Matthew Philip

[00:00:08] Hey. Hello. Hello everyone. Um, first apologies for those of you who speak only English. Uh this is your only English option, I think at this time, so, uh, sorry, you get me. Uh but anyway, thank you for being here. It's nice to be back. Uh this is one of my favorite conferences in the whole world. So, uh, it's really a delight to be here. Uh, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, uh let's go. Uh so a few years ago, uh I got a a chance to meet with this group of executives from Walmart, South America. They wanted to have a tour of Silicon Valley and the the company I was working at at the time, uh gave them a nice little tour, some of the top companies. Uh some very dynamic leaders in this group. And one in particular was the CFO of Walmart South America and he mentioned to me uh this the story of this uh feature that they made a few years ago called scan and go. A lot of companies have this now. At the time it was kind of new for them. Basically you you automate your your cart, you don't have to check out. Uh but he said that he he had really no idea what this was. He basically had told his teams, I think he was working in America at the time. Uh he just wanted some things that would help drive profitability, help make the organization competitive. And uh it wasn't until after they developed this and they had rolled it out that he found out how successful it was. And to me it was a an amazing story of how one of the highest level leaders had basically no clue what was happening at the levels below him. But it was wonderful because he said, I didn't even see it myself. And so it was a great example of how leaders at every level uh can do things to empower people and work at the right levels and got me thinking about how to help other leaders to learn to work this way. So, that's what our talk is today on level collapse. So here are things I I hope that we'll learn today. You can let me know, but uh we'll talk about flight levels and how they show us where to work in an organization. Um, how to identify some of the behaviors that lead us to level collapse. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. What causes that? And then how to find out for so each of us here, where where should we be working in an organization? Um. And then what activities need to happen? So, uh, why I care about this and maybe why you care about this is we really want to improve the lives of our colleagues ourselves, but also help people work in a more engaged way, work at their best, of course, improve organizational agility and improve the flow of value end to end. Um, okay. Any any managers here? Okay, all right. Hey. Okay. Uh, the right crowd then. Okay, good. Uh, okay. So, um, anyway, Klaus Leopold likes to say, having agile agile teams doesn't make you an agile organization. And I think that's one of the things that flight levels helps us to understand why that's true. Okay, so what's going on in our workplace today? So we have on the people side, we have uh middle managers uh really feeling like they're not performing well and they're experiencing low levels of uh success, compared with upper level managers and then individual contributors, team members. Um, most middle managers say they're at risk of burnout. I don't know if that's true for you. Hopefully not. Um. And then less job satisfaction and we have, oh, sorry. Uh and then connection. We have very little connection with what we're doing. Uh workers at all at all levels. Uh, and then the flow of work. I don't know how much time you spend on meetings. Email. Uh anybody do zero inbox? Any old timers? Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay. Couple people. All right, good. Uh, I don't I'm not I don't know how many email you have for the rest of you. Uh if it's in the thousands or 10,000. Uh, okay. Uh, you use your your inbox as your to do list, maybe? Okay. Uh, okay. That's not today. Um, so anyway, we we really don't have a way to manage flow end to end. And that's a problem. Uh and then we have a lot of dependencies in our organizations and then we're actually losing just from an organizational standpoint, losing productivity. So, uh, a lot of organizations have experienced disruption whether from within or from without. Uh especially at the leadership level. So you can see again, if you consider yourself a leader, a manager, individual contributor, it's all this this the impact of disruption is is not good for us. Um and so you can see how we're thinking about uh extensive disruption uh by job level. All right. So uh similarly, a lot of us feel micromanaged. Uh I'll talk about how that's different from level collapse, but similar to. Uh so four out of ten workers report uh feeling mismanaged or micromanaged. All right. So, uh those who feel micromanaged are much more likely than those who do not feel micromanaged to report feeling stressed or tense during their workday. So, you can see a lot of these things connect to each other and are not good for us. Okay. So, uh, I'll just read this. It's a rather long quote, so just be prepared. A leader who believes that he can make a positive difference through continual personal intervention is usually deluding himself. He thereby takes over things that other people are supposed to be doing, effectively dispensing with their efforts and multiplies his own tasks to such an extent that he can no longer carry them all out. The demands on on a senior leader are severe enough as it is. It is far more important that the person at the top retain a clear picture of the overall situation than whether some particular thing is done this way or that. So it feels very contemporary. I don't know if that's your experience. It feels like almost on a daily basis I experience this kind of thing. But this is not new. This is actually uh from uh a couple centuries ago. I don't know if anyone has anyone heard of Van Moltke? Okay, good. All right. So, uh this is not a new phenomenon. This is happening in the the Prussian army a long time ago, but it's happening to us in our organizations today in the 21st century. Okay, so here's my definition of level collapse. Uh it's when managers work below their intended organizational level, neglecting higher level strategic and coordination responsibilities for lower level operational tasks. Okay. Anyone old enough to remember Donkey Kong by the way? All right. That's good. All right. So, in