December "Are We There Yet?" - The Power of Environment, Google Notebook, and Social Change-Making

Welcome to the December edition of the "Are We There Yet?" newsletter!?

December is often a time of family celebrations and important holidays that provide us light and warmth as the Northern Hemisphere approaches its shortest daylight of the year.? Wishing all of you the happiest of holidays, no matter what or how you celebrate.

This is also the time of year that we take stock of what happened in the current year just ending and think about goals we want to strive for in the new year.? Taking stock of my 2024, I am proud that I was able to help my clients bring positive change to their organizations.? Additionally, meeting new people, understanding their challenges, and helping them find the tools, practices, and vision to move forward assertively and effectively into the future has been quite rewarding.?

As for my goals for 2025,? I want to make sure that I make time to:

• Get on the road to visit friends and colleagues from all over the world
• Find additional opportunities to have a positive impact on organizations seeking to develop great products and services
• Continue to develop community through mentoring and group events

I hope you give yourself the time to reflect on your 2024 and prioritize what is most important for you to do in 2025.? I'd love to hear what are you aiming to accomplish in 2025.

This month's newsletter is focused on:

• The importance of our environment in driving behavior
• A review of Google Notebook?as a tool to collect information about a topic and better absorb learnings on the topic
• Ashoka's approach to social change and how it compares to cultivating organizational change

I hope you enjoy this month's newsletter.? If anything in the newsletter sparks your interest that you'd like to discuss further or if you want to talk to me about working with you or your teams, please DM me on LinkedIn, send me a message via our website: https://www.practical-agility.com/contactus, or schedule time with me at? https://www.practical-agility.com/book-an-appointment.

How Does Our Organizational Environment Affect Our Performance?

I have a couple of different plants in my home office, but one in particular often catches my attention.? My Eleanor Roosevelt type croton plant sits in the far corner of the room, sitting on a small table facing a window that is exposed to varying degrees of sunlight throughout the day.? What continually captures my attention is the fact that there are several sets of distinctive coloring on the leaves of the plant.?

Some of the leaves are a dark, rich, green color, with distinctive yellow variegation.? Other leaves are mostly yellow, with small patches of the dark green color trying to peek through.?

Still other leaves have a deep red coloring on the outside of the leaves.

That there is such variety in the leaves of the same plant which are in a single location struck me as notable and interesting.? What accounts for the variety given that the genetic material is identical?? It turns out that varying angles and exposure to light can impact the variegation patterns and how much green or yellow coloration an individual leaf will produce.? The red coloring is introduced as a leaf ages, although this also depends on various environmental considerations, like light exposure, availability of water, and soil composition.

For those into genetics, there is the concept of genotypes and phenotypes.? The genotype is the set of genetic material an organism has.? This is inherited from parents and generally does not change in the organism's lifetime.? The phenotype is the organism's observable expression of behavior which can change throughout its lifetime.? The phenotype is determined by how the organism's genes interact with its environment conditions.? Even though my plant leaves have identical genotype, the coloration and variegation differences I observe is variation in each leaf's phenotype.

Over time, organisms with phenotypes that can adapt in certain environments will tend to not only survive in those environments, but also thrive.? In different environments, we can expect to see different organisms whose phenotypes are amenable to that environment.? That is why the trees that I see around my home in the mid-Atlantic region of the US are different from the foliage I saw on my recent visit to Scottsdale, Arizona.

As I thought more about the differences in the leaf expression, the sensitivity to environmental conditions and the different variation in species we see in different environments, it got me thinking about how our organizational environments impact the performance we get from the people within our organizations.

I think we intuitively understand that organizations have different cultures and that certain types of people are more or less likely to thrive in each of these cultures.? A well-known article in Harvard Business Review details how star stock analysts fared when they moved to a new organization.? Most never reached the same level of performance as they had with their previous organization.? Every organization should have enough self-awareness about the skills and adaptability that are required to be successful in the organization and look to add people who have a record of displaying such behavior.? We don't want to bring in a cactus plant to a lush and temperate environment.?

