The phrase "one bad apple spoils the barrel" implies the undesirable behaviour of one person can spread to others, impacting the performance of an entire team. Many have experienced this phenomenon, feeling like their team is falling well short of its potential. But is there any evidence supporting this phenonium? A fascinating study has shown that indeed, a single, toxic team member can create group-wide dysfunction and breakdown.

 

Bad Apple

The Toxic Blend: How One Rotten Apple Spoils the Barrel

We have all worked in teams where there is that one “difficult” person.  They often display a lack of respect for their colleagues, disregard for team goals, and have an unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions. They may engage in gossip, create conflicts, and foster a hostile work environment.

They seem to consume a disproportionate amount of time and energy. Conversations with them feel “heavy” and they tend to sap your energy. There are many common examples - The Brilliant Jerk, The Controller, The Slacker, The Anti-Establishment Person, The Career Politician, The Passive-Aggressive.

 

The Impact of Toxicity on Team Dynamics

Often teams don’t have any choice but to do their best and simply tolerate the difficult person, citing personality eccentricities, often with a roll of the eyes.  The impact can be severe, ranging from reduced morale, increased stress, burnout, turnover, low levels of creativity and problem solving, along with reduced productivity.

 

The negative influence of a toxic team member can spread like wildfire, causing dysfunction in the entire group.
- Simon Sinek

 

rolling eyes

The Toxic Team Member: A Catalyst for Chaos

Will Felps, Associate Professor of Organization & Personnel Management at Rotterdam School of Management, published a fascinating paper titled How, When, And Why Bad Apples Spoil The Barrel: Negative Group Members And Dysfunctional Groups.  The paper discusses how, when, and why the behaviours of one negative group member can have a powerful, detrimental influence on an entire team.  In other words, how one bad apple can rot the barrel.

Felps conducted a social experiment. He took groups of four college students and arranged them into teams. Each team had to compete against the other to solve some management problems. Unbeknown to them, Felps planted an actor in each team, designed to feign one of the three personality types Felps suspected caused major issues:

 

  1. The Depressive Pessimist - will complain that the task that they're doing isn't enjoyable and make statements doubting the group's ability to succeed.
  2. The Jerk - will say that other people's ideas are not adequate but will offer no alternatives himself. They'll say "you guys need to listen to the expert - me."
  3. The Slacker - will say "whatever", and "I really don't care."

 

The existing research assumed that groups had the ability to overcome bad apples and the power of the group would override the bad apple forcing them to change their behaviour. However, Felps findings proved otherwise.

Groups with a bad apple performed 30 to 40 % worse than groups without a bad apple.  The ability to get along, share work and collaborate significantly dropped in groups with a bad apple.

Poor functioning team

 

The Domino Effect: From Toxicity to Dysfunction

In groups with a bad apple, other team members begin to take on the bad apple's negative behaviour. When the bad apple actor acted out one of the three personalities, the other team members started to act in the same way.  When the actor was a jerk, other team members would begin acting like a jerk. When the actor was a slacker, they began to slack, too. Even worse, they didn’t just act this way to him – they acted this way towards all other team members. The bad behaviour had a ripple-on effect, propagating that type of behaviour throughout the team.

This is an immensely important discovery. One bad apple can cause rot in the entire cart by altering the behaviour of everyone.

Interestingly, there was one exception in the experiment. One group performed well, despite having a bad apple. The difference? This group had a leader with strong skills in diffusing conflict.

 

 

Psychological Safety

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson identified psychological safety as a cornerstone of effective teamwork and organizational success.  Psychological Safety is a vitally important part of our consulting work at Radically.

Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking." Project Aristotle, an initiative at Google, sought to uncover the dynamics of successful teams and identified psychological safety as one of the key factors driving high-performing teams. They found psychological safety was more impactful than the next four factors combined.

However, a culture of psychological safety isn't just a leader's job -  it is everyone's responsibility, especially as organisations become more decentralised and self-managed.

 

Restoring Harmony to Rebuild a Dysfunctional Team

So if undesirable behaviour can damage teams, and it can spread, what can we do about it?

There are broadly two key ways to approach this - by developing a group's ability to self-manage this and through people in leadership and management roles supporting this. the combination of both is the most successful approach.

The Power of Teamwork

Humans naturally form social group norms to guide behaviour. Norms take shape and change over time as the group evolves. Often group norms are implied and unstated, detected through the day-to-day interactions with others.

One way to help bring this into focus is to establish a team charter. This preventative action involves a team defining their desired values and behaviours. It can be quickly achieved with little more than a flipchart and some markers, using prompts such as

  • What would make our team powerful?
  • What can we count on from each other?
  • How do we want to be when we are challenged?

A team charter provides a clear statement of expectations - that is, what good looks like.  If behaviour slips off track, the group's role is to call each other out and self-moderate. However, this assumes the group has the capability and experience to do this. enter the leadership role.

