Forward and Prefaces
Foreword
I have been a consultant and coach since 1994 and began investigating Agile in the early 2000s. In organization after organization that I dealt with, I found individuals in fear-based cultures struggling to recover from failure or to implement the changes that they needed to make in order to improve. Occasionally I was able to encourage a more learning-based approach in the area in which I was working, but more often there was little interest in anything more than a short-term fix.
I first encountered Al Shalloway at a Cutter Summit, and our paths have crossed several times since then. In 2023, I joined Success Engineering’s Amplio Consultant Educator program that Al leads and met Paula Stewart there. What has most impressed me about this program has been the emphasis on ways to convey the concepts needed to help individuals in organizations learn how to thrive.
It's rare enough to find a book on coaching that incorporates systems thinking, or an understanding of how people learn, or how someone might perceive things differently based on past experience. In Being an Effective Value Coach, Al Shalloway and Paula Stewart have done that and more. It's the best book I've seen on coaching people involved in knowledge work in an organizational context. I wish it had been available when I started consulting and coaching.
—Susan Thompson, Agile Business Analysis Consulting and Coaching
July 22, 2024
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Preface by Al Shalloway
By training I am a theoretical mathematician and pragmatic engineer with an eye on the human aspect of knowledge work. I have graduate degrees from MIT and Emory University in EE & computer science and mathematics and a Magna Cum Laude in Psychology.? I have been a consultant for over forty years and a coach for two–thirds of that time. I have never been tied to one approach - so much so that I’ve been called a “serial adopter.” I took that as a compliment since I always look for a better way. I’ve spent most of the last two decades creating my approach that builds on the shoulders of giants.
The book is not just about improving people’s listening and speaking skills, their patience, and their personalities. While a certain level of abilities and character are required, getting to that level if you don’t have them can be a lengthy process. It’s not that it can’t be done, but the intention of this book is to show how you can quickly improve your abilities to communicate without having to change your personality or listening skills.
The need for this book grew out of the first offering of my Amplio Development Master Class . During that workshop, participants loved the new concepts I was conveying and continually asked me how to convey this to others, especially executives and managers. Their frustration stemmed from a lack of confidence in their ability to engage these people with the useful concepts they were learning. This wasn’t just with my concepts but was a general concern about explaining new ideas to others.
It occurred to me that it does little good to learn concepts if you can’t convey them effectively. I started writing chapters about how to do this in the sister book Amplio Development: The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams , on which that workshop was based. It soon became apparent that these chapters would make a great book in itself.
After starting the writing of this book, I came to know my co-author, Paula Stewart. In addition to our shared commitment to help people, and being life-long learners, we had a common connection via Landmark. This gave us a shared knowledge about the human condition and how to both help ourselves and others.
This resulted in a shift in what this book is intended to be. Our joint work here has extended what was originally a book on coaching in knowledge work to include how people assimilate and reject learning. In other words, it expanded to include how people are as human beings.
I had long known this aspect of the book having taken Est in 1983 and continuing my involvement as it transformed into Landmark and The Forum. I helped promote and produce workshops for Landmark and Logonet,? a related organization. Working with these groups has let me know of the impact proper coaching can have on people and how people that are entrenched in their way of being can be helped along their life journey.
I had originally left this aspect out of this book. But working with Paula had me realize that even though this book is not a purely coaching book, much of learning in business is related to leadership, communications, and individual coaching in that how receptive we are to learning and how we communicate makes a huge difference in how effective we will be in our careers.
The need for a book that encompasses how to convey new ideas to people while understanding how people “operate” so to speak became apparent. This includes team and organizational approaches in setting up people to be successful.
It also must include what we call “active speaking.” Active speaking is when you attend to how people will listen to what you say.? You consider their own way of looking at the world. You use practices to overcome your filters or triggers while understanding their filters, triggers, values, and commitments. This gives you insights into how they will react to what you are saying. This enables you to meet them where they are. To be empathetic to their views and to avoid triggering a resistance reaction. Paula and I are well entrenched in this method and have found it to be invaluable for coaches, consultants, and leaders. Both of us have had our own journey of uncovering and addressing our own patterns while writing this book.
This is that book. It can be used with any approach. However, it will be much more effective if you take an attitude that there are certain rules underneath the knowledge work that we should attend to. I’ll lay these out at the appropriate time. Relying solely on empiricism for understanding, according to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, leaves one 'blind' to deeper insights that require rational thought as well.
Another difference in our approach is that we do not believe coaches should sit back and watch their teams flounder, using only light interactions to get their attention. This doesn’t mean coaches can jump in and tell people what to do. We’ll discuss this in more detail as we go along.
Coaches use many approaches to guide improvements. Sometimes, they simply point out a problem. Sometimes, they can suggest a simple fix to a mechanical or procedural issue. More often, they help people learn to look at a situation in different ways, developing new habits of thinking. Coaches always take an active role in helping others see what is needed to improve. In any event, the coach must take an active role in helping others see what is needed.
This more proactive perspective has often been ignored in the Agile space. Many people believe looking for cause and effect is not effective in the complex space of knowledge work. This attitude makes it impossible to do the type of coaching we are talking about. This book includes some chapters on mental models from my Amplio Development book to clarify how this can be done. This does not limit this book to those using Amplio. These concepts apply to any approach; all coaches will find this book useful.
The Agile coach must tread a fine line between seeing what is needed and telling people what to do. It doesn’t work well for coaches to tell people what to do. Not because they may resist but, more importantly, because they will not understand the path.? If people are told what to do whenever they run into challenges, they won’t have worked out the details necessary to overcome the missteps that may follow.
