Hello, everybody,
and welcome to Episode 79
in Agile Meridian's Agile Shorts.
Today's episode is labeled the Big Pivot,
and it's actually really
about two big pivots,
potentially two big pivots,
at least that.
So I'm joined here today with my partner,
Kumar Dadatran,
partner in Agile Meridian.
Welcome, Kumar.
Thank you.
And we're going to talk
about this big pivot idea.
So I think it's interesting.
We're seeing all kinds of
big pivots in the market space,
in the business communities that we serve,
looking into the pivot
towards what's next, what's coming,
what is deemed as valuable
and what is helping organizations.
organizations and
individuals of different
sizes move forward with
today's VUCA and all of the
different things going on
and all the disruptions going on.
How are people adapting to that?
And we're seeing that a lot
of the techniques, the mindsets,
some of the frameworks,
they're all having to make
some pivots to keep up and
to evolve with the needs of
the market space.
Certainly,
we at Azure Meridian have been
doing that for some time.
Over the last five years plus,
we've been honing and
developing our disruptor
method and working with
organizations to help them
improve greater
profitability and personal
success for the leaders and
individuals at the organizations,
plus help further their
social desires in terms of
moving their social
momentum forward with their
mission and vision.
But there's, you know,
there's changes going on in
the way people are helping
other organizations.
People like ourselves are
helping other organizations.
And I wanted to talk with you today, Kumar,
around some of the things
you're seeing in terms of those pivots.
And what are you doing?
I hear that there's
something you're doing to
look at driving some new
pivots or directions as
well in this new space.
Yeah,
there's so much going on in the Agile
community.
And last week,
I talked about how Agile
coaches need to pivot their mindset,
their way of working with their clients,
broaden their knowledge, if you will,
invest in new certifications,
invest in additional learning.
All of those things are important.
from a, from a agile standpoint, because,
you know, agile is 35 years old now,
right?
If you, if you,
if you think about when
scrum started in the eighties, uh,
officially 93 or whatever,
but really the people were
using it in the eighties, the mid eight,
mid to late eighties.
And, uh, uh, the manifesto, the mindset,
all of that's been since
2001 is almost 20, almost 25 years.
And lean has been around
even longer than that, right?
Five plus, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So these things have been
around a long time.
It's almost like, okay, it's, you know,
waterfall has been around forever.
Of course,
waterfall methods are still in
use and agile and lean are, of course,
still in use, but everything's evolving,
everything's changing.
And so I think we all need
to adapt and evolve and change as well.
And
Mike, you mentioned the disruptor method.
That is a pivot away from
pure frameworks like Scrum
and Safe and so on and so
forth to a pattern-based
approach to transformation, right?
And we have been fairly
successful at taking out
the buzzwords and really
focusing on what's most
important to the companies,
the businesses that we serve.
And I think for me,
And I let me let me back up
here a minute and get your
thoughts on this to disrupt
your methods really focused
on medium sized,
maybe even large companies, right,
or maybe departments or
divisions within large companies.
And it's meant to disrupt
how the people in that
division department, company,
smaller company,
work and adapt and pivot to their market
conditions,
make them more business capable,
make people more capable themselves,
right?
What is your thinking on that,
on the disruptor method?
You agree with that?
Exactly.
It's really about a lot of
folks that are really,
they look at it and go,
I can see the value in this,
or the folks that are
trying to move into a different,
call it like a different
phase of their life cycle, right?
They're looking to grow.
A
5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, mom and pops,
startup companies that have grown,
they've been successful,
but they're trying to make
that jump from startup to scale up.
They're trying to make that leap, right?
And they're looking at ways
to do that in this
marketplace that's like quicksand.
It's just shifting all the
time and trying to deal
with that without the
advantage of scale that a
lot of really large organizations have.
And to your point,
even large divisions of
really large companies are
seeing the same challenges, right?
It's that same,
it's that movement from
where we are today to that
next level of productivity
and value and success that
both the organization and
the individuals are looking for.
So that's where it's been very effective.
That's where we've found a
lot of interest from
different clients that
we've worked with over the
last five years.
Right.
And so where the Disruptor Method,
and you can check it out on
the disruptormethod.com websites,
which is live now,
and we have a fantastic
testimonial there of the
efficacy of the method and
how it helped a
medium-sized company really
thrive in a changing landscape.
For me personally,
it's been very rewarding, of course,
working with my partners
and seeing the success of
the Disruptor Method.
It's still in its nascent phases.