The Role of Leadership

A good leader will help a group retain ownership of their behaviour and step in if it becomes unsafe or they see the group struggling with a lack of skills and experience.

A technique I frequently use is to help the group "notice" their behaviour if it differs from what they said was important in their team charter. The way you do this is very important. Avoid assumptions and embrace curiosity: "I am noticing that [observation]. Do you notice that too or am I misreading the situation?" If they agree, I might facilitate a discussion on what happened and what we can learn from this to improve. Note at no point am I taking ownership. The group is accountable for their behaviour. Reveal dont resolve.

Motivational interventions

Felps calls these “motivational interventions” - acts of teammates that attempt to change negative behaviour via influence. His research shows this is an effective way to deal with The Slacker and The Brilliant Jerk, but is less successful with the Depressive Pessimist.  Most people do not have the techniques required to resolve a teammate’s negative moods, and so tend to simply avoid or reject them. This is where a different leadership stance kicks in. Rather than facilitating (which is for a group), a personal coaching stance would probably be a better choice. In other words, connect with them, empathise,  share how you observe their behaviour impacting the group, and help them consider some options to move forward.

 

Honest conversation in a team

Conclusion

In conclusion, the impact of a toxic team member carries profound implications for group dynamics and team performance. The fascinating study by Will Felps has provided valuable insights into the impact of a single toxic team member on an entire group. This research has shown that the negative influence of such an individual can indeed spread like wildfire, leading to reduced morale, increased stress, burnout, turnover, and decreased productivity within the team.

Moreover, Felps' experiment shed light on the domino effect of toxicity, where other team members often begin to adopt the negative behaviour exhibited by the bad apple, causing a ripple effect of dysfunction throughout the group. This discovery underscores the critical importance of addressing toxic behaviour promptly and effectively.

Psychological safety, as highlighted by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, emerges as a vital factor in promoting effective teamwork and organizational success. It is essential for fostering an environment where individuals feel safe to take interpersonal risks, contributing to high-performing teams.

To counter the detrimental impact of toxic team members and restore harmony within a dysfunctional team, there are two key approaches: empowering the group to self-manage behaviour and leveraging leadership to guide and support the team when necessary.

Motivational interventions, as described by Felps, offer a powerful tool for addressing negative behaviors, especially when coupled with a coaching stance that emphasizes empathy and constructive feedback.

In summary, the study by Will Felps and the broader discussion surrounding toxic team members emphasise the importance of fostering positive group dynamics and addressing negativity promptly. By promoting psychological safety, establishing clear expectations, and combining self-management with effective leadership, teams can mitigate the influence of the "bad apple" and work together harmoniously to achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

If you are interested in learning more about Will Felps work, listen to this recording from the “This American Life” show. It’s an absorbing interview with Felps.

Modern leaders face a tough challenge - deliver outstanding results while nurturing a work environment that encourages innovation, collaboration, and growth. As a leader, fostering an environment of psychological safety within your team is paramount to managing this balance.

psychological safety

Understanding Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a concept that encompasses the belief that one can speak up, share ideas, ask questions, or admit to mistakes without fearing negative consequences. It's about creating a workspace where team members feel secure in expressing their thoughts and feelings.

The term was coined by Amy Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor, and it has since become a cornerstone of effective teamwork and organizational success. She defines it as “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”

Project Aristotle, an initiative at Google, sought to uncover the dynamics of successful teams and identified psychological safety as one of the key factors driving high-performing teams.

 

Key Findings of Project Aristotle

Project Aristotle analysed data from hundreds of Google teams to understand the key components that make a successful team. Among the key findings were:

  • Psychological Safety: The most crucial finding was the importance of psychological safety. Teams where members felt safe to take risks and voice their opinions were more likely to be successful. This safety allowed team members to admit to mistakes, ask questions, and share their thoughts without the fear of judgment or reprisal.
  • Dependability: Successful teams were characterized by a sense of dependability. Team members could trust each other to complete their tasks competently and on time.
  • Structure and Clarity: Teams with clearly defined goals, roles, and plans were more effective. When team members knew what was expected of them and how their work contributed to the team's goals, it fostered a sense of purpose.
  • Meaning: Successful teams found a sense of meaning and purpose in their work. They believed that their work had a positive impact and were aligned with the organization's mission.
  • Impact: Teams that felt their work made a difference in the world or in their organization were more motivated and successful. Understanding the significance of their contributions increased team members' engagement.

 

Psychological safety at Google

 

Total Motivation

These findings are well supported by Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor’s work from their outstanding book Primed to Perform. I highly recommend viewing this webinar we ran with Neel during lockdown. It is a game changer.

Neel and Lindsay on psychological safety

The Four Stages of Psychological Safety

The concept of psychological safety involves four stages:

  1. Inclusion: This is the first stage where individuals feel that they are part of the group and that their contributions are valued. Inclusion sets the foundation for psychological safety by creating a sense of belonging.

