Product Agility

Strategic Coaching: Bridging the Gap Between Agile and Business Success (With Elaine Tittanegro Correa)

• Ben Maynard & Elaine Tittanegro Correa • Season 2 • Episode 31

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In this episode of the Product Agility Podcast, we explore the world of strategic agile coaching with Elaine Tittanegro Correa, a seasoned Business Agility and Transformation leader with over 13 years of experience. Elaine has successfully navigated the complex intersection of agile practices and business needs, earning her a senior position at Tesco.

Elaine shares her unique journey, starting as a typical Scrum Master and evolving into a strategic agile coach focused on delivering business impact. She emphasises the importance of aligning agile practices with business objectives rather than rigidly adhering to agile dogma. Elaine’s approach is centred on helping companies succeed by integrating agile methodologies to support their specific goals, rather than pursuing agility as an end in itself.

Key Takeaways:

- The transition from traditional agile coaching to a strategic approach that aligns with business outcomes.

- How to maintain empathy and kindness while driving change in an organisation.

- The significance of connecting agile practices to business value, ensuring that coaching efforts contribute to tangible results.

Whether you’re an agile coach, product manager, or a business leader looking to enhance your organisation's agility, this episode offers valuable insights into how to leverage agile coaching for business success.

Tune in to learn from Elaine’s experience and discover how to strategically apply agile practices to meet your business objectives.

Links and Resources:

Connect with Elaine on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-tittanegro/ 

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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When I progress and start getting close to the leadership and start understanding that it shouldn't be about that jaw agenda, it should be about what the company needs to achieve and how we help them with agile. And that's why I'm sort of a different breed in a way they say. So I my aim is to use my knowledge to help the company and not necessarily gain a badge of the best agile company in the world. Welcome to the Product Agility Podcast, the missing link between Agile and product. The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips, strategies and stories from world class thought leaders and practitioners. Why I hear you ask? Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to experiment so that together we can create ever more successful products. My name is Ben Maynard and I'm your host. What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap between agility and product is a deep rooted belief that people and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence. Hello and welcome to the Project Agility podcast. I am your host, Ben Maynard, and today I am joined by Elaine Titinegro Cohera. And now I fit in this down. So if you're watching us on YouTube, I'm going to look down when I say this. When Elaine came onto the podcast for a talk in 10 at Lean Agile London 2024, it was by far our most popular talk in 10, I would say probably ever. It was at least in the top 25% of episodes globally with our podcast host. I suspect it was even higher. It was just it, it caught fire. It did so well. And so we wanted to get Elaine back on. And time has passed since the lovely warm day we spent on the on the roof of Coin St. building with police helicopter circling, not looking for us, looking for somebody else. And we're going to pick up a little bit of the thread from where we left off, but we're going to embellish it because the episode that we recorded for Talking 10 based upon Elaine's talk at Lean Agile London was around strategic agile coaching. And and today where we're going to start the conversation after a brief introduction from Elaine to herself is we're going to be talking about strategic agile coaching for business impact and how this got Elaine a new job, a very senior position at our household name. So Elaine, thank you so much for joining the Productivity Podcast once again. It's lovely to have you back. Thanks for having me, Ben. There was so much fun with all the helicopters and airplanes flying above us. I was massively surprised with how well the podcast did. I think that's what we get when we speak about something that's really passionate about. So I've been, I come from Brazil, so I'm in K for the last 11 years or so. I've been agile has been my career for over a decade now. Yeah, I, I have a new job coming which cannot close now. I'm really excited and I think I'm excited mostly about this new wave that is coming for agile, Agile world. I'd love it if you could just share a little bit of your pedigree because you're not just, what's the way I'm going to put it, you're not your bog standard agile coach. You're not a scrum master. You're a slightly different breed, right, as some of slightly different pedigree. So could you tell our listeners a little bit about your career history? Yeah, well, I was the typical scrum master. It all goes back to how I've entered this scrum world. I was working for a company in Brazil and I think Agile and Scrum was very, very nervous. They were, at that time that company was kind of very innovative. So they were bringing to the Brazilian market stuff that all the companies weren't even not even dreaming about. And I became a scrum master because in that company, that was your natural career progression when he after like you become a lead in your, in your space. So I was working as AQA and then