Transcript: Leading in the Fog (using Agility) w/ Brad Farris

Yuval Yeret: Fog, uncertainty, agility, and the dumb world around us. That’s what we’re gonna talk about today. I invited Brad, Brad Farris to the podcast after I heard him on the Dems Given podcast. And he I was actually triggered in a good way, when unexpectedly Brad mentioned The need for agility for as a way for businesses, companies, firms to navigate what’s going on around us and the amount of change and disruption and uncertainty, the fog that’s all around us.

And that’s exactly my language. So I said I have we have to catch up.

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: So welcome to the welcome to scaling. Scaling AI from activity to impact, used to be known as scaling agility. Welcome Brad. So for

Brad Farris: Thanks for having me.

Yuval Yeret: Those in the audience that don’t know you, would you tell us a bit about who you are, what you do, and what brought you to the conclusion that you need to be agile enough to run your business.

Brad Farris: Thanks. Yeah. I’m I live in Chicago. I’ve lived here almost forty years now. And I have five kids that I’ve raised in the Chicago area. And over the last twenty-five years, I have been working with leaders of growing businesses to help them to grow and expand to meet their goals. And initially that was a management consulting style business.

Over the last six years, I pivoted toward executive coaching. And so today I deliver almost all of my services in an executive coaching format. And you can find out more about me and what I do at anchoradvisors.com.

Yuval Yeret: Awesome. So that’s a good start. So let’s jump right in. When you

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: Say when you tell executives that you coach, leaders of firms that you coach, that they need to be agile in how they navigate the world. What does that mean? Like, first of all, I’m curious what size of firm

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: Would that typically represent? What’s the sort of operation that we’re talking about? What’s going

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: On in the organization?

Brad Farris: I mean, I’m working with multi-million dollar firms, so maybe two to twenty or fifty million, depending on the industry. And for all of them, I mean and most so most of them are service firms, professional service firms, a lot of creative firms. For all of them, they’re going through what I call the polycrisis.

Like There are multiple crises that are happening all at once. Obviously AI has overturned a lot of the creative services firms. But even consulting, recruiting, law, all of those types of professional services firms are also massively impacted by AI. Additionally, there are this shifting expectations in a in a professional services firm, your product is your people.

And The contract that we’ve had between the owners of the firm and the and the people delivering services in the firm is shifting dramatically. On top of that, obviously the political environment and the geopolitical environment has produced shocks over the last couple of years where things are just not the way that they were.

And so whereas Five or ten years ago, we could say that we had a complex environment, an environment that had a lot of things going on, but there were certain rules that we could depend on or ways of thinking about what was happening that generally led us to predictable conclusions. Now we’re in a much more chaotic environment where even the smartest people honestly have no idea what the future holds.

I mean, in my consulting days, one of the things that I did. Frequently was lead companies to create a five-year plan, like to kind of lay out their vision for the next five years of the company. I mentioned that to a CEO now and they laugh their butts off. Like

Brad Farris: I don’t have a five-month plan, Brad. Like forget about a five-year plan. I mean annual planning is this huge challenge that people are facing. And so in that environment where it’s almost impossible to predict the future. And in fact, not only is it impossible to predict, but we can’t even We don’t even have mechanisms to understand all that’s happening.

How do we lead? How do we manage?

Yuval Yeret: Okay, so that resonates for me. I as we’ve had a chat you know the other day that resonates pretty closely for anybody that’s in the world of

Brad Farris: Yes, yes.

Yuval Yeret: Business and services specifically, you’re in a constant pivot. You know the ground is shaking wherever you go.

Yuval Yeret: And it is like a New England fog. That you can see anything in.

Brad Farris: Right.

Yuval Yeret: Chicago is pretty good with its vogue as well.

Brad Farris: I grew up in San Francisco Bay Area, so we had fog. Like we’ve lived in fog. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: Yes, yes, yes. It has a name, right? The fog has a name. Yes. Yeah, when you get to the point that the fog has a name, you know your fog.

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: All right, so what does it mean? How do you actually operate? What does it mean to be agile in how you operate concretely, not conceptually for

Brad Farris: Absolutely.