So check out the site,
give us some feedback on what you think.
For me personally, over the past year,
I've been focusing more on
small businesses.
So these are businesses with
five to 20 employees.
Many of them are solopreneurs,
people like the person
working out of their home
for a small marketing firm
or agency like that.
I've had some success
helping these companies,
these small companies from
startup to at least some
modicum of scale up to be
able to be more sustainable as a business,
put more money in their
bottom line and so on.
And so that's my focus.
It's an experiment to see, you know, hey,
is this something that can
work so that as our company, as Meridian,
we can serve both small companies,
medium and companies and
large companies all at the same time.
You know, things like Scrum and Safe,
of course,
they don't work for tiny little
companies.
Of course,
the agile methods and the mindsets,
all of those work.
However, the frameworks don't work, right?
And so for me,
it's about bringing the
experience that I have as a
professional coach,
as an agile coach to small
businesses to help them be
more profitable.
It's really about that.
That's excellent.
Yeah.
And you're, you're right.
Those, those frameworks are overkill for,
for situations like that.
And,
and for certain industries and certain
things that are groups that are trying to,
trying to, to figure out how,
how they're going to make
that next move or that next pivot.
Sometimes it's,
it's a lot more situational
and contextual to what
they're dealing with.
So,
I have a feeling.
How do you how do you see
the parallel between
between these two areas?
Obviously, there's a scale differentiator,
but but there's there's
obviously something.
Let's call it something in
the air that that is that
is attracting folks to to
looking at something like
this and saying this could
be something that could help us out.
This could be something that
could help me out.
And help me meet the mission
and vision of the
organizations I'm trying to
serve or my organization
that I'm trying to grow
from the ground up.
It had some success, got a good idea.
How do I take that to the next level?
We seem to be seeing some
good amount of interest at
both levels with this type
of an approach.
What have you seen, Kumar,
that really makes you,
that's drawing these folks
to them and making them go, you know,
I think this is something I want to try.
Do you mean trying out or
hiring business coaches to
help them in their business?
Yeah,
in terms of the approach that you're
taking with the smaller
businesses and that we've
taken with the disruptor method,
what's the attraction to
folks around that?
Why are they attracted to it?
What do you think is the
reasoning that they're
interested in going ahead
and contacting and working with us?
I think that
You know,
Scrum and SAFe and the frameworks
are all great.
They have a good track record to, you know,
Scrum, of course, you know,
35 years of Scrum in all
sorts of different industries, right,
to product-based companies,
manufacturing companies, you name it.
It's a framework though.
It's a set of patterns and
practices that people follow.
And it's not as focused on
tangible results.
I mean, of course, it's inherent.
You do these things and you
should deliver better results.
You should put more money in
the bottom line.
You should be able to have a happier,
more engaged workforce.
But it's not inherent.
It's not the goal of Scrum
or SAFe and all those things.
I mean, SAFe might claim that it is.
In fact,
a lot of their metrics on their
website say that it is.
But there's a list of
caveats that come with that, right?
So it's like,
if... This and this and this
and this and this.
Yeah, exactly.
And so with Disruptor Method
and with my new experiment,
the company I'm calling Profit Sensei.
So I'm the sensei.
I'm going to help you build profit.
That's the idea.
Yeah.
The idea there is let's
focus on the results first.
Let's focus on the outcomes first,
which is something that in
the Agile community people
have been saying forever.
Hey, let's focus on outcomes.
Let's focus on outcomes.
But I think a lot of,
at least in my experience,
it hasn't been really reinforced.
I think Agile coaching and
coaches in general are more
focused on the process
rather than the outcome.
and so for me I think the
reason why disruptor method
and business coaching in
general is probably more
appealing to small to
medium-sized companies is
because it's the focus it's
about how do I how do I
craft a compelling mission
vision for my company that
customer that is focused on
my ideal customer
How do I attract and retain
customers to buy my products?
How do I attract leads,
new potential customers
into my ecosystem of
products and services?
These are things they're
talking about every day, right?
Exactly.
With themselves and their
talent and everything else.
Exactly.
And Scrum and the frameworks,
they don't talk about these things.
They talk more about how people should
work and deliver value and collaborate.
And those are all important.
But I think those are all
secondary to being aligned
towards common mission vision,
figuring out how to attract
the best talent,
figuring out how to deliver
the most valuable products,
experimenting and iterating
your way towards that.
And that's where I think I want to focus,
right?