 

  1. Learner Safety: In this stage, team members feel comfortable asking questions, seeking feedback, and admitting mistakes without fear of ridicule or negative consequences. This is essential for fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

 

  1. Contributor Safety: Contributor safety takes psychological safety a step further by encouraging team members to actively share their ideas, opinions, and concerns. They believe their input is not only welcome but also essential for the team's success.

 

  1. Challenger Safety: The final stage, challenger safety, encourages team members to voice dissenting opinions and engage in constructive debate. Team members are not just comfortable with their ideas being heard; they actively challenge the status quo to improve processes and outcomes.

 

These four stages represent a progression toward a work environment where team members not only feel safe but are also empowered to engage fully, question assumptions, and drive innovation and growth.

 

The Six Benefits of Psychological Safety

 

  1. Elevated engagement stems from a workplace environment that fosters a sense of safety and security. This heightened engagement manifests during team meetings, problem-solving sessions, collaborative project work, and interactions with both customers and colleagues.
  1. Cultivating an inclusive organizational culture: Creating an inclusive workplace has become increasingly critical. Inclusive environments embrace diverse teams and enable all members to thrive, regardless of factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, background, or political affiliations. This fosters a dynamic, collaborative atmosphere where everyone experiences a sense of belonging and unity.
  1. Nurtures creativity and fosters innovation - For creativity and innovative ideas to flourish, it is essential that team members feel comfortable expressing themselves. Consider the countless innovative ideas that may have gone unspoken due to a team member's hesitation to share them in an environment lacking a sense of safety.
  1. Enhanced employee welfare - Mental health plays a significant role in the overall welfare of individuals. When employees enjoy good mental health, they are better equipped to operate at peak performance and mitigate stressors that might otherwise hinder their productivity.
  1. Reduced employee attrition - a recent study found that employees who experience psychological safety in their workplace exhibit reduced inclination to depart. After all, why depart from an organization that treats you with respect, ensuring your sense of security and value? The significant costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training staff, among other expenses, render high employee turnover an unsustainable model for thriving businesses.
  1. Enhanced team effectiveness: When your workforce comprises deeply engaged, loyal employees, teams thrive. When a culture of inclusivity prevails, coupled with brand advocacy and a wellspring of innovative ideas, teams excel. When you combine these factors with the well-being of your employees, you've assembled a winning formula for elevating team performance.

 

psychological safety

Summary

 

By actively promoting psychological safety and embracing these key findings, you're not only contributing to the well-being of your team members but also paving the way for your organisation's long-term success, as demonstrated by Google's Project Aristotle. Remember, the seeds of psychological safety that you sow today will yield a bountiful harvest of innovation, collaboration, and growth in the future.

 

Interested in diving deeper into this top? Come along to our Psychological Safety in the Workplace.

 

 

Meet Ryan Jones.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, went to uni in the UK, came over to New Zealand in 2017 and have absolutely loved it here.

 

Do you have any hobbies? What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I’ve been a musician since I was young and have always loved listening to and making music. I’ve been in many different bands growing up, and nothing can beat a good jam session with mates. My wife Rachael and I also love getting out into nature and we go camping and hiking as often as we can. We’ve managed to do 8 of the 10 Great Walks and hope to do the other two soon!

 

What made you get into consulting?

The modern office world can be a very strange and unnatural environment and I’ve always been passionate about making a dent in this to help people become more engaged and at ease in their workplace. Eventually in my career I realised that as a consultant I can use my skills to make a bigger dent!

 

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

My wife is currently pregnant with our first child, so in 5 years I see myself fulfilling the most important job title of my life - Dad!

 

Throughout your time at Radically, what is one key thing that you have learnt?

Organisations are modern day tribes and are made solely of people and relationships, so the more that you can make each interaction and relationship as rich and meaningful as possible, the healthier the organisation will be! 

Also, I’ve seen many organisations struggle to deliver at pace because information has to flow up to the top levels of management for decisions to be made, which results in slow pace and ill-informed, biased decisions being made. When clear strategic direction is given by leaders and decision-making authority is delegated to people who are closer to the work (with clarity on constraints and guardrails), it results in better and faster decisions, and a more empowered and engaged workforce.

 

What advice do you have for other leaders?

Because organisations are solely made of people, relationships and interactions, make your interactions more meaningful by prioritising richer communication channels. Just remember “walk, talk, write” - if you have a significant message for someone, walk over and talk to them if you can, if not pick up the phone and call them, and rely on email and messaging only if necessary!

I've recently been asked by a few of our clients on how to improve psychological safety. One of the most insightful things on this topic is to realise that psychological safety is often not a binary question. There are many factors influencing psychological safety, however the first step is to understand the different levels of psychological safety, so that as leaders we can create experiments to provide intervention to foster more safety for our people and teams.

