Em Campbell-Pretty

Good afternoon, everyone. As Damon said, my name's Em Campbell-Pretty. For the tweeters among you, my Twitter handle is @PrettyAgile.

I'm one of the founding partners of Context Matters, which is the only consultancy in Australia that specializes in the Scaled Agile Framework, known as SAFe. But that is not what I'm here to talk about today.

Today, I'm going to share with you what I've learned over the last few years about the power of tribes, focusing on patterns I've seen repeatedly succeed in the field.

I first became interested in the concept of tribes and their influence on culture a few years back. Some of you may have seen my talk at last year's DevOps conference, where I shared the story of my experience as a business sponsor and later people leader of a large, struggling technology team.

Something I didn't talk about last year was the culture of that organization. It was toxic. To be clear, that's not my word. That's the word that people used when they came and visited the organization, and the observation they made to people after having been there.

It had such a reputation in the local job market that we could not hire people. People would be approached for jobs in this area, and they'd say, "No, no. I know that group. I know that company. There's no way."

So when I inherited the role of general manager for that group, I certainly had my work cut out for me. I spent about two and a bit years, two and a half years, as the leader of that organization, and over that period of time, the change in the organizational culture...

Having real fun with these slides.

The change in the organizational culture was quite phenomenal. So this video clip may speak for itself.

So that really was a video of a technology team doing the Macarena. And for the record, this was not my idea. This is not something that I made them do. This was their entry into a company-wide competition to win a gift voucher, which they intended to use to buy a PS4 for the office.

Following this event, it got me thinking about what had happened over the two years leading up to that point. And I was chatting with my leadership team when somebody pointed out to me that we'd become like a tribe, and I really quite liked that term. It had a nice community feel about it.

So I started investigating tribes, which led me to David Logan's book, Tribal Leadership. In the book, David makes the observation that people form tribes. They always have. They always will. Just as birds flock, fish school, people tribe.

But not all tribes are equal. What makes some tribes more effective than others is culture. David and his team did a 10-year research study looking at 24,000 people across two dozen organizations, and what they found is that tribes at different levels use different language when they talk in the office.

And they came up with five stages. Stage one is a culture of gangs and prisons, and the language these people use is, "Life sucks." And it occurs in about 2% of the organization.

Stage two is the culture many of us might associate with, say, the public service. The example David Logan uses is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Sort of place where you go and it's quite painful. So their language is, "My life sucks," and that occurs in about 22% of the population.

Stage three is associated with professions like doctors and lawyers. There's no doctors or lawyers here, are there? No? Okay, good.

Anyway, their language is, "I'm great, and you're not." Doesn't sound like any doctors or lawyers I know. This is the most prevalent culture we see in organizations. Occurs in about 49% of the population.

Stage four is where most people aspire to be. This is a culture you see in sporting clubs. Their language is, "We're great, and they're not," and it occurs in about 22, 23% of the population.

And stage five is something that they say is not sustainable, but it's a culture of organizations that have a global impact. So organizations that are curing cancer, as an example.

I have no control over this thing. Not sure why that is. Okay.

So now we know that people are going to naturally form tribes. We know what makes tribes effective. Let's talk about how we make that happen for ourselves.

In Seth Godin's book, Tribes, he says, "A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea."

So let's explore that, starting with how we can connect a group of people to one another.

In my view, the first step is to create teams, and I think Christine Comerford described the type of team we're looking for well when she said, "We want a team that acts like a team, one in which members support one another..."

Don't know why it's doing that. Sorry, guys.

"...which members support one another and work together to achieve the results you need."

So we're looking for teams to be small, seven people plus or minus two, capable of delivering on a specific mission. And the size of the team has a direct impact on its effectiveness. What we're showing you there in the illustration is that a team of five people has 10 communication connections, and a team of 10 people has 46 communication channels. So the bigger the team gets, the more complex the communication becomes.

Teams should be encouraged to visualize their work, preferably using physical information radiators or Kanban boards. Teams who visualize their work are quite simply better at collaborating. They have a better understanding of their world and how each team member contributes.

Once the team can see their work, we want to encourage them to communicate about the work as a team about once a day. So you might be familiar with the idea of a daily stand-up that's used very commonly in the Agile world, or Scrum. And this is often confused with a status meeting, which is not actually what it's all about.

The true purpose is alignment and prioritization, and we're looking for teams to share enough information to solicit requests and receive promises that help the work get done.

Once you have effective teams, you have the perfect ingredients for a tribe, or a team of teams.

