Agile for Executives | How to capture an Executive's attention?

so how do you describe what is agile to an executive let's find out hey friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is vibor i am an executive agile and leadership coach based in toronto canada and this video is part one in a three-part series where i will try and answer the age-old question what is agile with the hope to provide an overview to an executive and in the process of doing so gain their buy-in and hopefully make them our agile champions i hope that this three-part video series gets you comfortable

with the idea of what agile is and how you should go about describing it specifically to executives in this video which is the first in the series i will talk about how to get an executive interested and curious about agile now of all the topics related to agile this question what is agile tends to have the most confusion and misconceptions around it so in the second video i will talk about what agile is and what it's not in the third video i will provide a sample business case with quantifiable scenarios which you can use to

help executives pick agile over waterfall also as a reminder starting next week i am going to be publishing agile and productivity specific tutorial videos on youtube and unlike these videos which i publish on linkedin and youtube on mondays which by the way i will continue publishing the tutorial videos will be published on youtube and youtube only due to size restrictions so if you haven't already then please consider subscribing the topic of the first video is going to be product envisioning using impact maps so stay tuned as always everything i mentioned is going to be linked

as timestamps in the video description or in a pinned comment if you're watching this on youtube so feel free to skip around the video if you feel like it for now let's get started okay let's pause for a moment a moment for you to think about how you would describe agile to an executive with just a few words as someone who's responsible for agile transformation within my organization i have conducted several of these onboarding sessions for new agile coaches when i ask this question to the new age health coaches around 80 of the time the

answer that i get starts with the phrase agile is a methodology for insert your favorite business function here whether it be software development marketing you get the idea this answer deserves a red flag and i will talk about why this answer is fundamentally wrong in the second video now the remaining 20 percent and more knowledgeable agile coaches usually come and describe it as agile is a set of values and principles followed by the details about well values and principles now there is nothing wrong with this answer and it is much much better than the answer

that started with agile is a methodology phrase in fact when i started as an agile coach i gave the same answer to many executives who happened to ask me this question in elevators coffee shops or near water coolers as a new agile coach i was completely clueless but slowly and steadily i started noticing a negative pattern i started noticing these subtle behavioral changes these changes in executives body language after hearing the answer from me i noticed that almost all of them showed some sign of regret as if they were thinking why did i even ask

this question these signals like subtle roll of the eyes slight movement in the other direction fake jaws forced me to think that i was doing something wrong but what what was i doing wrong all i was doing was answering the most fundamental agile question with the best answer that everyone in the agile community would have agreed upon well it turned out that i was wrong after a few sleepless nights wondering upon what was i doing wrong it finally started to become clear it turned out that the problem was not in what i was doing wrong

the problem was in the answer you see executives and other senior management professionals in most cases are bound by these extremely tight time schedules making them unbelievably busy so much so that sometimes the only time they get to socialize is when they're walking between the floors riding elevators near water coolers or during the lunch hour so in general and it may not always be when executives ask a question they unknowingly expect you to provide an answer that is short and simple to understand especially when you catch them unscheduled out of the calendar without booking a

meeting and that's what was wrong with the answer i was providing them it was neither short nor simple so when we give an answer like agile is a set of values and principles we are not actually answering the question we are providing them with the address that says you can find your answers if you read these values and principles now our brain requires energy to think and ponder lack of which makes us impatient and longing to get rid of the reason the reason that's demanding more energy in my case the answer that i provided demanded

more of their energy the energy that they've already distributed in their calendar with this increase in awareness about the problem and hoping to find a solution one day i created this image on a piece of paper i digitized it with my ipad and i always keep it in my phone now when an executive asks this question i simply show them this image yeah i created this it's not created by a kid this image because of its visual characteristics is easy to understand and helps in locking the executive's attention i then asked the executive to identify

in the image the group of cards that are being agile and why it is already marked so it becomes super easy and quick for them to spot the only energy investment that is required from them is on the why why are those cars agile now most of the executives find it easy to answer this question for those who find it difficult i provide a short and simple answer by saying that those cars are agile because they are able to navigate the unknown constraint in this case the tree blocking the road by taking an alternate route

i then end by saying that agile is a mindset that enables us to navigate unknown constraints and complexities more efficiently providing an answer like this not only satisfies the curiosity but makes them hungry to know more more about how agile can help them navigate their unknowns and complexities at this point i have their attention and i use this attention as an opportunity to book further meetings to go over agile and its concepts in a little more detail and hopefully get their buy-in what those details are and how i go about doing that is explained in

the next two videos so there you have it capturing their attention and making them curious is the first step in gaining your executives buy-in on agile i hope you like this video and if you did then please do not forget to give it a thumbs up and also please do not forget to provide your valuable feedback in the comments i'll see you in the next video