lead QA. And then what's next for me? Well, we can become a scrum master for the team that was like the team lead at the time. Nothing to do with what we know from scrum master. To be honest. It was mainly the name and we were learning about what scrum truly was. And I remember when I went to the CSM in Brazil a few months before coming to London, and then I learned what actually square mastering was supposed to be and I was like, oh great, everything I was doing there is not what it is, but fine. I was lucky to work in a pub and learn English. And then went back to be a scrum master and then since then on, I was like scrum master and then a job coach. And when it was, I think it was about 2018 when I was feeling I left. I start up feeling like it's something something's missing. I'm an A job coach and I know all of this stuff, but something's missing, something's not connecting. I was so disconnected from the day-to-day in a way, because I think that's what we're doing. And back then we were being told that we are kind of guarding the process but leaving the teams to deliver kind of thing. And then I was so disconnected and it was feeling awful because I remember seeing my teams struggling to deliver something. I think every agile coach here has gone through this like, oh, we're going to do all this agile stuff you're talking about. Later on when we finished delivering this highly important thing and I was feeling two things. And one, I mean, I was put being put on the side when critical times are coming. And the second is why I would not, I was not involved in the critical times in a way like I could not help with it, not involved in this in like in the suffer sense, but I wanted to help my team, but I couldn't. So then I went to work for just and in in that role, I was actually a senior delivery manager and nothing to do. I mean, the title was nothing to do with fragile roles, but the, the role was a blend of fragile coaching, delivery management. And that's when I truly found that connection I was missing. So I was, I said I was coaching with a purpose. That's why I kind of picked up at the time. I have a skin in the game as much as my team does and that helps the relationship. So my teams were not seeing me as this person that goes to decide when critical times come. I was helping them when critical times come and I was using all of my knowledge to help the team to succeed truly. So it was it, it became less about the agile agenda and it became more about the team agenda, what the team needs to achieve and how we could help with agile, my agile knowledge and expertise. So we had, I was working for both Android and iOS teams at the time. They were responsible for both of the apps. And we did great things. We we really created great products and we managed to change the status quo for the apps. We went from releasing every month, every two months to reason every two weeks, but not because Agile said so. It was because we put things in order in a way. We organize things in a different way. And then from there on, I, I started when I progressed and start getting close to the leadership and start understanding that it's never, it shouldn't be about that, that job agenda. It should be about what the company needs to achieve and how we help them with agile. And that's why I'm sort of a different breed in a way they say. So I, my aim is to use my knowledge to help the company and not necessarily gain a badge of the best agile company in the world. So in my talk, Alina Joe London, I start telling them about a story where my very first strategy for agile, my mission, it was actually truly like this magnificent picture of like the, the sunset and then all of that, you know, that poetic kind of thing. And then the mission was a truly agile organization. So I've, I've, I've truly changed my, my approach and my way of working in this industry where I help the company succeed as much as everyone or every other skill set helps the company succeed. It's not about my skill sets being the goal. It's about what my skill sets can bring to the game so that the company can achieve their objectives. Why do you think some people struggle with making that mental leap? I don't know, to be honest. I think it has some elements of remember when Agile and scrum is started, like we're talking about like 10 years ago, eight years ago where it was really becoming a religion pretty much the fights over this is not agile. The book says kind of thing. I think when we went too far down the road of we are the silver bullet to solve all the company problems and it doesn't help when you are very well paid to do that job. It took a lot of self retrospecting, thinking about and self inspecting and all of that. All the things, ironically, all of the things we teach our teams and, and think about and learning coaching and all of that. It took a lot of observing what was happening, the the result of the things I was doing and understanding why things were not going well when things went well to actually start tailoring, tailoring that my approach. I put myself a lot in many people's shoes. I think sort of kind of became a norm for me. And as I started working with leadership, I think leadership has been so much like they're the bad guys in our industry. I mean, how many people still bash the leadership and say like, oh, because the leadership didn't do this, that's why we failed. Oh, because the leadership didn't do that, that's why we failed. We have this good and bad kind of position in our industry. These people are good, these people are bad. So we need to fight them. And it's not about it. And ironic, we are the we are sort of the role in a in a team that is supposed to bring humanity to it in a way, how much