Agile & OODA: Agility as an Outcome with Agile Manifesto Co-Author, Alistair Cockburn, PhD | Ep 10

Alistair Cockburn, PhD organized the historic meeting in Snowbird, Utah, in which he and 16 other people from around the world wrote the Agile Manifesto. His two industry-changing books, Writing Effective Use Cases and Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. In addition to being a world-renowned expert on Agile, he is an authority in the field of software development, product management, project management and organizational development, and has authored four words of wisdom to help “rewild” Agile: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve - known as the Heart of Agile.

Chapters found in this episode:

• What’s Behind Alistair’s Agile Orientation
• Consulting as Micro-Touch Therapy
• Agile 2003: What Should Have Been
• Agile and OODA Intent
• Keep It Simple
• Shu Ha Ri
• Demo-Do-Teach: A Western Version of Shu Ha Ri
• Mann Gulch: Implicit Guidance and Control
• Coaching Agile 
• Mr. Miyagi: The Ultimate Kokoro Teacher 
• The Importance of Play and Experiential Leaning 
• Reward Systems Drive Behaviors
• Collaboration
• Thoughts on the OODA loop

Be sure to use the Chapters Feature on Apple and Spotify to quickly browse and navigate to segments of this episode.

Alistair Cockburn, PhD Bio
Alistair Cockburn, PhD Linkedin
Heart of Agile
Manifesto for Agile Software Development

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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:

Eddy Network Podcast Ep 56 – with Ed Brenegar
The School of War Ep 84 – with Aaron MacLean
Spatial Web AI Podcast – with Denise Holt
OODAcast Ep 113 – with Bob Gourley
No Fallen Heroes – with Whiz Buckley
Salience – with Ian Snape, PhD
Connecting the Dots – with Skip Steward
The F-14 Tomcast – with Crunch and Bio
Economic...

Transcript

Transcripts are machine generated and are NOT edited for grammar or spelling.

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:11:09
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Welcome to No Way Out. Today's guest is the one of the creators of the manifesto for Agile Software Development and was voted one of the all time top 158 technology heroes in 2007.

00:00:11:11 - 00:00:15:01
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Someone else voted me one of the top 42. I'm going up and or.

00:00:15:02 - 00:00:24:11
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You're going up higher. All right. Not only that, he is the creator of Heart of Agile. We may talk about that today. And it's our good friend. There it is on a coffee cup.

00:00:25:01 - 00:00:27:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
If it's any video involved, that's the.

00:00:27:17 - 00:00:31:06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
We have it. So welcome to the show, Alistair. How are you doing, sir?

00:00:31:12 - 00:00:48:08
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Thank you. Thank you for pronouncing my name right as I'll set the correct you. It's Coburn and the Scottish clan, the Coburn client. And somehow they got people to stop pronouncing that c k don't ask me why how. But yeah, we got the whole clan thing gone. Kilts and everything.

00:00:49:09 - 00:00:53:20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I actually have a kilt from the Navy, so. Yeah, no, we're not going to do anything like that.

00:00:53:20 - 00:00:56:08
Mark McGrath
We have a registered plaid in the Marine Corps, too.

00:00:56:11 - 00:01:10:02
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, yeah, of course. But of course. And my my son, one of my sons, decided he was tired of dealing with it with the C k and he started calling himself writing Cob. You are n. Yeah, I said you can do that but then you can't wear the kilt anymore.

00:01:10:12 - 00:01:12:04
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Mhm. Oh nice.

00:01:13:12 - 00:01:14:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah.

00:01:14:06 - 00:01:19:09
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So Alister Coburn, born in Denver, Colorado. Right. Went to school in Ohio.

00:01:20:00 - 00:01:36:13
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Let me, if you will, I'll just give you the list. Sure. Spend time on it. Says, My parents were English and then they dropped kids around the world and I got dropped in Denver, Greeley, Colorado, just outside Denver. Lived there for like a year. So I know nothing about.

00:01:36:13 - 00:01:37:08
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Grew up in Greeley.

00:01:38:00 - 00:01:39:02
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Are you kidding me? No.

00:01:39:10 - 00:01:40:14
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
It smells really bad, right?

00:01:40:17 - 00:01:42:17
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I have no idea. I was left before. Oh, yeah?

00:01:42:17 - 00:01:43:19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, I'm from Greeley.

00:01:44:00 - 00:01:45:11
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I made of Greeley.

00:01:45:21 - 00:01:47:01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I'm really from Greeley.

00:01:47:04 - 00:01:58:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
That's amazing, man. Yes. I went back there as a teenager, like age 18, and my mother had me meet the her next door neighbor. And, like, that's all I know, really. As I drove in, said hi to the neighbor and drove out. So I know.

00:01:59:00 - 00:01:59:23
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
That's. That's all you need to know.

00:02:00:00 - 00:02:17:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
GREELEY Yeah. So but some people think they go, Where are you? But where are you from really? But where are you from? And then they give up and they go, Where were you born? And they go, Denver. And they are like, they understand anything. So my dad was a doctor and then he got posted. He worked for the U.N., the World Health Organization.

00:02:17:16 - 00:02:35:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
He got posted in Sri Lanka. So I spent the next two years in Sri Lanka. Then he came back to the U.S. and he got posted in Bangladesh. So I spent the next two years in Bangladesh. Then after, yes, I was in the expat British thing in, you know, the Indian stuff, right there. All that international came back and the coldest winter in my life.

00:02:35:18 - 00:02:55:17
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
We went back from from Bangladesh to Baltimore. There's me at age six or seven encountering American culture for the first time and Baltimore winter and I froze. All I know is I just my only memories is being called from near Cincinnati. I went to the grade school, middle school, Cincinnati, then to Detroit. I went to Mumford High School.

