Highlights from Agile Australia 2022

I recognise that not everyone can attend these conferences and yet these learnings/insights are helpful for us all. In the spirit of sharing, here are my rough notes from the keynotes:

• Lisa Frazier - Perspectives on leadership agility
• Frederic Etiemble - How to unlock innovation and how to balance building an organisation for the future whilst running the current business
• Sue Langley - Leading with emotional intelligence and how our emotions play a part in delivering outcomes
• Dr. Terri Janke - How to live and create your unwritten track. Values to live by that will enable you to deliver better outcomes.
• Joshua Kerievsky - How to reclaim the joy of agility and the balance between being quick and hurrying. 6 agile mantras to guide us.

Hope that they are useful reference. All credit goes to each speaker who was on stage.

Lisa Frazier – Leadership agility

COO of Judo Bank, Amazing leader and experience! Responsible for Product, Data, Digital, Tech and Operations

Her 5 leadership practices are:

1.Big picture, little picture view

• Strategy is a set of choices that you are making.
• Be clear on what you aren’t going to do!
• Share it to inspire and connect your work to it.
• There are 3 types of business models – Product (e.g. Apple), Experience (e.g. Disney), and Platform (e.g. Amazon).
• Most banks today are product centric and want to be experience centric. This is what Judo is! Its mission is to hero the relationships between bankers and customers.
• Need to get good at doing mental gymnastics to switch context between the focus for today – the next quarter – the next 3 years.

2. Leveraging tech for customer and business outcomes

• Measure what matters. Do this from Day 1.
• ‘Stop the creep’ – these are the pet projects / wish lists that are not connected to customer or business outcomes.

3. Culture matters. No matter what.

• How much time are you spending on culture?
• Culture is shaped and defined team by team.
• Resilient teams work hard on solving hard problems.
• The key question that a leader can ask is “How can I help?”
• Empathy is not enough. We need compassion.

4. No excuses

• How you respond matters. How you turn up matters.
• Do pre-mortems and post-mortems.

5. Possess an owner’s mindset

• No decision is a decision. Take accountability for decision making.
• Ask yourself: If this was your money, would you spend it?
• Bureaucracy is a result of fear or something that happened a long time ago in the past. Bureaucracy creates the frozen middle.
• We need all leaders to be doers.
• Challenge the status quo to navigate the headwinds. When you dig deeper, you find better answers.

Frederic Etiemble – Unlocking Innovation

Author of The Invincible Company

75% of companies have innovation as one of their top 3 priorities (BCG 2021 report), yet only 20% are ready to scale. This is what is called the innovation readiness gap.

The leadership challenge today is:

• How do you become an ambidextrous organisation?
• How do you become efficient and innovative at the same time?
• How do you build an organisation for the future whilst running the business?

Fred puts forward that EXPLORE (figuring out the business for the future) is radically different to EXPLOIT (running and optimising the business of today).

The type of innovation matters and we need to get better at classifying it:

• Transformative (e.g. AWS at Amazon)
• Sustaining (e.g. ebooks at Amazon – product innovation)
• Efficiency (e.g. robots in the warehouse at Amazon)

When we classify the type of innovation, we can be clear on its impact to the portfolio of work. < 10% of ideas will result in a positive ROI.

So, how do you get more transformative innovation? When you are a successful business generating top/bottom line revenue, it is hard to spend $ on this!

How many $100k innovation projects does it take to produce a mega success? 250 projects!

Great example is the Bosch Accelerator program – an internal program designed to engage employees to come up with new business ideas. Employees are engaged for 3 months at a time and are dedicated full-time.

Innovation readiness assessment - common blockers to innovation

1. Rewards & incentives
2. Resource allocation
3. Strategic governance

Sue Langley - Leading with Emotional Intelligence

Expert in positive leadership and practical application of neuroscience, emotional intelligence and positive psychology

What we do, how we deliver, how we lead – is all influenced by our emotions.

How are you at your best mood? How are you at your worst mood?

Emotions are just data! The better you are at reading this data and understanding it, the better choices we make. When you have a low mood, you are better at picking holes / flaws and you do not want to try things, etc. You are not open / ready to innovate. How we feel influences the outcomes that we decide upon, how we deliver.

How we show up with our mood impacts the team. Are you an energy giver or an energy taker?

There are 2 types of empathy:

• Emotional – feel what you feel
• Cognitive – know how you feel

Empathy is not enough. We need compassion.

Dr. Terri Janke – The Unwritten Track

Australian Indigenous lawyer specialising in commercial law and Indigenous IP; Author of True Tracks: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Culture

Live your life so your spirit is memorable. Power to lead with your heart. Everyone leaves a legacy – this means that you need to find your unwritten track.

We are all leaders. Leaders come in all forms. We can draw strength from our ancestors.

“Just stay on track. You need to make the track so others can follow.”

Leadership is:

• Showing up. Standing up.
• Leading from a place of values.
• Being true to ourselves.
• Taking care of each other.
• Being presented with challenges. Making decisions based on our values.
• Helping others to transformation.
• Learning.

Values to live by:

• Find your heart – your lifeblood, your why, your passion
• Be grateful – remember where you came from. Turn your ego down. Maintain your focus by leaving your unwritten track.
• Reciprocity – This is not an expectation. This is a way of being.
• Know your purpose and make it bigger than you.
• Be the difference – Set your foundation, and then help others.

Joshua Kerievsky – The Joy of Agility

Author of The Joy of Agility (forthcoming)

Story of agility - how Virgin Australia came about. Due to a cancelled flight, Richard Branson sought to hire a private charter plane, advertised the flight to the people who had been impacted, resolved the problem, started a business!

A story of how Oreo won the marketing prize at the superbowl in 2013. A tweet that was sent out in a short time in response to the blackout. A result of everyone understanding their roles, collaboration and quick decision making. That one tweet was 2 years in the making.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery! “Oops I dropped the lemon tart” – a story from a famous Italian restaurant on innovation and now this is the most popular item on the menu.

To be quick, you need to be in control. Don’t hurry.

To have a high adaptive capacity – we need to have the required expertise to then be able to pivot.

To win – you need to play on the edge, push the boundaries between quick and hurrying but remain balance.