The first step in creating a bond across multiple teams is to give them a shared identity. First and foremost, the tribe needs a name, and depending on the name, maybe a theme as well.

Some examples. The team I was talking about at the beginning of this session was called the EDW Release Train. It was an enterprise data warehouse, and it was a release train. Pretty straightforward.

Some names are a bit clever. Worked with an organization with a team called START: Student Administration Agile Release Train. And more recently, GoCART: Get Connected Agile Release Train. And some teams have just got fun names like Galaxy or Transformer.

So once your tribe's got a name or a theme, you also want the teams within that tribe to have an identity as well. So we look for the teams to name themselves after those themes.

Coming back to that EDW Release Train, teams were named after trains. So we had a Thomas and an Astrotrain and a Soul Train, and a Maglev, which is a very fast train.

On the other hand, the Galaxy group has teams called Krypton and Supernova and Mars Attack.

A fun thing to do when these teams are choosing names and beginning to establish themselves is an exercise derived from the product box visioning exercise that some of you familiar with Agile may have come across before.

The way that the exercise normally works is you've got a group creating a vision about a new product at the beginning of a project, and they create the box that that product would come in, when software used to come in boxes before we downloaded it from the internet.

We ask the team to do the same thing, right? We say, "Team, pretend you're a company and package yourselves up and tell us who, what, why, where. Why should people buy your product? Why should people interact with you?"

So that's a really cool activity that can be kind of fun to help teams bond with their identity.

Basically, identity and names help us create a sense of belonging, and belonging's a very human need. So the same way that our sporting clubs and logos and colors create a sense of community, the same holds true here. And when we feel a sense of belonging, it stops the fight-or-flight instinct from kicking in. So it makes us more comfortable being there.

The other thing I'm really keen on doing when it comes to creating that tribal identity is make sure everybody has a T-shirt. In the case of that EDW train, as Australians, we like to go to Bali for our holidays, and what you do when you go to Bali is you bring home T-shirts for your friends. That's just kind of an Aussie thing.

In this case, I had 100-odd T-shirts printed with "EDW Release Train" on the front and "World Leaders in Agile Data Warehousing" on the back. And when I got back from my holiday, "Here, guys, have a T-shirt."

Again, sense of identity. They wear their T-shirts to work. They wear their T-shirts on the train home. They're proud to be part of that team.

So when it comes to connecting a tribe, you're looking at a group of 20 to 150 people. Shared experiences are absolutely priceless. It's important to create a situation in which team boundaries are crossed, and there is an opportunity for that team of teams to bond.

The photos you see here are from a ritual that we called Unity Hour. I use it a lot with Agile teams in particular, where we take the first hour of every sprint. But I've also used this with non-Agile teams, equally if perhaps not more effectively, but more likely on a monthly cadence.

Whatever the cadence, what you're looking for is something that occurs regularly like clockwork. What we're doing is bringing together everybody in the tribe for an hour, once or twice a month. And we're using that time to share what's going on in the organization, hear from our customers why the work that we're doing is important, do problem-solving exercises, or just do some learning activities, or, what is quite clearly, play games.

Nothing quite like a group of adults playing games together to help them bond.

So, connecting people does take more than getting everyone to play games together once or twice a month. We really need to create a daily set of rituals that create that connection. What I like to call continuous human integration.

This idea came from Henrik Kniberg's book. He's quite well known as the lead coach at Spotify, and this particular book was called Lean from the Trenches. In this book, he has this concept called a cocktail party. It's a series of short, sharp stand-up meetings that occur every day that provide synchronization across the tribe.

So the way I tend to like to set this up is that you have a leadership meeting that kicks off the day, very informal: what are our priorities, what are we going to focus on today? Followed by all the teams having their daily stand-up meeting, and then the heartbeat of the tribe, which is this daily meeting of members from all of the teams on the tribe talking about what is going on in their world, and what are the things that the other teams on the tribe need to be aware of, what are their challenges, how can people help?

And this is where people came, or come, every day to find out what was going on.

Following that, sometimes you'd have support teams have follow-on meetings driven by the information coming out of that all-of-tribe meeting, taking their priorities for the rest of the day based on the needs of the whole tribe.

Of course, celebrating is also a great way to connect people. It's also important to remember when talking about celebration that we want to celebrate as a tribe, not a team. We want to reinforce this message that you succeed or fail as an entire tribe, not an individual team.

And celebrations don't always have to be related to day-to-day business. You can celebrate birthdays. You can celebrate milestones, holidays. International Talk Like a Pirate Day is a great opportunity to celebrate. Some teams like to celebrate a year together as a tribe, or number of sprints, perhaps 50, or a milestone like 100.

