Navigating the Agile landscape: Insights on Roles, Productivity, and Remote Work

Discover the future of agile roles in organizations with the insights of Brock Argue, co-founder of Superheroes Academy. Our latest episode unravels the real-world implications of economic pressures on the agile transformation journey, with a keen focus on the delicate interplay between team support and hands-on product development. As heavyweights like Spotify and Capital One pivot towards leaner structures, we question the longevity of specialized coaching positions and how these changes might reshape the agile landscape.

This week's takeaways:

• Invest in Skill Development: Explore the untapped potential in skill development.
• Embrace Agility and Flexibility: Dive into the world of agility and flexibility demanded by the hybrid work model and shifting economic tides.
• Focus on Productivity and Delivery: Whether in-person or remote, the secret sauce lies in unwavering focus on productivity and delivery.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com

Chapters

• 0:05 Agile Roles' Impact on Organizations
• 9:07 Shift in Roles and Focus
• 14:09 Adapting to Changing Landscape
• 20:26 The Future of Hybrid Work Environments
• 32:16 Sharpening Skills in Agile

Transcript

Peter: 0:05

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello Dave, how are you doing today?

Dave: 0:15

Very good, you can see we're warming up. Here in Vancouver it's nearly getting to freezing, so we thought we'd better dig out the warm weather gear.

Peter: 0:24

Actually, we went for a run this morning, and today we are joined by Brock. Who would you like to introduce yourself? Brock, tell us a bit about yourself.

Brock: 0:33

Sure, Thanks, Peter. Hi everyone, my name is Brock Argue. I'm co-founder of Superiors Academy, which is a boutique consulting firm focused on training, coaching and consulting. Organizations want to get the most out of their digital transformation. You can find me these days on LinkedIn talking about things like agile coaching, leadership, vertical development, among other topics, and more about our organization at wwwsuperheroesacademy. Dave and Peter, thanks again for the invite. I'm excited to be here today talking with you about digital transformation.

Dave: 1:05

I'm looking forward to being able to take the many conversations we've had around well, coaching conversations and conference conversations basically out into the open, as it were, just get some of those topics out there and chat about different aspects of digital transformation, maybe to get the ball rolling, as it were. We were just chatting and getting comfortable with some of the topics that we're looking at. One of them that's really coming up is right now. We're in a position where a lot of companies are, I'd have to say, re-evaluating the roles that they're supporting in their organization, specifically around agile digital transformations, maybe, and obviously Spotify recently, more this year. Looking back over the last 12, 18 months, there have been a number of different significant changes in how organizations are dealing with agility. Anything that you've seen that you'd want to draw people's attention to. Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's a bad news thing? What's your experience there?

Brock: 2:05

What I think is happening. There's obviously a shift that's happening here. For a bunch of years now, we've been focused on agility, the importance of the experience for the developers and people on the team delivering value and outcomes, and all of those types of things. I think there's a shift kind of the other way, where some of those things aren't as important right now. What we're seeing in the world is especially this economic downturn that we're in. Companies are really looking close at what they're paying for, what their costs are, and agile roles are on the cutting block.

Peter: 2:40

We're seeing that in a lot of places at the moment. There's a few of the larger profile places where we've been seeing this happen, like the Capital Ones and Spotify's of this world. I wonder if there's an element underlying it where they feel we've already got a lot of the benefit out of this. We've already got some structures that we like, we've already got mechanisms in place that we do this. We feel like we're not doing too bad. Do we need these people right now if that can save us some money and help us keep our cost profile under control? Yeah, exactly.

Dave: 3:14

I was going to say I'm just waiting for Brock, for you to jump in there, but before you do, I think there's two things that we can look at and recognize. One of them is clearly the economic downturn. Every organization, of course, is going to look at their cost profile and start looking at how they're getting things done. We're highly sensitive to the agile roles, but I think saying it's only the agile roles is really not recognizing what's going on. There's another element to that, which is to do with the delivery side of things the execution and getting stuff done versus supporting teams getting things done.