I want to focus on business coaching,
helping businesses which are
really the backbone of this
economy serve uh thrive
right not just survive but
thrive and as I'm doing
that of course I'm going to
be bringing in the patterns
that work for scrum and and
uh agile and things like
that sure the techniques
are solid right yeah it's
not that you know the small
a small um a restaurant
needs to use scrum but let
me tell you something
Early in my career,
my first jobs were all in restaurants.
I used to run restaurants in my 20s.
And there are amazing
parallels between agile
frameworks and restaurant work, right?
Because you have to be,
you have no choice but to
be nimble and agile when
you're running a restaurant.
The product life cycle in a
restaurant is measured in minutes,
not months or years, but minutes.
Literally,
you have to put a product on the
table or that customer is
not coming back and they're
going to tell 10 other people, hey,
don't go to Mike's pizza
because it sucks.
Right.
And so that's that's really
what I'm trying to focus on
is kind of going back to my
roots, if you will.
Not that I'm going to run a restaurant,
but I'd love to help, you know,
independent restaurant owners,
businesses become more profitable,
especially in this climate
with higher interest rates, you know,
lower wages,
employees that jump
consistently from job to job.
A lot of challenges there.
Yeah,
there's a lot of challenges in that
space.
It's interesting.
You mentioned something that
I think is an interesting correlation.
It's kind of an interesting tie in.
that you talk about the
frameworks and a lot of the
structures and things like that.
And they focus on value delivery,
but they don't talk about
specific value to deliver
for a specific company right now.
I think you and I have seen this.
We did this in our coaching careers.
and others that we've worked
with and kind of consider
our peers do a nice job of
taking that and
contextualizing it at a
client with a client and
with their customers to
focus on specific items, right?
But on their own, they don't do that.
And I think it's very,
I think it's an interesting
pivot to kind of get down to brass tacks
and think about what are we
what are these goals that
we're going to that we're
going to shoot for before
we even start work and
think about specific
elements of those goals
specific to that
organization or to that set
of individuals or that
owner and I think um while
some of the approaches said
they did that and I think
good coaches would
extrapolate that out and
try to make that the case
right the experience
On their own,
they were not doing that in a
lot of cases.
I think a lot of the
backlash you're hearing
around the business community,
around some of the results
over the last 15,
20 years is really about
faulty execution on some of
that stuff and taking the
framework as the value
instead of looking at what
is the individuals and the
leaders and the
organization I'm working with getting.
What are you going to be
able to do when I'm not here,
when we're done?
And now they're on their own
trying to do this two, three,
five years down the road.
How are they better for our time together?
Right.
Well, it's not entirely our fault.
People that hire us,
especially in large
companies as agile coaches,
they want us to implement
an agile framework of some
sort and train and coach
all the people on how to use it well and
Because it's the promise
that the promises that when you do that,
you're going to have better results.
Right.
And so we are we are not seen as bad.
business experts necessarily.
We're seen as agile framework experts.
And so our role is sort of
defined by those guardrails.
Hey, tell us how to do this stuff, but hey,
you don't need to get
involved in leadership decisions.
You don't need to get
involved in telling us that
our vision is not
articulated well enough and
we don't have a strong
market dominating position
for the products that we serve.
We don't need you for that.
We've got our, our,
our business consultants are, you know,
from the big four helping
us with those things.
We don't need you.
Right.
And so, you know, it's, it's,
it's unfortunate because
there's a lot of really
wonderful agile coaches out there that,
that can and do try to
provide that kind of advice,
but they may not always be, they may,
it may fall on deaf ears.
It's like, now what do you, you know,
that's, that's fine.
You know, good, good.
That,
Thanks for letting me know,
but just go back to helping
my teams with their scrum
implementation and make
sure the velocity keeps going up.
Yeah, that's the outcome, right?
So again,
that's really the outcome you're
looking for is increased velocity.
You don't even know what velocity means,
do you?
Because if you did,
you wouldn't be asking for
that as an outcome.
So yeah, it is very interesting to see.
And I think it's going to be
interesting as we move
forward into this new space,
because I think it's going
to be more rewarding, not only for
for customers and organizations,
but for folks like us that
are in the space to do good,
to see individuals perform and excel,
to see people take on and
have new capabilities that
they call you up two, three,
five years later.
You talked about the testimonial,
Eileen at BevCorp.
She's phenomenal and her
people are doing phenomenal things.
And it was so exciting to go
do a testimonial with them
three years after we started.
