#108: Adaptive Organizations with Ken Rickard

Join Brian and Ken Rickard as they delve into why agile transformations get stuck and uncover strategies for creating adaptive, resilient organizations and people.

Overview

In this episode, Brian sits down with coach, author, and Lean Change agent, Ken Rickard to explore the common pitfalls of agile transformations and the commodification of agile practices.

Ken emphasizes the need to focus on people rather than processes and introduces the art of change, which includes self-awareness and adaptability. And shares the six big ideas of adaptive organizations, such as sense-making strategies and leadership agility.

Tune in to learn how to navigate transformation challenges and create an environment that fosters resilience and adaptability.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Ken Rickard
Insight
The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations: From Frameworks to Sensemaking by Ken Rickard and Jason Little
Agile Manifesto For Software Development
Lean Change
Mountain Goat Software’s Agile for Leaders Training
Join the Agile Mentors Community
Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

• Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.
• Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Ken Rickard is a spark for transformative good — a change alchemist, deep thinker, and a catalyst for personal growth and organizational evolution. With over 15 years in the agile community, he's honed the art of navigating change and embracing adaptation as the true essence of agility.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian (00:00)
Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have a really special guest with us. I have Mr. Ken Ricard with us. Welcome in, Ken.

Ken Rickard (00:12)
Thank you. Nice to be here.

Brian (00:14)
Glad to have Ken here with us. Ken recently spoke at the the global Scrum Gathering, in New Orleans that I was at as well and had a really interesting, actually had a workshop slot there for a workshop titled Humans Agile and Change, How to Get Your Transformation Unstuck. And wanted to have Ken on to kind of talk through that a little bit. But before we do, for those people who aren't familiar with Ken, let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Ken is an enterprise coach and change alchemist. I love that. At a company called Insight, he co -authored a book called The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations, which I know we're going to get into here in this conversation. He's a licensed facilitator of Lean Change. He's an IC Agile authorized instructor. So he's got just a load of credentials and a load of experience to bring to the table here with this. So Ken, let's get into this. Let's talk about humans agile and change and how to get transformations unstuck. What do you think is the main cause of transformations getting stuck?

Ken Rickard (01:31)
Yeah. So I think, you know, we're all feeling the effects of the high of agile. And I think now we're, we're starting to come down a little bit in the industry. I think everyone's feeling that effect. I mean, I see so many agile coaches on LinkedIn that are still looking for roles and whatnot, scrum masters, you know, a good bit of that, though, I think it's a blowback from the industry and just companies in general who, when they need to tighten the belt, they're actually beginning to look at the roles they've got and figure out which ones that they can do without for now. Or maybe they can do with roles they've already got. And so the effect of that, I think is coming from this idea that, you know, the agile industry, let's even narrow that a little bit more and talk about scrum specifically, has really kind of in the industry has become commodified around this idea that it's a process. And that we just like, we used to do this thing over here and we can just go to the shelf and purchase like scrum in a way. And then like. take that and just drop it into the spot and the practices we used to do. And so when it was only viewed as a process replacement for what they're doing now, it's very easy when, things get rough or tough in the industry as they've been over the past year, year and a half, two years, that our natural, you know, kind of inclination is to kind of hunker down and that hunkering down is to go back to what's comfortable to us, which is typically non -agile, non edge. things because that edge is actually kind of uncomfortable. And so we want to kind of go back and go back into our hole and actually like do the things that we're most comfortable with as an organization or as leaders. And so, yeah, I think that's been kind of what's been happening. And it's just, you know, the follow up from that, I think it's just now hitting the industry, I think in the current times now.

Brian (03:10)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you talk about it being a commodity and I can definitely see that across the different organizations that do certifications with this, and we're both trainers, we both do trainings. The hard part for me as a trainer is that I don't wanna... discourage people from getting training because I think the training is an important step, right? I think it's you know, you got to know the basics before you can play a sport and You know, if this is the team sport, but it's it's so much easier for me to tell someone all right Well, there's these roles these events and these artifacts

Ken Rickard (03:49)
Mm -hmm.

Brian (04:05)
and they can just go, you know, start putting it into their schedule. Here's the events we're going to do, and we have these meetings at this time. It's easy to do that, but it's hard to say, all right, what is openness? And how do we operate in an open environment, you know, or how do we treat each other with respect as we go through this kind of thing? That's hard to train, you know?