humanity we brought to ways of working with healthy checks and caring about the team and the scrum master being like a servant leader kind of. And yet we have a same at the same time, we have the same position where the leadership is bad, we're good. We need to fight them. So I don't know, I think people, some people made made the change and then this this kind of changing mindset and and some people don't I think their place for both. I don't think I'm I might ways the right way. I think my way is the way makes me happy in what I'm doing and we were just chatting before we start recording how if we do something that we are passionate about. Then we find people, they are passionate about that too, and then things align and then you succeed. So my way might not be the right way for companies, some companies, but it's the right way for other companies. But I certainly think that there's a shift going on now that we need to bring more to the table than we have done. No, I, I'm amazed that for so long people have got a way of bringing so little. Yeah, I've got so much money for it. Yeah, I wonder. And this is just a collection of thoughts. And if you listen to this and you don't like what I say, then let me know publicly because I would like, I'd like to explore a little bit. Yeah, maybe, maybe you shame me. No, I'm not picking a fight. I just. I just think it's a really interesting 1 to observe because my perspective is somewhat different to others. I mean, everyone's perspective is different. That's a really fucking stupid thing to say, but everyone's perspective is somewhat different. And I spent a long time as a permanent member of staff, travelling the organization, working with all kinds of different teams in all kinds of different contexts, having all kinds of different impacts, or not, as the case may have been. And I remember around that time is when, yeah, in the early to earlier days of Scrum and Agile and people were going out and they were earning, you know, easily, probably about £1500 a day being an agile coach, let's say. And I wonder that some of that was because there was a relevant scarcity of people who had some degree of skill and understanding in the field. And you know, back in the day it was very easy to find good quality things being written on the Internet, and now it isn't so easy because that's just a deluge. Everyone's written something about everything, it seems. I wonder if a scarcity drove the price up, then the the price was high. And I wonder if then people mistook the fact they were getting paid good dollar because the skills were scarce and actually thought it's because they were very, very good. I, I don't think, I think there's, there's the element of the, of the skills, like I said, but there's also the promised land kind of effect here. So this, these companies were hearing, you have to do agile. If you don't do agile, you're going to die as a company, right? There was a lot of that. The companies were truly struggling, but then someone somewhere was was either with a book or with someone that has started the instance like this. This agile is the way. If we don't do it, you're going to regret it. So companies are scrambling to get people in and see what that that that silver bullet was, was actually in reality. And that's where things start going crazy and wrong because that silver bullet not never existed. And then they were high. They were paying top dollar for, for a lot of people, whether knowing they didn't know whether the people, these people actually were knowledgeable or not, because certification, the certification industry was really playing a part here, right? I mean, I'm the last, probably the least person I can say that because I have about 13 certifications, But I, I just, in my defense, I like learning. So I, I do them because I want the, the knowledge, not the name. But this like you'd get a candidate with like 4 or 510 letters and that meant probably nothing to someone that is not from the area. But they're like, whoa, this person must know what they're talking about. And most of them were like 2 day training courses that you, you get certified by just attending and they get a lot of pay. I mean, the contractor marketing during those years were crazy kind of regret that didn't get in the bandwagon, to be honest. Yep, still got the mortgage you need to pay the bills. Yeah, unlike Sam and I'm, I'm, yeah, there's a bit of MV there for me as well. I mean, I didn't jump ship from being a member of staff for a long time, but now I know I look at what I'm doing now, I don't think I could be doing what I'm doing now with, you know, which isn't really agile related. Isn't yeah, always product related is often different to a lot of those things. I I have a really fortunate position. I couldn't be in that position unless I've done the hard, the odds through organisations and held senior positions, positions myself. So, you know, I'm, I'm not, I don't regret my decisions, but it personally would be nice not to have a mortgage. The money would be nice. Yeah. But then I think that listening to what you were saying, there was something that struck me. And I think that many of us have experienced, I think it's the same with over a product person or an agile person or anyone, anyone in between. When you're put into a context that doesn't enable the teams to care about the the real end customer or, or say, or. And yeah, because of that, there are too many steps in between yourself and the end customer. There's a guy who we had in the podcast, the episode Will I think would have come out already. He used to be the chief market officer for Colgate and for L'Oreal actually. And he said to me, the number of steps you have between the teams and the