Dave: 3:52

One of the things that jumps to my mind is, if you look at something as simple as the Scrum framework, where they talk about a development team with product owners and Scrummasters the ratio of individuals involved in that who are getting the work done the development team versus those who are working with the teams getting the work done. There's a lot of people getting the work done there. This I remember in many organizations in earlier digital transformations the realization of how many of those roles that we're bringing onto the development team all of a sudden find that much more time where they're generating value. They're actually doing testing, programming, whatever it is, and they're not in meetings and discussing and all of these other things that can happen in organizations. I wonder, over time, especially if you think about scaling models and so on, that crisp, lean focus on a high number of people really dedicated to getting the work done seems to have shifted, I would say, in the last few years.

Brock: 4:52

Yeah, I think that's a good insight, dave, because for sure there's been, I guess, bloat, I would say, in some of the roles. As far as, especially as organizations have scaled the number of coaches, perhaps that they might have supporting teams. You have center of excellence with coaches and there's a group of coaches. They're supporting each other plus teams and whatnot. In some organizations that's been pretty heavy. I think there's still a good ratio where that works really well. But what we're finding is there's just this reaction and this shift where maybe organizations aren't getting outcomes they're hoping for or whatever it might be, and so this is a reaction to that, maybe, or to maybe some other things in terms of, well, these people aren't actually touching the product, so maybe we don't need them and maybe we just need people who are touching the product, and so that's one of the things I think that's probably going on here.

Peter: 5:48

It's an interesting space, isn't it? Because the where the coach helps is in helping the team get aligned to these different pieces and identify where can I improve, where are those problems? And there's, I think, all of that's still there. There's always room for improvement, always room to get better. It's where the teams have got to a point where there's the systems doing what the system's going to do, so it's as good as it's good enough for what they need. And so do I need to get any better right now. If I can instead say, okay, I'm good with where this is, I don't feel like it's valuable for me to invest any more into that team of improvement if I've got what I need right now and in fact, why don't I just save this money at this point in time and then we'll move forward with the assumption that they've got the sufficient outcomes from the product they're looking for at the moment. They've got the system that's working for.

Brock: 6:41

Yeah, and actually getting back to what Dave was saying a minute ago, just kind of going a bit deeper on the Scrum framework as well, one of the things that we forget right is that Scrum Masters are tasked with a lot of the things that coaches are doing these days, like someone with a coach title, and Scrum Masters are coaches to the organization. Scrum Masters are supposed to be working with their teams, but also outside of their teams to make sure that they're effective and things like that. And so also, perhaps some of these roles we've maybe I don't know over-specialized, but we've added these specializations into the industry and into the mix and maybe elevated some skills that actually Scrum Masters many do have and can leverage, even with the team themselves. And so I think there's some of these situations where there's duplication, maybe in roles or people or skills that organizations are also looking closely at.

Dave: 7:36

But let me ask Brok however we map that out and wherever that responsibility for sort of looking at the organization continues, improvement and so on comes in, would you argue that the coaches as a community, as a role, have generated sufficient value and therefore in the next sort of this cycle changes, all of those coach roles suddenly get filled in again, or do you see something different?

Brock: 8:03

That's a fantastic question, and so this is one of the big discussion points that we've been having lately. Right is around. Well, coaches do provide value and there is lots of value in what we do, but we're not very good at articulating that value or showing you know, like here's what, because of the coaching or because of the facilitation or whatever I've done, these are the direct results you're seeing, because it doesn't work that way. You know to see that. So that's one of the challenges I think that has come up as well in this whole discussion. And then one of the other ones is especially in larger situations, but as organizations maybe have overhired for coaching roles, the level of skill of, like, the collective group gets diluted because of the individual, because of the size of them, sorry, I mean, and so you can see that happening as well. And so you know coaching roles and roles that support the work, I think are still useful and still valuable and do contribute, and what's going to happen after all of this settles down in the future?

