Agile Mentors Podcast from Mountain Goat Software

Scrum isn’t new, but the questions teams are asking about it are evolving. In this episode, Brian and Cort Sharp compare notes on what they're hearing in class, in the community, and behind the scenes. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner welcomes Mountain Goat Software colleague and community manager Cort Sharp for a real-time pulse check on what’s top-of-mind for Scrum teams today. From overloaded calendars to misunderstood metrics, Cort and Brian dig into the patterns and questions they’ve seen across classes and conversations lately. They unpack common friction points like meeting overload, velocity confusion, misused roles, and daily scrums that eat the whole morning, and offer grounded suggestions for handling each one. Whether you're a Scrum Master trying to protect team time or a developer wondering how to work more collaboratively, this episode offers helpful context (and practical nudges) to help your team work better, together. References and resources mentioned in the show: Cort Sharp #143: What Still Makes Teams Work (and Win) with Jim York #152: The Five Pillars of Real Agile Improvement with Mike Cohn 7 Advantages of Scrum (Plus 1 Hidden Disadvantage) by Mike Cohn What Is a High-Performing Agile Team? by Mike Cohn Mountain Goat Software’s Working on a Scrum Team Course 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 a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast 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. Cort Sharp is the Scrum Master of the producing team and the Agile Mentors Community Manager. In addition to his love for Agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for five years. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm here as always, Brian Milner. And today we have Mr. Court Sharp with us. Welcome in Court. Cort Sharp (00:10) Hey Brian, thanks for having me on again. Brian Milner (00:13) Yeah, Court has been a frequent guest of our show. If you've been around for a while, you probably remember some episodes we've done with him. Court works with us here at Mountain Goat Software. He is a producer and other things, community manager, other things. But he sits in on just about, well, not every class, but he sits in on a lot of classes and helps produce them and make sure that they work. We previously have had Court on with sort of this theme that, you know, Court has his finger on the pulse of things a little bit more because he sees the classes through multiple trainers. He hears the Q &As that take place in all the classes. You know, he even sees some of the emails and some of messages come through the Agile Mentors community from his work there. So Court just has some insight that maybe... a trainer like myself who only gets to see how people question in my classes that I might not have. So we like to have Kordon to get a broader voice of the people approach, if you will, into things. So we wanted to talk a little bit about what are people talking about now? What are the questions? What are the concerns? Cort Sharp (01:18) You Brian Milner (01:29) What are we hearing now in classes as opposed to maybe a year ago or six months ago? So I think probably a good place to start there, Court, is when people are talking to us about just the common, hey, here's things that's a problem, here's things that are a pain point, how do you deal with this? What are some of the more common things that you've been hearing across the classes and across the interactions with people who are in our our system. Cort Sharp (01:53) Right, right. Yeah, I guess I am kind of the collector of questions. ⁓ But even outside of our classes, I'm hearing a lot of questions about, I'm hearing a ton in our classes about this, but outside of our classes, whether it's on various social medias, various emails, of just questions in general to people who are newer to Scrum or I guess Agile as a whole, but specifically about Scrum. Brian Milner (01:58) Ha ha ha ha. Cort Sharp (02:18) organizations that are newer to Scrum is time management. So like how do we fit all of this new stuff? Like all this new stuff is great. All of what we talked about is great. All that we know about it is great. We were on the same page of like, hey, here's, it's a good time to check in daily with our daily Scrum, make sure we're all on the same page, right? We do need stakeholder feedback with the sprint review. It's good of us to kind of retrospect. and use our retrospective to check in on our team and our process and make sure we're doing the right stuff. But how do we fit all of that in with all of the other meetings and stuff that we already have? And you and I were talking a little bit about just kind of what we're going to talk about a bit more. But we were talking about this before we started recording. And I think I told you literally three or four days ago, I just had a conversation with one of my friends who they're working in a tech software, they're doing a software project in some organization and they're like, yeah, they're trying to get us to move to Scrum because they've heard about this thing. And I just, I don't know how you push this man. I don't know how you do this. I don't know how you live in this world because they got me in six hours of meetings a day and they expect me to get four hours of work done. And I'm not sitting at the office for 10 to 12 hours a day. That's ridiculous. So I think the biggest one is the the time management specifically with all of these meetings. And I know my personal take is I think all of these or a lot of these organizations, I can't say all a lot of these organizations are looking at Scrum as an additive to their current process, not a substitute or replacement. you do you see that, Brian? Do you agree with that? Brian Milner (03:53) Yeah. Yeah, I agree. mean, if they already have a huge slate of meetings that they're, I mean, there's going to be some things that Scrum isn't going to replace and shouldn't replace, for example, like, you know, one-on-ones with your manager, right? There's not a function inside Scrum for a one-on-one meeting with your manager, nor should there be, because that's not about how a team builds something. That's more general management and HR, you know? so those kinds of things, no, it's not going to replace and there are going to be other meetings outside of scrum. It's not intended for scrum to replace all of them, but it is intended to replace some of what you already did. and if you, so for me, it's all about purpose. You know, that's, that's where I think that you should start with everything is what's the purpose. And if you understand the purpose, Cort Sharp (04:46) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (04:54) then you can compare, ask yourself what the meetings that you have now, what's the purpose of this meeting? And if you can't answer that, then I would challenge it. I think that an agile organization should be open to challenges for any part of the process. And you should be able to say, hey, I'm not sure why we're doing this. And if we can't really articulate, here's the purpose behind it, it should be gone. Cort Sharp (05:10) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (05:19) We should get rid of it. So I think you're right. I think there is sort of this layering on top of, and if we don't allow the scrum meetings to replace some of the things that we've done previously, yeah, can be, it can seem like a lot more of a meeting heavy kind of system, but the meetings in the system, let's be clear, right? First of all, depends on how long your sprint is, but let's just go with the sprint that's the sprint length that's the average or most common, which is two weeks. If I have a two week sprint, first day of the sprint, I'm gonna have sprint planning. That is going to be a long meeting. There's no two ways around it. The official time box is up to eight hours if you have a month long sprint. Most people would half that if it's a two week sprint. Cort Sharp (05:45) Yes. Brian Milner (06:07) So maximum maybe of around four hours. So half a day, let's just say, right? Half a day of your first day is gonna be in planning your sprint. Then maybe you finish that meeting up with a small sort of mini daily scrum, but that's it for that day. So you have half the day on day one. Day two, day three, day four, almost all the days of the sprint that are remaining, you have 15 minute meeting. That's it. If you, if you layer on maybe a backlog refinement, maybe you have another hour long meeting in the middle somewhere, but there's no other scrum meetings every day. It's a 15 minute meeting until you get to the last day. So first day, last day, right? First day, four hour meeting last day, you're going to have the sprint review and the retrospective. So there's going to be some time probably in the first part of your day that you have a sprint review. It's going to be some time in the the back part of your day for a retrospective. But those two combined, they're not gonna, maximum I would say there, if you combine those two, would be the same as the sprint planning, maybe up to about four hours or so, maximum. So maybe half a day. So two days of your sprint, you've got half the day for meeting, two out of 10. And the other days, you've got 15 minutes every day. So yeah, there's a lot of those 15 minute meetings, but they're just one a day. And otherwise you have the entire rest of the day to do whatever you need to do to build. So percentage wise, it's actually a small percentage of the total time that you have to work in the course of two weeks. ⁓ If the meetings are not being kept in their time boxes, Cort Sharp (07:32) Mm-hmm. Right. Brian Milner (07:55) then that's the issue, right? If we have a daily scrum that goes for an hour, yeah, I would feel like that's a beat down as well. That's not what it's intended to be. Cort Sharp (08:06) Right, right. And I've also heard the other really common complaint is about the daily scrum of, I understand it's only 15 minutes. I understand that it's a check-in. There's been, I've heard complaints about other, or seen complaints about other meetings where the point of the meeting isn't really well understood across the team, which I think we'll get into a little bit later. But specifically about the daily scrum, the biggest complaint I've seen is, okay, it's 15 minutes, but is it actually really only 15 minutes of your day? And again, same buddy of mine, same friend of mine who threw this out to me, and he was like, so let me paint this picture for you. I get in the office, let's say at 9 a.m. I sit down, I eat. respond to a few emails. look at my emails, I check that out until about 9.30. Our daily standup is at 9.30. Our daily scrum is at 9.30. I have to do minimal work because I can't get into any deep work. I can't get into any major thought work in that first 30 minutes. So I can't really do a whole lot there. Maybe I'll grab a cup of coffee and hang out. That's what most of my days look like. 15 minutes. And then there's always 15 minutes after that 15 minutes to kind of coordinate with whoever needs to, whoever I need to work with to get stuff done, to help remove bottlenecks or anything, which is totally fine, right? We encourage kind of that 16th minute, so to speak, outside of it, but the meeting officially ends at 15 minutes and unless you need to coordinate with someone else, you're free to go, right? So he's like, okay, there's normally another about 15, maybe 30 minutes. So that takes me until about 10, 15. Well, lunch is at 11, so I got another 45 minutes of nothing. Can't really do a ton of work, and that's basically my whole morning just gone, right out of the gate, right? So it's a 15 minute meeting, but in my friend's world, it's a lot more than 15 minutes. ⁓ I know what I would say to that. I'm curious what you would say, and then I'll share what I would say to that. Brian Milner (10:02) Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to say something that may blow people's minds. What if you don't have the daily scrum first thing in your day? Right. Maybe what the issue is here is the time of your daily scrum. If it's at 9.30 and that's messing with your day because you can't really get anything done before that. And then afterwards you're spending more time. So it's taken time and then there's not enough focus time before lunch. so you feel like half your day is gone, well, what would happen if it was the last thing in your day? What about if you ended the day with a daily scrum? What about if you did it first thing after lunch? There's nothing that says it has to be first thing in the day. The team can decide any point of the day to have the daily scrum, and I encourage the team to experiment with it. I've had some teams before who Cort Sharp (10:48) Right. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (10:58) really love end of the day daily scrums because they felt like at the end of the day, we check in with each other. We get together and say, all right, what happened today? Right. And they can all, it's all fresh in their mind because they just finished the day. They can talk through it all. All right. So what does that mean for tomorrow? All right. When we come in tomorrow, we're going to do this. And one of the things that allows is if you have, most of the places I've worked, Cort Sharp (11:02) Hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (11:24) You have developers who have sort of different time schedules. Some people will sleep in and come in late and work late. And other people like to come in really early because they like to avoid the traffic. If you have that kind of situation, if you put it towards the back part of your day, then when people come in in the morning, it doesn't matter what time they come in, they have a big chunk of focus time, but then they can dive in and do things. to me, your friend's problem is more about Cort Sharp (11:32) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (11:50) that interrupting the block of concentration time and it just needs to be moved to a place where it doesn't, you know, kind of split that block of focus time. Cort Sharp (11:54) Mm-hmm. That's a much better answer than I gave him. I just said, well, what else would you be doing in your morning? And he said, well, probably, you know, putzing around, checking email, doing nothing until lunch anyways. ⁓ Right, right. Brian Milner (12:06) Ha ha ha! Well, there is always that, right? mean, just because you've got the opportunity to have focus doesn't mean you're going to focus, but that's a whole other set of issues, right? Yeah. Cort Sharp (12:24) Right, yep. And really, I guess my additional answer to him was also, when you're working in an organization, you're making a reciprocal commitment to that organization to say, I will get this amount of work done, you will give me this type of compensation, and there will be communication between everyone. ⁓ And to me, the Daily Scrum is that communicative part, maybe not necessarily with the organization as a whole. Brian Milner (12:44) Right. Cort Sharp (12:51) but you're still communicating with your team and you're getting on the same page, you're getting aligned so that you all can meet your reciprocal commitment. So really, is the daily scrum for the team or for the organization? I think you can make an argument for either, but at the end of the day, it's for everyone to get on the same page so that we can move forward, which you were going to say something? Go ahead. Brian Milner (13:12) No, just going to say, part of that as well is just, this is some of the stuff that we talk about in our working on a Scrum team class that we're launching here at Mountain Goat Software is really these kind of more subtleties of how the team works together. When you take a Scrum Master class or something like that, you'll learn that, it's a 15 minute meeting and there's a time box. You may not hear that kind of thing of, well, what works best for this team? Maybe it's the end of the day. Maybe it's the middle of the day. Those are the kinds of things that we try to focus on in a WoWs class is what's the best way for your team to actually do this thing and actually make it successful. ⁓ One of those other areas that I think is kind of a classification of problems is that classification of things and just kind of general process confusion. Cort Sharp (13:49) Mm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (14:00) You know people who just don't understand You know chunks of the process or why things are done a certain way or how to do certain things What what kind of issues have you heard along those lines? Cort Sharp (14:01) Right. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard and seen and had conversations with people about velocity and how velocity, some piece of after it's explained to them, they totally get it. They're on the same page. That's all good. Then they run into the issue of explaining it to their leadership. But the understanding of velocity is that it's a changeable or it's a metric to compare teams. Brian Milner (14:21) Ha Cort Sharp (14:41) And I'm on team A and we have a velocity of 20. You're on team B. You have a velocity of 30. Someone looks at that, bigger number, better, right? Brian's team is better than Court's team. No, that's not what it is at all. That's not how it should be used. That's not how it should be handled. That is a misuse of the process. That is a confusion point on what velocity actually is. Velocity, I guess we'll explain it here. Brian Milner (14:52) Right. Cort Sharp (15:06) Velocity is just a measurement of how much one specific team gets done in a period of time. That's it. How many points? And points are all relative. So story points are relative. They are not the same from one team to the next. So therefore, your velocity cannot be the same from one team to the next or comparable from one team to the next. You might have the same velocities, but it's not like saying, OK, my US American dollar is the same as your US American dollar. Those are two very similar, those are the same exact thing. Those are very comparable. We're working with different types of measuring is really what it comes down to, right? Brian Milner (15:43) Right. Well, and I get the confusion because Mike's phrase is, estimate size, derive duration. So when you start to say, well, a story point is a measure of size, not time, you sometimes get pushback from people to say, yeah, but you're eventually going to translate it into time anyway. And you're right. We are. We're deriving duration from it. But the split we're trying to make there is when we estimate, right? When the developers are doing the estimation, we don't want them thinking in terms of time. We don't want them to make that process forward leap to say, well then the story point equals this number of hours. So let me do the calculation in my head and figure out how many story points this is gonna be. I say this in class. If your organization has a conversion chart like that, Cort Sharp (16:12) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (16:33) a story point equals this number of hours, you're gonna have to convince me and explain to me what benefit there is of doing that. Because I have yet to hear anyone say, oh, well, we do that because it gives us this benefit. Other than saying because that's the way our tool works, right? Our tool we use to manage our process or whatever takes it in this way. And so we have to make the conversion so that we can use this tool. Cort Sharp (16:42) Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (17:01) Now the problem is the tool is driving your process. But other than that, there's not really a benefit that anyone can show me for making that conversion, because what the developer ends up doing is estimating in time. And if they're going to estimate in time, wouldn't it be easier just to say, our estimate is in hours rather than story points? ⁓ It's six hours to do that. It's not one story point. ⁓ Cort Sharp (17:19) Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Brian Milner (17:26) That's what I encourage people to do. the confusion comes from the fact that we do make that duration, we do drive the duration eventually, but that's for the long range forecast. I mean, we say very clearly in our other classes, but we talk about this in the worst class and the working on a scrumpting class, that when you're estimating something, you're thinking in terms of size, you're thinking in terms of risk. comparative to other things. And there's really only two reasons that we would use Story Points. One is to make those longer term forecasts, but the other is to help the product owner to know the relative cost of things so they can prioritize. But the thing you're mentioning, Core, is to use it as a performance metric, and that's where people fall into, I think, a big trap. When you use it as a performance metric, it actually destroys the other two reasons. Mike says this, we have a good thing going with the other two reasons. Organizations want to be able to forecast forward. Organizations need the product owner to be able to know the relative cost of something so they can prioritize. Those are good things. So why go in and destroy it by also trying to use it as a performance metric? Because those two things are needed still. And we won't have a way of doing those. Cort Sharp (18:24) You Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, totally. I agree with that. I don't really have anything to add. I you just kind of knocked that one out of the park there, Brian. Good job. Brian Milner (18:48) Yeah. Yeah, no, mean, velocity, some of these, part of it's, you know, these are all new terms for a lot of people as well. And so you hear terms like velocity and think, oh, what does that mean? And, and I get it, you know, if you're a manager and you're not really familiar with this kind of stuff and you hear the term velocity and you think, oh, that's the speed of the team. Well, yeah, it is the speed of the team. Right. And if it's the speed of the team, why can't I use that to judge one team against the other? Because it's like using, um, you know, Fahrenheit and Celsius. I mean, it's Cort Sharp (18:56) Right. Brian Milner (19:18) metric and imperial. They're different measures. And so one number doesn't equal the same thing as the other. ⁓ Now, there are some scaled frameworks like safe that we'll try to level set across teams by having a little cheat sheet saying, hey, this is an example of a five-point story. This is an example of an eight-point story. So that the teams can maybe relatively compare against the same definitions of Cort Sharp (19:25) Right? Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (19:45) sizes. ⁓ But I gotta say, even there, the teams are going to be off. The teams are not going to be perfectly aligned. That's the only thing that you can really do to try to align those. But they still have their own conversations. They still reach their own conclusions. And so the scales aren't going to be perfectly aligned no matter what you do. Cort Sharp (19:46) Mm-hmm. think even more importantly beyond they have their own conversations or I guess more fundamentally, not more importantly, more fundamentally, is that they have different people on different teams. You have different skill sets, you have different abilities, you have different people working on different stuff. I think I've programmed a little more recently than you have maybe, or it might be vice versa. I know you've recently just built a website again. But I would probably wager my programming skill set in like, I don't know, Ruby on Rails is probably a little, I got a little edge up on you right there, right? So if we were on different teams, Court's on this team, Brian's on that team, how can we possibly compare this different skill sets to each other and expect the same result, the same speed, the same pace? Brian Milner (20:37) Yep. Yep, definitely so. Cort Sharp (20:55) You were talking about, oh, it's like comparing using Fahrenheit and Celsius. The first one that popped into my mind was miles per hour or miles and kilometers per hour, miles per hour, kilometers per hour. Right. Speed in different cars. And then even beyond that, I guess, building on the car analogy, that's like comparing a high end Ferrari to my little first car ever, which was a Saturn Ion little beater. Could barely get up to 60 miles an hour thing. Those are two different cars. They're two different skill sets and they require two different viewpoints to even be able to compare them. There are comparisons you can make, know, four wheels, steering wheel, whatever. But at the end of the day, one of those is going a whole lot faster and it was not my first car. I can tell you that. ⁓ Brian Milner (21:39) Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's a good way to compare it as well. What about things that have to do, and I'll kind of combine some thoughts here, but maybe what about things that are kind of more role-centric or even just how the team works together? What kind of issues have you heard people mention recently in those areas? Cort Sharp (21:49) Mm-hmm. So managers, for one, what is the role of managers within Scrum? What's the difference between a product owner and a product manager? Is there a product manager? Does that person even exist? Do we just need to fire all of our product managers or turn them all over into product owners? That one's very common. But I think another really common one is when does the Scrum master step in? And the first time I took my first scrum master class, I can't say first time I took one. I've only officially taken one. but I've been in, if you look at the title of a podcast episode, a couple, couple episodes ago, a rough estimate of a billion, scrum classes. Laura, Laura, Laura Kendrick and I have been in a billion scrum master classes. That was, that was the fun conversation we had, but. I made that that I needed that question to answer to help me kind of grasp what is this new role? This is not a very traditional typical thing that you see within organizations of the Scrum Master. Do I as the Scrum Master, do I help estimate? Do I help prioritize the backlog? What do I do? Am I am I a team lead? Is everyone trying to talk with me on the daily stand up and is it my role or my job to hold? take notes, hold people accountable to what they're saying? Or is that kind of just my job to say, okay, cool, we did it, we're good. I facilitated this meeting, I put it on all your calendars, you showed up and do your thing, I'm out, see ya, right? So I think the Scrum Master role as a whole, there's a bit of confusion on that and product or project managers, right? How do we manage those or handle those? Brian Milner (23:43) Yeah. Well, the other titles, no matter what other title that you have, first of all, let's separate out. This is part of what people need to understand. Do not confuse job title with scrum roll, right? Because you can have, let's say I'm a project, I'm hired as a project manager, but... Cort Sharp (24:00) Hmm. Brian Milner (24:07) now I'm gonna be on a Scrum team, I could be the Scrum master on that Scrum team. Does that change my job title? No, I'm still hired as a project manager. So that's kind of the thing that people need to understand. You don't have to have the job title Scrum master or now we're doing Scrum, so now we got to fire our project managers and hire Scrum masters, right? That's not necessarily the case. It's a role on the team. ⁓ So that being said, Scrum defines three. Cort Sharp (24:15) All right. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (24:33) It defines Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developer. It doesn't define any others. It doesn't mean you don't have them. Mike has this phrase that I love. says, the Scrum guy doesn't mention tacos, but it doesn't mean we don't have tacos. ⁓ The one I like to say in class is it also doesn't define a CEO. But I bet you have a CEO. I bet your company has a CEO. Cort Sharp (24:47) Right. Brian Milner (24:58) It's not saying that you don't need these other roles or that there's no place for them in an organization using Scrum. It's saying Scrum is going to define for you how a single team works. And if you have a product manager, maybe that's more of a scaled thing of how we manage that product across multiple teams. If you have project managers, maybe that's about coordinating information across teams. If you have business analysts, maybe that's helping product owners to write stories. Maybe they are a product owner. I don't know. If you have managers, managers are usually not on a Scrum team unless they're really expert at doing a certain skill. Sometimes I'll see managers who are developers on a team. But the power dynamic is a weird thing on a Scrum team and that's something to be careful of. If you do have someone who is a manager of any kind on a Scrum team, I would, if at all possible, try to make sure that they don't have any direct reports that are also on that same team. They can be on another team with other people that don't report to them, but if you have them on a team with people that directly report to them, now you got this weird power dynamic within this team that's supposed to be a team of equals, but it's not a team of equals because one person's going to fill out a... Cort Sharp (25:56) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (26:12) performance report on me. So how safe do I feel to say I made a mistake around a manager who's gonna put that on my performance report? That's the danger. ⁓ But yeah, I think you're gonna have any of these other roles. And as far as the Scrum Master is concerned, when does the Scrum Master step in? Well, let me ask everyone listening to think about this question. If you were a parent of a child, when do you step in if you have a child who's doing something that could be harmful? Cort Sharp (26:21) Right? Right. Brian Milner (26:39) Think about this, I didn't tell you what age the child was, right? If you have an infant, you're gonna step in a lot quicker. You're gonna protect them a lot more. If you have a teenager, you might give them a lot more leash and say, hey, that's your responsibility, right? You know kind of how to do this. And if they insist on doing something a way that you don't think is the right way, Cort Sharp (26:42) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (27:04) a certain point as a parent, you have to just say, you know what, this is their lesson to learn. And, you know, they need to have the, I believe very strongly as a parent that you have to really defend your kids' rights to make their own mistakes. And I'm not saying developers are kids, or I'm not saying that, you know, you're, as a Scrum Master, you're the parent of the team. Please don't interpret it that way. But I am saying there's a parallel to this to say, Cort Sharp (27:09) Mm-hmm. Right. You Brian Milner (27:29) As a scrum master, knowing when to step in is an issue by issue decision. At this instance, how harmful will it be if they do this thing? Is this a kid running out in front of a truck coming down the street? Well, I'm gonna stop that. ⁓ Is this, hey, don't touch that plate, it's hot. I have told you 50 times, don't touch that plate, it's a hot plate. Cort Sharp (27:35) Right. Right. Brian Milner (27:52) Okay, well hey, maybe it's time for you to touch that hot plate and understand that, hey, next time I'm not gonna touch that hot plate, you know? Cort Sharp (27:54) Right. I totally agree. I'm a little more, and I understand I'm a little biased in this, but I'm a little more of a fan of the Scrum Master. The best or a good analogy of a Scrum Master is like a coach on a team, like a sports team is what I'm saying. And the reason I'm biased, right. Brian Milner (28:12) Gee, I can't understand why that would resonate with you. Cort Sharp (28:16) Who would have thought? I am a, well, recently, I'm a little hiatus right now, but I am a swim coach, head coach, and I think the parallel there is just much easier for me to grasp because think of a coach. You are supporting your team. You're stepping in when needed. You're talking with, whether it's officials or referees or someone that's a little higher up, has a little more authority. than you or your team has in a moment. You're not being disrespectful to them, but you're just communicating, you're conversing, you want to get their understanding and you want to communicate that to your team and work within whatever kind of scope is set there. You're working within the scope of the rules. So I like to view that as kind of like, here's the general organization rules that we follow and standards and practices and all that stuff. But I'm not the one, me personally, I'm not the one. Brian Milner (28:48) Yeah. Cort Sharp (29:09) jumping in the water and doing the races, right? I'm not the one out there on the court, dribbling a ball up and down. I'm not the one out there on the field tackling people, right? I'm there to help the team formulate a plan, help the team execute that plan and help the team really just do what they can't or remove as much of their stress as possible so that they can only focus on doing their job, which in the coaching space is Brian Milner (29:15) Yeah. Cort Sharp (29:36) sport coaching space is let the team go out and swim, let the team go out and play football, let the team go out and play basketball or baseball or softball or whatever it is, right? Let them do their thing. You're there to help them and make their day on game day on meat day as easy as possible and as seamless as possible for them. So there was there was something that you said there to Brian that kind of got my gears gears turned a little bit. Brian Milner (29:55) Absolutely, Kreen. Cort Sharp (30:02) You were talking about how the kind of power dynamic, if like a manager is on a team and someone reports to them, there's that power dynamic there. But you said that everyone is on an equal playing field within Scrum. we're all on the same level within our team. We might have different roles, but we're all on the same level. And that kind of got me moving into like, what have you seen that one kind of helps establish that we're all on the same team, we're all on the same playing field, we're all working together, you I might be the product owner, so I might have a little, or I do have guidance over here's the direction we're gonna go more so than maybe the Scrum Master does with the product development itself. But how do you kind of build that trust within a team to be able to say, yeah, I see you, Cort, as an equal contributor here, even though you're the one saying, We're going to do, we need to do this, this, this, and the other thing in the next two weeks. cause I see a lot of, I see a lot of questions about that. see a lot of struggles with that. And I think that's a very common issue that a lot of people face within a scrum team. Because again, it is so different from, I report to my manager. You don't report to your scrum master. You don't report to your product owner. You sit down and have conversations with them. So how do you, how do you kind of foster that and facilitate that? that type of environment. Brian Milner (31:25) Yeah. Great question. And like the kids used to say a while back, there's the rub. You know, that's kind of the key point there. There's a thing we say about Scrum where we, a lot of trainers and coaches will say this, Scrum is simple to understand, difficult to master. And that is precisely what's meant by that. And that's kind of some of the stuff that we try to capture in this working on Scrum team. Class is is that difficult to master portion because? You know, how do you how do you gain trust from someone else? well That's not in the scrum guide, right? I we're not gonna be able to you know, look that section up and say here's the rules on how you You know start to trust someone else that you're working alongside That's a difficult thing How do you do it? Well, it takes time You know, it's like a any kind of any other kind of relationship you have with another human being, you can't walk in from day one and say, hey, we're going to now have this deep trust with each other. You have to extend it and you have to earn it. That's the way that it's built. And that has to happen over time. You have to display that I have trust in you and I'm worthy of your trust. So when you put your trust in me, you can count on me. I'm going to be here and I'm going to do what it is you expect me to do. That's really the only answer that works for that. it's difficult. is the human working dynamic, I think, is the undervalued kind of glue that holds a lot of this other stuff together. ⁓ Cort Sharp (32:52) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (32:55) And it's that kind of stuff that a good scrum master, I think, can really make an impact on because, hey, they're not just going to know a time box. That's kind of just Scrum 101. But they're going to also know, well, what happens when I have two team members who get into a big conflict, who disagree? My hand's off, and I just let that run. And all of a sudden, now we have a team that splits, that fractures along that line. Cort Sharp (33:05) Right. Right. Yeah. Brian Milner (33:23) Or do I get roll up my sleeves and get involved and have the skills to help them navigate that conflict and come back as a team without resentment, without losing trust in each other, but really working honestly with each other and being productive when we come back. That's the difficulty. And like I said, that's something we tried to capture when we kind of created that working on a Scrum Team classes. Cort Sharp (33:23) Right. Brian Milner (33:48) And what are some of those more subtleties of nuances that really are the heart of whether the team is going to work or not? Cort Sharp (33:57) Right. think even, even beyond just what do these look like? I think the way I view a working on a scrum team is it's for everyone on a scrum team, right? It's not just for scrum masters. It's not just for product owners. It's not just for developers. It gives you a big picture. Excuse me. Sorry. It gives you a big picture of how, how effective you can truly be when you are. Brian Milner (34:18) Yeah. Cort Sharp (34:25) working together on a Scrum team, right? You were talking a little bit about the human working dynamic or nature, one of those. And as soon as you said that, I was like, we should double click into that a little bit. But very briefly, maybe double click into it a little bit of when we work together and humans are working together and not working in siloed environments, not saying, hey, I'm the front end developer. I did my mock up. Brian Milner (34:31) Yeah, yeah. Cort Sharp (34:52) I'm out, I'm done. Figure it out everyone else. you're, struggling with your database stuff. Tough. I'm done with my thing. I'm going to sit back and sip a, sip a cool lot on, on Tahiti's beaches or whatever. Right. We're not doing that. We're, we're helping each other out. We're working together and we're saying, okay, cool. You're having database issues. I don't know anything about databases, but maybe I can help look up some stuff or I can find some. help you out in some way that isn't inhibiting you from doing your job. But it might not be like doing it. It's definitely not doing your job for you. And it's not like it's a, I know everything about databases or I know enough about databases to be able to get by. It could be even as basic as, you run into this error code. Cool. I'll look that up for you and send you the results and save you a little time, hopefully that way or something. But it's that team collaboration, it's working together as a team. I like the perfect example, which I'm pretty sure we talked about this in working on a Scrum Team course as well, of developers and testers working together in tandem and saying, instead of, we like to say, developers finish their code and then we throw it over the proverbial wall. And all right, testers, you got to catch it, figure it out. and then test it, developers maybe sit side by side with testers or hop on a call, not too dissimilar from what we're doing here, just hop on a call with each other and say, let's figure out the verification that the password meets the requirements. Okay, cool, tester, you want to write up the tests, I'll start developing or working on the code for it. Awesome, here's my code, here's my thought process. Do you have any thoughts, Tester? Do you see any edge cases right out of the gate that I should keep an eye out for or work on? I think that is the bigger picture that working on a Scrum team really highlights and really focuses on and allows a lot of people to kind of open their eyes a bit more and see the forest through the trees, so to speak, to be able to understand here's the value and here's what it actually means to be working on a Scrum team rather than just here's my role. I'm gonna go do my role, do my thing and see everyone else figure it out. Brian Milner (37:08) Yeah, not that it ignores the basic components and the ground rules that help us, but it goes beyond that to say, how do you actually make this thing work? So yeah, that's a great point. Well, this has been really useful. I really appreciate you taking time to do this, Court, and coming back. And I'm sure we'll do this on a periodic basis, just to check in and see, hey, what are you hearing now? What are the hot button issues now? So. Cort Sharp (37:18) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Brian Milner (37:32) Thanks for sharing that and keeping your ears open and continue to do that so we can do more of these. Cort Sharp (37:39) Hey, happy to Brian always always fun just seeing what's what's going on out there. What conversations are are being had. And I hope this actually like help someone. Right. I hope this this helps solve either clears up some confusion about, know, maybe what the daily standup is for, what the daily scrum is for, who it's for. Hopefully it doesn't add more confusion. But if it does, you know, you know where to go. Right. Brian Milner (37:59) Hahaha. Exactly, All right, thanks, Cort. Cort Sharp (38:05) Yeah, thanks for having me.

