Definitely, Maybe Agile
Definitely, Maybe Agile
Empowering Organizations from the Inside with Barbara Whittmann
Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile! In this episode, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock sit down with Barbara Whittmann, founder of the Digital Wisdom Collective, to explore how real organizational change happens from the middle out.
Barbara shares her 25 years of experience fixing broken digital transformation projects and reveals why the "juicy middle" of organizations holds the key to sustainable change. We dive deep into mindset training, building internal ecosystems, and why most organizations have forgotten the purpose of half their tools and processes.
From navigating the "permafrost layer" of middle management to understanding why AI initiatives often miss the mark, this conversation offers practical insights for anyone working to transform how organizations operate.
Three Key Takeaways:
- Meet Organizations Where They Are - Don't force rigid methodologies or terminology. Use the organization's own language and focus on solving their actual problems rather than trying to "fix" them with prescribed frameworks.
- The Power of Cohorts - Change isn't an individual effort. Building a cohort of four people creates redundancy, moral support, and a self-reinforcing dynamic that can create ripples throughout the organization.
- Communication is Critical - We don't invest enough in helping leaders develop communication skills. Leaders need ongoing support, coaching, and safe spaces to develop their ability to listen, speak up, and collaborate effectively.
Featured Guest: Barbara Whittmann - Founder, Digital Wisdom Collective
Contact: feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com
Peter Maddison (0:08): Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello, Dave. Good to see you again. And today we're joined by Barbara. So Barbara, would you like to introduce yourself?
Barbara Whittmann (0:23): Absolutely. First of all, thank you guys for having me. I feel a little bit outnumbered here, but I'm Barbara Whittmann, founder of the Digital Wisdom Collective, native from Germany, but I've been living in the US and Colorado for the past ten years, close to the happy city of Denver, where the new tech capital is growing. And I've spent twenty-five years of my career fixing and saving broken digital transformation projects. The patterns I've seen in that endeavor have always been the same - it's not really the tech that offers us the issues, it's more the people in the equation. So out of my twenty-five years of creating a toolbox for myself that I've reused over and over again, I've constructed a best practice framework that I'm now teaching to organizations because I'm a strong believer that we need to go from more of an external-driven approach to empowering the insiders of the organization.
Dave Sharrock (1:32): Makes a lot of sense. I was going to say that resonates so much. Denver is a city that I've been to many times, and of course the Scrum Alliance is headquartered there. So we've had many conversations around Agile and Scrum. And your last sentence that you ended with, Barbara - that people are the... you know, we need to empower people to get the best out of the organizations - is a recurring theme. And I think we'll have an interesting kind of deep dive into it. But maybe we can start with what are the examples that you've seen of where empowering people has really created a tremendous change versus maybe scenarios where you've not been able to empower people, and that was really something that highlighted the difference for you in your context?
Barbara (2:26): Right. So transformation projects in my experience are driven by the - I call it the juicy middle of the organization. It's the people that really pull up their sleeves and they're in the trenches. And they'll see very early on what's not going right, but they don't feel like they can speak up. So that's something I see for the most part - they're like, "Well, you know, we're just little worker bees here. We've seen all along for the past three months that something's not right." So when I stepped in as the rescuer, I gave them a voice. But when I stepped out again, their voice vanished. So I was like, "Well, you know, I've got to do something with what has worked for me - what has empowered me to be in a position to really step it up." And that was a very different mindset than what I have found. So in my books, mindset training of the middle management layer is essential. And it really starts with looking at yourself and seeing what are my limiting beliefs, like this little voice of "Oh, I'm just a worker bee, I can't really say anything. What do I know? Consultants have the voice," right? So a big part of my framework is mindset training. And what I've seen from participants that have gone through the program - they take matters into their own hands, you know. In most organizations, it's like "Oh, but I've got to wait until C-level decides, or I've got to wait for something." And they come in with, I want to say, a little bit of a rebellious edge, you know, in a positive way.
