Sohrab Salimi (00:01.666)
Hi everyone, this is Sohrab from Agile Academy. I have another one of the conversations where we get to know our ambassadors. Today I'm hosting Stuart, Stu. very happy to have you with us, both as an ambassador and especially as a guest on today's show. How is everything?
Stu (00:18.373)
Fantastic. The sun is finally shining here in the UK. So I am am a happy Stu and it's a pleasure to be here.
Sohrab Salimi (00:25.102)
You're happy, Stu. That's that's good to see I've never seen you unhappy I must admit there's always been like lots of positive energy and I think the first time we met it must have been at one of the scrum gatherings probably Prague or Munich and you were doing those beautiful facilitations the visualizations that we also see in the background so There's a lot of positive energy already coming into my direction and I want to acknowledge and thank you for that so Stu
Stu (00:51.473)
Good.
Sohrab Salimi (00:53.388)
Similar to all the other ambassadors, where did your journey start? When did you, for the first time, hear about Agile or practice Agile or one of those frameworks connected to it?
Stu (01:00.805)
Wow.
When did Agile find me, or when did I find Agile? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. I say that I had a non-conventional route and direction into Agile, but maybe everyone does. So I'm a design graduate back in the early 2000s. And interestingly, I think one of the most important milestones in my life, and it really does connect with how I hope to help businesses today, was I actually worked in social care. I worked with adults with learning disabilities.
Sohrab Salimi (01:07.223)
Either way.
Stu (01:31.853)
nothing I thought to do with Agile, nothing to do with product, nothing to do with design thinking or anything like that. It was to do with providing care. Over time, I became accustomed to projects and project management, and I was working for local authority and sort of shifted into a BA in project management role. And I sort of then moved into hearing about all these things like Agile, Lean, and design thinking. And so I could say that I kind of found Agile.
as I was going into that project management world. But I think that on reflection, looking back and knowing everything I know about Agile now, I was already applying it back then. When you think about the iron triangle and fixed time and fixed cost , but trying to flex that scope, but baking quality, I think that we always had those parameters of how you can maximize value, which is providing valuable care and enhancing people's lives. So a bit of a...
strange way of putting it, but I kind of almost look back and see how Agile found me.
Sohrab Salimi (02:36.226)
Yeah, that's very interesting how you put it. So I usually share my story when I teach a course that I started out as a medical doctor, and then people are like, Wow, but that's something like completely different. I'm like, is it? What do you mean? I'm like, as a medical doctor, you practice agility. So when I first encountered agile ways of working, primarily Scrum, in the context of product development, the question I would always ask myself was , why in the hell, sorry, wouldn't you work this way?
Stu (03:05.849)
Yes.
Sohrab Salimi (03:06.412)
Why do you work any other way? It makes no sense to me as someone that constantly faced uncertainty in the treatment of patients and probably similar to you or for you working in social care. But I wrote down a few things. So, design graduate, why design?
Stu (03:09.733)
Next.
Stu (03:25.713)
So I did illustration at university, and back then, back then, back in 2000, it was a case of the sort of one-dimensional traditional route of going and doing children's illustration. And I kind of almost sort of put that to bed and said goodbye to that as I sort of moved on. And it wasn't until I was working within social care that I realized that visualization could be an enabler for communication. So that's sort of the...
The synergy with where I was then and where I am now, the same values, the same principles that Holger Nils Pohl will propose within the academy with all his insightful trainings—we'll talk about it; it 's all around that communication. So that was the moment for me that I realized the power of visualization to enhance communication and how that can be applied within business.
Sohrab Salimi (04:18.862)
Yeah, I love that. Now, you started out as a design graduate. You do social care. You do a BA in project management. The first time you and I met, you were facilitating—not even facilitating, you were capturing, documenting in a visual way our guides retreat, right? And back then, I didn't know to what extent you were already also training yourself.
Stu (04:39.974)
Yes.
Sohrab Salimi (04:47.286)
or whether you would quote unquote just visualize for other people doing the training. So when did you become an educator?
Stu (04:55.963)
So my world kind of had two parallels. While I was a business analyst, somebody tapped me on the shoulder while I was also graphic recording within social care and moving into project management. Someone tapped me on the shoulder that I knew and said, Do you know that you can do this corporately? And I was like, why would people that don't have reading and writing difficulties want pictures on the wall? So I was kind of moving into the space of graphic recording and live illustration at the same time.
I was starting to work and train within local authority, within the project management space, and working, kind of moving towards design thinking, because it was all mostly to do with service design. So they sort of saw all these different bits were happening. And over time, I then started moving into more of the corporate world, where I kind of moved more into coaching and consulting and training. And of all those different stances, I have to say training is very much my sweet spot.