customers, it's just an extra layer of process and bureaucracy. And I thought that was actually pretty insightful. Consider this person's come from marketing for, you know, for the real interesting consumer goods that he was saying that, yeah, every step between your teams and the customer means that it's extra bureaucracy in process. And I think that if you are being put in a position where you have lots of steps as if a teams you're working with can't make that impact. You were talking about your time at just eat, you can't you could make an impact. You can see the frequency and the races going up. You were working for teams that created the thing that the end user was holding when you're not in that position. But I think having that harder view that taking more ownership of as a consequence of having a harder view of delivery of actually making an impact is not possible for people. And so I wonder that is some of the context, you know, that with missing what we said so far is that people couldn't make an impact on the business because the business wasn't structured in such a way the the teams they're working with actually could do anything. So when they're spending a lot of money helping A-Team try and, you know, helping the agile agenda rather than the team agenda, as you said before. And yeah, and I think that that's that's that also was the case, like most, I was fortunate that I landed a job. I just see to where they actually had merged the two, delivery and coaching so that I could feel the impact. And honestly, I think that's what made me realize that if I look before their role where I was in like the the book standard scrum master agile role, that's I think what made me think when I went back to this detached role where agile and delivery are not the same kind of not together. How could I show the value that we that we were bringing connect the agile function to the business in the same way I felt connected when I was doing agile and delivery together? And that's what I have been kind of sort of been experimenting with and go to my talk to LinkedIn London because I had, I had this clear moment in my career, like I was feeling something was missing up to just eat. Then I've, I've done a stint of a delivery roles that were agile and delivery where I felt very much connected with the business and I was, my skill set was bringing value. And then I went back to separating the roles and coaching and I job coaching and, and then I was like, I cannot go back to missing the connection again. I need to do something. So I keep connected to the business, but not necessarily involved in the actual delivery. And that's when I, I went into business agility and. And I remember Karine was doing, it was at the time when like the CIL from Scrum alliance training was coming out. Yeah. And then I went, I did mine with Karine and it was great because he was teaching his six business agility. He's gonna the six enablers of business agility. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you. He's gonna kill me, the six enablers of business agility. And that's when it clicked. And it's like, well, business agility is how we connect. What we've been trying to do as agile coaches separated from delivery without having to necessarily be connected delivery. This is how we bring value is by looking to business agility. We're still helping the company with ways of working and how they how the companies function in order to, to be ahead of the game without having to necessarily be involved in the actual delivery of the product. And by doing that, I really felt that connection, the same connection I had when I was doing delivery management. And I felt that connection. And I felt that by doing that, I was able to show to the the companies the value that we bring because it was sort of around the same time we started facing the. Why do we need a job coaches in scrum masters in this company, right? We can certainly have one a job coach per like 8-9 teams because what do they do all day? So I think that that's that's sort of the journey if I were to think about it. I mean, what can you do all day? I mean, Christ, you know, people, yeah, busy yourself with something. And I'm not saying they can't have a positive impact on the team. But I mean, I've definitely been guilty of situations where I've had a positive impact on the team, but that has not had a positive impact on the outcome. Just because you've got a team that seemed like a great team. If they're not performing on par with their peers or exceeding it, then you know, you have to quite a question what you're doing with that team because they may have great friendships and great relationships, but if you ain't delivering, you ain't delivering. And I think there is there is definitely a proliferation, you know, of and I think of agile coaches and scrum masters and we look at the product coaching world, you know, it's very different. I don't think it was going to suffer the same end, well maybe also for the same end, but it will get there via different means because I just don't think that there is as much of A money making opportunity for product coaching. I think that you have scrum Masters and agile coaches being able to be placed with delivery teams and there being lots of delivery teams that particularly consultancies, not a civil organisations saw that as an opportunity. Let's place as many as we can do and then we make lots of money. Product coaches is a very different product. Coaching at the moment seems to be generally speaking very much still a pull based rather than a push based, which is fantastic. You generally are looking for a product coach who's got experience doing some product stuff because they actually need to advise you. And