Dave (4:06): Yeah.
Barbara (4:07): And it's basically about the coalition of the willing, right? So they're coming up with their own plans of "Hey, you know, to really succeed, I need this and this and this to be successful. Or if I want to build out my department, this is my plan for the next five years." So they're really turning around the equation and they go from being a victim to really being a driver.
Peter (4:32): It's interesting what you're describing there, because where you start with limiting beliefs, that takes me into the coaching space where I think about how as coaches we help people overcome limiting beliefs. And where you're sort of leading them towards is becoming more systemic in their thinking, getting them to think more broadly about the system they're operating within, which are both subjects Dave and I like to chat about a lot.
Barbara (4:57): Yeah, absolutely. So I basically teach a couple of people in the organization how to build their internal ecosystem. So essentially it's just a different angle to DevOps, what I'm teaching, because they're building their own internal ecosystem and they remain part of an external learning ecosystem with the Digital Wisdom Collective. So it's the ever-renewing cycle of things. Because I also believe we need to get away from thinking that training people is a one-time equation. Essentially, it's like an operating system, and like we upgrade servers and other things in the organization, we need to continuously upgrade people.
Dave (5:39): As you're exploring some of that... I find it really interesting because - and I think we're going to explore perhaps where Peter and I typically get involved - as much as, certainly I can speak for myself, as much as we want to spend time helping the individual and helping them get that positioning and that mindset, and you've talked a little bit about what that shift looks like, we're often... again, let me speak for myself - it's often we can influence one or two individuals that we're maybe working with very closely. However, most of the organization we still have that responsibility. You mentioned a little bit about the consultants having the power. We still have that responsibility to move a bigger kind of slice of that organization forward in some way. So we end up maybe not being able to spend the time we'd like to on those individuals and that mindset shift. What have you seen that allows, or how do you see the difference between working with an individual and their mindset shift versus working with an organization and getting that middle layer shifting in lockstep as they go forward, learning on their journey?
Barbara (6:52): It's a little bit of a chicken and egg equation, right? So you've got to start somewhere and change starts with one. It's very simple because they're creating ripples, and that's what our entire system is based on - that the individuals that are trained in the organization are creating ripples and are a little bit infecting others with their positive thinking and their innovative thinking. Are there other measures that need to be taken to transform an entire organization? Absolutely. Are there possibly other layers that need to be looked at more on a broader cultural level? Yes. But these change measures are usually much broader and take much longer. As you guys know, it's something that is a work in progress. But what I can offer is basically a starting point in the middle to say, "Okay, if you bring four people, you at least have a dynamic that can multiply." And also, why do I start in the middle? Because change ripples outwards. And it usually is a much faster thing, especially if you look at individual smaller departments than if you look at the entire organization. And you're totally right - to turn around and shake out an organization and make it better, it takes a whole different approach.
Peter (8:17): Yeah, it kind of brings me to the bottom-up, top-down, middle-out thing. So you're trying to influence the organization from all those different places. One of the common pieces that I know Dave and I have seen in organizations is quite often that permafrost layer - where the leadership is brought into change and they set a new direction, but they fail to change the incentives, then the middle management is often being guided by a set of incentives which don't necessarily match up with the change that you're trying to make. And so the change just doesn't filter down and nothing much really happens as a consequence of that.
Barbara (9:01): Absolutely.
Peter (9:01): Yeah, do you... when you see that, what's your approach to try and help the senior leaders think about what they need to change?
Barbara (9:09): I definitely offer workshops that are part of our pilot package where I align the C-level leaders in how they look at change. So it's a parallel effort. I would train four people out of the middle management and I would have two alignment workshops with the C-level leaders that get things kicked off. And of course, to keep it going, you need to continue working on things. But essentially, yes, if middle management is changing their mindset, C-level leaders need to be part of it too. Are they generally open to buying into this? It depends, you know, because they do think they're very experienced and they don't need to change anymore, which is an interesting thing, right?
