The Big Influencers in Agile (and to Reaktor culture)

Jarkko Kailanto is an experienced coach whose expertise originates from Nokia, as with many others. Jarkko trains, coaches, and often develops new perspectives for training as the world changes. Externally, Jarkko is like an ancient philosopher-king. He faces situations with calm, a friendly smile at times, and always has the patience of a caring parent to help individuals consider issues from angles that unravel challenging situations.

Jarkko is an electrical engineering master’s graduate by training. This doesn’t really relate to what he does now, which is training, coaching, and solving situations related to people.

First 12 years of his career were at Nokia climbing the leadership ladder. Agile methods came into software development at the turn of the century, and Jarkko started working with them in 2007. Suddenly the work became considerably more humane. He started as a Scrum Master and product owner, and quite quickly, as a coach. In 2012 he joined Reaktor and started full time coaching. He has sought formal competence in individual coaching through, for example, the Neuroleadership Institute’s Brain Based Coaching and the Business Coaching Institute’s Certified Business Coach Master degrees.

This article is about those who have been significant inspirations along Reaktor’s journey. From whom Jarkko and other coaches at Reaktor have drawn content and ideas. Jarkko will be our tour guide.

Some people are good at naming where thoughts come from, i.e., there are clear scientific backgrounds and facts for some theory or model. I feel I’m a bit different. I’ve read a lot, talked a lot, and done a lot. From these, a continuously evolving personal synthesis of things has emerged, from which it’s not always entirely clear where they come from.

Then, behind many published thoughts, there are other background influencers, and it’s difficult to say where the real roots of certain ideas are. I’ve tried to choose certain basic characters and thoughts to this discussion, from which we have clearly drawn on a practical level.

One such legendary book is Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Written in 1937. It opens up key themes. Many other books repeat the same themes with slightly different emphases. I don’t believe maliciously robbing or plagiarizing, but because the ideas are good, and similar conclusions are reached by different routes.

Many coaches draw inspiration from war, as terrible as it is. Although the “Team of Teams” book talks about dismantling hierarchies and draws from the United States Marine Corps. Apparently, the Prussian army and later the German army used similar tactics successfully. It came to mind when you mentioned old thoughts.

“Team of Teams” by Stanley McChrystal sparked a lot of interest at Reaktor, and we invited him here to Finland. We had booked one of the halls at Tennispalatsi for the event and invited a wide audience to listen.

Back then, we were rebelling against corporatization, and we wanted to show that there are other ways to lead large groups than traditional hierarchy. The core idea was that slow and hierarchical leadership did not work against independent and constantly changing terrorist cells. Instead of hierarchical leadership, the aim was to ensure that those closest to the problem had the necessary authority and best information to act independently in that situation.

It would be nice if inspiration could be found elsewhere than in war. Here I would highlight David Rock. He is an Australian neuroscientist and perhaps the biggest inspiration to my work. He has also influenced broadly how we coach at Reaktor in team leadership and coaching leadership courses. From there comes a certain style of coaching, active listening, coaching questions, and coaching interaction.

Leaders often feel their role is such that they are supposed to solve things themselves and feel that they own all the problems. “Bring me your problems, and I’ll solve them!” In coaching leadership, this philosophy is turned into one where everyone is able to solve things independently, as long as they receive support. Supporting a person’s belief in themselves and supporting taking responsibility. David Rock is the father of this kind of thinking.

Exactly active listening, summarising, coaching questions, guiding focus, trying to find a shared vision, making a preliminary plan, and deepening details.

For example, the popular and more colloquial Scarf model comes from David Rock. Certain social interaction situations are perceived as a threat. Scarf words are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. I’ve heard how it’s used at Reaktor as a verb: “I got Scarfed!”. I think it’s great how people are aware of their emotional reaction and the reasons leading to it. Fundamentally, Stanley McChrystal’s book had the same idea, the belief in people’s ability to make good decisions themselves.?

