Guest host Nick Polce, Business Agility Practice Lead at Accenture, speaks with Jonathan Smart, Founder, Business Agility Coach and Leader at Sooner Safer Happier. Recorded live at the Agile Australia Conference, this conversation focuses on how psychological safety and Agile ways of working have to go hand in hand for any organization to truly change. Jonathan explains how relying on neuroscience can help teams and leaders embrace “flearning” (learning through failure), and continue to grow even through setbacks.
Guest host Nick Polce, Business Agility Practice Lead at Accenture, speaks with Jonathan Smart, Founder, Business Agility Coach and Leader at Sooner Safer Happier. Recorded live at the Agile Australia Conference, this conversation focuses on how psychological safety and Agile ways of working have to go hand in hand for any organization to truly change. Jonathan explains how relying on neuroscience can help teams and leaders embrace “flearning” (learning through failure), and continue to grow even through setbacks. You can find out more about how Atlassian and Accenture are helping businesses succeed at scaling enterprise agility by surfing to our home page http://accenture.com/atlassian
Nick Polce: Hello and welcome to Scaling Enterprise Agility, a podcast brought to you by Accenture and Atlassian that's all about how businesses can be more adaptive and responsive to the ever increasing rate of change around us.
I'm Nick Polce, your host, and Business Agility Practice Lead at Accenture, and we're recording from the Agile Australia conference in Sydney. It gives me great pleasure to host our next guest, Jon Smart from Sooner, Safer, Happier. Welcome, Jon. It's so nice to chat with you today. How are you and how are you enjoying the conference?
Jonathan Smart: Thank you, Nick. Thanks for inviting me. I'm good, thank you, and I'm loving the conference.
Nick Polce: Excellent.
Jonathan Smart: Lots of passionate people at large companies. They want to improve how they do what they do..
Nick Polce: First time at Agile Australia?
Jonathan Smart: Yes, first time at Agile Australia.
Nick Polce: Excellent. I know you've been to Australia before. How are you finding this time around?
Jonathan Smart: Yeah, great. Yeah, 27 years later I'm back.
Nick Polce: That's a long time between trips. Can we start off by you just kind of sharing a little bit about your story, both personally and professionally?
Jonathan Smart: So, I've been a natural and lean practitioner for nearly 30 years. Um, we started out in investment banking on the trading floor. We were naturally agile. The word agile wasn't being used. We were a small multidisciplinary team. We, were delivering value multiple times a day, business plus tech. So for me, this is like a no brainer.
This is back to the future. This is how we should be working. And then during the course of my career, I've taken teams on the journey from traditional ways of working to more modern ways of working at increasing scale that led up to Barclays Bank, um, across 18, 000 people in 40 countries, 300 years old, the elevator pitch is we have 20 times better quality, we have three times more value more quickly, and we have the happiest ever colleagues.
Nick Polce: It's pretty impressive. Did you know, I'm really interested, your first piece of work was About as agile as you can get. Did you know at the time how good it was or only, you know, as you're moving through your career, reflecting back and saying, we had it all kind of back in the day.
Jonathan Smart: Yeah, the latter. So only in hindsight did I realize what a high performing team we were. Because obviously I'd just left university, I'd just joined as a graduate, I was really fortunate that that was my first job. And also, from, in terms of my generation, I grew up with home computing, the beginning of home computing, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Model B, and I, since the age of 12, I've been programming, at home, because you could, and it was easy.
And so, but even then I'd been exhibiting agility not in a multidisciplinary team, but you know quick feedback loops and everything else so it was it again, it was a no brainer part of your day. It was a no brainer then in that way of working And then I did experience the dark side of waterfall as I then inherited teams with traditional ways of working or the control environments in the company mandated waterfall ways of working and saw, needless work waiting, competing between role based silos, a lack of end to end flow of value, really unhappy colleagues.
Nick Polce: Do you remember how that felt, the first time you went from this, high performing team into a more traditional... Environment? How did that Yeah, so It would have felt very unnatural for you.
Jonathan Smart: Yeah, and I and it wasn't a case that I would slot into it and work that way. I'd be a rebel and be the one to get out of that way of working.
And I there was one team I inherited where I spoke to the team. They were extremely thoughtful ways of working, and I said to the team, because it was really peace to famine, I said, Why are you still at this company? Why haven't you left? And they said, We're united for a common suffering.
Nick Polce: That was their purpose.
Jonathan Smart: That was why they were still at that company. They had a form of organisational Stockholm Syndrome.
