[This post is one of many inspired by Agile 2015.]
Another nugget of wisdom from Esther Derby and Mike Lowery‘s “Coaching Flow” (the other one being “Reframing“) was “Don’t coach Supply, coach Demand“. So, what does that mean? Let’s say, there’s someone frying bacon and you want them to fry eggs instead.
If there’s someone shouting “Bacon! Baaaaacon!” into the cook’s ear all the time, you won’t get far with your eggplants egg plans.
You’ve gotta change the Bacon shouter’s behaviour first, before the cook has a chance to change theirs.
It certainly rings true for me. That one time at band camp I worked in the tech department of a company and we hardly ever shipped anything. Mostly because the business department demanded STARTING whenever a client shouted. FINISHING, by comparison, wasn’t in their focus. They were upset that none of their requested feature ever saw the light of day, but dropping what you were doing to switch to the latest request was way more important than finishing an old request.
In short, tech had little chance to change with business breathing down their necks and demanding unreasonable behaviour.
I tried to coach the business side, too, but my “authority” was clearly rooted in the tech dept. My influence on the business side was very limited. The overall company was very sales driven anyway. Not much wriggle room.
At that time none of us techies were able to change demand, so the results stayed the same, as coaching supply will rarely have lasting effects.
Maybe today I would do a better job, but back then, not a chance…