00:02:56:09 - 00:03:11:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Then I took a year in Sweden as an exchange student in college at Case Western Reserve. I went to Scotland for a year in college I came back and got a job in Utah. Then I got tired of that. So I went and got a job in Switzerland for seven years and then I came back and I got tired of that.

00:03:11:19 - 00:03:30:10
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So I went and got a job in Norway for a bit and then ten years ago I gave up my house completely and just went around the world for six years. So where am I from? Is that tough question? It's all mixed. I'm international and for me, national borders are an accident of history. They have no meaning to me.

00:03:30:21 - 00:03:39:10
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, likewise, being in the military, serving in the military, when people ask that question, it's there's a place I was born, there's many places I lived. But where are you from?

00:03:39:10 - 00:04:03:22
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
It's this is a wonderful, wonderful song for anybody who's who's who's connected to Latin America or speak Spanish. It's a singer called Facundo Cabral. And he has a song. It has a line. And I won't say it in Spanish for your listeners, but it goes, I'm not from here, I'm not from there. I have no age, I have no future.

00:04:04:05 - 00:04:20:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Happiness is the color of my identity. I heard that in my head, exploded, and I said, That's me, especially that last line. But I have I'm not from here. I'm not from there. I have no age. I have no identity. That's for people like us, right? It's just like here we are as a person.

00:04:21:09 - 00:04:29:09
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. It gives us perspective. It gives us. And that's probably what helped you with your work in software.

00:04:29:09 - 00:04:51:22
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
It turns out to be core to my consulting because all of my consulting is what I call micro touch therapy. You know, there's chiropractors that snap bones and things and this people who do the micro touch. I'm the micro touch consultant and I worked out it's from this background that that I've always been a visitor in a culture any culture I even even the U.S. I'm still kind of a visitor here because I came here at age seven, right?

00:04:51:22 - 00:05:12:23
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Effectively, yeah. And so if I go to a company or an organization, it's not my job to change them. They they're not. They didn't go bankrupt. So something's working. They have a culture. You live with it. And for me, you years, there's only so many changes you can do as one person. So I'm always looking for what's the lightest touch forever.

00:05:12:23 - 00:05:33:20
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
It's been that way for my whole history in consulting is what's the least change you can make. So that people can do better in whatever, right? Right. And all of my software development methodologies are built that way and all of my interventions in companies are built that way. And that's that's like deep down inside me. I can't I can't do it a different way because of that travel background.

00:05:34:14 - 00:05:54:10
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. So today I want to bring up a topic that I think you tweeted out in 2000, and that's the connection to John Boyd's Loop and Agile. And before we do that, I want to go back to a conversation that you and I had in Portugal and kind of set the scene there. There's a Dave Snowden's at the table, you're at the table, there's a few other folks there.

00:05:54:17 - 00:06:09:04
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And you start asking me about my background in the military and in particular, if I was familiar with Karl Vick. Karl Vick, who is a thought leader in the space of sense, making and hire reliability organizing or high reliability theory.

00:06:09:07 - 00:06:24:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
He was a very, very influential sociologist, and I actually tried to get him to be the keynote speaker at the first Agile conference in 23. I didn't succeed, but he was my guy that was going to show our intention in the agile industry.

00:06:25:04 - 00:06:37:17
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So back in 2003, going back to this conversation, to your point just now, my impression of the conversation is had you been successful with getting Karl to speak at that, we may be on a different trajectory than we.

00:06:37:17 - 00:06:58:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Are, I believe 100%. I was so sad. We we went with an industry speaker in the hall, the whole like agile community locked on to lean startup moneymaking, you know thing as opposed to sociology sense making thing which would have been my particular preference.

00:06:58:22 - 00:07:00:09
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Right. And you know.

00:07:00:15 - 00:07:24:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Mike's work, you mentioned Uda and I don't think I knew about OODA 2000. I might have by 23, but it's possible. I was in a conversation with it with a friend and colleague and he brought up ODA at the time and I knew nothing about military who do this stuff right. And, and, and I am so anti military or at least I was back then and I'm like, don't, don't even say military.

00:07:24:07 - 00:07:46:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I mean, that's the Northern software stuff, right? And then years later, I mean, literally years later, I know six, eight years later, I finally got to reading John Boyd and you know, and the other thing and I would but this is what we're talking about. Like literally like this is it. Yeah. Okay. So I did so like, yeah.

00:07:46:04 - 00:08:01:21
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
That's that's a fantastic perspective. So when we were, you know, in the military, we don't go to YouTube school. There's no here's your 4 hours of Guadalupe or anything like that. It's just assumed that you kind of learn it when you, you know, Hey, you must have been in the military, therefore, you know, that little loop. Yeah, that's not always true.

00:08:02:02 - 00:08:17:09
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And when you dove deeper into it and you start looking at what John Boyd put into it, things like mission command, lessons from the Toyota production system. Yeah, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy. You start to see the value in it outside of warfare, right?

00:08:17:20 - 00:08:35:08
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Oh yeah. Totally, totally. And and by the way, you know, I know he developed his brief so he he could talk nonstop for two days or something. I'm a big fan of of the short word sense, as you know, like look at look at my mug. All I sell these days is these four words, right? And it's a podcast.

00:08:35:08 - 00:08:54:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You can't see it, but it says collaborate, deliver, reflect, improve. They're only four words in. I edited the short phrase, they're right. Increase the quality of listening. Stuff like that was such a good model and soon pause. The reflect is the pause, right? Give give yourself a chance to breathe. Let all the neurons connect. Try to figure out where you are from moment.