I feel that as a leader, I’m paid to own the problems, to try to minimise, for example, the effects of political escalations on teams so that they can peacefully focus on more productive and meaningful work. Is that old school leadership (I'm ok with being a bit old school)?

Helping can be done in many ways. Leadership is also situational awareness. Sometimes it’s beneficial to have someone who can take responsibility for decision-making. The ability to apply the right approach in a situation is at the core of leadership. There’s no need to be ashamed of taking a role and solving problems.

In terms of the big picture, however, it makes sense for people to dare to take roles and make decisions independently. If we go back to Stanley McChrystal for a moment, the challenge is that the ultimate decision-making power is high up in the organisation. The book noted that in tight spots, the general was woken up in the middle of the night to make decisions. He had to make decisions with little information and little sleep about things without local knowledge just because of the hierarchy. About things that the people on the ground surely understood better. This kind of rubber stamp role had to be gotten rid of.

In addition to David Rock, for example, David Maister’s Trusted Advisor book has influenced our doing. Its core idea is to rise from hand-holding consulting to becoming a trusted advisor. It’s already a bit outdated work and is no longer distributed to all new employees, but still, those thoughts resonate in our doing. The role of a trusted advisor is probably the goal of all consulting companies. The idea is that you are called even before things are put out to tender, and then, of course, you are in a great position in terms of sales.

Consulting business can be done at many different levels. Many companies focus on implementing what the customer knows to ask for, and of course, that’s quite sensible in itself. Then a lot is done so that things are defined ready and then done. Our way of operating has been and hopefully will continue to be different. Not to chew things ready, but to try to find the real need together, and constantly learning to develop the best possible solution within the agreed constraints. This, of course, requires trust, and you have to believe that the supplier isn’t trying to cheat at every turn.

If we jump to agile development, it has been some kind of cornerstone and enabler of growth for Reaktor since the beginning of the 2000s. There are certain key things. Everything could be said to have started from the Agile Manifesto. 17 wise men gathered on some mountain to ponder what’s wrong in software development, and what things work, and from that, the basic principles of agility were born.

From the Agile Manifesto were born productised versions like Scrum, which we have also trained from the beginning of the millennium. Behind it were such names as Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, although the original version came from Japan, and there Takeuchi and Nonaka were mentioned as developers of the concept.

Ken Schwaber wrote the Agile Software Development with Scrum together with Mike Beedle. It’s a black-covered book with colourful text on the cover, and it’s such a bible level that even the picture of the book has burned into my memory.

The basis of our teams is still Scrum or let’s say, the basic things of Scrum. There is self-guidance, a more formal cycle or cyclic format, a work queue or product backlog, there is a product owner guiding choices and prioritisations, we retro and also develop the way of doing itself continuously, we aim to keep things ready all the time and not just at the end of the project. All this stems from the basic ideas of agile.

Kanban has originated from the same roots of the Agile world and is based on the Toyota Production System. From there has also started Lean thinking, which affects more in the industry. Kanban has also been made a commercial or more formal version, and behind it is David Anderson. This is now quite much from memory, so it shouldn’t be taken quite as a fact.

Kanban at one time competed somewhat funnily for the official agile model position with Scrum. About ten years ago, there were genuine discussions about which one is THE agile model. Also, various kinds of intermediate forms, versions of doing Scrumban, emerged. The strength of Kanban is visualisation.

In all kinds of agile faith wars, the funny thing is that at the core of agile is always to act in the most sensible way considering the situation. That there would be some model to be slavishly followed or that there would even be a correct model is basically already in contradiction with the philosophy of agile. Of course, if models are commercialised, it’s probably sensible from their perspective to emphasise that some model is the right one.

Scrum actually offered a starting point and framework to start doing things, and at its core is to develop the doing itself continuously better just for that team and need. Kanban came along first as an alternative and later the best features of both have been taken as a basis for doing.