Understanding the Levels of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety isn't a one-size-fits-all concept. It actually comes in different levels, and understanding them is key to creating a truly supportive workplace. Let's explore these levels:

 

Level 1: Basic Safety

This is the starting point. At this level, team members feel safe enough to do their job without fearing punishment or humiliation. They know they won't be reprimanded for making honest mistakes. It's like a safety net that catches you when you slip.

Practical Tip: Encourage open dialogue about challenges and share your own mistakes to set the tone.

 

Level 2: Sharing Ideas

Moving up the ladder, this level is about people feeling comfortable sharing their ideas without feeling judged or dismissed. They're willing to put their thoughts out there, even if they're unconventional or untested. It's like opening the door to innovation.

Practical Tip: Praise and acknowledge creative thinking, even if an idea doesn't pan out.

 

Level 3: Taking Risks

At this level, your team members feel confident enough to take calculated risks without worrying about blame. They're not afraid to venture into uncharted territory, knowing they have your support. It's like the fuel for growth.

Practical Tip: Encourage calculated risk-taking and celebrate lessons learned, not just successes.

 

Level 4: Honest Feedback

At the highest level, your team feels free to give and receive honest feedback. They trust that their input will be used constructively, not as a weapon. This is where you see constant improvement and genuine collaboration.

Practical Tip: Foster a culture of feedback, and lead by example by actively seeking and welcoming input.

 

The Big Takeaway

In a nutshell, psychological safety isn't just a yes-or-no thing; it's a spectrum. The higher you can climb on this ladder, the more your workplace will thrive. So, take these simple steps, start adding more psychological safety in your workplace. Want to improve psychological safety for your workplace? Join us on our 1 day workshop on Psychological safety here.

Transparency is critical for agility, but often the power of transparency is challenged by long-hold cultural norms. This article shares examples of the power of transparency and how it can be used to create breakthroughs in performance.

Situation

I was helping an organisation adopt agile ways of working across six teams. We had started well. We had a shared vision for the change and everyone felt excited. We held a series of workshops to upskill everyone and had kicked off strongly.

The teams were full of highly skilled people who knew each other well and had worked together for years. They had been granted plenty of autonomy, were all highly committed and knew the area they were working in very well.

As we progressed, I kept getting a feeling that something wasn’t right. I drive home each day feeling something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I didn’t know the area of the business nearly as well as they did, but my gut feeling was that they should be getting through much more work than they were.

While reflecting on this I suddenly realised what I needed – transparency. Without transparency, I didn’t really know what is going on.

Creating Transparency

I decided to set up a small experiment. The CEO had made it clear that this project was the number one priority of the entire company, therefore all people working on this were dedicated to it full-time. I decided to test this.

Rather than dig into the details of what everyone was working on (micro-management), I asked them to help me create transparency about where their time was being spent. To do this, I set up a simple board where each day (at our Daily Scrum) each person recorded a green tick if they were doing the 7 hours they were supposed to, or a red cross if it was less than this.

What I saw shocked me. Everyone was red crosses!

As we worked through this, we found something significant - most people were only spending one hour a day on the project.

Despite this being the most important project of the organisation, structured to deliver the most important work first in iterations, the teams were actually working on all sorts of other things!

I remained curious and asked lots of questions. One team member shared an email that read something like this:

No transparencyIt turned out this was happening everywhere. There were literally thousands of invisible undercurrents running all the way through the organisation based on whatever work well-meaning managers were trying to get done. They had no transparency of what was actually going on.

Using The Power of Transparency

This organisation had a hierarchical culture, where success was measured by people doing what managers asked them to do. Well-meaning managers were trying to get their accountabilities delivered, but were creating a nightmare of bottlenecks, delays and dependencies across teams.

I bought the discovery to the Product Owner, who was also a senior manager with a lot of influence in the organisation. He too was shocked yet also thrilled with what we had discovered.

We designed an all-hands meeting where we shared the problem. He then empowered all the teams by asking them to say no to any work that wasn’t part of their current Sprint or was a genuine emergency that had been agreed by the Product Owner. All other incoming work to go to the relevant Product Owners to be ordered on their respective Product Backlogs.

The next Sprint productivity went through the roof. Teams were much more focused and happier. They started delivering significantly better-quality outcomes more frequently.

Winning with transparency

Breaking difficult habits

Six weeks later we hit another brick wall.

The Teams were struggling to manage the volume of support work coming through. It was impacting their ability to focus on project work. They raised it as something they needed our help with to resolve.

We asked them to estimate how much of their time was being spent on support work. They calculated 25%. When then asked them to calculate their per-Sprint capacity. As an example, one team had 8 people, each dedicated 7 hours a day over the 10-day Sprint. Therefore, their capacity was 8 x 7 x 10 = 560 hours. If 25% of their time was being spent on support work, then this was approximately 140 hours. Each team then set aside this amount of time for unpredictable incoming support work.