Brock: 9:07

You know, I think some organizations in this time will have rejected that and said that's not what we do here.

Brock: 9:15

I mean, spotify is a great example, right? They really just came out and said that, like, if you're not doing the work you know we need actually maybe not that, but we just need people here who are doing the work. And so some organizations are like that. I think others right now are kind of in a middle space where you know they still have coaches or maybe they're still higher some here and there, but it's just not going to be to the extent that we've seen so far. Also, part of that one of the discussion points we had as well is that you know agility as you know I don't know a philosophy or an implementation of or whatever in most organizations it's generally understood, it's known, people have skills around that and I think organizations are looking for, organizations are looking for their people to understand agility and be able to leverage the practices and values of things of it, and I don't think they're looking at specialized rules to help them know it anymore.

Peter: 10:08

I think you think, as they're looking at what's next.

Dave: 10:11

Oh, I don't know that, it's even that. So it's interesting, peter, what I'm I was just thinking as Brock's describing this. There's one view you can take, which is, you know, the economy's bad, so we're going to reduce and then, when the economy's good again, we'll fill in the roles again and we're all. We've all seen this in many organizations. They do that on the budget cycle, they do that on the economy cycle and so on.

Dave: 10:33

Where I like what Brock's kind of outlining is, there's a different shift to it, which is, I think of it as maturity or professionalization. It's got to the point. I mean, think about the last time in an, in a digital space, a technology space, there's, outside of technology, non tech spaces, there's agility, has lots of room to run because it's really not well established in those spaces. But in the technology space, you can't find teams which don't already know something about Kanban and Scrum and agile and so on. Every. It's sort of pervasive. And what I find really interesting if you think about, just to be specific, but the Scrum guy 2020 shifted away from roles to accountabilities.

Dave: 11:16

And think about the agile community and what we've talked about, leadership, how we've talked about leadership, middle managers and leaders well, they've now take on a lot of the role of coaching and guidance and so on, because we've been doing it long enough that that role has sort of moved a little bit, like you were saying, around the Scrum, master and coach, those that the distinct role that you needed at the beginning to help bring clarity to what that was need look, looking for is now diffused and is being picked up in other parts of the organization. Right, so there's a, there's a maturation or a increasingly sort of complex way of looking at things, opposed to this sort of black and white, simple I need a coach and I need a development team and things like that.

Peter: 11:58

I think there's a knowledge piece of the. Do you say there's an intrinsic amount of knowledge that people have heard of the word, I think, said that I spoke to CEO, ceo and last week and I brought up the term DevOps and you had no idea what it meant. So I mean it's not entirely.

Dave: 12:15

There's always. There's always room, and just because they've heard it doesn't mean they understand it in the way you know. We would sort of not ahead and go, oh thank goodness, you've got it sorted, and so on, most of the time. Well, we're obviously always going to see room for change and improvement, but I think that it's not. It doesn't mean that the quality of that instance is where we'd like to see it, right. But I think, peter, you said at the beginning it's, it's good enough. And a lot, of, a lot of organizations, you know, they went through that shift and change and they've got to a point where they're good enough and now they're beginning to think of different problems.

Peter: 12:53

And awareness right, it's people are aware of it.

Dave: 12:56

Yeah, and then, and that whole thing like productivity is the word that I keep thinking nowadays. Agility was, you know, that flexibility and the agility, that nimble ability to do things, was one thing that they were looking for for a while, and it feels like that shift is especially, you know, the last couple of years. There was a lot of bringing people on board and now it's really focused on productivity, which is exactly where you can see. You know, if I want to, if I think back, facebook a year plus ago, talked about really focusing on productivity Spotify, what we've just been talking about, what just been heard about, is an easy way of addressing productivity is taking anybody out who's not touching product, Right.

