Invitation as Leadership art - Agile israel 2016 Daniel Mezick

Invitation as a Leadership Art Moving towards Modern Agile: beyond the Agile Theater

Presenter: Daniel Mezick+1 203 915 7248

[email protected]

www.TheCultureGame.com 1

mailto:[email protected]

Learning Objectives in 50 Minutes:

• Identify the concepts & facilities of INVITATION

• Learn about “Invitation-Based Change”• Apply invitation- in a leadership context-

immediately• Locate and access resources, for further study

and application of these ideas


Who Am I?

• Agile Coach, 10 years• Competent Agile Coach, 4 years• Author, THE CULTURE GAME• Co-Author, THE OPENSPACE AGILITY

HANDBOOK • A heretic with respect to “Agile dogma”• Reachable at DanielMezick.com


Who or What is Authorizing Me?

• The conference organizers have formally authorized me to lead you through some learning– To FACILITATE your learning

• And now…a question.


Ground Rules

• We agree to end on time. • We agree that, during exercises: I raise my

hand, you raise your hand also, and you stop talking, and face the front.

• Fair?


One More Thing

• For the next 50 minutes or so, you agree: – To suspend your disbelief– To act as if what I say is actually true– To “pretend” that what I say actually works

– Does anyone want to opt-out? This is your chance…..


One More Thing

– Everyone who is here at the VERY END receives a COMPLIMENTARY copy of the Kindle version of THE OPENSPACE AGILITY HANDBOOK

– Kindle readers for your Mac, PC, etc


“Invitation as a Leadership Art”

• What is Invitation?• What is Leadership?• What is Art?• Let us first define our terms….


…Definitions Are… Agreements

• With agreed-upon definitions, we can expect MORE clarity in the sending and receiving of communication

• And now …. Let us define our terms.


“Invitation”

• The Definition For Today: – “a written or verbal request that tests the

willingness of someone to go somewhere, or do something, and respects any response similar to NO, THANK YOU.”


“Leadership”

• Let’s skip this one for now, and shortly go to AN EXERCISE….


“Art”

• Our Definition for Today: – “ The expression or application of human creative

skill and imagination.”• Source: GOOGLE


“Leadership: What’s the Definition?”

• EXERCISE: • Turn to a person next to you, and by

agreement, each take turns defining the term LEADERSHIP. Each person, take about 90 seconds.


“Leadership: What Is It?”

• There are as many definitions of LEADERSHIP as there are PEOPLE

• Our Definition, For Today: – “The act of helping to shape, form and execute the

decisions that affect the group-as-a-whole.”– Is leadership fundamentally about decisions?• For today, we will suspend disbelief, and pretend, and

“act as if” the answer is YES


Invitation Basics

• INVITATION is fundamentally respectful of personal boundaries.

• Respect is a core value of Lean, Agile & Scrum


Invitation Basics

• INVITATION triggers decision-making • Decision-making triggers engagement• <SUSPEND DISBELIEF>– There is no such thing as a successful (Agile)

change program without high levels of human engagement


Invitation Basics

• ENGAGEMENT is essential• INVITATION triggers engagement by triggering

decision-making


Invitation Basics

• Enough talk: Let’s have an EXERCISE• EXERCISE: You Decide– Find a person nearby, and by agreement, each

express clearly what you prefer from this session: More LECTURE or more EXERCISES?

– Each take 1 minute (2 minutes total for both.)


Structure Invitations as Games.Good Games Have:

• Clear GOAL(s)• Clear RULES• A Clear way to track PROGRESS• Opt-in participation


Sample Invitation Structured as a GOOD GAME: – “You are invited to dinner at my home. We will

have 6 courses and 8 different wines. We plan to enjoy very fine food, finer wine, and even finer conversation. We plan to start around 630PM and end around 1030PM. Beforehand, I will send an email listing everyone who is coming. I do need to know not later than Thursday regarding your intent to attend. I hope you can make it!”


Good-Game Invitation Exercise:

• Turn to someone close by. By agreement, each issue an actual invitation (beer after the conference, for example) or a practice-type invitation (to breakfast for example.)

• Be sure to structure your invite as a GOOD GAME: clearly specify the goals, rules, and progress-tracking

• 90 seconds each (3 minutes total)


Invitation Structure: The Details

• Poorly-formed invitations are hard to respond to – (“…what is being asked of me here?”)

• The 4-part game format makes your invitation well-formed

• Everyone likes a GOOD GAME. Make your invite a real, good, game.


Wider Implications

• Everyone needs and wants a:– Sense of control – Sense of belonging– Sense of progress

• Invitations (structured as good games) deliver.


Wider Implications

• The art of inviting may be the most important leadership skill of the 21st century


Leadership Implications

• It is hard to imagine any “psychological safety” being present when respectful invitation is absent or lacking.

• Safety aspect of Modern Agile? Is it possible in typical companies without leadership invitations?

• Exhibit A: Agile Adoptions


Exercise: Agile Adoption Rating

• Find someone you do not know. By agreement, in turn, disclose the following information about your Agile adoption: – Have any genuine invitations been issued by

leaders? (Y/N)– One a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning “total

success” and 1 meaning “total failure”, rate your Agile adoption.