And I'm still doing that to today.
Sohrab Salimi (05:56.534)
I can imagine, and your trainings are probably very visual and very little like PowerPoint presentations. So you now embark on this journey as a project manager, and you start doing more and more of these like training sessions, et cetera. When did you first encounter Scrum?
Stu (06:03.761)
That's right.
Stu (06:07.899)
Yes.
Stu (06:16.827)
So whilst I was working, much like most organizations when they try and adopt agile ways of working, it's always slightly relentless; it's slightly difficult. And it was very painful, I think, to say the least. But we were trying to introduce Scrum within the local authority. And back then, it was more a case of just trying to slowly strive for relentless improvement and just try to make small.
iterative improvement. So back then was when I did it. And I think that there was so much learning from all of the anti-patterns and the things that you shouldn't do that I still apply today when I'm delivering foundational classes, when I tell people how you shouldn't do it and the pain points that I've shared. So yeah, back probably to late 2010 onwards, we started to introduce Scrum in more traditional environments. And then in my latter years now,
more a case of trying to support and help teams that have already embedded those frameworks, but not necessarily applying them in the right way.
Sohrab Salimi (07:22.178)
Yeah. So what would be interesting to me, Stu, is you started out in the social care and then you mentioned local authorities. I assume local authorities are some kind of like government entity, right? Now, at some point, you start working with corporations, right? Because your friend tapped you on the shoulder and said you could do this in the corporate world. What were the big changes for you?
Stu (07:33.103)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Stu (07:47.707)
So the biggest change and where I am right now, so everyone, we try to storytell, but I jump around quite a bit. So you have to keep up. So what I really focus on now is human connection. And this is all connected to visualization. It's also connected to something I'd love to talk about around emotional intelligence and those human skills. But for me, what really surprised me,
Sohrab Salimi (07:55.202)
That's fine.
Stu (08:13.135)
was when I was working in frontline services with adults with disabilities; the focus, the most important fundamental principle, was to maximize communication, total communication. So regarding different preferences of communication and different needs, we would think about what we could use, whether it be intensive interaction, whether it be symbol and picture communication, or whatever. What really shocked me both in the corporate
side of local authority in the project management space and even today in the corporate world is the lack of communication. And it surprises me and it shocks me so much that research papers that are only maybe a year old suggest that the biggest lack of skill in the world of business is communication. While I enjoy talking about Scrum, I enjoy talking about Agile. Life is continuously evolving and continuously changing.
And everyone's obsessed with AI, which is great, but AI is not going to save you. But there needs to be more focus on communication and human skills.
Sohrab Salimi (09:21.346)
Yeah, I think that's interesting. You just mentioned AI. I was thinking while you were speaking, the problem that a lot of organizations have, or why they still have this challenge with communication is they invest a lot in tools, and tools don't help you communicate. Tools can help you create transparency, but then the communication still has to be done. Just because everybody has access to the same data doesn't mean that everybody extracts the same insights.
Stu (09:35.311)
Yes.
Absolutely.
Sohrab Salimi (09:51.566)
Right? So the alignment piece still needs to be handled via communication. And you were surprised, or I at least heard this, that you were surprised that people without learning disabilities would still prefer like visual things. And the first time I saw Holger's work, you referred to him earlier, I was like, Man, this is brilliant. I want to learn this because this makes it so much easier to bring across my message.
Stu (09:52.314)
Is that?
Stu (10:08.314)
Absolutely.
Sohrab Salimi (10:20.694)
It's not like I then only draw, but the visualization combined with the words that I use, right, with the stories that I share, that then, I believe, activates multiple areas in the brain so that people ultimately can remember it better, connect to it better, transfer it to their work better, whatever, right? Now, as you were already shifted to today's world, right, it's fine.
Stu (10:41.681)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Sohrab Salimi (10:50.888)
The storyline is great. We did a big segue. Now, today your primary focus is facilitating that communication, right? And probably also teaching people how to become more effective communicators through visual ways, etc. I still want to explore briefly, like, what are, for you lessons that you could take from your work in social work and government entities or local authorities?
Stu (10:53.677)
Yes, yes, yes.
Stu (11:16.795)
Mm-hmm.
Sohrab Salimi (11:20.43)
to the, from the outside perspective, very different corporate world. Other than communication.