Brock: 13:34

So Exactly, and so you know that shift. So productivity is the big word and delivery is the other big word that I hear all the time now, and so you know lots of roles maybe around that or just like. Those are the types of people that we need in organizations, and great point about the accountability is right from the scrum guide. We're not we don't have these specific roles necessarily anymore that are doing something, but these skills need to be there and they're spread throughout like whoever has them, Right. So definitely some interesting things there.

Dave: 14:06

So so what? What's your recommendation Like? As a group, we've chatted a little bit about what we're seeing. If somebody is working in an agile role or in an agile delivery organization, what should they look at?

Brock: 14:19

So, yeah, that's a tough one, right. And so, like I'm an agile coach in an organization, I'm hearing these things, I'm listening to this podcast, like what should I be doing? And, you know, really, the first thing that comes to mind is getting curious and getting learning in some of the new technological movements that are happening, right and so generative AI, cloud computing you know all of these types of things. If you don't know what those are and you're not you know, at least have a basic understanding, you know. That's, I think, a concern. But also getting some skills, maybe in some of these areas, and so there's lots of.

Brock: 14:58

Actually, I was talking to someone from a company a couple of months ago that they had all of their executives and kind of leaders in the team starting to use some of these automation tools. Right, where they can, you know, similar to Zapier or whatever, where they can automate some of your tasks and some of the things that you're doing, and so they're teaching this to you know, leaders in the organization, and so even that, right, there's there's ways to be more efficient that you can learn and use and maybe help people with. But really, what I'm seeing, it comes down to some like technical skills that you would have, as well as your coaching ability or whatever else it is you know that you bring to the organization already.

Peter: 15:37

Yeah, there's always the two sides of it, right. There's the having sufficient technical skills that you can help people work things out and help them understand these new concepts that are coming in, and especially if you can talk across different layers of the organization and you can start to, because this is often something where, as coaches, tend to be able to move out into different areas and have conversations across different layers and that allows them to. Hey, if I can bring these concepts and make them relevant and explain them in language that this audience can understand, and that's a very valuable skill to be able to bring. It's now, it's the consulting side of coaching, but it is yeah.

Dave: 16:19

So, peter, I was just thinking, as you're saying that, and as Brock was, describing some of those technologies and how leaders and coaches can kind of lead the charge or at least facilitate that. When you're touching on the consulting bit, what I'm thinking is it's showing productivity, showing delivery, those two these strike me as like really, quite frankly, and I think we've all sort of looked maybe behind us in the past and thought, yeah, we should have done a better job explaining or showing what was going on here about that deliverability aspect, about the productivity, and I think the data side of things or the consulting side of putting some tools in place and transparency and helping people really solve some of those problems, is almost certainly a, you know, it's gonna sharpen the right skills and get you in front of the right people and start focusing on some of the real problems that organizations are wrestling with, I think, right now.

Brock: 17:19

And the other thing, right, if you're a coach in organization, there are skills that you have that would be considered technical already, and so, even just looking at like you know what do I do day to day, what are some of the ways I do it and what are some other things you know that maybe I enjoy doing outside of work or whatever, or I've learned recently. I mean, there's other types of skills that you have that would also be useful for delivery and productivity, and so, yeah, I think you gotta go and learn some new ones, but you also have some already that are useful in this space in this time, I guess.

Peter: 17:57

I mean even there. I mean as coaches, holding the space so people can have the right conversation, facilitating that, helping them prioritize, helping them build mechanisms to prioritize and work out things out and how you break down work and understand it all key coaching skills which are absolutely essential in everything we do, and I still see many organizations I work with struggle with a lot of these and need help working through this.

Dave: 18:22

Well, we're working in a dynamic landscape, right. So even if you you know we sit with an organization, we think they're doing a pretty good job right now.