An effective coach is more like a guide - shining a light on the way forward so others can discover for themselves what is useful.
This book attempts to quickly and dramatically enhance your ability to influence others to solve their challenges. It is a part of a family of Amplio offerings to help us all learn together.
As we will describe in the introduction, this book is a culmination of what we’ve seen working, but is mostly ignored, over the last 2+ decades. How people learn, systems thinking, and the causes and effects of knowledge work have been mostly ignored in the Agile space for any number of reasons.
This book is timely. Many companies are laying off Agile coaches. And budgets for Scrum Masters in particular, seem to be slashed. We believe there is an opportunity to create a new kind of Agile coach - one that focuses on how to create value, not how to follow a framework. And one who understands both people, systems, and science required to be effective. While we have no doubt that many individuals already do this, we have not seen a defined approach for doing so and we hope this work encourages others to do so.
Preface by Paula Stewart
During a recent hike, I reflected on my introduction to systems thinking, which began during my college years. In 2000, with a catalyst leader, Chris Noel, I had my first experience working with agility. We used a pragmatic approach influenced by XP principles and practices. Chris identified me as a systems thinker and appreciated my ability to focus on both the customer and technology. The iterative value delivery and feedback from our customers and users was inspiring. I wanted to recreate this experience for knowledge workers.
As much as working side-by-side with business users allowed me to gain a deep understanding of a domain quickly, it was also about being connected to our users and being invested in their work. My goal is to recreate that experience for teams. With a runway, I have made significant contributions where leaders, teams, customers, and users won. The many long walks and conversations with my oldest son who is leading the architecture, design, and development of sustainable solutions or with my husband allows me the opportunity to contribute and learn.
Throughout my career, I have been at the heart of transformative programs, starting with the Outcome Evaluation Program, where our small yet impactful team delved deep into systemic issues affecting children and families. My experiences have spanned technological and organizational transformations, from the early days of the Stradis Methodology to contemporary Agile Transformations. The lessons from these diverse initiatives, such as XP, Lean Six Sigma, Rational Unified Process, and Business Intelligence, have been profound in practice and the philosophical shift they demand. True transformation is about people.
This realization has been a guiding light in coaching groups, teams, couples, families, and individuals. It has been part of a loving relationship with my husband, raising our wonderful sons, and the care of our parents. I've learned that foundational elements, often overlooked, are critical for sustainable progress. My reflections on these experiences are not just musings; they are distilled into actionable insights shared on Sevawise.com , our programs, and captured in many the pages of our book.
As we wrote the book, I added several concepts, including some of the attitudes, the inclusion of context, how to treat people doing the work, team dynamics, and keys to organizational change. I saw that this book could be used by leaders, knowledge workers in various roles, and coaches. Al was generous in allowing the scope of the book to grow. It was crucial to examine everything related to coaching from the Ways of Being through reframing, being strategic about communication, creating empowering contexts, helping people understand the Runway, understanding team distinctions, and organizational barriers that can be overcome. Al and I had previous experience teaching using experiential, just-in-time micro courses in multiple modalities. I came up with this approach when my husband found himself one coach serving multiple global teams due to an acquisition. I included how to bake in learning and psychological safety from talent acquisition, onboarding, and team distinctions to the timing of an improvement initiative or transformation. We must start with well-being and mental fitness with leaders and teams. This makes everything else impactful, focused, and effective. I am grateful for being able to present at conferences the combination of Lean, Agile, and the Theory of Constraints starting in 2020. These were part of my work with organizational transformation over many decades. We can more easily address wrong incentives, lack of strategic goals, a focus on teams when we do not have the foundation, product management maturity, financials, and digital capabilities. We can start with the partnership between business and technology. Finally, in large organizations, using an Integrated Technology Portfolio Manager, as most organizations underestimate the scope and costs of a successful digital modernization initiative, is a cost-effective, dynamic root cause and impact map.
I added Artificial Intelligence as I see it as a strategic win for many coaches. I started looking at Artificial Intelligence over a year ago. I had many conversations with my son where we compared how we could or did use generative AI. I provided business owners, university professors, and a mother who provides her children with home-schooling ways to use artificial intelligence and encouraged my husband to dive in. Consider how Artificial Intelligence can contribute to every part of the product life cycle, customer journey, and operational efficiency.
I gained compassion, empathy, and a deep understanding of how past conversations impacted people when I coached under Sandy Robbins for almost hundreds of hours over many weekends and weekends with small groups and one-on-one coaching over several years. I was part of many peoples’ relationships in every area of their lives, transforming, not just improving. This led to me coaching an Executive Director for a non-profit that serves disadvantaged youth. This also had me look for and find and develop programs that impact mental fitness. I have multiple coaching teams running: 1-A women’s coaching group to guide amazing and high-achieving women in replacing self-limiting beliefs, eliminating imposter syndrome, and spending more time on what is most important to them, 2-A couple interested in adopting, 3-A couple transitioning into product management and team leadership roles, 4-A POD of and small business owners, and a psychologist. As a Positive Intelligence Coach in Shizard Chamine’s Positive Intelligence PQ? and other modalities I have practiced, they will live with greater well-being, empathy, connection, resilience, and creativity. They will also impact their children, friends, team members, and family members.
Ultimately, I am writing this for my sons, nieces, nephews, and leaders who are balancing a lot in their lives. I see a world where work is rewarding, challenging, and empowering. Creating opportunities where everyone wins is possible!
This book is being put online as part of the Amplio Community of Practice
You can buy a copy of this book on LeanPub .
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