other words, you may be working here, uh but you really need to be working here or here, uh higher levels. Okay, so this is all predicated on the concept of flight levels. Just a quick show of hands, who has heard of flight levels? All right, good. So hopefully you can check to make sure this is accurate. But uh for those of you, uh hopefully this will this will help you understand what's going on. So, this comes out of the the Kanban community, uh Klaus Leopold, uh namely, it's a thinking model. All right, so it's not a framework, it's a thinking model. It's just something that helps us think more effectively, a thinking model that helps you find out where in an organization you have to do what in order to achieve the results you want. So again, it helps us think about where we need to be. Uh the idea of the idea of flight levels, it's kind of like your level of elevation or altitude. So uh if you're at the lowest level, so uh, you know, level one, like a butterfly in the garden. Uh, the second level, maybe comme un oiseau. You can see a bit more. Uh, a bird's eye view. And then the the third level, comme un avion. You can see everything, uh, wide, uh, but nothing in in real detail. So, this is a mental model, a thinking model to help us kind of get an idea of where things are happening in the organization. It's not meant to be three boards or three levels organizational, uh but really just a way to think about what's going on in the organization. So, the the first level is the coordination or executive or execution level. Things where the work is getting getting done, the day-to-day work that's getting done. Uh level two connects those things. So, think end to end, uh flow of value. And then the top is really the strategic level, helping connect those level two processes, those level two delivery systems. Okay. Um. Right. So we need leadership at all of these levels. And so for those of you who maybe you're seeing yourself, maybe working a lot of times we work at multiple of these levels and that's okay. Um, but the idea is that we want to kind of probably move up a level. Okay. So, uh again, so kind of start visualizing yourself, where might you be working in your organization? And so, uh, right. So I don't know if you have examples of if you've seen some of the level collapse behaviors. So I I've had one uh person with a C in her title uh would come to uh just appear in a training session, uh with she's not in the training session, but she just wanted to check on her people, check on who's here. Okay, that's interesting. Uh, maybe a director is the only person who has the authority to close a sprint in Jira or someone with a particular title. I don't just examples here. Um, I don't know if you have examples. Uh but uh managers who drop in on on retrospectives, just kind of uninvited. It's not always bad, but it's just kind of behaviors. And it you kind of get this picture of someone who really doesn't know what to do with his or her life and just kind of uh just goes and hangs out with the people doing the work. Um, that's it's fine if you're lonely, I guess, but really we want to give those people something to do because it's actually important. It's not just a matter of not doing something at the lower level, but there's a lot of good things to be doing at the the higher level. So, um, so first, don't don't hear what I'm not saying. Uh it shouldn't be a case in which leaders are are too good to do level one or level two work. Uh, we we need we need that kind of leadership. We just need a different uh sort of uh place for them to to be effective. Okay. Uh. Right. So some things you might experience, these are kind of, oh, sorry. Uh if you have any of these things happening, maybe you're doing these things or maybe you're you're experiencing them. Uh this might be a sign that you're experiencing level collapse. Right, so I I use this empathy map. Just to kind of get a sense of what's happening in our teams, in our organization. So, uh hopefully you've or maybe you've used empathy maps before. But basically, to think about people in your team. This is who it's for and we really want to help them to do their best work. So, uh, what are they seeing? They're seeing another reorg. Maybe this is happening for you. Managers are popping up in my meetings. People who aren't really in the team, but they don't have anything better to do perhaps or they're they're not trusting that we're getting things done. Maybe they're maybe we're in a remote setting and people are just kind of making sure that the mouse is moving. Work is appearing without context. So we get work into our system. We don't know why or where it's coming from, but we have to do it. Uh, so we might say, why are we doing this? I don't know why. Um. But what we're doing is basically only the work that's been given to us, that's been queued up for us, that's been spoonfed for us. And often times it results in we call the uh asymmetry of voice. Basically, uh in terms of psychological safety, people don't always or feel comfortable speaking up, so we'll keep quiet. Uh and then just do this. We need it by this date, do more perhaps. Okay. So, what we're thinking and feeling? I know how to do my job. Leave me alone. Let me do my job. Don't make me come to more meetings. Don't make me uh answer these emails. Don't make me do these processes that don't add value that someone said that we have to standardize on. Um, I am losing motivation and I need to look for a new job. Okay. So, uh these are some diagnostic questions. Maybe you can ask these of yourself or maybe these are things that are happening to you. So, uh how often does your manager provide clear direction on goals and strategy? Okay. Uh engage in day-to-day operational tasks. So these are the the manager type who kind of need to be doing something. Uh given the autonomy for the team to carry out responsibilities, we heard that this morning. Um, what is the broader organizational context of of my work that I'm doing? Why does what I'm doing today matter to someone? Um, similar giving guidance on how our work aligns. And how much is it current or future thinking? Uh, how often does your manager or maybe do you have a conversation or even coach someone who's in your in your group on how to grow? Uh this is kind of the uh example that Mary Poppendieck, uh I think, mentioned a long time ago with respect to the entrepreneur and the professor types of