworks, the
• 15:32
  processes-Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus-any of
• 15:38
  them-they'll all tell you, "Hey, make sure you have a not a fixed
• 15:44
  mindset, but a growth-oriented mindset. And what they don't
• 15:48
  tell you is how to go ahead and develop one of those. So even
• 15:53
  they tell you it starts with people. We're assuming you did
• 15:57
  that work because now you're at process, and now we're in a
• 16:02
  world where for 20 years we see what happened to the world of
• 16:05
  agile, and we're at the tail end of
• 16:08
  Devon Morris: it. Yeah, in some
• 16:09
  Jeff Burstein: communities, capital A is agile or agility is a bad
• 16:14
  word, right? And and that's because people relied on the
• 16:18
  process, thought the process would help the people. Process
• 16:21
  doesn't help the people. People have to help themselves. Then
• 16:25
  they can use a process, and then they can find the tools that
• 16:29
  help them make that process simpler for themselves. And
• 16:33
  that's why, in that order.
• 16:35
  Devon Morris: Then, then here's the question, right? And and I'm
• 16:38
  just saying we, just to be general, okay. Sure. So why did
• 16:44
  we get it wrong and start with process or tools first?
• 16:51
  Jeff Burstein: So it's not that way. So I'm as a mindset coach, it's
• 16:55
  not wrong or right. It's better or worse, right? Because if it's
• 17:00
  about relentless improvement, did we improve or did we make it
• 17:04
  worse? So the reason, well, so this is a pure law hypothesis.
• 17:11
  It's because of where the solution originated from. It
• 17:15
  came out of a group of software developers who were frustrated
• 17:19
  with the way they were being asked to develop software, and
• 17:23
  so for themselves, they came up with a better way that they
• 17:28
  wanted to work, right? And then that became you know that became
• 17:35
  Scrum Common, right? All that that was the Agile Manifesto,
• 17:38
  right? In the hot tub, right? That was great. They all read
• 17:42
  the work of you know Tom Gilb, great guy, right? You know he
• 17:48
  wrote how to build software better, focused on value. I've
• 17:52
  had the pleasure of speaking with him, and even he told me
• 17:55
  he's like, yeah, you need to have a mindset. That set they
• 17:59
  had the mindset. They just assumed maybe everybody else
• 18:03
  does, and what happens as humans is we turn to processes and
• 18:08
  tools so that we don't have to think because change is hard.
• 18:12
  And I'd rather just do what somebody else tells me to get
• 18:14
  the result that I need to, so I can go on doing the things and
• 18:17
  dealing with the things that you know I think about all the time.
• 18:22
  Devon Morris: Yeah, if it's, I mean, if you're, you know, you
• 18:24
  mentioned earlier that you know these executives get replaced,
• 18:29
  you know, often enough, right? And so, if you're a leader and
• 18:35
  and somebody says to you mindset, right? You know, the
• 18:41
  measurability of it. How do you measure that? Because it's you
• 18:44
  know when it comes to a process or to a tool, you know they can
• 18:49
  measure that to say. Oh yeah. Right. So how do you measure
• 18:54
  that? So you can know that you went from point well one
• 19:00
  particular starting point to some other point in the future,
• 19:04
  right? So, sure. Talk to me about that.
• 19:07
  Jeff Burstein: So, you know, unlike unlike a process or a tool,
• 19:11
  which do have very objective measures that anybody can look
• 19:16
  at, right? When you're dealing with human beings, you now cross
• 19:21
  the threshold into subjective measures, right? So, I've worked
• 19:28
  for a lot of financial institutions, and there is a
• 19:31
  measure that they use all the time with their customers. They
• 19:36
  call it a customer satisfaction rating, right? And really, all
• 19:42
  it is is it's just a subjective measure where you come up with a
• 19:47
  fixed set of questions, the dimensions, the things that you
• 19:50
  want to know about, and you ask people their opinion. But you
• 19:54
  you read them with the understanding that yeah, the
• 19:58
  answers may be completely flipped. If I'd ask the
• 20:00
  questions in the afternoon versus the morning, because
• 20:04
  people's you know where they are emotionally can change, and the
• 20:08
  way they're going to answer a question can change. So you know
• 20:16
  that's it. So it is those kinds of subjective measures,
• 20:20
  engagement measures, satisfaction ratings. I always
• 20:26
  encourage leaders to, and most companies do this kind of work
• 20:30
  with their employees, anyhow. Yeah, they do. Right? They do.
• 20:35
  They do take a measure of that, and so it's just about asking
• 20:41
  the questions and focusing on the areas that are also in
• 20:45
  alignment with the mission of the transformation. You know, so
• 20:50
  do you feel that in your team you're more empowered to make
• 20:53
  decisions to provide feedback to product? You know, to those
• 20:58
  kinds of things. Do you feel that solutions are being handed
• 21:01
  to you versus problems. It's those kinds of questions that
• 21:06
  yeah, you could ask those. You just have to be aware that you
• 21:10
  could ask the same person that question three different times
• 21:13
  in a day in a day and get three completely different answers.
• 21:18
  Devon Morris: Yeah, it's one of those things where you know you
• 21:20
  know read studies and all this other kind of stuff, and you
• 21:23
  know, doctors and folks like that make better decisions in
• 21:27
  the morning time versus in the afternoon. You know, sure, these
• 21:32
  things happen. You know,
• 21:33
  Jeff Burstein: exactly.
• 21:34
  Devon Morris: Will have happiness metrics, right? So
• 21:37
  then, then as a leader that's dealing with several teams,
• 21:41
  Jeff. How do I compare across teams?
• 21:45
  Jeff Burstein: So that's the that's the risk. You don't, right? How
• 21:49
  do you compare an apple to an orange? Two teams are two
• 21:52
  different teams. They have different people. It's a
• 21:55
  completely different unit of value delivery. I would never.
• 22:00
  Like, how do you compare? I have two kids. How do I compare them?
• 22:03
  I don't. They think I do, and it's okay that they do, right?