Dave (9:55): I'm not sure how you go from... That's an interesting mindset. And so the next bit of loosening things up and getting them buying into that change... Can I... sorry, go ahead, Barbara?
Barbara (10:06): Maybe just to add a little something. So the common layer I've found that everyone can identify with is values. So this is something that the middle understands, something the top understands. So usually I would go into the C-level and do a values workshop because that to me is the first layer of alignment, and you can derive decision patterns, decision matrix and such from a value baseline. So that usually has the least hurdle to jump, and then from there, if people are willing, you can go deeper.
Dave (10:42): Can I repeat back what I'm hearing? Because I think there's a couple of things that our listeners might want to draw away from it. Number one - I was mentioning earlier where often, at least in my experience, we're able to influence one or two individuals. And I wanted to draw attention to what you're describing about getting that cohort of four, which has a little bit more redundancy in it, and there's a little bit more moral support and covering for one another and calling out what might be going on if you've got that core of four people. Which I think is interesting - it's a great number because it's not too many where people can hide, and it's not so few that people can't really support one another as they go. And then the second piece - in order to get executive buy-in or senior leadership C-level buy-in, the starting point is around values and principles about... can we agree how decisions are made? I'm interpreting a little bit, but can we agree on how we can align the decision making and the trade-offs that we're going to have to make as we move forward?
Barbara (11:49): Correct. And you know, most times I only start with the middle layer of people because C-level can best be brought along if you have results. So, you know, their biggest thing is "We want to have our initiatives to be successful. We want them to be delivered on time." So if I can train up a couple of people and I can actually show how things have positively impacted, then it's a no-brainer. Usually change work or culture work or any of that kind - there is a general allergic reaction in some organizations.
Peter (12:27): Yeah, that's the... the immune system, as we call it, the organizational immune system, where it reacts badly to change and sometimes fights back.
Barbara (12:38): Yeah, and that's okay. You know, it's just about what is the way in and how can I help the people that are in the trenches to make their lives easier.
Dave (12:49): So now we talked a little bit... I love this point about inertia, the institutional inertia, because one of the things I've realized is it's one of the bugbears of any organizational change. However, it's also something that once you're able to bring that institutional inertia on your side, all of a sudden it helps because now it's reinforcing change in the direction that you're trying to move. So it's not something that is inherently a problem, it's something that you actually want to build. You just want the inertia to be supporting the change that you're doing, not opposing it. And I'm a bit slow, but sometimes I do reach these realizations. And I think that's one of the big changes - all of a sudden, how do you subtly change that inertia so that it's reinforcing the change rather than opposing the change? Are there any preferred ways of doing that? What have you seen works really well to kind of make that shift in mindset around that institutional inertia?
Barbara (13:55): So, first of all, I want to say that as we as individuals have limiting beliefs and paradigms, every company has them, right? So it's something that is deeply ingrained and you can't just shake it off and air it out. So, from my experience, it really is about showing results and really showing "Hey, you know, how have we made something better?" And there I prefer to go a little bit of the guerrilla route and come in with maybe one department that's just functioning a little bit better. We do have an assessment we do at the start of our pilot - that's a six-month period - and then at the end of it where we can actually measure and show how things have improved, or ideally, we would walk along an initiative or an innovation project that's just going smoother. And smoother meaning that silos are less prominent, that people actually get together. And the most important thing that I've seen and that we teach - and it's a repetitive cycle that we keep ingraining over and over again - is that people understand the problem before they jump into a solution.
Dave (15:11): It's like you've worked with technology teams before. "I know what the answer is. What's the problem again?" Yeah.
Barbara (15:20): Right, right. It's like... and it's honestly, it's not rocket science, it's very simple things, but we're all repetitive learners. So even in project teams, you have to repeat every time why are we in this? What is the goal of this? What problem are we trying to fix? So, you know, it's also implementing just good habits to do things right, and it's by no means changing the methodology or the tools they're using. I go in and I trust that they're having a great tool stack and that they're having a great methodology. It really is about making them collaborate and interact better.