roles in an organization. Okay. Uh how often do you invite people to pair on on work with you? Maybe some a subordinate or someone who's working at level one. How often do you invite that person to work with you, to pair on some of the things that you do? Okay. All right. And then just the idea of are we talking about how or why we work? And so, uh this comes from uh an organization called uh the Vega factor. They have a lot of good research on motivation. intrinsic motivation particularly. Um you can see the effect of the kind of people's autonomy over these types of categories that we have. So, where we work, when I work, and how I work? And the interesting thing, how I work really is what we can be doing is allowing people to have more autonomy over how they work. And you can see it has the biggest effect on people's um motivation. All right, so we talk a lot about flow at this conference, the flow of value. There's another kind of flow, the flow channel. Has anybody heard of this concept? Me high cheeks at me high uh Hungarian. Uh yeah, basically this is how how we as people experience the way we work. And so, it's kind of I don't know what the French phrase is being in the zone when you actually you feel like you're doing well. You know what the next task is, time seems to just evaporate and you're just kind of in the in the moment. You're doing good things. It's when your skills align with the challenge at hand, the task at hand. And so you can bounce in and out of the flow channel. Each of us has our own personal flow channel. But if your skills uh outstrip the task or greater than the task, we experience this sense of of boredom. Likewise or contrary wise, I should say, when the challenge is greater than our skills, we get anxious, we experience feelings of anxiety. And so as you might imagine, people who have leadership skills uh who are actually working at too lower levels uh experience boredom. Is anybody have to do approvals of things? Approval of hours. Uh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, that's not a good feeling. It's not not a good use of your time. Probably you probably know how to click and approve something. It's probably not the most exciting part of your day. Um, but what do you do? When you when someone asks you to approve something, what do you do? Do you think deeply about it? You just you just kind of click and get it over with, right? And so that's what we're talking about. We leaders have skills that are more valuable and shouldn't be doing those things. So, what leads to that? How do we get there? Um, this is actually, um, there's there's something called the state of the global workplace. And there's a quote that was in this this report, maybe it's true of you or people you know. Here's the quote. When I feel pressure at work, I have to push the engineers and pressure them. I hate doing this to other people, but in our job, we have to do this. So, I think again, cultural expectations, organizational expectations, create this kind of thing that most of us don't even really want to do. You know, we think about the evil manager, I don't want to become the evil manager. Um, most of us don't want to do that and yet this is kind of the expectation. Uh, another cause for me is really just observing the the Peter principle. Uh basically people who uh are put into roles that they're really not suited for. Um and research shows that some companies tend to promote employees to management positions uh based on their performance in previous roles, rather than on actual manager manager or leadership potential. And they're likely to perform poorly as managers. Uh 70% of middle managers actually like to be individual contributors again. I don't know if that's occurred to you or sometimes you get to a leadership role. It's not really leadership, it's just a a management role where you have to do a lot more approvals, right? And so most people, it's not surprising, would actually like to be back in a team again. Uh and so basically, the the takeaway is that employees who maybe excel at level one types of work may lack the competencies or the aptitude to succeed at levels two and three. Okay. So, you might say, it sounds like this is just like your kind of fancy term for micromanagement. It's similar, but not exactly the same. Because micromanagement can maybe seem as something that's like a personal flaw, like it's just a personal defect, you know, your micromanagers, your control freak. Um, but it's really usually more organizational, more more uh system level type of behaviors that we see when we see uh level collapse. Uh and by the way, I'll I'll have this posted on my blog, so and I'll share the slides, so uh if it's a lot of reading for you, don't don't feel like you have to memorize it this late in the afternoon. Uh but basically, one of the things I want to point out is really some of the things that are neglected. So some of the things where we have need for personal development, higher level vision, giving end-to-end awareness of what's going on, giving the context, the why. That's micromanagement is not necessarily the opposite of that, but level collapse is really preventing us from doing those things. So, flight levels talks about having multiple activities that we need to do at each level. Some of those things look different at each level. So, uh so you can see uh all these apply. Um visualizing the situation. The situation at the team level or the level one is going to be different from visualizing end to end. Uh likewise strategy level. Uh but really creating focus, what is the focus of a team, what is the focus of a level two end to end uh board or flow flow uh visualization? Uh and measuring progress, what that looks like at each level and then improving and iterating on that. Okay. So, in general, uh the way I kind of categorize these things is the why and the when needs to happen at the higher levels, uh the what and the how well, so what's the level of fidelity, the level of quality, the level of service delivery and then again, at level one, it's mostly about the how and the what. Okay, so things that I kind of pay attention to metrics-wise at these different levels, uh and things I use. I think we had heard about some of these things earlier in the day, so I won't go into too much of that. uh board or uh flow uh uh visualization. Uh and then measuring progress what that looks like at each level and then