then and there's people that are pulling in their product coaches and actually do have that connectivity. Do you have those ligaments which connect them to the real business outcomes or trying to find ways to get a bigger voice from someone that's been there and done it before? So they think product coaching will go the same way because I don't think there's as much money to be made with it. And I think that was some of the issues. There was too much money to be made by the consultancies, not by the businesses that ended up with too many agile coaches, sadly, yeah. And this then flip that to seeing Agile was having a more of a delivery focus is something which I'm definitely seeing the people that I'm speaking to and the companies I'm speaking to and going to meet ups and conferences people are. Tend to be kind of talking about more and more of the same thing. So I think actually if we do have a, a smaller pool of agile coaches available to us who are more focused on delivery because they've got their delivery chops. And one of my associate partners has been working on the agile project and delivery management course actually recently. And this is shaped up amazingly and I think it will sell like hotcakes because she's actually understands agile, but she's also bring it in that hard delivery focus and show people how to get shit done. And I don't think that's going to be for everyone, but I think for the people it is. I think there's a, there's a great niche opportunity just presenting itself now, which I'm guessing given your successful interview recently is part of the reason you were able to be, well, have a have a couple of opportunities right to take up because you've actually shown you can make a difference to a business, not just a difference to some nebulous team ways of working. Yeah, it's, it's, it's certainly, well, I think the landscape changed. Delivery management certainly became a thing. I remember struggling to find the literature to read about what being a delivery manager meant when I took the job in 2018. And certainly now we have a book and we have training courses. I think I see Agile now has a full track on delivery management. That's the whole debate. Is this like project management in Agile? And I'm not going to get into that, but there's certainly a, I think the, the landscape is adjusting where to, well, some of the people are not going to make it. And the people that certainly haven't that there were need for the money because I know we had a lot of people that were in it for the money only whether you were truly a practitioner that really believed in Agile, but you also you believed in a way that Agile can help rather than Agile's destination. And I think these people are going to make it. I think the leaderships in the companies are much more aware of agile. We have now companies that went through the failure of agile adoptions, whatever that looks like for from hiring a bunch of agile coaches and getting rid of them from doing a full on transformation and then putting the the latest scaled framework and then getting rid of that. So we have a lot of batter scars already. And I think that changes the landscape for us because it's not as easy to get roles in in leadership and in what we do because it really needs to align the vision or how you envision. I went through a few interviews for Heads Off and it was never about can we make this teams agile because I have a bunch of teams that don't know agile or scrum. Whatever it was about what we envisioned, how can we help this company, what the things we're struggling and most of the struggles have nothing to do with necessarily the teams not doing scrum. The struggles are the real struggles the company are going through with we're too slow, we're not able to react to change as fast as we need. The the pace is picking up with the customers. Customers are able to switch from this product to that product. I was recently financed and and the fintech market is crazy, certainly UK with everyone being aware of how they're spending their money. People are changing products very quickly. And if the companies don't adapt to that massive change that's happening, then they're going to fail. And I think that's where we bring in the right skills to help them to adapt. But it's, you see, the destination is not being the best agile company. This nation is helping this company to survive what's going on around us. Have you seen that some people are going away from having agile in their titles? Yes, it's certainly a thing. Now we're avoiding agile nomenclature in terms. But it's funny, isn't it? Like where we were rushing to be branded with certifications, now we're going away from it. I'm trying to think of a good parallel to it, really. Like where you call yourself the means to an end. Yeah, I think it's it's it's good that it isn't in so many people's job titles. It's not as long as I'm sorry if this offends anyone, as long as you end up with stupid job titles and they know the ones. And an agile detective or something like that, you know, or just no, no, no, just figure out, you know, figure out what it should do. Don't give yourself a silly name because it might be harder to get a job. So you mentioned that company's been slow kind of customer retention slash churn, being able to adapt. And you mentioned about the agile being a means to an end of that and some skills which, you know, we can bring to those environments to help out with achieving those particular goals. What type of skills would you say are the most important for a, for a product or an agile coach? You know, I'm guessing that there's some overlap and perhaps the types of skills you're thinking of. Yeah, the skills I certainly use the most. And I