• 22:09
  But the danger of comparing teams is you end up with, you
• 22:16
  know, managers and leaders who come in and tell teams, "Hey,
• 22:19
  you have to double your velocity. What? Why do we have
• 22:23
  to double our velocity? Velocity is a measure that we a team use,
• 22:28
  so that when we're going into planning, we have a rough idea
• 22:31
  of how many sprint points we can deliver, how many story points
• 22:34
  we can deliver in a sprint. That's what velocity is. It's
• 22:40
  not a, you know everybody
• 22:42
  Devon Morris: what velocity is so they're all clear just in
• 22:44
  case somebody don't know what it is
• 22:45
  Jeff Burstein: sure so velocity is a process measure the process is
• 22:50
  Scrum how do teams organize around the work Scrum is a a
• 22:54
  methodology it's a framework you know the it's a great one it's
• 22:59
  used in a lot of organizations and velocity is simply a measure
• 23:04
  of story points on average that a team gets completed in a
• 23:10
  sprint over the last three sprints. And now I'm going to
• 23:15
  have to define all those words. So a sprint is simply a time box
• 23:19
  that's used to get work done in, you know, typically one to two
• 23:23
  weeks. A story is how the work is captured, right? Like as I
• 23:31
  want so that, and it's ideally a relative complexity measure.
• 23:37
  Hey, have we done this kind of work before? Are we familiar
• 23:39
  with it? Is new. How complicated do we think it's going to be, or
• 23:43
  is it going to be more chaotic? Like, like if we've done it
• 23:46
  before, have we never done this before, right? And then the more
• 23:51
  complex the story points, they are just a number that are
• 23:55
  assigned to the complexity of a story, so that if a team goes
• 23:59
  into sprint planning and they plan to do a body of work, a
• 24:02
  number of stories. They'll calculate, you know, and add up
• 24:05
  the story points, and then it's a rolling velocity is the
• 24:09
  rolling average of the last three sprints. How many story
• 24:12
  points actually got completed? And it's just a planning
• 24:17
  mechanism. That's all it is. It's just something to help the
• 24:20
  team do a better job when they plan. Hey, how many story
• 24:24
  points? Should we plan 50 story points next sprint? I don't
• 24:27
  know. We've been getting on average 20 done. 50 may be a
• 24:32
  little bit much, and that's all it is intended to be. But now
• 24:37
  managers, leaders use it to measure the success of a team. I
• 24:42
  was on a call where a leader said, "I need all teams in this
• 24:46
  department to deliver to double their velocity points. When I
• 24:51
  asked them exactly what they expected that to produce, their
• 24:57
  response to me is, "Well, I don't want my the team." Under
• 25:00
  my department, looking worse compared to other teams, and so
• 25:04
  I said, "Great, we'll have it doubled by the end of this
• 25:08
  sprint. And he was like, "Great, you're an awesome coach. I am an
• 25:13
  awesome coach because I went back to the teams and I said,
• 25:16
  'Great, in order to satisfy a ridiculous request from
• 25:20
  leadership, please multiply all of your story estimates by two.
• 25:27
  And they're like, "Why? I'm like, "Because they want you to
• 25:29
  double your story points, and I'm not willing to let you work
• 25:32
  80 hours a week. So it becomes a math problem.
• 25:39
  Devon Morris: Yeah, we we
• 25:41
  Jeff Burstein: done, and we were by the end of the week multiplied.
• 25:43
  He was like, "Oh my God, mine was blown. I'm like, "Yeah,
• 25:47
  these teams you had to whip them into shape. But that's a mindset
• 25:51
  problem, and they started with a framework, with a process. And
• 25:56
  when you start with a process, you have to force teams into it.
• 26:01
  That's why you start with a mindset. Going back to the
• 26:04
  previous question.
• 26:06
  Devon Morris: Now you you talked about you know that's
• 26:08
  interesting because I there was a client I worked with recently
• 26:12
  that they started dictating story points to the individual,
• 26:17
  and I I just kept hearing you say we, we, we, and I just want
• 26:22
  to make sure people understand that Jeff really was saying we.
• 26:27
  He really was saying a team here. He wasn't saying the
• 26:30
  individual person there. Can you just speak on that for just a
• 26:35
  second?
• 26:36
  Jeff Burstein: Sure. When you're when you're looking at any of these
• 26:39
  adaptive or agile or lean methodologies frameworks, they
• 26:46
  will look at the smallest value delivery unit within an
• 26:51
  organization as a team. They don't look at individual
• 26:54
  contributors because they already assume that a better
• 26:59
  quality output is going to come from a group of people all
• 27:05
  providing their own insights and their own thoughts to how to
• 27:08
  solve a problem that will make a better solution rather than
• 27:13
  relying on a single expert. You know, so if you're familiar with
• 27:17
  complexity theory, specifically the Cynefin model, which which I
• 27:22
  love. Dave Snowden, great guy, really sharp. But he explains it
• 27:29
  as the work of the systems that people do exist in one of four
• 27:33
  quadrants. It's clear we know everything, and if we know,
• 27:37
  since we know everything and we're familiar with everything,
• 27:40
  we know what we need to do to produce particular outcomes.
• 27:44
  Then there's complicated. This is the domain where experts are
• 27:48
  awesome. You bring in consultants into the complicated
• 27:50
  because you know what there is to know. You're just really
• 27:53
  unfamiliar with it, and what you need are extensive documents so
• 27:57
  that your teams can follow the process, and experts help you to
• 28:01
  document those processes. Very few organizations work actually
• 28:06
  exist in those two domains. Most organizations operate in the
• 28:10
  bottom two quadrants: complexity, where there is a
• 28:13
  degree of known unknowns. Oh, we know we need to figure this out.
• 28:18
  We just know we haven't figured this out yet. And the way you
• 28:21
  approach that is experts won't help. You need to run
• 28:24
  experiments. You need to test theories. See if hey, well, we
• 28:29
  think it might be this. Is it this? Let's see what happens.
• 28:33
  That's complexity. The other domain again. Most of our work
• 28:36
  exists in this, especially today, as things change every
• 28:39
  day. New technology, competition changing, customer demands
• 28:42
  changing every day. That's more of chaos. We don't even know the
• 28:47
  dimensions, the boundaries of the, you know, the environment
• 28:51
  that we're working in. And so, what we have to do is anything.
• 28:55
  We have to get teams doing anything. Observe what happens.
• 28:59
  See if we are able to identify some unknown unknown, something
• 29:03
  that we weren't even aware that existed, that we now can start
• 29:06
  coming up with experiments to contain it and move it into the
• 29:11
  complex domain. Because once we've solved it with experiments
• 29:14
  in the complex domain, it moves into the complicated domain,
• 29:19
  right? And it's about shifting things and relentless
• 29:21
  improvement is once you get things clear, pushing them over
• 29:26
  the edge and making it more chaotic. That's what brings
• 29:29
  improvement. That's what relentless improvement feels
• 29:31
  like: is running that model over and over again.