And by the way, do you know, if you have a team of 100-odd people, you can have birthday cake every day of the year, just about. Just average it out a little bit.

The other thing that's really cool about cake, according to Linda Rising, who wrote Fearless Change, when people eat together, they are more likely to bond because we let down our defenses. So we should eat, have cake. It'll help the team or the tribe connect.

So now we've talked about how we connect a group to one another. Let's look at how we connect a group to a leader.

It begins by getting the leader to go to the Gemba. Gemba being a Japanese word for the real place. To connect with a tribe, the leader needs to step outside their corner office and visit the tribe in its natural habitat, the real place where the real work gets done.

Of course, walking the floor, staring at people, staring at computer screens could be a little bit on the boring side. So that's where those physical visualizations come into play. And what we want those leaders to do while they're at the Gemba is talk to the tribe, talk to the team, build relationships.

Try asking, "What can I do to help you?" and see what comes of that. You'll be absolutely stunned at the things that teams find insurmountable that a leader can solve with an email or a phone call.

Probably my strongest memory I have of a scenario like this was walking around talking to teams, asking them what I could do to help, and somebody telling me that they needed extra RAM for their computer.

"Yeah, okay. Why do you need extra RAM?"

So he tells me that when we changed our software over from one standard operating system to another, that we essentially had chosen software that was no longer able to be run on the standard systems, so he needed more RAM to run the software. And he'd asked for it, and he'd been waiting six to eight weeks, and no one had apparently listened when he'd requested the RAM upgrade or the new computer upgrade.

In the end, he spoke to me, and that was very easily fixed. So again, really, really strange the things that teams find completely insurmountable that a leader can fix.

Some of those problems you might find at the Gemba will be trivial, like the RAM. Others might be more systemic.

Successful tribal leaders know that their role is to serve the tribe. That means taking ownership of the challenges that the tribe cannot solve for themselves.

One approach I've used with that is a leadership continuous improvement Kanban, which you'll see, somebody decided to rename a sporadic improvement Kanban, which is a good reflection on how well that leadership team was doing with resolving challenges for that particular tribe.

So the key is to get the challenges or the change initiatives to come from the teams to the leadership, and for the leadership to take ownership and commit to resolving those issues. And then when those leaders deliver on those commitments, we build trust between the tribe and the leadership.

So perhaps the most powerful way to connect a leader to a tribe is through displays of vulnerability. Of course, this takes courage. As Brené Brown says, "Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me and the first thing I look for in you."

So let me give you an example. Remembering that Macarena that we started this session with, you may have noticed I did not appear in that video. I took one for the team. Someone had to make sure that the Macarena was recorded so the team could enter the competition.

The team, however, did not see it that way. And at the end of that day, there was a complaint brought to the leadership team which said, "Em did not do the Macarena."

As it turns out, Em can't do the Macarena. So this is the compromise that we reached.

So what you've just witnessed is the world's worst ever Bus Stop. There's nothing quite like making a fool of yourselves in front of your tribe or a group full of strangers when it comes to building trust.

Oh, man.

So if you want your tribe to be transparent and therefore vulnerable with you, then you need to find a way to be vulnerable with them.

So we've connected the group to a leader. We've connected the group to one another. Now let's talk about how we connect the group to an idea.

John Kotter, author of Leading Change, says that the most common error made in organizational transformations is under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10.

The thing that's key here is your vision doesn't have to be landing a man on the moon. This is not about boiling the ocean. The main thing your vision needs to be is genuine.

So in the case of that EDW team: world leaders in agile data warehousing. Not the world's sexiest vision, but enough to inspire that tribe to bring their A-game to work every day.

Another tribal leader I work with talks about, "Imagine a world in which you can increase productivity, eliminate waste, release value faster, increase staff engagement." Again, maybe not the world's most exciting vision, but enough to inspire that tribe, to give them direction so they know where they're going.

So why is all this culture stuff important in a commercially driven, profit-maximizing world? Well, to put it simply, happy employees lead to happy customers.

There's a body of research that Bain & Co. did on customer loyalty that's contained in a book called The Ultimate Question 2.0. You may be familiar with this concept. It's known as the Net Promoter Score or Net Promoter System, or NPS.

The way it works is the ultimate question is: would you recommend? Would you recommend this product or service to a friend or colleague on a scale from zero to 10?