Ken Rickard (04:10)
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And coming from the, you know, I've spent a three and a half, almost four years now, I think with lean change and Jason little, and, and obviously we co -wrote co -wrote the, the book together, but the, I think the thing that I've learned from all that is, I mean, I want to say that at the beginning, the intention of the folks that created the agile manifesto for software development, their intention was really to help the industry change, but from a software development and probably an adjacent request would have been that the project management kind of behavioral patterns that were there and existing already. They could have actually kind of caused that trajectory to start to shift. And they obviously did over time. I think the one thing, if I had a time machine and I could go back and I could just plant a little seed with those 17 folks, it would be to not look so narrowly at the organization, like just the software development part. Because I think that's what's caused agile and scrum to become that thing that those IT developers do. And it's actually in a way done a disservice, I believe, to the industry at large and then just kind of the trajectory over time and where we kind of landed over these past few years. And it's why with lean change, what I'm trying to do, and I'm not the only one trying to do this. There's a number of folks out there trying to do this as well. But I think Jason and I, what we're trying to do and all the lean change facilitators is to get people to realize. that at the end of the day, everything is really about change. So scrum is just a process. It has all these, like behavioral patterns that come along with it. You're going to need to change, but those things aren't laid out necessarily exactly explicitly in the scrum guide. So you can read through that with your current understanding and your current lens of the world. And you can go, okay, I got this. And okay, all I need to do is go and create a scrum master position and I need a product owner and we need to do these events and then we need to set up these artifacts. And, and that can very easily lead to that kind of mechanical approach to scrum because that's kind of the world they've come from, right? If they've come from kind of project management world where everything is very laid out, very kind of straightforward and linear and then sequentially executed. And I think what we would all probably agree is that what's really missing is that mentality shift and. and the perspective shift. And to get there, we got to really focus on people change. Like, and I don't mean just like, Hey, we're doing a new process. So what do I need to do differently? Or, Hey, we put, we installed this new piece of governance software. So what buttons do I need to push differently? I'm talking about like actual evolution of the individual, their beliefs, their behavioral patterns, and the rituals that match up to those behaviors and beliefs that set underneath them as a person.

Brian (06:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Rickard (07:14)
And so that's what we're really trying to focus on from Lean Change is we're really trying to help people understand that, that to do those things well, to do things like Scrum well, you really have to focus not just on the process change or the technology change, but actually on the people change. You may even have to focus on structures and strategies as well.

Brian (07:31)
So I'm trying to channel my inner listener and try to think of what they might be asking or thinking about in hearing this. And I mean, what I think about is, all right, well, let's say I'm an organization and I buy an end to all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've tried that. We've tried to implement this stuff and it's all about process and we'd rather not do that. We want to do it the right way. Where do you start? How do you start to...

Ken Rickard (07:38)
Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

Brian (08:00)
you come in and just say, hey everybody, we're gonna change how you think and how you, how do you start to get the organization to shift like that?

Ken Rickard (08:06)
Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. Yeah. And I would actually, I would point the finger right back at ourselves first. I mean, this is the journey I've been on for the past five years. You know, I mean, I, I actually talked about this in the session at the global scrum, scrum gathering. I told the crowd there. I was like, like five years ago, Ken, like if anybody challenged anything or didn't understand how scrum worked, I would essentially kind of like,

Brian (08:14)
Ha ha ha.

Ken Rickard (08:34)
just picture this idea of Ken taking them by the arm and leading them over to the Scrum Guide and being like, look, here's what the Scrum Guide says. And that was kind of my go -to thing in a way, variations on that, obviously. But at that time, it was mentality -wise, I was just like, okay, well, we just need to do Scrum. If we just do it well and we do it like it says we're supposed to do it, then it'll fix all the things. And that didn't really get the best response out of it. everyone. You know, it wasn't until I started to shift myself and my own perspective and start to really understand that, okay, I'm not the snake oil salesperson that they probably think I am. I'm actually somebody who's trying to help them change. And so if I look at it from that perspective, now it becomes less about the process or the framework and all the specifics of the framework. And it becomes more about, okay, where are they now?

Brian (09:18)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (09:29)
What mentality do they have now? What are the attitudes that they have about the things that I would hope to put in front of them? Like, are they, are they like, yeah, this is great. Let's do it. Or are they like, no, I don't know. Not so sure. Or are they like, no, that's a stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Like we would never do that here. so better understanding them as an individual and then being able to better show up in a way that is going to be conducive for them to see the need to change is actually the very first.