• 29:36
  Devon Morris: Relentless improvement.
• 29:38
  Jeff Burstein: So, yeah, relentless
• 29:41
  Devon Morris: improvement. So then, here's the question,
• 29:43
  right? You brought up you you you literally said you know the
• 29:48
  team as being like the smallest unit of value, and and and these
• 29:55
  agile frameworks moving in that direction. Can you tell us a
• 29:59
  little? A little bit more about that conceptually.
• 30:05
  Jeff Burstein: You know, so if you look at the Agile Manifesto, you
• 30:09
  know, it'll tell you that collaboration is definitely a
• 30:14
  better way of getting to to outcomes, right? Versus sticking
• 30:18
  to a plan. Let's negotiate. Let's do things. So negotiation
• 30:22
  only happens be between people. If you look at the traditional
• 30:28
  or you know the way product project management was done, and
• 30:32
  it's still done in a lot of places in the waterfall
• 30:35
  methodology, where it takes a project manager to write down
• 30:37
  the plan. One person writes down the plan. This is the plan.
• 30:43
  Everybody who's you know they're going to talk to somebody in the
• 30:46
  program, get a bunch of resources. Don't please don't
• 30:49
  refer to people as resources. They're going to get people
• 30:53
  assigned to their project. They're going to do allocations.
• 30:56
  Okay, you're working 80 hours over the next three months,
• 30:59
  whatever it is, right? And then it must go. There's toll gates,
• 31:04
  right? You got it. Oh yeah, we're gonna get it monthly.
• 31:06
  We're gonna get here, and we're gonna have sign off and
• 31:08
  approval, and all these things happen, and we're gonna develop
• 31:11
  all these documents. And there's a business development document,
• 31:15
  and there's a functional requirements document. All these
• 31:17
  documents get done, and that information finally flows down
• 31:21
  to a group of people who have to do that work. There's no team in
• 31:26
  doing that work. It's everybody's reading the
• 31:28
  instructions. They're picking their piece and they're working
• 31:31
  alone. Somebody has done all the thinking for them. That is very
• 31:36
  rote work. That is not the work that most of us do today, right?
• 31:41
  Most of us do not rote work. We do knowledge work. Rote work is
• 31:45
  we experience the same thing every day. It's clear, and if we
• 31:49
  just do it faster, we'll get more of it done. Knowledge work
• 31:54
  is our work changes every day. There's a new problem. There's a
• 31:57
  new technology. The competition has tried something new. A
• 32:01
  customer has a new demand. Oh, we have to introduce an
• 32:05
  efficient, a more efficient way of doing this because the way
• 32:07
  we've been doing it is no longer efficient or effective. So
• 32:11
  something has to change. That knowledge work, right? And it
• 32:16
  takes different types of workers to do those things. And in the
• 32:20
  work of knowledge, work collaboration gets you a better
• 32:24
  outcome because what you start with is a problem given to a
• 32:28
  group of people who bounce ideas off of each other and try
• 32:32
  different things, mix their ideas together. Everybody gives
• 32:37
  a different perspective of the problem, thus resulting in a
• 32:43
  better solution. I, as a single human being, I cannot wrap my
• 32:50
  head around how am I going to solve this exact same problem
• 32:54
  for for 100 different people who all have different needs. It
• 32:57
  might be easier for 20 people to think how they might solve it
• 33:02
  for five different people, and so when you look at
• 33:09
  organizations that are are working in these more adaptive
• 33:12
  or agile ways of working, they look at teams. They have what I
• 33:18
  call the value delivery teams. These are the people who do the
• 33:21
  work, right? But they might have management teams and leadership
• 33:26
  teams also. I believe those people should be working in
• 33:29
  teams also. A CEO is a part of several teams in a large
• 33:34
  enterprise. They work with the board, but they also work with
• 33:37
  their other C-level executives. They're part of multiple teams.
• 33:43
  Their work moves at a very slow pace. They're setting strategy
• 33:48
  multiple years, right? But in when we talk about scaling, we
• 33:53
  scale down, right? We narrow the scope, we narrow the work. It
• 33:57
  moves down in the organization, and so the cycle picks up faster
• 34:01
  and things move quarterly till it gets down to the team where
• 34:04
  the work gets done. Now it's moving every week or two and it
• 34:07
  gets done, and that value flows back up through that exact same
• 34:11
  system. So if you stop thinking about an individual as the one
• 34:18
  person who can solve every problem. That is for rote
• 34:24
  workers. We don't exist in that world. We work in the world of
• 34:27
  knowledge workers.
• 34:29
  You will just get a better solution from a team. And so,
• 34:32
  when I talk about teams being the smallest unit of value
• 34:38
  delivery for any organization, that's what I mean. Is once
• 34:42
  you're down and you get to the lowest level team, what they're
• 34:46
  actually delivering is customer value. So that's why I call them
• 34:51
  as a team. They deliver customer value. They're a value delivery
• 34:54
  team. That's the smallest unit that delivers customer value. A
• 34:58
  team of people.
• 35:00
  Devon Morris: That's that that that right there is amazing. Now
• 35:03
  you you mentioned two things in that that I want to make sure
• 35:07
  that people are really clear on, and I'd like for you to
• 35:11
  distinguish some different types of things that are knowledge
• 35:16
  work, you know, in general versus what you said rote work,
• 35:21
  Jeff Burstein: rote work, sure. You know, so this this is we're now
• 35:26
  going to cross into the realm of L-EAF.org, right? Why is why
• 35:30
  L-EAF.org as a framework? So there has been a lot of work.
• 35:34
  This is not like the research has been done on this. There are
• 35:38
  two different types of workers in the world. There are people
• 35:40
  who do repetitive work. It doesn't require any thinking.