improving and iterating on that. Okay, so in general, the way I kind of categorize these things is the the why and the when needs to happen at the higher levels, uh the what and the how well. So what's the level of fidelity, the level of quality, the level of service delivery and then again, at level one, it's mostly about the how and the what. Okay, so things that I kind of pay attention to metrics wise at these different levels, uh and things I use, I think we had heard about some of these things earlier in the day, so I won't go into too much of that. Um but at level two and three, it's really not about the board, it represents more points of communication, linking things together, optimizing value streams end to end. Uh okay, so seeing workflow end to end is a is really a key job at level two. I don't know, how many of your organizations have ways to visualize end to end of value. You probably have jira boards that show your team or some part of the value chain. Does anyone have good end-to-end? Okay, yeah, a few. Good. Yeah, okay. You must have uh come to the conference before. Uh that's great. Uh so yeah, so again, maybe this is just on a a physical board if necessary, because part of our tooling is just not up to up to speed yet. Um or we just focus on those level one boards. Very few organizations that I've worked with and for over the years have an actual way to see end-to-end flow of value. All right, so that's a key part of this. Um if if, you know, we talk about eliminating dependencies if we can, but mostly they can't be, but we we want to manage them where we can. And so that's again, a level two concern. We want to um figure out what teams are working on things. And so this concept of of uh flight levels turns into flight items. So things that flow across your organization. Sometimes they dip down into level one, sometimes they go up for an approval at level two or three, go back down into uh level one. So the flight paths again, using the the metaphor of an airplane or something that's flying. Um but you don't have to do a reorganization to do that. And that's the key here. A lot of organizations are very disruptive because they introduced reorganizations. If you're familiar with the kind of Cotter's dual operating system, you've got the level system one, which is the organization the the hierarchy basically, and then level or system two is the the value creation network. How things actually get done. So this is a way for us to actually at levels two and three span across those things and create a sense of of delivering value without reorganization. Okay. And level three is about bringing the strategy into action. So, um it's about do we align all these things together? So these things should be connected. Again, maybe not a board for each level, but multiple boards and they should be connected. And so, uh uh again, adding a level three board or level three visualization is something a lot of organizations don't have or if they do have them, the teams working at level one have no access to them. Uh and so again, if you're a a leader who might be thinking about level two, level three, connecting those things. This is a lot of these things may already exist and so it's just your job to connect them. Okay. The idea though is that these these things are more than documents. They're really a way for us to have conversations and interactions. Okay. Uh again, this is just an example from from uh Vega factor.
[00:24:04] Okay. Uh again, it I would be remiss if I'm at at the Flowcon conference and didn't say anything about managing our work in progress and limiting work in progress. But again, this is important point that Klaus talks about is really, it doesn't do much good if we have limited work at maybe a work item stage, a workflow stage, or even a team level because what happens is work gets built up in in the in between. So we talk about workflow management, but we need to be concerned about weight flow management, the stuff that's in between. And you can only really see that when you visualize levels two and three. Um and so, you know, work gets gets kind of stuck in between these phases here, no one's no one's proactively managing that. So he he proposes uh that we manage work in progress at the highest levels of the organization. I think every organization I've worked for or with over the multiple decades I've been working has a work in progress problem. Uh I I mean, there's all these great agile practices and XP practices that was my kind of introduction to agile. Those are all great things, but I think most problems would be solved if we just limited work in progress at the highest levels of the organization. But most most people have no clue how much work is happening in their organization. And so you can only really achieve that by visualizing at levels two and three.
[00:25:29] Feel free to interrupt me by the way, if you're like, that's that's silly talk. Um anyway. Uh so, this is a a nice lightweight tool, it's not new, uh but uh I find that a lot of people don't know about it. It's basically uh the concept of strategy deployment, uh and I use X-matrix. I learned this from Carl Scotland, who many of you may know. I think he's spoken here before. Uh but this is again a simple way to help us connect what's going on at the tactical level or the level one with higher level concerns. And so, if we think about the uh the long-term objectives here being the strategy, uh and then along with these the the things on the left here, uh enabling constraints and then at the top, those are the tactics or the kind of experiments, the ideas, the actual a lot of times the projects we're working on. Those are the things that are meant to be connected. The nice thing about the X-matrix is that it allows you to visualize how connected are these things. So you put little dots in the corners to say, yeah, this thing actually seems like it's it's strongly correlates or has a connection or contributes to this thing here. And so, if you find that you've got some kind of a a strategy goal here, but no strategy that's connecting to it. That's probably a heuristic for saying, we need we need one or maybe that's not a good goal. Uh likewise, if we have a bunch of projects in flight at the top, but they're not really connected to our strategy or our high-level goals, why are we doing those things? So this can be kind of a helpful way to get a picture of that quickly.