Brian (09:42)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (09:55)
best thing that I ever did in the way that I shifted my own perspective and how I showed up. And then that started to actually unlock them and their ability to actually pay attention and realize how they needed to change. And then therefore the change started to go. It's a much slower route because you can just go take stuff off the shelf and be like, Hey, we need to do it like this. And you probably will get some traction with some folks, but you're probably going to miss a good bit of them too. So.

Brian (10:20)
Well, let me, let me ask you this because this is something I've kind of been wrestling with with some other guests on the podcast as well. It's just this, this concept that, you know, partly, I think what's behind some of the problems with this is, is also the short kind of nature of, of how we view change in organizations. And, you know, we want quick results. We, you know, we have a change initiative to do something and we want to see that, that, that benefit of that change in the next three months.

Ken Rickard (10:42)
Sure.

Brian (10:49)
And all of a sudden things are going to be completely turned around and we're going to do things differently. But that's driven a lot from this short -sighted nature of, you know, we got to increase our profits quarter by quarter. We got to, you know, please our shareholders and they don't have the long vision that we used to have in companies of, you know, 10 years or something.

Ken Rickard (10:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to say something and I'm going to meet it in a completely different way. Planning. Let me explain what I mean by this. all right. And I don't want to make this into the lean change show either, but I'm going to talk about a concept, from lean change real quick. so bear with me, but, so there's this idea that has been created in lean change. It's called, we, we, we refer to it as a big next now. Really what it is is it's like.

Brian (11:17)
Okay? Hahaha.

Ken Rickard (11:42)
Think of like an overarching rainbow at the top of like, Hey, what's the largest, biggest thing we're trying to accomplish? And what's the strategy around that? And if we can define a high level strategy around that, it will help us be, get like an orientation towards what outcomes are trying to seek it at the grandiose level. Let's say it's an agile transformation. All right. Underneath there are like a series of smaller humps that are like, okay, what are the goals we might want to actually achieve? Let's make sure those are really loose. except for the ones that are in the very beginning. Does this sound familiar? I'm basically describing breaking down and iterating incrementally changing the organization, right? So, underneath that you'd have like what's referred to as like the lean change cycle. This idea that we go out and actually look at the organization and get data back on what might need to change instead of actually telling people what needs to change. Like, Hey, we're becoming a scrum team, or this is what scrum is, and this is how it works.

Brian (12:21)
Yeah, yeah.

Ken Rickard (12:41)
well, what if they just start where they are and maybe the first thing I add is like a daily, you know, maybe they don't have any kind of coordination events at all right now. And then their tolerance level to change is just minimal. So, okay. So as a coach or as a less even a scrum master, the first thing I might help them do is to actually just put in some frequency of a regular sink. That could wind up turning into something that we would recognize as a daily scrum or a daily standup, but. In the beginning, maybe they don't have the tolerance to go right directly to the thing. Maybe they'll reject that or resist that. So as, as a coach or as a scrum master who's focused on change and not the process of the framework, I would go in and actually help them figure out what the best changes for them right now. And that's the approach I've been using and it just works. It works pretty well. versus coming in and being like, Hey, here's what scrum is. Here's how it works. Let's go through this training. You know, we got to get all these things set up. We need, here's what perfect looks like.

Brian (13:14)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (13:39)
guess what we can't get there. So yeah.

Brian (13:43)
Yeah, I mean, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, it's a difference of listening versus telling, you know, like there's a, there's kind of a telling mindset of going in for a lot of coaching of, you know, what we would typically frame more as a consulting approach. You know, I have answers. Here's the answers for you. Just do the way that I've always done it and everything will be fine versus let's actually hear what your situation is. And.

Ken Rickard (13:59)
Yeah.

Brian (14:10)
what your needs are and what you're seeing going wrong and how can we address those issues? I love that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ken Rickard (14:14)
Yeah, and experimenting through it and honestly showing up, showing up as, or knowing when to show up in a coaching stance, who is going to be more empathetic and more understanding and not going to give them all the answers and it's going to let them explore and figure it out. And it's going to shine the light in the dark corners of the room versus the consultant stance, which is going to show up in more of an advisory. Hey, If I see you all struggling, I'm going to kind of tell you what to do or show you what to do. And they may not be ready for that. So it's about knowing when to actually do one stance or the other and be able to be very fluid in those things.