Shared services teams often wonder: Does product ownership still apply here—or are we the exception to the rule? In this episode, Brian and Kert Peterson explore how Scrum principles hold up when value isn’t always customer-facing and demand never stops. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian welcomes back longtime friend and mentor Kert Peterson for a deep dive into what product ownership looks like in a shared services environment. They explore the practical realities that differentiate shared services from traditional product teams, from endless stakeholder requests to the challenge of defining “value” when your users are internal. Together, they discuss the importance of proactive leadership, strategic alignment, and understanding who your real customers are. Kert also shares tools for improving intake, applying an experimentation mindset, and closing the feedback loop, even when your work is abstracted from the business’s end goals. Whether you’re a product owner in infrastructure, data, middleware, or internal tools, this episode will help you reconnect your team’s work to the outcomes that matter. References and resources mentioned in the show: Kert Peterson #9: Scrum Artifacts with Kert Peterson #12: Kanban with Kert Peterson What Happens When For Product Owners 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 a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast 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. Kert Peterson is an experienced Agile coach and trainer who bridges the gap between business strategy and technical execution. With a background spanning engineering, marketing, and management, he’s helped teams at Amazon, NASA, and Capital One launch Agile practices that actually deliver. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you here as always, Brian Milner. And today I have one of my dear friends with me, Mr. Kert Peterson is back. Welcome back, Kert. Kert (00:13) Thank you, Brian. It's great to be back with you. Brian Milner (00:16) Love having Kert on. Kert is one of my mentors and actually first person I ever came in contact with when I was trying to become a CST. He kind of showed me the ropes and took a lot of time helping me to understand how to do this thing. So I have a huge debt of gratitude to Kert that I can never repay. But wanted to have... Kert (00:33) It's funny, Brian, let me just say I have the same debt of gratitude to Mike Cohn. So it's funny, it's coming full circle. Brian Milner (00:37) That's awesome. That's awesome. So, but we wanted to have Kert on because we want to talk about something that we I know I've heard a lot of questions about in class and it's a big topic of conversation. And that is, you know, when we talk about working in the area of shared services, you know, how does product ownership fit and work into that area? Does it fit and work into that area? Or do we find the exception? Is this the place where product ownership just all of a sudden is not able to provide any value? So Kert, that's a huge big ball of yarn to unravel there, but what comes to mind when you think about this? Kert (01:18) Well, I think back to the origins, what inspired the Scrum framework, which was Japanese product companies in the late 1970s doing things differently, using this sort of rugby approach and getting cross-discipline groups together and seeking to innovate and reduce time to market. So when I think about product ownership arising out of that context, it's very clear, right? There's a printer that I want to get better at. I want to take a Canon EOS Rebel and I want to make the next generation of it, or I want to take the Honda Civic. And I want to improve the way it shifts or whatever. And so there's a lot of clarity. And I think, I would say an easy vision to sort of begin to form and coalesce around the direction we're moving in. And the shared services groups I've worked with, whether it's middleware or data people or cybersecurity folks, they just experienced this constant deluge of requests from a variety of stakeholders, dozens, if not hundreds of stakeholders. And it feels like they're always operating tactically. helping those product owners that they're leading shared services teams to shift out of the tactical and begin to think more strategically and begin to get more, I guess, proactive about how they meet requests and what they're going to offer and how they're going to offer it is sort of a challenge that I think I see many of my customers and clients up against. Brian Milner (02:37) Yeah. I think one of the things I hear quite often about this is it's sort of, you know, cause and for example, a product owner class or something like that. We'll talk a lot about understanding your customers and, and mapping out kind of personas and other things and how that influences our idea of value. And then how you, kind of rank value according to your backlog. And that, that to me is kind of where one of the friction points here in shared services is you've got these demands coming at you. all day, every day from all these different corners and from everyone, it's urgent. From everyone, this is the most important thing. So how can you apply some of this product ownership mindset principle to scenarios where everything is urgent? Kert (03:21) Yeah, you those fundamentals, you know, when something's coming in, how do we weigh it against other opportunities? And usually we want to do so financially. How do we kind of begin to assess this particular request or opportunity against others? And when I teach product owner training in person, I hand out these little plastic covered pictures of currency. So I'll have like a yuan from China. I'll have a euro, I'll have all these varieties of currency and I won't, I make them kind of cryptic. Like I'll choose one from, you know, maybe one from Mongolia. And so I put this currency in front of them. say, okay, rank these in order of value, you know, translate it to U S dollars, which one's most to least important. And they struggle because I don't let them look at their phones and they have to, you know, sort of think or be creative. And at the end of the activity, they realized, wow, I don't have a system for translating this currency into the currency that's universal, which is US dollars. And it gets them, it sort of sets the stage for this idea of scoring, you whether you're using rice or some other scoring method, it sets the stage for that conversation, which is critical. How do you objectively assess what's coming in and make the choice on the next best thing to build? Yeah. Brian Milner (04:36) Yeah, that's a great exercise. I love that because it's a great picture there to understand as a product owner, you can't make those decisions in a vacuum. If you don't have the background, if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't have source information coming in, then no, I can't rank currencies. I've got to have expertise in those areas to help me understand those things. So yeah, I love that exercise. That's awesome. One of the other things I hear quite often in the shared services space is kind of the idea of, maybe this stuff is, maybe Scrum doesn't work as well in a shared services space because of the immediacy of all this stuff. And maybe we have to do Kanban versus Scrum. What's your opinion there? Kert (05:18) When I was at Capital One many years ago, shared services teams were adopting Scrum because that was the only game in town. This was 2005. really Agile was sort of very closely connected to Scrum because the Scrum and XP communities sort of were the members of the Agile Manifesto. And what Scrum teams end up doing is they say, you know, we're going to have a sprint planning session and we're going to plan 10 % of our capacity for something that is doable. And we're going to reserve 90 % for unplanned work. that's coming at us. And I see Scrum teams that retain Scrum and that want to leverage Scrum for shared services really just allow for a huge buffer of flexibility. But they also start to get curious about, you know, over the last two weeks, we left 90 % of our capacity open. We used all of it. And here's the top three, you could say offenders, right? Top three requesters, top three sources of demand. And they really begin to get good at tracking where their money's being spent as a team. So they can go back to those stakeholders and say, look, if you want us to continue to serve you, give us some more funding. So I think Scrum teams can excel in shared service. You're applying Scrum in shared services. I just think there's some nuance to it. That's been my experience. I'm curious what you see too. Brian Milner (06:34) Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. I think that 90-10 kind of thing, the thing that concerns me or that I always try to raise with people is the whole concept of transparency and trying to understand the reality of what's behind this. So you make a good point. If we have top three offenders of people who are the people who constantly requesting things from us, it's important, I think, to stop and look at those things and say, how many of these things were things that could not have been foreseen or things that we could not have planned in advance. And how many of these things are things that really were just kind of urgent pop-up day by day, we've got to handle these things as they come in. And don't take for granted, I don't think would be my advice to people that all the things that people are requesting of you are kind of urgent day by day things. There's probably a lot of those things that could have been foreseen and could have been planned. But it takes kind of that after action of retrospecting and trying to figure that out to know the difference. Kert (07:34) Beautifully put, I totally agree. Brian Milner (07:37) Yeah. So Kert, what are some of the other big challenges that you've heard from people in the shared services space when it comes to just using Scrum? Kert (07:45) Well, one of the biggest challenges that I've seen and one of the things that I think is a great solution I heard from one of my mentors, Kevin Rosengren, who worked at Capital One for many years. I worked with him at Applied Frameworks and he's now an airline pilot. He loves to fly. And so he's back doing that commercially. But I worked at Mission Health in Western North Carolina for, I was a contractor there working with the application support team. And I kept using the word intake management. intake management and Kevin got really his kind of the back, back, hairs in his neck kind of bristled and his hackles went up and I'm like, come on, Kevin, what's, what's wrong with intake? And he said, intake implies passivity. You're just kind of standing there waiting for things to come at you. He says, I want my product owner to be proactive. I want them to have a vision, a mission. want them to be out in front of the problems. And so I think one of the biggest challenges for shared services is really, taking ownership of the team. And really be a financial custodian for the investment that the company's making in that team and being more proactive in Kanban. We have this term called shaping demand. And this idea of shape demand implies proactivity. So I'll give you an example. was it Collins aerospace working with a middleware team and they did some demand analysis. They kind of diagnosed their backlog, what's in it. And they, they started to realize they weren't tracking an important backlog item. speaking of kind of unplanned work, there are people with ask him for advice or consulting and they realized over a period of weeks or months that a lot of their capacity was kind of leaking or going out via these, just these consulting hits that they took. Give us advice on this, give us advice on this and it may be three hours here, four hours there, but it would add up and they realized, Hey, we can get more active. But we create a knowledge base. If we have some protocols about how we receive this request, if we make them fill out a form. So those are some. some aspects of really taking ownership of your service and requiring certain, you could say, information or maybe levels of respect coming from the requester that begins to help you feel like you have more power than you might have thought last week or last month. Yeah. Brian Milner (09:55) Yeah, that's a good distinction because I agree there is sort of this reactive nature sometimes to that work. if I'm a, I don't know, if I'm a backend shared services team and we're fulfilling requests on a daily basis of people to build servers and install things or whatever, it can feel an awful lot like we're just reacting to what people are giving us. So that, I agree, that's a huge challenge of, know, when you're that kind of product owner, how do you come up with a vision? How do you understand, you know, I get those questions all the time, especially if you're in things like sprint goals, you know, those kinds of things. You know, do we have a sprint goal when what we're doing is just kind of taking things in and responding to people? What do you think are the keys to people becoming more proactive than reactive as a shared services team? Kert (10:48) Yeah, that's that I think therein lies the challenge, Brian. I think that's a real challenge because I do think that things come at you and it just feels like you you're a ticket taker, right? You're you're you're just under this deluge of constant work and it's very tactical and it's very kind of, know, it doesn't it lacks sort of that that sense of purpose drive and the ability to say no. Now, some demand is going to be irrefutable, some demand you just have to say yes to. But I think more often or I say There is definitely a category of demand that you should be able to parse through and determine if it's for you and if it fits with the strategic goals that you've been situated, that you've been assigned or your mandate, so to speak. Gosh, it's shifting from, it's kind of like, how do you shift from that fire fighting mode to fire prevention? And I think there's a piece of that is kind of. Brian Milner (11:35) Right, right. Kert (11:37) I call it scrambling up to the crow's nest, you know, in the old pirate ships. And you've got to have at least someone on the team that's looking out and seeing the big picture and understanding the strategic goals of the business and how we as a shared services team can begin to serve them. But I don't have a, it's not easy because, you know, I think when I was a product owner at Amazon in the early days, and there was a very clear, you know, there was very clear missions like let's grow the number of wishlist creators or number of wishlists in the community. And so there was a kind of a clear, you could say marker and a clear direction for what you're up to. You're serving the community. You're doing things to populate the community, get people more connected. I think there's a lot less clarity and you have to kind of hunt for it, I would say. And I think it does take I think one of the challenges for shared services leadership is to be more connected to the business and to recognize themselves as a more integral part of the business and the ability to actually affect business outcomes. I think, so anyway, connecting to the business and getting those shared outcomes in view, think is a part of that puzzle. Brian Milner (12:44) Yeah. Yeah, I think you're making a strong point there because I agree. That's sometimes I think the challenge in that space is you do feel sometimes very disconnected from the business goal because it's not as clear as gain this new set of customers or service this new clientele or anything. It's more support based. It's more infrastructure based. If we don't do our job in that space, then we can't enable the other groups to do what they do well. But that's a layer of abstraction really, even from what the business has as its goal. So I think that's an important point is, if I'm that kind of product owner, I want to make sure that what we do is tied into the business objective and trying to understand fully what it is we're trying to do as a business and how we support that. We talked to, I mentioned a little bit earlier about customers and that being kind of a friction point of understanding customers. And how do you, how does that relate in your mind when you're in a shared services team? Do you, there less emphasis on trying to understand who your customer is if, know, from product ownership, uh, kind of discipline, uh, or, or is it just as important and we were not really understanding what we. should be classifying as our customers. Kert (14:07) I think it's the latter, Brian. I definitely think it's the latter. When I was working with this 50 person division at Mission Health, I Mission Health got acquired a couple of years ago, there were requests coming from every department in the hospital system. mean, there was clinics, there was oncology, there was radiology, there was all this, there was this huge landscape of stakeholders that, again, felt like my thing's the most important. And understanding each customer or segment of the, you could say the market, right? The 10,000 person healthcare system was really critical to sequencing work and shaping work and to timing, determining how to kind of decompose it. And so that was a really vital piece. what, you know, I think about a few weeks before I left Mission Health, there was a really strong move from the leader there, Joel, to create what we call strategic engagement partners, which really were these proactive individuals that would go out into the landscape of the hospital system and begin to profile the oncology clinicians or the oncology physicians. And so by doing that, it started to kind of get them to put a finger on the pulse of the bigger, really the customer, which was a variety of customers, but it also helped them recognize, okay, this quarter we're, As a healthcare system, we're falling way behind in MRIs or radiology services. And so we better give some extra attention to that. So let's ensure that that's part of our goal this quarter. And so it really, that strategic engagement with the customer is, think as critical as it is when you're selling a camera or a car. Yeah. Brian Milner (15:43) Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That just brings to mind as well then the idea of making closing that loop with your customer to understand whether what you're doing is actually making impact or not. And I think you gave a good example there, but what about if your shared services team is kind of more internal? And like I said, if we're installing servers, If we're installing some big network system or something, and that's what our team does in various places, how do we close that loop in a more productive way and really make sure that the work we're doing, even though it's somewhat repetitive, even though it's abstracted from your end customer, how do you make sure it's actually doing what's needed? Kert (16:26) Yeah, that's, I love that question, Brian. It's a fantastic question. So I live in Canada. moved here, moved here five years ago. There's a data center of excellence, data center of excellence for the government of Alberta. And, the leader of that data center of excellence, a guy named Donnie, he, he came to one of my product owner trainings and he started to kind of put pieces together that I want my 30 person data team to be equipped to not only go out and service, you know, the community of the ministries. there's like 26 ministries. like health, education, kind of like departments here in the US to service them, but also to help recognize that what we're providing is impacting the bottom line of the ministries. And in some cases, it's harder than others. I mean, I'll just like the Ministry of Health Care, for example, if a data center of excellence can go in and be a strategic partner for that data for the health care ministry, they can begin to formulate. Brian Milner (17:14) Yeah. Kert (17:24) a strategic plan for how they use data. They can