would say they're important because I use them. I have to use them the most in a way, Observation. So you being able to observe how things are going and so that you know impact of change empathy. So it's really hard, but through empathy is putting yourself in someone's shoes. Side Story, I remember being in one of Feliz Adkins training back in the day and I remember she's saying we really need to believe that everyone here has a good reason to do what they're doing and see the best in people. And then when you're in the struggle for whatever manager you have or whatever leader in the company and you're like, there's no way this person is doing this out of their good heart. But actually they are they everyone is believing they're doing the best thing to be done in that situation. It's just that what they believe is best is different than what we believe is best. And then approaching that with kindness, which is another skill I think we need to have, is hard but so necessary. Everyone is under distress to perform. From the CEO to the most junior member of the staff, everyone needs to perform and to succeed. So everyone is doing what they know and sometimes we know different things. So you absolutely need to know. I think everything from our join Ling, all the trends and all, all the new things knowing in the sense that make your toolbox. So you need to have a good toolbox. Things I'm not saying because another thing I think we did in the past was to apply just one way for everyone. And that took out the, I think that's just assumed that everything was going to be the same, that every team is the same, every part of the company is the same, all the problems are the same. So let's do the same solution. And that doesn't work. It doesn't work. Teams are unique because they're made of people and people are unique and change the combination of people, you get different groups, unique groups. So you need unique solutions. So have as many different solutions in your toolbox that you can think of because then 1 is going to be useful, but not all of them. And I think I mean from my coaching days for like the learning to be a professional coach, like listening is important and intentional listening and tenacity. I think bravery is not is not easy. We're now dealing with in the same place with groups of people that absolutely still think agile is the right thing. We're dealing then at the same time with people that absolutely hate agile. And every single word in that was based actually mostly used in the agile world. And it's hard because you keep adapt, being able to adapt pretty much like you've talked, adapting your knowledge and your skills in a way to depend to depending on the audience you're talking about. If you talk to someone that actually hates Agile, please do not use any jargon, right? People are allergic to the jargons now, yeah. I think that's why I think that's a big mistake that people have made over the years is everything people often talk about the tool. And I think I'm using the word jargon means it doesn't really mean anything to anyone without actually just saying like, what's the why? What's the purpose behind it? And if we say like why we're considering a particular tool, then I think that's a much that's a way of going about getting people on board and stuff. And we can articulate what we feed the benefit of doing that tourism, perhaps perhaps even what problem we think it solves. Now then I'm just keeping one eye on the clock, right? Because I think we've only got about, you know, 10-15 minutes left. A number of things you mentioned there. Always, always observation, empathy, kindness, listening, like they're all great. And I'm putting my feet in the shoes of the listeners and just thinking they're, they're useful skills. But like, how the hell do you work those skills? Like what advice would you give to people of regardless of what they're doing, if they want to work on their observation, empathy, kindness, they feel that this makes sense, What would you suggest they go and try? I think we could try them in every single situation in our day-to-day. It doesn't need to be work related, but observation is just truly arriving at a place, a situation and just take a moment to look what is happening. Just don't. Some people, I I'm certainly guilty of that. We have this urge to solve a problem without even understanding what is truly going on. But take the time to observe, to listen to what people are saying. We can borrow some some lines like questions from from coaching and from clean language, for example, which is something I stood in the past. As long as we just don't stick to, don't just get stuck on the questions part only, but ask some questions and just try to understand from the people's perspective what's going on. And then. So with observation, I guess then there's a big important part around not being. LED astray by your own biases and your own mental models there. I mean, we, we after many years in the industry, if let's, let's keep in the work lane. If, if, if many, many years in the industry, you sort of already know how to solve a particular problem because every company they work for probably struggle with sort of the same situation. So your instinct is going to kick in and say, yeah, I know, I didn't know how to solve this. They need ABCXY&Z. This is where we've is essentially a trap because when our instinct gets in, you kind of ignore the, the, the detail, you ignore the uniqueness of that situation because again, we work with people problems, right? So it is taking us, it is stopping the intuition or the instinct to kick in and say, well, let me see what's unique about this situation as a, a person is a culture of the company. It is the, the, the, the