Brian (14:47)
Yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a phrase I'll use often in class when I talk about the coaching kind of mindset to say, you know, what we're trying to do is not build knowledge, but build capability. And if you build the capability, then people can then adapt and change when, when something similar comes along or something in the same realm, they can say, yeah, I remember last time when we had something like this, here's how I responded. So that, that ability, I think to. deal with change like you're saying. And if we have it ingrained in our mindset that, hey, we identify problems, we inspect them and we adapt as we go along, to me, that's so much more important to build into how we do things than it is to know, we got these four meetings or five meetings that we're gonna make sure we hold at a certain time. Awesome. Well, you know, I'd like to hear a little bit because I know, you know, your talk is somewhat loosely based on your book as well. And, you know, with a title like the six big ideas, help us understand. We may not have time for all six, but give us some of these big ideas.

Ken Rickard (16:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also still, I think Jason and I are still trying to figure out if, how the word or the phrase big ideas is resonating with folks too, because in the agile community, you know, big, big is not a word that I think people will gravitate to very quickly, but, we're also trying to straddle the fence on the change community and the agile community. Honestly, what we're trying to do is I was joking around and I think we, I'm.

Brian (16:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Rickard (16:31)
might've wrote this either in the book that's out now or the bigger book that we're working on for later this fall. But I wrote somewhere that really the change community and the agile community should really go on a blind date because they never should have really been two separate communities in my opinion. And I think Jason would hold the same opinions and a lot of our lean change facilitators, I think would hold the same opinions. So yeah, so the book is really about trying to get Agilist to understand that their role is really about change.

Brian (16:47)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (17:02)
They already know the agile bits and the iterative incremental and all that kind of stuff. And that the change community really needs to better understand the agility community and take some of those practices and apply it to the change. And if both sides do those things, we're going to wind up in the middle and everybody's going to be the same type of person or the same type of thing. Because at the end of the day, getting to agility, like this idea of the characteristics of being nimble and being able to adapt to what's going on with a certain grace and resilience.

Brian (17:25)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (17:31)
that set of characteristics is really, I think what the agile industry is hoping to go for. And yet a lot of the folks that find these things come to it with their current understanding and they don't really, aren't really looking to change themselves and how they see things, their perspective. And so that's how we get into this commodified kind of off the shelf version of it. And so I think we're just trying to get people to realize that. Look, if you look at these big, these six big ideas, which are really just sense making strategies. At the end of the day, that's what they are. You should be able to sense your way through what your context, your organization, given the changes that are going on. you know, what are those circumstances? How well do you know those circumstances? If you can understand those things in a sense making way, you'll be able to show up in a way that it actually be conducive to help that organization change, no matter what the scope of the changes. Let's say you're a store master. It could be your scope of your change is essentially your team or teams.

Brian (18:25)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (18:29)
And the product that they're building, let's say you're an agile coach. Okay. Maybe it's somewhat wider than that. I don't know. I'm still on the fence about what the difference between agile coaching and scrum master is. That's another podcast though. I think, or let's say you're somewhere higher up in the organization. So whatever your purview is, whatever your scope is, that context is really what we're trying to do. We're trying to help you and the others around you understand what it is that you're not paying attention to, what it is that you don't understand.

Brian (18:39)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (18:58)
or that you might think you understand about your organization. So it's really six ideas to help people kind of unravel that about their organization and themselves. Because like, for instance, one of the six big ideas is something that Jason had created quite a long time ago called the four dimensions of change. And what it says is that there's four things that you really probably need to focus on as, as a agent of change. And that is yourself. So like,

Brian (19:07)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (19:26)
Your set of beliefs about things, you know, how you show up because how you show up actually affects how others receive or perceive you. And then that impacts your ability to influence others and actually help them change. And then it goes on to say there's, the big ideas or strategies that you can deploy from, from a change perspective, typically minimally viable practices, or strategies. And then the last bucket in that four dimensions is, tools and practices. You know, the things that we have the most affinity for and tend to go to first, and kind of ignore the other three things. So it's, so that particular big idea is trying to get people to recognize that, no, there's like a bigger kind of art and science here to helping people change. It's not just about the science, like the strategy and the tools and practices to be good at those things. Most likely you got to focus on the art of change, which is yourself and your stance or how you show up.