begin to equip them with dashboards and other information, other data products, and they can tell a story to the bigger organization that's allocating funding for the data center of excellence. So his drum that he beats is he wants his people to be able to go in and engage strategically and be able to tell a story about the impact they have. Now, some industries are so busy and so inundated with work, they just want a dashboard. Be a ticket taker, give me a dashboard, and don't bother me with strategic stuff. And those are much harder to kind of draw the connect the dots between business impact and our efforts. But there's going to be a subset, I think, of requesters or customers that you're going to be able to start to build a relationship and tell a story. And then those customers become indispensable to, they can become part of your testimonial. Brian Milner (17:55) Yeah. Kert (18:15) they become indispensable to you justifying your existence the next annual budgeting cycle, so to speak. Brian Milner (18:21) Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. One of the other areas I'm thinking about as we're talking about this, because there's a lot of content that comes across in the product in our class about the idea that we should be in an experimentation mindset and look at the things in our backlog more as experiments. We're running these things trying to see if they're going to solve the bigger problem. And then if they don't, we find another experiment. Sometimes I hear a lot from people in classes that are in more shared services places that they have a harder time finding how that would fit in with what they do. It doesn't feel like experimentation. feels like, like we've talked about kind of more order taking. So how does that apply, Kert? How do you, how do you, if you're a product owner in that space, how can you take more of an experimentation mindset if you're in shared services? Kert (19:10) Yeah. You know, I love this question. I've never heard this question, Brian. And it's, it's a great question. It's, it's, it's taken me deep down deep, deep thinking about product ownership. I'll throw out my, my, my, I'll kind of expose my thinking and it, cause I don't have, direct experience that I could point to in sort of this experimentation, the application of this mindset to shared services. I can imagine, can imagine if you have a customer that comes and says, you know, Brian Milner (19:14) Hahaha. You Kert (19:39) I want a purple minivan. And you're in that mindset as a shared service provider, you're going to want to discover the underlying need and sort of begin to kind of tease out, you know, what is it that you're trying, what problem are you trying to solve? What is it that you're after? And maybe, you know, we've all seen that famous, you know, iterative incremental picture of, you know, the skateboard, then the, you know, what is the... thing with the handles on it and then the motorcycle and a bicycle. So that evolution of solutions you could say. And I think if you're in that mindset, you're going to say, Hey, I know you want a pink minivan or a purple minivan. Let's start with, you know, this, which is, which is going to move you in that direction, because I know what you're doing is trying to solve this problem. And let's start with that. And let's see, let's see how it goes. You see, you're enlisting the support and partnership of your customer or requester. And so it takes that willingness to kind of be in a. Brian Milner (20:03) Yeah. Kert (20:30) experimental mindset with the shared services provider, I would think. So that's my thought. don't know how that question lands for you, but it's a great question. Brian Milner (20:38) Yeah. No, I mean, I think this is kind of central to what we're talking about here because, you know, I think there are going to be things that, you know, are just needed and there there's not really going to be an exploration of those things. If we have a government regulation that says we've got to do this and you've got to have this in place by this date or whatever, that's That's not up for question. I don't need to run a rice, you know, kind of a prioritization on that because it's needed, right? It's unquestionable. But I think that sometimes it's sort of that line in product ownership of, I think it's very easy if you're a product owner in the shared services space to maybe shift and consider everything as a needed thing, as being an order taker. And if that's the case, then yeah, you kind of, you kind of abdicate your, responsibility in that case of understanding and prioritization and everything else, because you're just kind of giving it to the people who are demanding things from you. And I think that that's there's, there's a balance there. There's a yin and yang. I think because you've got to understand some of those things are that way. And there are some things that are not. And the things that are not, I've got to understand, as you said, the core need behind it. Because it's very easy to have your stakeholders turn you into just an order taker. And if you allow that to happen, your stakeholders will run over you. But you've got to keep that wall, keep that boundary up, I think, if you're a product owner in that space, to be able to say, now, wait a minute. You're saying you need this. Let me understand why, help me understand what's behind this. What is it that you're trying to do and accomplish with this? It's the whole how versus what kind of discussion, right? We have to understand the how behind it, or we have to understand the what behind it so that we can then talk with the team and find the best how. But if we don't go through that extra work, then I think that we just. Kert (22:34) Yeah. Yeah. Brian Milner (22:51) quite simply become order takers and get overwhelmed with the volume that's coming at us. Kert (22:56) Totally agree. And I think data teams are a prime example because of course everyone these days wants a dashboard. Give me a dashboard. I need a dashboard. And the probing and sort of the con I call it a consultative approach. The consultative hat you wear to go in and discover what's underlying that request. And like you're saying, what is it you're really wanting and why and what need are you trying to, you know, kind of achieve there is often I say undervalued. Brian Milner (23:01) Yeah. Kert (23:22) And often, you know, not seen because they're under such a deluge of just, you know, okay, just get them something and make them go away. And I think there's a desire to have, I mean, Donnie wanted sort of everyone in the team, his 30 person team to have that capability or that sort of consultative hat that they could wear. And I think that can come with time, but I do think that there's some people, you know, in that What we recognize was in that 30 person team, there were probably six to eight folks that were really sort of ready to step into the role of product owner. And so I think one of the things that's important in any team, specifically in shared services teams is to recognize there's going to be people or a person or people that are sort of inclined towards, you know, being a great listener, being consultative, thinking strategically and sort of bringing, you know, having kind of, I don't like the word gatekeeper, but sort of manning that front gate and ensuring that what's taken in is well understood and well shaped and all that sort of thing. Brian Milner (24:20) Yeah Yeah, I agree. don't like gatekeeper as well, but there's a judgment element, right? I mean, you've got to apply judgment. And that's quite frankly something that only humans can do is to apply judgment to decisions and understand the story behind the data. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this topic. As I said, this is something I hear questions about quite often in product owner classes, because there's a huge number of product owners out there that are in this space and sometimes feel like the redheaded stepchild. Maybe we just don't fit in. But I think you made a strong case here. I think there's a lot that can apply. Kert (25:07) So, so Brian, I'm really curious when you think about great product owners. I feel like my question to you is, are they made or are they born great product owners? Do you have any thoughts? Like what comes to mind when you think about that question? Brian Milner (25:16) Ha ⁓ yeah, I mean, there's, there's, there's talent and skill, is what comes to mind. And I think that we all have some natural abilities in different areas, but I think we all have skills that we acquire and learn and there's discipline to it. There's rigor to that. There's a process to it. And I mean, I, you know, I think there are our product owners that have talent, ⁓ that are, that's kind of innate. but for me, it's mostly in areas that's, things like communication, right? If you're, if you're a poor communicator, ⁓ you can improve your communication skills, but, ⁓ you know, you see this in politicians and things in certain times. I talk about certain politicians as being just really good communicators naturally. Yeah. They, they've, they've studied communication and understand how to do it better. but they had an innate skill in that area already, or innate talent, I should say, since I'm differentiating between the two. ⁓ But yeah, I think I would lean more towards like maybe 90-10 skill over talent, and that it's, you know, it is a lot of practice and learning and discipline that we just, need to study and know our craft, you know, it's a craft. And I think we have to improve on that and get better at it. But yeah, I mean, in this kind of work, think I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the talent side of it. I think that there is some innateness that can be useful, but ⁓ I kind of lean much more to the skill area. Kert (27:06) Yeah, yeah. So Donnie's got this 30 person team and he suspected there were six to eight that were suitable candidates to kind of go into a multi-week cohort to kind of become sort of more seasoned or sort of competent product owners. If you had 30 people in front of you and you were asked to choose the six to eight that are most suitable for a product owner program, would you have any thoughts around? how you would do that. mean, I'm guessing you probably wouldn't draw straws, but Brian Milner (27:38) No, I mean, I think it comes back to some of the things that we talk about. ⁓ Whenever I go into an organization and try to figure out who's the right product owner for this product, it comes down to a few common things. First of all, do they have the domain knowledge for the product? Do they know enough about that product to be effective, know about the market, the customers, those kind of things? Do they have the availability to do the job? ⁓ Are they constantly going to be involved in other things? Are you splitting this person between 10 teams? ⁓ And then are you going to be able to give them the authority that they need to make the decisions that they need to make in that role? ⁓ if I was trying to decide which is the right person, that would be the rubric I would be using is trying to say which one of these people match best for this product. Kert (28:34) Right on. Cool. Thanks, man. Thanks for entertaining that last topic. Brian Milner (28:39) Yeah.

Tali Shlafer, a certified interview coach, shares her insights on mastering the interview process. She explains why top performers often falter in interviews despite their qualifications. Tali emphasizes the importance of preparation, authenticity, and storytelling, encouraging candidates to view interviews as skills to develop. She provides strategies for tackling tough questions and reframing weaknesses into growth opportunities. This engaging conversation offers practical advice for anyone looking to enhance their interview game and connect with potential employers.

Barnaby Golden, an experienced Scrum Master and Agile Coach, discusses a critical issue facing Agile teams: the underpowered product owner. He explains how lacking authority can derail decision-making and team momentum. Barnaby highlights the stark differences between empowered and underpowered product owners, emphasizing the need for trust and clear communication from leadership. The conversation also uncovers the complexities of managing multiple product owners and the importance of aligning product development with customer needs to deliver true value.

Join Brian and Scott Dunn as they unpack what “buy-in” actually means and what it takes to move from surface-level support to genuine commitment in this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian is joined once again by Scott Dunn to tackle a listener-chosen topic: how to get real buy-in for Agile initiatives, especially when shifting from a non-Scrum environment. They explore why buy-in isn’t about enthusiastic cheerleading or deep Agile knowledge, but about leaders and teams aligning on desired outcomes. From the cost of performative support to the emotional side of change, Brian and Scott share practical strategies for securing support at all levels of the organization. Along the way, they dive into influence tactics, the importance of shared purpose, and how co-creation—not compliance—drives lasting change. Whether you're guiding a large transformation or simply trying to influence up, this episode will help you rethink how to earn trust, build alignment, and inspire meaningful momentum. References and resources mentioned in the show: Scott Dunn Elements of Agile Assessment 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. Scott Dunn is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Scrum Trainer with over 20 years of experience coaching and training companies like NASA, EMC/Dell Technologies, Yahoo!, Technicolor, and eBay to transition to an agile approach using Scrum. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:01) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And I also have with me today someone that you probably know pretty well because he took over this podcast for about a month there. Mr. Scott Dunn is with us. Welcome in, Scott. Scott Dunn (00:19) Hey, thanks Brian. Yes, that podcast takeover was a lot of fun. So thank you for that opportunity. That was a hoot. Had a great time. Brian Milner (00:25) Absolutely. Well, I don't think I publicly thanked you for that. just ⁓ a public thanks. Scott Dunn (00:28) No, you didn't. No, not even an email. Not even a Slack message. Brian Milner (00:33) Well, very public thanks to you for doing that. Those episodes were great. I enjoyed them and it was fun to be a listener. It was fun to listen to it and just kind of hear the conversations and be a fly on the wall for those. So thanks again for doing that. Scott Dunn (00:47) Yeah. Yeah. It's a real treat. Brian Milner (00:48) We're having Scott on we kind of ran an experiment on this one because we were Scott was teaching a class for mountain goat and We thought maybe we'll just see what the class thinks so we pulled the class to see what topic do you want us to talk about and We thought we'd just go with the winner the winner that came out of that class was how to get buy-in How do you get buy-in in a? move from a non-scrum place to a Scrum kind of way of working. How do you get buy-in in the organization and buy-in from others? So when I was thinking about this as a topic, I think the first thing that popped in my head Scott about this was What do we mean by buy-in? So what does that mean to you? Scott Dunn (01:33) Right. So sometimes what I'm hearing is people saying like, buy in, you know, they, I would hear a common complaint, like they don't get it. They don't understand. don't, for me, buy in isn't that they need to understand agile or scrum and these types of things and how it works. Buy in is they get, they give their support kind of regardless. So my favorite example of that is walking into, this is a multi vendor effort we're doing on a Salesforce implementation. And we'd asked for the VP of the whole thing to come down and say some words before we had our first retrospective. You can imagine it's going to be kind of heated with different vendors trying to make each other look bad or whatever. And he'd said, yes. So we're coming down into this, you know, big high stakes meeting. And I just remember him saying, you know, I'm so excited to be doing this for you all. It's great. And he kind of falls in and looks at me says, what am I doing again? Cause he didn't, he didn't know, he didn't know what a retrospective was. He just knew he was asked to come and do something around that. And to me, Brian, Brian Milner (02:21) Ha Scott Dunn (02:28) That's fine. He's showing up. He's letting everyone know this way of working is important. It's important to me. It's important to success. And he probably couldn't tell you any of the meetings or artifacts or anything in scrum, right? But that's still what we need. Brian Milner (02:39) So. Yeah, I think that's a good way to think about it because I think a lot of people sometimes think of buy-in, like everyone's clapping and waving scrum flags around and all that stuff. And I don't think that's really buy-in. I think it's just the willingness to honestly try it, to give it a shot and be open about what would work and what doesn't work. The opposite of that is the resistance, know, of just being resistant to it and saying, I'm gonna put up hurdles and walls in the way of this being successful. That's, think, what needs to be avoided. Scott Dunn (03:18) Right, right. think that some of what was helped is to give them the, for me, the mindset of their buy-in isn't about doing things right. They're not saying, we're really wanted. We really want a new process. We were getting asked to come in because they're not getting the results they want. So buy-in for me from their perspective is how to help get the results that they're looking for. And they'll support us to get those results. So I don't talk to them about some of the aspects of an empirical process or any of that. I sort of say, you in order to get things faster or in order to improve quality, right? And that's how they get behind that. I think sometimes people are preaching some of the process part, even if they could understand that's not really what they're about. But I think they even struggle to understand what we're talking about. So yeah, it's hard for them to get behind and support us when they're not tracking. They simply know there's a pain point we're having. Can we talk about that and how to get what we need and what do you need from me to get that? Great. But I think we We can do ourselves a favor by helping point to the same target, make sure we're aligned with the same target they want. And maybe they'll give us more support if they feel like, yeah, you're tracking with me. I want to come in talk about, you know, more collaboration. Like we already have enough meetings. That's what, that's what I heard. Right. But I'll come and talk about faster time to market. Well, yeah, now they're interested in talking about what they need to do, you know, that I'm asking them to get behind that. I think that's fair. Brian Milner (04:28) Right. Yeah, I think there's also an element there, because I know we're both kind of fans of and users of kind of the path to agility framework from our friend David Hawks. And I love the part of that that's trying to establish the motivation, the purpose from the outset to try to say, What's the thing we hope to get out of this? And I think that's really crucial in getting buy-in that you can't just tell people, hey, we're gonna be a Scrum organization now. Why? Because I tell you that's what we're gonna do, because we're gonna check off the box and say that we're now Scrum. That's not motivating to anyone. if I can say, no, we're gonna... go through this change because here's the end result. Here's what we're trying to get to. Here's what we think will be better. If I can lay that out, then I've got a purpose behind it. And now I have motivation to go forward with this difficult change and