• 35:45
  You know who you are, right? You may work on a factory assembly
• 35:49
  line, and you just right, or you could work in a big organization
• 35:53
  and look. You just know at the end of every month the reports
• 35:55
  are due. I go to a system, I press a button. I don't know
• 35:59
  what the heck happens. I just know when I press that button,
• 36:02
  reports happen. That is rote work. If you don't understand
• 36:07
  what's going on behind why you do what you do and it produces
• 36:12
  value, you are a rote worker. If that breaks and you can't fix
• 36:16
  it, or the way that value is delivered is now no longer
• 36:22
  meeting the needs because something in the environment has
• 36:25
  changed. It's taking too long. It's it no longer meets quality
• 36:30
  standards. Government regulations have changed. We
• 36:34
  have to file our taxes differently. Whatever doesn't
• 36:37
  really matter, but something has changed, necessitating a change
• 36:41
  in what happens after the button is pushed. If you can't get
• 36:45
  behind the scenes, improve it. So the way you improve what
• 36:49
  happens behind the button is all knowledge work, and that's
• 36:52
  really the distinction. Is if I push the button and I don't
• 36:56
  understand what happens, I'm a rote worker. If I push the
• 36:59
  button faster, right, then what happens happens faster. And the
• 37:04
  way you reward those people, it's very simple. It's stick and
• 37:07
  carrot. Press the button faster, and we'll give you a bonus.
• 37:12
  Don't press it fast enough, and we'll find somebody who can
• 37:15
  press it fast enough. No thinking involved. Knowledge
• 37:21
  workers-they don't work like that, so they require the way
• 37:28
  you motivate them. Is it? It's it's two steps. Step one is you
• 37:33
  first have to remove their concerns about money, right? And
• 37:41
  this is again not my research. This research has been done by
• 37:44
  psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, finance people,
• 37:50
  right? Like all over the spectrum, people from the
• 37:54
  liberal to liberal to conservative have looked at this
• 37:58
  not only in the United States but globally, and they just see
• 38:01
  the same pattern when it comes to human beings. If I don't
• 38:04
  think about my work, and I don't have to think about what happens
• 38:09
  for me to do my work, then reward and punishment makes me
• 38:13
  do it faster or gets someone else to do it. But if I have to
• 38:19
  think about my work, something's changing. I have to be creative.
• 38:22
  I have to come up with new solutions. And now I'm a
• 38:25
  knowledge worker. You first have to remove my concern of
• 38:28
  money, right? So I'm not thinking about money when I'm
• 38:34
  doing my job. Then you have to provide me with three things.
• 38:38
  Devon Morris: One is
• 38:39
  Jeff Burstein: purpose. Why are we doing this? Who are we doing
• 38:45
  this for, and why does solving this problem matter in the
• 38:49
  world? So, purpose. Second thing is you have to show them where
• 38:53
  they can have all the access to the tools and the resources, all
• 38:57
  those constraints. These are the boundaries: what you can and
• 39:00
  can't use, what's good and not in, what's in and out, all those
• 39:04
  things. Make the boundaries clear, make the resources
• 39:08
  available, and then leaders. The third thing they have to do is
• 39:13
  they have to learn how to get out of the way. Give the team
• 39:18
  autonomy to solve the problem because you hired them because
• 39:23
  you realize there are no experts, and we've never done it
• 39:28
  this way before, so we can't bring in a consultant. What we
• 39:32
  need are people who work really, really close to where the
• 39:35
  problem is, and have actually seen the shift in the
• 39:40
  environment, and now can shift the process to me. It's
• 39:44
  evolutionary in nature, right? And so then we talk about
• 39:52
  knowledge workers and rote workers. Those are the two
• 39:54
  buckets we're talking about. You can be the CEO of a company and
• 39:59
  be a rote. Worker, I don't know what happens when I say get me
• 40:05
  these reports, but all I know is these reports matter. No idea.
• 40:09
  If the process broke and the board asked you to fix it, they
• 40:12
  would be replacing you in 90 days. Because if you can't tell,
• 40:17
  and what's worse is a lot of senior executives actually have
• 40:21
  a belief that their systems, the way their organizations run,
• 40:25
  that they actually exist in the clear or the complicated
• 40:29
  domains, when in truth they exist in the complex or chaotic
• 40:35
  domains, and they are just oblivious to it because there's
• 40:39
  a middle management that protects them.
• 40:42
  Devon Morris: So, so then that is beautiful and interesting.
• 40:47
  So, one thing I'll say, so then people know. I think Dan Pink
• 40:50
  summed it up in a book called *The Drive* in terms of some of
• 40:53
  the things that you're talking about, and what I'll add for
• 40:57
  people: if you remove autonomy, you're going to impact
• 41:00
  motivation and psychological safety. That's what the
• 41:04
  research, right?
• 41:04
  Jeff Burstein: Well, so those those those things, right? It's the
• 41:07
  it's the how do you unlock motivation in knowledge workers?
• 41:10
  It's remove their concerns about money, then purpose, resources,
• 41:15
  and autonomy. And now you have just unlocked their motivation,
• 41:20
  and you just stay out of their way. That's it.
• 41:23
  Devon Morris: So then, then you started talking about. So how do
• 41:27
  you, you know, we almost we you mentioned goals. You meant you
• 41:31
  mentioned alignment. Yeah, you mentioned a lot of things,
• 41:34
  right? So then I'm curious, and I want to go back to the
• 41:40
  mindset, and I want to give people some things that are
• 41:43
  definitely useful. You know, how do you get, you know, in in this
• 41:49
  world? Can you get those mindsets to actually stick?
• 41:57
  Jeff Burstein: Um. So that's a great question. I don't know. I've
• 42:03
  been working on mine since I'm like 22, 23, and every day it can
• 42:12
  be a battle. So does it stick? Like you don't have to keep
• 42:17
  working on it? No, I don't think it ever. You're never done. It
• 42:22
  is relentless improvement, right? It's you know, it's the
• 42:27
  when I'm coaching, I'll tell anybody. I say it's not a
• 42:30
  question of right, wrong, good, bad. It's like going to the eye
• 42:34
  doctor, better, worse, and just orient and keep orienting
• 42:39
  towards better. It's never done, right? When I deal with leaders
• 42:46
  and I talk to them about how do you cast vision for your
• 42:50
  organization, so that there's always something that at one on
• 42:56
  one end of the sector it seems like oh yeah yeah we can get
• 43:00
  there, but it's also just out of reach. So they'll never get
• 43:06
  there because they have to, as an organization, constantly be
• 43:11
  pulling towards something. Why would you ever stop? The
• 43:16
  companies that stop, they begin to atrophy. Like as soon as you
• 43:23
  stop trying to get better, you start to get worse. Not because
• 43:28
  there's anything wrong with the systems or the organization that
• 43:32
  you've built. It's just you don't exist in a vacuum.