industry of this company. If you work in, in different industries, going to see certain industries approach problems in a very different way. Some, some companies, I went from a company that would, if you have a problem, you would just get together and then scramble, get a bunch of people and then solve the problem. And then I went to, to an industry where people would have very clear process and procedures to solve that particular problem. And I could just go in, in the second with the instinct of the first, because people are like what you're doing. I mean, we have clearly set out and if we're missing a way to solve this problem or procedure or process, whatever, then we need to go and have this process to write it down. So it is about having them. I think being mindful of where you are, the people around, the people involved and the context you're in. Context is so important for these things. So observation is key because you need to get into the understand that context first. And then the listening comes in because people are going to start saying why. If you while observing, you're going to may ask questions and people are going to answer those questions and you need to be true listening to get what's going on right. And the empathy comes in because you need to think about, well, if I were in that position, although right now I would not do the same way, but if I were in that position, I probably would have done the same thing. Or I know how they feel and I need to approach these a bit in a delicate way, for example because there's history, whatever here. So the sometimes we're in a rush and we're just like, Oh my God, it's just stupid. We could have solved this by having one meeting kind of thing, but then the coach of the company is not like, let's get together and solve problems. So going for a meeting to solve that problem is probably not the first thing that people do because that's not part of how they operate. But we can't certainly things I used every day and and it's so hard that you need to keep reminding yourself that you need to do those things. I certainly don't haven't mastered it, but absolutely and probably I would. I try mastering it sometimes in an autopilot. I mean, you just go and plow through what was been the biggest regret of yours in your career for not being able to apply these things. I don't think I'll probably, I don't have like a biggest regret because I'm, I'm, I mean, I have anxiety, right? So anxious people, they plan ahead everything in their minds to the extent of all the possible outcomes, etcetera. So it's, it's difficult. So it's rare when I go through too far from without realizing I'm going too far. So I kind of my anxiety doesn't let me in, in a way, like I just do a step and I overanalyze it and I was like, Oh, that was a wrong step. Go back and do it differently. But I think when coming back from maternity leave, I was a bit rusty with with all of this because I was still on, on sleep deprived mom mode. And definitely when I sleep deprived, you're not going to be, you're not going to have empathy, you're not going to observe anything. You're just going to get stuff done. So I might, I might have been hard at the beginning there, but I'm being kind to myself that I was going through being a work full time working mom with a one year old. So I apply kindness to myself as well, but I think I've picked up these over the years of many, many, many mistakes, big mistakes, more mistakes. And by all means, I'm still want to make them. And what's your hope for the future? Like, not your life Ward beans and all of that. I mean, yeah, I mean, wouldn't that be nice? But I think humans are just just stop bickering. They're just assholes, just generally. So fortunately, not sure if that's gonna happen anytime soon, but I suppose with lots of people talking about Agile being dead or product being the next big thing or product not being the next big thing or agile resurgence and all of this. I mean, what do you really hope the future holds for people like us and what we do? I, there's one thing I really want is that people stop bickering on on LinkedIn because this whole agile is dead movement is just more and more of our industry shooting ourselves in the fit because we like to do that right. We wash our laundry laundry in front of everyone else in the industry. And then no wonder people are just like it. Zhao coach is a bunch of clowns, which we're just fighting. We, we think like instead of instead of trying to help each other, we just fight with each other. It's just crazy. I, I'm, I'm not too unhappy. I mean, I'm happy about how a lot of good people are being affected by the, the result of years of uncontrolled growth and, and number of specifications and crazy pay and all of that. So being selfish and, and having gone myself through something like that, I'm really sad that really good people are getting caught. But it's actually needed so that we start entering a new era where actually people that actually have the, the, the expertise and the skills and they, they really are good in what they do. They get to the pay they deserve. Because it's really hard to get the same or smaller package for example, than someone that just started on the yesterday on and goal certification kind of thing. I think the our industry needs and I think is a much needed crisis to make all of us think through our approaches, our way going with all of these companies and self reflection like what can I do differently? How can I involve we talk so much in agile about companies needing to stop and, and, and, and do retrospectives and improve for the next cycle in scrum with the springs and company to try to do like big retrospectives for things. And the we're telling