Dave: 18:30

We also know the landscape is gonna change fast, so it's a case of can they stay on top of that? I mean, one of the things that is often talked about in economic downturns is the smart kind of companies use that downturn to sharpen the tools, and that's where I think about things like, you know, delivery and productivity and transparency into what's going on, and I love, brock, what you're saying about both retooling or re-skilling or upskilling certain areas, but also looking outside of that to try and find those things. That's the organizations that really understand it. No, this is the time when those new ideas can seep in and some of those sort of the desks can be cleared, metaphorically and actually, you know, some of the tools that we always promised we were gonna get in place, or whatever it might be, can be put together.

Brock: 19:20

Yeah, I give you some desk cleaning myself around here. It's on my list for the holidays. But, yeah, right, it's a great time and, to your point, the smart organizations are probably still hiring and looking for those types of people even in this time. There's something specific right that you need to bring that they're looking for that will help them, and so definitely still opportunities harder to find and more specific probably.

Peter: 19:47

Well, I think you bring up a good point there, that it's more targeted. And there are more targeted in the problems they're looking to solve, which comes from many different places. One is being cost conscious, another is perhaps having a better understanding of what the problem they're trying to solve is. So they're looking at how do I best spend the money and the investment and the time to move this idea forward. Yeah, go ahead bro.

Brock: 20:13

Okay, I was gonna change the subject, so I hope that's okay.

Peter: 20:17

First, go change away.

Brock: 20:19

You wanted some disagreement and so I'm just gonna check the test this, see if there's. You know if we're all on the same page here if we have different thoughts. But the hybrid work environment is another kind of aspect. All of this coming out of COVID and now this economic downturn and the company's forcing people back to work, back to the offices Is looking up some information on this. Kpmg did a study and they found 62% of CEOs believe there's a full return to the office in three years and 90% of CEOs are likely to reward employees who make an effort to come into the office by giving them favorable assignments, raises or promotions, those types of things. So the question is, do you think there's gonna be a full return to you know co-located in the office work environments, or is it gonna be something different?

Peter: 21:07

I personally don't think full return. I think you'd have to define that. I don't think everybody is going to come back into the office. I think that, especially for people where it's been so incredibly beneficial to their lifestyle, how they live where they live, what they've decided to do, that they will probably quit and go find another job before they would come back into the office on five days a week. It depends what you mean by full, I think, is the answer to that.

Peter: 21:40

I think there's definitely a number of economic motivators behind this. One part of it is you've got long lived leases and an awful lot of economic investment in commercial real estate, which has suddenly become awfully expensive for an awful lot of companies. Having all of that office space sitting empty is not a good thing. With all of that investment, they want to make sure they're making use of it. That in turn is driving some sort of very drastic shifts in certain part of the market space. There's a bigger picture there. It's certainly impacting the commercial real estate vendors. They're being gutted right now. Based on that, I would say that not everybody's coming back to the office or else those companies would still be thriving.

Dave: 22:32

I feel like the other piece that's missing from that conversation is leaders and how you manage a remote or hybrid workforce, Because I think when we're forced to do it, we're all going to put nod our heads and say we're really happy with the fact that we've got a distributed workforce, because it was that or no workforce. We're now in a situation where we opened up that and or as box, if you want to think of it. I think it really opened up a knowledge work does not have to does not gain anything. If I sit in an office, there's a lot of things I can actually do in a different environment which are more valuable to the organization in terms of productivity, in terms of just having a clear head, not being spending two hours, three hours a day, back to back traffic going wherever it is I'm going traffic trains, whatever it is.

Dave: 23:23

There's a lot of benefits that come out of that, both in terms of work-life balance, but also productivity, ideas and so on there's a lot of talk about. Well, at the very least, we need to bring people back in for innovation, for a career growth, and definitely that's all very, very clear. However, there's there's another element, which is if I'm a leader or a manager and I'm not skilled at managing a diverse, distributed group of people, then it's the easy path is I need you in the office, and I think that's a real shame because I think that's a drop on anybody who works with leaders about how to bring that skill level up.