However, I keep coming back to what I saw with the Croton plant variety and the differences in expression in the same plant.? How is our organizational environment impacting our employees' behavioral expression and performance?? Is the environment supportive and conducive to optimizing each person's skills, experience, and potential?? Or is the environment inhibiting the expression of higher-value performance and forcing our colleagues to adapt to sub-optimal conditions just to survive?

In an organization, there are many environmental factors that drive the phenotype that people express on their teams and in their work.? Everything from incentives to resource availability, to one's manager, to one's colleagues, to learning opportunities, to the amount of leeway someone is given all play a role in impacting what someone will be able to contribute to an organization.? We spend lots of time trying to find the best people to bring into our organization, as we should, but are we spending enough time tweaking the organizational environment to help those we bring into the organization reach their potential? The investment in developing our people and creating a conducive environment for them is just as crucial as the investment we put into bringing talented people into the organization in the first place.

I will discuss different ways of developing people and tweaking the organizational environment in future newsletters.

If you want to engage in a conversation with me about your corporate environment and how you can tweak it to realize more of your organization's potential, please DM me on LinkedIn, reach out via our website: https://www.practical-agility.com/contactus, or schedule a meeting at: https://www.practical-agility.com/book-an-appointment.

AI Tools Review: Google Notebook LM

We are living in an age where it seems like new AI-powered tools are introduced every day.? While it would be a full-time job to gain familiarity with all of the tools available on the market, it is important we make time in our busy schedules to experiment with at least some of the tools so that we see what are new ways of working that are enabled through the new capabilities in the emerging tools.?

To that end, I have spent some time over the last two months playing around with two such tools:

• Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine
• Google NotebookLM, a "personalized AI research assistant"

In last month's newsletter, I shared my experiences using Perplexity.? In this edition, I am sharing my thoughts on Google NotebookLM.

To start my investigation of Google Notebook, I provided it links to 15-20 sources of blog articles I have written, podcast episodes I appeared in, and presentation materials I have created over the last year or two.

Next, I asked it a question, "What is the overall theme that Gary and Practical Agility discuss in their writing, speaking engagements, and presentations?".? Google Notebook took about 15-30 seconds, then responded with the following answer:

The overall theme of Gary Cohen and Practical Agility's work is centered around navigating the intersection of product discovery and product delivery, advocating for enhanced collaboration within organizations, particularly between leadership and agile teams, and emphasizing the significance of embracing change and uncertainty in the pursuit of better business outcomes.

This theme encompasses several interconnected concepts:

The Intertwined Nature of Discovery and Delivery: Discovery (identifying customer problems and determining valuable solutions) and delivery (efficient execution of solutions) are often viewed as separate stages. Gary posits they should be continuous and interleaving processes. This approach emphasizes continuous learning, adaptation, and a focus on customer value throughout the product development lifecycle.

Communicating with Leadership: Gary highlights the importance of understanding the language and priorities of organizational leaders for effective collaboration. Leaders are primarily concerned with business outcomes such as sales growth, customer retention, risk management, and efficient resource utilization. To foster trust and credibility, agile practitioners should align their communication with these objectives, demonstrating their competence and commitment to achieving shared goals.

Embracing Uncertainty and Adaptation: Gary emphasizes the need to acknowledge the inherent uncertainty in product development and adopt a mindset that embraces change. This involves shifting from a rigid, plan-driven approach to a more emergent and adaptable process that allows for continuous learning, experimentation, and feedback.

Importance of Continuous Discovery: To overcome the high failure rate of features, Gary advocates for continuous product discovery, a practice that involves constantly seeking to understand customer needs and validating assumptions about solutions.192021 This involves techniques like opportunity solution trees, hypothesis-driven development, and rapid experimentation to reduce risk and increase the likelihood of delivering valuable products.

Customer-centricity and Jobs To Be Done: Gary underscores the importance of keeping the customer and their problems at the forefront of all product development efforts.? This involves understanding the "jobs to be done" framework, which focuses on the underlying tasks customers are trying to accomplish with a product or service. It emphasizes building solutions that truly address customer needs and avoiding the trap of overdeveloping features that provide little value.