Peter (16:04): Yeah, I'm not entirely sure that it's true on that last piece, but they have the one that they have, is usually the way I describe it. When we talk about mapping things like value streams, we say you already have value streams - it's how you deliver value. Now they may not be perfect, but they never will be, but they exist because otherwise you wouldn't be delivering anything.
Barbara (16:25): Absolutely. You know, what I find is that for the most part, what people are missing if they have a bunch of tools and methods, it really is the orientation bit, you know. And you know, I may be outdating myself now, but when I was starting to do road trips, we still had a map you could put on the hood of the car and say, "Oh look, we're here, we want to go here." And so that's basically artifacts I would help them establish - to have a landscape, a printable landscape, again, old-fashioned, of how systems and data are related, for example, and that they can hang in their meeting room. You know, it's amazing what these things do.
Dave (17:08): Well, I mean it drives the conversation, right? So all of a sudden the issues that are arising, that collaboration and coordination that you're discussing comes out of having a clear landscape understanding or common shared understanding of that landscape. It's interesting as I'm listening to you describe the approach and the experiences that you have, Barbara. It aligns so well with what Peter and I have experienced from an agile sort of DevOps transformation perspective, which is... you know, the phrase that keeps coming to mind is "fit for purpose." And you come into an organization that has a technology stack, has processes, has ways of working that were fit for a purpose that might have been different to the one they're in now. And I think that's one of the key things - understanding what the organization has in terms of assets and ways of working and things like that, and what they're trying to achieve and see where the gaps are, what's missing, because once they see that, they can often already start having a conversation about what needs to change. It becomes more obvious.
Barbara (18:16): You know, honestly, I think they've forgotten the purpose of some things they have. It's like a cluttered garage.
Dave (18:22): Yeah.
Barbara (18:22): You just... you don't really know what you have in it. So, you know, I keep making the case that if they were to go through the inventory of licenses they have... it's either because they tried something out or another department clicked on something. You know, if they were to take all of that out, they would free up a lot of money. Just imagine.
Dave (18:45): We're a small organization, and one of the things we do every quarter is look at all of the bills that we're paying on a monthly basis, because invariably there's two or three tools there that we were using six months ago and we're not using anymore.
Peter (18:58): Yeah, yes, yeah. Priorities change, you don't need that subscription anymore. It never worked out as an experiment, and so now you need to move on, do something else, do something new. So, Barbara, one of the... when we were chatting before this, one of the comments you made is you said you wanted to pick our brains about agile. And so I'm curious... because we've been talking about a lot of these pieces. But go ahead.
Barbara (19:24): Right. I have a bit of a history with agile, and when I was working at SAP what feels like eons ago - over twenty years ago, actually - I was in an innovation team and we were the first ones to try Scrum as an agile method. And it worked quite well, and these days it's a standard that SAP is using throughout the organization. Granted, it took a little bit, right? And I keep going into organizations that claim they're fully agile, but then when I see what they do with it, it really is something that's different, you know, it's maybe running on one cylinder of agile. So what I would be curious about is what do you see at the bandwidth? You know, is there like a fully purebred agile, or is it in most cases something that's just a little bit fumbled?
Dave (20:15): I'm going to let Peter answer this one.