00:08:54:19 - 00:09:05:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Recenter yourself in and then and then makes and then make small improvement. So I only have four words. And so for me the thing with the OODA and I never remember which ones first you observe or orient which were.

00:09:05:09 - 00:09:06:00
Mark McGrath
To observe.

00:09:06:05 - 00:09:31:13
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Observes first orient second right that this right I don't I don't need his in his half day one day to day he'll go into detail. I can go into details on this too, but I don't. But I don't. And for me, just having the forward zmuda is all I need. Because you're talking about rate of observation, right? Rate of orientation, you know, rate of feedback across around that center.

00:09:32:03 - 00:09:51:08
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I'm bringing a million other details on yours. I can bring in a million details on mine. And most people are never going to get to those details like they get lost. But the second concept you bring up is already gone, right? Yeah. So my what were my lessons in the last five or six years is keep it simple, right?

00:09:51:08 - 00:09:59:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Keep the language, people. I have a thought, but I can't let you get to your next question before I just ramble on for 20 minutes now.

00:10:00:14 - 00:10:01:15
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
We want you to ramble on.

00:10:01:19 - 00:10:26:02
Mark McGrath
Yeah, it's a lot like the way you're describing it. It's a lot like how I came into contact with John Boy stuff. In the military, you learn the simple things about it. You learn sort of the process, so to speak, in very clear, simple terms. But I had to leave the military to really understand the context and the power of what it was actually teaching me to function in complex domains effectively.

00:10:26:16 - 00:10:31:02
Mark McGrath
But I didn't you know, they don't tell you that when you're learning it, you won't arrive at that.

00:10:31:02 - 00:10:37:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Conclusion because it want to. But I wanted to give you a chance to react to anything I said so as a conversation. Right. And then.

00:10:37:14 - 00:10:38:02
Mark McGrath
Of course.

00:10:38:22 - 00:10:40:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And not just a blur. Yeah, well.

00:10:40:19 - 00:10:48:15
Mark McGrath
That's I mean that's our format here. So we were all learning st yeah. Three guys having coffee in the world's listening in and taking notes hopefully.

00:10:48:21 - 00:10:55:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So I have to stop talking so they get you're like the the interesting parts the reaction in both directions so thank you interact.

00:10:55:07 - 00:11:09:20
Mark McGrath
What do you think about this. So like so when you learn something simply you know you learn the four things simply at first what's what's your thought on the continued in-depth learning beyond in order to better understand something so simple.

00:11:09:20 - 00:11:14:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I'm I'm I'm afraid you ask that because I give, like, hour long lectures on that. I'm like.

00:11:15:12 - 00:11:18:02
Mark McGrath
That would just to say.

00:11:18:17 - 00:11:40:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Right, I have a ten year, which you probably can't see. It's, it's Japanese. It's though it's the word re and so the Japanese in Iki know they have this concept of shou hari shu means follow like you go to, you go to a dojo, you don't ask any dumb questions. They hit like this, you hit like this. You don't ask, what if the guy's taller?

00:11:40:16 - 00:12:00:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You just copy, right? And this is generalized over all learning. Everybody kept in the doorway. Mark Shu, they say you get a new job, right, or a new assignment, and you say, How do I do that? That right? And then they tell you how to do it. They give you a technique, they give you a starter kit technique, and you don't ask any questions.

00:12:00:19 - 00:12:19:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You just see if you can copy the technique. It's universal, right? So that you then and you go to different, you know, weapons and techniques and that's how that means break. So you break from that like the tyranny of the rules of the shoe and you pick up lots of things, but you're still kind of in a conscious competence state.

00:12:20:15 - 00:12:41:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And this last one, this tattoo that I've got here is re and that means leave. That's like you leave the dojo, you're done. And it's a fully integrated experience. You don't even know what you do. You do it differently. Every time you blend in, then you don't know a thing because it's a whole body reactive right thing. Well, there's a fundamental contradiction between shoe and re like the shoe people.

00:12:41:11 - 00:13:02:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And this is what I've been in my first book since 2000. I've been talking about this. Everybody comes in and they say, How do I do that? They're in shoe. And everybody who's re says, But that doesn't always work, right? That's suboptimal. It's not the best, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that confuses the shoe people. They just give me one thing I can't do.

00:13:02:00 - 00:13:22:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Even me. Yeah, you show me something new and I'm. I'm good. I got it. And when they go, well, you don't have to do it that way. There's other way. No, don't talk to me, blah. Like everything is right. Everybody. So that's the re is when I started traveling the world, I got the tattoo because I was I left the dojos traveling the world.

00:13:22:12 - 00:13:42:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Well, in 2015. And now we're we're really getting to your question. So shoe Harry's critical everybody comes in the door and Mark's you right and then I wanted to break that shoe is a is it's a binding it's a false binding. Everybody comes in, they learn a technique, they get attached to the technique. They argue, and now they can't let go of it.

00:13:43:02 - 00:14:00:20
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Right now I want Agile to be adopted by everybody in the world. We can't teach shoe level techniques to everybody in the world. That's what's gone with the Scrum Master stuff. They're teaching kind of a shoe level. That's good. They have a million students. Let's get their brains locked on scrum. They don't know how to let go. Right?

00:14:01:04 - 00:14:27:05
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So this tattoo here is the Japanese word kokoro. And it means heart or essence. The heart of something, the eyes of something. And what I did with these four words that I'll again put up in the coffee cup collaborate, deliver, reflect, improve. I was seeking to break away from this shoe nonsense. So I have words that are so easy and obvious.