Yuval Yeret: These organizations? What do you recommend to The managing

Brad Farris: So

Yuval Yeret: Partner, the CEO that you’re coaching, how should they do their annual planning? How should they track goals? How should they figure out if they’re moving in the right direction or not and when to change direction?

Brad Farris: So the path that I’ve been talking about with people, obviously, if you’re a leader, you have goals. Like there is a thing that you’re trying to do. And if that thing involves more than just you, you need to be able to articulate it with some clarity so that you can align your human resources around that goal, right?

And so having a conversation with your team where first of all we admit, and this is very hard. For the leaders that I work with. To start out by admitting, I don’t know how this is gonna go. Like, if we don’t, if we don’t say that part, then everything after that is just a bunch of pretending, right?

It’s kabuki theater. Like, we’re all gonna pretend that we all know what the future holds, and we’re gonna argue about these imaginary futures. And you know, none of that leads us to where we want go. And you know, from a You all the people in the agile world recognize this as, this is what waterfall was, right?

Waterfall was we all pretend that we know what it is that we want to do. And so starting off at the beginning and saying, I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds. And we still want to get here. We have a product that we want to get out, we have people that we want to serve, we have a mission that we want to fulfill.

That’s still the thing that we’re here to do. And I think that’s really critical. When I earlier this year I interviewed a bunch of CEOs to ask them about how they’re leading through the fog. And one of the things that came back clearly was, I have a mission. You know, our organization has a mission. And we have people that we want to serve.

And we still have to find a way to do that. That’s that is our reason for existing. And so we’re going to do that. And so starting the conversation from there, renewing your commitment to the mission that you’re on and to the people that you’re here to serve. And making sure that the whole organization is enrolled in that mission.

That’s kind of the first step. Does that make sense?

Yuval Yeret: Yes, so the what I’m hearing or the way I try to tackle that is to say The how is gonna change. Maybe even the what is gonna change dramatically along the way.

Yuval Yeret: You need to have a North Star that’s something about high either a high-level what or a why. I like to use outcomes. I like to use

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: Not necessarily the business results because that’s too far and it doesn’t say enough, it doesn’t provide guidance. Yes, we want to reach a certain revenue level, but that’s not really useful. So when I coach Executives in creating goals for the organization, try to take them away from setting revenue and profitability goals.

It’s okay, you want to be rule of 25, 50, whatever. Okay, but what would need to be true to get to that point? What would need to be true in order for us to grow? People need to do things with our services. Our services need to change the way people do some things. Those are the outcomes. And I find that setting goals around outcomes is on one hand useful and unlocks a lot, but is also very hard for people.

Brad Farris: Yes, I would agree. Right. And because of what you what you were hinting at there, that it people immediately go to the how, right? They immediately start asking about the how. And because we’ve set up front, I don’t know. I don’t know about the how, right?

Then when people start going into the how, it’s really important for the leader to be, hold on, we’re not there yet. You know, remember we said We’re living in a chaotic environment where we can’t predict the future. So we’re just trying to agree about how what does it look like when we fulfill our mission?

What does it look like when we reach the outcomes for our users and get some agreement about that before we move on from there? And it’s important to hold that line and just get that agreement before doing anything else.

Yuval Yeret: So a couple of thoughts. One is I hear you talking, and I hear a modern product person talking, right?

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: Because that’s how we should be doing things in the product space. That’s what you know, as product coaches, as a product coach, I’ve been helping product people do for a while now. It’s not that all of them do it. There are problems with this, even in the product and engineering space. But we’re not talking about Product people here.

Just

Brad Farris: No.

Yuval Yeret: To clarify for our listeners, we’re not talking

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: About coaching a CPO or

Brad Farris: No.

Yuval Yeret: A VP engineering or a product manager. We’re talking about coaching a GM, a CEO, a managing partner for a creative services firm or law firm or accounting firm.

Brad Farris: Yep. Yep.

Yuval Yeret: So I can tell you that I’ve had this vision. I first heard the Dharmesh from Hobspot talks about it, and it really resonated when I heard it. He talks about developing your culture like a product, developing your company

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: Like a product. And he’s a CTO, he’s a founder, but he comes from the technology space, and he tells the story of being asked to write the culture, develop the culture for the company, come up with an employee guide or something along those lines. And he said.