Dave: 24:05

It's not the spy web tools of seeing who's typing on their keyboards or anything. But there's an element of that whole thing that we always talk about outcome over output, making sure that alignment around objectives and priorities is clear, making sure we're breaking the work down into small enough pieces that we can see progress being made All of these things would allow for people not to have to be in the office, and I think that's where I think we will want to recognize there's huge value in having people in the office for certain things whether we talk about innovation, career progression a couple of them but just saying if you're in the office, that's great, if you're not, we're not so happy about it, I think really misses a fantastic opportunity, because there are also great things that come from people not being in the office, and that side of the balance isn't being talked about in the same way.

Brock: 24:58

Okay, so maybe we do all see it the same way, but we're disagreeing with those CEOs, I think. Perhaps, David, I totally agree with you Perhaps for leaders being able to lead such a team that's distributed, working remotely, whatever, perhaps that's a technical skill now for leaders in that way, and organizations are still doing what you're talking about with the spyware and I was talking to someone the other day and part of their performance review is based on the amount of time they were at their desk or whatever. It was something like that and I was like what? That's still something people are looking at. So with this shift, there needs to also be that upskilling and maybe mindset change in that way in terms of leadership. But it's not towards agility, it's towards how do you make this work? I'll be back to what we're talking about delivery, productivity, outcomes, all of those things.

Dave: 25:56

I mean. I also think there's a couple of things that are still not solved, and one of those is innovation. So innovation is a lot of it is. I absorb things from my environment. I overhear conversations, and you can't plan to overhear a conversation.

Dave: 26:11

You can't plan to be in the right discussion at the right time. That sparks those conversations. So I think there's something that we have to learn a little bit about that. I mean, this is where you can imagine in universities, for example, or any research institutions, I'm pretty sure they're all still kind of there's so much value in coming together in that one, so maybe there's something there. The other one is around culture. I mean, we've all struggled with this. We, you know, we all of us run workshops right, and that whole conversation about how do you get aligned behaviors is tough. It's really tough in a remote environment. So there's things that work so well in person this is clear but the cost is quite high. That's, I think, what's. What really came to mind is the cost is high and we can now maybe optimize that in some way.

Peter: 26:57

I think we can actually identify it now much more easily, because we've now got so much more focus. What have we got?

Dave: 27:02

Yeah, we've got a baseline of whatever it was a year or two years, 18 months when you know some of those costs were removed.

Peter: 27:09

Yeah, that deep thinking work does much better when everybody's in person and you can collaborate. But even like on this course, three of us here and but only one of us can really talk at a time we for us to have a side conversation. I mean we'd have to chat or turn on music and like tap away on the keyboards. But the ability to have that dynamic conversation with others or to break into smaller groups, I mean you can do it here, but it's artificially enforced, it's not as dynamic and there are some tools out there and platforms that have tried to do this, to either greater or lesser of success, but it we still haven't got a way that really beats being in person to achieve that level of interaction as a group, as human beings.

Dave: 27:56

Well, it feels like there's some sort of formula to be worked on there, where you're you bring and this is the hybrid model. I mean, I don't like the word hybrid because that feels you can bring the worst of both worlds together and it's still hybrid, or you can bring the best of both worlds together and it's hybrid, so hybrid. We got to be a bit wary of in and of itself as a descriptor. But what you're saying, peter, is this this conversations that we need to have in person, those responsive, you know, sort of activities that are really well suited to being in person, there are activities that definitely don't need to be in person, and it's we now. I would argue we now have the opportunity to get that balance right. I'm not sure I'm mandate as to which day to turn up on, which not really addresses that ballot. We need to be a little bit more thoughtful about how we address that.

Brock: 28:44

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, just from my experience, like my organization, we've always been remote, even before coven, and so, and my partner I mean he only lives like a 10 minute drive away but I never see him in person, except for those times, like you're talking about, when you know we get together because we want to build out something new or we need to do like strategic planning for the coming year or those types of things. Always get together a person for that right. But otherwise you know we're able to do things remotely and you know not have to travel anywhere, not have to dress up and all of those types of things. So definitely value there.