But to ensure we maintained transparency, we tracked how we were using this time. We created a large public whiteboard where we tracked how much of this time was being used, day by day.

What we discovered shocked us again.

After one week (half the Sprint), they had used all of their support allocation! The amount of support work was significantly more than what they had estimated.

Together, we analysed the incoming support work. It turned out that only a fraction of it was genuine support work. The rest was coming from the same managers as before, who were now gaming the system by putting through their work requests as “support work”. We still had the same problem – just in a different format.

Brick wall

Solution: Increasing the Power of Transparency

To resolve this once and for all, we made a decision to make all incoming support work transparent by putting it on the wall. Each day at our Daily Scrum, the teams and Product Owners agreed how much support work versus how much project work they would do each day.

Productivity shot up again.

We then kicked off a broader piece of work to address the root cause of the problem – the portfolio of work the company was trying to get done. We created an organised, structured and transparent portfolio system where all project were prioritised based on the capacity of the available teams. With all the managers involved aligned, everyone could to get their work done and be successful.

Conclusion

Transparency is your friend. It is easy to blame people when we are getting results we don’t expect, but it is usually the system of work that is the root cause. People don’t want to fail.

Leadership is about creating clarity and an environment where people can be successful and high-performing teams can emerge. As leaders, transparency is an important way of achieving this. Without it, it is difficult to know what is truly going on.

I encourage you to consider how your organisation uses the power of transparency. What could you do to improve it?

You probably don’t have to look very far to find people facing problems in their personal life or at work. They find themselves in a challenging situation and struggle to find a way out. Often times they are too focussed on all the negative things that are happening.

Attempts to solve the problems, even when acting with the best intentions can end up having the opposite effect, leaving the person feeling worse. One of the most valuable things you can do as an individual is to counterbalance that negativity. First, we need to understand how the negativity is created and sustained before we can break out of it.

A few years ago, one of the teams at my company was struggling to keep up with the delivery of their project, with tight deadlines to be met. the Product Owner, new in the role, was under a lot of stress from the demands of the Account Manager. The Account Manager was adamant in meeting deadlines for the client and was continuously applying pressure to the team. Stuck between the demands of the Account Manager, and the development team not keeping up, the Product Owner felt overwhelmed and spent their days keeping busy with low priority work. They shied away from hard decisions and complaining about the unfairness of their situation to other people at the office.

The situation worsened as time went on, until one of the senior managers became aware of it. After talking to the Product Owner they decided to help out by creating a delivery plan to have more alignment between the Product Owner and Account Manager. And so, Product Owner felt an immediate sense of relief. The intervention of the Senior Manager seemed to have taken off some of the pressure coming from the Account Manager. However, the relief was short-lived and the Product Owner quickly started feeling even more insecure. 

I believe it’s safe to say that we have all found ourselves in situations where we felt trapped and without a way to move forward. In the end, we think of all the reasons and people responsible for our misfortunes. We just hope that someone would finally do something, anything about it. Or maybe you are the one finding yourself having to constantly step in and take over the situation to get to a positive outcome.

Stephen Karpman describes these situations in his Drama Triangle. Let's take a closer look at the various roles at play.

The Drama Triangle

 

 

In our story, the Product Owner falls into the role of the Victim. They feel as though things happening to them are largely out of their control, leaving them feeling helpless and disempowered. They feel trapped and unable to act on their own, avoiding facing the necessary challenges, looking for someone or something to get them out of that situation.

The Account Manager takes on the role of the Persecutor. They are the perceived cause of the Product Owner taking on the Victim Role, and being helplessly trapped in that situation. The word “perceived” is key here. The Victim might view the Persecutor as the source of their hardship and misery, but that doesn't mean it's true. While the Persecutor in our story is a person, this role might also take the form of a specific situation. For example, it might be a co-worker, a boss, a spouse, or a parent. Or it can be a situation like a deadline, the realisation of not meeting your target, financial struggles or even a natural disaster.

The final piece of the Drama Triangle is the Hero role, also called the Rescuer or Saviour. The Hero intervenes on behalf of the Victim in an attempt to save them from the Persecutor, much like our Senior Manager created a delivery plan for the Product Owner. This role of the Hero is tricky because initially, it might not seem like there's anything wrong with stepping in and fixing things. However, the result is that the Hero reinforces the Victim attitude. Their actions underline the helplessness and disempowerment of the Victim and reinforce the perceived persecution.

While the Senior Manager created an initial feeling of relief for the Product Owner, who was grateful for their help. In the end, the Product Owner was left with a deeper feeling of self-doubt and anxiety for the next project. Wondering if someone would need to step in yet again. Like the Persecutor, the Hero can either be a person or a situation, like winning the lottery.