learning what's expected of me and all that stuff. But if that's not done, I feel like that's a crucial misstep in that. Scott Dunn (05:44) Yeah, I wanted to add to that, that that point about the clarity of the goals is really something that has sticking power. And we had a client, I came and was working with him this year that he had remembered from the last year as the CTO. He's remembering from last year that we had done that same exercise or what are the goals that leadership has. And he remembered it was quality and customer satisfaction. That had been over a year since we had done that, but that not only stuck with him, but we came back to the group and kind of had a fun poll. Like, everyone remember? They remembered. And so every time we're having a decision we're trying to make about should it be this way or that way on the process, the different, were doing the race, the matrix work, et cetera, people kept coming back to, well, is that going to help us in terms of quality? Is that going to help us in terms of customer staff? We're not going into the nuts and bolts of Scrum or these other approaches. It's simply what's the business goal. will that help us hit the goal? And when the leader hears you using their language that they get, like that's my goal, they're feeling like, okay, whatever you need to do, sounds like you understand what I'm after, right? It's really powerful. But I like that you mentioned that, because when we go through that exercise, always super clear, we don't get confused. Times when we lead with, especially on the executives trying to lead with explaining Scrum, you can tell sometimes they're not really tracking or they're following along, okay, so what's the point? Brian Milner (06:59) Yeah. Scott Dunn (06:59) Yeah, you start off with what's their goals. They're like, great, this is exactly what I want to talk about. And then, Hey, you're not doing the things you need to do to hit those goals. Oh, okay. What are they? I mean, I remember one time a couple of years back, literally when the coach was presenting the results of that assessment towards their goals, they cut them off in the middle of his presentation. Just says, well, why, why is it, you why is that red? Why are we not hitting the goal? What do need to do? And they just started solving the problem right then he couldn't even finish his presentation. Talk about getting support. And he had been there six years saying, Brian Milner (07:23) Wow. Scott Dunn (07:27) Scott, they're not gonna buy into doing this transformation team and the scrum work. He couldn't even finish, I think, a couple of slides and they gave him everything he wanted, right? Powerful, powerful. Brian Milner (07:36) Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I also think one of the reasons that there's, you know, and that kind of parallels it. One of the reasons there's a lack of buy-in in general is that it's sort of targeted to just one area. You know, like this is a team thing. The teams are going to get trained, but the leaders have no idea really what's going on. They're kind of separated off from this. And I think that's a big part of the problem as well is you get buy-in when they see the leaders have bought in. So are the leaders bought in? Are the leaders on board with this? If they're not, then the rest of the group isn't going to be bought in either. Scott Dunn (08:18) People are smart. They're watching which way the wind's blowing. to be honest, Brian, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I tell people, I don't even care if they genuinely believe in that or not. If they're getting behind it because that's the way the politics are going, hey, they're getting out of the way. We're getting things done. Fine by me. Right. So partly when we're getting that by now, so make sure leaders, are you communicating this clearly? Because some of your people are either not on board or they're kind of waiting to see, this a fad or is this going to blow over? I need you to really communicate that clearly, et cetera, to see if people are get on board with that or not. Or, and on the other side, if I feel like some of these folks are not on board and I do feel like I have leadership support, I need to escalate that pretty quickly and make sure you understand, know, because they might get mad at you or me for talking about scrum and changing things. I'm like, I didn't knock down the door and come in myself. I was asked to come in here by someone who has authority. So maybe you need to clarify that with them, whether we're doing this or not. But don't get mad at me. Brian Milner (09:04) Right. Scott Dunn (09:11) So I will check them on that and clarify with the leadership to say, let's make sure your people are in alignment as well. If we do have that buy-in for sure. Brian Milner (09:20) Yeah. I saw another kind of quote about this that really got my brain working a little bit. Cause it was talking about the cost of fake buy-in and it was, it was kind of saying, you know, performative buy-in might actually, you know, it was asking the question, is performative buy-in worse than just outright resistance? And I don't know. Let me ask you that. What do you think? Do you think performative buy-in is worse than just someone who's resistant? Scott Dunn (09:28) Interesting. Yeah. As someone that just gave an example of performative buy-in. So if you would ask me a week ago, I might have gave a different answer, but someone was talking about this is a wildly different aspect of this, but you did ask me to join. So you get what you get. ⁓ They're talking about the difference of discrimination in the US versus South Africa. And they said, what's the difference? And they said in South Africa, it was blatant. no, you're a person of color. You cannot buy property here. That's how it is. Here, it's more like Brian Milner (09:59) You Scott Dunn (10:14) Yeah, we're looking at your loan application and I don't know if you can buy in this way. So it's subtle. And this person actually said, I'll take the outright blatant discrimination of South Africa, where at least you know what the issue is versus the subtle one. So maybe to that point with what you're saying, maybe it is better to have outright resistance and then say, well, at least I know who's on board or not. Rather than the person says they're on board, but every time they're in a meeting, they come out meeting and we don't get the decisions made we need. That's funny. Brian Milner (10:39) Yeah. Yeah. When I read this and started to think about it, I kind of had that same conclusion that like when someone's being outright resistant, yeah, it's an obstacle, but it's honest. And, you know, I'd rather have the honesty because they're trying to, they're still acting their way because they have a belief that their way is the right way to do it. And so they're throwing up a resistance because they're honestly resistant to it. Whereas someone who just sort of nods in meetings and claps along and, know, oh yeah, sure, great. But then they're kind of in the quiet, you know, behind the scenes and the hallway conversations. That's insidious. That's something that I can't really deal with. And it's like, you know, let's have the discussion. Let's talk about it. And, you know, if you win, then great. Why not have the courage to just have the conversation and see which idea wins? Scott Dunn (11:39) Right. on that note, think for everyone's sake, Brian, if we could be honest for a moment, not that we haven't been honest in these other podcasts, but in this, in this moment, we're really going to be honest. Would you, would, do you feel at times that our culture, our company cultures actually teach people to do just what you said to not be honest, but then like be like, you know, politically savvy, don't say what you really think, but then you're going to kind of be subversive and undermine that thing. And I've dealt with that so many times, I'll show up to a meeting like, I would have swore we were on board. had that one-on-one and now you're not saying in the meeting that you go on board with that. So people might've gotten coached. It's actually not safe to be honest and have good clear spirited debate because there's a price to pay if they do that. And they maybe 10 years in corporate can kind of teach you don't be honest or they're trying to read the tea leaves about what you think it's going to be. And so, yeah, I definitely would rather take it. Maybe it's part of the mindset of trying to really check, you know, where people are at. If I go back to my early days of coaching, those one-on-ones of having the level of honesty to really know where people are at. That was, think, some of the power. And I think some of that came from genuinely caring about the people, wanting them to succeed, wanting them win, even if it wasn't going to be at this company because of all the change or whatever. I did feel people felt like I really was open and honest with them and transparent and had their back. I would hear some real things about how they really felt because they didn't feel like there was a payback for that. And that allowed me to actually say, well, you know what, if you're really not on board, let's see what we can do as far as another opportunity. Maybe it's a positional switch we can do or whatever that was. Because I mean, this did affect people's jobs in some ways. And I think maybe if I don't have those one-on-ones, they're probably just going to give lip service because they don't know if anyone there really has their back in a turbulent time of change. AI is a great example of that, right? Hey, we want to move forward with AI. Well, what's the impact of my job if we do? But no one's really talking about that, right? It's all positive and all that. So I think people are trying to read that too. But you bring up a good point. I think I would take the direct as long as they feel like they can safely be open and honest. Brian Milner (13:31) Yeah. Yeah, well, even that question, right? What effect is AI gonna have on my job? And the honest answer I think that someone has to give right now is, don't know. I feel like I understand what it is today, but I don't know that that's gonna be the same way tomorrow because this technology changes so fast, so I can't promise anything. But here's what it is today and this is the paradigm we're trying to live in. So I think that there's an honesty component there that you've got a mirror to say, hey, I'm going to be honest with you. You be honest with me about this. And we'll be upfront with each other as we make our way through this. yeah, so yeah, think that kind of being honest and taking that approach, I think, is the right way to go. I also think that being kind of a reverting back before you get into things like, here's what a Scrum Master is, here's what a product owner is. You've got to start with the basics and mindset kind of culture things. You have to start with transparency, inspection, adaptation. That's really the way to go. And if we buy into those sorts of things initially, then we can start to say, well, here's a practice that supports that. Now you understand why we're doing this practice because it does this thing. Without it, it's just sort of one of those things of do as I tell you, you know, and that doesn't get buy-in. We've got to see the why behind it. Scott Dunn (14:48) Yes. Yeah, I think so. That's a great point. I was just making a note because sometimes we come in about agile. Some of the folks when I'm sharing this, it's maybe is new to them that I try to really present it. I want what you want. So even down to the words and then I kind of map back to that. So for example, if if we have quality problems now, I might believe in say an agile practice like mob programming, but I don't want to bring up like, hey, we should try mobbing. because it's cool or because you know, whatever, they don't care about that. But oh, they have a quality concern. Hey, boss, I've been thinking about, you know, these quality issues. I got an idea that I think it really could help with quality. But if I was to ask you, Brian, is is Bobby gonna, does Bobby help with quality? Does Bobby help me with, you know, cross training and tearing down knowledge silos and sharing learning? And I think, well, it does a lot of things, I pitch it towards what management wants. So agile as a means to an end. So I want what you want. And if I can't get that clarity that I want what you want, I need to be listening more because if I feel like I come to them talking, I've seen from my own experience, I come talking about better collaboration. That's not what's on their mind. I'm literally losing credit with them because they're like, why are you bringing this up? Like this isn't even our concern right now. Right. So I'm losing trust. I'm losing political capital. So I listen intently what their concerns are, the things I think that are important or that can get that. Then I'm going to pitch it. I'm going to pitch it in that language even like, you know, that what these are the things that would help on. I want what you want. Brian Milner (16:00) Yeah. Scott Dunn (16:18) the sport, I'll even research stuff to find out. So maybe I gave an example recently, when I was a manager for a web development, team that they wanted bigger monitors, of course, and I couldn't get approval for the bigger monitors. so I went and researched, I knew that always we had pressure to deliver more. I researched until I found somewhere someone had to study the show that larger monitors help productivity. And then I brought that to him and like, Hey, I'm looking for ways to improve the team productivity. I think I found something. What is it Scott? Brian Milner (16:30) Mm-hmm. Scott Dunn (16:46) Well, larger monitors, you can tell us, Smollick, really? You've been asking for this for months. I said, no, there's a study that proves it. Now he approved it right then. But partly I wonder, Brian, is I was also giving him air cover for when he gets flack from the other departments. Why does Scott's team get the special monitors? Well, it improves productivity. And right. He's got a reason now. Otherwise, it looks like maybe he's just playing favorites or something else. Right. We're all watching costs. So I will do the research to say, hey, I want what you want. I'll go and I'll go and dig it up. Brian Milner (17:04) Yeah. Scott Dunn (17:13) Someone somewhere must've said it's gonna help. So I'll bring that to them. It ⁓ worked. Brian Milner (17:17) Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. you're giving him the why behind it. You're telling him, hey, here's something that's in. It's the old outcome argument that the outcome from having larger monitors is this, that we have this productivity. I know you want greater productivity, so here's a means to do that. And I think that's kind of the way that this, you in a nutshell, what we're trying to say here is, you know, I can't go into a company, your boss comes into your company tomorrow and says, hey everyone, we're switching to pens that write in green ink, because we're a green ink company. We just, we want to be known as the green ink company from now on, because it's better. So everyone, make sure you switch to green ink. I mean, they do it. But there's a difference between compliance and real commitment. ⁓ And that's the difference, I think, is, all right, you wanted to switch to green ink, but why? What's the point behind it? I'll do it, but I'll be committed to it if you tell me, well, studies show that when people read in green ink. I mean, that kind of thing can make an impact. But otherwise, it's like you're Scott Dunn (18:08) Yes. ⁓ Absolutely. Brian Milner (18:31) It's almost like an insult to the intelligence of someone, you know, to say, we're going to do this crazy new thing called a standup, you know, or daily scrum or whatever. And well, why are we doing that? I don't know. Cause right. That they tell us that's what we're supposed to do. Well, we have to stand up for a meeting. Why are we standing up? Why aren't we just sitting down? It's more comfortable. I don't know, but that's what you do in a daily scrum is you stand up. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's that kind of a thing that I think. Scott Dunn (18:34) yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Brian Milner (18:58) if you don't lay the groundwork of here's why, then they're gonna just react with the way that you would switch to green ink. ⁓ Scott Dunn (19:05) I love that example. love that. And we've all been there, right? When someone says, why would we do this? I'm like, I actually don't know. It's a terrible feeling. I don't know. We go through all this effort to do just that. And you mentioned that compliance, compliance will never have their heart and soul and energy into this. So think that that's a big deal for them as well. When leaders are, we had something happen where it's a large financial institution and their data engineering group. Brian Milner (19:11) You're right. Yeah. Scott Dunn (19:33) You're like, yeah, AI is not really, you know, for us, not important to us. Which is interesting, right? Then the next week, like that, the head of that group, their boss's boss says, we need to be using, AI. Well, guess who makes it announced at the very next week. We need to get going with AI, So some of this is like, look, if they're pushing those things, we also want to make sure that they're in a position to look good for their bosses, those types of things. Right? So one, you know, giving them air cover, but two, listen to the winds of those things. If we make them successful, I mean, this is old school, right? Make your boss look good. My goodness. If they feel like that's happening, then you're going to get a lot more support. And this is a good example of a radical change for a whole data engineering team, just because the boss's boss says so. So now we're going to do it. I think looking for even those opportunities and following through on what that might be bringing them ideas that make them look good and generating that as well. I love the green ink one. just now it makes me want to be that we're the green ink company. You're we're going to be known for this. Brian Milner (20:23) Yeah. Scott Dunn (20:29) ⁓ But why? Brian Milner (20:30) Yeah. I think it's also kind of important that you acknowledge that there is an emotional impact here. And this gets into kind of the idea of the whole Satir model of change and that kind of thing. And so I think maybe part of the equation of getting buy-in is really comprehending and understanding that you're not going to get buy-in right away. ⁓ Scott Dunn (20:56) Hmm. Brian Milner (20:57) you know, there's going to be chaos and resistance. There's going to be a point where people are going to be resistant to it. And if you do the rest of it well, then that they'll turn that corner. But what makes them turn that corner is, is that they're connected to the purpose behind it. And so if you're, if you're going to try to implement this, if you're to try to do a change, and just expect it's gonna be, know, hunky dory from day one, you're fooling yourself. Humans don't take to change well. It's got an emotional aspect to it. I love the way David Hawks used to always say this. You know, I knew how to be a hero the old way, and I have no idea how to be a hero in this new thing. So I don't feel comfortable with this change because I don't know how to win. Scott Dunn (21:41) So true. Brian Milner (21:47) And I think that is a really accurate reflection of that emotional kind of impact of it. Everyone wants to do their job well and be seen as a smart person at work and everything else. And I knew how to do that before, but now I don't know how. And so I'm afraid I'm gonna look bad. Scott Dunn (22:02) Right? And I think that lack of awareness or knowledge is some of the things that we're asking them to do. Like you said, uncomfortable or new doesn't feel good. And we kind of think that, oh, if I don't feel good, this must be bad. It's just uncomfortable. But