00:14:27:05 - 00:14:49:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Everybody can relate to them. Everybody knows how to collaborate like you don't want to, but you you know how to pick up the damn phone, walk down the hall, right? You know what is there delivers technical. But you got technical people. People don't practice reflecting but it's not hard to prove. So I can take these four words and go to any organization, any initiative, any company.

00:14:49:16 - 00:14:56:15
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I go to a village in Patagonia, I go into India. Right. There's no words. Just collaborate, deliver them.

00:14:57:10 - 00:15:02:20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So I collaborate. Are you using any lessons from team science to help people to collaborate.

00:15:02:22 - 00:15:23:05
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And I just got a word. I just have a word. See, I'm not on there. I'm not going there. This is the question. And this is this is the Mark's question. Right. And and you can unpack, collaborate in 100 different ways, right? You got one there. You can show Hari every technique inside of there. Right. But at the end of the day, you know, if you're collaborating or not, man.

00:15:23:05 - 00:15:40:16
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Oh, yeah, yeah. So in the military we had demo do teach, right? So in fighter aviation, the way we accelerate performance is through the art of debriefing and planning, executing, assessing, right? We also do demo duty. So when I first heard Shuri eight years ago or nine years ago in the outer community, I was like, okay, that kind of reminds me of what we did.

00:15:40:16 - 00:16:01:08
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Military, you know, those three levels. I chose those because I was talking about three levels getting reinvented. This model with five, that's great. That sounds great. The Save the demo do teach sounds sounds pretty similar, right? Right. The nice Western style words. Yes. Levels of competence. Right.

00:16:01:08 - 00:16:12:03
Mark McGrath
And if I was explaining it to someone that doesn't have our background and they're just learning this is a fair to say for Shuri is to say follow the rules, break the rules, transcend the rules.

00:16:12:03 - 00:16:15:02
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, that's right. There's a nice a nice similar things.

00:16:15:07 - 00:16:19:14
Mark McGrath
The thing she did, I looked it up. I mean, I see. Exactly. Well, yes.

00:16:20:04 - 00:16:36:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And transcend the rules if you're in Japan when they use re they're talking about like it's in your blood. Right. We're not just translating the rules. It's in your blood. It's in your body. It's right. It's fully all there. There is no higher level of performance than rules.

00:16:36:08 - 00:16:49:05
Mark McGrath
So the foundational, the you know, the rules, the training, the traditions give us are core. And then we develop those and then we transcend those by our own interaction in the various domains that we interact with.

00:16:49:17 - 00:17:01:08
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Etc. and, and shoes. Shoes is, is interesting. It's taken me years to work out, but it's actually a trap. The technique. The trapped by the technique. Yeah. Yeah.

00:17:01:08 - 00:17:11:06
Mark McGrath
So now I was going to say so you said people get trapped there is that we're just people just stick to the the simplicity fundamentals without doing the extra thinking or learning.

00:17:11:12 - 00:17:18:01
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I have a beautiful, simple example I do in my talks. I love doing this. I guess a good big group of people.

00:17:19:15 - 00:17:27:00
Speaker 4
You are listening to, No Way Out, sponsored by adults. Now let's get back to building your confidence in complexity.

00:17:28:17 - 00:17:47:14
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And I say there's you know, there's two ways to tie shoelaces, basically. And the one is you make a half a knot and then you make a bunny ear. I mean, you make it, you make it, you make a loop, right? And then you go round the tree and through the hole and you pull the other loop out right round the tree through the hole.

00:17:47:16 - 00:18:02:23
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
That's one way of the shoelace, right? And the other way is you make a half knot and then you make too many years and then you make another half, not you pull it through. Right? So and the world is split as to which they do. So I ask people and I go, Raise your hand if you do the round the tree through the hole.

00:18:02:23 - 00:18:26:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And typically people do that depending what country I'm in. And then I say, raise your hand if you do that, that the 20 years method it's a people raise their hand. I go, okay, now here's here's your challenge, right? Some time today, try to do the other one. You will feel so uncomfortable. And I want you to understand that this is how hard it is to get anybody to learn the second technique.

00:18:26:16 - 00:18:37:22
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Most people will go through their lives never having tried the other technique, and it's harder than hell to get them to try the other technique. Yeah, that's the trap of two. I learned one and then.

00:18:37:22 - 00:18:52:08
Mark McGrath
So let me. So since I'm a marine and we have a lot of Marines that listen to this so shoe Harry like I think a shoe is like my fundamental indoctrination where my correspondence to the old world is shattered and I'm given a new coding system and I'm drilled repeatedly.

00:18:52:18 - 00:19:03:05
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
What's it when you're in boot camp or wherever you have any questions when they say fold your socks this way, by God, you fold your socks. This way you do not ask any questions.

00:19:03:12 - 00:19:24:01
Mark McGrath
And then I get out into my operating unit, out into the fleet, out into the field, and I learn from my peers and leaders and subordinates, and we start to pick up more things that we didn't learn at boot camp, but we learn through experience. And then re would be the third part where now I may be teaching others these sorts of things.

00:19:24:23 - 00:19:44:01
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
In every skill people get to that re level, right and take anybody out in the field. Right? The people who've been out in the field for a couple of years, they don't care what the boot camp people learn right there in the field. Something happens. They reach for whatever they do a thing. There's a there's a thing in firefighting.

00:19:44:02 - 00:19:49:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
There was a very famous forest fire in Idaho. I'll pick a number 30 years ago. But it was.

00:19:49:09 - 00:19:53:11
Mark McGrath
Oh, the Gulch. Yeah. Mary Gulch. Yeah.