• 43:36
  Everything around you is changing. Your competition's not
• 43:39
  stopping. Your customers are going to want more. Technology
• 43:44
  changes every 13 seconds. Yeah. Well, how can you stop? You know
• 43:50
  who gets to stop? Organizations that don't have to worry about
• 43:55
  sustainability. I look at some government entities. Yes. They
• 44:00
  don't have to worry about where does the money come from. We tax
• 44:04
  more. Okay, but you know there there is a threshold. You know,
• 44:11
  so, but for an organization or anybody to go, yep, no, it's
• 44:19
  stuck. It never sticks. I don't think you know. So we have this.
• 44:28
  There's this one interesting exercise we do. We call it
• 44:31
  letting go. Right? Like when you realize that, oh my God, I've
• 44:36
  just brought my emotions into the work. I got to let that go.
• 44:40
  Right? Like I brought I brought something personal to my team
• 44:44
  that is not in not aligned with what we all said we were
• 44:48
  committed to delivering value wise for our customers who we're
• 44:51
  here to do the work for. How do I let that go so I can get back
• 44:54
  in with my team? And so we we often will will tell people you
• 44:59
  know. Imagine you've got a pen in your hand and you're just
• 45:02
  holding it. I mean, I mean, really hold on to it tight. You
• 45:07
  know, think about how much energy you're putting into
• 45:10
  holding it on. Now, is it easier to hold on to it than it is to
• 45:13
  just let it go?
• 45:15
  Devon Morris: Right. Yeah.
• 45:16
  Jeff Burstein: And imagine if you could take all that energy that
• 45:18
  you were putting into holding it and just divert that into
• 45:21
  delivering value, just because you let it go, so you weren't
• 45:23
  focused on that. Now, what you find is, yeah, you can let it
• 45:27
  go, but it could be five minutes later, 13 seconds later, two
• 45:33
  years later. You don't even know how it happened, but now that
• 45:36
  pen is right back in your hand, and you're holding it again, and
• 45:39
  you got to practice letting it go again, and you have to
• 45:42
  practice all the time letting it go. So it's that it. I don't
• 45:48
  know that it sticks. It doesn't get any better.
• 45:52
  Devon Morris: Here's here's a question, right? So, so I, you
• 45:56
  know, I obviously we are mind melding here, right? And so I'm
• 46:03
  curious, man. So, for me, when you say this, the
• 46:12
  Devon Morris: way to get it to stick is to understand it's never
• 46:16
  gonna stick. Jeff Burstein: Right. Well, so we get back to relentless
• 46:22
  improvement. Why? Why in all the frameworks? Why in all the
• 46:26
  methodologies do they tell you you got to have a commitment to
• 46:30
  relentless improvement? Because they know things are going to
• 46:35
  change, and if you just rest on your laurels, you stop getting
• 46:41
  the value from what you've done.
• 46:45
  Devon Morris: So then, how do you help a team that did get
• 46:50
  stuck in a mindset?
• 46:53
  Jeff Burstein: Sure. So it is a great question. So the first thing I
• 46:59
  would tell you is that in in mindset training, everybody gets
• 47:02
  stuck. There is no not getting stuck, right? In order to have
• 47:07
  what we call a breakthrough in mindset, you actually have to
• 47:11
  hit what we call breakdown. And breakdown is I'm not talking a
• 47:15
  mental breakdown where you go away, although it can sometimes
• 47:18
  get something. What we're actually talking about is that
• 47:22
  if you think of your brain as a system, all right, it's just a
• 47:25
  system. It generates ideas for you. That's all it is. It is,
• 47:31
  however, a system that is influenced by emotion, which is
• 47:36
  weird because no other system is influenced by emotion. That's a
• 47:40
  weird thing. We talked about that earlier, but when you can
• 47:44
  identify, you individuals can identify that they are in some
• 47:48
  sort of cognitive breakdown or the mindset breakdown when
• 47:52
  they're looking at a problem and they're like, "I don't, I don't
• 47:54
  know what to do. I can't think of anything to do. I'm not doing
• 48:00
  anything, and they just sit there and look at the problem,
• 48:03
  and then I have this saying that I I do and I say, and people
• 48:09
  really don't appreciate it, but I people will often say, "Oh
• 48:14
  God, we hope that works. I'm like, "Well, hope is not a plan.
• 48:17
  Come up with a plan, you know. Or I'll say things like, "Well,
• 48:21
  hope is what you what you have to rely on when you run out of
• 48:24
  your ability to plan. So if you are just in hope, if all you
• 48:30
  have left is hope, you're in cognitive breakdown. That's the
• 48:35
  signal. It's like God. I I I hope my finances work out. I
• 48:40
  hope this problem for the customer solves itself. I hope
• 48:45
  this report automatically fixes itself. I hope we can somehow
• 48:49
  magically be in compliance. I hope I've got nothing left. So
• 48:53
  how do you get out of breakdown? It's actually really simple. Do
• 49:00
  something. Do anything. It doesn't matter. All you're
• 49:04
  trying to do, and all that, and I describe it like this: is
• 49:08
  think about it this way. The gears in your brain that come up
• 49:13
  with ideas are seized up. There's something jamming them,
• 49:17
  and you're in breakdown. You are relying on hope. You cannot come
• 49:21
  up with any ideas. At that point, don't try to do the right
• 49:25
  thing. Don't try to do the good thing. Don't try to do the thing
• 49:30
  everybody expects you to do. That's going to make you think
• 49:32
  about a thing to do. We already have agreed you can't think of
• 49:37
  anything to do. So stop trying. Just do, do anything. Do
• 49:45
  something. Do something small. See what happens. Just keep
• 49:51
  doing things because what happens is, is you will just
• 49:54
  unjam it, and then you go. Okay. Well, wait a minute. Before I do
• 49:58
  that stupid thing that I know doesn't. What if I tried this,
• 50:03
  and that is an indication you are now popping out of
• 50:06
  breakdown. And what you'll generally get to 80% of the time
• 50:11
  is breakdown leads to breakthrough. You have to get to
• 50:17
  one to get to the other, because what you've done, if for those
• 50:22
  who have seen the the video, getting smarter every day, the
• 50:27
  backwards bicycle video, it's a great video and it explains this
• 50:32
  what's happening. Right, is you're essentially taking what
• 50:36
  is a cognitive pattern that has been set in your brain because
• 50:39
  you've always done it that way for so many years, and it's
• 50:41
  always worked. But then it stopped working, and then you've
• 50:45
  started to fill in that cognitive pathway and start to
• 50:48
  develop new trails.