Implementing Agile in an Agile Way

• Invitation is a pull-based technique.• Is your organization using “push” to

implement “pull” systems like Scrum or Kanban? If so, what does this mean?

• Is your organization encouraging experiment-based learning? Or is your Agile a “forced march” to delivering faster?


Advanced Invitation Technique

• When they say no, reduce the ask by HALF.– Take care to structure every invite as a GAME

• Example: You want teams to use Scrum for 12 months. They resist. Your next move: frame the experience as an experiment, and reduce the time to 6 months, after which we inspect the results.


Invitation-Based Change

• The hypothesis of invitation-based change is that the people who resist the change might support it if we invite them to be a character in the story and even as an (co)author of the emerging (not yet written) story.



• You might be thinking…– “…people who know NOTHING about Agility need

to be TOLD how to do it and SUBMIT to that learning. They know NOTHING.”

– Shu – Ha – Ri. Right? They are in the Shu stage…• But wait: is every beginning-student in the martial arts

FORCED to learn or are they CHOOSING to be there?



• Leaders name direction and “guardrails”• Example:

Direction=“continuous improvement”Guardrails=“The 12 Agile principles”

• In IBC, leaders view themselves as people who send important SIGNALS about direction and “guardrails.”



• Leadership Storytelling• In IBC, leaders view themselves as people who

send important SIGNALS, and this includes the telling of generative stories that support the invited change.


Optional Exercise

– Find another person, and by agreement, each (as an executive leader) tell a positive story about 1 of these scenarios: as if in the hallway or a meeting:• Teams are doing a good job learning Agile in the 1st two

iterations, but deliveries are going to be late as a result of all the intense learning about new processes• Teams have identified the policy of annual, individual

performance reviews as a huge impediment to the wider advance of agility in the org.


IBC Practice: OpenSpace Agility



• Starts with an invitation to an Open Space meeting

• End with an invitation to an Open Space meeting

• In between, teams do experiments with practices and formally authorized leaders support these experiments– With storytelling and more



• The entire process has a beginning, a middle and an end

• The entire process engages as many people as possible, inviting collective intelligence

• The entire process encourages massive amounts of self-management…at scale– Within clearly defined boundaries



• Starts with an invitation to an Open Space meeting

• Ends with an invitation to an Open Space meeting

• In between, teams do experiments with practices, which formally authorized leaders completely support.





• Any technique that leverages invitation is an IBC technique

• Leadership Hack: Make your meetings OPTIONAL to attend. – Optional Exercise: Find another person, and

discuss what would happen to your meeting if you made it OPTIONAL TO ATTEND.


Some Links

• The Agile Imposition by Martin Fowler– http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AgileImposition.htm

l• Push vs Pull by Daniel Mezick– http://newtechusa.net/agile/push-vs-pull/


http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AgileImposition.html

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AgileImposition.html

http://newtechusa.net/agile/push-vs-pull/

Some Links

• Agile Coaching Lessons by Daniel Mezick– http://newtechusa.net/agile-coaching-lessons/

• Software is Saving Us by Michelle Holliday– http://solarium.cambiumconsulting.com/content/

software-save-humanity-not-how-you-might-expect


http://newtechusa.net/agile-coaching-lessons/

http://solarium.cambiumconsulting.com/content/software-save-humanity-not-how-you-might-expect



Some Links

• Authority Distribution in Open Space– http://newtechusa.net/agile/authority-distributio

n-in-open-space/• Invitation-Based Change– http://openspaceagility.com/invitation-based-cha

nge/


http://newtechusa.net/agile/authority-distribution-in-open-space/

http://newtechusa.net/agile/authority-distribution-in-open-space/

http://openspaceagility.com/invitation-based-change/

http://openspaceagility.com/invitation-based-change/

Some Links

• Discovering What is Possible– http://openspaceagility.com/discovering-what-is-p

ossible/• OpenSpace Agility “About” and “Big Picture”– http://openspaceagility.com/about/– http://openspaceagility.com/big-picture/


http://openspaceagility.com/discovering-what-is-possible/

http://openspaceagility.com/discovering-what-is-possible/

http://openspaceagility.com/about/

http://openspaceagility.com/big-picture/

Receiving THE BOOK

• Everyone here is invited to receive a COMPLIMENTARY copy of the OSA HANDBOOK Kindle edition!!


Receiving THE BOOK

• Steps: – Go to www.DanielMezick.com– Subscribe to my list BEFORE June 25 (by this Friday

at MIDNIGHT. Today is better…)– You will then receive a link to access your

COMPLIMENTARY copy of this US$10 Kindle


http://www.DanielMezick.com/

Reaching Dan

• Thank you !• Daniel Mezick– [email protected]– www.danielmezick.com (register for the Kindle!)– Phone: +1 203 915 7248– www.OpenSpaceAgility.com/About– www.TheCultureGame.com


mailto:[email protected]

http://www.danielmezick.com/

http://www.OpenSpaceAgility.com/About

http://www.TheCulturegame.com/

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Invitation as Leadership art - Agile israel 2016 Daniel Mezick