Trust Archives - Yves Hanoulle

I saw a tweet about Jutta’s #agile2019 experiment is trust cheaper.

Nice experiment: is trust cheaper? @JuttaEckstein #Agile2019 #bossanova pic.twitter.com/1hSxSbKjAA

— Karen Greaves (@karen_greaves) August 5, 2019

I got a flash back to a x years (x to protect the innocents)

I was working at a company where my manager, had a problem with 1 (yes not a typo) one freelancer that was doing too many hours, as in +12 hours a day.

For the record, he was not thinking this freelancer did not do the hours, he found it was setting a bad example. He knew that the person was doing the best he could, he was one of the best, maybe the best person around (according to the manager), yet he also knew that it was hero behavior and although he could not prove it, he was afraid that with too many hours, the results of the extra hours was also of lesser quality and so maybe even hurting his team and company.

My manager did not want to confront that one person on the long hours. He did not want the person to feel attack, as after all, he liked his work.

The solution that my manager came up with, was create a new set of rules that had as purpose to forbid working for more than 10 hours.
let’s be clear everyone at the company, knew why we had the new rules, except maybe the hero developer (looking in hindsight, I think he knew too, yet he never told me, and we were not supposed to discuss this with him.)

The new rules, had all kind of detailed stuff,like starting hours, and working late hourse, and remote hours etc etc.

They bothered everyone, F ex I know of a one single parent who did a good job, that felt forced to change hours and left the company for that sometime later.

So that was a nice or better bad example of a manager that did not want to confront a persons behavior, and changed the rules to avoid the needed conversation.

To make things worse, guess who never followed these new rules and in the end had a conversation with the manager to get an official exception to these rules.

You guess right, that was our hero developer.
So now we all had to comply to arbitrary rule to keep a person in line, that in the end, was the only one who did not had to follow the rules.

That’s my trust vs rules story, what’s yours?

Today it’s 25 years ago, that I did something that at first looked like my biggest mistake up till then. I was 19 years old and for the first time in my life, my parents were on holiday without me.

I felt an adult. I had been living more or less on my own the year before at university.

Although 1991, had been a tough year, by the summer I felt like I finally had control again over my life and everything was about to get better. I had again a girlfriend, my parents trusted me to stay home in their house. In my hometown I had been going for the first time in my life to 10 days of partying at Gentse Feesten. And I was doing volunteer work with children at a playground. I felt at the top of my life.

And then 1 august 1991, around 19 hours, fate struck, or was it desitiny?
I made my own French Fries, and with that I burned down my parents house.

I was 19, all alone, no cell phone, without a number to call my parents, no house, wearing nothing but underwear and a pair of jeans. No t-shirt, no socks, no shoes. I went to my neighbor and I called my girlfriend, unfortunately her parents had never seen me, and they did not believe that a boyfriend they officially did not knew she had, had just burned down a house. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do.

I felt very very lonely.

I was 19, although my life was not an open book to my parents, I realized then, there was no way that I could hide this from my parents. And even postponing this, would not help me.
Yes that evening I learned the value of transparency and default to open.
First thing my mother did when she came home, she did not say a word, she hugged me. That hug told me; yes you failed, and no you are not a failure.

It was a healing hug and it was the start of a long journey, that makes it possible that I can say that for the biggest part of the next 25 years, burning down that house was one of the best things that happened to me.

No, I’m no advising you to do the same. I’m advising you, to look at the failures in your life and see what you can learn from it.
What do you gain from hiding them? Most people gain a life of fear. Fear for being embarrassed. I had just burned down a house and everyone around me, knew about it. I had no place to hide. not literally, not emotionally. Yes there were (Tons of) people that made fun of me. I even had a friend who yelled at me. He yelled because, yeah because of what? It wasn’t clear to me at the time, now I would say, he yelled because of his own fear. Today, I’m ok with it, very OK with it. It told me he was not a real friend. The kids and colleagues at the playground on the other hand turned out to be gold.

Today I will celebrate the fire. Celebrate at work, and celebrate with my family; I’ll make some French Fries and I’ll explain to my son why burning down the house turned out to be ok.

And next time I make a mistake, I’ll do a #FailureBow. If you haven’t decided what to eat today, have some French Fries and think of your failures.

I just got back from the first edition of GentM 2015. Today the topic was Social Togetherness.
A topic that I expected to be close to my heart because of one of the speakers Frank Van Massenhove.

I don’t know Frank personally, yet I have heard his story many times and it keep inspiring me.
For those who who don’t know Frank, he turned (one of the) worst FOD (ministries – is that an English word?) around to become one of the hottest places in Belgium to work for.
Inspired by semco, the new working etc…

Many people felt inspired by the talk, yet what also happened was that a few people wondered yeah but would it also work (fill in anything you want…)

Now I have been working as an agile coach for ten years, and more specifically the last 5 years helping large to huge organisations in that role. And then my role is partly a change agent.
Helping to turn an organisation into a new way of working, with a big mindset shift.