One way, in my opinion, to fail with agile is to start applying models without understanding more deeply the philosophy of agile and the core of the problem to be solved. Often you hear that we tried to do agile, and it didn’t work, and that brings a bit of a smile to the lips. If agile is considered as a model to be followed, then it is basically already a bit off track. Thinking agilely, one should consider one’s own situation and whether, for example, Scrum would provide a good framework for doing, from which could develop a good way of doing. Always choose the best model in relation to the needs of the situation.

About customers’ agile operating models and successes, one could talk for hours. If we try to stay with big names, don’t Snowden and Kniberg connect strongly to the agile world, or Snowden perhaps also as a questioner of agile?

Snowden studies complexity, and related to that is his Cynefin model. Roughly it helps to structure the world or problems into different levels. In obvious problems, cause-and-effect relationships are clearly visible, and as we move towards more chaotic situations, it’s difficult or impossible to genuinely understand the consequences of actions. Here comes quite a logical connection to agile thinking, i.e., when the boundary conditions are unclear, the results cannot be deduced in advance, it’s worth proceeding with small experiments and examining the effects. This is very compatible with agile thinking. For example, the consumer market is in constant change, and if services are developed there, one should be constantly sensitive to the effects of changes. In industrial investment, the situation may be the opposite.

Henrik Kniberg, again, is a very significant actor in the agile context. He is a Swedish coach and worked in the 2000s in a company called Crisp. Maybe it compares to how Reaktor influenced the arrival of agile to Finland. He worked as a coach, but in addition, he has been really good at verbalising, simplifying, and popularising things related to agility. Lean from the Trenches is definitely a landmark work. Scrum vs. Kanban explores the agile war around 2010. He also makes great summaries to the youtube platform. Agile Product Owners in a nutshell condenses the core of two days of training in 15 minutes.

Kniberg’s legacy also includes the so-called Spotify model, which inevitably comes across in this world of organisational coaching. Kniberg was creating Spotify’s new organisation and ended up writing something about it in his way. The story goes that the original intention was to describe an iterative model of how to find the right organisation model using Spotify as an example. However, it turned into yet another ready-made model that has been started to be implanted as such into organisations. Of course, it can work somewhere, but that wasn’t the idea of the model.

The Spotify model was made famous by at least an article in Harvard Business Review about ING Bank. The world’s largest consulting houses are driving it forward as a Big Bang change, i.e., in situations where the whole organisation is wanted to be blown up and reorganised. It can be quite a shock to people as well.?

If the Spotify model is thought of as such a big hammer, then it wasn’t its original purpose. If I think about that Big Bang change and shock, then sometimes that’s needed as well. Sometimes a big vision and a bit of shaking are needed. I think that in all models, whether it’s Scrum, Spotify, or Safe, they should be remembered to be tools and frameworks for doing or rather yet starting to do, not end results or target states. One should never stay in place and should constantly correct, improve, and take things forward.

If we go a bit to a different area, J. Richard Hackman has been a great source of inspiration for us, especially regarding teams. He has such a book as Leading Teams, from which we have drawn a lot. He actually did work with airlines, and therefore some things don’t apply to software development. With airlines, when thinking about how a plane goes from place A to place B, the staff have very precisely defined roles and tasks, and they can replace each other if necessary and still know what to do.

Building teams is different than in our context. With us, teams can share roles based on competence or passion, it can be agreed who decides, to whom certain problems belong, and so on. However, the book offers elements for building a good and successful team. In the right team, there is permanence, it is small, it has a common, shared task, it needs everyone to reach the end result, everyone is dependent on each other.

The common goal is called Compelling Direction and it means a common shared goal that is so significant and valuable that it can be committed together. Another central thought that comes to mind is Enabling Structure, i.e., workflow, task division, prioritisation, and how everything connects together. He has also opened up what kind of structures are needed around (Supporting Context) for the team to succeed.

He has also come up with the 60-30-10 model, which has at least got me thinking. 60 percent of the team’s success stems from the team’s structure, i.e., more broadly, that the aforementioned basic things are in order; how it works, is the goal clear, does the environment support success, and so on. 30% of success comes from the kick-off and the first three weeks, i.e., how work starts and is organised around the thing. Only 10% of success can be affected along the way.