Peter (20:20): Oh come on. Yeah, yeah, I mean... So I'll give my perspective. I think there is a... and Dave and I have talked about this on past episodes before - and over many beers - that there is a bad tendency to end up worshipping at the Church of Agile, like this is exactly how it must be done. And "thou shalt" have a fifteen-minute stand-up, not a minute longer, and you've got to have all of these other ceremonies throughout, and it's got to be done this way and that, which unfortunately sort of deviates a little bit from the entire point, which is much more along what we've been talking about in the first half of this podcast, which is around designing these sort of fit-for-purpose ways of working that are going to work at that organization. And it's more about how do we figure out... we want to think about how do we deliver things in smaller increments? Because if we can deliver things in smaller increments, it opens up opportunity to make decisions faster and to learn faster and build that learning culture within the organization so that we're not planning out year-long projects and funding these and trying to stuff everything into them when we know that a year from now the market's going to have moved on, and what we would deliver then isn't what the market's going to need. So we understand that and we need a different way of delivering. And agile is intended to aim for that. Unfortunately, as Dave will quite protest, Scrum gets equated to Agile, whereas they aren't really the same. The goal and... much as we were talking about earlier, where we lose focus on what the actual goal is, the same thing happens with agile implementation. Is there anything you'd add to that, Dave?
Dave (22:08): This could shut down the conversation. We could just talk for a long time about this. Maybe there's two points that I'll just add into what Peter's describing. And it relates to what we were talking about earlier around institutional inertia because in many cases, if I look at the adoption of new practices or new mindsets... the sort of classic crossing the chasm technical adoption curve - as you get to the late adopters and the people who will never happily adopt, the institutional inertia means that they're now co-opting the language. So what I'm seeing a lot is you go into organizations that never really wanted to change. They're begrudgingly agile and they're co-opting the language effectively to say "We're agile, leave us alone." And in those organizations, we actually find that you can't use the terminology, the vocabulary that we're used to. And we have to - and we're talking about this - focus on results. We have to help them view... is what they're doing, whatever they choose to name it, is what they're doing serving the purpose that they need to be following? So you find that this shift becomes... it is again institutional inertia to prevent additional change in that direction. And the way we end up getting around it is leaving that vocabulary there, allowing them to call what they're doing... I used to go in and go "No, this isn't agile." And we'd do an assessment and show how definitely not agile this is, and that just ramps up the wall, right? So nowadays I walk in and go "This is fantastic. I'm so glad you've been using agile all these many years." And then we'll sort of turn around and go "How's it working for you? Where are the problems?" And to your point, what are the problems that need solving? What's the value that can be created by making some small changes in this department, this team, whatever it might be? And literally just ignoring that terminology.
Barbara (24:17): Yeah. What I often find is that the problem lies much further in front of any methodology. It really is... I don't know what it is now. Is it like fear of missing out or something? That the amount of initiatives that's on the list of small companies is just hideous.
Peter (24:41): Oh yeah, work in progress. Yeah, yeah. We're trying to do everything.
Dave (24:44): Well, and a lot of that I think is... none of us know how to stop doing one thing and call it a day and pick something new up. So we maintain too many plates spinning at one time, even as change is causing us to change our direction and motivation. And it's... I mean, every organization struggles with that, but I do feel it's endemic right now.
Barbara (25:09): It's ramped up quite a bit, and especially with the coming of AI and so many different forces in organizations. You know, the board says "You guys have got to do something with AI," right? Not giving any direction, and then it kind of snowballs from there, turning into interesting things.
Dave (25:28): Yeah. This must be a really interesting place. You work so much with the people side and you talk a lot about that sort of digital wisdom. It feels to me like AI is ripe for a conversation there around applying digital wisdom to something that everybody's trying to add into the mix. What have you seen? How do you bring order to that directive of "We have to use AI"? "Give me an AI."