00:19:53:16 - 00:20:12:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So there's a moment there's a moment there where a guy invented a new fire fighting lifesaving technique. The fire was coming at him. You knew he was dead. He lit a counter fire to go toward the big fire, and and he created a little dead patch. And he jumped in the dead patch and the fire jumped over him.

00:20:13:06 - 00:20:32:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
That's re right field. You don't have time to think. Your body just goes firm. You do a thing, right. So for your Marine people that they've been out in the field, they laugh at the newcomers coming out with their little box of techniques. You know, the little box they would. There is no you don't have time to people like it's poppin that's read.

00:20:33:13 - 00:20:58:01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So let's apply this into coaching agile. Agile inside organizations. Today you get a Scrum master who comes in, you learn Scrum 35 questions and now they're trying to place from across the board right us that has some experience in coaching. We're going to show them some different techniques. So going back to what we learned in fighter aviation, we have procedures, we have methods and then we have techniques.

00:20:58:01 - 00:21:09:00
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I'm going to show you a technique. This is your standard. But here's a technique, right? So we'll show techniques more often now when we're coaching an organization's is this what you're trying to do with the heart of Agile as well as.

00:21:09:09 - 00:21:28:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I'm breaking it in here, I'm breaking all of that. Right. So I've been you can lecture on Shoe Harry for 20 years now and and and make use of the fact that the word shoe is spelled s h you in Japanese. But it sounds like shoe like what you put on your feet. Yeah. And what I say is people get trapped in the shoe box.

00:21:28:17 - 00:21:48:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, right. They get comfy and they make a mess there and it's nice and comfy. They know this technique. They don't want to change. Right. So job and your job is to kick people out of the shoe box. So I never denigrate anybody. I don't insult anybody by pretending they don't they don't need to learn shoe. They will learn shoe.

00:21:48:00 - 00:22:01:01
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
They have to learn shoe. They have to go to boot camp. Right. But it's very important that I start right from the very beginning. They're going to have to leave the shoe box. They're going to have to leave the comfort of the known technique to pick up a second technique.

00:22:01:13 - 00:22:02:15
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
One that's hard to do.

00:22:02:16 - 00:22:23:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Or then they're comfortable. Yeah. So now let's talk coaching, right? You go into an organization, maybe they don't know Agile, they're afraid of Agile, they hate Agile. Maybe they're not in the business at all. And you come to Adam with with with three dozen new vocabulary words and suddenly. Right. And, and they're terrified. And you say, do this technique.

00:22:23:06 - 00:22:29:02
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
They're going to lock onto that so hard. And now you say, now, by the way, you don't have to do that and they freak out, right?

00:22:29:05 - 00:22:29:12
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah.

00:22:29:20 - 00:22:56:14
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So I only offer as a thought with the shoe. Harry, if you can bring something like this into your teaching to warn them in advance, this is a starter kit technique shoe. Harry, we're going to have to kick you out of the shoe box. You have to go out of that shoe box. If you stay in the shoe box, you'll be suboptimal forever because different teams have different, slightly different needs and they're going to need to do slightly different things.

00:22:56:14 - 00:23:03:20
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And if they're all locked on, what does a scrum guide said they're going to be way suboptimal. They're going to suffer. Mark What you get.

00:23:04:03 - 00:23:27:09
Mark McGrath
When you understand shoe Harry And you're teaching and learning and people are becoming aware of it. And one of the things I like to do with coaching is help people become more competitive is a lack or a deficiency in shoe. Harry, is that something that you look, I would think that you look for that in a competitor where they're stuck in that shoe box and we're and we've moved beyond the mastery that that's a great competitive target.

00:23:28:00 - 00:23:47:05
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, I think I think I've never done this. But if you've got Marines and Marines, they're wonderfully competitive. I love that stuff. I set it up as to who can find find the more different ways to do the same thing that's getting out of that shoe box. Right. So that that gets them thinking sideways. They can do other things.

00:23:47:05 - 00:24:04:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Now, the problem is, of course, they then go to their colleagues and the colleagues go, I don't know what the hell you just did because that's not in the script, right? So the whole organizational transformation, adoption of ideas, you know, somebody is adventuresome and figures out something better and their colleagues won't listen to them. Like that's the standard problem we get.

00:24:05:02 - 00:24:05:19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. So let's.

00:24:06:02 - 00:24:12:12
Mark McGrath
Do that. Let's move to that then. Like the collaboration, how do you get colleagues to improve their harmony with each other?

00:24:13:12 - 00:24:22:22
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Okay, 1/2, if I could. I had a dangling thing. I want to ask about Shoe Harry just before we leave it, because you opened up another big topic right there. Obviously.

00:24:22:22 - 00:24:29:04
Mark McGrath
Big topic I want to talk to. I think the tattoo, the kinds of the characters are phenomenal.

00:24:31:07 - 00:24:51:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And all I do is I work from copper. It was like radical simplification, right? If you only say the essence of it is this just practice the basics forever. It's like wax on, wax off Mr. Miyagi, wax on, wax off. He's the ultimate kokoro teacher. Like, just, yeah, they strengthen your basics forever. And everything will generate from that.

00:24:51:04 - 00:25:09:20
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So that's what I teach these days as well, where I learned. But I don't want to say about Shoe Harry. I spent years trying to figure out there has to be another doorway, but I can't. I can't live with the fact there's only one doorway in. It's called shoe. And I found two other doorways and the other dominant doorway in for learning is play.

00:25:10:12 - 00:25:24:03
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yep. And play has got all kinds of advantages. Like when some when kids play or adults play and they, they find something new themselves that anchors in their brains stronger than any technique you'll ever teach of it's theirs they own. Right?