Brad Farris: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: You know what, I’m a developer, the only way I know how to do that is to write it in So he essentially created the code for culture at HubSpot way before AI was actually able to help us enforce culture

Brad Farris: Sure, yeah, yeah.

Yuval Yeret: Via its capabilities, which is maybe something we can talk about. But it was a it really resonated with me like five years ago. And but whenever I talk with people about this, I struggle to find the right language. Where it resonates for them that their company, their culture is providing services to their organization, that product thinking is relevant for how we look at our culture, how we look at services that

Brad Farris: Mm. Mm.

Yuval Yeret: We provide, how we grow our talent, how we hire, all of these things are essentially internal products.

Yuval Yeret: Or even if they’re not internal products, product Practices are really useful be because of all of the problems that we’re talking about. Because we don’t know for sure what’s the right approach, because people have a lot of choices of where to work, who to hire to do something for them. And we need to be customer-centric.

Not in the sense of doing everything for the customer, but being strategic around what’s the right mix of offerings, capabilities, things even we do with AI inside the firm. That will move the needle and help us become the company that we want to become. So I’m looking for help here. Advice. What

Brad Farris: Yes, yes.

Yuval Yeret: Have you seen work and not work from a language or approach perspective when you’re trying to convince people that aren’t product people, aren’t product builders or managers, whatever, to apply some of the best practices that between you and me we know are from the product space.

Brad Farris: I mean, especially the because the next step that I’m gonna suggest is once you have the goals, then you run some experiments, right? Like that the thing that I that the way that I approach it is to say, okay, if that’s the goal, what is the smallest possible thing that you could do that would l move you toward that outcome?

And then you do that thing and you say, Did that get us closer to the outcome or not? And then you do that all over again. And so always working from where you are. Just make incremental changes toward the goal. That’s that’s the whole because in a chaotic environment where we can’t predict outcomes, it’s like we’re feeling in the fog.

And so when you’re in a place where you can’t see, what do you do? You move slowly, you reach out, you get more information, you make take another step, you get more information. And so we just keep going like that until we find our way to the place we want to go. And so that process, yes, you’re absolutely right.

This is what product managers do. And I’m not trying to convince them that they need to follow a product management process. I’m just presenting to them: here is a way that we could look at the situation that you’re in. If I can get them to agree, we’re in this situation where we’re standing in the fog and we can’t see where we’re going.

Well, how should we do that? Should we drive 50 miles an hour in the direction that we think we ought to go? Well. Maybe, but that can have bad consequences. Or we could all agree on where we’re going, create a set of experiments, try those experiments, get back together, share the information. The more people we have running experience, the more information we start to gather, then we can start to accumulate some speed from there to where we want to go.

And so I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m what I’m trying to do is to offer them a possible solution to the problem they see themselves.

Yuval Yeret: So yes, that resonates. I kind of assumed that’s the direction

Brad Farris: Ha!

Yuval Yeret: That you’ll be taking.

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: I think If I imagine the listener who is coming from an experience similar to mine. They’re coming from working within product and engineering, helping product and engineering organizations. And Let’s say the organization is undergoing an AI tsunami.

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: And They’ve managed To shift the way the product and engineering organization works. So I’ve talked recently with several clients and past clients who know you know how to think this way and apply this thinking to the way product and engineering works. And it got to the point that they’re not the constraint anymore, they’re not the ball neck anymore.

The factory is working.

Brad Farris: Yes, excellent. Right.

Yuval Yeret: But The ecosystem around it, the head office, the you know, go-to-market organization, the customer success, the marketing, HR, all of the system around it is not up to par with what’s going on. And it’s at the point where they could improve product and engineering, but it’s not gonna achieve much. And they’re taking over, they’re asked to.

Take over the transformation of the wider organization. I’ve talked to a couple

Yuval Yeret: Of these people that six months ago, eight months ago at this point, told me, yeah, I’m on top of the AI thing in product and engineering. I asked them what’s going on elsewhere in the organization and said, you know what? It’s a good question. I don’t know.