Barbara (25:58): "Give me an AI." Oh my god. There's so many different angles. So, first of all, I love AI because it is in a way the perfect storm, right? Whatever organizations said they were doing really well, right? Like the business and IT alignment - boy, it all kind of flings and is getting turned upside down. So that to me is amazing because it shows really the underbelly of everything, right? So that I love. And how do I deal with that in terms of alignment? Well, you know, it's stabbing right in the heart of it. So that really calls for a conversation on different levels and really having workshops with the C-level. And we usually go in and we call the workshop "Mindset Before Machines." And it really is questioning what are all the assumptions in the room? What is really the problem that they want to fix? And the interesting thing is we have a four-pillar model that we go through with people in the questioning, and we start with AI as a topic, and by the end of it, once we have the problem actually defined in the next steps, there is nothing of AI on the table anymore, because it usually is a very mundane problem that needs fixing, right? So that's an aha moment where a lot of people are like "Whoa, you know, maybe we should take the foot off the gas a little bit here," which is great, and then we can have a real conversation of priorities and such, and who needs to be empowered in the organization to then actually lead and drive these initiatives. Also from an entirely different angle, looking at it... last year for a stint of four months, I was an interim global IT director. So I was on the receiving end of things, which was interesting. And I can tell you guys, being on the other side of the fence is no fun.
Dave (29:01): Yeah.
Barbara (29:02): So I was going through the entire budget haggle and whatnot. And what was presented to me as AI initiatives usually were things or problems disguised in AI that should have been fixed a whole lot longer in a different way. Also there's a lot of unintended consequences that people don't think about. It's like "Oh yeah, but we can store all these high-resolution photos," but then we need to store it for three years. And I'm like "Well, that costs you server space for about a hundred thousand a year." Everyone's like "Whoa, you know." So AI really calls for a conversation where a lot of people are at the table.
Dave (29:10): Yeah.
Barbara (29:02): And this is really the prime example of alignment. And boy, if you don't fix it before you get started into it, it costs a lot of money.
Dave (29:10): Isn't it another example of that... a solution looking for a problem instead of understanding the problem? Let's focus on the problem, and then maybe AI has... you know, I mean, there's so many different components that are captured under the umbrella of AI, so many different things to work on. Maybe there's a problem that there is a solution in that space for, but in many cases not, right?
Barbara (29:33): And no doubt it will change the way we work and the way we run our businesses and processes and everything, but we really cannot force it because we need to fix a basic issue, and that is that our human-to-human interaction has not been the best, you know. I mean, we're trying to put an intelligent prompt into an AI solution, and we have a hard time really communicating to our coworker what we need, you know? It's like, let's stay real here, right? And if a problem persists within people and you're trying to transform it into AI, then you're just training the machine to do the same thing. So we really have to change our mindset. And here it really is a case where it's the most prominent, where we need to break the innovation box because if we stay within, we're just going to repeat the same thing over and over again, just more expensive.
Dave (30:33): Can I just inquire a little bit about that? We've talked quite a lot about that sort of... I think you described it as the juicy middle layer at the beginning. And we talked a lot about the workshops and the communication and the expectations you have going upwards to leadership or senior leadership. And now you're touching on communication between humans, but that's often my middle layer talking to their team members or people providing services that they're needing within the organization. What steps do you take to help that cohort of four people that you're working with interact more effectively as they're going into their teams?
Barbara (31:17): So, first of all, I do take four people out of one organization, but I put them into a mixed industry and company cohort. So that is one step of really getting out of your own echo chamber because if you train people within the organization, there's never really the effect you want, right? So I did something that everyone called me crazy for, but that's nothing new - you know, that happens occasionally throughout my career - that I'm putting different companies, different industries, and even different hierarchy levels together. Because what I want people to understand is that more diversity is more innovation. So we meet monthly in a mastermind, and everyone can bring their challenges and we dissect and fix them. So they learn how to properly listen, how to define a problem, how to give feedback, and everything they've learned about themselves, about their own new mindset, they can test drive, they can try out, right? Because it's a safe space, they can show up in a very different way that they cannot do in their own organization. And that builds their muscle of communicating, of speaking up, of asking questions. And then they can go back and apply that instantly.
Peter (32:36): So it's like a coaching cohort. You're helping them become better leaders, better communicators, better listeners as a part of that. Yeah, but I like that. I think it's a good method to help them, as you say, build that muscle. And it often gets missed, like helping those leaders learn how to communicate, especially on the tech side, where very often the reward for being good at your job is to be promoted, and now you're on your own. So it doesn't necessarily mean you have those skills. Maybe if you're lucky, you get an hour-long class once a quarter that you have to go to that'll maybe teach you some of the basic skills, but you need a lot more than that to start to really truly develop those.