As you can see, all three roles are closely related and keep reinforcing each other. Continuously showing up as a Persecutor reinforces the Victim stance, and a Victim will continue to wait for their Hero. With time, these behaviours create a downward spiral of unhealthy dynamics.

Luckily, it’s possible to break this downward spiral and replace it with a much healthier alternative.

 

The Empowerment Dynamic

 

 

In his book “The Power of TED” David Emerald describes a response to the Drama Triangle called the Empowerment Dynamic, and dives into how we might make the switch to it. As with the Drama Triangle, there are three roles.

In place of the Victim, we have the role of the Creator. A Creator, rather than feeling helpless, realises that they have much more power and possibilities for action. They are able to choose a response to their circumstances and can find a way forward. They are focused on opportunities rather than problems, and are motivated by passion and their enthusiasm about bettering their situation and themselves. For example, our Product Owner might have sought input and collaboration with the Account Manager, or proactively gotten some advice from senior management.

The role of the Persecutor now becomes the Challenger. As a Challenger, the role is about triggering the Creator's ability to make things happen. They might encourage them to learn new skills, make difficult decisions and do what's necessary to get the desired outcome. They surface possibilities for the Creator to grow, like an Account Manager, highlighting risks and communicating needs transparently with the Product Owner.

In the final role, the Hero becomes the Coach. A Coach, instead of fixing or solving things for the Victim, sees people in charge of their own actions and the owners of their outcomes. In addition they facilitate personal progress and offer support by showing pathways, offering perspectives and giving advice. In our story, this is where the Senior Manager could have made a real impact, by providing the Product Owner with the tools and knowledge required to build their own delivery plan.

 

Making the shift to empower your team

Like in the Drama Triangle, all three roles of the Empowerment Dynamic are closely connected and reinforce each other, but they create much healthier dynamics. Luckily, making the shift can be initiated by any of the three roles.

Starting to show up as a Creator will eliminate the perception of a Persecutor by acknowledging opportunities and challenges. This redefines the role of the Hero since there is no one to be rescued. Rather someone in need of support and perspective. As a Challenger, constructively surfacing opportunities and triggering growth will not leave people feeling like powerless Victims needing a Hero. Moving away from Hero behaviour to a supporting coaching approach will empower people to own their own actions and outcomes. Helping them see their perceived Persecutor as an opportunity to grow.

Whichever role you might be playing in a Drama Triangle, shifting to a healthier dynamic starts with a realisation. Only you can change your own thinking and behaviours, and that it needs to be a conscious choice.

If we want to change something about our lives, we need to start thinking and acting differently today. Rather than wait for situations or people to change tomorrow.

Having worked with many different leaders and teams over the years, I’m aware that recognising the detrimental patterns of the Drama Triangle can prove to be difficult while being in the midst of it. It can be even more difficult trying to make the shift to the Empowerment Dynamic without support. At Radically we help leaders and teams recognise harmful dynamics and support the shift of mindset and behaviours, to create an outcome focussed, collaborative culture.

I recently attended a zoom meeting with my Toastmasters club — yup, online speeches and all — which was pretty fantastic. Some of us were sitting in their kitchen, some of us in their bedroom, someone outside with an amazing view in the background. While I was busy giving my first ever online speech, I had a realisation: all these backgrounds give a much more intimate view into a person’s life than I would have had a chance to get otherwise. Has this crisis made the workplace more human?

Has the crisis made the workplace more human?

Safe to say that we are all online meeting pros by now. We have trialled what feels like a hundred different tools, we’ve optimised our home office set up as much as possible and we have all had our funny and embarrassing moments. I’ve seen children needing attention and curiously eyeing the camera while the person was trying to talk about a roadmap, pets “helping” with the meeting or hidden significant others who bring their loved ones a cup of tea or coffee while they whisper “Thank you” to the left of the screen. I have even seen people’s partners or roommates in their undies, squeezing past them, believing that they are out of the angle of the camera. In a weird way, these glimpses into a person’s private life, their home or even just of their weird favourite coffee mug, have made me see them in a different light. Even if I only see them on a screen, I have learned a little more about who they are (or might be) outside of work.

In his book “Reinventing Organisations”, Frederic Laloux talks about the concept of wholeness — bringing your whole self to work. Traditionally, the idea of bringing your whole self to work was not embraced by organisations. In an attempt to show up professionally, people have created a version of themselves, or a mask for themselves, that they wear to work. All other parts, that don’t fit in this professional image, were left at home, especially the part that shows vulnerability.

Now, while Laloux takes this concept as far as a spiritual level, the very unspiritual COVID-19 global crisis has forced many of us to be vulnerable and open with their co-workers and managers about challenges they currently face. With lockdowns in place, children at home or helping out others or the community, many of us have to juggle a busy ‘bubble’ life with working from home and getting stuff done. Uncertainty about the world after, job security or worries about the health of loved ones and friends are piling on the pressure. We simply don’t have a choice to not bring our whole selves to work anymore, because work-life and life outside work have started to blend.

