Behaviour Stories Workshop.
A process to help leaders manage the culture. Specifically, one that surfaces bad behaviors, and systemically and sustainably eliminates them.
”I really enjoyed the course. It gave real food for thought. I think Ahmad was inspirational. He had us all really engaged in the room. 7 days after the workshop and we are all still enthused. We are seeing real “small changes” across the different project streams (whether they work is yet to be tested but we are actually trying). It also allowed us to spend “quality” time with our UK reg projects colleagues. It made me realise that there was a good relationship between the teams and the course helped make it stronger. It was fun, I laughed a lot throughout!”- Workshop attendee from a a major investment bank
Culture is the codified behaviours of organizations, both adaptive and maladaptive. The maladaptive behaviours are usually born during periods of stress and are the result of quick fixes, and local optimizations. Systemically removing these bad behaviours is necessary for creating the environment that unlocks people's greatest asset; their ability to collectively solve difficult problems in elegant ways, or in other words, to create beauty.
There are always toxic behaviours. This workshop provides a process to uncover them, understand where they came from, and suggest solutions to stop them. Doing so will take time, but there is nothing more important for an organization than to manage the culture.
Background.
Key Principles.
The Behaviour Stories Workshop works well in a context that supports continuous improvement over a culture-flip approach. The following are 6 key principles that we stick to throughout the process.
1. Manufacture Purpose & Urgency
2. Do Experiments (not Projects)
3. Manage Friction by removing and creating it
4. Create Small Near-Term Wins that snowball into Massive Wins
5. Change Very Little but change the Right Behaviour
6. Actively Manage the Culture
The Workshop.
Part 1: CAN Goals.
Manufacturing a sense of urgency is the first step in surfacing toxic behaviours.
However, the key is in creating this urgency by establishing a goal, rather than reacting to a problem.
A CAN goal provides just enough external force to start the behaviour change process.
The CAN Goal consists of 3 attributes:
Part 2: Behaviour Stories.
This is a 3-step process to identify the toxic behaviours and understand why they exist in order to meet the CAN Goal:
1. Gather BS
The first step in this part of the process is by using the behaviour stories template:
“To achieve the [CAN Goal], [X role/person/group] has to stop doing [Y behaviour]”
We will collect as many behaviour stories as we can as a collective, writing them on Post-It notes. One or two people may have answers to what needs to change.
2. Visualize Organizational Debt
Clustering the behaviour stories on a wall will provide an accurate representation of the organization or department’s current actual culture. The cultural underbelly.
We then vote on which behaviour stories are the biggest blockers to achieving the goal within the established constraints
3. Root-Cause Analysis
Using the lens of the CAN goal to help isolate the real waste, we apply root cause analysis techniques to get a deeper insight into why the highest-voted behaviours occur.
Each behaviour story would now evolved into a more complete story with both the symptom and potential root causes.
Part 3: Behaviour Mapping.
The final step in the process is to generate as many experiments as possible that target changing the underlying behavior of the story - solving for the root cause, not the symptom itself.
These will be short-term 1-month experiments that will be evaluated for effectiveness once they are complete.
Outcomes.
The creation of an environment that allows change by manufacturing urgency.
A renewed sense of urgency by creating a CAN goal.
Surfaced toxic behaviours holding the organization/department from meeting the goal.
An understanding of the behaviours that need to change and why they exist.
Eliminating the toxic behaviors surfaced by generating experiments targeting their root causes.
A sustainable momentum that can be built on by creating an environment that allows change.
Duration:
6 hours online.
Or
1 day in-person.
Who the Workshop is For:
Scrum masters or agile coaches looking for new patterns to introduce into their organization.
Program/project teams (key stakeholders, development managers, project managers)
Development managers who are considering introducing agility into their teams
Organizations who want an incremental approach to agility
Any team that is looking to improve its performance