I think I love what you're saying. We can map it out and say, by the way, it's going to look like this as we go through that. And that hero part, a lot of our management, like 90 % of the management is going to be in that, you what we call expert or achiever. Like they're the smartest ones in the room, or they're ones that coordinate everything and they know who to talk to. you're trying to introduce something to someone who thinks they already know all the things. So how we're presenting that to them, including the fact that they're human too, right? They're gonna feel some things and maybe uncomfortable. It wouldn't hurt to explain a bit more, even if they're not gonna necessarily admit it, but like, hey, it's gonna feel different. The people might push back on this. So even when you're first beginning that, it reminded me of how I just knew I'd need to ask my boss like five times. Look, lots of people are asking him for stuff. They're partly just going by the simplest way of Who keeps coming to my office the most? And maybe on time five, like, wow, Scott, this sounds like a problem. Well, yeah, I've been here five times. Because they're kind of waiting, like, is it really a problem or do you just come in once or twice? So repeating that and then maybe framing it to say, and doing the change looks like this and that, giving them information so they don't have to admit that they don't know if they're priding themselves on knowing all the things. I really think that's a great addition to that. The Satir change model, knowing that it's going to get uncomfortable. I've seen execs jettison this just because people are bothered or upset or they're uncomfortable. So therefore this must be a bad idea. So I think we can do ourselves a favor by explaining a little bit like it's going to look like this moving forward as far as their support. Some people may not like it and here's why, but here's how I would answer those people. Like you're literally feeding them the responses. And I'll also do the get behind the expert and say, well, this is, this is what Harvard business review says, or this is what this expert says. You might be surprised because Again, back to them being experts, if you ask them what they think they know about Agile, I might have mentioned before, they score themselves on average about 8.5 out of 10. But their people would score them about 4.5 out of 10, right? It was what I've seen when I did the study, the surveys. So they think they know, so they're not gonna admit they don't know, but go ahead and give them the information they wish. If you know they don't know, I like what you're saying, kind of shrink the chain so they can understand, it's gonna look like this and feel like this. People might ask this way. But here's how I'd respond to them. know, remember this is where, you know, 90 % of the companies are doing X, Y, and Z. So they have backing. They can answer to the people. We kind of set them up for success. Otherwise that satiric change curve is going to hit them. They won't have answers. That feels really awkward. This must be a bad idea. And they're going to undo what you just asked for. Right. I've seen that happen. You just got approval and then a week or two later it got put on hold or undone. Brian Milner (24:44) Yeah, no, I agree. one of the areas, one of the other kind of things that I found in thinking about this in advance was a quote that was from the five dysfunctions of a team book that we all talk about quite a bit. But there's a quote from that that says, people don't weigh in, they won't buy in. And I love that. And I thought, you know, that really is a good point that there, it's not about Scott Dunn (25:00) Woo! Brian Milner (25:08) people need to feel like they're co-creating with you. And to do that, you need to be able to listen to them. If they don't feel like they have a voice, mean, put yourself in their shoes. If you felt like there was a big change happening and you had no say in it, that would feel pretty oppressive. But if they felt like they're building the change with you, then I think then that's what kind of can turn people around and say, no, I have a say in this, I'm a part of this. and I get to shape a little bit about what this is going to look like. They're going to shape it a lot. I mean, that's part of just the Azure way of working is that, hey, we're going to individualize this for this company, for this team. It has to fit here. And the more we can help people see, no, you're a co-creator in this. You're not just being told, but you're going to shape this with us. Scott Dunn (25:54) Right? Even with the leadership, I mean, it's easy. think everyone listening would agree. If you look at the common leaders, that's, even the, let's say director level and above personality types, right? For, for disc, it's going to be a high D for a strange pattern would be like command, um, computing values framework. They're going to be blue, get results, make it happen. But we need it to be, we need to be their decision for some of these folks. So when I would come to one of my bosses and say, I think we should do X every time he'd say like, yeah, let me think about. I'll get back to you. I kept thinking like, I don't understand because these are my people. I thought you trusted me. I realized, it has to be his decision. So part of what you're saying is invite him into the solution. So then I'd say, hey, we've got three options, good, better, best. What do you think we should do? Or I'd say, hey, I've done all the research, option A looks great, option B looks terrible. What do you think we should do? I mean, I try to simplify it. I tried to make it obvious, but I couldn't tell him I need to do X or we need this from you. It needed to be his input and to decide. Brian Milner (26:44) Right. Scott Dunn (26:51) once I framed it that way, he agreed every single time. I simply frame it, put it right in front of him so it's kind of an obvious decision, but I had to let him have that voice to decide. I'm really glad you brought that up. That one literally went from zero to 100 % if I changed my approach of how I had addressed it to let him be the one to decide and weigh in on that. Or even pitch it as a sales. Hey, I think it'd be great to move forward. What would that look like to you? Well, now he's talking about moving that change forward. without even realizing it, because you said to move forward, what would we need to do? And now he is co-creating, but it's already a yes, right? But by default, a little bit of sales, a little bit of sales effort there. Brian Milner (27:24) Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a good example. And that's a good example, I think for like the scrum masters listening and other people out here that are, feel like, you know, I'm not the leader in the organization. I'm not way up here and I can't, you know, have my decisions trickle down to other people, but, you know, kind of the, influencing up kind of mentality there. Yeah. It might sound like a little bit of a trick, but you know, if you can help. the boss co-create with you, right? Here's the problem. I've done some research. Here's some solutions. How would this look for you? Or what do you think of these options? Which one do you think sounds best? If I'm a boss and someone comes to me and says that I've researched this, here's the solutions that are possible. Which one do you think sounds best? That's really a service to me because you've just done a lot of work for me and I know that I'm doing my job by making the decision, but you've presented it and now I don't have to do anything but make the call. Yeah. Scott Dunn (28:24) Yeah, yeah. Simplify the decision-making or frame the decision-making is, think we might actually be kind of, I don't want to say teasing. I just hear some feedback from people at times like, leadership's was like, bright, shiny squirrel, right? And they get frustrated. But in some ways I'm thinking, well, at least someone in the org is decisive. I'll take that. But we can help them leverage that decisive trait they have. Brian Milner (28:43) Yeah. Scott Dunn (28:48) But for the good, instead of these random crazy things, you know, when the leader's like, I love Agile, I can change my mind all the time. We can, we can, we can guide them to better decision-making too. I love the influence both up and down what you're saying the Scrum Master can do. I think we miss, that we all have that ability to try to influence decision-making and shape some of this. Maybe there's more agency than we realized, I think for some of these folks, Scrum Masters, product owners, cetera, that you might be surprised. Like run an experiment, try some of these things out that we're talking about and see for yourself. I mean, all these personality types are different and your orgs are different. I totally understand that. Do something, inspect and adapt and see what you get. might, cause once you strike gold, you're like, you know, you're set on getting influence and buy-in from folks. It's really powerful network. Cause we don't need to give you a title or change the org chart in order to have results happen with you involved if you're that kind of a person. And I think you can really write your ticket in your career if you're able to do that soft skill of influence and buy-in up and down. It's great. Brian Milner (29:43) Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Well, I hope that for at least the people that were in your class, this is is hit it right on the nail on the head for what it is they were they were thinking this would be about. But I think this is good. I think this is a good conversation and it's important, I think at all levels, because there's you know, this this affects us whether we're doing a massive transformation in an organization or Scott Dunn (29:51) Yeah. Brian Milner (30:06) We're just trying to influence up a tiny bit, you know, the food chain. Scott Dunn (30:10) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I hope that for the folks who were in that class, you better let us know if that was it. If anyone else is interested in other things, absolutely. We love hearing what your what those topics would be and bring on the right people. I will say that Brian, you brought in so many different voices. It's really, really great. So again, influence us. You can practice what we're talking about by putting those ideas up there. Other folks that we'd love to hear, because I love the the slated speakers you brought in. Brian's been really awesome. Thanks for this opportunity. Brian Milner (30:34) Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on again, Scott.

Join Mike Cohn, CEO of Mountain Goat Software and agile thought leader, as he discusses the five essential pillars of successful Agile implementations. He emphasizes the importance of cultivating an Agile mindset, clarifying team roles, and fostering clear goals and visions. With insights on common pitfalls and effective collaboration strategies, Mike highlights why teams must engage in collective learning for true transformation. Tune in for powerful stories and an introduction to a new course designed for holistic team development!

This week, listeners learn about the importance of taking a break to ensure a sustainable pace in their lives. The hosts emphasize the value of stepping back, whether it's poolside or during downtime. They encourage revisiting past episodes filled with valuable insights while sharing their excitement for upcoming content in August. It’s all about recharging and preparing for a fresh season, inviting listeners to engage and contribute their thoughts.

Evan Leybourn, co-founder of the Business Agility Institute, and Christopher Morales, a digital strategist with two decades of experience, dive into the real impact of AI on businesses. They discuss how AI may not be the expected silver bullet for innovation, emphasizing that human challenges often hinder its success. The conversation explores the importance of organizational agility, the crucial role of company culture, and the necessity for new skills in an AI-driven workforce, reshaping how businesses achieve growth and sustainability.

Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp hijack the mic to share what it’s really like behind the scenes at Mountain Goat. From Zoom bloopers to unexpected team bonding, they unpack how a fully remote team built a thriving, human-centered workplace. Overview In this special takeover episode, Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp pull back the curtain on what goes into running hundreds of Scrum and Product Owner classes virtually—and why Mountain Goat's remote team still feels so close-knit. With stories of early tech headaches, Slack banter, hilarious costume moments, and the quiet rituals that keep the team connected, they explore how remote work can actually foster strong relationships and top-tier collaboration. If you’ve ever wondered how to make a distributed team work (or just want a peek at some Zoom-era growing pains), this one’s for you. References and resources mentioned in the show: Laura Kendrick Cort Sharp #61: The Complex Factors in The Office Vs. Remote Debate with Scott Dunn #147: The Power of Quiet Influence with Casey Sinnema Run a Daily Scrum Your Team Will Love Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community 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: Cort Sharp is the Scrum Master of the producing team and the Agile Mentors Community Manager. In addition to his love for Agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for five years. Laura Kendrick is the producer of the Agile Mentors Podcast and a seasoned Scrum Master who keeps virtual classes running smoothly. Outside the podcast, she helps clients apply Scrum techniques to their marketing and business strategy, bringing structure and momentum to big, creative ideas. Auto-generated Transcript: Laura Kendrick (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. As you may have noticed, I am not Brian Milner. I am Laura Kendrick, and this is Cort Sharp. And if you have taken a class with us at Mountain Goat in the last five years, there is a good chance that you have met one or actually both of us. Cort Sharp (00:19) I think it's like 90 % chance, 95 % honestly. We've been in so many of these classes. Laura Kendrick (00:26) Definitely, and oftentimes together too with one of us TAing, one of us producing, sometimes one of us teaching court. Cort Sharp (00:33) once in a while, once in a while. Yeah. Laura Kendrick (00:37) So we thought we would come on over here and hijack the podcast to share a little bit about some of the insights that we have gained from doing about a billion, maybe a little exaggeration. Cort Sharp (00:49) Roughly. Roughly. We've done roughly a billion classes with Mountain Goat. Yes. Laura Kendrick (00:56) We have seen a lot in the certifying of Scrum Masters and product owners and advanced product owners and Scrum Masters and all of the evolution of the classes that we have done. We actually hold quite a bit of insight into what is happening in this world. And so we thought we would come in, steal the podcast, and share a little bit of what we have seen, learned, observed, and really just kind of Honestly, some of the laughs and fun that we've had along the way. Cort Sharp (01:25) Also, I think, I don't know, just your intro right there is talking about, hey, we've seen the evolution of these classes. That just got my brain going of like, remember the first class that we did? Way like 2020. I mean, I was in my parents' basement with really terrible internet. It was a struggle. Laura Kendrick (01:40) Yeah. Cort Sharp (01:49) But we were working on like Miro boards or mural. One of the two, forget which, which tool it was, but that was, yeah, that was before team home. And then we got to see the first version of team home. We helped do a little testing with it. And then we've seen it grow all the way into this awesome tool that we have nowadays. And I don't know, just, just to me, I think it's cool to see how we've been iterating and be part of that process of the iteration process, um, to develop these classes and these courses into. Laura Kendrick (01:52) Mm-hmm. Mural. Yep. Mm-hmm. Cort Sharp (02:20) the truly awesomeness that they are today. Personally, I'd rather take a virtual class than an in-person class with Mountain Goat at this point. Laura Kendrick (02:27) It's funny that you say that because I notice actually the iteration of the experience like outside of the tech piece because you know, that's where my brain goes. Here's the difference between court and I. I'm noticing the interactions. But I've noticed, mean how people are interacting a little bit differently in the online space, how even our team interacts, like all of those things has become so much more sophisticated and amazing and Cort Sharp (02:39) Yeah, just a bit. Laura Kendrick (02:54) I mean, honestly, we sometimes talk on our team between like the producing and TA team where like I've referred to it as a perfect game if we don't need anything from the outside team, which occasionally we need a lot of support from the outside team, but we've we've got this down at this point. And it is it's become those first classes. I remember them being super stressful, like, my gosh, the breakout rooms and all the things and just being like, I mean, you couldn't do. Cort Sharp (03:17) Yes. Laura Kendrick (03:21) It was almost like learning how to drive where you felt like if you turned the radio knob up, you might actually turn the whole car. And it was like, so much anxiety. Cort Sharp (03:31) I mean, but we just didn't know Zoom then. Zoom didn't even know itself then, right? What Zoom is, ⁓ for those of you who don't know, we host all of our virtual classes on Zoom. And learning that platform, like I'd used it once maybe for some just, yeah, here's Zoom exists in one of my college classes. That was about it. But yeah, totally. was like, man, what does this button do? Hopefully it doesn't end the meeting and kick everyone out. Laura Kendrick (03:34) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah, no kidding. But you know what's really interesting too, though, is that it's been over five years now for both of us being part of the Mountain Goat team. And we all work remotely. And other than you and Mike for a little while being right down the road from each other, none of us had any actual interpersonal interaction with each other outside of Zoom email and Slack and the occasional, know, fretted text message of like, are you late? Where are you? Cort Sharp (03:58) Absolutely, yeah, totally. Yeah. Laura Kendrick (04:26) But other than that it like we truly were of and still are a fully remote team and the crazy thing about it is we have at this point once gotten together as a full team in person and it was such an interesting experience being having been fully remote and then being in person and in particular the team that is live on the classes Cort Sharp (04:39) Yep. Yep. Laura Kendrick (04:51) It was a very different interaction because we have this time built into our classes where the team gets on the Zoom call 30 minutes earlier than the students do. And we get this time to just honestly have like water cooler chat and like friend chat or occasionally see Mike get on and you can't hear him, but you can see that he is quite angry at his very elaborate tech system that is not working correctly. Cort Sharp (05:14) you That does happen. Yes, it does. ⁓ Laura Kendrick (05:21) these moments, I feel like they really bonded us together. Because when we got together in person, it was old friends. wasn't even fast friends. It was old friends. And the banter even that goes on in Slack is fun and engaging and not rigid and confining. Cort Sharp (05:31) Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. I mean, I'm just thinking back to like the first time because that was the first time I met you in person. aside from being like, wow, she's a lot shorter than I thought she would be. Laura