Brian (19:59)
Right. Right. Yeah, I'm gonna share one of my geeky subdivisions here in making this quote, but it reminds me of in the musical Hamilton, there's a line in there that George Washington says to Hamilton where he's talking about, you know, Hamilton has these visions of going off and dying like a martyr and George Washington says, dying is easy young man, living is harder. And.

Ken Rickard (20:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (20:51)
That's kind of how I see this. I'm not saying we're dying or making a choice between dying or not, but I am saying that the practices side of thing, practice is easy young man, culture is harder. It's just harder to try to implement those things. And I think a lot of times, I don't know if it's, I think individually sometimes as coaches we can get lazy.

Ken Rickard (20:55)
Yeah.

Brian (21:18)
and go to the things that's easier to tell people about. But I also think that it's an institutional thing because it's much easier for me to certify somebody or give them a credential saying that, hey, this person knows their stuff when I can test them on facts and figures and how long is that meeting and that sort of stuff versus.

Ken Rickard (21:20)
Mm -hmm. somebody. Yeah. Please.

Brian (21:41)
you know, how do you change the mindset of the culture of the organization when they're really into quick solutions and they're into trying to get things out the door as fast as possible and not focus on quality. It's harder, right? It's just, it's more difficult.

Ken Rickard (21:55)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're hitting on one of the other six big ideas right now. Actually two of them, but we can start out with the explain the one. So there's another one that we made called the, the two change strategies of effective organizations. And so what this one says is that there's two ways that you can probably improve or change your organization. And that's a fractal statement in an organization because again, we're only talking about whatever context you have.

Brian (22:06)
Hahaha.

Ken Rickard (22:27)
Cause if you're a SCAR master, we're talking about the context you have of the teams you're working with. Agile coach or something higher up than that, whatever context you have. So, okay. So within your context, you probably have two ways to think about and try to help your organization change. And those two ways are either optimizing what they already do to make it better, faster, cheaper, or evolving the way they think about what they do so that they can actually succeed in ways that they never have before. And I'd be, I'll go out on a limb and say that every, at the very least, every single company I've come across that's doing agile and whatever way they call it, is really trying to do it from the purpose of the optimization, better, faster, cheaper. I think there are very few companies around the world that are actually taking it seriously enough to do the evolution part to actually change the way they think about how they do things in such ways that they're actually elevating. their set of beliefs and behavioral patterns, not just as individuals, sorry, as individuals, but as a collective and then ultimately as an organization. And so it's really trying to get you to, to focus on what is it that we actually are trying to improve? Is it just that we're trying to optimize what we're doing now? Cause that's a take scram off the shelf and just drop it in, you know, or that's send people to training and like come back and be like, cool, you're certified.

Brian (23:33)
Chief.

Ken Rickard (23:49)
But if we don't ask the hard questions around, okay, well, what are you gonna change about your behaviors? Then they're likely not focusing on evolution. And if we're not coaching them through that, yeah, not really going anywhere.

Brian (24:01)
Yeah, do you think organizations just don't know what they don't know? I mean, because I know you're right, they do want better, faster, cheaper. And that's sort of the end goal that they're coming at a lot of this stuff with. They just not recognize that it's really the change capability that they should prioritize.

Ken Rickard (24:05)
It's like. Well, I think it's because they focus. So what's really easy for a lot of organizations to change. There's a, we're going to keep tying these five, sorry, these six big ideas together, I guess, because there's another one called the five levers of change. And what that one is, is a, it's a circle of five things with people being the biggest circle in the center. And then on the four corners of it, it's basically process and technology strategies and structures.

Brian (24:32)
No, that's great.

Ken Rickard (24:48)
And so if we look at that as a systems approach to changing an organization, the reason why it's called the five levers is because they can pull any levers in any combination they want in order to try to change their organization. But the easiest levers to pull are process and technology. So, Hey, let's do scrum and we need to install Jira or Azure DevOps. Right. And that's generally where these kinds of things start because it's within the control of the teams oftentimes to make those changes. It doesn't impact a larger organization to, well, it can, but probably to a lesser extent initially. So the teams have some level of autonomy or local control to start making those changes. They don't run into problems or impediments or just kind of organizational dysfunction until a little bit down the road so they can kick that can down the road. And so I think it's, I think it's that that causes us to gravitate towards a process and then just pull that lever pretty easily. And, and that's an optimization lever. So if you tie those two ideas together, it takes the other side of those five levers, the structure and the strategies, which are all built on beliefs. You know, like if I'm a leader in a hierarchy who's worked 20 years to get to my lofty management position, I'm going to be a lot less likely to take a empathetic kind of delegated approach to my management style because I put in a lot of hard work to get to where I am now. And there's no way you're going to tell me now.