Yuval Yeret: Not my not my domain. I don’t know. But when I talked with them two months ago, they said, Yes, it’s now on my plate. I’ve been asked to lead this. And

Brad Farris: Yes, yes. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: And these people I think an interesting question that they are facing and that consultants like me are facing is what’s the right way? To bring these concepts to the rest of the organization when we’re when we don’t have the privilege of we’re coming in from the position of coaching, the CEO, the

Brad Farris: Hmm.

Yuval Yeret: The managing partner. We’re coming

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: In, we’re already colored, painted,

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: As product and engineering people. So What’s your advice to people like

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: This that are coming with concepts that they think are useful? Engineering,

Yuval Yeret: You know, thinking about engineering and developing as concepts for what you need to do elsewhere in the

Yuval Yeret: Organization, thinking from a product perspective, applying

Yuval Yeret: All of these things. But every time you talk using this language, the rest of the organization goes into, at best, eye-rolling mode.

Brad Farris: So when The scenario you’re setting up is that you have a one department who is who’s doing well with AI adoption and then other parn apartments that are seen as being laggards or behind in their AI adoption. And so the CEO says, Hey you, you’re good at AI. Here, go help these other people be good at AI also.

Is that am I getting that right? Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: More or less, yes. Let’s

Brad Farris: So when you show up in that other department, the assumption is that you’re there to kind of judge them or Fix them, or you know, or there’s some superiority relationship that’s going on. And in general, humans respond very poorly to that engagement style. And so I if I was in the situation that you’re talking about, I think I would start by first going in and saying, hey, I’m not sure whether I can help you or not.

But tell me. What kind of problems do you think AI could solve for you? Or what kind of problems do you have that you would like to have be different? And the whole goal here is to get on the same side of the table as the person that you’re working with. So it’s

Brad Farris: Not a I’m from corporate, I’m here to help kind of situation, or I’m gonna fix what’s going on. But how can we work together to do something that’s important to you? Like, I know I’m supposed to make you guys use AI. I don’t really care whether you use A or not. Like if it could be helpful for you, let’s talk about how that could be helpful.

And so if we start from there, from a place of service, from a place of listening, we’re much more likely to get cooperation, engagement, and interest. And then in that conversation, if we can say, well, here’s two or three things that are, this is a giant pain in our butt. Creating this report is really difficult.

And Know we have this ongoing problem with how we’re analyzing stuff that just takes a lot of hours to get the data in. Interesting. Tell me more. And the thing is, when we’re subject matter experts, when we hear that, sometimes we want to jump right into I can fix that, right?

I and just getting in there. And that sets you back in two ways. Number one, it sets up that up-down relationship again, right? And secondly, You’re probably not gonna fix it in a way that is durable for them because you don’t have enough context yet. And so to slow it down and actually help them to create the solution, as opposed to you creating the solution, through some small experiments where they can start to get some wins.

Once I mean the if you think about how you learned AI, you sat down and tried to do something and it worked, and you were like, holy cow, this is amazing, right? So to the extent that we can get on the same side of the table. And run some experiments where the person that you’re there to work with is having the experience of, this isn’t so bad, then you kind of don’t have to do that much.

Like they’re gonna take it from there. You then you can be in that coach guide position where you’re just kind of cheerleading from the sidelines.

Yuval Yeret: So I’m tempted. Go back to an earlier comment that you made about your own transition

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: From consulting to coaching. And I’m connecting the dots.

Brad Farris: Yes. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: So Would you would you say more about

Brad Farris: Yeah

Yuval Yeret: That transition? I’m personally intrigued by it.

Brad Farris: So I had spent almost 20 years in consulting and the implied contract when someone invites a c a consultant in is the client has a problem, the consultant is here to fix it, right? So there’s automatically set up, built into the relationship, this up down thing where the client is assigning to you this problem to fix and you’re there to fix the problem.

And they decide whether or not it’s fixed or not. And it’s it is this up-down kind of relationship. And in a lot of the work that I was doing, a pattern that I would hear over and over again is that leaders would invite me in and they would say, Brad, here’s what I need your help with. I really need you to fix the team.