If you think about that as a coach, it feels quite discomforting. Success can only be influenced a little along the way. On the other hand, what that thought actually emphasises is that it’s worth trying to influence structures. How teams start, and how the surrounding organisation supports success. So ten percent is the team’s internal game, what actually affects is around that team.

When this thinking is brought to the team level? a self-guiding team solves its things within the team, and they come up with the best way to achieve the goal given to them. The team leader and managers have a better view of the outside world of the team, and they can create the best conditions for success in that 60-30 area.

Patrick Lencioni visited the Nordic Business Forum arguing with Jos de Blok, and his books are seen a lot in Reaktor’s bookshelves. How has he influenced us?

Jos de Blok’s Buurtzorg is a Dutch healthcare organisation, and its roots in writing are in Frederick Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations book. From that stems the TEAL model and talk of modernly self-directing organisations. It has taken a bit of wind under its wings and partly it has remained at the level of utopia or maybe an ideological goal.

Patrick Lencioni’s big thing with us has been the Five Dysfunctions of a Team book. He has written a lot of other things as well, like Advantage, where values are talked about, and last to come out is Six Types of Working Genius. Thet latest deals with personality types from the team perspective. Lencioni is talented at developing models and consulting businesses around them. The books are easy to read and through the consulting business supporting them, the thoughts spread effectively.

Indeed, Five Dysfunctions of a Team has been significant for us, and we use it in the Team Builder Academy training as one of the underlying basic thoughts of the layered building blocks of a team. The things in the book’s name are in the form of negation, but they actually tell what should be in order in the team.

First comes trust or lack of trust, it is of course in other models as well. Psychological safety is needed at the bottom, for the team to function. In this model, the next thing is fear, for example, fear of offending others, fear of expressing one’s own opinions, fear of conflicts that the development of the team requires. The third is lack of commitment and it requires those lower levels.

Genuine commitment requires that everyone has been able to say their opinion, and thoughts have been challenged, and through these conflicts, a synthesis has been found, to which everyone can genuinely commit. When we are committed, we will be individually and team wise accountable for doing what is needed to reach the results. Lencioni’s dysfunction at this last level is “inattention to results”. Only when we hold each other accountable can we achieve the desired results.

The model can easily be turned the other way around. The goal must be significant enough that the team commits and takes responsibility, and through that, the team’s existence becomes important. This way, these leadership thinkers connect to each other in our training. That way Lencioni’s model connects to J. Richard Hackman’s thought about the importance of a significant goal.

So if there is no significant goal to be aimed for, then why would we care if the team works? One might as well go home and watch Netflix. In the real world, this of course creates a situation, that because you want a salary, you go to work to do the minimum required so that the salary continues to run. This is not meaningful in terms of an individual’s or company’s resources, but unfortunately, reality for many. This chain of thought Lencioni has nicely popularised.

Can we return to the Reinventing Organizations book. Before I started at Reaktor, I interviewed one of the founders, Hannu Ter?v?, for a book project, and I got the impression that the work has had a great impact on the development of Reaktor’s culture. Through it, self-guidance, independent decision-making by experts, salary transparency, and many other quite modern thoughts have been developed. Isn’t this work then appearing significant in the coaching context?

Formulated that way, it hasn’t been a central work. The idea and ideology were talked about quite a lot at the time, but it remained more like a dream of an organisational model. What lived on in Reaktor was taking self-directiveness to the organisational level. That’s something we’ve dreamed of and strived towards, i.e., how to be as self-directing as possible as broadly as possible. As Reaktor grew, the challenge was scaling the thinking to an ever larger organisation so that we could still be self-directing and in the same way a quickly reacting entity.

If you think about Buurtzorg, which is in the book as a case example. The growth of units is stopped at 150 people. It’s one of Dunbar’s numbers as a population that can still feel like they’re the same gang. If units grow this big, they are split in two. Keep the units so small that they can direct themselves independently. This is one of the great insights of that book.