• 50:50
  Devon Morris: Yeah, and that
• 50:51
  Devon Morris: is really, really hard
• 50:54
  Devon Morris: to do. So then, then here's the question, right?
• 50:57
  Because you've seen people go from breakdown to break to break
• 51:01
  Devon Morris: through, yeah,
• 51:02
  Devon Morris: and you've seen both, right? You've seen both
• 51:07
  how it looks in a person that you've seen in that place where
• 51:11
  they had breakdown versus when they've broken through.
• 51:16
  Jeff Burstein: Sure, right, and so breakdown really does look like
• 51:21
  it has a signal. It's people are relying on hope and they can't
• 51:24
  think of what to do, and they're just stopped. They're literally
• 51:28
  unable to think of what to do next, and they're unwilling to
• 51:32
  do anything. They're resigned, right? Like, yeah, this is this
• 51:37
  is just it. This is it. I gotta hope that someone's gonna come
• 51:41
  in and save me or something. I've got nothing. I'm broken
• 51:45
  down. In that way, I cannot create anything new. And when we
• 51:52
  ask them to start, well, just do it. Do anything. Doesn't matter
• 51:56
  what you do at that point. Do something you know is not gonna
• 51:59
  work. Do it 10 times. Watch it not work. See if you can
• 52:03
  understand why it's not working. Right? It's just the starting to
• 52:09
  get them realizing that they gotta get the gears that have
• 52:14
  seized up in motion because once they start going again, right,
• 52:18
  the ideas do flow, and then you will see the signal, like the
• 52:23
  signal show up because a they'll they'll fix the problem, like
• 52:27
  they'll get a solution. It may take a little time, but then
• 52:30
  what they'll start to be able to do is produce solutions at a
• 52:34
  higher rate than they, and they will be like, I can't believe
• 52:37
  that I figured this out. Yeah, like I thought it was going to
• 52:40
  take this, but I got it in in much less than that. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:47
  And that's that's what it looks like. Is they have now moved
• 52:50
  beyond their own cognitively set imaginary boundary of capability
• 52:58
  for themselves.
• 53:00
  Devon Morris: You know, I say to you, Jeff, when when it when it
• 53:04
  happens to me, it may be I reset by going to bed, playing a video
• 53:12
  game, going to cook something, taking myself away for a moment.
• 53:17
  You know, going someplace on the computer that's a little bit
• 53:20
  different, just so I can disconnect a little bit and then
• 53:25
  try to get back at it because I don't have any more ideas, any
• 53:30
  more things to move forward with. Because I just, you know,
• 53:33
  and then I do try to move forward. I'm just messing things
• 53:37
  up, just making and worse and worse for myself. So I'm just
• 53:41
  like this is this is this is wild and crazy. And again, I may
• 53:44
  connect with family in some kind of way, and that's you know
• 53:48
  classically, I'm I'm I'm going to my other human systems to
• 53:54
  help me out in some kind of way, and we all, you know, I don't
• 53:59
  know a single person that does not go through it. We all go.
• 54:03
  Jeff Burstein: Everybody does, but that's why we have these
• 54:06
  connections.
• 54:07
  Devon Morris: So then, what? So then, we we definitely was
• 54:10
  talking about an individual here. Do you get the same advice
• 54:13
  for a team?
• 54:15
  Jeff Burstein: Same advice for teams. Yeah, you you can see it in
• 54:18
  their backlog, right? When they stop putting things into their
• 54:21
  backlog. They're running out of ideas.
• 54:25
  Devon Morris: Yeah,
• 54:25
  Jeff Burstein: put anything in your backlog.
• 54:27
  Devon Morris: Yeah,
• 54:28
  Jeff Burstein: pull anything into your workflow. Do something. Right
• 54:34
  now, the coaching may be right. Like do something intentional.
• 54:38
  Like you know, okay, maybe I'll do the same thing again, but
• 54:42
  instead of doing the same thing, trying to move, you know, have
• 54:46
  it be the solution. Let me do the same thing and understand
• 54:49
  why it's not the solution. Okay, so what we've really done is,
• 54:57
  you know, mentally we simply step to the left. Right a little
• 55:00
  bit, and we looked at the problem from a different
• 55:03
  perspective, and that's all we're trying to do. Just change
• 55:09
  where we're standing and looking at the problem. That's an
• 55:12
  advantage a team gives you: is everybody's already standing in
• 55:15
  a different position. They're already looking at the problem
• 55:18
  different way. Great, everybody, shift 10 feet to the left. Now
• 55:22
  we're getting that exponential value of having a whole team.
• 55:26
  Now all look at it through a new lens. Now what do we got?
• 55:30
  Devon Morris: That's that's that's interesting. So here's
• 55:32
  here's the question, right? Because you know when I when I
• 55:35
  think about a leader, a leader could be somebody on the team on
• 55:37
  the team, right? A leader could be somebody outside of the team.
• 55:43
  when you have leaders that don't notice that a team is seized up,
• 55:48
  how do you teach them or coach them through process of being
• 55:55
  able to coach their team in the right direction? Because again,
• 55:58
  you said, Jeff, I'm not going to be at an organization forever,
• 56:02
  so how do you leave that knowledge with that leader so
• 56:06
  they can actually help these teams be better?