[00:27:07] Uh these are a couple colleagues I worked with a long time ago, uh from ThoughtWorks. And they were two in a box leadership model. And it was great because they were working with at higher levels of the leadership group and and more global. And we were out doing work and the the workforce is all distributed and so we were on projects and consulting all all the time. So we didn't really have a good way to get in touch. But these guys were very, uh very disciplined, so every week they would record a like a five to 10 minute video session, just the two of them talking about kind of off the cuff, what's going on in the organization. And it was a great way because when you're a leader, you have access to conversations, interactions, meetings that most people in your teams do not. And so we have a tendency to think, oh, everybody understands what I'm the information I'm getting. But if you think about, you have a certain kind of maybe goggles or glasses that you get to wear, that you allows you to see things in the organization, you need to share those glasses or those uh lunette uh with other people on your in your team and throughout the organization. These guys did a really nice job of that. because again, you can do it different ways, they just did a a five to 10 minute video and then they would publish every week and we knew what was going on. It's great. Uh one of the nice tools again, lightweight canvas type tool is this back briefing A3. And so, for me, it allows us to on a page convey up and down through a through an organization what's going on or the particular idea we have. And the magic for me on this on this particular A3 is is this boundaries thing. So it really helps us make our freedoms and uh the constraints explicit. So, uh again, if you're if you're in the business of approving things or uh you know, people have expenses or they want to buy things, often times that slows us down. That's that's friction in the organization. When we put our thoughts and our again those goggles, those those lunette onto a page like this, it allows our teams to make decisions in freedom without having to always ask for approvals. So that's another heuristic. If you're getting requests for approvals rather than people just telling you what they're doing. Uh this idea of intent-based leadership, this is really supportive of that. Okay, uh I won't ask all these questions, but again, as leaders, we need to be thinking about different types of questions at at the right levels. So, uh again, there's things that a team is concerned with, what what are the interactions, what are the uh what makes them fit for their purpose, but then we have to think about what makes level two and level three fit for their purpose. Uh and so again, these are just some examples, I mentioned weight flows, no one's looking after weight flows unless you're at level two, uh connecting those in between the teams.
[00:29:56] Okay. Uh again, reframing what is the role of a of a boss or a manager, a leader. This comes from Amy Edmondson's book, the Fearless Organization. She's known for psychological safety research. But really, if you think about yourself as having to have the answers, again, this goes back to maybe the organizational cultural expectations that you have to know things. She talks about uh being a a know nothing. Uh so, I don't know if you have the the the safety in your organization to say, I don't know.
[00:30:26] Um kind of like the the Walmart executive who said, I don't even know what's going on. Uh and a lot of companies I've worked for, that would be like career suicide, that would not be a good thing to admit that you don't know, even if you don't know. Um and so the idea is that we want to kind of switch our our framing of what leadership is, uh and then again, our role as leaders then changes. because now we're empowering people, now we're helping coach them, we're enabling them to learn, uh even learn our own jobs. Which can be scary sometimes.
[00:30:58] Uh okay, uh again, this is all in the intent-based leadership uh line of thinking, really pushing authority to the information. So, if you do uh have to have some kind of organizational requirement that approving people's time or approving people's expenses. How might you make that? Uh those rules more clear for people to be able to do these things, uh push that that authority down to where the information is. Because again, if you're if you're approving things, if I've done this before in myself my own career, am I going to go and like check on people to make sure that they worked? What what am I doing here? Right? I'm just going to tap submit, submit or approve, approve. There's no value add going on there. And so if you if you need to have that happening happen, push the authority to the information or where that that's actually happening.
[00:31:48] And then refactoring meetings. Again, I think this is I've seen this over the last five years with the proliferation of remote work. A lot of organizational cultures tend to um if if you're not seen, if you're not being if you're not turning up on all the meetings, no one knows you're there and no one thinks you're doing any work. Uh and so meeting proliferation happens. So, uh I started doing a a little club in one organization I was with, it was called the 50% Club. And you became a member of the club if you could show that in a any given week, you actually had 50% of your time or less spent in meetings. And so a lot of people say, how how do you how do you prove your value if you're not in meetings all day? Uh well, you're actually doing thinking work and helping. Uh anyway. Maybe you have some good meetings, hopefully you do.