Like they just don’t follow through on stuff. The their quality is poor, they’re really just they’re not as engaged as I would like them to be. We just really need to fix the team. And after a while, I would respond to that by saying, okay, I just want to get this straight. This is the team that you hired, right?

And that you’re managing, and that you’re training and leading. That’s the team that we need to fix. Would there be an easier way to fix that problem rather than fixing the team? And that was never, in a consulting engagement, that conversation was generally like, hey, let’s talk to a different consultant.

Right? That was not a

Yuval Yeret: Yeah.

Brad Farris: Conversation people wanted to have. But in a coaching engagement, that’s what that the implied contract is, I’m the problem and I need your help to fix me so that we can get a different outcome in the rest of the organization.

Yuval Yeret: So I think that’s interesting. That makes sense to me. And it’s very tempting to me.

Brad Farris: Ha

Yuval Yeret: But I’m not but. And

Brad Farris: Yeah, and

Yuval Yeret: We have this since we’re talking about agile and we have this role called Agile Coach that exists in organizations. We

Yuval Yeret: I don’t know whether that’s a role I mean it’s a weird role when you think about it in this continuum between consultant and one on one coaching for the leader in the background.

Brad Farris: Yes, right.

Yuval Yeret: You’re not in what I’m assuming when you when you talk about it is you don’t show up in front of the team. You talk to the leader every so often and

Brad Farris: That’s right. That’s right.

Yuval Yeret: You know, you coach them one on one. That’s a Much more accountability and ownership by the leader of that team.

Brad Farris: That’s correct.

Yuval Yeret: And when I look at what happened in the specifically in the agile space, and I’m not sure

Yuval Yeret: Whether it’s that prevalent outside of that space, is that we’ve created this role called the Agile Coach, which is a different type of coach. It’s more the I would say the Ted Lasso style of coach or sports coaching, where You are in front of the team.

Brad Farris: You’re trying to improve the team’s performance and you’re really coaching around a process. You’re trying the it’s about how can we improve the process and that the process produces the outcomes, is that right?

Yuval Yeret: Yeah. I mean I think most of the coaches focus on the process. The good ones focus on the outcome and use process when appropriate to

Brad Farris: Yeah, yeah.

Yuval Yeret: To get there, but I it’s intriguing is that would you consider that consulting? Would you consider that coaching or would you consider that something else? And I think there’s I’m also thinking that part of what we’re seeing out there in the market right now

Yuval Yeret: Is maybe their realization that by assigning accountability, assigning this responsibility of coaching the team to a coach or to a scrum master, it’s sort of the dynamic that you were talking about, which is that there’s a leader to this team. Are we expecting the coach to be the leader?

Ted Lasso is considered the leader of the

Brad Farris: Yes. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: Football team, but that’s typically not what we expect from an agile coach or scrum master in an organization.

Brad Farris: That’s right. Right.

Yuval Yeret: So the fact that they’re there is actually taking away from the responsibility of the real leader that should be responsible for what’s going on.

Brad Farris: And the sports coach is the person that we hold accountable for wins and losses, right? Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: Yes, yes, yes. They’re paid well and they’re fired quick. That’s the dynamic.

Brad Farris: Well and that’s I mean, that’s a very interesting thing to pay attention to, is that I have not experienced a lot of the culture that you’re talking about, but where I have, the Agile coach is specifically avoiding responsibility. They’re just saying, I’m here to help you guys be better, right?

And so they’re decidedly on the sidelines. Like shouting plays in, but that the players have the responsibility. And I mean that’s fine. That’s a perfectly good way to do it. And I think if that’s the dynamic, then that coach needs to detach from the outcomes and realize that their role is to help people to be more aware, more self-aware, to communicate more effectively, to be able to call out and say, hey, are we Are we achieving the outcomes that we’re looking for?

And if not, how would we want to do that differently? But if everyone ignores

Yuval Yeret: So

Brad Farris: It, then everyone ignores it and like you’re the thing i assuming that you’re, shouting plays in from the sidelines, there’s only so much you can do.