• 56:11
  Jeff Burstein: Sure. So that is a great question. And so, when
• 56:15
  working in an enterprise, doing enterprise level transformation,
• 56:18
  there is transformation work that gets done at the team
• 56:20
  level, at management level, at leadership level, at executive
• 56:24
  level, and in any kind of scaled framework, everybody's seeing an
• 56:30
  amount of the same kind of process. They might be seeing it
• 56:34
  as it relates to their work, or if you're a leader, like oh,
• 56:38
  when you're seeing teams, these are some of those things that
• 56:41
  you might be on the lookout for, right? But it really is the best
• 56:47
  way for leaders to track progress of teams and just make
• 56:53
  sure that everybody's moving in the same direction as an
• 56:56
  organization. We don't have two teams working in opposite
• 56:59
  directions or working opposed each other, right? All of a
• 57:02
  sudden, we're not making any progress, but we're spending a
• 57:05
  lot of capacity and energy, right? There are regular
• 57:12
  check-ins. Like a leader who has gone through the training with
• 57:16
  me will not be surprised because they are participating at
• 57:21
  regular schedules and in team demonstrations, maybe at the you
• 57:27
  know maybe one layer up at the product level where they're
• 57:32
  seeing with product you know managers working within the
• 57:35
  portfolio. If it's a really big organization, you know, so they
• 57:40
  have and they're engaged, and they're participating. They're
• 57:44
  providing feedback. Yes, I see that the teams are moving us
• 57:48
  closer to our initiative. What we'd like to see next is these
• 57:52
  solutions. How would they answer these questions? So they're
• 57:58
  engaged, and they're not surprised. And yeah, I mean,
• 58:02
  they will notice that you know why is it that the flow of value
• 58:06
  has has slowed down? Yeah, you know, is there is there
• 58:11
  something from that triad that as a leader I am now failing at?
• 58:18
  Is it that they don't completely cannot connect to purpose. Maybe
• 58:24
  we don't have the right resources and tools and
• 58:26
  boundaries set. Yeah, or maybe the teams don't have feel they
• 58:31
  have the right amount of autonomy, and we haven't moved
• 58:35
  that authority closer to where the solution is going to get
• 58:39
  developed.
• 58:41
  Devon Morris: You know, you you, I and I and again, you see it a
• 58:46
  ton. Probably if you you you remove that extrinsic motivator
• 58:51
  money and those kind of things, remove that, and you mentioned
• 58:54
  purpose, you mentioned autonomy, and then you mentioned
• 58:56
  boundaries. I'll just call it mastery, all that kind of stuff
• 58:59
  back there, Right, which of those three things, you know,
• 59:06
  purpose, autonomy, mastery, because you touched on every
• 59:11
  single one of those in this conversation. Which of those do
• 59:15
  you see missing the most with teams that you engage with?
• 59:20
  Jeff Burstein: You know, honestly, it is a combination, and it's not
• 59:22
  just a combination of those three. It's also a combination
• 59:25
  of that predecessor, right? Like the conversation of money has
• 59:29
  not been taken off the table for them, right? And so you're
• 59:33
  already behind the game because you then don't get to rely on
• 59:37
  the the triad, you know, that formula that every leader has to
• 59:41
  experiment is it is it a little more purpose is it a little
• 59:45
  pinch of you know autonomy or mastery whichever it is you know
• 59:49
  what's the ratio where do we need to lean into now that the
• 59:53
  conditions have changed and it's not a it's not like Ron Popeil
• 59:58
  where you set it and forget it.
• 1:00:00
  Devon Morris: Yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:01
  Jeff Burstein: right. It is, you know. It's you have to be engaged. It
• 1:00:05
  is a living, you know. I tell people, you know, organizations.
• 1:00:10
  The word is so much like organism, and it is a living,
• 1:00:13
  breathing organism that evolves and changes, and either it
• 1:00:17
  adapts to its environment or it shrivels up and dies. I didn't
• 1:00:24
  write the rules of biology. I was taught them as a child. So
• 1:00:29
  evolve or don't, right? You know. But there's a formula to
• 1:00:36
  evolutionary organizations, and it's not bringing in experts and
• 1:00:42
  consultants to tell everybody what to do, and it's not set
• 1:00:45
  your processes once and be done with it, and it's not this is
• 1:00:50
  the way we've always done it, and we're always going to do it,
• 1:00:52
  and no one can tell you why. It's just not.
• 1:00:56
  Devon Morris: I, I, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't agree with
• 1:00:58
  you more. Organisms, organization,
• 1:01:02
  Jeff Burstein: organisms.
• 1:01:03
  Devon Morris: I love that, right? Evolve or die, right?
• 1:01:08
  Absolutely, like nothing new under the sun here, right? So we
• 1:01:13
  we are in agreement. So here's the deal, right? I'm gonna ask
• 1:01:17
  you one final thing, and then let let us tell everybody where
• 1:01:21
  you can be found at. We talked about mindset first, so I like
• 1:01:29
  to kind of make sure that we tent that with that mindset. But
• 1:01:35
  here's my question: What would you tell a leader whose team is
• 1:01:43
  behind right now, and they know it.
• 1:01:50
  Jeff Burstein: Sure, I would tell every leader the same thing: is
• 1:01:53
  as a leader, that title comes with a certain set of
• 1:01:58
  responsibilities and accountability to the team. So,
• 1:02:04
  what is it that, as a leader, you need to do to ensure that
• 1:02:09
  your teams have everything they need to be successful? Because
• 1:02:15
  either you have inherited an organization that is configured
• 1:02:23
  in such a way that teams cannot be successful, or you have
• 1:02:31
  inadvertently created rules and guidelines and governances that
• 1:02:38
  have forced your teams to behave a certain way, or maybe with the
• 1:02:43
  best of intentions, you brought in a tool or a process. So, what
• 1:02:51
  I would tell every leader is the same thing: just remember, you
• 1:02:55
  lead people, and you are accountable and responsible for
• 1:02:59
  people. And on any given day, your people are dealing with-is
• 1:03:03
  there cursing on this podcast? I don't know. They're dealing with
• 1:03:07
  stuff, but they're dealing with stuff. And as a leader, what you
• 1:03:15
  need to ensure is that they're okay, that They can, for
• 1:03:23
  themselves, attach to the purpose you have laid out,
• 1:03:30
  develop the mastery that you have defined you think is
• 1:03:35
  needed, and that they get that they have the autonomy to solve
• 1:03:41
  your problems with their teammates, and that you've done
• 1:03:45
  what you can to make sure they are not thinking about money all
• 1:03:49
  the time, most of the time, right? Because at the end of the
• 1:03:55
  day, if you if your teams if your teams are suffering, right?
• 1:04:03
  And there's a difference between a team that's working on a
• 1:04:06
  solution and just not making progress. Could be there's a lot
• 1:04:09
  of unknown unknowns. It's just going to take time, right? You
• 1:04:14
  know, giving people artificial make-believe deadlines doesn't
• 1:04:17
  help. That that is a that is a touch on the autonomy corner.