00:25:24:10 - 00:25:25:16
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Right. That experience.

00:25:26:04 - 00:25:46:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, but they created it, right. So all the neurons, the brain, it's theirs. It's, it's, it's woven in. So it's a stronger anchor and also they'll come up with different things, right? Which is cool. The bad news is it's unpredictable how long it'll take to deliver. So, you know, we're on a timeline. We've got to train all these people.

00:25:46:14 - 00:26:01:23
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So we go for the easy thing, which is shoe. But there is an alternative. It's called play. And so with me, with the with the kokoro I was looking for, I need another doorway that doesn't get trapped in shoe. And that's why I won't say more than these four words, right?

00:26:02:11 - 00:26:09:00
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So we use a lot of experience for learning activities as play activities where they can actually reflect back and make the connection of what they do.

00:26:09:00 - 00:26:09:10
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And.

00:26:09:18 - 00:26:13:01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
What they experience. And they have to make the connection to their work and.

00:26:13:01 - 00:26:16:13
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Then it's their neurons building the links. We just tell that them and.

00:26:16:13 - 00:26:41:07
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
As coaches we're there to reinforce it and help guide them to to discover that. And it's what I found is that is a it's a higher energy approach for us to do as coaches. It takes a lot of energy to create those conditions. And you see the participants expend a lot of energy as well, and they learn more from that play or experience from anything else.

00:26:41:07 - 00:26:50:06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, absolutely. There's no didactic approach. There's nothing like that. It's let's get you in an environment where you can learn and actually fail in front of others to.

00:26:50:09 - 00:27:13:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Say, Yeah, well, I'm learning to fail in front of the others. And learning and getting better from that is a whole separate topic. But let's go to the collaborate part. So given we've established that there's not going to be a shoe thing right where we're playing in the space, the reason one of the things I learned from having these these four topics is that they're doorways to huge discussions, which is when you say, how about improve, collaborate?

00:27:13:10 - 00:27:39:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So behind the word collaborate are a common topics and I'll just pick a couple that are surprising. So the heart of Agile is not a process, it's not a framework. Literally four words. It's no more. My friend, a solo painter, an Argentinean now living in Belgium, referred. We were looking for a metaphor that doesn't trigger the process reaction in people.

00:27:39:06 - 00:28:02:03
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Right. But she said it's like a compass, right? You don't you don't go around all four points of the compass. You go to circle, right? You say, I'm trying to go there. Which direction now off the compass will get me more in my desired direction. So of these four words you say, do I want to put more energy on the collaborate side now, or do we are we to get to where we want?

00:28:02:03 - 00:28:21:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Do we need to beef up that the deliver part now is it time to stop and reflect? Right. So you choose a word to put your energy on for a time being, right? So these are directions of conversations. Now we open up the collaborate one and say, Hey, we want to improve the quality of collaboration and organization. Yes.

00:28:21:16 - 00:28:46:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
What the first topic you have to pick up is trust. Then you have to pick up culture, then you have to pick up reward. So we're way out of process territory here, right? We're in conversations and I go into organizations. The first thing I talk about is executive bonuses in big orgs. They often put executive bonuses in conflict, like you're in charge of quality charge a quantity.

00:28:46:04 - 00:28:57:21
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
They can't collaborate. They got they got million dollar bonuses riding on the line for not collaborating. So the first thing literally the first thing I talk to with exec team is executive compensation.

00:28:58:13 - 00:29:00:21
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So that the reward systems drive behaviors, right?

00:29:00:23 - 00:29:01:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
So what.

00:29:01:21 - 00:29:03:13
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
The reward system is driving behaviors.

00:29:03:15 - 00:29:17:22
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Totally. But then you but you have to follow it all the way down to the the annual employee evaluation. If, if collaboration is not one of the top two things they're evaluated on, they're not going to do it right. Even if it's number three, it's it's too far down.

00:29:19:04 - 00:29:19:22
Mark McGrath
It's hard hitting.

00:29:21:08 - 00:29:35:06
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You yard is not process like you if you say we just want to prove it's just a topic, how do we improve collaboration? Trust, fear rewards turf ambition. They're there.

00:29:35:22 - 00:29:36:18
Mark McGrath
Oh, yeah?

00:29:36:23 - 00:29:37:16
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
What about ego?

00:29:37:22 - 00:30:01:18
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
It's all in there, man. It's all in there. And explain. Most corporate dysfunction is just off of greed and fear and ambition. And and that gives you that of diagnosed almost any corporate story you ever hear. Well, now, having said that, in the shoe realm, I did a research paper back, I don't know, 15 years ago about what increases the quality of collaboration.

00:30:01:18 - 00:30:22:14
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And on a minute by minute basis, on a minute by minute, I've never seen a book on this. I wrote an article. I did it kind of for fun and I don't have them here. Must be there in my in my other room. But we boiled it down the article to about 16 cards that we sell collaboration cards and and it's things you do that increase collaboration.

00:30:22:14 - 00:30:35:16
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Exactly. For instance, recognize other people write you in a meeting, in a session, you call their name, you say, nice idea. You actually increase the inclination to collaborate right there. Right.

00:30:36:00 - 00:30:41:15
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You mentioned names. How important are names in all this? Just knowing each other's names.

00:30:41:15 - 00:31:01:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah. It's your all on your. So here's my model of of of collaboration. So you have a people sitting in a circle and somebody has an idea and they want to speak what goes through their mind at some level. Right. What goes through their mind at some point is to say, hey, everybody, what I have to say is more important than what all of you have to say.