Brock: 29:20

And I think, peter, you mentioned something along these lines earlier. But you know, I think employees, regardless of what leaders choose to do, organizations choose to do around this, you know, forcing people in or incentives or whatever employees are still going, are they're going to look at that as just part of the compensation package and make the decisions right. Okay, well, I don't get to, I don't get. This thing is, I don't go in, but I don't have to travel for two hours, so it's still a good deal for me, right? Or to your point, we've seen a lot of this in the last probably couple years. Okay, I'll just quit and I'll go somewhere else, and there's been a lot of that as well, so maybe that's a little more difficult right now. But I think that's one of the things outside of the economic downturn that will come back is that there will be lots of roles. People will have that mobility in, in organization, especially if you know they've honed some of these skills that we've been talking about it was like we should summarize, peter.

Dave: 30:12

how did you want to break this one down?

Peter: 30:14

I'm going to say brock, what's your favorite point you'd like to do?

Dave: 30:20

By the way, brock. Thank you very much for joining us on this, and now we're gonna put the pressure on you.

Brock: 30:25

I love it. You know, dave, I'm used to it. I've known you long enough that I knew you would do this to me, so so, no problem, you know favorite points, I guess. I mean it's all kind of connected. But there's this discussion.

Brock: 30:38

I think that we started with where there's this thing going on right now, you know, to people maybe like us or people we know or whatever, and so there's a bit of like what the heck is going on, right, and so there's a bit of frustration around that and a bit of like trying to understand, like what's happening. So I think that's all kind of going on. I think that came out a bit in how we're talking about things. But what I, what I love is there's something that we can do about it, right. And so when there's a problem and it's just like like, what do I do? I don't, there's no way out of this that I can see what we have here is like well, no, you know there are jobs out there, there's certain skills and things people are looking for, and so by upskilling in the right areas, by promoting the skills you already have, you know there's, there's going to be opportunity, even in this downturn. So I thought that was a really good takeaway, awesome.

Dave: 31:30

Dave, you know I'm just going to go back to that previous conversation where we started the discussion and productivity and delivery. I think, if I get anything coming, we can have the conversation around hybrid workplaces and so on, and I think that one is Is going to happen one way or the other. I mean that's will be able to choose the organization that we work with to match what we want from a working environment. I think, at least for the moment, the conversation we had around agility and how that's shifting, those two words of productivity and delivery, I think as a focus, I mean certainly is. I'm leaving this conversation, I'm thinking about the next 12 months and I'm thinking, yes, these are things that we have to help, help draw attention to how we're impacting those two awesome I think.

Peter: 32:16

I think for me, it's the taking the time to sharpen sort, looking at this is an opportunity to invest more is, I think, one of the key pieces that it's the, both individually and as organizations, where we look at how can there's this piece of like, how can we improve, how can we focus, what are the things that the organization really truly needs and I really liked what you're saying, brocker, and like getting to that's being specific About where you focus with the skills you can bring in so that people can see that, and using the coaching skills in other ways to help the organization understand where this might benefit them Will then you start to really see the value that you're adding as well, which I think is very bad and awesome. So so, with that, I thank you very much. Brock, really appreciate the engagement in the conversation and, davis, always, it's always fun to have these conversations and you could send us feedback at, feedback at definitely maybe agile dot com. Any last words from you?

Dave: 33:13

I think the only thing I wanted to add to it was that subscribe as well, to keep getting things. I know there's that subscribe button and then just finally, in closing, brock fantastic to catch up with you. Thank you very much for taking your time and Steering the conversation as you have that I think you guys for having me here.

Brock: 33:29

This has been fun and always enjoy talking with you.

Peter: 33:33

You've to Definitely maybe agile the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital agile and devops at scale.