Stu (11:26.001)
Well, yeah, other than communication. First of all, I kind of put myself out of a job to connect with what you said before: easy-read information is something that I introduced to local authority. And then everyone suddenly realized, why would we not have easy reading for everybody? So in there, it became the norm. It became like, you know, which is great. So I think that the principles and the learning are in
The human connection like you said, people focus, people are very dogmatic. And one thing I would say, and one of my quotes, which I hope that this community might like, is that I'd rather be a pragmatic project manager than a dogmatic, dogmatic agilist, in that I think people assume that you can just use words, you can use tools, and you change your mindset. Now, forget about roles. I think the focus for me is skills over roles.
Sohrab Salimi (11:59.054)
Mm.
Stu (12:23.835)
But I would love one thing that I learned is that there is so much to be said for human connection before you can embrace agile ways of working, before you can embrace creating amazing products and all the other things that you may be striving to do, evolve transformations, or think about culture shift or culture change; it all starts with humans. And so the thing that I've always been, that's been important to me is
getting the most out of a group. So you mentioned facilitation. So you could be a coach, the stance of coaching or training or facilitating or mentoring, and whatever different stance you're taking, what can you do to create a space that enhances communication and enhances collaboration? And collaboration requires that you challenge the status quo. You don't want to cooperate.
Cooperation is fine. We can cooperate on a, on a, on a static roadmap, right? But what we really want to do is be able to collaborate, collaborate collaboration, true collaboration, requires a good high level of psychological safety. And that comes down to humans. So for me, the biggest thing that is not necessarily different between social care and corporate or social care, local authority for everything, is
emotional intelligence and is just ensuring that you're creating the right conditions for safety.
Sohrab Salimi (13:55.234)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned collaboration requires challenging the status quo, and then later you talked about psychological safety yourself. I'm pretty sure you're familiar with Tim Clark's model on psychological safety, and that last level, that last step is challenger safety. Right? So people being willing to challenge the status quo. Now, I have a few techniques that I use or introduce for people to be more comfortable challenging the status quo. What do you do, Stu?
Stu (14:26.043)
So I think that when, much like yourself, one of the most important things when we think about getting the most out of a high-performing team and creating that level of safety is to create that level of neutrality, right? To make sure that in whatever stance you're in, whether you're an educator, as an ambassador, whatever we're doing, we need to provide that level of neutrality. So the sorts of things that I do, and if I recommend people, I'm sure you can find it.
Within the academy are things like the Johari window and the scarf model. There's so much psychology that's being brought into the world of agile ways of working, which is great. But I like to be very open and very transparent. I also like to encourage a level of vulnerability. Most of the talks that I did last year were around vulnerability and not knowing leading to success.
So if we think about the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people think that they could just learn a little bit of information, have a high level of competence, and stay on Mount Stupid, as opposed to experts that realize that, you know, with a bit of skin in the game, you're likely to have imposter syndrome. So I try to be quite open. I try to be quite vulnerable. I talk about the things that people might not know about me. I like to classify myself as an anxious extrovert.
You know, and I always create those conditions. So that's what you get from me is an open book. I'm not saying that works for everybody, but that's certainly my approach is being open and in creating that space where other people can feel safe to be vulnerable.
Sohrab Salimi (16:07.262)
I really like it. You mentioned imposter syndrome, right? Once you pass Mount Stupid, some people tend to be there. No, I was talking to Trisha Broderick yesterday, and Trisha said she replaced the term " imposter syndrome with a term that she had heard, I think from Adam Grant, " confident humility. And I love that. I'm like, this is so good, right?
Stu (16:32.347)
Beautiful.
Sohrab Salimi (16:36.844)
Because as an imposter, you basically don't believe in your own expertise. If you have confident humility, you're confident, but you're still humble, right? You know that there's still a lot to learn, right? It goes back to this old Greek philosopher saying, the more I know, the more I know that I don't know, right? And I think this confident humility is, I liked it so much, so I picked it up immediately. said, I'm going to steal this.
Stu (16:42.832)
Right.
Stu (16:46.171)
Yes.
Stu (16:49.457)
I like that.
Stu (16:59.045)
Yeah.
Stu (17:05.574)
I'm staying here.
Sohrab Salimi (17:05.664)
And today, first opportunity, I'm already stealing it.
Stu (17:09.522)
Yeah, no, I do. I do. And I guess you could connect it with Shu Ha-Rui and other principles of that lifelong learning. So yeah, those are the sorts of things that I think are really important.
Sohrab Salimi (17:19.79)
Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I mentioned challenger safety earlier. So one of the things that I share with people, like, if you want to have challenger safety, because a lot of people talk about, we just need to change your mindset. OK, so how do you change the mindset? For me, we need to make mindset, or when we look at the organization culture, we need to make it tangible. If we say it's the internal values of someone, that's not making it tangible. Because how do I reprogram?
Stu (17:46.606)
No.