[00:32:42] Uh okay, another another great uh role I think at levels two and three is the concept of of Yokoten. Again, this is not a new concept, this comes from Lean. The idea of bridging or sharing across. So there's some beautiful bridges in Paris. That's one of my favorite things about being here. Uh if you think about, if you as a leader, you're bridging, you're not imposing standardization and standardized practices on people, but you're elevating, you're amplifying what's going on in the organization so that other people can benefit from that. One one company I worked with, we had a monthly uh science fair. So we had experiments going throughout the organization, people would write an experiment on A3 and then every month we would have an open forum, not mandatory, but we would just have the opportunity, the the space, we were creating the space for people to share. Again, that's what levels two and three leadership can be doing.
[00:33:30] Okay, so just to to conclude things. So, uh what what this looks like
[00:33:37] uh for us is I would say working up a level. So wherever you are, if you can work up a level, uh that's what I would encourage you to do. So, uh I have three general categories for this, product management. If you consider yourself in product management in some form, uh these are maybe some things for you to be thinking about. So instead of doing this, instead of prioritizing things, maybe um creating some policies that allow the team to work into that and uh make their own decisions about what's important and what could make an impact.
[00:34:12] Uh okay, right. And again, this idea of future facing work. So instead of just really focusing on what's happening now, thinking a bit ahead, getting ahead of the team. Again, level one is working on the stuff today.
[00:34:27] Okay.
[00:34:29] Uh right, so this is if you're kind of in the business of flow management, process work, helping people work more effectively, uh and get value through the system uh from a flow management standpoint. Here are some things you might consider. Uh and so, again, using a lot of things to make things explicit, sharing those goggles or those lenses with other people that you have that maybe they don't have.
[00:34:54] And then people leadership. So if you if you are in a role where you're helping support people, um I I call it the business of autonomy support. So, do you meet to have a not a review with someone, but say, how can I serve you? How can I make your life better? How can I help you become more engaged? Give me uh assignments to do. So, if you have one-on-ones with people, maybe think, how often do I give that person something to do as opposed to how often do they give me something to do? I actually a few times I've just made it explicit. I'm going to meet with you, you know, you work in my team or I'm your manager. In our one-on-ones, I don't want to have you take away anything to do. As soon as I see someone writing something down, I've said, what are you doing? This is this is for you to give me work to do. I need homework. I'm working at levels two and three. This is your opportunity to give me something to do. Again, most of us as managers who we are effective in teams, maybe don't know what we're meant to be doing at levels two and three. And supporting people, uh creating that autonomy support is something that's really helpful. Uh again, going back to some of those statistics about work today. Okay.
[00:36:04] Uh right, just some questions kind of a reality check for yourself. Um I don't know if these are helpful for you. Um but basically, am I creating, am I working on the system as opposed to in the system? That's a kind of what I would categorize levels two and three doing.
[00:36:25] All right. And even this is the concept of reflective improvement loops at levels two and three. Working with other leaders. I think I see a lot of leaders who are siloed. They care only about what's going on as opposed to that concept of Yokoten working across, uh working with other leaders to be more effective. Okay. Uh this is maybe the second time we've seen this quote today. Uh it's it's a great one. Um but uh again, most people don't know that uh he was a flight levels practitioner, but uh this is helpful. Hopefully uh helpful for us today.
[00:36:58] Okay. Uh I'll end there and uh take questions if you have any questions or comments or feedback. Rocks, tomatoes.
[00:37:14] Any questions?
[00:37:19] Or comments?
[00:37:22] Or comments or disagree?
[00:37:25] Oh yeah, or other opinions. It's just I'm proposing some ideas here.
[00:37:39] Yeah, thank you. Um, it resonates a lot with what I'm on, yes. It resonates a lot with what I'm living currently in my company. Um, I feel like I'm probably belong to the level two, as you describe it, but some of my bosses too, and uh how do I get them to operate at the level three?
[00:37:59] Is is the question how do you get your bosses to operate?
[00:38:01] Yeah. At? If you should be working at level two?
[00:38:03] If you should be working at level two?
[00:38:04] Yes.
[00:38:05] Yeah. So I think it's a lot of just question asking and maybe modeling. So if if you're modeling some of the things. one thing, um I did uh uh this is with a kind of it wasn't executive level but kind of the next level above where I was, uh they brought me in to facilitate some of their planning meetings. And I I started it with a safety check. So maybe if you facilitate retrospectives, you might do safety checks, but I did a safety check with that group because I kind of sensed that there was some tension there and they probably didn't get together very often. Uh and they liked it. And in particular, my, I call him my grandboss, like my my boss's boss. He's like, this is really cool. I'm going to take this and I'm going to use this with my the people I work with. And so I think just modeling some of these behaviors, sharing, uh I mean, maybe not bragging on yourself, but just saying, hey, this was a successful thing. Most leaders like to kind of figure like they they like to hear things that are proven, uh and that that work. And if you say, I've I've done this and it's really helped my team that I've given them some autonomy here or that I've started doing maybe stay interviews or whatever you want to do. And then sharing that and modeling that so that they can they can do that too, or maybe telling them what you need as well. Uh and or what you don't need. Say, I this is this I already have this from the board, or I what I don't see is end-to-end flow of value, or I don't see and it and it's costing us, or it could be costing us.