Nick Polce: Wow, that's incredible. So, moving on from your experience, you've got obviously a lot of experience across a whole range of different industries. For those that are listening that are unaware, you've created what I call a movement, for lack of a better word, around Super, Sooner, Safer, Happier.
Can you maybe just explain what that is, or the intent behind that?
Jonathan Smart: Yes. So, in a nutshell, we'll focus on the outcomes. Focus on the goal you're going after, not the means to the end. So my learning was, I was ahead of the Agile transformation, we were running an Agile transformation, we were measuring how many Agile teams do we have, how many product owners, front masters, stand ups, who's using Jira, which are all the wrong things to measure.
How many people have we trained in Agile? That was stupid, it was dumb, I wish I hadn't done it, but this is all about intelligent failure and learning. We made a mistake. because Agile is not the goal, Agile is a means to an end, so what's the end? What's the why? What's the outcomes? And in my experience, when I was leading Ways of Working as a permanent member of staff previously, we pivoted to better value, sooner, safer, happier, because that's the goal.
Quality, value, time to value, safety, and happiness. And then it's a bit of Agile, a bit of Lean, in some cases smaller waterfalls, because of historical baggage. Um, it's whatever you need to do to deliver value sooner, safer, and happier, with high quality. so that was the big pivot in year two.
We made that the headline. We took down the posters that had the A word on it. We took down the Agile posters, we put up posters that said, Better value sooner, safer, happier. And data, we measured it. And we made the data transparent. And you have to do that, otherwise it's purely subjective.
Nick Polce: Yeah, and I love that data thread. I'm very much data led in everything that I do as well. But it's very hard for these large organizations to start to measure things. What's your recommendation for executives and leaders around measurement, and what are one or two measures they can start the journey with?
Jonathan Smart: So when's the best time to plant a tree?
20 years ago or today, so just start. The longer you take to figure out what you want to measure and the longer you spend kind of planning it the longer it's going to take them to actually have anything that's measurable. So think big, start small, learn fast. Just start with whatever you can get hold of. I would strongly recommend measuring quality, time to value, safety, and happiness.
Quality, the measures for quality can be whatever applies in your context. If it's IT, CEP1, CEP2, CEP3 outages, it's a good indication of quality.
Nick Polce: I should argue that should be tracking anyway.
Jonathan Smart: It will be tracked anyway, guarantee it. Time to value, I recommend measuring lead time, throughput, and flow efficiency. Lead time is the point of taking something out of the backlog to getting it in the hands of the customer because the backlog is just a Dear Santa wish list. It doesn't matter how long it's in there for. low efficiency, the amount of time it's being worked on, versus the lead time, which is another very, very important metric.
And then, safer is compliance, infosec, data privacy, fraud, anti money laundering. So again, you're looking at where your mandatory controls have not been implemented. You should have implemented two factor authentication, and you haven't. you should have encrypted the data, and you haven't. So that's breaches in the control environment. There's a measure there.
And then happier is happier customers, colleagues, citizens, and climate. HR will already have a measure for engagement. It will already be there and there will already be measures for net promoter support from customers. So, Happier is really important. Happier is the one that's normally missing. The others are normally being measured. that's what I would recommend measuring better, sooner, safer, happier. And then value is unique. It's the how, it's the what rather. The other ones are the how, that's the what. And that's OKRs, objectives and key results to measure the value.
Nick Polce: Great insights for the audience there. Thank you, Jon. In your movement, you talk about seven acts of agility. Can you, touch on those, or maybe which ones are like the top three or something to tackle?
Jonathan Smart: Yeah. Number one, focus on the outcomes, not on the means to the end. So, better value, sooner, safer, happier, not agile for agile's sake, or lean for lean's sake.
Number two, I would say is leadership behavior will make it or break it. Leadership behavior, and this is, by the way, this is not pointing up at them as leaders, absolving yourself of any responsibility. This is everybody as a leader.
This is you as a leader. Even, when you're still at school, Greta Thunberg, Greta is an amazing leader when she was still at school. So, this is you as a leader. Leadership behavior, role model, psychological safety, and an emergent mindset. Three key behaviors. and then, another one I would say is ‘invite over inflict.’
Invite participation. Start with the champions, don't inflict change on people because there won't be intrinsic motivation. There's extrinsic motivation and there will be sabotage, silent or otherwise, so invite participation will be the third one.
Nick Polce: Yeah, fantastic. And then your talk today I very much enjoyed, so thank you for sharing.