However dramatic this sounds, finally, I have experienced a workplace where it is ok to log off at five to cook dinner for hungry children, where it is supported to go grocery shopping for the elderly parent to help them out and check in on them. People are encouraged to share their feelings, be vulnerable and ask for help. In fact, many meetings I attended over the past three weeks have started off with a check-in round to give everyone a chance to share what’s going on for them. And while I wish it would not have taken a pandemic to get to this point, I hope that we can learn from this experience. That, in a post-COVID-19 world, however it may look, we can continue to strengthen the human connection we forged during this time of crisis — over VC no less! — and bring our whole selves to work.

(Photo by Andy Orin on Unsplash)

I love travelling and visiting different countries. Being born in Singapore, I am always fascinated when I travel back to visit family and friends at how much the country has changed and evolved in just a short period of time.

The picture below depicts how far Singapore has come as a small nation over the past 50 years, defying obstacles and constraints in order to become one of the most respected and wealthiest Asian countries in the world.

As human beings we have a bias for progress - take technology for example. It's not uncommon for new breakthroughs to be developed over many years without being accessible to the general public until many years later either due to cost, complexity, or simply feasibility.

The OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) display is a really good example of technology that has fought for many years to surface to the top over other display technologies such as PLASMA, LED, CRT etc. In 1987, the world's first OLED paper was released by Kodak. I'm sure at the time when the first OLED paper was invented, I imagine that the excitement around future possibilities of this technology was buzzing around Kodak. However what is interesting is if you look at the journey of OLED over the next 30 years, its intriguing to see a few things happen.

  1. Kodak are no longer the leaders of the technology
  2. As OLED became more and more available mainstream, it became simpler and more accessible
  3. It took 20 odd years before OLED was introduced to televisions

So what does this all have to do with Agile and its application to New Zealand businesses?

Having devoted the last 2 years to building Radically, a lot of my time has been spent on getting to know the challenges of New Zealand businesses, both large and small. The common pattern across most organisations is change. While the reasons and motivators might be different from organisation to organisation, most do fit in one of the categories below:

  • Margin at risk due to declining revenues, increased market competition and pressure on costs
  • A sudden boom in the organisation, requiring significant growth in order to meet demand in orders of magnitude of +200% growth
  • Industry profitability is declining, requiring a shift in strategy to innovate and diversify for future survival

In speaking to organisations, what I've found is that most know they need a step change, and that in their current form, they would not be successful. More and more organisations are realising that improving their ways of working in the form of culture, processes and practices is a way to overcome their challenge.

Organisations that journey down the path to shift in the way they work often look for a partner to diagnose and help them start. Just like when you visit your local GP for medical expertise, organisations that face these challenges look to consulting companies and individual experts to prescribe the right medication in order to get healthier. Unfortunately instead of becoming healthier, many of these organisations end up becoming more sick than when they started. Why is this?

From talking to businesses and their leaders, I've found that the help and advice they were given was focused on an idealism and a pursuit of an outcome which often has not been translated to suit the needs of their organisation. Even worse, when asked if prescriptions such as Agile can be tailored, they were labelled anti-agile or not-agile, leading to an assumed implication that having achieved agility means you have succeeded.

This type of approach often leads to organisation seeking to be Agile as an outcome, losing focus on their original symptom, which is to increase business performance, improve delivery, or build foundations to scale.

Unlike the OLED example, where technology was developed then modernised and simplified, many in the industry have failed to simplify and make Agile digestible for businesses to adopt. The impact of this is many organisations have become resistant because they are forced to make a binary decision - "are you Agile or not?". This often ends up taking organisations down the wrong path in pursuit of an outcome to comply to an "Agile way of working", rather than simply working better so that the business thrives. Whilst I understand in application things are more complex, my challenge is that as experts of change, it is our duty to wear our expertise lightly and make it easy for organisations to embrace better ways of working, rather than make the solution the only means.

I started off this thought piece with the idea of what might be beyond Agile. My challenge is as we look beyond, that we don't think deeper and more complex as the solution. In my experience most are still at the stage where they benefit from very simple principles such as

  • Embracing try and learn
  • Delivering in iterations
  • Structuring for intentful collaboration
  • Reflect and learn often

Many of us understand that these are inherently linked to Agile practices, however they do not have to be implemented by the book. Instead, at Radically we believe organisational benefits come from making these principles so simple and practical, that they can be applied across the entire organisation. This is what better ways of working means, as opposed to achieving some kind of agility index or being the very best follower of a practice like scrum, but failing to meet your business goals.