[00:39:36] Okay, thank you.
[00:39:38] You're welcome.
[00:39:51] Hello, and thank you for everything. The um you mentioned lean practice, and uh one strong thing in the lean practice is the gemba, the fact that for the manager to go on the floor and um see how everything is going. How does it fit with the the level clubs, how is it opposite, does it fit together?
[00:40:14] That's a that's a good question. and it and it's costing us or it could be costing us. Okay, thank you.
[00:39:51] Hello and thank you for everything. that uh You mentioned lean practice. And uh one strong thing in the lean practice is the, the fact that for the manager to go on the floor and um see how everything is going. How does it fit with the level collapse? How is it opposite? Does it fit together?
[00:40:22] Yeah, it's a great question. Uh so the the concept of the, the walk, go and see, go to the shop floor or go to where the work is happening. First, it's it's been increasingly difficult to do that with remote work. It's like where is the work? There is, do I go to your house? You don't want that. Right? So how do you how do we see where the work is? Where where is the work? So that's that's one one issue that's difficult. I think the other thing in traditional lean practice is that leaders go not to blame like, hey, what's going on here? Uh but really it's how can I help? And so you're invited it's explicit invitation to help. And so you you that the manager role there is actually to help provide either uh guidance or learning opportunity or to kind of link with other parts of the organization. Uh so I think it's a good practice and does fit with the concept of level I don't I wouldn't consider it a failure or a level collapse. I would say that's a good manifestation of of level two leader or level three leadership. Um the difficulty is how do we see where the work is? And so I've been really interested in the concept of like virtual obeas. So big rooms where we can see stuff and allow access to other people to see that because there is no one place anymore like in the good old days where we had a you know, team space and everybody's working around. Does that help answer the question or? Yeah, I think it's good actually.
[00:41:49] Let's say uh you're managed by a person who acts like the left column. Uh, how would you approach uh the topic so he acts more like in the second column.
[00:42:03] Yes.
[00:42:06] Yeah, do you want to you want to pick one? Uh, is there any particular one? Yeah, how do we how do we help get someone from over here to this? Yeah, so Yeah, well, um, so I'll start with the last one since I was already talking about safety checks and the concept of psychological safety. I think a lot of people come in, they're like, oh, this is a safe space, or a town hall. It happens a lot in town. Like the highest level leaders are like, hey, you can you can ask anything here. And we all know that's not true at all. Right? Because the last guy who who like questions something is like no longer here for some reason. And uh, so you know, so, so it's it's having that conversation maybe not in the meeting. But saying, hey, there's this thing called a safety check. You might want to try this, you know, not assuming that there's safety because again, you might have good intentions. I'm sure, you know, people have good intentions that they really mean that it's a safe place. place you can ask anything. But to assume that can be difficult. So I think it's just just kind of sharing, I mean, all the stuff you're learning at the conference, stuff to share with people. But usually it works better when it's an individual one-on-one conversation.
[00:43:14] Euh, you suggest that people should level up. If we think about descaling Agile, would it be relevant for you to suggest to level down?
[00:43:29] Interesting. Okay, so leveling down. So you're maybe you're seeing people working in frameworks at higher levels who are maybe disconnected. Is it I'm I'm inferring a lot of things maybe. Yeah, so working a level down being more familiar. It's kind of like the concept. Yeah, yeah. I think that's appropriate. Yeah, because again, you can't support people who's work you don't understand. I think there's a lot of that actually where there's disconnection. You know, like you'll see these kind of reports like the red Amber Green reports or everything's good. It's like the watermelon reporting, you know, it's green on the outside, red on the inside. Um, And a lot of times they don't they don't truly know. Sometimes they're covering up, they do know, but a lot of times they they don't know because there's not safety, there's not good connection points uh between the two. So I think that's leveling or working down a level can be helpful in those. Yeah, that's good. Thank you.
[00:44:23] Ah, thank you.
[00:44:33] Um so you you start talking about the Peter's principle, right? And maybe I missed it, but then you advise everyone to, you know, move up a level and I'm expecting if it can, you know, always work. Yeah, say the last part again. So the Peter principle? Yeah, and maybe I missed the link uh but like we can advise everyone to move up a level and to to start acting like at the next next level, but yeah, if we take Peter's principle into account, maybe uh not everybody is able to to do so, you know.