the company to, to adapt to the, the changes in the market. And we need to do that. And this is the time where we need, we're doing that. This is a is a great opportunity for all of us to stop and think and retrospect to what was not working and what we need to do and be and know and do differently so that we can actually bring a lot more value than sometimes we have been in the past. And I think there's a, a great in a way is, is getting the Eagles a little bit down as well because there's so much ego in this. So we need things to calm down a little bit, get the hype out. Like we, we don't need the hype. We are a skill as much needed as a product skill, as ACX skill as a engineering skills, whatever. We're just part of the same. We're not special. And I think that's this is this is helping a lot of people understand we are not special. We love what we do, but we are no different than a product manager that loves what they do, an engineer that loves what they do. Awesome. I think that's a lovely place to end it as a closing thought. Yeah, that is true. I think that might end up also as the intro. So let's see what is the portion of it. Elaine, thank you so much for. Thank you. One listen to me whittle on for ages before we even hit record, but also lovely. It's the best part. We should have quite recorded that. I know every people have fun every time they end up in this silly situation, but also you've been very curious and you've shared some great stories and some great tips and just it's been really nice to get this opportunity to reconnect and explore things in slightly more depth. And I think that I loved it. You're gonna smash your new senior position. And maybe by the time this episode comes out, maybe that will be public on LinkedIn. So, you know, people can do some research if they want to know. And we will put your LinkedIn address into the show notes for this as well. Is there? Anna, do you have any requests of the listeners or anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up? Just well, thanking everyone for listening. I for years I've struggled with why I'm going to do this kind of things because I don't have anything interesting to say. Jose Casal knows this. I hate bugged me to do that. Lena Linajo London conference for probably four years or more and I was like no, why people would come. So thank you for listening. You me is meant a great, great deal for me. Thanks. Thanks you, Ben for it was true. I wrote on LinkedIn that you picked up that you give you give an audience to to new people. You give a voice to new people and I, I felt I, I certainly felt that you gave me a voice. So to the listeners, if you liked anything I said, you didn't like anything I said, my LinkedIn, come and talk to me. I'm happy to discuss it. I, I love talking to people about these things. I'm very passionate about agile and my world and my career and I love discussing it. So by all means, come and chat. Lovely. Thank you very much, Elaine. And, and we won't be strangers. We will see each other very soon, hopefully. Hopefully we can find a way to get you to a productised in Lisbon because that's the next conference. I'm going to be so sound. I can't wait. I love Lisbon. Can't wait. It's like second summer holiday for me. Pop over to productised. Yeah, I just hopefully we'll meet, see each other again soon or maybe at Wembley Stadium and we're going to do that. That'll be cool. Yeah. So those who listening in the UK believe agile London the meet up have a meet up come up in September, end of end of September. That is at Wembley Stadium in one of the hospitality suites. I believe I may or may not be speaking, but I'll definitely be in attendance with the podcast if nothing else. So do make sure to check out our London if you want to get to see the inside of Wembley Stadium in the United Kingdom. And also and finally and also and finally, yes, we had a really nice thing happened every day where somebody left us a review on the Apple podcast platform. And the reviews make a big difference to the podcast. If nothing else, it just makes the podcast platforms like us a bit more so that when people are searching for something that increases the probability that the productivity podcast will come up in their search results. So if you have enjoyed today's episode, Elaine, if you've enjoyed being on today's episode, oh, I love it, please do go on to Spotify or iTunes or whatever podcast and tool that you use to digest your podcasts and leave us a review. Five star voice. We really don't mind, but your feedback is really 5, preferably 5, yes, or six if they've got 6. Let's see a bonus star because yes, it does make it more discoverable. And the more listens we get, the more downloads we get, the the more guests we get and the more it is easy for us to sustain this content to you all. So thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for that review that you will be giving us very shortly. Yes, Elaine says so. Yes, we need to beat the algorithm. Those algorithms. We need to exactly leave the review. We need the review. We're begging for a review. Yeah, I'm not begging much. Just a little bit. OK. By now, if you are still listening, congratulations, you win. You've made to the end of yet another episode. Thank you very much for this. And Elaine, thank you very much for coming on. Next time around, we're gonna have somebody else with something just as interesting to say. Just who it is, I don't know, because you know what? I don't plan far enough ahead. But it will be somebody awesome, I promise you that. So make sure you hang around for next week's episode and. That's it. I'm Ben Maynard and this is the Product Agility Podcast.

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