At Radically we strive every day to draw on our diverse teams expertise, such as:

  • Delivery Experts who have managed large complex waterfall programmes
  • Agile Coaches who have helped embed new mindset and practices in organisations
  • Business leaders who have set a vision and understand the realities of running a P&L
  • People & Culture practitioners who deeply understand people, psychology and the practices required to unlock high performance

Together we are a diverse group of people who believe in partnering with organisations large and small that who want to improve their ways of working. To do this we:

  • Make the complex simple
  • Draw on a diverse background of skills and experience
  • Focus on delivering clear business outcomes

If you've been considering how you can step change your business in 2020 and want a partner that has deep expertise with the ability to simplify the complex, feel free to get in touch with myself or one of the team.

Forward thinking firms are realising that in order to thrive in a world of uncertainty they need to fundamentally rethink themselves beyond the tactical “doing” mindset (processes, frameworks and methodologies), to an adaptive mindset, based on a culture of collaboration and a team-centered approach to problem solving.

Culture, HR, intrinsic motivation & emotional EQ are converging with agile, servant leadership, the growth mindset & customer empathy to fundamentally reshape what it means to be a modern organisation.

The winners in the current climate are not just embracing modern technology; they are fundamentally redeveloping their core DNA in order to detect new opportunities. And this change is increasingly being led as a culture-first initiative.

Much of the work we are currently doing is less about responding to a particular crisis, rather it is more focused on creating new capabilities to enable our clients to continually adapt and respond to almost any situation. We call this agility. In practical terms, what does this involve?

From years of working at the coal face of adopting agile ways of working, we have learned that a holistic approach radically increases your chances of success. We therefore approach it as two interrelated pieces – Business Design and Transformation, with the overlap, validation, playing a vital role in road-testing the change.

Business Design

Business Design is about designing the business to help it best achieve its strategy. It is vital, yet in our experience many organisations skip this and leap straight into “implementing agile”. The result is a transformation with no real substance, no compelling call to action, no North Star. And firms wonder why so many transformations fail!

At Radically we take a very pragmatic view:

  • First, understand the core strategy. What space does the firm play in? What unique combination of drivers enable it to win in this space?
  • Design an Operating Model that will enable this strategy, empowering and aligning all the key business functions towards the same outcome.
  • Get explicitly clear on the target culture required to achieve this. What does it look and feel like? What will leaders do to role model this? How do we reward and recognise people demonstrating the desired behaviours?
  • Review and align the Organisational Structure to support the above. If our Operating Model is strongly agile based, then a different org structure is often required. What does this look like and what changes are required to get there?
  • Ways of Working – clearly design how we will approach our work. What work should be approached with an agile model? What work should be delivered by a traditional model? How will these interact? Who will do what? How will we measure success of this?
  • Funding & Governance – an agile enterprise tends to adopt an experimental mindset, delivering quick iterations of value that can be quickly tested with customers, resulting in continual course correction. Traditional funding and governance models tends to focus on adherence to a fixed plan. So how should a more modern funding and governance model work?
  • Leadership – given the above, what should our approach to leadership look like? How will we live the values as behaviours each and every day?

Sadly, most agile transformations we have seen in New Zealand completely fail to consider these fundamental building blocks. Instead, they tend to take an “agile practitioner” approach, focusing on frameworks, methodologies and processes. In our experience, these firms are unlikely to achieve their desired business outcomes.

Transformation

Transformation is the art of moving the business to the new model.

This is when the ‘people aspect’ of change truly kicks in. If you think about what we are actually transforming, it is people and people are the trickiest part to change; processes and models are relatively easy. The human shift must be designed with a human-centred approach. We find that by taking a leadership and mentoring approach, our job is to guide all levels through the change and build the capability and mindset within the staff to be self-sustaining into the future.

Validation

In our experience, no design is perfect. There is low value in trying to design a perfect design as no such thing exists, and secondly it will change as you implement it through transformation. Transformation validates design, yet transformation without design is folly.

 

Conclusion

In summary, we urge you to take a strategic focus when embracing agility. Are all the pieces of the firm aligned to the same vision, model and approach? Are we all completely clear why we are doing this and what outcomes we want to achieve? If you can’t answer yes to these foundational questions then it is time to re-think what you are doing.

Don’t “go agile”. Instead, design your business for agility, break the cycle of failed transformation and realise the true benefits from your investment.

Vodafone has accelerated their digital journey through the adoption of agile ways of working. In parallel, other parts of the business started to look at Agile to leverage new ways of working outside of IT with a firm focus on how to better win in the market, and better deliver strategic objectives. Vodafone engaged us to help achieve this by designing & embedding new ways of working for strategic business teams responsible for managing the key consumer products like broadband, mobile plans and pre-paid offers. In this webinar, we discuss how we use different tools, models and frameworks to help Vodafone’s business teams, along with the cultural & leadership changes needed to enable agile ways of working.