Sohrab Salimi (17:48.876)
the internal values, But if we consider mindset to be our habit, right? How we respond to something automatically, unconsciously, then we can think about how do we reprogram that because we can go into how our habits form. Now when we come back to challenger safety, there's like so simple things like a retrospective. It's a practice to challenge the status quo. That's the only intention the retrospective has.
If the outcome of the retrospective is that everything is great, you're not doing a good job as a scrum master, as a facilitator, or whatever, right? You want people to challenge the status quo. Now, it might take some time, depending on the existing culture of the organization, for people to feel comfortable. It takes a lot of skill as a facilitator to create that safe space. The vulnerability that you mentioned earlier is because every time somebody starts challenging the status quo, they're making themselves vulnerable. As other people might say,
No, no, no, that's a stupid idea, right? Especially if your boss says that in front of everybody else, you're humiliated, right? But I think there are. We have to think about concrete practices that people then start applying in a very disciplined manner, and through that, they change their habits, and they change their mindsets. How do you look at that?
Stu (18:48.891)
Absolutely.
Stu (19:06.717)
Well, I think that this is the problem in the world of business is that there's so much jargon. And I like the way that you shifted away from the word mindset. How I look at that is behaviors. And so I think this is where emotional intelligence comes in about your self-awareness and your self-regulation and your social awareness and your relationship management. And I think that for all of us on this, for many of the ambassadors and for educators,
Sohrab Salimi (19:19.533)
Yes.
Stu (19:36.163)
Often we need to sort of, it's where we've come from, which could be times of difficulty and pain, as well as happiness that kind of carves out who we are and how we operate. But on my journey, I personally have received therapy and I think it's one of the best ways. I'm not suggesting that everyone that's listening needs to go out and get therapy, but I highly recommend that it's probably a very good way to become self-aware. But I learned lots of different things about how I interact with others, how I operate.
And I had more empathy for myself and more empathy with others, but it got me to realize about my behaviors and the pay behaviors of others in the world that we live in right now of hybrid working. It's even harder to read people going back to what I said before about communication, how people are showing up. And I think that the, mentioned retrospectives, let's go for another, let's go for another event of the, of a daily scrum or a standard, call it what you like.
You know, how do you cope with me turning up one day and I'm happy and I'm jolly, and the next minute I'm quiet as anything? So when we talk about, you know, we haven't got long enough to discuss all these things, but neurodiversity, people with bipolar, different people with different people that will have different difficulties day in, day out. How do you read that? How do you behave, and how do you bring
the best out of yourself when you're guiding and supporting others and the best out of themselves. And how do you create that safe space? It's easy to say " psychological safety," "mindsets," and "behaviors," but the depths of understanding people are so important. And I'll leave that by saying that there are—I would highly recommend if you're enjoying this conversation between me and Sohrab, if you can keep up—to look into the scarf model, and the scarf model proposes that there are situations where
You can feel threatened or rewarded and it's your responsibility to ensure that when someone dials into a video call, because that could be the only time they speak to another human, what can you do to make sure that person leaves feeling safe?
Sohrab Salimi (21:48.226)
Yeah, yeah. I think the scarf model is David Rock's model, right? Yes. Did he write the book Neuro Leadership or something like that?
Stu (21:52.879)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I was made.
Stu (21:58.969)
I was introduced to it a few years back at the Agile conference and I found it absolutely fascinating because I had personally, if you connect with the scarf model, it takes you to that sort of fight or flight mode where you really, you you can be provided with the same information and it can take you in either direction. It's fascinating.
Sohrab Salimi (22:19.436)
Yeah, absolutely. Stu, we are approaching the end of our time box. I still have one question for you. If you could describe your perfect client, what would it be? And by that, I don't mean like they pay you a lot of money and you don't have anything to do, because I know you well enough that I know that you like challenges. So focus also on the challenges that you would like to be involved in solving them.
Stu (22:33.093)
Gosh.
Hahaha
Stu (22:41.008)
Yes.
Stu (22:46.533)
You know what, I'm trying to try to answer this without using jargon. So I would say somebody, a client that is curious, a client that is open-minded and a client that is willing to listen. And I'm going to leave that there because that can be taken in so many ways. I think that there are so many people that aren't able, that asked for the ability to change in today's world.
There's many people that are struggling with change and we need to become better at dealing with change. But a client that is willing to change, willing to take risks and is curious.
Sohrab Salimi (23:26.04)
That's nice words to end the conversation. So Stu, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you even more for being an ambassador. Really appreciate the trust that you put into me and the program that we have created. And we'll meet soon.
Stu (23:41.009)
Thank you very much.