Yuval Yeret: So I think going back to the premise that we’re that we’re trying to focus on, and I’m taking

Yuval Yeret: Us away from it, but I think it might be useful. So going back to what it means for the firm to be agile. It doesn’t mean to do agile. Let’s be clear about it. It doesn’t mean that we’re Taking all of the manifestations and mechanics and roles that are associated with Agile that are showing up as a as the downfall, I think, for a lot of people right now when you look at what go what’s going on.

But I’m curious if there’s anything similar to that. Have we created in the agile space? Have the founders created the monster? You know, something that shouldn’t have been created through this role with weird accountability, no accountability, allowing leaders to relinquish accountability. I don’t know.

Brad Farris: I mean in the coaching world, the word that we use is co-create. So when I’m working with my client, my client and I are co-creating whatever the outcome of the coaching is. Which means that I have a responsibility to show up fully and be as honest as I can and as clear as I can. And the person that I’m coaching also has responsibility.

To take what I’m saying and put it into practice and give me feedback to tell me when it’s working and when it’s not working, right? And so that co-creation means that we both have accountability to each other. And I think that potentially in the situations that you’re talking about, there just hasn’t been a clear conversation about how that accountability is held.

Who is responsible and who is moving the needle and who. You know, in this much like what we started talking about uncertainty, I think there could be different ways that could be held with different teams. There might be teams that say, No, you know what, I really need a lot of direction from you. Please help me, help take responsibility.

And there are other teams where they might say, you know what, I have full responsibility here. I want your input. And I think as long as everybody is being clear about what that agreement is, I think either one could work.

Yuval Yeret: So when you coach let’s try to bring it on. When you coach a leader

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: And you’re realizing, okay, part of what we need to do here is we need people to start operating in a different way. They need to focus on different things, they need to run experiments rather than one-year plans. And that’s different for them. That requires them to learn some things and

Yuval Yeret: W what’s the What’s your what does the approach that you co-create with that leader look like for how to build this fluency

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: In how to operate in uncertainty, how to be more agile throughout

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: The organization, to get teams to work differently, to get individuals to work differently, especially assuming that you’re only there coaching the CEO or the managing partner. On the back end. People in the organization might not even know that there is a breath.

Brad Farris: Twice a month. Yeah. Right. Right. So one thing that’s really important in that relationship is that there’s no judgment. That we could we could have a conversation and together come to a conclusion that here are some experiments that person would want to run, then that would give them more information. And I might come back two weeks later and they haven’t done any of those experiments.

And my job is not to say, you know. Bad client, you’ve done the wrong thing. My client is my job there is to be curious and say, we had this kind of direction and you haven’t followed through. What new information came to mind or what other things were more important?

And whatever that is, that’s okay. I don’t have to I don’t have to ha be right or wrong in that situation. I’m just there to help them to see that they were planning to do some things, they didn’t do those things. Some things got in the way. Let’s look at those things because those are opportunities for us to strengthen the agreement around the direction or to choose a different direction.

And again, I don’t have I don’t have a dog in that hunt. So whatever however that comes out, is okay because now I’m helping the leader themselves to rem to have their own agency and use their own agency to move the ball forward.

Yuval Yeret: So I guess my question more specifically is

Yuval Yeret: Not about your interaction one-on-one with that leader.

Brad Farris: Yes. Yes.

Yuval Yeret: It’s with what sort of advice? Or even regardless of the advice, what are some of the ways that work and don’t work that you’ve seen leaders use to deploy this? Way to deal with uncertainty with complexity and the chaotic environment and the need to be more agile. What do they go and actually do when they leave the room between your sessions that

Brad Farris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yuval Yeret: You’ve seen work? What do they go and read? What do they go and listen?

Brad Farris: Mm.

Yuval Yeret: What do they try to do?

Brad Farris: Boy, there’s a lot there. I mean, I have a lot of resources that I apply depending on different circumstances, but Oftentimes the reason that it’s hard to deploy those assets or to help get people to move in a certain direction is has nothing to do with the business environment or the idea. It has to do with our internal resistance to change and desire for things to stay the same.