And everywhere I go and I'm
there doing the testimonial
and the shoots and everything,
everybody's coming up and saying, oh,
Mike, can you look at what we did?
Remember, we talked about this.
We couldn't get.
And there's just all these
stories and everybody's
very energized and engaged.
And it's all happening
organically now that that
was not a culture that existed there.
But to your point,
because the senior leaders
saw value in having that,
that was part of the goal
and the outcome we were
looking for out of this entire thing.
The ability and the
capability for those
leaders to craft an
environment that could spur culture,
that would be
self-sustaining and driving
the things that they wanted to drive.
And now they're getting
involved in all kinds of
community activity and
they're growing their
business organically.
uh through talent through
means and accessing and
building their own talent
sources that they had no
idea how they were going to
fill two three years ago
It's so cool to see.
And I think it can be very
rewarding for other folks
that are in our space to
look towards moving in this direction.
When you think about that,
what would you say,
we're coming up on the end
of our time here,
what would you say to
organization leaders that
are looking for this as to
why they might wanna see it
and for other coaches like
ourself as to why they
might wanna think about
pivoting towards this style of help?
for organizations that they serve?
I mean, I think at the end of the day,
you know, it's not that agile is dead.
It isn't, you know,
companies need to function with agility.
They need to be nimble and
need to be adaptable.
All those things are true.
And so long live agility, right?
And so for companies, I think,
The focus should be more on
hiring people that are
adaptable and certainly
getting help from companies
that have experience with
helping their clients adapt
to a changing marketplace.
And if your favorite agile
shop has that kind of
experience and they've
transcended just the pure frameworks,
you know, hey, go for it, you know,
hire hire them.
I think where Azul Moray, I mean,
of course,
I'm going to think that because
I'm one of the founders of Azul Moradian,
but I think we have transcended that.
We do offer something that
is more than just the frameworks.
And I don't mean to belittle
the frameworks.
I mean,
there's some incredibly talented
and smart people that built
these frameworks based on
millions of hours of
empirical evidence that
these things actually work.
So I don't mean to belittle that at all.
All I'm saying is that the
frameworks are absolutely needed.
We need more of a focus.
Organizations need to see
more of a focus from the
companies that support them, like us,
on building top-line revenue,
bottom-line profits,
delivering value to the
customers that we serve,
more of an emphasis on
building cultures that
sustain people and allow them to grow,
right?
So as long as we can do that,
I think that would be a
great outcome for agility in general,
for the companies that
provide those services to companies.
And for coaches, you know,
I'd love to work with
coaches that want to get
into this to be more pragmatic and more
more focused on bottom line,
top line sales, right?
It's not just about the frameworks.
It's really getting
leadership of the small company,
big company, whatever it is,
aligned on what they are
all about and how they're
going to attract customers
to that message.
Yeah, it's being a business partner,
right?
Exactly.
It's just helping them with
a framework or a flow of work.
It's about business outcomes
and results and being that
partner from a business perspective,
inclusive of talent,
inclusive of market space,
inclusive of marketing and
all these other things that
a business owner is thinking about.
I think that's really key.
And it can be so much more
rewarding as a person who
is helping someone
achieve those things.
You walk back into your
organization three years later,
you're welcomed like a hero
and everybody's telling you
great stories.
And it's just the most enjoyable,
rewarding thing in your
career to see that happen
for other folks and to see
them just thoroughly enjoy
their work environment and
to be bragging about
everything that they've achieved.
It's really a cool thing.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know,
we'll include links to the
Disruptor Method and Profit
Sensei in the show notes below.
Visit the site.
You know,
I think my first priority is to build,
to validate this experiment
that there is a market that
I can actually be
successful as a business coach.
And once that's proven,
which I'm well on my way to doing,
then it's to get other
coaches involved in Profit
Sensei and the disruptor method.
Because really they're very much,
I wouldn't say the same,
it just serves a different
tier of the market, right?
So Profit Sensei, small business,
literally small business, right?
Disruptor method, medium.
to large, not super large,
not the mega businesses, but.
But dealing with scale and
scaling and those types of things.
Correct.
Exactly.
There's that component that
is definitely a part of that element.
Yep.
Excellent.
Well, thank you for your time.
Thank you everybody for joining us.
And we look forward to
seeing you on our next Agile Shorts.
Please check out the links.
We're excited to show you
what's going on and excited
to have you hear the
stories of other folks that
have gone through this
approach and what they're
able to achieve and how
they're enjoying their success.
So thank you again.
Bye everyone.