Another thought that has remained in mind from the book is that there are two types of leaders. There are such leaders that when you talk with them, you think that wow, there was a smart and insightful person. Then there are such leaders that when you talk with them, you think afterward that you are smart and competent. I really like this latter type of leader. The leader does the best work when he makes you believe in yourself.

That’s admittedly a great thought. Power and leadership may involve a certain egocentrism, or maybe just that one wants to appear as the center of everything and the source of all wisdom. It’s sad if it starts to push into behavior, and it’s no longer about serving people.

I basically think well of people. Even humane people end up as leaders, and really smart people. Those are tough spots, and often that need to prove one’s own competence stems from insecurity, even if you’re an experienced leader. You want to give the impression that you know everything and are on top of things. We are naturally insecure, but for some reason, we worship self-confidence.

Most situations are anything but black and white, there’s no such thing as right or wrong decision, there are just heaps of options and their consequences. In practice, one cannot be, nor need to be, sure of the right decision. In such situations negative phenomena creep in. One’s own certainty is emphasised, although it might be better to admit that here we are now together exploring the unknown future.

I had Kari Neilimo as a professor when I was studying, and he had such a thought that one important characteristic of a leader is to recognize those moments when the troops need to be led from the front. When the world is more peaceful, one can try to empower people to act more independently.

That’s indeed a good thought. I return here to the leader’s situational awareness, which we discussed a bit. When in the rapids, it’s really valuable to have a steady hand at the helm.

We haven’t had time to cover everything, but let’s include a reading list here. If one significant work is still picked along, personally for me, it is Chris Hadfield’s book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. He is thus a Canadian astronaut who has written a book about his journey to that quite rare profession. From it, I remembered a few great insights, which I also try to follow in my own life.

Chris realised already as a child that it’s really difficult to get to be an astronaut. When studies had to start orienting in the right direction, he thought that the probability of getting into space is really small. So the journey or striving towards that rare profession should be valuable in itself. If he never gets to space, he should still be satisfied with his choices. If this is condensed, he doesn’t evaluate his success in life relative to whether he reached his goals or not. I think this is a fine and useful thought.

In fact, one succeeds in life already by learning to enjoy the journey. You don’t need to win every competition, you don’t need to always get a happy ending. Around us there are always millions of changing things, coincidences, and circumstances for or against us. One cannot really influence the outcome of things too much. You should learn to enjoy the ride and time you have. This wisdom I want to raise here at the end.

Jarkko’s Reading list and notes:

Leadership and Coaching

David RockQuiet LeadershipYour Brain at Work

Neuroleadership GroupBrain Based Coaching

Communication and Interpersonal Skills

Dale CarnegieHow to Win Friends and Influence People (1937)

Team Dynamics and Management

Patrick LencioniThe Five Dysfunctions of a TeamAbsence of TrustFear of ConflictLack of CommitmentAvoidance of AccountabilityInattention to Results

Arbinger Institute & Terry WarnerLeadership and Self-DeceptionThe Anatomy of PeaceBonds That Make Us Free

Consulting and Advising

David MaisterThe Trusted Advisor

Effective Teams

Richard HackmanLeading Teams

Agile and Software Development

Diana Larsen & Esther DerbyAgile Retrospectives

Lyssa AdkinsCoaching Agile Teams

Jeff Sutherland and Ken SchwaberAgile Software Development with Scrum (with Mike Beedle)

Taiichi OhnoToyota Production System

David AndersonKanban

Donald ReinertsenThe Principles of Product Development Flow

Henrik KnibergLean from the TrenchesScrum vs KanbanAgile Product Ownership in a NutshellSpotify Model

Additional Insights

Chris HadfieldAn Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

Beau LottoDeviate

Notable Mentions

Brandon SandersonNot a specific book mentioned, but recognized for his insights on steps and progress.