The Value of Slack w/ Andrew Fuqua

In Andrew Fuqua’s blog post “Slack and the Agile Manager’s Role: Be the Slack” https://www.leadingagile.com/2017/01/slack-agile-managers-role/ he shared his thoughts on the need for management to make space and time for teams and individuals to be creative and innovative. In this podcast Andrew and Dave Prior dig deeper on the topic, how and why organizations resist it, and how managers can get started with introducing time to allow teams to be innovative. Show Notes 00:15 Podcast Begins 00:48 Some background on Andrew’s work as an Enterprise Consultant 01:47 Introducing the topic of Slack 02:05 How the PMBOK defines slack 03:00 How Andrew defines slack and what he focuses on when he’s looking at it 04:12 Why wringing all the slack out of a team is not necessarily a good idea 05:00 Finding the slack you need to keep 05:44 Flow Trumps Waste and Value Trumps Flow 06:56 When you see downtime, what do you lose when you feel compelled to fill it up? 07:44 Whose job is it to create an environment and culture that supports creativity? 08:33 Why it goes beyond the responsibilities of a ScrumMaster 08:58 BUT ANDREW! WE ARE TOO BUSY TO STOP AND BE CREATIVE! 09:24 Someone is going to come along and eat your lunch! 09:43 Why organizations forget to take the time to be innovative 10:40 Why it is about more than simply holding innovation days. 12:18 What’s the manager supposed to do in Agile anyway? 12:54 How we end up with managers who do not know how to manage and like to crack the whip 14:09 Creativity also needs sustainable pace 15:26 Making space for creativity every single day 16:31 The manager shouldn’t be delivering stuff 17:07 Taking personal responsibility for protecting your own space/time to be innovative 17:43 How Andrew creates and protects the innovation space for himself 19:08 Time spent recovering from working at an unsustainable pace is not the same as slack time set aside for innovation 20:09 How Managers can introduce Slack 22:05 How much slack should I make sure each person has and how do I track it? 22:42 How do you become a change agent that will transform an organization to support Agile? 23:18 Focusing on Lead Time to help the organization understand what needs to change 23:53 Is the best way to create change changing the CEO 24:09 What a manager can do to understand Slack more 24:47 How do we get more creativity in the organization 25:13 Happiness Metrics, Employee Retention and taking a baseline before introducing Slack 25:51 Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose 26:56 Things a Manager Should Not Do 29:02 Beware the Hero 29:58 Parting words of advice for a manager who is trying to understand how to let Slack live in their environment 30:42 How to reach Andrew Links from the Podcast Slack and the Agile Manager’s Role: Be the Slack https://www.leadingagile.com/2017/01/slack-agile-managers-role/ Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco http://amzn.to/2lkow1C How to Use an A3 In An Agile Transformation https://www.leadingagile.com/2015/08/how-to-use-an-a3-in-an-agile-transformation/ Contacting Andrew You can reach Andrew via LeadingAgile at https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/andrew-fuqua/ On Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewmfuqua On LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewfuqua/ Contacting Dave You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ On Twitter at twitter.com/mrsungo Or on his personal site at: http://drunkenpm.net Feedback/Questions If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class.