[00:45:04] Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that's where again, thinking about the flow channel, uh where we there's like maybe a skill gap there. So maybe you you don't have the power to say, uh you need to work, you need to stop being a higher level manager and go back into a team. Now, obviously there's organizations where there is that level of safety and that level of ability to say, I tried this role and it's not working for me. I'm going to go go back and do this other role where I was really good and I like it. Um that happens a lot especially with tech careers, you know, because I think organizations don't really know how to handle good technologists. Um but if you don't have that freedom and safety to to do that, I think it's a matter of of skill work and just developing the competencies that someone might not have and you know, Again, like most people if they if they don't know, if they're they're new managers, if they're honest, if you're able to have an honest conversation, they they will admit they don't know what they're doing. And I've had that happen where people will say, I don't know I'm I'm in this role and what what should I be doing? Like especially, you know, the way some people roll out Agile, you know, everybody goes Agile and they follow a framework and there's particular roles. There's no particular role. I mean, obviously if you're using a framework, there's some higher level. They they've made roles for manager types, but most of the time, people don't know what they're supposed to be doing and even in the some of the frameworks, it's not really helpful roles. It's more like command control type roles. So, I don't know. Competency development is my short answer. I don't know. How does that how does that fit?
[00:46:36] Ah, thank you.
[00:46:44] Thanks for this talk. I want to ask a really simplified question about all of this. So level collapse, is it when you are like at level two and you you should be at level two and you don't do it? Or is it when you are at level two and you do also level one?
[00:47:01] Yeah. Uh, good question. I think it can be both. So it's if I can go back to the my definition. I think it manifests itself in different ways. Um So Sorry for the last slide, sorry. Ah. Okay, we'll get there. I don't know. Yeah, okay. Um, yeah, I think you're already at level two and or you you should be. I mean, I think depending on your context, you'll probably have a sense of where you should be. But it's also you're not exclusively limited to one level. Again, this is just a thinking model to think what's going on in the organization, what kind of decisions have to happen, where do we need to visualize things? Where do we need to limit limit work in progress? Um, so you're often spanning multiple like between one and two or two and three. Maybe not so much levels one, two and three. So.
[00:48:01] Thank you.
[00:48:08] How how do you do a safety check?
[00:48:10] Oh, okay. Yeah. Any expert, I mean, I've been talking a lot. Anybody wanted to explain how to do a safety check? Any facilitators? Okay. Uh, safety check. Yeah, it's it's a anonymous way to assess the safety in a room. So, for example, uh if I were to assess safety here, uh I would have some way for you all to convey to me your level of safety, your ability to to speak freely, essentially. Um, so you can do that with Post-it notes. I could pass out a bunch of Post-it notes and have you not give me your name. The key is it it needs to be anonymous. Uh, you can do this with online tools as well, as long as you assure people that they're anonymous. I've I've been in groups where they have some kind of like a polling uh software and it actually records the person's email, right? That's not a way to engender trust. Uh, so I usually like to do it low-fi with like a, you know, uh Post-it notes. And then you you you collect that and you find out uh is is the requisite safety here? Like if if someone's like for uh one one traditional approach is like uh ESVP. Explorer. So you you indicate whether you're an E, explorer, I'll I'll go anywhere, I'll explore any topic, I'll speak freely. Uh or S, is shopper. Uh if there's a topic here that's interesting, I might I might jump in. Otherwise, I'm just kind of browsing. Uh V is vacationer. It's better than work. I mean, I might be in this meeting, but I'm day dreaming, I'm not going to talk, I'm just it's better than spending an hour working. And then uh P is prisoner. So anything, if you have any Ps at all, for example, you don't have safety. Um and you can't assume that there's safety. Now, you might say, well, if it's all Ps and Vs, maybe it's not great. And so you have an opportunity to then change course and say, all right, I'm canceling this thing, this retrospective, this meeting, or we're just not going to be able to talk about important things. I don't know.
[00:50:14] Yeah, it helps. Thanks.
[00:50:15] Okay, there's yeah, you can probably Google it. But it it's I'm surprised that yeah, like not more more leaders know how to do or know what this is because again, I I mentioned Amy Edmondson, the concept of psychological safety is so so foundational to work getting done, um effectively and us working together effectively. I think it's a good thing for us to be aware of.
[00:50:42] We have time for one last question.
[00:50:48] Or we can stop here. Okay.
[00:50:53] When you arrive in a organization where everybody or most of the people are working down the level with what do you start?
[00:51:03] Uh, yeah.
[00:51:06] Uh, I usually start when everybody's at level one.
[00:51:09] Everybody's at.
[00:51:10] most of the people. Uh, I I try to visualize the end to end. And then like what's what all's in our system. So, uh, you know, you have leaders who have tasks to do because they're they're given they can't just be doing nothing. So I I try to make that visual. Just put all the stuff on a on a board somewhere. You know, we we know what the teams are doing because they have Jira or whatever it is. But what's everybody else doing? Or what's what are the teams doing that's not on your board? So just kind of making everything visible. I think it's like one of the core practices of bond method, make things visible. Always a good start.
[00:51:48] Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Uh
[00:51:52] Thank you very much. And it was very good.
[00:51:51] mercy, very nice.

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