00:31:01:07 - 00:31:21:13
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You all have to shut up and listen to me. Now, that's a big chunk of ego, and a lot of people don't have that right. Some people do. They don't have a problem. But most people don't. So you have a huge amount of fear at that moment for offering an idea. So the first two elements of that, that's like five, five suits in the cards.

00:31:21:13 - 00:31:41:03
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Three of them are all around getting a person to feel like they can speak. So recognize others, lift others everything, complement it, remember the name, all of the things that make a person feel more important. If you adopt their idea, boom, they get points, right? If you if they say something and say, good idea, let's do that. Boom, right.

00:31:41:03 - 00:32:03:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
They're braver. We go after bravery. You're right. The second one is safety. Like if people are pounding on each other, criticizing each other, they're not going to speak. They just like everybody. They like that. So you have to create safety. There's different techniques, moves you do for safety. And then internally people have to be encouraged, like find your center, raise your own sense of power.

00:32:03:09 - 00:32:26:11
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Right? Go inside and make yourself braver. Right? And then you've got energy levels. Like what's the posture like sitting forward, being attentive, right. Adding humor occasionally. Little challenge, right? You're just you're watching the energy level in the room. Right. And then the final one is making progress. Like if you make a decision, you actually increase collaboration for the fact of having a small success.

00:32:26:18 - 00:32:48:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Right. To get back from Divergent. You know how everybody's like you got sidetracked and someone says, Everybody, let's get back on track. You actually increase the collaboration of that moment. We have about 16 of these parts in all these micro moves. So when you learn them, it's a vocabulary for the team and the way you use them is like a team could take a card and say, This is our theme for the next week.

00:32:48:09 - 00:32:50:19
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Just everybody walk around to look for it, just look for it.

00:32:51:04 - 00:33:11:18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You know? So we we use those as behavioral markers because what you just identified are visible behaviors that you can almost see. You can see when you're gauging absolute. We don't coach to them. And there is a danger in coaching to them because you just don't hand out a bunch of like, here's a markers, go do it because everybody will rate themselves as saying that's what we're doing already.

00:33:12:05 - 00:33:31:21
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So they have to go back to the experiential learning to play, learning to to experience that first, and then we build that up in there. So those behaviors of like psychological safety, removing fear in the organization, asking probing questions, inviting participation, these are all extremely valuable things. And you said you wrote this 15 years ago, right?

00:33:32:05 - 00:33:34:21
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
There are 2008, something like that.

00:33:35:04 - 00:33:54:13
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So you're about eight years ahead of the curve, right? That you know, where we are today and today we know a lot about psychological safety. It's kind of I don't know, people are kind of twisting it now. It's been many, many things. But you just captured. It is already known, right? Right. Yeah. So what else do you have for us on developing that?

00:33:55:06 - 00:34:16:14
Mark McGrath
I wanted to ask you about what you were just kind of bring it back a little bit to what you said about where there's those very clear, massive walls between, you know, you're mentioning executive benefits. How how do you crack those silos? Because I've lived in those structures where one will not talk to the other at all. And nothing get literally nothing gets done.

00:34:16:14 - 00:34:19:10
Mark McGrath
And they might as well be on another planet, let alone be. You know.

00:34:19:14 - 00:34:36:13
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
The only thing I've I've seen is there has to be team based rewards. Yeah, they are. They all get the same bonus. Right. So if they want the bonus, they help the other. That's the only thing I've ever seen. We got another one minute. Honorable.

00:34:36:18 - 00:34:41:20
Mark McGrath
How vulnerable do you think those kind of companies are that that that build those silos that are impenetrable?

00:34:43:06 - 00:35:00:20
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
You know the still that I don't you know the story about I don't have to be faster than the bear on they have to run faster than you. Yeah yeah I tell that is it's like I go into like an any company bank insurance company and they go, we can't do this. I go, well until Amazon, Google get in the picture, you're actually safe because your competitors are just as slow as you are.

00:35:00:21 - 00:35:10:17
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, that's right. So Alister, I know we only have a few minutes left with you today. Is there anything that any questions that you want to ask to us or of us or anything else you want to explore in the last few minutes?

00:35:10:17 - 00:35:30:05
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I know. I just I just love this idea of, you know, what the delight for me is. What's your current thinking current conversations around? Because everything I know is, you know, whatever a book I read 15 years ago, about 20 years before that sort of what's the current conversation in the other world? In your world?

00:35:31:01 - 00:35:36:07
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I'll take that one. So yeah, what we're looking at now is connecting it to reality. It's just kind of fun.

00:35:36:07 - 00:35:39:04
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
I mean, the current state is in your mind, like where you're working.

00:35:39:11 - 00:36:05:10
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, so psychedelic. It's just a therapy. We just had a couple of conversations with some neuroscientists on the OODA loop. So the way we perceive the world can be explained through John Boy, do we our eyes send sensory signals to some part of our brain. Our orientation makes predictions of that, and out of that we get some into Bayesian inference, predictive processing, and we create some reality of the world from inside or top down, inside out.

00:36:05:10 - 00:36:28:17
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
That's one aspect of it. There's we're also getting into active inference, which is really advanced thinking with the free energy principle, some more ideas that can be applied to A.I. as well. And then we're getting into, you know, some of the basic stuff like separating decisions from outcomes when we're talking about the really as, as applying it to the complex to domain thinking like the connection framework.

00:36:29:01 - 00:36:34:18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So there's that aspect of it. There's, there's a lot more we can dove into as well. I'll turn it over to Mark that.