I helped companies around EMEA and at the same time I spoke at conferences in many different countries.

Two of the most common reactions I get are:

– yes this is fine in (name another country/company ), but this would not work in (the country /company of the speaker)
– yes this is all nice in theory, but in the real world...

And yes, I have to admit, when I read some books, blogs or hear about company x or y, that I think mm this would not work here.
Well, that never is about the other people, that is me being scared of trying.
And so when you think, what I heard at GentM, or what I read about Semco, or saw in the video of spotify, stop thinking it won’t work here. But look for the smallest step you (not your company, you), can make in that direction.

Thus this mean, I’m never frustrated about where my clients are and the speed they go?
No, I’m always frustrated. I always want to go faster. And that is good because that is my job. The moment I’m happy with where a client is, that means I stayed too long.

The story that Frank told today, is where he is now, and yes it’s the good part. I’m sure there were moments he was frustrated, I’m sure that he still has things he wants to improve and he might even feel they just started. That is not the point.

The first big change assignment I took in a large organisation, I felt frustrated about the speed. I felt frustrated about how little we achieved. I thought I was frustrated because I compared them to what I knew in other companies. It took me a few years to realise that was not really the case.

I compared my clients with:

a imaginary team existing of
– the best developers from the best teams I worked with
– the best tester from a great team I worked with
– a great scrummaster (who is now working as an agile coach)
– a Product owner that is a combination of two great PO’s I worked with, mixed with the person who taught my PO training and wrote one of the best books on user stories.
– …

mixed with stories I heard at conferences, read online, and hopes I have build up over the years.

so really that is not fair to anyone. None of the teams I have worked with or any of my colleague coaches, will win this comparison. All teams will look pale compare to this imaginary team.

What I started to do instead, is compare my clients to how they were when I joined.
F ex: at my current client, we now have the support of the CIO. That is something that I consider necessary for the kind of change we are trying to achieve now. And I have to admit, one year ago, I did not think we would have this already now. That is a huge achievement.

I can choose to complain about all the possible roadblocks and thing that go slower then I want, and yes I sometimes do that, because I need to let go of my frustration.

yet I love my job, because I am asked to help people to find a better working world.

Just as Frank, I meet a lot of good people that are capable of doing extraordinary things, if we allow them to think. And I know they are capable, because they do it. Unfortunately some of them don’t do it at work, but do it in some kind of volunteer work. And I’m totally not against volunteer work (I’m a coach for coderdojo, and I love helping kids discovering technology), yet I don’t like it when people do voluntary work because they can’t do what they would love to do at work.

Ask people their values, give them a why and trust they will figure out the how. (After all you hired them because you thought they were smart.)
Basically treat them as adults.

PS If you think they are behaving as children, ask me at the next GentM, about some of the times I treated my children as adults and what that resulted in… (Thanks Lamazone to ask me the questions that reminded me of these stories…)

I read a lot of books, I always have.

As a coach, I decided some years ago, that the books I read as a coach, I want to have in my possession. I decided this because I try to learn something from every book I read.

The number of books that I really have to say, I did not learn anything from is very very low.
During my coaching, I referred people to the different books I had read.
I know that not every one likes to read as much as I do, yet in every organisation there is at least someone who loves to read.

And gradually I began to bring books to the clients I was coaching.
Every company/person has their own proces for lending books.

I call my proces: the library of trust.

Here is how the Library Of Trust works:

You select a book you would like to read
You take a picture of you with the book
You send this picture to my work and personal e-adres (a bookfie)
You read the part of the book that interest you (mandatory)
You bring the book back
You ask me to take a picture of me with the book and send it to you (important, that way I have a trace it’s back)

I get two kind of reactions to this proces:

Wow cool proces
How many books have you lost already?
Ah that last question is interesting. I also bring my books to the XPdays conference and I leave them in the hotel lobby.
There I lost 2 books in the last 10 years. One of them came magically back the next year at the conference.
So I lost 1 book in 10 years.
The reaction of one of the people that asked me this question. Wow we have a very rigid proces and we loose about 1 book a year. I rest my case.

My friend and colleague Franky Redant said that the SCARF model kinda explains why. Something I let you figure out on your own.

Category: Trust

trust vs rules

How a hug turned my biggest mistake into something I am proud of

That worked in your world, but that would not work ….

the library of trust

Interesting article? Dont hesitate to share

Interesting article? Dont hesitate to share

Interesting article? Dont hesitate to share

Interesting article? Dont hesitate to share

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