Transforming Organizational Culture: Gary recognizes the need to shift organizational culture to support agility and innovation. This includes fostering psychological safety, empowering teams to make decisions, encouraging experimentation, and promoting transparency. He also recognizes the challenges of individual attribution and reward systems that can hinder collaboration. He encourages leveraging change management techniques like Appreciative Inquiry to drive positive change by focusing on strengths and positive idea generation.

Google Notebook also included references to my source material within the text it generated.? I removed them from the above text for clarity, but that is certainly helpful when you want to dig into more details or you want to make sure that the summarized information is true to the underlying source.

I then asked it, "Who are my biggest influencers that I reference in my work?"

Here is how Google Notebook replied:

Based on your provided materials, these are some of the biggest influencers you reference in your work:

Bob Galen ???? : You cite Galen's concept of the "Teardrop" Metric, which assesses delivered value from the customer's perspective. This suggests you value customer-centric approaches to product development and measurement.

Clayton Christensen, Bob Moesta , and others associated with the Jobs To Be Done framework: You reference them multiple times. This highlights your focus on understanding the fundamental needs and motivations of customers as a driver for product development.

Teresa Torres : You repeatedly mention Torres, particularly her work on Continuous Discovery Habits. This indicates your strong belief in ongoing customer research and experimentation to inform product decisions and avoid building unnecessary features.

W. Edwards Deming: You draw parallels to Deming's teachings on quality in manufacturing when discussing the benefits of building quality upfront in software development. This reveals your appreciation for proven quality principles and their application across industries.

Additionally, your conversational style in the YouTube transcripts suggests you're also influenced by:

Lean Startup principles: Your emphasis on experimentation and validation aligns with core concepts from the Lean Startup methodology.

Systems Thinking: You reference Causal Loop Diagrams as a tool for understanding the interconnectedness of organizational systems and the impact of changes. This suggests a belief in considering the broader system when making product and organizational decisions.

These individuals and frameworks reflect your commitment to customer-centricity, continuous learning, and adaptability in product development. You draw inspiration from diverse fields like manufacturing and lean thinking, applying their principles to the software development context.

I'm curious how well you think Google Notebook captured the spirit of what I talk about?? I think it is pretty close, especially given the sources I provided to it.? Note that Bob Galen is a big influencer for me, but for much bigger reasons than the "teardrop metric" he mentioned in an interview.? Teresa Torres' work indeed seems to find its way into many of my talks and writing, and I certainly have a great affinity for Bob Moesta's work.

It was very easy to generate this information, from sharing the sources to having a conversation with Google Notebook to ask the above questions.?

Google Notebook also provides an option to generate a podcast-style episode with two "hosts" discussing the material covered in the sources you have listed.? Likewise, you can also generate study guides, briefing documents, and FAQs based on the source material.? I found the podcast episode to be superficial, wandering, and performative, although it was still cool to hear "people" talking about some of the topics and principles I care about.? I can see the other generated documents as being helpful in the learning process (the study guide provides quiz questions and a glossary of important terms), but I would not use them as my sole source of information.?

There is limited synthesis of the overlapping ideas to form new or higher-level conclusions.? Given that this was my source material, it did feel a bit like word salad and "Gary-style" bingo at times.? The technology is pretty remarkable, but remarkable alone doesn't always lead directly to valuable.? I found some value in the generated material, but right now it seems like a series of basic-level points I made in my speaking and writing being regurgitated back to me without further analysis or synthesis.

I used my own material and asked about myself so I would be in a good position to evaluate how closely Google Notebook came to reflecting the topics I spend much of my time talking about.? I think it would also serve as a good learning tool for material that you want to learn or dig deeper on, whether it be topics you are learning in a class or something that you are actively researching and applying in your job or project.

I am definitely going to use Google Notebook in some of my learning and analysis work in 2025 and would encourage you to do the same.? The more we use these AI-powered tools, the better we will get at determining what practices and tools are the most useful to us and how to get the most benefit from using them.

Ashoka Changemakers

The end of year holiday season is often a time people focus on charitable giving (although like feedback, it is something best done on a continuous basis). I'm no exception to that. One of the organizations that I have donated to for many years is Ashoka. I have been fascinated by their dedication to cultivating and supporting social entrepreneurs who aim to make the world a better place, one change at a time.