We take the nines and tens. We call them promoters, and they're people who would be willing to put their personal reputation on the line to back your product or service. And we take a seven or an eight, we call them passives, and they mean you no harm. They're probably not going to say anything negative about your product or service. However, they're probably also not going to put their personal reputation on the line either.

And six and below, we call a detractor. Detractors are likely to say something negative about your product or service.

So to get your Net Promoter Score, we take your percentage of promoters, subtract your percentage of detractors, and we get your Net Promoter Score.

The second metric contained in this book is called Employee NPS, or eNPS, and it's exactly the same question except we ask, would you recommend working here in this department, in this organization, to a friend or colleague? And we calculate it the same way.

The beauty of this is it's really, really simple. You can send a survey out to everybody on your team, employees, contractors, consultants, everybody on your tribe, on a quarterly basis. Two questions: would you recommend, and what's the reason for your score?

Suddenly you're getting really fast feedback, really live, actionable data that you can use to continue to grow the culture of your organization. Certainly much better than any employee engagement survey that I've ever had to deal with in a large organization.

Any West Wing fans out there? Got to love America. This doesn't play so well in Australia.

So The West Wing, for those who aren't familiar, American television series about a US president by the name of Jed Bartlet. In the first season, it's his first year in office, and he kind of loses his nerve a bit, and he's very cautious, and he doesn't feel that he can do the things that he wants to do in case he unsettles the political climate.

And his chief of staff gets a bit annoyed with him and challenges him on it. Basically, the message they give him is, "Let Bartlet be Bartlet." Be yourself.

So really, bottom line, what is all of this about? It's creating an environment in which people feel safe to be the people they are at work. Creating an environment in which people feel safe to be the people they already are at work.

Looking at the pictures up on the screen at the moment, these are some of the antics that I've seen over the years. We've got people putting skeletons in my office, the management team being off-site and Ryan Gosling taking over the daily stand-up, a gentleman who bet the tribe that we couldn't raise $1,000 for Shave for a Cure, but if we did, we could wax his legs in the office, and then one guy who was upset that he didn't have a corner office, so the rest of the team created one for him, and that would be the streamers in the bottom corner.

So when I left that EDW team that I started this talk referring to, that was about 18 months ago now. They very kindly made a 15-minute feature film for me. And what I'd like to leave you guys with is just a short clip out of that film that might give you a feeling of what it looks like for people just to be themselves in the office.

"AR5869, feature 2034, we still haven't received sample data. Okay, Gene. Okay, bye."

That's supposed to be me.

"So Wayno, Gene and I were just discussing how we can be a little bit more innovative in how we communicate. So I want to try something different at the feature wall. Have a think about it, and we'll discuss a little bit more."

"All right. AR5869, feature 2034. We're still waiting for sample data."

"Hmm. I'm not quite sure that's what I was referring to, Wayno, but have another go."

"Okay, so what we found out at today's stand-up was there are a few issues, defects. Then we did a retrospective. Then we started working our way out of them. That's how the disco's getting done."

"Nailed it, Wayno. Nailed it."

"That's a good blog. I've got to blog. Megsy, got another blog."

I was a little bit renowned for blogging about that team. The day they made this, they didn't know what they were doing, and I'm sitting in my office, which is the other side of that wall, and there is all this laughter, and I've been told, "Do not leave your office." They had a little bit of trouble making that one with a straight face.

Come on.

So I'm not suggesting that everything that's worked for me is going to work for you. But what I would like to do is inspire you as you contemplate what an intentional culture of joy could look like in your world, in the words of Richard Sheridan.

So top five takeaways, as requested by Gene.

A tribe: group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, connected to an idea.

We want small, mission-capable teams visualizing their work, communicating daily.

To create a team of teams, you want to invest in a shared identity and shared experiences.

Leaders need to connect with the tribe at the Gemba. Use what they learn to serve the tribe and have the courage to be vulnerable in front of the tribe.

What makes some tribes more effective than others is culture.

And bonus takeaway: don't forget, create an environment where people feel safe to be themselves at work.

And cry for help on behalf of one of my clients. Interested in talking to people who have experience implementing DevOps in a world of 1,000-plus legacy and off-the-shelf applications, with a view to getting advice on where to invest first and what benefits to look for. So small problem.

We're pretty confident that one of you guys have got that nailed for us. So if you just let me know who you are, we'll be set.

And on that note, happy to take questions.

Q&A

We only have time for one question, so anybody have a burning question before we switch over?

Okay. All right, Randy Shoup's up next. I think in about five minutes, Randy Shoup will be next.