And so oftentimes there’s work that needs to be done to create. Security and connection and attachment within the group so that people are willing to go with you on this uncertain journey. Like if you know you and I don’t know each other that well and if what I said next was, okay, you’ve all I’m blindfolding you and we’re gonna go walk around the streets of New York, you would rightly be like, I don’t know if I want to do that, right?

But that’s kind of the thing that we’re inviting people into. And so there might be some Work that needs to be done both in the leader and in the team to create a more secure environment so that people are willing to go on that journey. And so that might involve. Probably not, no.

Yuval Yeret: So you’re telling them to go do trust falls in the Chicago parks together. No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Yes. Kidding. Yes.

Brad Farris: But having some agreements, like one of the things that we really talk about is the difference between expectations and agreements. Expectations create disconnect, right? If I have an expectation that everyone’s gonna follow my directions, then they can either follow that direction or they can’t. So they either succeed or fail, right?

And there’s no there’s no room for negotiation, for adding a better idea, for experimentation for all the things that we’re talking about. And so one of the ways that we shift that is move toward agreements and agree in an agreement. Both sides have to agree. There’s room for negotiation. So the leader might go out and say, Hey, here’s an experiment that I’m thinking about.

Here’s the outcome I’d like to see. And here’s how we would evaluate it. And do you guys agree or disagree? How would you how would you approve that? And people might say, actually, I think we should shift it a little bit this way, or your out the outcome you’re measuring is gonna be really hard to measure.

We’re gonna measure this other thing. And so you negotiate amongst yourself to come to an agreement about how we’re gonna do it. And now we’re connected. Now we’re all on the same page. And so that’s like a that’s a baby step toward creating that more trust trusting environment.

Yuval Yeret: Makes sense. Alright, so before you take me on a trustful blindfolded

Brad Farris: Ha.

Yuval Yeret: Walk around New York, let’s take it home. So We’ve been talking about couple of things today, but I think the

Yuval Yeret: Essence that I’ve heard, what I’m taking away, is Yes. You heard right. The principles of agility and product orientation that we’re trying to follow in the product and engineering space do make sense in the broader organization. But we need

Brad Farris: Not only make sense are the only tools that we have to lead with right now. Like that

Yuval Yeret: Yeah.

Brad Farris: That’s this is the essential tool that people need to have in their toolbox.

Yuval Yeret: But we need to be very thoughtful about

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: How we introduce them, how we talk about them. We will probably be better served if we distill them to first principles

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: And to common sense and shed away as much of the language, mechanics, manifestations of it as possible. And avoid a lot of the things that happened when we were deploying these techniques in product and engineering, which was mandates and FOMO, and you have to do this, and this is how things are done that resulted in agile theater, that resulted in agile police.

Brad Farris: Yes. Right.

Yuval Yeret: Let’s make sure we don’t do that.

Brad Farris: Right.

Yuval Yeret: In the rest of the business, let’s start with the problems. Let’s start with what people are trying to do. Let’s If you’re in a spot where you have an opportunity to help people, use what you know, but don’t enforce it on people. That’s the way I’m thinking about it. Cool. It’s been fascinating. Brad, thanks for joining.

If anybody wants to dive deeper into your thoughts

Brad Farris: Yes.

Yuval Yeret: On navigating the fog and the need for agility and how to approach driving change in a growing firm, growing business in this day and age, where would you what should they do? Where should you where would you send them?

Brad Farris: If you go to anchoradvisors.com slash conversation, you can sign up for a an email that I send out once a week. I s I use the word conversation because it is a conversation. The email that I send is designed to start conversations. And so you’ll be able to see how my thinking is involving and, re reply back, ask a question, see what Where you disagree or clarify things.

And so that would be a great first place for people to just see what’s going on.

Yuval Yeret: Awesome. I love that. I can’t believe I’m not signed up for the conversation yet. That will be fixed in a bit. And I might steal that idea from you.

Brad Farris: Yeah.

Yuval Yeret: As well as maybe some other ideas. Thank you again, Brad, for showing up. It’s been

Brad Farris: It was great. Thanks, Yvonne.

Yuval Yeret: Great to catch up. Thank you, listeners. Thank you for joining me again for another episode of Scaling AI from activity to impact. Talk soon.