Brian (25:48)
Yeah.

Ken Rickard (26:18)
20 years that I now have to change the way I operate? Like, no, I'm in control here. So I think we're also battling that a little bit too.

Brian (26:20)
Right. Yeah, what I've done got me here. So why would I do something different now? Right?

Ken Rickard (26:32)
Right. Exactly.

Brian (26:34)
Yeah, I've battled that in multiple occasions, for sure. One of the places I worked was a newspaper. And if you want to talk about people not wanting to change their mindsets of, hey, what do you mean that people don't want to have delivery of their newspaper on their front doorstep every day like they've done their whole life? Yeah, it's crazy. Well, this is great stuff. I'm really enjoying this.

Ken Rickard (26:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (27:03)
Do you have one last big thought, big idea to leave us with here? Because we're almost out of time, but what have we missed in these big ideas?

Ken Rickard (27:13)
Yeah, probably the other big one that comes up a lot. one of the other six that I haven't talked about yet is the, what I call the three agilities. And we'll tend to focus on the delivery agility, which is like, Hey, we, we can help you team better and people better at the team level where you're delivering. And we can help you become more product led. And we can also help you with your technical excellence, you know, like DevOps types things, right?

Brian (27:21)
Okay?

Ken Rickard (27:38)
And I think we could probably draw a circle around those three things and go, you know what, for the vast majority of the agile industry, this is what they think agile is. But in my opinion, that's only one of the agilities an organization needs in order to actually possess the characteristics of agility. And the other two would be change agility. The idea that we are adaptable to the change that we cannot control and that we actually can adapt well in a resilient way to the change we can control within our organization. And that we're constantly evolving to get better at that so that we can sustain change in a graceful way over time. So that's change agility. And then the third one is probably possibly the most important one. And that is leadership agility. This idea that if we don't create the environment for change to take place in a conducive way that is productive and adaptable. then we won't change and we'll stay stagnant and we'll stick to our standardized approaches in a stagnant way. And then delivery will suffer even though we can put new things on top of it and we can call things new words, it won't actually change. And the leadership agility is really about not just trying to teach leaders to be more competent. That's generally what management consulting and a lot of other folks are focused on. It's really about trying to help leaders address their ability. to actually have a consciousness about themselves, that they can show up in ways that are actually enabling and empowering the organization to be adaptable and flexible and to be able to deliver and change in ways that are graceful and resilient. And so in my opinion, it kind of starts there even though a lot of them don't start.

Brian (29:14)
I love that. No, I love that. I think that's great because, you know, a lot of times you hear the complaints of people who come through classes that are kind of more team level in the organization. And it's, there's a lot of complaints about how management just doesn't understand, or we're bumping up against the glass ceiling, you know, kind of in our organization, we can't really Institute change or make the change permanent because, you know, leadership still wants things exactly in the old way. They haven't actually shifted. how they think about things. So I love that, I love that concept. I would agree there. Well, this is great stuff. And obviously, like I said, the workshop that Ken did at the Scrum Gathering was an hour and a half. And this is just a short little taste in half an hour. So there's no way we're gonna be able to cover it all here. I strongly encourage people, if they're really interested in this topic, if they're really interested in what Ken is saying,

Ken Rickard (29:53)
Thank you. Yeah.

Brian (30:15)
Check out the book the six big ideas of adaptive organizations. It's a great book And it'll go into detail on all of these these six big ideas that we talked about here And what we're gonna put lots of the links in our show notes here so if you want to just head on over our show notes you'll find links over not only that but to to Ken's organization the six big ideas network and you can find the website there and find the the

Ken Rickard (30:24)
Mm -hmm.

Brian (30:44)
classes and trainings that Ken is doing in this area. So we'll make sure that everybody can get to that. Ken, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for coming on and sharing your knowledge with us today. Yeah.

Ken Rickard (30:54)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.