Trust within Team vs Organization in Scrum

How important do you think it is to first create a sense of urgency for organizational change?

That's true Rajesh, this is one of the toughest challenge we have while working with the team at this kind of situation. 

@Ian , Organizational change could turn to be the first turning stone . How do we enact , get-along , cascade and deepen the roots of legendary leaders? Organizational leadership team already has fixed proven mindset but supports Agile Scrum or Kanban from strategic standpoint.

What are some of the steps to create a trusted and safe environment for people to fast-fail and learn?

Hello Rajesh,

Multitude of factors could contribute to lack of trust either within Organiation or scrum team. In addition to people skills, like Ian mentioned, organizational change as well commitment from senior leadership are crucial.

The challenge I see is, how to drive that organizational change from a scrum team level, especially when leadership is insular or not receptive to such changes that can create trust among scrum team or harnessing full potential of SCRUM.

Regards,

Trinadh

Organizational leadership team already has fixed proven mindset but supports Agile Scrum or Kanban from strategic standpoint.

Are you sure that agility can be supported with a fixed leadership mindset? How has this been proven?

@ Ian, What should be our approach to bring change in senior leadership`s mindset and ensure that they have greater commitment for SCRUM, particularly when the organiation is going through finanancial crisis?

Trinadh,

Some questions you may want to pose to your Senior Leadership:

• Do you have an interest in building the right thing, which can differ from building according to plan?   (building the right thing optimizes money spent)
• Would you like the capability to quickly introduce potential revenue-generating functionality as it is realized?   (frequent inspection and adaptation promotes agility)
• Are you in favor of early identification of functionality being built that is not being accepted by the marketplace? (frequent inspection/adaptation provides opportunities to limit expenditures)

And be sure to help your leadership understand that their competition is doing the above, which may be why they are falling behind and feeling financial pain.

What should be our approach to bring change in senior leadership`s mindset and ensure that they have greater commitment for SCRUM, particularly when the organiation is going through finanancial crisis?

Do senior leadership recognize that there is a crisis? Do they see resistance to change as being a viable option?

A successful change program is determined by the following relationship:

D x V x F > R

where

    D is the Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo;

    V is a clear, compelling, believable Vision;

    F is the First and reinforcing steps;

    R is resistance to the change.

@Ian  and All , I believe the nature of the question relies on how to build trust between team and organization.

I do see teams and business or stakeholders engage in conversations more often which is healthy and good.

But on the other hand, few leadership management team vs Organizational legacy heads still behind on the Agile ways of thinking . How to enact or make trust better between these supporting pillars .

Trust comes from the willingness to let others prove they are worthy of it.  If your Organizational legacy heads are willing to let agile practices be used, then trust will come when they start to see the benefits of doing so.  As a Scrum Master/Agile Coach it is vitally important that you continuously communicate and hide nothing.  The legacy heads need to see when success occurs but more importantly they need to see when failures breed adaption and change.  They need to see how incremental deliveries are actually driving the products in the direction that the users want at the time of their use and not what the users asked for months ago. 

Your second job as Scrum Master/Agile Coach is to work with the agile teams to help them understand that they will need to gain the trust and that hiding information will breed distrust.  Help them realize that a failure is not going to be held against them, especially if they can show how they learned from it. Help them realize that not all of their decisions will be correct and they will have to admit they didn't know everything when they started working on something.  Help them understand how taking a risk of delivering part of a feature will reap the benefits of feedback and necessary course corrections to ultimately deliver the solution the customer needs and not what they asked for.

You can not enact or make trust better.  You can only help influence an environment where people are able and willing to earn and give trust.