00:36:34:18 - 00:36:54:15
Mark McGrath
Yeah. My, my, my tack. I came out of the asset management world for almost 20 years when I got out of the Marine Corps. And the complexities and the the volatility of the asset management world, I found that the warfighting concepts that I had learned in the Marine Corps were very applicable specifically to Boyd. And that's how I got into the exploration.

00:36:54:15 - 00:37:27:13
Mark McGrath
My my master's degree was in economics, and my interest was specifically in the Austrian school centering around Friedrich Hayek, who was a Nobel laureate from 1974, and really understanding how knowledge is tacit dispersed. We can't be certain. And what I found was that I felt Boyd and Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and other Asian economists, they really aligned on how they dealt with economic phenomena being the result of human decisions and actions and also entrepreneurship, how we generate new information and how we compete, etc..

00:37:27:13 - 00:38:03:05
Mark McGrath
So I would teach that out to people in the asset management world, but then I also ended up coauthoring an academic paper on it. We're bringing out a second version of that that actually this week and we're presenting it next month on aligning Boyd with economics and explaining it that way where orientation is understood first and then OODA becomes the process of how the orientation functions and then the intent behind what the entrepreneur is trying to do to create value for their clients is sort of the tie in.

00:38:03:05 - 00:38:32:22
Mark McGrath
But when I, when I explain OODA to people that don't know anything about it, I always start with orientation and I explain that I was like an internal operating system. Now who we are, what we think, what we believe, what our psychological state is, and then how we make sense of the world and how we process things. And I say that, you know, orientations like a fingerprint, everybody is unique, but we can align orientations and we can collaborate as teams and we can compete together and we can build trust together, cohesion together.

00:38:32:22 - 00:38:57:03
Mark McGrath
At some point, our our orientations have an alignment that we can harmonize in direct action together. And then I think people start to start to get it. And then, you know, and I actually just spent a punch. I finally met in person for the first time in December after we worked together, but we were in the Boyd archives and that made a second trip a couple of weeks ago.

00:38:57:03 - 00:39:02:13
Mark McGrath
And you're getting into that stuff. We're realizing that his work is so far beyond.

00:39:02:16 - 00:39:03:07
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Oh yeah.

00:39:03:10 - 00:39:04:09
Mark McGrath
OODA It's.

00:39:04:09 - 00:39:05:17
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
In your yeah.

00:39:05:18 - 00:39:25:09
Mark McGrath
Right. And what I really love about what you were saying earlier, you've got to start with those very simple words because not everybody's going to get the depth and the scope of what he was doing because because he's often very is, you know, I mean, he's very easily dismissed. A lot of people dismiss him because he didn't have a Ph.D. or he didn't, you know, produce any academic work.

00:39:25:09 - 00:39:32:11
Mark McGrath
But I'm aware a good way to start is with those words. Yeah. And get people I like. So I really like that. I think that's a.

00:39:33:04 - 00:39:58:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
That's that's for me. And when you wrap this up, I'd love it if you get especially comments back from Marines. I, you know, I don't spend I'm there I do I have done sessions with with highly competitive people in the in the oil exploration industry on pipe age type people. Yeah, I love it. I love playing with them and I love the competition myself and I love setting them up to compete.

00:39:58:09 - 00:40:15:12
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
And then I go, Yeah, well, actually there was a group, I sent them a problem and they were looking, but it needed lateral thinking to solve. They're just going straight or they were like they were so obvious as they were on it. And then second round they go, We're killing it. I go, You guys are like kindergartners. I got high school kids doing better.

00:40:16:04 - 00:40:23:23
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Yeah, I got so mad they couldn't solve it because they were like. Like, forward thinking. But I love competition. Love to hear from any of your Marine people.

00:40:24:03 - 00:40:42:20
Mark McGrath
Well, I love I love I love to get in a connection with some of them and some of the concepts because because of John Boyd. And I always attribute to, you know, the Marines are naval service and the ocean is pure chaos. And yeah, that's where the naval services I think have an advantage. But the Marines have also spent a lot of time in the East.

00:40:42:20 - 00:41:06:00
Mark McGrath
So I think a lot of the Eastern concepts have have have transcended into the into the Marine way of thinking. And I think that when Boyd came to the Marines in the late seventies and started developing all of these concepts with the Marines in the 1980s, you would find now that the the stereotype of, you know, sort of meat head, jarhead, knuckle dragger automaton, that's completely false.

00:41:06:12 - 00:41:30:10
Mark McGrath
The Marine Corps is the most intellectual branch, constantly reading, constantly studying, constantly debating, because they're trying to find other ways. So, you know, back to your shoe, Harry, were serious and clear about the shoe the in the second phase. And the third phase is where we really start to develop and come into our own. You can see behind me, it's no accident.

00:41:30:10 - 00:41:39:18
Mark McGrath
I mean, Marines the Marines threw a lot of gas in my my intellectual pursuits. So it's a really, though.

00:41:40:04 - 00:41:46:00
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
This is my family. We're all out of here. Do you have any last comment or question? Were closing words or something?

00:41:46:07 - 00:42:05:01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
No, it's wherever you look, wherever you look, you'll find John Boyd's. You, too, Lupe. You brought up the lean startup. The idea of that came was actually influenced by John Boyd did a loop. Same with the customer development model. So it seems that anywhere we look, we're going to find a connection to it. Yeah. And it's, you know, so it's it's inevitable.

00:42:05:01 - 00:42:07:01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
We got it. It's essentially.

00:42:07:01 - 00:42:16:09
Alistair Cockburn, PhD
Coded it. It's just our lives. Bill, this is brilliant. And I was a little bit sad. It took me, like, so many years to figure out that. Yeah, it's sweet. So good for you guys.