Barbara (33:22): And certain things you just don't want to ask within your organization simply because you don't want to look like, you know, the person who hasn't gotten it or, you know... So I basically give them a sandbox where they can come in and they can ask anything.
Dave (33:35): Yep. Yeah. And I think of that as almost like an apprenticeship model over time. You're going to learn by applying and getting feedback from a cohort of people who have shared interests but not the shared headaches because they're in different parts of the organization or in different industries.
Barbara (33:54): Yeah. And you know, because usually we would always go to the same people in the organization to ask questions. But if you see in a mixed cohort that, you know, maybe a UX designer who you would have never asked actually has a really good viewpoint, you're encouraged to within your organization also go and ask very different people.
Dave (34:16): Go ahead, Peter.
Peter (34:17): I was going to say, are we at that point in the conversation?
Dave (34:21): I think it's been a fascinating conversation. We're just touching on one of the things that I'm coming away with - coaching is not dead. We've talked so many times about agile coaching and where that's been going. And what I find so fascinating is this is sort of opening the lid on coaching back in the world of coaching. There's so much that you're saying that really resonates.
Barbara (34:42): And I have to say, what made me an excellent consultant is that I'm a trained coach, I'm a trained facilitator. So I really think that you need to develop your skill set that is much broader than your profession, always. And then you can combine it into a superpower.
Peter (35:03): Yeah. This was actually, I suppose... if I was going to say something nice about Agile for Change... one of the good things about the agile coach in general, if you think of the different roles, the agile coach roles - the trainer, a facilitator, the coach, as well as the technical expertise and these different ways of showing up for the team and showing up for the leadership to help them through that. That's exactly as you say, Barbara, all those different skills that they need. So we normally wrap up these conversations, Barbara, with sort of three points we want our listeners to take away. So as the guest, would you like to go first? You only need to come up with one, by the way. I thought I said that.
Barbara (35:51): Well, that takes the pressure off a little bit. I really love what you guys said about leaving the organization's own language - to really meet them and pick them up where they are and not try to fix them, if you will. So I love that. And that's something I deeply resonate with and what I do in my work, and I think that was also a little bit of my own perception of Agile, that it's a very rigid thing. So thank you. That opened my perspective a little bit, and I like that.
Dave (36:30): Awesome. Dave? I'm going to come back to that cohort piece. And one of the reasons that I really like that, and I think it's just a good reminder that first of all, change isn't an individual thing. As much as it's individuals making ripples, you need a group of people who are sharing their experiences and supporting you and so on. And sometimes I think we've - certainly in my experience - shifted away from building cohorts that are sort of self-reinforcing in an organization to trying to infect change through individuals or small programs and so on. So I'm going to certainly take that away and rethink a few things because I think that cohort mentality is something that has a lot to offer.
Peter (37:19): That was actually going to be my takeaway too.
Dave (37:22): So there's a plus one there?
Peter (37:26): And then a plus one on that one. I'll have a third point though. I think the importance of communication is a very critical one. And ensuring that we're putting the right practices into place and that we're helping our leaders learn how to communicate is a critical piece as well. And I don't think enough work is put into that. Or in some cases, enough work put into encouraging the leaders to go and engage with that, because that can also be one of the big problems - it's very hard to send somebody to be coached. They've got to be willing to go and do so, they've got to be willing to go and learn, otherwise their behavior won't change along with that. So yeah. Thank you very much, Barbara. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for that. And thank you as always, Dave. And we'll wrap it up there for today. And as always, people can reach out to us at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com and look forward to the next time.
Barbara (38:27): Great. Thank you. It was fun talking to you guys.
Dave (38:30): Thanks a lot, Barbara. Thanks, Peter.
Peter (38:32): You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.
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