• 1:04:25
  That's not autonomy. We'll solve it when we solve it. Not we'll
• 1:04:28
  solve it by the 23rd of the month, right? That's that's not
• 1:04:32
  autonomy. We don't know what it's going to take. We've never
• 1:04:36
  solved this problem before. So I would always tell a leader,
• 1:04:41
  great! You have a basic set of tools that you, as a leader, can
• 1:04:46
  use to help the people that you lead. Right? You have purpose.
• 1:04:52
  You have mission. You have vision. You have your ability to
• 1:04:56
  cast those things. The ability to set an off. North Star, and
• 1:05:01
  then you have control as the leader of the organization,
• 1:05:07
  right? Over as things get identified that are standing in
• 1:05:11
  their way, they don't need to be there. Let them know they can be
• 1:05:15
  removed. They don't have to be there, right? Keep in mind every
• 1:05:21
  rule that exists in this company, and every rule that
• 1:05:25
  this company follows, even by the government that made up a
• 1:05:30
  bunch of rules that we all have to follow. These are all rules
• 1:05:33
  that were just made up by people, just made up. They don't
• 1:05:38
  exist anywhere but out, but they only exist inside of a human
• 1:05:45
  system, society, nationality, how corporations are structured,
• 1:05:54
  tax systems. Those are all human made. It's all made up. None of
• 1:05:58
  it's real. Yeah. And so, if not, why treat it like anything it's
• 1:06:02
  not? And let's just understand that as long as we're going to
• 1:06:07
  adhere to the boundaries that other people set, we get to get
• 1:06:11
  there any way we want to.
• 1:06:13
  Devon Morris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:17
  Jeff Burstein: So that's what I tell leaders: is lead, and you lead
• 1:06:21
  with purpose, vision, and mission. Go lead,
• 1:06:25
  Devon Morris: go lead. I like that. And I'm there, but here's
• 1:06:29
  here's the statement. I I have to I have to say it because I I
• 1:06:33
  love that you said it. Um, and that's suffering, right? It's
• 1:06:40
  really hard to be really productive on anything if all
• 1:06:44
  you can think about is you or the people that you love and
• 1:06:47
  care about suffering, right? Especially knowledge work. So I
• 1:06:53
  think that that is a great thing that you pushed in there. But
• 1:06:57
  again, mindset is extremely important. So I'll ask you here:
• 1:07:03
  Where should people find you, and tell us what's coming up for
• 1:07:08
  you?
• 1:07:10
  Jeff Burstein: Sure. So the easiest place to find me is probably on
• 1:07:14
  LinkedIn. I do a lot of just meeting people on LinkedIn,
• 1:07:19
  talking to people on LinkedIn, I will generally respond to every
• 1:07:23
  direct message sent to me at some point. You know, I get
• 1:07:27
  back, and that's even the ones that I know where it's just
• 1:07:29
  people trying to spam me and try to sell me something that I'm
• 1:07:33
  never, never going to buy. I take the time to talk to them.
• 1:07:36
  People took the time, even though I know that they set up
• 1:07:39
  an automatic. I hey, look, you took the time. Let me
• 1:07:42
  acknowledge you as a human being. We're all human beings,
• 1:07:46
  all right. So LinkedIn is the best place to find me, and you
• 1:07:51
  know I am on LinkedIn. It's Jeff Burstein. You'll you'll see me.
• 1:07:56
  I'm standing in front of it's the the the picture of computing
• 1:08:02
  and theoretical science building on Argonne National Laboratories
• 1:08:07
  out in Illinois. When I was working for the Department of
• 1:08:10
  Energy, one of the even though there's no pictures, one of the
• 1:08:14
  guards let me take a picture outside the building because
• 1:08:17
  there was nothing to see outside the building. But it's a it's a
• 1:08:19
  great picture. It's got the old punch cards in front of it, and
• 1:08:24
  and so you'll find me there. It's you know LinkedIn. I'm just
• 1:08:27
  Jeff Burstein, one straight thing, you know, without an
• 1:08:31
  underscore in between them. You can also connect with me at any
• 1:08:36
  of the websites. My email is generally Jeff at or JB at, and
• 1:08:44
  then it's either @advancedenterpriseagility.com,
• 1:08:50
  L-EAF.org, or L-EAFLab.org, L-EAF Lab. So those are all ways that
• 1:08:57
  anybody can can get a hold of me. We're always willing to talk
• 1:09:03
  to people and see how we can help.
• 1:09:06
  Devon Morris: I must say this to you, Jeff, because I'm I'm I
• 1:09:09
  keep getting kicked in the teeth by you guys who come and I
• 1:09:13
  interview. I always think about a title, a possibility, beats
• 1:09:17
  that we go and have conversations about, and then
• 1:09:20
  you guys just all of a sudden change the conversation, and
• 1:09:23
  it's the right conversation to have. So I appreciate you, man.
• 1:09:27
  Thank you so much.
• 1:09:30
  Jeff Burstein: And you know, it just it comes back to you know we
• 1:09:32
  have plans, and that's great. It's good to have a plan.
• 1:09:35
  Everybody needs a plan, and if you get nothing out of an
• 1:09:38
  adaptive way of thinking, it's your ability to plan, but just
• 1:09:42
  realize that your plan's gonna just go off the rails as soon as
• 1:09:46
  you start implementation, and that's okay because all that's
• 1:09:50
  happening is you're learning about. Oh, I thought it was
• 1:09:53
  this. Turns out it's that, and you're just adapting as you go.
• 1:09:58
  Devon Morris: Well, you know, I'm. Try my best to be as
• 1:10:01
  adaptive as I can be, but I'm going to say to you, Jeff, I
• 1:10:04
  really appreciate you. Thank you so much, and audience, go find
• 1:10:10
  Jeff. You heard the conversation. Get that mindset
• 1:10:14
  right, and we will be talking to you again sometime soon.
• 1:10:18
  Jeff Burstein: Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much.
• 1:10:21
  Have a great rest of the whatever. Listening
• 1:10:24
  Devon Morris: to
• 1:10:25
  Jeff Burstein: enjoy the rest of it, and we'll we'll see everybody
• 1:10:28
  next time.
• 1:10:29
  Devon Morris: I appreciate you, Jeff. Thank you so much. Thank
• 1:10:31
  you. Thank you for joining us. Where every Tuesday and Thursday
• 1:10:38
  we work toward bridging the gap for teams that are behind.