You touched on the anti patterns and patterns for business agility. Can you touch on those for the audience here on the podcast? What are some of the common anti patterns that you see, through your interactions with these organizations that you're working with on a day to day basis?
Jonathan Smart: So some of the common anti patterns will be the opposite of what I just said.
So some of the anti patterns would be, we're doing an agile transformation, capital A, capital T, and we're going to inflict ways of working upon you. And it's a program with a due date, um, at this point we will be magically transformed into a butterfly. And that's our butterfly. Another common anti pattern is rolling out squad tribes chapters and guilds that’s top down inflict. So - 4th of September, you're in wave number 8 of 10. You're the next 10, 000 people to move into tribes. We have senior leaders competing to be tribal leaders because it means power and money and influence, even though they don't know what it means to be a tribal leader. We have language like tribes, which I'm not sure I really like that language, to be honest, ‘tribal behavior,’ it's like a, an org design looking for a problem, and you can pivot into a new org design, but then typically the anti pattern is there is no measurement of the outcomes, and there is no measurement of actually why are we doing this thing. and often the justification for doing it is a cost outlay of we're going to let 10 to 20, 000 people go and then everyone else we're going to pivot into squad stripes, chapters and guilds.
And, almost, I think with a narrative org, we'll still be able to deliver just as much value in this new structure as we did before, 10, 000 people go, which is not the case, because same old behavior, new labels, same outcomes.
Nick Polce: How do you navigate that conversation? Because that's one that comes up time and time again: We're going on an agile transformation, and it's masquerading as a cost out exercise. So, what are the conversations you have with executives when you hear the intent behind the change program?
Jonathan Smart: So it depends where people are at on the journey, and it depends how much their personal reputation is already embedded within the thing that's happening, because back to, our brains being survival machines–if someone's reputation is hooked up in this thing and it's already underway and halfway through, very few people will say, you know what, ‘I was wrong. Let's stop halfway through and do something different.’
So I think it's about then a recognition. what I observe is, there is a dawning recognition with empathy and kindness is people are trying to do the right thing. There's just so many unknown unknowns. So In one scenario is this dawning realisation that once we're in the model, in quotes, and we've done this big bang, or series of small bangs, medium bangs, there's this dawning realisation that it's just day zero.
We thought that was done, but actually, you know what, we've just realised that the next five years is the beginning.
Nick Polce: We're just getting started.
Jonathan Smart: We're just getting started. so I see this aha moment happen. Um, and also, in my interactions with senior leadership teams and with ex cos, is I'm going through my narrative of this is all about the most value in the shortest time with these leadership behaviours and continuous improvement.
Nick Polce: It's a journey that never ends for them.
Jonathan Smart: Exactly. It's a journey that never ends. And, dear leaders, you need to focus on the most value in the shortest time with experimentation of psychological safety. And incentivizing colleagues to continuously improve, not just do the doing all day long. So once you have that, once you've got a clear why, clear outcomes, which are immeasurable, and you've got incentive from senior leaders to continuously improve, you are good.
You, you will be successful. Yeah. If you've got a clear why clear measures feedback, the data is transparent, you've got incentive to change. you will improve provided there's a sufficient incentive.
Nick Polce: That's fantastic. And obviously you worked inside Barclays Bank as the head of Agile Transformation and now part of your own niche consultancy, what difference are you finding you're being embedded in an organization versus advising?
Jonathan Smart: For most of my career, I've been working inside large companies, for 30 years. The last four years I've been advising organizations and sharing the mistakes that I've made so that organizations don't need to make the same mistakes. What I have learned is that it doesn't matter what industry you are in, it's just organized human endeavor, same patterns and anti-patterns apply. Whether it's public, private, not for profit, charity, religion, military, it's organized human endeavor. People trying to do stuff. So the learnings are identical.
Nick Polce: Did you find it harder, being embedded in one, or the other.
Jonathan Smart: Like being embedded in the heart, much harder in the company. Because there is this human nature of, you'll have someone in the company say something and have someone external say exactly the same thing. There's this human nature, people will attach more credibility to what the external person said. So I know that, which means now I'm external to companies. I can help amplify the good messages that are already in the company by you know, often saying the same thing as what people internally are saying.
Nick Polce: Yeah.
Jonathan Smart: And it's like, oh my God, these gems of wisdom. Well, by the way, your colleagues have been saying the same thing for the last year.
Nick Polce: He's not listening to them.