Kendrick (05:47) Mm-hmm. shorter. By the way, court is like 6-4. Cort Sharp (05:55) Yeah, yeah. Not that you're short. But I've just always ever seen like, the profile like the profile picture. That's all that it's really ever been. So I'm like, yeah, you're like, what I would consider normal height, which you totally are. But in my mind, I was like, yeah, it's weird seeing, you know, your legs. That's funny. ⁓ Laura Kendrick (06:14) We digress. Cort Sharp (06:15) But aside from that, was like we've known each other for three, four, four years because we've had that time to get to know each other. We've had that time to talk about just life events, what's going on, where we live, what's happening, what the deal is going on with life. Because we've been very intentional about having that time with that. The 30 minutes before each class were originally very much so used to take care of any tech problems. As the years have gone by, we've for the most part figured out the tech problems. Sometimes, you know, we'll change something out. Laura Kendrick (06:48) Except, hold on, except last week in Lance's class, we were talking about his dog and suddenly it looked as though Lance in his entire room did a cartwheel because the camera just fell. This is not a small camera. Cort Sharp (07:02) It said, nope, I'm out. ⁓ man. Laura Kendrick (07:06) So we still occasionally have the tech problem. Cort Sharp (07:09) Yes we do, yes we do. That's why we still do the 30 vimits. Laura Kendrick (07:14) The crazy thing about that is that when we landed at this in-person meeting, there were members of the team that at that time, and I in particular had never had any interaction with. so like other than the odd email or Slack message, so it was like really knew their name, but didn't really work with them up until that moment. And it was really interesting because at one point, the way that the leadership team had mentioned of like, well, if you need somebody to step in and talk to Mike for you, if you're not comfortable. And I remember looking at court and being like, Mike's the one I'm most comfortable with in this room because of that 30 minutes. I feel like I know Mike. I feel like we have an actual interpersonal relationship where I have no problem speaking up and saying the things that I need to. And that has made like those little water cooler times, those little Cort Sharp (07:54) Yeah. Laura Kendrick (08:06) bantery questions, them asking about my kids or hobbies or whatever. And just knowing those things made a huge difference in our team functioning. The communication across time zones was so much better and easier and safer. Cort Sharp (08:24) Absolutely. We were talking a little bit before we were recording about just people who want pure in-person no matter what. I think at this point, I will always push back on that and say, you might not get that quote unquote collaboration time that's naturally built in, but if you're intentional about it and you provide the space and provide the resources, Laura Kendrick (08:32) Hmm. Cort Sharp (08:50) And also, kind of push people along, have some, I don't know, working agreements or something of, hey, our cameras are on whenever we're talking with each other, unless something like drastic is going on or something's happening, right? Which I think we're going to get into in a little bit, but it's massive. It's crazy. Laura Kendrick (09:03) That's huge. Yeah, I mean, it is. I think we can definitely speak to that in our own experience because we've had, of course, there are moments where people don't have cameras. There are moments where people have bad connections and we'll encourage them in class, like turn off your camera, save your bandwidth. But there are also moments where we are doing private classes for companies. In particular, we've done some with companies that work with like Department of Defense. So there's like real security. issues there and so they don't turn their cameras on. Their cameras are totally disabled on their computers. And it is, I have to say those classes are some of the most like energy draining classes I'm ever present in because I'll be there with the trainer and I feel like I have to give all this emotional feedback because when you are talking to a black screen, that's, it's really hard to just. Cort Sharp (09:47) Hmm. Laura Kendrick (09:58) survive that because you're not getting any feedback from anyone. So you don't know what's happening and you're constantly questioning and the kind of banter in your own mind is like, God, is it landing? Is it not? And you're just not getting any of that physical feedback. So I feel like when I'm on a class with a trainer like that, I feel like I have to be like, that's funny. I'm like, yeah, good point. Cort Sharp (10:19) Yeah, you're kidding. Laura Kendrick (10:21) I'm tired Cort Sharp (10:22) You No, I get that. And I've had some pretty similar experiences too. I might not be as in tune with the emotional side as stated earlier. So I might not help the trainers out nearly as much as I probably should. But I do think cameras on just can make all the difference. And again, situations where it's just not possible. Absolutely understand that. One of our trainers, Lance, he Laura Kendrick (10:39) Mm-hmm. Cort Sharp (10:47) He always likes to throw out the phrase, look, let's approach everything with grace, patience, and mercy. So I like, which I really appreciate, and I like that he throws that out there. But I think that's a good thing to keep in mind of like, know, even though you have the company policy, you have the working agreement, whatever it is that says, look, camera's on all the time, sometimes it's just not possible. Sometimes it just doesn't happen. I recently had to figure out internet in the middle of nowhere, because that's where I live now. Laura Kendrick (10:52) Mm. No. Cort Sharp (11:15) And I was worried for a while that I wouldn't be able to put my camera on. But, you know, if if they came down to that, I know that it would be, hey, you know, it's a it's a unique situation. It's something different. And we're going to do we're going to work the best that we can with it and try to figure out maybe you can turn your camera on for any time you're talking or just any time you have something to say or, you know, if you're agreeing with something, you could briefly turn your camera on to show like, yeah, I'm nodding. I'm agreeing. I'm doing whatever. Right. But Laura Kendrick (11:45) Honestly, I think recently I had a very busy day and we communicate in back channels, of course through email, but also we use Slack as a team. And so I sent a direct message to court about something and I just like, I sent it in a voice? No. And court's response was, didn't know you could do that in Slack. But in those moments, I think there are other ways of doing it too, where you can bring the humanity out, where it's not just words. Cort Sharp (12:01) Yeah. Laura Kendrick (12:09) So often I'm actually thinking about there was one time that you and I were talking about something and I misread it as like, I like kicked something, like some hornet's nest in there. Like you were upset with me, but you were like, no, that was not my intention. And it's an amazing thing that that's only happened once in five years. There was that subtle nuanced miscommunication of I thought I had offended in some way and I hadn't. Cort Sharp (12:18) So. Yeah. Laura Kendrick (12:34) Just keeping that in mind though, in written word, tone is interpreted because probably what happened is I like offended my kid or my partner and was bringing that into the conversation with court. And it had nothing to do with what was actually happening, but adding in those personal things of your face, your voice, those things really do help move that human connection, which enables the teamwork that we've seen at Mountain Go. Cort Sharp (12:42) Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (13:00) I mean, it's amazing the way this team functions and it is not perfect. There are definitely communications missteps. There are definitely like, oops, forgot to leave that piece out of the information packet. It happens. It happens to everybody, but we're able to recover really quickly or even it's a safe enough space to be able to speak up and say, I think I got left out on this. And it's responded to in a really gracious and amazing way. Cort Sharp (13:26) It absolutely is. I mean, Mountain Goat's been remote for longer than the COVID stuff, the pandemic stuff happened. Laura Kendrick (13:33) Yeah. Well, Lisa's been with them for what, 10 years? I think it was nearly 10 years when we started, maybe 15. And Hunter's around the same. So yeah, they've been spread for a long time. Cort Sharp (13:42) Something like that, Uh-huh. ⁓ I know that they had an office space and that office space changed just in case people wanted to like come in, come to the office. I think at one point, one of them was in Colorado, which is kind of funny because several people live on the West coast. And then it's like, okay, yeah, come on, come on, swing by the... Colorado office on just a random Tuesday. Yeah, fly in, have fun. I don't know. Yeah, why not? I don't know what the deal was or what it was like, but they've been fully remote. And I think with the kind of runway that they've had leading up until the time where everyone had to be fully remote has really benefited Mountain Go in a lot of ways, because a lot of those early, like, how do we work remote? How do we do this? Laura Kendrick (14:09) I'd do that. Yeah, let's do it. Cort Sharp (14:31) kind of was ironed out, but back to your, your point to just like, it's, it's incredible how much support there is. It's incredible how much, how well communication again, it's not perfect, but how well we're able to communicate with each other and how well we're able to just say, yeah, let's, let's hop on a call real quick or here. I think most of us have like personal phone numbers. We, we use that as a very much so last resort type deal. Laura Kendrick (14:57) Yeah. Cort Sharp (14:59) But even then, it's nice to just have those open lines of communication and know that those are always available, but also know that people are kind of in our corner all the time too. And I think you have a pretty good story about this one. Something happened in a class a few years ago. Laura Kendrick (15:09) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It was early on we had, it was a non-Mike class. So it was one of the other instructors and there was a student who was just challenging. And in the end, it didn't go well in the moment, to put it, just to kind of like not go into grave detail about it. But Mike wasn't there, right? And so The thing that was interesting though is the first piece of communication that came from Mike, which was before that class even broke, right? Because it was one of those things of like, we have to share. As a team, we can't hide it. We have to share that something happened in class that was less than ideal. And so we did. And the immediate response from Mike was in support of the team. And later on, he did go and review the tape of the, because the classes are recorded, not for this purpose. They're recorded actually so that the students get a recording of the class afterwards and can return to what, you know, all the things that they learned because it's a lot to take in in two days. But in this one instance, it was beneficial in this way because Mike could actually see rather than taking people's words, what happened. And I think the important thing is not even what happened after, but what happened in the moment. that he instantaneously was like, I've got you. Like no matter how this goes, we're a team and I'm gonna support you as well. And that was actually, that was pretty early on for me. And it was in a moment where I didn't know Mike that well yet. And it was actually this very solidifying moment for me that was like, I'm in the right place. Like I am part of this team, not just a minion or an employee. Like they care about all of us. Cort Sharp (16:48) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (16:56) and we're in this together, even if it turns out that we're in some form of trouble, it's still going to be thoughtfully managed and handled rather than just the kind of lashing out that can happen in so many environments. Cort Sharp (17:12) Right. And, and that experience, cause I think we were all included on that email. Like I, I wasn't in the class when it happened, but I do remember getting that email and it just was a clear communication from kind of head honcho Mike, right? A top dog saying, yeah, no, we, we got your back. on, we're on the same team. We're all working towards the same goal. And when I, when I read the email, I was like, wow, that was an eventful class. but. Laura Kendrick (17:26) Mm-hmm. us. Cort Sharp (17:38) My second thought, my second thought was, huh, this very similar to what you were saying of like, wow, this is a great place to be. This is a great company to work for. These are great people to be working with and alongside. ⁓ but also like, I know so many people whose managers, whose higher ups would say, Nope, you're in the wrong. You should have done better. Your toast, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like putting all the blame on you. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Laura Kendrick (17:52) Mm-hmm. Yeah. The knee jerk. Yeah. Yeah. Cort Sharp (18:07) And it just, makes me think all the time of like one really blessed, like very fortunate to be here, very fortunate to work with mountain goat. but also people don't quit jobs. They quit managers. They quit leadership more often than not. And, not that I'm talking about quitting mountain goat, but, neither, neither of us are throwing that out there right now, but just like, Laura Kendrick (18:20) Mmm. Yeah. No, but interestingly in five years, I've not seen anybody quit. I mean, we've had people kind of go down separate paths, but nobody has been throwing their hands up and been like, I'm done. I can't be in this. There have been people who have taken other opportunities that they needed to take for their own businesses. But yeah, nobody's quit. In five years, no one has quit, which speaks volumes to the culture that is created in an environment where Cort Sharp (18:37) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (18:57) And I also want to be clear that that response from Mike also, it wasn't disparaging to the other party either. It was simply a, like, it just let us know that I see you and this, you were in a hard moment in the moment and you had to react like a human being and you as a team, I've got your back and this is, you know, great. And to be fair to that was like in the heat of COVID. Cort Sharp (19:24) Yes, yeah It was yeah Laura Kendrick (19:27) good times. But there's also been a lot of fun that's happened in class too, which is, I think that makes a big difference. Like where we are, I don't want to say allowed because I don't think that's right, but like part of the culture is to have fun. Like Mike is a pretty funny guy. Brian's a pretty funny guy. Like honestly, the whole team is quite humorous and it's, we're allowed to like make these really fun things and Cort Sharp (19:48) Yes. Laura Kendrick (19:52) in response to like when we see them in class, like, we foster those two and it becomes this really fun working environment, not only for us, for our students. You brought up one that I had totally forgotten about with the costume. That was good. Cort Sharp (20:06) ⁓ yeah, I, I, yeah, I'll, I'll get into the costume thing, but I think the word you're looking for instead of allowed is enabled. Like we're, we're enabled to have fun. We're encouraged. Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent. If you ever hung out with Mike or, or taking a class with him, you've probably heard some funny stories. Laura Kendrick (20:13) Yeah, Encouraged, in fact. And my gosh, the one class too where Mike was asked how long they'd have access to like the videos and stuff. my gosh, Mike ended the class and it was a super engaged Chipper class. Everyone was laughing and Mike brought it down. Cause he did his usual thing where he talked about, what does he say? You have access as long as the internet exists and I'm alive. And then he went into great detail. great detailed speculation about what will happen once he's not alive. It went on for like five minutes. Cort Sharp (20:58) Yeah, where where he's like, yeah, you know, my kids will probably be like, what's this? What's this old website that dad's still hosting? Guess we'll we'll close that up 10 years down the line or whatever. Laura Kendrick (21:09) Dumbfounded. It was so good. But anyhow. Cort Sharp (21:13) man. But there was, I don't even remember why this happened in the class. don't think it was around like Halloween time or something. think the person, actually, I think the person does this to go to like local children's hospitals or local hospitals and just visit. But I get on and I'm normally the PM producer. So I normally hop on in the afternoon. And I took over from Laura and Laura Kendrick (21:22) No, it wasn't. think so. Cort Sharp (21:39) Laura was like, yeah, you know, pretty normal class. This happens, whatever. We're good. And I hop on and people start turning their cameras on. And then all of a sudden there's this dude in a Captain America costume. Like what? He's got the mask. He's got the, the, the uniform. He's got the shield and everything. And I was like, what is happening? What is going on? Come to find out he was telling his story. Laura Kendrick (21:50) Like full on math. Cort Sharp (22:04) Yeah, I do this. This is cool. And Mike was like, that'd be awesome to see. He went out, put it on and took the rest of the classes Captain America. So we have certified Captain America. Laura Kendrick (22:12) Awesome. We've had, there was the guy who was put on like a crazy hat for the first session and then came back for session two with a different crazy hat. And then other people started wearing crazy hats. And by the end of it, like by the final session, almost the entire class was sitting there with some like their kids stuff on their heads. it was. Cort Sharp (22:34) You Laura Kendrick (22:36) But was this one, like it stands out of the billion classes we've done. It stands out in our minds as these really fun moments. I remember the class where it was a private class, so it was for a company or team. And there were, it took me until the very end to, it was early on, so it took me until the very end to get up the gumption. There were five mics in the class. And finally I was like, I'm just gonna put them all in the same room and see if anybody notices. Cort Sharp (22:36) People just... Yes. Didn't they notice like right away, they all came back and they're like, team Mike is back in action or something, right? Laura Kendrick (23:04) I don't think they said anything, but they did. The instructor went into the room and like, yeah, they noticed. Good. My passive aggressive humor worked. Cort Sharp (23:10) Hehehehehe It's fun. It's all good. But it's also like going back to us being able to do this before I figured out kind of my background situation, I would always put up virtual backgrounds and I would just change your background every time and see if people noticed. And it wasn't, it was a lot of Disney. Yes. Laura Kendrick (23:23) Mm-hmm. Disney. That's the thing though. That also, that kind of stuff built a little bit of a relationship as well. like it was, court was always going to have something for Disney. I had one that I would, when I finally found the one I liked, I kept that one for a long time. And Mike would occasionally, when I wasn't in a class, he would send me a screenshot of somebody via email and be like, somebody's in your house with you. Cause they would have the same background. Cort Sharp (23:52) Yeah! Laura Kendrick (23:56) those little tiny things make the relationships and make the team function and make us giggle. So