In their words from their web site, "Ashoka builds and cultivates a community of Fellows, Young Changemakers, Changemaker Institutions, and beyond who see that the world now requires everyone to be a changemaker – a person that sees themselves as capable of creating large-scale, positive change." Ashoka proudly states that "Three-quarters of the Fellows have changed national and/or international policy within ten years of launch."

Some of the change that Ashoka Fellows have tackled are:

• Financial literacy and access to banking for teenagers in well over 100 countries
• Increasing school enrollment in poor, rural areas in Bangladesh
• Achieving safer pregnancies outcomes in India

I bring Ashoka up here to take a look at their successful approach to creating change and to see similarities to how I have learned to best bring about organizational change. Key aspects of their change methods include:

• Find and select people with the skills and interest in social entrepreneurship
• Support those change makers as they identify new societal needs and engineer structural changes
• Help the change makers bring in partners like unions, civic organizations, media outlets, and governmental agencies to support and reinforce the change in behavior
• Connect change makers working on similar problems to create a forum for exchanging ideas, sharing challenges, and propagating best practices
• Change makers cultivate the next generation of change makers by involving the impacted communities in their change efforts

This is very similar to the best practices we use when cultivating organizational change. First, we make sure there is an identifiable challenge and outcome that is important enough to drive change. We quickly identify people on the front lines and within the organization who see the need for change and have ideas they want to pursue. We support those initial champions, providing whatever education, space, and resources they need to achieve initial, quick wins. This early success attracts other potential change agents who are now more willing to pursue change seeing the success of the initial change agents. This allows us to create an internal network of change agents where best practices, challenges, and ideas can be exchanged. We also leverage our relationships with organizational leadership to gain support for structural changes that are required to achieve different outcomes, as achieving substantive change requires addressing structural change. Remember that the current (organizational or social) structure has delivered our current outcomes, so if we want to drive significant and impactful change, we need to change the structure of our environment.

I find Ashoka's significant success in creating social change to be even more impressive as social change is even more complex than organizational change as it involves more people with less similarity and looser bonds. With organizational change, we have many structural levers that are easier to access and change. When driving social change, we don't have an employment relationship to lean on and we have to deal with laws, public policies, and conflicting interests. I also believe that finding resources to help with social change often requires more creativity than obtaining resources for organizational change.

Finally, I'll leave you with one more statement from Ashoka to contemplate. "In a world where the rate of change and the extent of connection are both accelerating at roughly exponential rates, everyone must be a changemaker to play." If you agree with their observation about the rate of change and connection, what are you doing to create change makers in your teams and your organization? Please reach out if you'd like to chat about specific strategies for your organization.

Upcoming Events / Happenings

Thursday, January 9, 5 PM EST - Philadelphia Area Agile Coaching Dojo- In this meeting, we will be using an actual dojo format to break off into groups of 3-4 to practice our agile coaching chops in scenarios of our own choosing.? People will take turns being the coach, the coachee, and the observer.?

This is intended to be a safe place where people of all skill and experience levels can improve through practice and observation.? This is open to anyone who is interested in practicing agile coaching, no matter your title.? As this event is virtual, it is open to people in any location.??? This is also a free event.? Here is how you can join us!

Thursday, January 23, Noon EST - Philadelphia Area Agile Coaching Dojo- In this meeting, we will be using a lean coffee format to discuss topics related to agile coaching that attendees choose collectively.? This is a great place to discuss situations you may be facing in your organizations and with your teams and a great way to get different perspectives from other members.?

This is intended to be a safe place where people of all skill and experience levels can improve through practice and observation.? The session is open to anyone who is interested in practicing agile coaching, no matter your title.? As this event is virtual, it is open to people in any location.?

This is a free, virtual event.? You can join in the fun here!

Contact / scheduling info

If you have any comments about something you read in the newsletter or have suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered in future newsletters, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn or via our website: https://www.practical-agility.com/contactus.

If you'd like to schedule time to discuss a topic in an introductory meeting, you can schedule a meeting at: https://www.practical-agility.com/book-an-appointment.

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