Jonathan Smart: You're not listening to them. So there is a human psychology thing at play there. It also helps, um, in terms of human psychology. Having written a book, and shared the learnings, and just having your name as an author on the book, there is a human psychology thing there as well, which is, oh my goodness, this person has written, you know, just like any other author.
There is an additional credibility that comes with that, even though you're the same person, and you knew just as much as you did before.
Nick Polce: Yeah, that's fascinating. I've got a couple more questions before we wrap up, uh, you've gone on this great journey with Barclays Bank over a number of years, I think you said about four years. do you know where Barclays Bank is now with their continuous change journey?
Jonathan Smart: Great question. so one of Professor John Potter's eight steps to change, step number eight,’ institutionalize the change.’
Uh, one of the things that we did while I was there is we rewrote the control environment. So the control objectives and the controls, or at least the controls that implement the control objectives. So that's like chiseling into stone new policies and standards in a highly regulated, control conscious organization.
Nobody in their right mind is going to go back and rewrite those controls to mandate a waterfall way of working, which is how they were at the beginning of the journey.
Nick Polce: Yes.
Jonathan Smart: So that's a parting gift, and when I moved on... One of the reasons is we got to 100 percent of all change governed through the new change environment, the new change controls.
It doesn't mandate agility, it doesn't mandate agile, but it doesn't prevent agile. You can have speed and control. So, once we got to 100 percent of all change in the new control environment, I felt my work was done. Time to move on, to the next challenge, and so I know that has stayed there. And then like every organization, as senior leaders change, there are some senior leaders who will stretch the elastic band and will be more supportive of improving ways of working, and there are other senior leaders who have a different lens on the world.
Some senior leaders might be a bit more deterministic and a bit more used to rank statuses, and some leaders have more psychological safety and some leaders have less psychological safety. So every single organization, and I've been hearing it multiple times just today, you can see over a 10-year time period, you can see periods of getting better change in senior leaders, leaders, a period, like a dip in the curve of better ways of working and incentivizing back to incentive.
Nick Polce: Yeah.
Jonathan Smart: And neuroscience. There's less incentive to change and now just to do the doing and then another change in leaders and you'll see the curve go up again. So there's multiple organizations even just here in Australia who are on their second, third or fourth…
Nick Polce: Correct !
Jonathan Smart: ..ways of working a journey, uh, and I think that will continue to be the case. It's like two steps forwards. 1. 9 steps back.
Nick Polce: Yeah, it's a leader. You cycle through these organizations. They bring their own every time getting slightly further forward. All right. Last question. what's your parting gift for the executives, leaders listening to this podcast? What are the kind of three tips of wisdom you'd like to leave them with?
Jonathan Smart: Yeah. number one, the word incentive. So maximize incentive and minimize threat. So it's two sides of the same coin. Neuroscience– our brains are survival machines and our brains haven't changed in 15, 000 years. Uh, we have loss aversion. We are more likely to do nothing than do something if there's a fear of loss.
Because, if we hear a rustle in the bush, we will expend 200 calories by running away. If we don't run away and there's a tiger in the bush and the tiger eats us, we will lose 20, 000 calories, which is how many calories the tiger gets when it eats us. So we're incentivized to run away a thousand times.
Nick Polce: Yes.
Jonathan Smart: Which means basically not changing. You know, that means running away from change, if it might be a threat to us. So you have to dial, neuroscience, you have to dial the dial up to 10 on incentive to intelligently fail in order to learn, which means psychological safety. So when I say the incentive, I also mean psychological safety.
Most people, every single company I talk to, people are too busy doing the doing, the working progress is too high, nobody has time to talk about the cart with square wings. So, incentive to continuously improve, and psychological safety, number one and number two.
Number three, an emergent mindset, which means acknowledging that the future is not knowable. Focus on the outcomes, focus on the hypothesis, and focus on the, scientific thinking, which is we have some experiments to run to test the hypothesis of whether this is the best way to achieve this outcome and whether this is the best outcome, which means learning through failing. Normalizing, “flearning,” which I got from Optus, learning through failure, which is an emergent mindset if we're going to run experiments and we're going to have an outcome focus.Those three things are the most impactful.
Nick Polce: Awesome. Jon, thank you so much for your time.
Jonathan Smart: Pleasure. Thank you.
Outro: You've been listening to Scaling Enterprise Agility, a podcast from Atlassian and Accenture. You can learn more about Agile Australia, where this conversation was recorded, as well as the work Atlassian and Accenture are doing together by using the links in our show notes. We'll be back with more conversations soon. Follow us now in your podcast app, and you won't miss an episode.