I'd be like out with my kids and see an email and be like, oh no, Mike, what does he need? And then click in and be like, you know, actually more often than not, it would probably be like, am I missing class? See, I'd be like, oh, that's funny. But you know, it builds that relationship. And I think it's why this remote working has worked so well for us. And I'm totally with you where I, when people are Cort Sharp (24:13) You Yeah. Laura Kendrick (24:26) railing against it because of my experience. like, you're crazy. This is great. Cort Sharp (24:31) Exactly. I'm like, how can you not want to just chill out, hang out in your home, chat with some people, get some work done, and like, you're good. Who despises that? Who doesn't like that? don't know. It's, Exactly, yeah. But I do think it does, it comes down to being intentional with it. We were talking about that 30 minutes before that used to be primarily tech troubleshooting. Laura Kendrick (24:47) I know, you get to do things on your own time too. Cort Sharp (25:01) but has since kind of evolved into, okay, so everything, like, I don't know about you, but the vast majority of time, unless a camera's fallen, the vast majority of time, it's, all right, does everything look good? Yeah? Cool. Sure does. Whoever I'm working with, awesome. So, what'd you do this weekend? how was this? ⁓ sorry, sorry that the Avs lost to the Dallas Stars. Yeah, I'm sorry too. Stuff like that, right? Where it's just, Laura Kendrick (25:19) Yeah. It's water cooler talk. Cort Sharp (25:29) It's fun, but we're very intentional with having that time to do that. And I think if you're not intentional in setting up that time, whether if you're working remote hybrid, you're not going to get it. And it's not just going to naturally happen because it is so much more difficult to produce. it's impossible for it to just kind of naturally pop up without taking away from some other intentional time. so I think in, in this this world that we're living in where there is the option to work remotely and there is this really big push to go back in person. I'm saying stick with remote, take your 15, 15 minute daily standup, and turn it into, you know, say, Hey, I'll be on 10, 15 minutes early. If anyone wants to come hang out, come chat. And make it worth it. Make it a valuable time because that is the time to connect and that is the time to say, yeah, cool. How are the kids? How was your weekend? Did you grill up some good hot dogs during this last weekend? What'd you do? Like, what was going on? ⁓ Build up that stuff. Laura Kendrick (26:23) Yeah. We also have Slack channels too, that are like that. Like there's a Slack channel for our team that's just movies, books and TV shows. That people, it'll get active at certain times and it'll be totally dead for a while and nobody's cultivating it. It's simply that somebody will pop in like, I just watched this and it's great. And they've set up also like the automatic bots, cause Mike's a big fan of James Bond. So like if somebody mentions James Bond, the Slack bot will say something quippy and it- Cort Sharp (26:39) Yeah. ⁓ Laura Kendrick (26:58) But it adds that little, like, little bit of humor, little bit of humanness to even though, like, the people that we have time to interact with like that is the team that's in class. So I don't, I mean, it wasn't until we were in person that I met our CTO. He was kind of an enigma, you know? Cort Sharp (27:10) Yeah. Mm-hmm. He was just in the background. Things just magically showed up digitally. Laura Kendrick (27:23) It was in my email and my Slack sometimes, but it creates that thing of like, now I know things about Hunter. Yes, of course it was because we were in person. I heard lots of stories and all that fun stuff. But also I know about like some of his like TV watching stuff. I know occasionally like what his wife likes to watch because sometimes he'll like pepper in something that, she dragged me into this and not my cup of tea. But it's those little bitty things that you start to learn about the people. Cort Sharp (27:39) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (27:50) that makes them human and gives that space. And I also, think it's important to have it be a little bit of white space. so often we talk about cultivating the conversation and like, can you have icebreakers and get people engaged? And yes, those things are so important, but when it's with a team, you need to do those things, but you also need to create the empty space where maybe you have that daily standup or that... weekly meeting or monthly meeting, whatever that is for your team. And maybe at the end of it, it's just leaving the call going and allowing people to just talk. I mean, we did that as a producer team that we would have a meeting as producers that would be very structured and then kind of the official meeting would end. And there would be times where as a team we'd be on that Zoom. I'm like, thank goodness nobody needs this channel. Cause like we'd be in there for like two and a half hours. Cort Sharp (28:26) Yeah. Yeah. Laura Kendrick (28:42) just talking. And of course, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't billing time. It wasn't, you know, it was just us being friends and hearing each other and sometimes ranting and complaining and doing the things of like, this part was hard and like, yeah, well, people need the space to do that and feel seen and heard. And the only place they're going to get that is in the white space. Cort Sharp (29:01) Yep. Exactly. Yep. And where my head went when you were talking about the white space, I love where you just went to because that's absolutely very true. But where my mind went was the newest kind of Slack channel that that's been set up, which is the artificial intelligence. Yeah. Where we just we just it's cool because I'm interested in AI. I think everyone's interested in AI right now. Things are things are going in all sorts of wild directions with it. There's there's all sorts of possibilities that we can do with it. Laura Kendrick (29:17) ⁓ Yeah, that one's Yeah. Cort Sharp (29:32) And Hunter just threw out, who wants in? If you want in, cool, I'll get you in. If not, and you're not interested in AI, let me know when you are, because it'll be at some point, I was going to say. It's just another full group one. Yeah, we just. Laura Kendrick (29:39) Yeah. Pretty sure the whole team's in there. But it is fun. Like Hunter and Mike do deep dives and Brian too. And I'm like, wow, I just get to swim in that pool. It's really Cort Sharp (29:50) Yes. Yeah, yeah. You just kind of get a glean from what's posted in there and say, oh yeah, I am really interested in the automation side of AI. I want to do, I think I threw in there one time, like this whole GitHub repository that has just from zero to hero AI, here's a two week crash course. And I've been working my way through that. It's taken a lot longer than two weeks for me. I've been working my way through that. And it's opened my eyes to say, okay, now this awesome thing, think Mike just threw in there something about someone using it at Disney, I think it was, and how they were using it at Disney to propose, here's a cool way that we can use AI to help our proposals go faster or help our marketing campaigns go faster or whatever it is. And just learning and seeing and... Laura Kendrick (30:38) Yeah. Cort Sharp (30:44) growing together as a team as well and having that space of, yeah, you know, here's what here, here are these articles that I'm reading. Here's the ones that stuck out to me. And to have that space, I think also is, is really interesting to me too, not just because I like learning, but it's also like, I feel like, okay, I can talk with Mike about AI. I can talk with Hunter about AI. I can talk with whoever about it. And we're all relatively on the same page because we're all relatively getting the same information. Laura Kendrick (31:14) Yeah, yeah. I feel like having the Slack channel has been really helpful and all the white space and even honestly the in-person event, there was white space built into that too. There was definitely a lot of structured meetings because of course when you are bringing everyone in from all over the country and actually the world, have a team member who is in the UK too. Cort Sharp (31:26) yeah. Laura Kendrick (31:37) flying a great distance and being in a space together, it's got to be structured. You have to make that worth the time and effort and investment. But also there were dinners, there were shows that happened, there was fun built into it, and there were options of not just like, I'm forcing you to go to this, but like, here's a choice. Would you like to do this or that? And those things have made a huge difference in breeding the like belongingness. Cort Sharp (31:55) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (32:05) and the feeling like we are actually a team. And even though there are definitely times where the frustrations arise, of course, I mean, who doesn't have frustrations, but it's a space where they can be vocalized, they can be talked through, and it's all due to that togetherness that we have, that connectedness that has been built through, honestly, Cort Sharp (32:05) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (32:30) just being in these like casual fun spaces is where that comes from in my opinion. Cort Sharp (32:36) Yeah, I agree with that. Just having the space to talk about whatever. But I think it's all rooted in communication, right? So in various methods of communicating and various ways of communicating too, where it's not just exclusively Slack, email, written text, we have that space there. But we do still run into some communication problems, right? There's... Laura Kendrick (32:41) Yeah. For sure, for sure. Cort Sharp (32:58) there's all sorts of communication problems that we're gonna run into because especially we are text-based heavy, but we're not exclusively text-based. But I think you were talking about a story where Mike was late one time or Mike's late story about communication and what was going on with that. Laura Kendrick (33:12) he tells it in class. He tells a story in class with that. It's one of his examples that he will pull into fairly frequently with an experience with a team where somebody was always late to the daily standup and they realized that it had to do with the fact that they had to drop their kid off at school. And so it was that simple communication shift of asking instead of assuming, asking which... They've put into practice too, like I recall early on hearing like, do you prefer to be communicated with? And like we've had these conversations that court and I have a tendency to be more slack people. But Brian has stated that for him, like when he's teaching slack is like his emergency line. And so like knowing that I'm not going to send him something through slack unless I desperately need him to see it when I can land it in his email versus Lisa and Laura are much more Cort Sharp (33:43) yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (34:04) they're going to be in the email. Like that's just where they live and they are less likely to be in Slack. So it's just knowing those things have also helped us build the right kind of streams of communication. I'm pretty sure Hunter is everywhere all at once. Like he's omnipresent. You can get him anywhere. I know it. I'm in New York and he's in California. I'm pretty sure if I whispered his name, he's hearing it right now. Cort Sharp (34:06) Right. my gosh. He's the enigma. He's the enigma everywhere. I was gonna say, I'm surprised he hasn't popped into this. We've said his name three times. It's, he just knows everything and he's always got everything coming through and no matter what you need, he's any message away. Slack, email, could be carry your pigeon. I don't know, something like that, right? Laura Kendrick (34:43) Yeah, his next Halloween costume needs to be Beetlejuice, so I'm sending that to him. my goodness. But I think at the end of the day, the practices that have been put into place that you may have felt in our classes too, have helped really grow this team into what it is. There's a lot of strength here. There's a lot of fun here, but there's a lot of hard work here too. And a lot of, there have been hard moments where we've all just kind of put our heads down together and moved through the hard moments as a team with a lot of support and a lot of. Cort Sharp (35:12) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (35:15) Just trying to be in it and be like kind of move things where it needs to go. I don't know what the right word is as a team. It's redundant. Cort Sharp (35:22) I think it. Yeah. But I think that that does show in our classes a lot, right? You and I have both taken a class outside of the mountain goat sphere, ⁓ and I'm not I'm not dogging on anyone. I'm not trying to talk down on anyone. But I got out of that class. I was like, man, we are light years ahead of that. Laura Kendrick (35:30) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Cort Sharp (35:49) that kind of interaction and that kind of experience. was the information that I got out of that class was awesome, superb. It was great. But just the amount of energy and effort and time that has been invested into these Mountain Goat courses, it's far and away just, it shows. And it shows how much of a level up it is to take a class with Mountain Goat. And I do think partly, you know, I'm boosting my own ego here. But I do think partly it is because we are surrounded with some awesome people and we have some awesome people working together and awesome support on every call, every class that you take with us, right? You don't have to, like the instructor can focus on just instructing. And we, more often than not, we are typically in charge of everything else. Make sure that any tech problems, any issues, anything that's going on, right? Yeah. Laura Kendrick (36:32) Yeah. Yeah. I remember the early days. Like you just brought up a memory that apparently I had stored in the trauma bank. I remember the early days though being, because I would often, because I'm on the East Coast, court is in mountain times. So, often I would be the early person just because it's easier for me. was mid morning for me. we would start class and it would be just, especially honestly when like people were figuring out Zoom and all this stuff, it was... stressful. Like they were just, it was just question, question, question, problem, problem, problem. And we would get to the first breakout and I would send everyone away and the instructor would be like, that was great. And I'm like, was, you know, just totally frazzled. But the point was, is no one else felt that. And it was, I was in my Slack and working with the team, working with Hunter, things fixed, working with Lisa, making sure the person was in the right place. Cort Sharp (37:20) Yeah, glad. Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (37:33) and doing all these things. And though that has died down because we've all gotten very good at our job and the systems in place are amazing at this point, it still is like, that's the whole point. We worked as a team so that the instructor could deliver an amazing class and be present with his students. And we could be here or her, because we do have hers too, I should say. They're students. And we were here taking care of the things that needed to be taken care of, which was, yeah. Cort Sharp (37:54) Yes. Laura Kendrick (38:00) Though I had forgotten about that. Thanks for that. Cort Sharp (38:02) Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's gotten easy, right? ⁓ Laura Kendrick (38:04) Yeah, it does. But that's at the end of the day, that's how a good team is. I think that we can kind of end it with this thing of Mike has created this environment and it definitely comes from him. Like it's is rooted in the founder for us because we're a small team, small but mighty. But he it's rooted in his like engine of creativity, efficiency, and just love of innovation. And that has kind of Cort Sharp (38:18) Mm-hmm. Laura Kendrick (38:34) folding that in with seeing all the people as humans, and with flaws and different talents and all those things and human interaction is messy and folding all of that in has actually been what has bred these amazing class experiences for our students and also this rewarding and fantastic team experience for the people behind the scenes as well. And I think the lesson Cort Sharp (38:39) Yes. Yep. Laura Kendrick (38:59) comes from that, that if we can fold those things in together and make space for humans to be humans and also have this amazing expectation of creativity and innovation, then it's all going to happen. Cort Sharp (39:06) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I 100 % agree with that. I mean, it does come down to Mike and Mike is a fantastic leader. It's awesome. I also want to raise Mike, but. Laura Kendrick (39:28) Nice. Not passive aggressive at all. On that note. Cort Sharp (39:29) Yeah, you know. No. I'm just joking, right? We're able to have fun. We're able to joke around. But it does come down to leadership, right? And I think that's true on any team. And we have just we've been so fortunate to be able to experience it firsthand and go through this awesome transformation from being in person to fully remote, even in the class teaching stuff. And it's been really, really fun. really, really enjoyable. I, you know, you don't love every day. There are jobs, right? It's a job. But I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. It has been fun. It has been enjoyable. But I don't look back on it and be like, wow, these last five years were just all terrible. No, it's we've had great leadership. We've had great interactions with with everyone. And I think Laura Kendrick (40:05) You should have just left it at really, really fun and enjoyable. Mic drop, goodbye. Cort Sharp (40:28) It's just come down to the people that we're working with and the people that we're engaging with consistently. And our leadership, Mike, has fostered an environment very, very well that is around fun, around communication, around enabling us to grow, to learn, to try new things, to move forward. And I really feel bad for companies who don't have that kind of leadership. that's, it's a tough spot to be in, but, I'm really, we're really blessed and really fortunate to, to be able to work here. And I hope this, this little peek behind the curtain, kind of encourages you to you, the listener, guess, whoever, whoever's out there to take a, take a little step back and say, okay, what, what am I doing as a leader within my sphere of influence to help my team be a little more human and embrace the humanity side of stuff? Not just pushing for more, we need more, more productivity, more AI, more everything, right? Yeah. Use AI, make it a tool, but just remember you're, building stuff for, for people. You're working with people all the time. And I think that's something that Mike has never forgotten and never will forget and never will let fall to the wayside that we're all people and we're all here working with each other. Laura Kendrick (41:43) Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Well, on that amazing note, thank you, Cort, for joining me in this hijacking of the podcast, the Agile Mentors podcast. And we're going to turn it back over to Brian, who's going to walk you right on out. Cort Sharp (41:54) Happy to.

Boris Gloger, a pioneering agile strategist and Germany’s first Certified Scrum Trainer, dives deep into the relationship between action and strategy. He discusses the importance of fostering a bias toward action in Agile environments, emphasizing the need for experimentation to combat stagnation. Gloger unpacks common misconceptions about failure and how innovative technologies like AI can reshape organizational habits. He also shares insights on overcoming barriers to an Agile mindset and cultivating leadership that embraces experimentation.